This is a Spellslinger deck based around Elsha of the Infinite, the alternate commander from C19’s Mystic Intellect preconstructed deck.
The general idea of the deck is to get a bunch of mana out, and then play lots of spells off the top of the deck. This increases Elsha’s Prowess, allowing for some big attacks, and triggers other effects like Guttersnipe to win the game. In practice, this deck was a bit inconsistent: it stalls too often when you have a land or creature on top of the deck, and it hasn’t been easy to get win conditions into play before needing to play a lot of spells.
Casting tons of spells like this can be a lot of fun to play! However, it’s not fun to play against at all. Even though the deck is fairly effective, I’m taking it apart because it’s not fun for other players. My original plan was to rebuild Elsha as an Artifact Storm deck, but I decided to build Jhoira, Weatherlight Captain instead. Artifact storm is more effective, but spoiler alert: it’s also not fun to play against.
It looks like my blogging will never really catch up with the decks I’m actually playing regularly, as long as I only ever blog a deck once I’m done playing it. But that’s your problem, not mine. I’m just writing this stuff down in case I want to refer to it some day.
This was another early deck build. At this point I was more focused on “this looks fun to play” than “how does the deck win?” So, we have a pile of perfectly fine cards, but no real focus when it comes time to delivering a killing blow.
The deck isn’t focused on a specific strategy other than “play stuff out of the graveyard.” When it wins, it’s because it has longevity and lots of answers: it’s good at not losing, but not great at winning.
My list of cards to add include Lotus Petal to implement an infinite combo with Muldrotha… without enough mana to actually turn it into a useful win condition… and possibly Fa’adiyah Seer for more graveyard filling.
I haven’t played the deck since I added Hermit Druid and a few other cards, but it won’t help unless the deck adds a solid way to eliminate enemies. I’m setting this deck aside until I have an inspiration for a more focused deck with a specific win condition. At this point Muldrotha is hated enough that I’m not sure it’s worth putting effort into.
I have no luck with Rakdos, and yet I feel compelled to try again. Once again, here’s a decklist before I disassemble the deck.
After some tuning I was able to get it to function, but the deck’s timing is very awkward. The objective is to get Kazarov on the board as soon as possible (never as soon as you want), and then use mass-ping spells to quickly add many +1/+1 counters. Kazarov costs a lot, but the spells are cheap. Keeping them in your hand long enough for them to be useful is hard, and all those turns give your opponents plenty of time to draw removal.
I originally ran Whispersilk Cloak to get attacks through more easily, but it’s really hard to keep Kazarov on the board unprotected for a turn. Swiftfoot Boots let you wait only one extra turn for Kazarov and still protect him. Now I know why Lightning Greaves costs more.
My next set of changes to this deck would be to increase my defensive base, probably with more creatures overall, more defenders, and fewer pingers. The pingers are too easy to kill with my own burn spells, not fast enough to provide adequate defense, and not necessary to add tokens to Kazarov late game
This is one of the first Commander decks I built, after tuning it a bit more towards Discard instead of Minotaur Tribal. The deck isn’t very good. The problem is that Minotaur Tribal is not awesome, but transforming it into a discard deck will just leave me with a deck I won’t enjoy playing.
I’m disassembling this to use the Rakdos color base in another deck, but thought I’d save this for posterity.
To take advantage of Museum Miniatures’ January sale, I placed a large order for Warring States Chinese figures to bring my triple army up to date. So far I have painted up a lot of Bow Levy, and rebased my DBA 4Sp figures as Light Foot for Early Warring States.
All of the figures are Museum. The red guys were painted by JM, the rest by me.
After I finished painting up all the Bow Levy bowmen, I read the Meshwesh army list more closely and realized I should’ve gotten crossbowmen instead. I opted not to restart from scratch. I have about 5 more bow figures that I will eventually base as Skirmishers or Archers depending on what the army needs when I’m finished.
Newly painted Museum 15mm Warring States Chinese bow levy.
After rebasing, I got 16 stands of Light Foot out of my 12 stands of 4Sp and assorted spare spearmen. This is not quite enough for a triple Early Warring States army; it looks like I may need to buy a few more packs of spears or just pretend my halberdiers are light foot.
Rebased Warring States Chinese Light Foot, Museum Miniatures
JM’s basing didn’t match mine, and the paste he used ran off the sides of the metal bases, so I decided to rebase his 3Cb as proper Archers, and rebased a few Skirmishers for good measure.
Rebased Museum Miniatures Archers and Skirmishers
Running tally of Triumph Conversions
This post
Newly Painted: 12 elements; 36 figures (plus 5 not shown)
I’ve started playing Triumph. After building a few armies out of my existing DBA figures, I decided to build up my armies to better work with Triumph. Depending on the army, this means either rebasing elements or painting new ones to increase the size of the force. I’ve had to do a little of both, to get my Classical armies up to date. Clearly I need to adjust my depth of field and get some better lighting before I take too many more pictures.
I started with figures I had on hand that extend the armies I already have painted. My first batch was enough Greeks and Thracians to at least be able to field single armies.
Now that Greek Hoplite armies are mostly Heavy foot but with some Elite Foot, I need both more elements in total and some different elements to distinguish between Heavy and Elite. I painted up some Essex Later Hoplite Greek figures wearing metal breast plates to represent Elite Foot, as well as a dedicated general and a few more linen armored units. Everything is hand painted including the shields, but my decreasing eyesight is becoming apparent. Along with my 12 Spartan Hoplites this is more than enough to field most Hoplite-heavy Greek armies or a Persian triple army mercenary Hoplite contigent.
Newly painted Essex Later Greek Hoplites, 15mm
The other major change in Greek armies was reclassification of light troops from Psiloi to Rabble. I had 2 elements of Greek Psiloi that I rebased as Rabble, and eventually I painted some more to bring it up to 4 rabble. The paint jobs were close enough that none of the figures stand out, once they’re based consistently. I also painted 3 elements of Thracian Light Foot to augment my Thracian army.
Thracian light foot in the front; Essex figures with maybe a few Old Glory? Rebased Greek Rabble in the rear; Essex 15mm
A combination of rebased and newly painted Greek Rabble: mostly Essex, some Old Glory.
Along with the Greek Rabble, I also painted a bunch of Javelin Cavalry for my Alexandrian Macedonian army. Most of these represent Thessalian Cavalry, but there’s also an element that is more plausibly Thracian. This is a mix of Magister Militum (Chariot) figures and Essex 15mm. The size difference is apparent if you’re looking for it, but not so bad when they’re based consistently and with only two horses per element.
Newly painted Greek and Thracian cavalry for Alexander the Great. Essex and Magister Militum 15mm
Thinking a bit harder, I don’t remember what order I painted all these in, so I might’ve gotten some of it wrong. In any case, I also needed way more Hypaspists for a triple Alexander the Great army, and my existing Hypaspist needed to be rebased as Raiders. I could’ve chosen Pike, but I don’t yet have a full set of Alexandrian pike yet, so I decided to make the Hypaspists Raiders for variety. These were Old Glory figures I got from JM unpainted. I declined to paint even more Alexandrians looking like clowns, and chose more straightforward colors for their armor. The shields and plumes are enough color for these elements. I also had a few elements that were previously “4Ax,” but the closest equivalent in Triumph is Greek Mercenary Peltasts (Light Foot); so, more rebasing…
Newly painted Alexandrian Hypaspists: Raiders; Old Glory 15mm
Rebased Hypaspists (Raiders) and Greek Peltasts (Light Foot); 15mm Essex
Next are some mostly rebased Persians, augmented with newly painted Light Foot. I had 4 stands of Persian 3Ax with identical figures on each set of 2 stands, as well as 6 more identical unpainted peltasts. I painted the 6 remaining guys and rebased everything with different figures on each base for variety. You can find the newly painted figures if you look hard enough, but the paint jobs are close enough to match well. I also rebased a bunch of DBA 3Cv stands as Javelin Cavalry, including the general, who is no longer allowed to go into battle on a chariot. Good for morale, bad for King Darius’ hemorrhoids.
Persian Light Foot; Essex 15mm. Mostly rebased, with the guy sticking his arm out to the right on each stand newly painted.
Rebased Persian Javelin Cavalry; 15mm Magister Militum (Chariot) and Essex.
At this point I have a lot of options for an Alexandrian Macedonian triple army in Triumph, and limited choices for Later Achaemenid Persians. I may pick up some more Light Foot figures for the Persians, but I have enough mounted troops for now.
Rebasing figures that were originally based on metal bases, attached with either super glue or epoxy, is basically not a problem at all. The figures can be removed easily with an X-acto chisel blade, and it gives me an opportunity to update my basing. I’m not sure how difficult it will be to remove figures from wooden bases.
The availability of a large selection of models for wargaming and RPG terrain was a huge factor in deciding to purchase a 3d printer. Here are some examples of OpenForge dungeon tiles I’ve printed and painted.
OpenForge dungeon tiles and Carrion Crawler models printed in PLA.
Because OpenForge 2.0 “low wall” pieces weren’t available when I settled on what I was going to print, I decided to drop the wall height by 15mm everywhere. This makes things more visible in tight spaces while keeping it visually interesting, but unfortunately the doorways don’t line up perfectly.
I settled on using magnetized bases: each base has a spherical magnet at the edge of each 1″ square, which allows the pieces to align and stay aligned during use. It’s not a strong connection, but it works fine for single floor dungeons.
The first image is an encounter I set up for a D&D game I’m running with Ezra and some of his friends. This is the tower in Thundertree (from the Mines of Phandelver introductory adventure) some time after another group of adventurers came through and killed the dragon. Carrion crawlers and insects now inhabit the area, preventing local loggers from using and restoring the tower.
A selection of painted and unpainted OpenForge dungeon tiles
Another year, another Halloween costume! This year Ezra chose the character Death Gun from the Anime series Sword Art Online II.
This one was supposed to be pretty easy: a mask, a cloak; maybe some arm coverings; he wasn’t allowed to bring costume weapons to school anyway.
Nothing is ever as easy as it’s supposed to be, though.
Death Gun reference image downloaded from tvtropes.com
We started with a foam head from the craft store, and a cool material called Sculpt-a-Mold. This is basically a mix of paper pulp and plaster. After mixing water to form a pasty consistency, you can form arbitrary shapes out of it. Because of the plaster, it dries in only half an hour; but the paper fibers make it much less brittle than plain plaster.
After many iterations of shaping and sanding, we identified a few fatal flaws with the approach. The mask was relatively heavy, but it was still too brittle to attach straps securely to it. More importantly, starting with a head-sized base meant that the mask fit too tightly on Ezra’s face, making it impossible to breathe or even open his mouth.
The abandoned Sculpt-a-Mold mask
Solving this problem turned out to be a great excuse to get a 3d printer. There was a model available on Thingiverse available, so all we needed to do was print, assemble, and paint it.
Even 3d printers that work well are a bit fiddly and require adjustment, experimentation, and maintenance to produce good results. I didn’t start printing this mask until I was confident I’d get good results, and overall, it succeeded. I didn’t have any completely failed prints, but there was a bit of underextrusion in the chin pieces, which led to a piece breaking off on Halloween night.
3d printed Death Gun mask based on a model from Thingiverse
The lenses were thin plastic from packaging material, painted with Testors transparent red paint. We just glued them in, instead of using the lens holder pieces included in the 3d model. The mask itself was glued together using 5 minute epoxy, primed grey, and painted with craft acrylics. I didn’t make any effort to smooth the surface prior to painting, and it turned out fine. The printing layers aren’t really visible, but the polygonal facets of the 3d model can be seen in the finished product.
3d printed Death Gun mask
The cloak was made from a pattern and fabric found at Jo-Ann Fabrics. We tried several techniques to get arm wraps like Ezra wanted, but they didn’t work well, so we abandoned that. Under the cloak, he wore all black, with the black strap chest harness we made for the Gaara costume.
This wasn’t the most satisfying costume project, but it turned out well,
Just a motorcycle, looking like a motorcycle should. It’s perfect for an urban commute, but I’m not planning to ride on highways much.
I was a bit concerned about the kids getting bad ideas when they turn 16, but I learned that anything Dad does is inherently uncool anyway, so no worries.
2011 Suzuki Tu250x; Suzuki Gel seat, custom tank badge.
