SDE Denizens, Round 1

I was able to get some more painting done last night and decided to crank out some denizens. These guys are brutal in the game, as long as you still have your egg clutch on the board I don't know why you would want to spawn kobolds unless you had no denizens left to spawn.

Charmeleon...err I mean a whelp.

Wyrmling

Hatchlings

My favorite model so far, the egg clutch spawning point

The entirety of my painted SDE set

I'm finding that I can keep to my painting goals fairly well. There were some gaps in the Whelp and the base of the Wyrmling that I would have liked to fill but I told myself this is a board game, get over it and paint them! So far the minis are quick and fun to paint so I don't see myself losing interest any time soon. Queue 3 months of silence about painting SDE...

SDE Paladin WIP

I started working on my first SDE mini last night. I'm coming at these minis differently than usual. Basically the look of the overall set is more important than the individual minis. Meaning, I'd rather have a fully painted set than a few really stellar models. With that in mind I'm trying to keep the paint techniques and style simple. For example:

1) I'm only doing a basecoat and rough highlights. This will allow me to move quickly but I think it will also add to the pixelated 8-bit feel.

2) I'm not doing NMM but I'm not using metallic paints either. Metallic paints take a long time for me and I think they'll stand out oddly against the cartoony feel of the minis. In Legend of Zelda Link's sword doesn't shimmer and shine. It's a brown stick but you still know it's a sword. So my steels will be grey and my golds will be yellow but I think you'll still be able to tell that it's a sword, not a grey stick.

3) Paint the heroes, dip the mobs. Yes that's right this will be my first foray into dipping. I plan on painting the heroes, drakes, mini-bosses and boss by hand but all the kobolds are getting dipped. I just need to decide what color their skin will be so I can get that color primer for Christmas. At this point I'm thinking blue.

With all that said here's my Paladin. I'm calling him a WIP because there's some touchups I'd like to do (stray paint etc)but in the interest of getting everything painted I'm moving on.

Super Dungeon Explore Boxing

There are plenty of Super Dungeon Explore unboxing videos and reviews out there so I thought I'd just do a boxing post in which we all admire the box that SDE comes in. Sounds like fun right!

Here is the box in all of its glory. The first thing I noticed about the box was how big and heavy it is. Quite the impressive product based on girth alone. If you squint you can see a fully grown man standing to the side of the box, engulfed in its shadow as the sheer awesomeness of SDE overshadows him. I have to say the cardboard is a little thin, if you run you hand across the box you can feel the corrugation. But in the less than 24 hours that I've had it the box has held up admirably.

Like many boxes this one has 4 sides. Here are some pictures of those sides (with bonus uncropped knees if you're into that sort of thing).

The box also has a back which details the contents of the box and gives a description of the game. For those of you who like to read the last page of a book first you may be tempted to skip right to the back of the box, but don't let that distract you from savoring the box in its entirety.

A unique feature of this box is that it opens to reveal objects stored inside of it. Here we can see what awaits us when we fold up the lid of the box:

So there you have it, a complete box review of Super Dungeon Explore. What's that you say? You want me to press on further into the labyrinth mysteries of this box? Well the people have spoken!

The first things that will greet you upon opening the box is the rulebook and two (count them two!) sheets of double sided counters:

After that we have the 5 double sided dungeon tiles and the adventure tracker:

And below that we have a plastic tray with dice, cards and a big ol' bag of minis:

And a short while later the Heroes are assembled:

And there you have it. My Super Dungeon Explore experiences to date.

Super Dungeon Explore Board

Jon was kind enough to hook me up with some pink foam so I could make a Super Dungeon Explore board. This is my first time working with pink foam so many mistakes have been made so far. Hopefully it will be at least playable by the time we get together to give the game a spin, but this is what I have done at this point.

Surprise Hit of Kingdom-Con

Super Dungeon Explore!



Sorry I didn't get more video, I was too busy having a blast trying this game out. I learned the game in about 3 minutes and got to play for about 30. This game is going to be seriously awesome. Easy to teach people, accessible, cute minis that will draw girls to male gaming nerds resulting in breeding which will increase the overall population of geeks. What's not to love?

The game is basically a tabletop version of an 8 bit dungeon crawler like Gauntlet or Zelda. Each player controls one overpowered hero while another player runs the dungeon. Each hero and minion has special attacks (like Sparkle Burst, Backstab, Iron Halo and Rex Cuddle) so there's just the right amount of depth to keep you coming back for more. We were also told that there would be support for competitive party vs party play. The game is due out sometime in late summer 2011 and personally I can't wait. If you're interested in getting an early start head over to Soda Pop Miniature's web page and get the demo rules. I'm planning on running some demos at the LGS after Easter so expect some more updates about this game.