I am making another review post and this time I am looking at the Pz.Kpfw. III G from Zvezda. Zvezda is the largest Russian manufacturer of model kits, board games and toys and makes up 3/4 of the Russian model kit market. This offering is from their Art of Tactic line and while the tanks are 15mm the foot soldiers of this line seem to be on a larger scale.

So why did I choose to use this kit. First and for most was because I was in need of some 15mm German tanks and the second reason was because I have three of these new on sprue.

Speaking of sprue lets start there.

The tank is made up of a total of 10 pieces if you count the flag piece used in Art of Tactic (I did not use this piece on mine). The parts are well sculpted and cast with very crisp details. Speaking of details the hull is covered with them in the form of an extra idler wheel and tools. I was surprised to see them so well done on such a small model. The plastic that makes up the model is a little flexible but it is not a hindrance and actually makes assembling the model easier.

The included instruction sheet is simple and straight forward. They show the numbers for each part as well as a diagram of how they fit together. Also included with the instructions is a card for use in Art of Tactics. This model fit together so well that I only used four small drops of glue and honestly would have been able to get away with not using any glue at all.


This tank painted quickly. I just gave it a grey base coat followed by a black wash and then went back and picked out the details. From start to finish this tank took about an hour and 15 minutes from sprue to finished and that includes drying times of the primer, wash, and dull coat. Here is the finished product.


I am quite happy with the end result and it meets my needs perfectly. I would like to get a few more of these in the future. If you are looking for some 15mm WWI or WWII tanks I recommend checking out the line from Zvezda.

Today weare going to look at a miniature from Scibor Monstrous Miniatures (http://sciborminiatures.com/). The one we are going to look at is the Chaos Master (#28sf0050).

I must start by mentioning where this mini came from. The Chaos Master was ordered through Slave to Painting (http://www.slavetopainting.com/).Slave to Painting was a pleasure to deal with. Their website is easy to navigate through, just make sure you select the right country so the prices are in the correct currency. The minis were well packaged and as a cool added bonus they came packaged with a Slave to Painting decal and a awesome paint brush shaped lollipop.

Now to the miniature in question, the Chaos Master. I found this mini while searching for a suitable model to use as a Dark Apostle in Terminator Armour to lead my Word Bearers army. The Chaos Master seemed to fit the bill so I ordered one up.

The multi-piece resin miniature comes in clamshell blister pack.


The arms and mace haft are on separate sprues with some small decorative shields while the rest of the parts are loose.



Here is a parts break down with individual pictures. All these pictures are straight out of the pack without any trimming or washing.
First we will look at the main body piece. The torso, legs, and head are all cast in one piece. As you can see there is a ton of detail on this model. While we are talking about detail, the detail is very very crisp and there is almost no sign of mold lines.




The left arm is meant to hold the power maul/mace and represents the model from its shoulder to the wrist plus a couple of the small shields. During transport some of the shields had came off the sprue but were in perfect shape and not damaged.


The mace haft is on its own sprue and though it looks like there is a lot of flash on it this is very thin and mostly on the sprue. It trims away easily and leaves no trace of it behind.


The mace head is a large well detailed chunk of resin on a small round plug style sprue. It trims away easily with a steady hand and light pressure.


The right arm is on a sprue with a couple small shields. This power fist style arm ends in a pointy finger pose that looks great on the model.


The base, what can I say about it? It is a true work of beauty. It is an elaborate display style 40mm base featuring demonic creatures wreathed in flame wrapped around a rock with eldritch symbols carved in it.
This does add so height to the model but to me is more than acceptable because it makes the model look much more impressive on the battlefield.


Clean up of the model was cake. What little flash there was easily trimmed away. The same story applies to the mold lines though there was next to no mold lines on the model and what there was were very faint and did not run through any highly detailed sections. The parts went together quite well. The shoulder joints required a bit of careful trimming to get a good solid mounting surface but this was done quickly with the edge of a razor blade. The three piece arm/mace combo went together very well with very minimal trimming.
As you can see they meet very flush and tight.

There is sadly a minor bad spot with this model and that is on the base. The blue lines point to some minor pin holes in the bases detailing.

Honestly though this is a minor thing. I was thinking about filling them but they were so minor I decided to leave and after painting the base they are pretty much invisible.

When it came to painting the resin took paint very well. I used a spray primer that is the same color as GW's Fortress Grey and it went on smoothly and did not soak into the freshly washed resin. The rest of the painting went pretty straight forward using GW paints.



This is a model that can be painted quickly to get it on the table (like I did) or one can really take their time with and make a true master piece. The resin is crisp and of very high quality. The sculpt is amazing and truly full of presence once assembled and painted up. I highly recommend this model and judging from another model from Scibor that I got at the same time as this one their quality is top notch on all their models. I know I will be buying 6 more termie style models from them in the future to make a squad to accompany the Chaos Master onto the 4x8 battlefield.

Thank you for reading this review. I welcome all questions and/or comments. Until next time may your dice roll those magic numbers you need and happy gaming.
-Manny-

Living in a college town you get a fair number of people who will only be in the area for a short while. Students coming in for college or people dealing with the college, but still they need a game. My current gaming group is breaking up in a couple of months. I have only been gaming with the group for about a year. My previous group was about 12 years of time together.

I guess it is Gamer isolation but i have grown weary. The gaming spark is there, but the flame has died down. I just found out about 20 mintues ago one of my friends is moving in aug/sept. with another one moving at the end of March, it just gets a little sad. I am in two games. A Vampire game which runs every other friday (which ends in Aug/Sept due to the gm moving) and a Pathfinder game (which is ending in the end of March the gm is moving), both of which are hosted at the Pathfinder GM's appartment.

I am at a loss for words at the moment.... Corinthians 13:11 hits me again...When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I felt as a child, I thought as a child. Now that I have become a man, I have put away childish things. People grow up and move away, some faster than others....I dunno, it's just a bummer to find out the new blood in the game isn't lasting a year, and the new group I joined where i was the new blood ends in March....

When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.

Sorry I'm bumed...One of my friends backed out of the gaming group so we are down to 3 players and a GM...

get new players you say....well it's easier said then done. Specially when players in the group are old and crotchety and right wing and thinks occupy washitington people are "useful Idiots" and he believes that Atlas is Shrugging....If you understood that you may beable to fit into the group....

Get a new group, well that is easier said then done as well....I'm on disability and can't drive so they all woul dhave to come to me or something...

I don't know My creative juices were flowing and I was writting and then poof my group fell appart...

Zoë (Serenity) : Do you know what the definition of a hero is? Someone who gets other people killed. You can look it up later...


I love GMing, though it is not as fun as playing...well in some cases and in its own way.

Gm's have to follow the rules more then a player, they come up with a world and Idea and they usually make it theirs. GM's have cannon to sift through, to pick and choose and so on.

I guess I am writing this blog because I get Ideas for games, big damned ideas. Worlds I want to create, people and places I want to share with my friends...Using the most advanced graphics chip...the human Imagination. Ok so I am watching Big bang theory and Serenity and pulling quotes. I just am in the mood to write so I am doing it here.

I have several Ideas but i don't know how to bring them to fruition. Of course it is several different games as well. I just don't know what to do lol. I'm torn between playing in huge worlds that are already made or making them my own.

So, Tonight was Shadowrun night. the Game only lasted 2 hours because of my use of brilliant contacts, and my room mates use of demotivation that caused the game to last only 2 hours lol.

So The driver (note not a rigger mind you), happened to "Find" a military grade box full of Monofillimant wire I believe it was over 3000 meters it was 9,000,000 worth.
Well we get called together to handle this stuff after the driver sliced his finger open touching it and his arms dealer contact runs dry (leaving the city for a while after he found out how much we had) it was up to me to find a buyer for it....I'm not a contact wiz I just have two bigassed contacts...both are my family members, the magic circle my father is a part of (which is very large in Tir) and my grandmother (who is very large in Tir) that is the good part, the bad part is we are in Seattle, so we have to get from there to Tir a 5 hour drive....from Seattle via smuggler routes through NAN to Tir....

Well we make it through NAN but we get caught and being tracked by 6 military grade vehicles. They tell us They are after the 9,000,000 worth of monofiliment...so we get scared, we trim off 30 meters and unload the cargo and run....instead of selling it.

We played our second session on Wed and it went well. Chef who plays our Druid wasn't there however Will joined in and played his Dwarf Fighter. So we had three fighters none of them over 4 foot tall, and me 6foot wizard. Lots of comedy was involved. We were concerned with our lack of healing but we did really well. I did support and the three fighters just mowed through all the opposition. Again our GM Doug had to increase the numbers of mobs and hp's just to challenge us. This adventure we found our way to the goblin village after a few random encounters in the swamp, and it became a dungeon craw at the village, with the GM creating a child goblin on the fly to give us directions, apparently we had already killed more goblins than were supposed to be in the village and we were not heading towards the boss. So the child got us on track and we faced off against the goblin chief. He was a ranger who focused on shooting, unfortunately for him it only took us one round to plow through his fodder to get to him. We took him down quick and had found info on a bunch of skeletons that had attacked the goblins and went to a cave. We went to the cave and started exploring. We found a giant amobea, it gave us a few issues since our party kept rolling ones. We defeated it though and after a few healing potions being passed around we ended the session for the night.

TOOO MANY CHOICES!!!

lol, I have The Secret World and Star Wars: The Old Republic. Ok it is just two choices. But still they are big...which one. I don't know, which one, and I don't know inside of those what I want to play....

The Secret World has 3 factions, within those factions they have magic and machine guns...don't know what I want to do there. But I don't like PVP so I don't know if I will play the game...I just found out about it a couple of days ago, but I still don't know It looks Damned Interesting.

Then there is Star Wars: The Old Republic I have been excited about it for months. But there are a ton of choices in the game that I will have to make, like what faction, with in the faction do i choose good, neutral or evil (yes you can be a Sith and gain light side points....but at the moment it doesn't do anything). Then you have which class to choose, i'm looking to Bounty hunter, Smuggler and Operative. Then there is the big question, which trade skill do I want to play. There are a Large number of trade skills within 3 sets....but you can only choose one out of each set.

I have no idea what I am going to do, I am damned interested in both games, and looking forward to them. I also have to get friends to play with me...I'm a social player, and a casual player and a trade skiller....though The Secret World does not have trade skills and PVP I know I am going to have another player maybe more. On the flip side there is Star Wars, which will have a ton of players but don't know if they will have my play style (I know half my friends are more PVP and Raid oriented) then you so many friends wanting to play but this one will go with his World of Warcraft guild, that one will go with his girlfriend to the Roleplaying server, and these guys want to be Imperial, the others rebel...so I don't know what I am going to do, play The Secret World with a friend or two but pvp, or Star Wars and too many decisions....

So Magic: The Gathering Released their latest set "Innistrad" last month.

It has a heavy Horror theme, with lots of Vampires, Werewolves and Zombies...oh and a few spirits to boot. The release has a few double sided transformation cards that once a situation is met, the card flips and "Transforms" usually gaining more power though werewolf cards (the main transformers) can revert back to their human selves growing weaker.

I know there is a lot of Graveyard play in this set. Putting things in, taking things out, power and toughness equal to number of things in graveyard, exile from graveyard and so on. Innistrad also has a lot of token play in it.

2 New plainswalkers are in the set. Garruk the relentless/veilcursed a green transformer, and the big one Liliana of the Veil a black force sacrificer.

I am a green and white wienie deck. I like to put a lot of low cost stuff out and buff them up and over run a player. In Innistrad both green and white have a lot of potential. White has a lot of low cost 1/1's that get buffed for more in play or when creatures die...example Unruly mod says when ever another creature you control dies, put a 1/1 counter on unruly mob, or Champion of the Parish a 1/1 that when another human enters the board under your control put a 1/1 counter on Champion of the Parish, both cards are 1 white cost only, add Adaptive Automaton from 2012 set who is a artifact that can be counted as human, and has battle cry (other creatures of chosen type get +1/0) makes a mean starter for a white wienie deck. As for green there big one is Wolves and Werewolves, throwing tokens in left and right specially with parallel lives which doubles tokens, and moonmist which transforms werewolves makes a mean green deck.

All in all Innistrad is a good set, just coming out there isn't a lot of decks that are Innistrad themed yet, but there will be.

Doug is running a Jade Regent Adventure Path at the Castle and we had our first session last night. I am playing a Universalist Wizard and had a lot of fun doing it. Doug is having us make multiple characters since much of the campaign we will be part of a caravan. This will give him several options, npc's, plausible replacements if we die, character someone else could jump in for a few sessions with. Lots of good things. So far I've made the wizard, and I haven't decided what my other two characters will be. Dave did his (ie I made his characters) and he is the caravan cook, gnome wizard, the wainwright, Halfling Fighter, and a scout, 1/2 orc ranger. We did fairly well, Doug told us he gave every encounter more Hp's just because we took them down so quickly. He also used the Pathfinder Plot Twist cards, which are pretty cool. At first we were using them incorrectly and when we encountered a sinspawn and 5 cards were played on it we knew something was wrong, we have since figured it out and it was fun and I wouldn't mind adding them to any game I run.

So, I have decided to start blogging. Don't worry I will Keep posting like i usually do :) lol. I decided the blog will be a general blog about stuff that strikes my fancy dealing with gaming.

Zlann Orez is my Star Wars D6 SparkForce7 character.

He is a Sullustan .

Which are Natural Navigators (once they have been to a place they remember it) so they make good natural pilots. I played in 5 games, plus the seminar. I have a habit of O.C.D.ing on one or two things and going with it. I really enjoyed playing and had a blast.

My character took on a life of his own as we played more games and I got into character, and winning 15,000 credits in the first adventure really helped :D
I don't know how to explain it, but he did take on a life of his own as he got to know the players and characters. It was funny DD (David Demarest) looked at me in every game we had together and would say "my man" when I would do something very Sullustanish, or by the way I designed my character.

To Quote a Famous show (well to geeks anyways) "Lets Be Big Damn Heroes" I took that to heart, the character who started very Ferengish turned out more to have have a soft side for the Rebels...though he isn't one, he dumped his cargo (50 tons of lead bricks he got from a previous adventure) to fend off Tie Fighters, Bribed a Bounty Hunter to "Forget" a party member for a few days, and even promised Endro Epstein 5% of his profits from selling 100 tons of Foodstuff...instead of the Normal 2%. All in all, Zlann Orez and the "Heart of Gold" (the ships name) are glad to fly the friendly skies making profit from one end of the galaxy to the other.

I decided to start running Pathfinder Society at the Castle. I ran it last night, and it seemed to go well. David, Doug, JP, Chef, and Delaware were the adventurers. Due to time constraints most used the pre-generated characters provided by the Pathfinder Society. Dave was the Cleric, Doug was a Wizard, Chef made a Barbarian, Deleware made a monk, JP was the Samurai. I ran the Society adventure, The Devil You Know, Part 1 Shipyard Rats. We got a late start and only got halfway through the adventure. Next week, we will finish it up. We haven't set a regular day to run this yet, we are trying to set up all the RPG's for the Castle but there just aren't enough days in the week. Soon I'll be adding it to the CharCon calendar though.