Creating a Warmachine BioShock Army, Episode VI: Anna DeWitt & Little Sister

I have to admit I've taken a week off from the WarmaShock project, and have been indulging a bit in my love of Batman.  However, the enthusiasm for the project is still very much there, so I thought I'd mention the last couple of models to join the team whilst I'm in between bouts of painting the dark knight!

 

For those who have just joined the article series here, WarmaShock is an ongoing project to create a BioShock army for Privateer Press' Warmachine tabletop system.  So far the army has seen Booker DeWitt and Elizabeth Comstock from BioShock Infinite, and the security bots and Eleanor Lamb from Bioshock and BioShock 2 - all of which can be seen through the Article Archive tab at the top of the page.

In today's article we're going to be looking at two new additions; a Little Sister from the first two BioShock games, and Anna DeWitt from BioShock Infinite.  It might seem odd to feature two completely different characters in the same article, but I'm doing this for two reasons.  First, neither miniature needed much (if any) customisation, so if they had individual articles they'd be very short.  And secondly, the miniatures used for both characters come from the same Malifaux box set, so it makes sense to put them both together.

 

Thanks, once again, to GMorts Chaotica for allowing the shameless theft of the photos from his unboxing articles!

 

 

Little Sister

 

So the box set in question was the No Shelter Here set - Pandora's crew from Malifaux's Neverborn faction.  Straight away from looking at the front of the box it was obvious that I'd gone to the right place for a Little Sister!

 

 

Way back before this was a project to build an army - instead being just a plan to paint some BioShock-y miniatures - I'd actually taken a look at the Pandora box, but couldn't justify buying the entire thing just for a single model (it isn't availably individually, unfortunately).  However, once it became an actual army-build and I started throwing money away faster than I could burn it, the No Shelter Box became a more viable option - after all, what's a sixth Malifaux crew when you've already bought five?  Besides which, I'd undoubtedly be able to find use for some more of the miniatures.

 

So with the box set finally in hand, it was time to get a Little Sister onto the painting table!

 

 

Assembly was nice and straightforward - the newer plastic Malifaux minis tend to be exquisitely detailed, but the trade-off is often that they have tiny fiddly bits which make them a nightmare to assemble!  Candy avoids this nicely, with just three pieces to de-flash (which is minimal) and put together.  The only non-Little Sister thing about this miniature is the basket, containing candy canes and a human skull.  Not exactly fitting with the Little Sister aesthetic, but it's built into the model in such a way that it was beyond my skills to remedy.  I've no doubt a more skilled hobbyist could trim off the basket with a good knife and use green stuff to complete the dress (and perhaps even sculpt a Big Daddy doll into her hands), but at this point I'm not that hobbyist!

 

With Candy/Little Sister built, I needed a suitable base to attach her to!  Normally when I do tabletop armies, I just grit and paint the bases to look like a battlefield, but seeing as that wouldn't really work for Rapture (and only in a limited capacity for Columbia), I've been going for more scenic bases with the WarmaShock project.

For the Little Sister, my basing plan came from one particular area in BioShock 2: the Little Sister Orphanage.  In Rapture, Little Sisters are walking ADAM factories - the substance which allows the creation of the superpower-granting Plasmids - but they start their lives as ordinary little girls, and these girls come straight from the Little Sister Orphanage.  In large parts of Rapture, the flooring consists of lavish carpets or polished marble, but the orphanage is all wooden floorboards and other such typical orphanage furnishings.  Wooden floorboards are certainly easy enough to replicate, but whilst bits box-rummaging down at Titan Games I actually found a resin base which would work even nicer, as it featured a little more detail.  So I nabbed this base, stuck Candy onto it, and one paint job later, I had a Little Sister to add to the army...

 

 

The head popping out of the broken flooring was actually part of the base - presumably meant to be some kind of apparition arising out of a vortex, but being Rapture I just painted the vortex to look like water (with the addition of some clear resin effect), and just made the head into a melty-faced splicer, who had presumably just met his end at the hands of the Sister's Big Daddy!

In gameplay terms, she'll be using the card of Gaston Crosse - the new Mercenary journeyman warcaster.  It's a bit of an odd one, I admit, but I liked the idea of the Little Sister controlling her own Big Daddies, so in terms of gameplay it should actually be quite fitting.

 

Anna DeWitt

 

Warning!  This section of the article contains spoilers!  If you haven't yet finished BioShock Infinite then only continue at your own risk.

 

The other model in the No Shelter Here box I was planning to use was Baby Kade, the baby with the knife in his hand and demonic look in his eyes.  I wasn't sure what to do with him, apart from make him another resident of the Little Sister Orphanage - obviously the Sisters we always see in the game are probably around 6-7 years old, but one would assume the orphanage takes them in at a younger age.  This would also work with my plan to use him as Reinholdt, as he could then toddle along with the Little Sister and lend her a hand!

However, before I could get started on him, a good friend and fellow Titan Games regular suggested that he could be used to make Anna DeWitt - Booker's missing daughter from BioShock Infinite.  Always susceptible to suggestion, I immediately seized this idea and ran with it, and that very evening I started working on ideas of how to turn Baby Kade into Anna DeWitt.

 

 

The main problem with a baby in this scale is that there isn't much to work with in terms of conversion options, which meant that I'd have to get creative with the base to ensure that this ended up clearly being Anna DeWitt, and not just some random baby I'd thrown into the army for no discernible reason!

 

*FINAL SPOILER WARNING*

 

In BioShock Infinite, the protagonist, Booker DeWitt, is a man with a fair degree of inner turmoil, having sold his daughter to pay off a gambling debt (as you do).  Many years later he is sent on a job to capture/rescue Elizabeth Comstock from Columbia, and on this job discovers that she has the unique (and often helpful) ability to open up tears between parallel worlds.  Well, in a dramatic twist of events at the end of the game, it's discovered that Elizabeth Comstock is, in fact, Anna DeWitt, after Booker sold her to the game's main antagonist Father Comstock.  In a further twist, Comstock is, in fact, a parallel world Booker, and Booker-prime's attempt to back out of the deal as Anna was being passed through an inter-dimensional portal resulted in the loss of Anna's little finger, and Elizabeth's subsequent abilities years down the line!  Phew!

To make the model embody Anna, I decided to try and capture the essence of that moment in the base, so with a rough plan in my head, it was time to get started!

 

If only he'd used one extra "O", maybe Comstock would have listened...

 

First of all I assembled Kade, which was again nice and simple.  The teddy stayed on the sprue, as it had no place in this scene, and the knife was clipped out of his hand, but aside from that he was simply assembled as normal.

 

 

Then it was time to start the all-important base!  I started with a resin street-base which I had on-hand - one of many I'd bought for my Batman miniatures.  It was important that the base had a kerb, for reasons we'll come to in a moment...

 

 

Next I needed a wall.  It would be very difficult for Anna to be passed through a portal in the wall if there wasn't actually a wall, otherwise the portal would just be in thin air.  Actually, that would have been just as feasible, but from a modelling point of view it would have been a nightmare, so I was very grateful for the wall.

I simply used a piece of plasticard for the wall.  It was a little bit smooth for brickwork though, so I scored some lines on it to represent bricks, and then gave it a light sanding to try and give it a rougher finish.  The other side of the wall I left smooth, as this was going to be the interior of a room, and so was going to be wallpapered.  Then I just needed to create the portal itself, which I did by simply drilling a hole in the plasticard and gradually working it wider with a knife.

 

 

Then I just glued the wall onto the base, flush against the kerb, and used some wooden coffee stirrers to make some floorboards for the other side of the wall.  This is where the kerb was important, as that raised level meant that once I'd added the floorboards, both sides of the base were even with eachother, and it also sandwiched the wall in place, preventing it from being knocked off in an inevitable bout of clumsiness later!

 

With the base and the miniature both assembled, all that was left was to combine the two and paint them!  Again, the paint job did help to bring the scene together a little bit...

 

 

 

As Anna lost her left little finger in the incident, I wanted to add this to the grizzly scene, so I added a small pool of blood around her left hand, along with a streak of blood running down from the postal.  Now you could nit-pick at this point, as she wouldn't have lost that finger while the portal was open, but I'm playing the artistic license card here, as it captures the overall scene a little better.  On the pavement side of the scene, there is a small patch of blood on the ground, and I even added a dot of flesh for the severed finger.  Again, I used artistic license and scrawled the words "Bring us the girl, wipe away the debt" on the wall - these words weren't present in this scene, but they are the words that prompted Booker's sale of Anna, as well as his eventual rescue of Elizabeth, so I felt that including them added to the scene as a whole.

 

So that's the latest two miniatures for the army!  The splicers are almost done, so they will probably be the next article, but in the meantime thank you for reading, and I hope you enjoyed this!







Creating a Warmachine BioShock Army, Episode IV: Elizabeth Comstock

Welcome back to the ongoing WarmaShock project!  Okay I just thought of that on the fly, but it's kind of catchy, so I think I might stick with it!

With my BioShock Warmachine army now standing at a warcaster and one solo, I decided to press on with one more solo.  Granted it'll feel like serious progress is being made once the force starts to bulk out with units and warjacks, but before I moved into that territory there was one more character from the series who I really wanted to bring to life...

Elizabeth Comstock; BioShock Infinite's female lead.  Back when this project was just going to be a small collection of BioShock-looking miniatures, Elizabeth was the first model I set my sights on, but once it became an army list I knew that with Booker DeWitt leading the force, Elizabeth had to be included.  The entire story of BioShock Infinite follows Booker's attempt to rescue her from the city of Columbia - initially as a job, and eventually out of loyalty to her.  A lot of Infinite's players became very invested in the Booker/Elizabeth relationship as the game progressed - myself amongst them - and so I wanted to try my damned hardest to bring justice to the character with her miniature.  All the more so since the Booker model turned out quite tidily!

Elizabeth does wear a number of different outfits throughout the main game and the Burial At Sea expansion, but I've always been a fan of the white corset and blue jacket/skirt look in the image above, so this was the outfit I wanted my Elizabeth to wear.

As per usual, the first order of business was to decide which model was going to be used as her base.  Unusually for this project, however, I was able to use an actual Warmachine miniature instead of having to plunder the dark world of Malifaux!

Madelyn Corbeau, Ordic Courtesan, seemed the perfect starting model for Elizabeth Comstock.  A few alterations to the model would be needed, but the corset was there, the long coat, and the hair was almost perfect.  My initial plan was to just leave the model as it was and just paint it up to look like Elizabeth, but ambition soon got the better of me and I decided to do everything in my power to turn Ms Corbeau into Ms Comstock!

The first thing I did was to start trimming and filing back the parts of the model I didn't need.  The cigarette in Madelyn's left hand was clipped off and filed back down - before any Burial At Sea fans pipe up, yes I know Elizabeth smoked in the expansion.  However, in the main game she didn't, and it's the main game from which I've taken the outfit, so I feel justified in this.  As the image of Elizabeth shows, she wears a short jacket, not long gloves, so I filed down the tops of Madelyn's gloves to make them easier to blend into the jacket when it came to sculpting time.  I also clipped and filed back the ruff around her neck, as again this wasn't part of Elizabeth's outfit.  This just left the jewelry on her forehead, which was a little tricky.  I couldn't get it entirely flat without damaging her hair, so I did my best to scrape it off with a sharp craft knife to give her a bare forehead.

I'd been lucky enough to get a cobblestone 30mm resin base for participating in a local Warmachine steamroller event a week previous, so with this acting as as the streets of Columbia it was time to crack open the green stuff and get sculpting!

To start with I needed to make Madelyn's coat into Elizabeth's skirt, so I rolled a nice thin piece of green stuff and blended it across the front of the coat, and along the slit at the back, making the skirt one complete piece all around.  That was the easy part!  The next part took a few attempts seeing as I'm still learning to use green stuff properly.  I needed to sculpt a short jacket on her upper body, covering her shoulders and blending into her gloves, and then coming to a stop around half way down her back.  As I said, this took a few attempts, but after a week the model had a jacket I could finally be proud of!  Or at least most of a jacket, for it was still missing one element: the cuffs.  Seeing as Madelyn is wearing long gloves, they blend seamlessly into the hands of the model.  With Elizabeth I needed the hands to be bare, which meant adding the cuffs to the miniature to separate the hands from the forearms.  This proved to be much simpler than the rest of the jacket, and I was happy with the result after my first attempt.

I've also been trying to do something a little more interesting with the bases.  With Booker I added a few drops of blood, which seemed fitting seeing as he spends the game rampaging across the city!  For Elizabeth I wanted to do something different.  I didn't want to throw blood all over the base, but I wanted to add something to make it look more like the city of Columbia.  That's when it struck me: flags!  Columbia is a very all-American city, and you can't turn anywhere in the game without seeing red, white and blue flags, banners or bunting.  So I decided to drape a bit of bunting across the base, as if it had fallen down onto the streets during all of the fighting.  This was just a simple matter of creating some green stuff triangles and then tucking them neatly in against the kerb stones.

With the model now assembled and heavily covered in green stuff, it was time for the fun part: painting!  I've never been quite so impatient to start painting a model, in fact I almost didn't leave the green stuff time to set properly before starting, which could have ended badly!  I also can't remember ever being quite so anxious about doing a decent paint job - the fact that Booker was already waiting for her to join him in the display cabinet at Titan Games just piled the pressure on even further.  But with a belly full of tea and the TV on in the background, I managed to steel myself and do a job I was pleased with overall, and here's the result...

So that brings my running total up to three!  I'm currently planning to use Elizabeth as Madelyn Corbeau for obvious reasons, but I may experiment using her as Alexia Ciannor.  This may sound odd, but bringing back Risen each turn could be a nice way to represent the way Elizabeth opens up tears to bring support through from other worlds to help out Booker.  It might work, it might not, but I'm keen to give it a try!

I think Elizabeth will be the last solo for a while.  I want to get Andrew Ryan and the splicers on the go soon, and I have a pile of Big Daddies waiting to be built!  So thanks again for reading, and keep checking back for the next addition to the army!

Creating a Warmachine BioShock Army, Episode III: Eleanor Lamb

For those who may have missed the start of this article series (you can catch up from the Article Archive tab above), I'm currently working my way through a project to create a Mercenary army for Privateer Press' Warmachine tabletop system based on the BioShock videogame series.  Seeing as this is quite an ambitious project, and one which will require a fair amount of conversion and artistic license, I've decided to chronicle this project from start to finish.  In the last article we looked at the creation of Booker DeWitt - the protagonist from BioShock Infinite and the army's warcaster.  In this article we'll be stepping away from the floating city of Columbia and heading beneath the waves to Rapture, the setting of the first two games in the series.

 

"BioShock Harder" ...or something.

 

Before I start to go into the creation of today's miniature, I'll just quickly address something about BioShock 2.  It is, unquestionably, the game that divides fans of the series.  Some think it's terrible, some love it.  At the end of the day, this is a tabletop blog and not a videogame blog, so I won't be delving into the details of whether it was a good game.  All I'll say is I thoroughly enjoyed playing it, and just leave it at that.

 

When this BioShock project first started out, there were just a handful of characters from the games which I wanted to bring to life in 30mm form - ironically Booker DeWitt was not amongst them!  Elizabeth Commstock from BioShock Infinite was one, a Big Daddy and Little Sister from BioShock were two more, and one of the Big Sisters from BioShock 2 was the last.

The Little Sisters from the first game became one of the most iconic images in modern videogame history.  One of the things I loved about the sequel was that it took place a few years after the original, and so we got to see what happened to these little monsters when they grew up.  Being a big fan of the series I had a copy of the artbook on-hand, so had not only plenty of images to work from, but also the designers' notes as well.

The Big Sisters never quite became as iconic as the Big Daddy/Little Sister pairing from the first game, but still I found the idea behind them quite fascinating.  Their design was based upon the idea that these little girls had grown up into young women, and in their own way were trying to emulate their Big Daddies.  Unlike the Big Daddies, however, which were specifically designed during the heights of Rapture, the Big Sisters were left to cobble together their own outfits, effectively attempting to recreate the Big Daddy look with whatever they could scrounge from the now-derelict city.

 

 

Now, whilst Booker was undoubtedly the most important model in the army, he was still a relatively simple build.  His skyhook may have required a bit of finesse, but the Lucas McCabe model at his core already had most of the work done for me.  With the Big Sister, things were going to be a little more of a challenge, as I really couldn't think of a model which came close to fitting the profile!

As usual, it was off to the Malifaux shelves to try and find something to use a starting point.  One of the things about Malifaux models in general is that they're more realistically scaled, as opposed to many systems which have exaggerated heads/hands etc. to emphasise certain elements of the model.  Seeing as the Big Sister is quite an emaciated figure, Malifaux did seem the best bet for a suitably slim female miniature.

After a bit of searching, it seemed that the best model to use as a base was to be Rusty Alyce from the old metal Leviticus crew  (most of the Malifaux box sets have been rereleased as plastics at this point).  I should point out now that if you do a  Google image search for "Malifaux Rusty Alyce" you'll actually find a much better Big Sister conversion than mine!  But I'm still very much a conversion beginner, so I'm happy enough with my outcome... I can always try again in a couple of years!

 

 

It was whilst looking at how to convert her that the idea came up to make her into more than just a regular Big Sister.  In BioShock 2 the player takes on the role of Delta - a Big Daddy who is trying to be reunited with the Little Sister who was taken from him.  It's not as gripping and heart-wrenching as the Booker/Elizabeth relationship from Infinite, but still made for a good gaming experience.  The Little Sister in question was a girl named Eleanor Lamb, and towards the end of the game, circumstances force her to become a Big Sister.  She's the only Big Sister who the player ever sees without her helmet on, so I thought it'd be a nice idea to turn Rusty Alyce into the Big Sister version of Eleanor, rather than a generic Big Sister.  Seeing as the plan was to use her as Dirty Meg on the tabletop anyway this worked quite nicely, as she could jack marshal a warjack which could be modelled after her Delta.

 

With the base model chosen, it was time to start turning her into a Big Sister.  As with the Big Daddies, the most distinctive part of the Big Sister is the helmet.  My original plan was to use an Attunement Servitor from the Convergence of Cyriss faction in Warmachine, but after opening up a blister of these I found them to be far too big.  Fortunately I was able to return these, but on the downside I ended up picking up something much more expensive in its place!

 

 

The M&SU crew from Malifaux contains Arachnid Swarms, which served perfectly as Big Sister helmets.  Seeing as I only needed the one though, the majority of the box set was left in tact, meaning I can still assemble and use it as a Malifaux crew if I so wish!

 

With the helmet chosen, I just wanted to concentrate on the oxygen tank and basket on Eleanor's back, and the large, forearm-mounted syringe on her left arm.  For the syringe I went back to the M&SU box, and took a part from the Joss model - the tank shown on the lower-right part of the sprue below.

 

 

Obviously the cable had to go, so I clipped it off, drilled a small hole in its place, and glued in a shortened sewing pin to finish the weapon.  Then I just filed it down a little to fit more snugly against Rusty Alyce's arm, glued it in place, and then used a little bit of Green Stuff to make it a more seamless fit.

This just left the oxygen tank and basket on her back, so for the oxygen tank it was back to the world of Malifaux, though this time it was for a new release!

 

 

The Flesh Construct had literally just arrived in at Titan Games on the day I was building Eleanor, which was an absolute stroke of luck.  I don't have a sprue photo for this one (as with Booker, Eleanor was done before the idea for this series was suggested), but you can see the syringe-like container on the back of the Construct from the box photo.  Seeing as the Flesh Construct is so much bigger than Rusty Alyce this was actually a very good size, and so with a little bit of trimming it served the purpose of Eleanor's oxygen tank.  The rest of the Flesh Construct won't be going to waste, as he'll be taking on the role of another BioShock character, but I'll leave you to guess which one for now.

This only left the basket, but with no suitable alternatives in any system, this was just built manually using thinly-sliced strips of plasticard.

 

So, here's the result...

 

 

As I said before, she's not the best Rusty Alyce/Eleanor Lamb conversion I've ever seen, but I'm satisfied that she met the designer's goal of "cobbled together Big-Daddy-esque outfit".

Many thanks to Gmorts Chaotica for use of his unboxing photos for The M&SU.  If you enjoyed this rambling insight then please go back and take a look at the Booker DeWitt article!  And of course check back in a couple of days, when I'll hopefully have Elizabeth Commstock ready to join him...

Creating a Warmachine BioShock Army, Episode II: Booker DeWitt

Hello again, lovely readerfolk!  If you had a nose at the last article you'll have seen that there are grand plans in motion to create a BioShock themed army for Privateer Press' Warmachine tabletop system.  In that article I talked about how the idea came about, so here we'll be taking a look at the first model to find its way onto the painting table and get the ball rolling.

 

 

The centre point of any Warmachine army is its warcaster.  With no warcaster there is no army, and generally the entire army will be built around the warcaster's spells and abilities so as to pull off the most effective combos.  This created a bit of a dilemma right off the bat: who should take on the role of the warcaster?  With a universe as rich and well-designed as BioShock's there are no shortage of characters to choose from, so who should get the honour of being the pivotal character when this army finally gets to march to war?

For many, the most central BioShock character is Jack - the protagonist from the very first BioShock game.  The player watched the story unfold through his eyes, and heard the tale of the rise and fall of Rapture through his in-game discoveries, making for quite a personal experience.  However, you never see more than his wrists in the game, and you never hear his voice, so he didn't give me much to work with in terms of fashioning a model in his image!
(EDIT: Having just finished the Burial At Sea DLC from BioShock Infinite I do now have a slightly better image of Jack, so he may well feature in the army at some point...)

In BioShock 2 you take on the role of one of the Big Daddies - a Delta - not as iconic as the classic "Mr Bubbles" Big Daddy, but much more human-looking, and therefore more relatable.  However, in spite of this, there's still an overall lack of the human connection.  His relationship with Eleanor Lamb in the second game was superb, but the lack of a face, a voice, and a real name still severs the human connection somewhat.  Delta will certainly be featuring in the army, but he didn't quite cut it as a pivotal character.

Then we move onto BioShock Infinite, where the player takes on the role of Booker DeWitt.  So straight away we have a full name for our protagonist.  His image dominates the box art.  He's the most vocal character in the game, whether he's muttering to himself or conversing with Elizabeth, so we have a very clear idea of his personality.  In short, he's real.  He's tangible.  He's someone we can connect with.  Booker has a tragic past, he's on a mission of redemption, and the developing relationship between himself and Elizabeth tugs at every heartstring from their initial meeting to the final scene of the game.  If there was ever a character who deserved to be the centre of a BioShock army, it's this man.

 

 

So the BioShock character had been decided, the Warmachine character had been decided in advance as Magnus the Traitor, so that just left the hard part: bringing Booker DeWitt to life in 30mm form!

It was quite obvious from the offset that I wasn't going to find a miniature in the Warmachine range which was even close to resembling Booker, so it was off to the Malifaux shelves to try and find a suitable doppelganger.  After looking through all of the crews on offer at Titan Games and coming up short, it was starting to look like I'd have to start trawling through the more obscure tabletop systems, until someone suggested Lucas McCabe of the Relic Hunters - one of the Malifaux crews not on the shelves at the time of my browsing.  As a stroke of luck, one of the regulars had an unpainted McCabe crew which they no longer wanted, and so a few days later I was able to see if he really had the makings of Booker DeWitt!

 

 

As soon as I had the miniature in my hand I knew I had the base for Booker!  I've always described McCabe as "Indiana Wolverine", and I'm sure I'm not the only one, but in terms of outfit he was pretty much perfect for the role, even down to the neckerchief!  So now came the task of converting him into the hero of BioShock Infinite...

It should be noted at this point that I'd like to post some photos from various stages in the process, but seeing as the suggestion for this article series didn't come up until after Booker was finished this wasn't an option, however GMorts has granted me permission to steal photos from his Malifaux unboxing articles to help ease things along!

 

The first thing I did was clip the whip out of his right hand.  I left the hand on at this point as I wasn't sure how I was planning to use it, but the whip was distracting me and had to go asap.  The second thing that had to go was the "stupid Wolverine hair" as I kept calling it.  This required some very delicate knife-work with a very sharp hobby knife, so I had a more conversion-savvy friend take on this task for me!  With the whip gone and Lucas' new haircut in place, it was time to move onto the weapons.

Now as awesome as Booker is, there's nothing particularly distinctive about his outfit.  Sure, at a convention I can spot a Booker cosplayer a mile away, but at the end of the day it's just a shirt, a waistcoat, a pair of pinstripe trousers and a neckerchief.  When people look at my warcaster I want them to know straight away that this is Booker DeWitt and not just a generic waistcoated character, so he needed something to make him stand out, and if there's one piece of equipment that defines BioShock Infinite, it has to be the skyhook...

 

 

Being a floating city, the best way to travel around Columbia is to ride the skylines, and to do that you need a skyhook!  This became the most iconic piece of Infinite equipment, and so I knew that my Booker had to be equipped with one.

Seeing as skyline riders obviously don't want to fall to their deaths 30 seconds into their journey, the skyhook is designed to fit snugly half way up the user's forearm.  Upon looking at the gun in Lucas McCabe's left hand, it seemed to me that the makings of the skyhook were right there!  The stock nestles in against his forearm, and the way the strap falls against it actually makes it look as though the stock is lashed to his arm.  I clipped the barrel off the gun, just leaving the trigger guard, and stock.  From this point on it was going to be a custom build, so I dived into the bits boxes at Titan and started searching.

For the hooks themselves I had it in my head that the best thing would be to find some meat hooks, and glue them at the centre with the hooks an equal distance apart.  A short distance in, however, I found a Dark Eldar sprue with some very fine hooks which would do the job perfectly.  It took a bit of trimming, dry-fitting, and trimming again to get them to a suitable size (originally they dwarfed the rest of the weapon!), but eventually I had them looking just right, and applied a spot of superglue to fix the formation in place.

At this point, however, my iconic skyhook was nothing more than a trio of hooks glued onto a trimmed back gun barrel.  It certainly looked as though it was heading in the right direction, but didn't yet look like the finished article.  It still needed something at the centre of the hooks, as well as something to hide the point where they attached to the barrel.  I did try a few bits and pieces from the bits boxes, but the thickness of the plastic on even the finest detailed pieces bulked the skyhook out far too much.  Fortunately Games Workshop have released basing packs which contain a selection of brass-etched cogs and gears, which were just what I needed to complete the skyhook without the bulk of plastic alternatives.  With one small gear attached to each side in the centre, and half of a larger gear hiding the joining point on each side, the skyhook was done!

 

This just left Booker's right hand, which needed a period-suitable firearm.  This took a mercifully short search, and I found a hand holding a revolver on World War 2 miniatures sprue (possibly Bolt Action, I can't say for sure).  I have to confess I wanted to give Booker a rocket launcher that was on the same sprue to increase his awesome factor, but a friend reigned in my enthusiasm and suggested the less-is-more approach!

Seeing as the hand with the revolver was the perfect size for the miniature, I clipped off the entire left hand from the Lucas McCabe model and replaced it with the new one.

 

The streets of Columbia are smart, white cobblestone, so I found a suitable resin base to attach Booker to, and all that remained was the painting!  So it's my great pleasure to present to you the first model in my BioShock Warmachine army: Booker DeWitt!

 

 

I hope you've enjoyed this article, and if so then please check back for future entries when I'll be putting together Elizabeth Commstock, Eleanor Lamb, Andrew Ryan, splicers, and of course those iconic Big Daddies!

Creating a Warmachine BioShock Army, Episode I: Conception

Welcome to Games & Tea, good readers, where the great will not be constrained by the small!!!

 

*ahem*

 

Excuse me, channelling Andrew Ryan there for a moment.

 

Good day, ladies and gentlegamers!  I'm afraid this is going to be the start of another one of those pesky tabletop article series which seem to be creeping into the Games & Tea lineup more and more often.  This won't impact upon our board game reviews (in fact our next one is due up in the next couple of days!), but as this is a very special project I've just decided to undertake, it was recommended by Gmorts Chaotica that I record the process.

 

 

So the project (as you really should have figured out from the title) is to create a BioShock army for Privateer Press' Warmachine tabletop system.  I don't play many videogames these days, but in the last few years there are two particular series which have left a major emotional impact and secured themselves a special place in the blackened cavity I call a heart.  The first of these is the Mass Effect series, and the second is BioShock.

My primary army in Warmachine is Khador, and within Khador my favoured warcaster is Karchev the Terrible.  Being mostly a warjack himself, he does favour very warjack-heavy army lists, which usually need to be complemented by a lot of repair crews, which in itself mens recruiting Mercenaries.  In a recent attempt to make his 50 point list even more jack-heavy and ridiculous, I decided to let some of the Mercenary fixers jack marshal their own warjacks, and that meant having to pick up my first Mercenary warjacks!  It only took a few moments on the Privateer Press website to decide which Mercenary warjack was going to be my first, as one glimpse of the Mariner immediately conjured up images of the underwater city of Rapture.  I knew I had to do something special with the model - I didn't want it to just be a Mariner, I wanted it to actually be recognisable as a Big Daddy, so with a bit of customisation, this was born...

 

 

Whilst I never intended for this to be the start of something greater, it did get me thinking.  Surely there must be other BioShock-esque models scattered amongst the many and varied tabletop systems?  Wouldn't it be a nice idea to collect and paint up some of these just to have a BioShock shelf in my display cabinet?  I popped into my FLGS Titan Games and spitballed the idea with the owner (who doubles up as my longest-serving friend and the man who got me into the tabletop hobby!), and he made a counter-suggestion that I build a workable Mercenary army around the BioShock characters.

I have to admit I wasn't instantly sold on the idea, but he always has a way of convincing me, and we were soon sitting down and penning a 50 point list.  Unfortunately there aren't a great deal of Warmachine models that fit the BioShock aesthetic - either for Rapture or BioShock Infinite's Columbia - so we had to start getting creative.  Being a Victorian alternate reality steampunk system, Wyrd Miniatures' Malifaux seemed to be the best place for us to find the characters of the BioShock series, so our list soon came to comprise of three sections:  The BioShock character, the Warmachine character they would be used in place of, and the Malifaux model used to represent them.

 

With many miniatures in need of some serious customisation, and several Malifaux crews required to complete this task, it's going to be quite a long and ongoing process (at this point I've bought 6 crews, totalling at over £150)!  However, I can't wait to see how the final army looks, and I'm looking forward to bringing you all updates as the months progress!

Puppet Wars Unstitched, Part 2: Gameplay & Verdict

In our previous entry we looked at the box contents of Wyrd Miniatures' board game for 2 or more players, Puppet Wars Unstitched.  Now we're going to look at how the game plays, and then give the run down on Games & Tea's opinion of the experience.

The first thing to decide upon starting a game of Puppet Wars Unstitched is the layout of the board.  At the back of the rulebook you'll find a series of maps for 2-4 players which show you where to lay out the Impassable Terrain tokens and the Workbenches.  More experienced players can create maps of their own, and can even create handicapped maps to give an advantage for newer players, but for those embarking on their first game the wise choice is to stick with a map from the book.

 

Once the map has been decided upon, each player must choose the Master to lead their puppet army.  There are three masters in the Puppet Wars Unstitched box; Seamus, Lady Justice and Pokey Viktoria.  So whilst the manual does contain maps for 4 players, until Wyrd begin to release additional puppets that fourth player will be required to own their own copy of the game so as to bring their own master.

With the Masters chosen, each player then chooses the puppets for their army.  The rulebook lists the puppet numbers for various sized games, with the smallest (or 'shoebox') size consisting of 8 plus the Master.  With the puppets having different abilities, selection can seem tricky for newcomers, but the rulebook also helpfully lists two well-balanced pre-set armies, so that new players can get off to a swift start.

Each player then selects one of the map's Workbenches as their starting Workbench, and replaces it with a token of their chosen colour.  The Masters start on the board in any space adjacent to their controllers' Workbench, and the rest of the models await in the players' 'toybox', off to the side of the board.

 

 

The players shuffle their Puppet Decks and each draw a hand of 4 cards, plus 1 for each Workbench they control.  Whilst the Puppet Wars Unstitched box does contain enough miniatures for a 3 player game, the absence of the third Puppet Deck does mean that a deck of cards must be provided to allow the game to take place.

With the Masters placed and the cards drawn, it's time to begin the war!

 

Each turn consists of 5 Animation Rounds, and the bottom-right corner of the board allows you to keep track of which round you're on.  This is another shortcoming of Puppet Wars Unstitched, as it doesn't contain a counter or token to move along this track.  We've discovered the handiest thing to use is a Workbench token of an unused colour.

At the start of each Animation Round the players draw one card off the top of their Puppet Deck and add it to their hand.  They then place a card face-down to determine which puppet they're going to activate, either from their toybox or from the puppets already in play.

 

 

Each puppet's 'Animation Requirement' is marked in the top-right hand corner of their card.  To activated Pokey Viktoria her controller would need to put down a card with a value of 6 or higher.  The Judge, on the other hand, has a suit in his requirement, so not only does his controller need a 5 or more, but it also needs to be a Ram.  Once each player has placed their card face-down, they are all revealed, and here's where the game starts to get interesting, because the player with the lowest value card gets to go first.  The more powerful puppets have higher Animation Requirements, so players are left to make a tactical decision:  Activate a powerful model, but lose the initiative to your opponent, or bring out one of the low-cost pawns to start gaining ground, but lost the advantage of brute force?

Each time a puppet is activated it can move up to its total movement distance (the value on the far left of the row of numbers), and take a single action.  Actions can consist of attacking, attaching upgrades from fallen comrades, acquiring unoccupied Workbenches, or a variety of character-specific actions which we won't go into here.  Whenever a puppet takes an action it received an Exhausted Counter, and any puppet which is activated whilst in possession of an Exhausted Counted suffers one rip.  Again this leaves players with a tough decision, as the puppets they'll want to activate will often already be exhausted.  The number of rips each puppet can suffer is represented by the buttons on the far right side of the card.  This is another shortfall from Wyrd, as the Puppet Wars Unstitched box contains nothing to keep track of rips suffered on each model.  As a tabletop gamer with a tinful of dice this wasn't much of an issue for me, but a board gamer might struggle to find an appropriate substitute.

 

Taking an action is where the Puppet Deck comes into true effect.  We'll take a look at combat as an example of an action, as it's showcases the game mechanic quite nicely.  Once again we'll use the two puppets above as an example, so we'll have Pokey Viktoria making an attack against the Judge.

The puppet's defence is the second number in the row, with the thimble in the background.  The Judge has a defence of 8, which means that when Viktoria's controller flips over the top card of their deck, they need an 8 or higher to score a hit.  Now the Judge's controller may value their puppet highly (perhaps it's late in the game with few puppets left, or this one is in a good tactical location), so they can choose to dodge before the attack is made.  To do this they select one card from their hand to replace the defence value.  In this instance we'll say they've dodged with the 11 (Jack) of Tomes.

The third number in the row is the puppet's combat (attack) value.  Pokey Viktoria has a combat of 4, which means that her controller flips over the top 4 cards of their deck to make the attack.  If any one of those cards is the 11 of Tomes or higher, the attack is successful and the Judge suffers a rip.  If none of the cards are high enough, then the controller can use a card from their hand instead.

 

The true genius of this system means that players will be hoping for a mixed hand at the beginning of each turn; low cards to activate their models before their opponents, but high cards to boost their attacks and dodges.

 

 

After 5 Animation Rounds, the turn is over.  Players discard any remaining cards from their hands which they don't wish to keep for the next turn, shuffle the discarded cards back into their Puppet Decks, reset the Animation Round counter to 1, and remove any Exhausted Counters from any puppets.  The game continues in this fashion until a victor is decided.  The two ways to lose Puppet Wars Unstitched are to let your Master die, or to find yourself in control of no Workbenches.

 

So there's a nice, in-depth look at Wyrd Miniatures' Puppet Wars Unstitched, so let's break it down.

 

The Good Points

• The game is very nicely presented.  The box, board and Puppet Decks are all of excellent quality and contain some fantastic artwork.  The miniatures themselves, whilst requiring assembly, have an incredible level of detail, and are a joy to play with.
• Whilst a complex looking game, Puppet Wars Unstitched is very quick to pick up, and even brand new players often start moving through the turns at a decent pace before the end of their first game.
• The rulebook contains optional extra rules for experience players, whilst giving beginners guides to new players by way of suggested army lists.
• The wide selection of maps in the rulebook, together with the option of creating your own, and the variety of puppets to choose for your armies keep the game fresh.
• The nature of the game itself is very tongue-in cheek, and leads to an overall enjoyable gaming atmosphere whilst playing.

The Bad Points

• Whilst Puppet Wars Unstitched is technically a board game, it's designed by a tabletop gaming company and feels like it's made for tabletop gamers.  The game simply isn't ready to play straight out of the box, requiring modelling tools to assemble the miniatures, and paints to make them look their best.  The character cards require counters of some kind to be provided to keep track of rips, and whilst advertised for "2 or more players", the box contains only enough Puppet Decks for 2 players, and only enough models for 3.  Put quite simply, it isn't a complete package, which is what most board gamers want.
• The game mechanics might seem overly complicated to board gamers with no tabletop experience.  Puppet Wars Unstitched could be called Malifaux Light, for all of its similarity to Wyrd's flagship game.
• The puppets are based on Malifaux characters and the games is set in the Malifaux  universe, so the game's charm may be lost on those without the background knowledge.

Recommended Number of Players: 2-3

Both 2 and 3 player games of Puppet Wars Unstitched work very well, with a balance between bull-headedness and absolute caution being the best way to play.  4 players is workable, but can make the board overly busy and cause the game to slow down to a crawl.

 

Average Game Time: 30-60 minutes

Once the game gets moving, Puppet Wars Unstitched moves at a relatively brisk pace, and entire turns can pass within a couple of minutes.  Larger scale games with more opponents will inevitably take longer, but casual 2-3 player games in 'shoebox' size will take under an hour.

 

Replay Value: High

As mentioned, Puppet Wars Unstitched gives the players variety in both the maps they battle on, and the puppets in their armies.  On top of this you have the human element, with each different player favouring their own tactics.

 

The Future: Bright

Seeing as Puppet Wars Unstitched is a light-hearted parallel of Malifaux, Wyrd are planning to release corresponding puppet miniatures of their other Malifaux characters.  This will mean more expense, more modelling, more painting, and perhaps even new rules to learn, which will delight tabletop gamers, but may further put off hardcore board gamers.

 

Price:£45

At £45, Puppet Wars Unstitched is certainly not the cheapest board game out there, but nor is it the priciest.  Again the point must be made that it's a sizeable expense for a board game which requires hours of work before the first game.  In many ways it should be viewed more as the purchase of a new gaming system, rather than a regular board game.

As Malifaux is one of the better-known tabletop games doing the rounds at the moment, most specialist gaming stores should stock Puppet Wars Unstitched, and even if they don't then it won't be a problem to order it from an already established supplier.

 

 

 

OVERALL SCORE (BOARD GAMER): 3/5

 

OVERALL SCORE (TABLETOP GAMER): 5/5

 

This split score might cause controversy, but it really must be emphasised that this game is marketed towards two different gamer groups, and it will be a thoroughly different experience for each of them.

 

If you enjoyed this article and want to see more of the same, come and like us on our Facebook page to keep up to date with our reviews, as well as our general day-to-day ramblings!



Puppet Wars Unstitched, Part 1: Box Contents

Well we did say we'd have something special to end our long absence, and here it is!  Games & Tea are proud to give you our review of Puppet Wars Unstitched from Wyrd Miniatures.  If ever there was a game in need of a two-part review, this is it!

 

 

Puppet Wars Unstitched is effectively a refined re-release of the original Puppet Wars from Wyrd.  Unstitched includes a more streamlined set of rules, and a greater number of puppet models than its predecessor.  The game is for 2 or more players, and follows the plights of puppet gang-leaders as they fight for supremacy over a workshop in the fictional world of Malifaux.

So let's open up the (rather nice) box and see the contents in detail.

 

 

As with most board games, the first thing you'll come across upon opening the box is the game board, giving the players a birds-eye view of the workshop in which the battles are fought.  For a specialist board game this board is remarkably simple, consisting only of a grid of hexagonal spaces and an area to keep track of the players' Animation Rounds (to be explained later).  A simple board doesn't necessarily mean a simple game, however, and often signifies that there's a lot to keep track of outside the board area.

Once the board's out of the box we reach the first point which may be a stumbling block for some gamers...

 

 

Puppet Wars Unstitched contains 44 puppet miniatures with which to fight your battles, and the back of the box does state that "some cleaning and assembly may be required before play."  There is no way at all that Puppet Wars Unstitched can be played without first assembling these miniatures.  Whilst Wyrd are probably best known for their tabletop miniature game Malifaux (on which this is actually based), Puppet Wars Unstitched is advertised as a board game, and the fact that it isn't playable straight out of the box will probably put off a lot of people.  As a  seasoned tabletop gamer it took me just over 4 hours to construct all of these models (varying from 3 to 9 parts each), and I was fortunate enough to already be in possession of clippers, files and superglue.

 

The next thing you'll find are two Puppet Decks.  Whilst these do have suits particular to the world of Malifaux (Rams, Tomes, Crows and Masks), they are effectively the same as a deck of regular playing cards.  There are 13 ascending-value cards of each suit, and two jokers; one red and one black.  The artwork on each card is beautifully rendered and the cards are made of plastic, which makes shuffling tricky but prevents wear and tear.  Should misfortune ever befall one of your Puppet Decks however, they can always be replaced with a deck of playing cards or a Malifaux Fate Deck.

The purpose of the Puppet Decks are to take the place of dice.  There is no dice-rolling in Puppet Wars Unstitched, instead players flip cards over from the top of their decks to determine whether or not their actions take effect.

 

Now we'll take a look at tokens and counters, of which there are three different types in the game:

 

Exhausted Counters are used to keep track of which puppets have been used each turn.

 

Workbenches are the strategic points in Puppet Wars Unstitched.  There are grey tokens for neutral (unoccupied) workbenches, and coloured tokens to represent those which have been captured by their respective players.

 

And there are Impassable Terrain tokens.  The presence of one of these not only prevents movement through the board space, but also blocks line of sight, which is vital in many of the puppets' abilities.  It would have to be described as an oversight by Wyrd that the Impassable Terrain tokens and neutral Workbench tokens are the same colour, and sometimes the Workbenches can be difficult to pick out against the dark background of the board.

 

 

Next up, we have the character cards.  The puppets in Puppet Wars Unstitched have different abilities and attributes, and each model has a corresponding card to let the players keep track.  These show you the card value required to use the puppet each turn, the number of rips (wounds) it can take before it's out of the game, as well as its attack/defence powers and movement distance.  It also tells you the models abilities and actions, as well as how many upgrades they can receive (see below).

 

 

Whenever a puppet suffers its final rip and 'dies', the model is removed from play and the character card is flipped over to show the upgrade that the puppet leaves behind.  If the puppet had a particularly powerful ability then its resultant upgrade will often allow you to bestow that ability onto another puppet.  This keeps the game very well balances as it allows the players to strengthen their remaining troops even whilst their army is being reduced in number.

 

Now we've established the box contents it's time to move on to gameplay and final verdict!  Stay tuned for the imminent Part 2!