Monday, January 10, 2011

Creative Substitution

I like to think I'm a fairly creative guy most of the time... but I'm not above admitting that I need help with it. For that help, I typically turn to Critical Hits, NewbieDM, SlyFlourish, and Sarah Darkmagic. The tips I read about on their sites have really helped me, both in following their instructions, and in coming up with my own ideas. They've really helped to get my creative juices flowing at times.

When Gamma World was released, I was very interested in running the game. The tokens that came with the game are fine, but I'm really a much bigger fan of miniatures.

While reading the WotC Gamma World forum, I started posting in the "Miniature Proxies" thread, and in searching through various miniature websites (Trollandtoad.com, MiniatureMarket.com, Auggies Games, and eBay) looking for miniatures that could stand in for Gamma World monsters. I came up with quite a few good ones, and I'm still looking for more.


Most of my ideas have come from D&D, Star Wars, Mage Knight, Monsterpocalypse, Horrorclix, Heroclix, Heroscape, and Warhammer 40k. I've also started looking into AT-43 recently, and there are some miniatures in that line that I really like.

LEGO is another resource that I've started to tap. While at Walt Disney World before Christmas, I bought a small bin of various lego pieces, and I bought a set from their Atlantis line that has a giant crab in it. Monster Crab Clash. It looks mechanical enough that it would fit in well with some ideas I've had for the game.

Just the other day, I was in Target and saw that they were clearing out a bunch of toys. Included in the sale was another of the Atlantis sets, Wreck Raider. Now, this set, as built by the instructions, isn't very useful to me (well, not until Legion of Gold comes out... if they stuck with the basic concept of the original adventure, that is), but hey... you know what? Lego can be made into pretty much anything you can think of!! Did you know that?! ;-)

After taking the Wreck Raider apart again, I futzed around with the pieces for awhile, pulling in other pieces from that bin I bought, and from a small Star Destroyer set, and I came up with a very cool flying Hunter-Killer robot.





Oh, and since I just finished painting it tonight, I figured I'd show this off as well. I recently bought a Castle Ravenloft miniature from Auggies Games, of Gravestorm, the Dracolich. Using some paint that my wife had in her art supplies, and some basic techniques for painting undead miniatures (learned from Games Workshop), I turned this...


into this:

Hmph. A lot of the detail is lost in that picture. I'll take another one tomorrow and post it... if our power is still on... this winter storm that has hit the Southeast could cause some problems with the power grid, what with all the freezing rain in the forecast.

Well, here's hoping. *crosses fingers*

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