A few more minutes in the library

I received the following email, apparently from a young person, so I won't reveal the name:

Hi im 14 and ive loved modeling since i was 10. I have 3 dioramas Railroads Cut, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania/ The Battle of the Hurtgen Forset, France/ and one that i made up and created when i was 11 Bloody Ridge, Kentucky. I am know working on the battle of waterloo and was wondering do you have any tips for me i have already painted 80 bristish and prussian and 15 French calvalry and am working on the french foot soldiers. I am hoping to get a large board than i have know but any terrain tips or details?

There are many sites on the internet where you can find such advice, but I have a different suggestion: Go to your local library and look for books on "military modeling", "model railroading", "Civil War history", and anything you can find by Sheperd Paine. Browsing those shelves of related hobbies can show you more in a few minutes than you will find in hours of Googling the internet, because library shelves aren't sorted by keywords. 


That doesn't mean you won't find the same information with your favorite search engine, but it's hard to search for ideas you don't know exist. Look in your library - because libraries are absolutely full of good ideas. You will be pleased with the results.


This is good advice for anyone who enjoys games, miniatures and modeling. DO NOT limit yourself to learning only from others within a narrow segment of your hobby. Reading some of the bulletin boards, you might get the impression that painting miniatures is nearly exclusive to just one or two games, and nothing could be further from the truth. Make a serious effort to study what others are doing, and bring back what you learn to make your own hobby work even better.

Wet Palette

I've been working on finishing up an Arctic Wolf mini. I took this picture of it (on the right) for a post back in September, and I've been using it to "brush up" my technique, since I'm a bit out of practice. This is not amazing.

I wasn't happy with the browns, so I broke out those colors again and got back to work on it. This also, is not amazing.

Here's a close-up. I started reworking this back in September, but took a long break because I've been busy. The Thanksgiving holiday has given me more free time, and since last week I've been painting again in what time I could manage in the evenings. Some progress has been made, but still not happy with it. And still not amazing.

A picture from few days later; I've got a better blend and a start at highlighting. I'm still working at the browns, and this work has been spread out in short spurts over 3-4 days.

But not amazing.

Since this work has been spread out over time, I've been storing my paints in my new wet palette I bought back in September. The paints in the round well-palette are the same batch that I started this work with back in September. That was about two-and-a-half months ago.

 AND THIS IS AMAZING

I don't get many long stretches of painting time these days, and being able to store my paints open and wet is incredibly useful. I also like to blend my colors, and even the blending spots I make outside of the wells are staying wet.

AMAZING!

To be fair, I haven't exactly left these paints unattended for over two months. Every few weeks I've opened them up and stirred-in a little airbrush medium to keep them wet. I also dosed the palette sponge with rubbing alcohol to help keep the paint from curing. The pigments do settle, and the airbrush medium I added made them very thin. I had to stir them throughly, and I added a little regular acrylic blending medium to get them back to a good consistency. I always work with thin paints anyway, so this didn't me a bit, but if you are used to working with paint straight out of the bottle this might not be to your liking.

This wet palette far exceeds my expectations for what it could do, and will change the way I paint. Now I should be able to pick up the previous colors I've been working without having to spend time remixing and getting the consistency to how I like it.

Bonus Pic: If you recall my little adventure with the pink paint, my might be amused to learn there is still a spot of pink on my living room furniture.

Happy Painting!

Sword and Dragon Mission Matrix

Our local Battletech group has been playing through Starterbook: Sword and Dragon, and we are having a lot of fun doing it. Peter, my cohort in planning for team Fox's Teeth came up with this state diagram as a way to follow the possible mission tracks, to help us plan in advance:

Nifty, but very difficult to follow as many of the arrows are on top of one another. This put the idea in my head to redo it in matrix form. This entailed repeating most of the work Peter had already done, but in the process I gained a much better understanding of how the Warchest Point system works. I'd never paid much attention to this before, so it was worth the effort:

The left-hand side lists the possible current missions, along with prerequisites and Warchest Points (WP), number of 'Mechs in the scenario, and WP rewards for a successful mission. If you follow the row for the current mission over to the right-hand side you can see what missions are available following the current mission. There is a "1" in the cell if that mission can be played next, and blank otherwise. I also added color codes for missions that are only available to either Fox's Teeth or Sorenson's Sabres. This has been corrected for the published errata too, so if you are looking for the mysterious Probe or Holding Action missions, they have gone away. You can download this in spreadsheet format:

Download as Google Docs spreadsheet.
Download as Excel 2003 spreadsheet.
Download as Excel 2007 spreadsheet.

The Creative Commons license I apply to this blog obviously can not apply material derived from this Catalyst Game Labs product. However, I would appreciate being credited as author if you pass this on. The Mission Matrix form is an idea I will develop for my own purposes. Send any suggestions or comments along too, and I'll see about working them in.

I should probably blog about the play sessions too, because there is a lot going on there. Not tonight tho, it's late!

Battletech Billboards

I picked up some terrain pieces from the Acheson Creations booth last year at ORIGINS (a few pics 1 2 3). Although they painted up well enough, they still didn't look right. They needed something more.

From Battletech Billboards

Because I always intended these to be barriers for a Solaris style arena, I thought it might be cool to turn them into billboards for various sponsors. All I needed were some ideas for sponsors, and I had this idea I've been wanting to try. I did some digging among the Battletech blogs I follow for banner or icon image, a little image editing in Paint.Net, and sent it to the color printer.

From Battletech Billboards

A bit more work with a good pair of scissors (the Perseus and Thug helped), and then some glue ...

From Battletech Billboards

 ... And viola!

From Battletech Billboards

Steve's Battletech Reader billboard was the most work (image editing, I replaced "Classic Battletech" with "The Battletech Reader") and turned out the least legible. So I might have to redo that one (Hey Steve, got any banner ideas?).

I was so happy with the results, I decided to turn it into a mini tutorial. I have a Picasa album up with the full set of Battletech billboard photos.

From Battletech Billboards

Lesson #1: Try some different sizes, and (if you can) print a black-and-white copy first to check the final size before going to the expensive ink. I did three sizes for the Catalyst Logo, and only the smallest would fit. The MechCorp logo was too big entirely and I'll need to rework it from scratch.

A dry fit to see how the finished piece will look is always a good idea.



Put a drop or two of glue on the back of the paper, right in the middle. A single drop will do for smaller bits, but with larger pieces it helps to put a small amount of glue near the corners.


Next is the part I couldn't take a picture of - place the paper on the piece as you did with the dry fit, then press down with your finger and slide the paper around to spread out the glue underneath the paper. This pushes out bubbles and excess glue, and should give the paper a good bond. The glue starts setting pretty quickly once you do this, and you will feel it getting harder to push around. Get it set where you want it and press down on the corners to make sure they stick. Wipe away any excess glue (I just used my finger). In the event you end up with a corner that isn't glued down, use your hobby knife to place a tiny amount of glue underneath and press it down again.

From Battletech Billboards

It was an easy project, and I've got some attractive new terrain pieces to show off. Follow the link if you want a copy of my billboard images (MS Word).

Metallic Inks for Miniatures

I went shopping at Michael's Saturday and found something new; metallic inks from Ranger Inks. These are alcohol based inks (note: not for kids!), they apply very easily with a brush, leave a near perfect metallic sheen, and thin/clean up easily with a bit of rubbing alcohol. I can't begin to tell how impressed I am with this product; I added some silver ink highlights to some spaceship minis that I had already highlighted ... and WOW did it make a difference. The reflectiveness is much greater than I get with metallic paint, and really makes the minis pop.

This is a product created for rubber stamp collectors, but I think it make have great potential with miniatures painting too. Click thru for a demo video.

[Update: added photo and link to photos]

Farkle Probabilities

I've been playing Farkle on Facebook, so I started getting curious about the probabilities involved with the game. I'm not the only one doing this, as I've found several others doing much the same (1,2,3). You can also play Farkle at TADMAS. It took me a quite a bit of time tinkering with a spreadsheet until I understood how to think about this. I'm already up past my bedtime tonight, so I'm going to spare you the gory details and get right to the results. This post will focus on the number of dice you roll and the number of times you roll them. I haven't completely figured out the scoring distribution yet, so that may be a follow-up post.

The following table gives the probabilities for how many dice will remain after you remove all the dice which score points (but you might choose not to remove all). For instance, when you roll 6 dice, there is a 2.31% chance of not scoring at all, or a "Farkle" (marked in red), and 15.43% chance that you will be able to score exactly one die (a 1 or a 5). The percentages (marked in green) are the probabilities that all remaining dice can be scored, thus gaining a "new roll".



If you score one die and re-roll the remaining 5 dice, and there is (for example) a 30.86% chance that there will be 2 (three Sir) 3 dice left (and therefore the other two are 1's or 5's).
As you play, there is a choice to not score all of the dice. You might do this in hopes of getting a better throw on the next try, and you might use this table to consider the risk of choosing to re-roll 1's and 5's, instead of scoring them immediately.

That first table looked the the game from the "one roll at a time" perspective. The next table is a little more complicated because it "looks ahead" at what will happen if you score all the dice you can and keep rolling until you Farkle or get a new roll. Win/lose percentages marked in red and green are as before. Numbers in shaded gray are intermediate probabilities used in my calculations and have no simple interpretation.



These (red and green percentages) are conditional probabilities for what might happen. If you roll 6 dice, AND score one of those, AND roll the 5 remaining dice, there is a 1.19% chance of a Farkle.

My final table presents some some further conditional probability calculations, and gives the overall probabilities of either Farkle-ing or getting a new roll, if you score all possible dice and re-roll all that remain.

Starting with 6 dice, there is a 68.63% of Farkling before getting a new roll, assuming you choose not to "cash-in" your points first. If you want to think about the possibility of getting several re-rolls (thus scoring a large number of points), you can look at each group of 6 dice as a geometric series - a probability distribution which I have mentioned a few times before.

You can use these tables to inform yourself about the risk of Farkling as you play the game. This might help you understand the game, but by itself it probably won't help you achieve a high-score to beat all your friends. To do that will require an understanding of the relationship between the risk of losing your points versus the probability of achieving your target high-score. When I figure that out, I'll let you know.
[some revisions, 3/26/2011]

Paper Figure Generator

The Stages RPG site has a feature that lets you create your own paper figures, which can then be cut out and assembled. That might be handy for your next RPG game.




If this printed all 6 sides instead of just two, you could make your own Squadron Strike and Attack Vector: Tactical ship boxes.

[UPDATE] Ad Astra Games has an application to create six-sided box figures as part of their subscription service for Squadron Strike.

Gravity Pods 2, Part I

When I was 14 or so, a friend and I made up a game a game with magnets and steel ball bearings. The idea was to launch you ball bearing at the right speed and direction to navigate a series of magnetic barriers, and finally hit the target, which represented the other players "base". I don't think we ever had a name for it, but the idea in our heads was that this represented a battle in space, launching a missiles of into a complex gravity well to attack the enemy. Very low tech, but we had a great time with it.

Now you can get a very similar game right in your own browser, and it adds even more difficulty. Gravity Pods (not functional in my browser) has been out for several years, and now Gravity Pods 2 has recently been released.

This game lets you use gravity, repulsion, and reflection to guide a projectile from the launcher to the target. This forms a sort of puzzle where you use the laws of physics to guide your missile through a maze.

The game offers 50 levels, starting from the easy-introductory and working up to fiendishly-difficult. Some levels involve moving obstacles and wormholes that require precise timing as well as clever use of the available tools to solve.

The Gravity and Repulsion objects are particularly useful, but they have long range effects, so what at first seems to be the perfect placement can foul you up later. Some levels that at first appear very difficult turn out to have very limited ways they can be solved, and so are much easier than they appear. Of course, so that look easy, are not.

It's good fun, just don't start playing Gravity Pods 2 if you have something important to do, because you might be at it for a while. :-)

[Hat Tip to the Sciencepunk]

Skaph Tips and Tricks --- Part 2

Today a few more tips for the game Skaph.
[Previous Posts on this game: 1) Intro 2) Tips & Tricks Part 1]

--- Tips & Tricks --- Part 2 ---

Spending Your Level-ups:
With every level increase, you get three level-up picks to improve certain aspects of your game. I have a suggestion ...

1) Increase your Resources. The resource extraction level-up increases the production of all your resources. That means every hour, every day, 24/7, you get more resources to build your bases. None of the other choices give you back so much. The only down side is that the bonus you get is rounded down rather than carried over, so you need to invest a fair number of picks to get best use of this, but it is well worth it.

2) Build more bases. You automatically get more bases as you gain certain levels (3,6?,9?), but the Bases level-up lets you build an additional base for every 5 picks you put into it. When you get to the level where you can build new bases, you should save 2 pick so you can have 5 at the next level, and build another base right away.

3) Go back to #1 and #2. None of the other level-up choices are worth considering. Here is why Resouce Extraction (RE) is better than everything else: Protected Resources-->[useless] You save a tiny amount when you get raided, but you could more than make up for the loss with RE, and eventually you can build Bunkers to do this job better. Max Resource Storage-->[useless] Same reasoning, for the little bit extra you can save you could be building other building with have the same effect. More Energy-->[barely useful] With RE you can build more tiles and more reactors instead. Sensor Power-->With RE you can build more tiles and more reactors sensors instead. Long Range and Short Range-->[barely useful] These are tempting, because they booth your firepower, but with RE you can build more firepower instead. Also, these only benefit you when you attack or are attack, where RE helps you all the time. Hangar Space-->[barely useful] With RE you can build more tiles and more reactors sensors hangars instead. Extra Points--->[doubly useless!] Long Range and Short Range do the same thing, AND they boost your firepower at the same time. Unit maintenance, Unit build time, Building construction time, Building strength-->[useless, useless, useless, and useless]. Resource recovery, Unit recovery-->[barely useful] These might help a little if you do a lot of raiding, but only then.

4) Economics. Skaph is basically a game of economics, and the best thing you can do is increase your resource production. Did I mention that yet?


Combat:
There is much to describe, but not much to tell. That is, the detail of combat in the game take a bit to explain, but there is not much you can do about it. The only real rule - more is better - but you didn't need a guy with a degree in statistics to figure that out. Still, there is a little bit more to it.

1) Straight to the point. Combat is linear, meaning that if you just have one type of unit is a combat, the total attack strength of the opponent destroys units up to the total resistance of all the units, rounding down.

2) In proportion. The only random part of combat is how damage is allocated amount difference groups of units. It appears that units in your force are randomly selected to be destroyed, and combat ends when the total resistance of the units absorbs all of the attack strength. The allocation of damage is proportional to the types of units is your force, but different units have different resistance. This means that by including some Boga (no offense, high resistance) in with a group of Veen (light combat mecha), the Boga will absorb proportionally more damage, letting more of the Veen survive. This might not be the most efficient way to attack, but it can help a smaller group of Veen make a successful attack against a well defended target.

3) In Veen we trust. Veen appear to be the most efficient combat unit in the game, interms of the combat strength received per unit of ore spent. You might be better off with a large number of Veen rather than a smaller numbers of more expensive units. I still can't build all the different Skaph (mecha?), but I suspect this will still hold true when I can.

In part 3, a discussion of strategies, and maybe some help from a suicidal duck.
[a small update: I never did write part 3, my interest in the game ran out.]

Skaph Tips and Tricks --- Part 1

I have been playing SKAPH, a browser based game for several months now, and a month has passed since I first wrote about it. Since I've been spending a lot of time playing lately, it seems like a good time to offer advice to new players. Skaph is a little bit Sim City, a little bit Civilization, and a little bit ... well ... Viking raiders greedily pillaging each other. Here are some tips for play.

--- Tips & Tricks ---

Resources:
1) Concrete is Precious. Concrete is the most important resource in the game, and if you have enough concrete (and a bit of money) it will enable you to do anything else you want to do. Protect it, use it wisely, but most importantly use it before someone steals it from you.


2) Expand. Multiple bases are key to increasing you resource production. Build new bases as soon as you can, and put 2 or 3 concrete plants on each. You are automatically allowed a new base as you gain certain levels (3,6?,?), and you you should save some level-up choices to have enough (you need 5 each)for extra bases as you gain levels too.

3) Float Resources. Use Bogas (cargo mecha) for short-term storage of resources so that you base won't stop producing as it reaches the maximum limit. These Bogas are vulnerable to your human neighbors attacking them, but if you keep them in groups of 1 or 2, and keep them out of detection range of enemy bases. You can also send 'slow' transport/transfer mission between bases. One or two Bogas are generally undetectable, and the resources they carry are safe while in-transit. This is especially helpful for overnight (or work-day) missions; time the arrivals so the resources are there when you will next log in.

4) Transfer not transport. If you haven't noticed already, your Bogas cannot transport resources to a base once that base has reached its maximum storage (the resources just stay in the Boga for the return trip). However, you can transfer Bogas full of resources and exceed this limit. This is one thing I wish could be changed, because all it does is create busy work, forcing me to use two transfer missions in place of a single transport mission.

Building:
1) Be flexible. Sometimes you will want extra hangar space, other times you might need to maximize your cash production. Don't be afraid to tear down building you don't need at the moment and put up those you do. Advance Hangars and Gen Mines are conveniently the same size, and make an easy swap.

2) Plan ahead. Plan space for big things. As you progress through the research tree, you will eventually want to build a large building like the Advanced Research Facility (ARF), or Advanced Armory, which both have a 4x5 footprint (20 tiles), and the Extended Research Facility (ERF) is even bigger (6x7 = 42 tiles!). If you plan ahead where these big buildings can be built, and fill the space with buildings you can afford to tear down later, you will save yourself a lot of time and concrete. An extra concrete plant (or two) is a great choice for this, because it will help you build up your base, and tearing it down will free up most of the space you need for the big build.

Research:
1) Turn it off. If you aren't doing research currently, power down your research facility and use the power for something else, like powering Turrets and Rocket Towers.

2) Tear it down. I'm presently saving resources to research the Extended Research Facility ($10000, 2000 oil, 2000 ore, 5000 concrete). Once I had over 2200 concrete saved up, I realized that the concrete plants were maxed out and not doing anything useful. I was still very low (<500) on oil and ore, so I tore down the concrete plants and put up ore mines and oil pumps instead. This will cost me an extra mission to transfer replacement cash /concrete from another base, but will save me 4-5 missions by mining the oil/ore in-base, rather than transporting it.

[UPDATE] In part 2, I will discuss some different strategies more tips for the game (strategies in part 3).