What have The Sentry Box staff been up to – Feb 27-Mar 5

Behold Sean’s Contubernium! “Clearing off the workbench is starting to bear fruit.  These duders are Gripping Beast Praetorian Guard (circa 100 CE, now out of print) with Little Big Man Studios shield transfers. Essentially an essay on Sean’s Rule of Miniature Wargaming #3: ‘Get the Shield and Base right and the rest is gravy’. (yay flowers, yay gravy)  Tired of palace intrigue, assassinating and proclaiming Emperors, these Praetorians have ventured out into the field to face down some Germanic Panic. All slappychoppy technique with the exception of the metal tones. GW Gullyman Flesh is a really decent Mediterranean skin tone over black/grey/white.  AP Dark Wood I just fall in love with more every time I slap it on a spear shaft, or pila shaft if you will.  Highlights courtesy of Vallejo Silver and AP Matte White.”

Greg and Tracy played another two player game of Barrage using the Leeghwater expansion. “I was the start player and had the Executive Officer that lets you use concrete mixers to build conduits instead of excavators. I also took an early external work that let me build a power house, and that got me into a good position in the early game. I was able to get a 4 value conduit and also build a base to start managing the water flow to my advantage. By the mid game Tracy had caught up a little, and in the late game she made effective use of her country power (Germany), but it was too little too late.”

Greg and Tracy played Escape Room: The Game: Candy Factory. “This is one of the Family Versions, so you might expect that it’s slightly easier, but we still managed to go over the time limit by three minutes. That was down to a couple of time consuming things when opening one of the envelopes, and the fact that we screwed up one puzzle and had to restart it. Overall it wasn’t difficult, we just failed to pay proper attention and wasted a bunch of time. It was a fun one though, I enjoyed it quite a bit.”

Greg read A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge. “I’ll admit that I didn’t quite get the whole concept of the different Zones (Slow Zone, Beyond, etc.) or the idea of the ‘Powers’ and the Blight, but I did enjoy the idea of the planet with the Tines. The concept of them existing as packs that make up individuals was an interesting one. Overall I enjoyed it and it definitely felt different to most of the other sci-fi books I’ve read lately.”

Luke wanted to play a game with Greg since Alex was at school and Tracy was out, so they played Catacombs of Karak. “He chose this game and picked out the character he wanted. He’s definitely much better at focusing now, and kept his attention on the game the whole time. I just prompted him to ask which way he wanted to go, but he did a great job of adding up the numbers in the combats, remembering to add the bonus from his weapons. He also crushed me, despite me eventually killing the dragon. He kept finding treasure chests and the monsters that give you the keys, ending up with 6 points to my measly 2.5. However, he informed me that all of the treasure we both got was actually for the Queen “

Sue doesn’t typically post work-in-progress shots, but she was very pleased with how the blue Superstar 5/0 brush worked for the Ash Waste Nomads eyes. “I was able to use this inexpensive brush to do 9 pairs of near-perfect eyes. I felt like this brush was made to paint the eyes on these masks and wanted to share this recommendation for anyone else working on these, or similar models. If you like the rest of what you see so far, I used Vallejo’s Bone White primer then used a Citadel Layer Small brush to apply a thinned down (w/ Contrast Medium) Black Templar Contrast Paint for the masks. Since the Ash Waste Nomads come with 2 heads for every body, you might want to clip and prime a few extra heads for practice to get the hang of how the Contrast Paint flows in this small area or to practice the eyes.”

Renee and Jenn have recently played a bunch of expansions for Escape Room: The Game. “We’ve played Secret Agent (with a cool spy theme) The Magician (which has you figuring out different tricks), Wild West Express (where you’re on a train trying to save all the passengers), and The Switch (aka The Break In, in which your crew needs to pull off a heist in a museum). This series continues to impress us with its puzzles, components, storylines and overall experience. We do occasionally find some of the puzzles finicky so figuring out which key to use may take a couple of tries and once or twice we found ourselves looking up the answer, but overall we’ve always enjoyed each one. I also really appreciate that every component that you need to destroy in the process is available for download off their website so they are re-playable.”

This week they also played the latest Exit game with puzzles, Nightfall Manor. “Compared to the earlier 2 we’ve done in this series, this one was rated easier and we really appreciated that. The puzzles themselves were fun to put together and the ‘exit puzzles’ were once again creative, interesting and most importantly fun! The fact that it was overall on the easier side meant that we got to have a chill afternoon with the game together without having moments of frustration trying to figure out what we were supposed to be doing. So not on the more challenging side, but we still had our fair share of ‘high-five’ moments when we figured out the code. These EXIT games are longer experiences, taking 2-3 hours, so they make for a more extended gaming session.”

Sue picked up some of the new Dragonlance D&D pre-painted minis and the following are some of her favorites. Interestingly, (and fortunately), most of my favorite models from this line are common or uncommon so I won pretty much every model I wanted from the blind boxes. First up, the Dragon Army Ogre and a couple of Draconians. I love models that have something fun going on, and an ogre with a bucket of fish certainly qualifies. This uncommon model is one of my favorites out of this entire range.

“There are quite a few Knights of Solamnia in this collection, but this classic looking, uncommon one is definitely my favorite. Pictured with a fun little piece of dungeon dressing, the Dragon Egg, as well as this cool looking Warhorse.”

“Although I couldn’t get a great photo, I thought the common Qualnesti Elf was quite beautiful, and the uncommon Kender Vampire is cute also. I also thought this Gnomeflinger was adorable and fun.”

“I was glad to get a Leedara to go with my Lord Soth (from a previous D&D prepainted collection). If you want your own Lord Soth, a new Lord Soth on Greater Death Dragon due out in the near future and he will be detachable at the waist so he can be a dragon rider or standing.”

“Lastly, my favorite, black robed wizards! I was so pleasantly surprised to see my favorite Dragonlance character, Dalamar the Dark included in this collection! I also thought it was nice to see a dwarven(?) black mage included as well. I actually think she is one of the nicest models in this set and she is a common as well, so there is a good chance you can win her pretty easily from the blind boxes. The other black mage is Wyhan, the magic shop keeper.”

Greg hadn’t managed to get the group together for a month or so, but they were finally able to do that and get their Roll Player Adventures campaign back on track. “We played the 8th adventure as well as the Colosseum side quest, which leaves us with 3 more scenarios to play I think. We were a little more consistent with our choices this time, even if we thought it might prevent us from unlocking more of the adventure. There are lots of ways that previous choices can affect things in the future too, so we may find things come back to bite us later!”