What an absolute beast! If I didn’t already own their Brachiosaurus (which I refuse to call anything but a Brontosaurus, in honor the “Bronto Gun” in this game) I’d pick one up. Anyway I know this is late news since he was released over summer in 2015, but sometimes I forget to check the new releases :) I can’t wait to see what Papo will bring in 2016.
That Papo Apatosaurus
October 1, 2015 — Dinosaur CowboyMad Max the road warrior – a new painted mini
July 30, 2015 — Dinosaur Cowboy
Know who’s cool? Mad Max. In case you’ve been living under a rock there was the recent “Mad Max 4” movie Fury Road. Unfortunately no “crazy” Mel Gibson as Max this time, but still quite an adrenaline filled, action packed movie.
But we’ll go back a bit in time to the classic de-facto Mad Max movie of The Road Warrior (some people think it’s the first movie, unbeknown of the first less-apocalyptic movie).
Anyway this mini is the Chronoscope “Rex, Dark Future Hero”, while clearly being Mad Max. I do appreciate the old Games Workshop reference to Dark Future though. But yeah, nice leather jacket, good double barrel shotgun, etc.
For the paint scheme I went back to my roots of flames everywhere. Otherwise fairly standard pants/shirt. I did a nice tattoo on the arm of a curving skeletal snake. I also am really happy with how the base turned out, sort of like the classic Trista miniature from my very first battle report, but with a white passing lane instead of a straight yellow dotted line. I did orange hair perhaps as a reference to an old, old fantasy Paladin character I had named Tunher. Otherwise nice copper shoulderpads, the old blackened shotgun, hand painted black glove, slick gold zippers and copper belt buckles, and you have a great looking mini!
Anyway in case the previous preview image didn’t clue you in, or the background Dodge Challenger model or interior fight, I have a battle report queued up with this new Mad Max figure. So that should be up soon!
UPDATE Read the battle report featuring Mad Max: Pillaging the Old Exxon Station
Euro Truck Simulator 2 – Dinosaur paint pack!
July 28, 2015 — Dinosaur Cowboy
In case you didn’t know, I really enjoy the computer game Euro Truck Simulator 2. I’ve put over 100 hours in so far, and imagine I’ll keep playing it for years to come. I actually have the full Logitech G27 wheel/pedal/shifter setup. It’s fun to just put on some British radio, hook up fifteen tons of cattle, and drive 2,200km.
Anyway how does this relate to Dinosaur Cowboys? Well, they just released a DLC “paintjob pack” that is dinosaur themed. Gotta like that!
Pick up the ETS 2 Prehistoric Paint Jobs Pack for ~$2.
Anyway some ACTUAL Dinosaur Cowboys content coming soon, as I alluded to a few days ago with my preview post of the next battle report…
Sneak peek of upcoming battle report…
July 24, 2015 — Dinosaur Cowboy
Looks like I’ve got myself some guzzoline eh, eh?
Frontiersman – the perfect dino hunter (upcoming Infinity mini)
June 16, 2015 — Dinosaur Cowboy
This is the upcoming “Frontiersman” mini for the sci-fi skirmish game Infinity. Normally the majority of their figures are pretty anime focused, although I do have one or two I want to buy that would be a good fit for Dinosaur Cowboys. It’s hard to actually find them in stores though. Either way this Frontiersman would make the perfect Duster with his cool Laserbow and sidearm pistol. He could maybe even pull off a tougher Neotechnoist, since the gauntlets could be painted to look fancier. All in all pretty awesome, I like the dynamic pose as he aims for a Terror dinosaur.
These pictures are from this Miniwargaming Youtube video.
Picture: Volcanic Eruption
June 4, 2015 — Dinosaur Cowboy
Volcán de Fuego, Guatemala by Andrew Shepard
New painted mini – Leonius the War Horn Bearer
April 3, 2015 — Dinosaur CowboyThis is a new mini I just finished painting this past week. So a bit of backstory. I had bought this figure way, way back (as I did with most minis) as part of a Warhammer Fantasy Dark Elf command group, because I liked the leader (who had a big two handed axe and was holding a severed head). As part of the command group I also got a standard bearer and musician. The musician sat unused in my “to paint” box for years, until recently I noticed him when re-organizing.
As you might have seen in the upcoming v2.6 rules, there is a new weapon added called the War Horn. This is a 1A-3D range weapon with the “Motivate” special ability (basically lifesteal). So for once a mini with a musical instrument was useful (outside of being a Bard in D&D).
The downside was, being Warhammer Fantasy, this mini had a sword. But I easily converted that by chopping off his hand and using an autopistol from my Necromunda parts. The best part is this particular Dark Elf mini is meant to have a reptile skin as a cloak, which is a perfect dinosaur looking skin.
As you can see the arm conversion turned out quite well, I think. For the paint scheme I went with a traditional dinosaur skin color of green. When it comes to painting I generally do a few washes but very little drybrushing. Those are both painting techniques, with “washing” meaning adding water to a darker color and painting it on, and the watered down paint creeps into all the recesses and crevices of the mini. Drybrushing is using a lighter color than what you’re painting onto, wiping off almost all the paint from the brush, and then lightly stroking the brush over the top to pick out the raised areas. Basically think of washing as adding shadows, and drybrushing as adding highlights.
Anyway I normally prefer rich, basic colors instead of the style of drybrushing. However the dinosaur cloak for this mini was the perfect use case for both techniques, as the scales had lots of recesses between them, and I could also pick out the edges with some drybrushing. So I did a green base, then washed with a teal color, then drybrushed some bright green over that. In the end the cloak looks nice and realistic.
Otherwise a simple reddish pink and gold scheme, with the horn being a natural bone color, and the gun (for once) not having steel/metal coloring and instead just being wood and black. I opted to paint the helmet visor pure black instead of a flesh tone because I find it more menacing to look like a completely shadowed face (think of a cheesy 1990s cartoon villain).
All in all I’m happy with the result.
Redone rulebook gameplay example art
April 2, 2015 — Dinosaur CowboyAs part of the upcoming v2.6 rules I ended up doing some re-organization of the table of contents/objects, which cleared up the following page and left me with a big blank spot. To fill that spot I put in a new gameplay image, actually from the recent Mountie Chase of Samurai Jack battle report.
This is the image:
The problem is the existing gameplay picture in the “Game Overview” section has a lot of similar features, specifically a T-Rex and the road sections. I didn’t think that reflected very well on the game, to have such duplication, so I recently re-took a gameplay photo to replace the old Game Overview one.
This is the result:
I made a concentrated effort to not use any minis or terrain from the Samurai Jack gameplay photo. The downside is I staged the photo, whereas the previous gameplay photos were taken during actual games. Either way I’m happy with the result, and I think showing the green table in the first and desert table in the second is a nice way to break them up.
So anyway v2.6 will get a nice facelift with these new photos. As I mentioned before, you can check out the latest, non-released rules on the Bleeding Edge Dropbox which is synced with my computer.
Terrain: based cacti and small trees
March 31, 2015 — Dinosaur CowboyBased Cacti
A while back I randomly stumbled across some model cacti (in a nearly empty hobby shop I had never been to before). They were great, perfect scale, prepainted, and so I picked them up immediately. The only downside was they had tiny bases, and some were quite top heavy and wouldn’t sit very well on my desert cloth for the gaming table.
So I glued the cacti to 1-cent pennies. Then recently I finally got around to filling in the gap with glue (to make the transition from old base to penny less visible), painting the penny bases, and spraying the whole setup with protective coating.
Here are the results, which you can expect to see in a desert themed game of Dinosaur Cowboy soon:
Based Trees
Now this terrain goes even farther back. I’ve had these little model trees, the same as what were used in White Dwarf battle reports waaaay back in the day. The problem was they were meant to be stuck into foam terrain or the like. Initially I had done exactly that, but over the years the trees had fallen out (and left little holes in the terrain, a few of which you might even notice from previous battle reports).
So what I set out to do was properly base the trees on standard square mini bases, so they could be moved around freely instead of being stuck to the terrain. This involved cutting the metal stick at the center of the tree to shorten it. Then I drilled a hole into a series of bases and glued the trees in. I don’t think I’ll paint the bases, so after adding a second layer of glue (to ensure they don’t come loose with rough handling) I had 5 new small trees to use. They match the color of my larger trees, which is an added bonus.
Cowboy artwork by Frederic Remington
March 20, 2015 — Dinosaur Cowboy
“What an Unbranded Cow Has Cost” by Frederic Remington. He was a terrific artist from the late 1800s who did many paintings that evoke the loneliness and desolation of the wild west (at least in my opinion).
(From http://commons.wikimedia.org/)
Blurry and dark pictures of my miniatures collection!
March 10, 2015 — Dinosaur CowboyStraight from the cabinet, here’s my miniature collection from the past, well, probably 15-17 years:
The top shelf is pretty much entirely fantasy minis from my years playing Horizon (my own game), Advanced Heroquest, Mordheim, and more recently D&D (the majority of the front row were painted in the last ~3 years when I was going to D&D Encounters at my local shop. For example the purple and green Mordheim cultist was a Binder. The pirate looking guy with the red scarf was a ranged Thief. The big red Minotaur was a Battlemind I think…some kind of psionic guy regardless). Also I loved little goblin figures growing up so I have a wide variety of those. So much character and zaniness in those early GW sculpts. Anyway some of these actually made appearances in Dinosaur Cowboys battle reports, such as the repeat usage of the far front, far left Dark Sun Mul as some kind of axe wielding Savage.
Three new painted minis (a record?!) and some exciting new terrain!
February 25, 2015 — Dinosaur CowboyWell if you’ve been following this blog for a while, you might know I’m a bit exhausted of painting. I did a ton of mini painting as a kid, then kind of burned out on it, and now only do the odd character figure. So I’m excited to say I have THREE new minis to show you, all fully based, painted, and sprayed. That must be a new record for minis shown at once on here, right?!
The Neotechnoist
Before you look at this first miniature, I want to confess something. When I made the Neotechnoist allegiance I had a lot of imagery in my mind, and some of that was from Games Workshop’s Necromunda faction called the Van Saar. They are basically high tech nobles with super cool suits and laser weaponry. I’ve have this mini for a while, since I bought a few Necromunda figures off Ebay a long while back. But I finally sat down and painted him.
I used one of my favorite new paints that is basically a clear sparkle/shimmer that can be added to any other color. In this case I added it to an (already) sparkly blue to get what I call “Crest Blue” (like the toothpaste!). I used this color for his undersuit, and then copper for the raised plates. Pretty standard weapon (black, gold, green) and wiring/cabling of a nice washed green. One thoughtful touch is his backpack has a few squares on it, which I painted to represent a charging level (red to green).
Anyway a picture is worth a thousand words, so here’s the first mini, the de-facto Neotechnoist:
(And before you ask, yes the little bum plates are sculpted on…it was the 80s!)
Samurai Jack
Next up is, well, what I can best describe as a samurai with a shotgun (who I’m calling Samurai Jack for now). I got this figure, um, maybe 15 years ago? I had spray painted him gold for whatever reason, and so he sat for the last decade and beyond. He’s a cool and unique mini though, so I thought it was time to finally paint him. I have a painting night with friends to thank for motivation for this one, as I painted the entire mini while hanging out hunched over a table with other painters.
Anyway first of all I went for a nice and classic scheme, which is purple + green with some bright gold to tie him together and make him look pretty noble. There are some pretty cool touches as well, like the central chest plate being a yin yang and the “kill scratches” on his shotgun. And I actually painted the Japanese kanji for “strength” on his sword sheath. Definitely happy with the result! I haven’t done kanji work since I wrote “Hyena” on the back of a Battlemech for Battletech about 7 years ago (I should post a picture of that!)
Also you might have noticed the strange egg ball shapes on his base. What could they be? Well it’s actually trick from the oddest of places: my mom! Normally moms are great for saying “That looks good dear!” but coming up with a genius hobby idea is even better. In this case the eggs are unground black pepper glued onto the stand (in this case mostly unpainted). Really has a great texture with the lines, and the size is perfect. If no one told you it was pepper you’d probably just think it was some cool “green stuff” sculpting.
Mountie Duster
And finally is another Games Workshop mini, of course not even remotely recent (screw those prices!). Best I can tell this guy is a Rogue Trader (ie: Warhammer 40,000 first edition) era mini, some kind of Imperial settler or colonist. Either way he basically looks like a farmer Han Solo, and certainly has a dated look to his sculpting (such as his bulgy jacket and squat stature). Great pistol though, and I decided to paint him like an RCMP / Mountie, which just semeed to fit for some reason. So that meant a blue stripe on the pants and a red jacket. His shirt, while not a wild color, turned out nicely with the copper buttons.
I also like his base, which is sort of snowy/ashy looking like Canada is in Dinosaur Cowboys.
Unfortunately I didn’t have as much luck with the pictures for him (also he has an annoying piece of fluff stuck to his hat), but I can guarantee you’ll see him again in a battle report soon.
The New Crew
The Terrain!
I recently did some overtime at work, and my wife and I decided to spend some of the extra income on fun stuff. So I headed to my local hobby shop and browsed around for an hour. Oh man I love good hobby stores. I ended up with some new paints, but more importantly some new terrain!
Anyway I have been extremely pleased with Pegasus Hobbies in the past, since I bought pre-painted barrels and crates (image here) from them in the past.
Now I bought their pre-painted fence set and stone wall set. The fence set is so thematic and fitting to this game that I might go back and pick up another! Definitely going to be a dinosaur corral in the future. The walls are great as well, especially if I ever do some fantasy gaming again in the future. All I need now is the oil barrel set and I’m golden.
(Funnily enough this is actually a pretty good picture of the Mountie Duster…)
Next up are two resin pieces from a company called Novus Terrain. The first is a really cool looking propane tank (“Exploding Crates” feature in the game much?!) and the second is a nice sci-fi looking ruined building. Both of these will require some painting, but I figure a bit of spraypaint and highlighting the details should do it.
I mean just look how cool the camera shots will be when someone is sniping from the building with a Lever-Action Rifle!
(For once my old trusted camera really came through on this shot, look at that sick autofocus)
Upcoming Battle Report
Obviously three minis and new terrain means a battle report is necessary to try it all out! I had actually hoped to play tonight, but finishing up the bases and protective coating everything took longer than I expected.
But I’m thinking Samurai Jack is some kind of bandit raider near the Canadian border, and the Mountie is dispatched (with his Neotechnoist hireling) to stop the problem. Walls and fences will be involved just because! I won’t use the resin terrain yet since I want to paint it before the tabletop debut. Anyway pretty exciting times!
I still have probably 12-15 minis I’ve dogeared for Dinosaur Cowboys, so I’ll slowly work through those. And no offense to my friends at the painting night, but I don’t know how they can paint rank and file troops the same color scheme for 80+ minis. I’d blow my brains out (or just stop halfway through). Even having to do consistent bases would be a drag, since as you can see I had quite the variety in my recent works. Anyway I think I’m pretty much going to stick to single character models, be they for Dinosaur Cowboys or some RPG or whatever. Just way easier to think up your own paint scheme, inject some spice (like yin yangs, power meters, etc.), and end up with a diverse crew of people.
Imaginative art from Simon Stalenhag
February 22, 2015 — Dinosaur CowboyThere are a couple of dinosaur related pieces that the artist Simon Stalenhag has done, as well as some really imaginative robot related work. All in all a nice dark style with moody forests and the suggestion of tense situations. All the images below came from his website, where you can visit and view more:
Instead of flooding the main blog page with huge pictures, click the link below to see the rest that I chose from his full collection.
Lego town mixed with normal terrain
September 5, 2014 — Dinosaur CowboyMarch 2015 Update: I finally played out this battle report (albeit with a slightly different Lego table). Take a look at the Thermopolis Outpost Raid with Lego!
Been a long while since my last post! I had a kid, so that’s definitely shifted my focus elsewhere :) As life starts to settle back down I’m hoping to get back into tabletop gaming.
In the meantime I’ve noticed my Lego Lone Ranger post gets a lot of hits from searches. So I figured it would be fun to eventually try a battle report using the Quickdraw posses, but in a Lego town and with Lego minifigs.
Here’s the table I setup to get a feel for how viable the idea is, complete with a dinosaur towing a Lego cart, a jail cell at the end of the road, some rooftop planks to climb between buildings, and various Lego chests scattered around the map (which I’ll use as some kind of Crate feature in the game):
Finally took new components shots
July 2, 2014 — Dinosaur Cowboy
Well this was a long, long time coming (far too long actually) but I finally sat down and took new component shots for the “What is Needed to Play” section of the rulebook. To be honest this was literally the only TODO holding me back from releasing v2.5. So I’m going to do a once over of the rulebook and then publish it today.
Anyway I needed to take a new component shot because the old one had D4s, D8s, and D10s, which v2.5 removes the need for (thankfully).
I think I’m going to go with the big picture above (although I’ll probably retouch the color slightly). The other two options were with different figures involved. I like the one with Sarah Love, but I find her stand a bit too bright (the red ring) and it draws the eye away from the center of the picture. I also like the one with Crazy Rhodes and his dual submachineguns, but I think the Preacher Pike mini is a bit closer to an old west feel.
Horizon Games (main blog)- Road Trip! – solo dice placement game
- Distant Adventures v1.0 release!
- Distant Adventures v0.9 after feedback
- Distant Adventures v0.8 preview
- Progress on Distant Adventures
- I bought my dream dice
- Distant Adventures – new RPG for remote play
- My “Fishing Day” web game
- My “Treasure Hunt” web game
- Progress on Battletech rework
Dinosaur Cowboys - Tabletop Skirmish Game 