Kickstarter: Dominion of the Gods

This week I’ve decided to put my money behind Dominion of the Gods

Dominion of the Gods is Comfy Chair Games latest entry into the miniatures gaming market. At least it will be if they can meet their funding goals. This time around they’re harness the breadth of mythological pantheons the world over as the miniatures that make up the line. Initially the line will consist of several box sets containing five miniatures corresponding to specific pantheons. The initial goal is to produce a Greek themed box containing the goddess Athena, a Minotaur, a Cyclops, Medusa, and Achilles, and a Norse bx containing Thor, a Valkyrie, a troll, a frost giant, and Jokul Frosti the spirit of the winds. Also contained within these boxes will be quick start rules, special dice designed for the game, and stat cards for each of the models in the box. It’s an ambitious project with planned stretch goals including plans to offer additional pantheon boxes including Hindu and my personal favorite one based on the works of H.P. Lovecraft.

Comfy Chair Games is no stranger to the miniatures gaming market. The company has been around for about five years and has already produced a game called Spinespur which, although it lacks the popularity of the bigger games in the market, has it’s own strong and dedicated following. I believe they are well positioned to take this game and make it a success with the support of they’re existing fan base and any new comers they can attract from the fans of mythology out there who would love to pit god against god on the table top. They even had the sense to put some gameplay demo videos up on the project page right at launch which is rare from other companies who have run miniatures game kickstarters. Often times you’re asked to put your money behind a game without any indication how the game plays and whether or not you’re even interested in it’s mechanics. From the looks of it Dominion of the Gods is a fairly simple and straight forward system that is easy to learn quickly without sacrificing tactical complexity to keep the game fresh and interesting.

There you have it, my opinion of the game, it’s creators, and the reason I’ve decided to give them my money. If it sounds interesting to you, go over to their project page and see if Dominion of the Gods might be the next game you get into.

Have you seen the Avengers gag reel yet?

It is FANTASTIC. Thor’s antics with the hammer is my favorite; I love it so much that I had to post a drawing:

My 4-year-old (Thor is her favorite) asked me if it was a coloring page for her. I told her yes. It is a coloring page for ALL THE INTERNETS.

Click to enbiggen and print it out!

Wednesday Art: “Misadventures in Dreamland”

Remember when I said I would paint the silliest, most random thing I could think up? And that it would involve unicorns and rainbows? Well, here is the result of my endeavors. It’s probably a fairly accurate depiction of what it can be like inside my brain.

Since there’s quite a lot going on in every corner of the picture, I picked out a few details, so it’d be easier to see on a computer screen.

You can read more about my newest painting on our RedBubble page. PS: It’s totally on sale.

Lokiiiiii iiiiiiiin Spaaaaaace

Sorry I forgot to post this on Wednesday, everybody. >_< I had it done, and then it completely slipped my mind! It won’t happen again, promise.

-Krystal

More Avengers sketches

Avengers

Last night Krystal and I went to see the Avengers and it was pretty decent. Everyone is praising it as the greatest super hero movie ever made, and to be honest they’re probably right. I’m just hard to please, especially when it comes to movies, so here are a few things that irked me.

First and foremost was the ending battle with alien invaders. A never ending stream of the guys are just pouring into Manhattan while the Avengers do their best to put them down. Okay, cool, very climatic. Here’s the thing. There are a lot of other super heroes in the Marvel universe who would have shown up very quickly to do their part in the event of a catastrophe of this scale. I realize this is a movie about the Avengers and tossing in Spiderman, The Fantastic Four, and the X-men would have cheapened that, but maybe somebody should have thought about that before introducing something quite so large as a massive alien incursion into New York. The aliens could have just as easily invaded some other city with a lower density of readily at hand heroes and this wouldn’t have bothered me quite so much.

Another thing that bothered me was how quickly they glossed over Thor’s return to Earth. At the end of his movie they made a big deal about him not being able to get back to Earth because the Bifrost was destroyed. Then when he pops back in to capture Loki and take him back to Asgard there is only a single line of dialogue explaining his presence. While I won’t deny that there wasn’t really room in the film for a long winded explanation of how he got there, a little more effort could have been put into it. Hell they took the time to explain where Natalie Portman’s character was at and why she didn’t appear in the film, and frankly I don’t think I’m the only one who wouldn’t have cared if they’d decided to leave that out entirely. Thor has better things to do than go checking in on her, so it would have made plenty of sense to gloss over that.

The film starts out with Loki coming to earth and through his newly acquired made spear taking control of several S.H.I.E.L.D. personnel including Hawkeye. To me this just felt like an easy way to write Hawkeye out of the first half of the film. Any agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. could have been taken by Loki in his place and the film could have played out exactly the same (with the exception of one particular piece of bullshit that I won’t go into.)

Lastly, at the end, after all kinds of build up about how unstoppable and uncontrollable the Hulk is, and an incident where he had no trouble what so ever attacking the others, Bruce Banner willfully transforms into the Hulk and for no apparent reason is suddenly able to exercise control over whose face the Hulk decides to stomp. The Hulks sudden ability to differentiate between friend and foe is just foisted upon you and you’re excepted to swallow it without question. He even gets his hands on Loki at one point, smacks him around a bit, then decides to walk away leaving Loki battered but free to get up and do as he pleases. Granted by the time Loki comes back to his senses the others are on hand to apprehend him, but there’s a pretty big span of from between Hulk smashing him and them taking him into custody during which he could have easily just walked (limped) away.

Over all it wasn’t a bad movie. The action was pretty smooth with everyone getting their fair share of screen time with the possible exception of Hawkeye, but let’s be honest, who cares about Hawkeye anyway? The in fighting may have been taken to a bit of an extreme, but really it was fairly entertaining watching Ironman smack Thor around and even more so watching Thor smack the Hulk around.