PROTOSTARS!

It's been a long time since the last PROTOSTARS! so here's another great gaming blog with far too few followers for the quality, The Dark Workshop, home of Cursed13.

What are the highlights? 

> a superb guide to basic hobby tools for modelling and painting

> two excellent hobby tutorials, the first on using an airbrush and compressor, the second on building a lightbox, as well as good advice for press moulding decorative elements

> subtle modelling, especially the posing and converting for these Blood Angels space marines and this space marine captain, not forgetting those simple Eldar wraithbone bases

> solid painting, not least on this Dark Angels chaplain, these Space Hulk terminators and this crashed lander

> more terrain: a defensive wall with an electrically-operated gate and these etched stone columns for a desert-themed table

> the detailed creation of a balanced character for 40K, Captain Alessio Cortez, and a space marine chapter, the Void Ravens

As can be seen, illumination awaits in The Dark Workshop.

The earlier PROTOSTARS! - six more great blogs:

• A Field Guide To Doomsday
• ix
• Confessions of a 40K addict
• Super Galactic Dreadnought
• Fire Broadside!
• Blighty Waaagh Boys, including the intro to the series

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PROTOSTARS!

It's been a while since the last PROTOSTAR! so here's another blog I think deserves many more followers than it has, a blog with a simple concept but a very high quality.

It's A Field Guide To Doomsday, home of some very odd creatures, designed for Mutant Future, but excellent inspiration for any setting in terms of likely characteristics.

The blog is mostly one pulp mutant per post, often a hybrid of existing creatures. Especially interesting for me - although admittedly rather horrific - are the mantipede, shockroach and brainwhale, perhaps for seeming just a little more believable.

Another good generic idea, for all kinds of fictional settings, and one I assume is less of a hybrid, is the dunestrider.

The verman is something - or maybe someone - Warhammer fans might recognise as a distant relative of a Skaven, while the labwrath both of them would want to watch out for.

Here's one of the posts which break this pattern, one for the modellers in particular, featuring a girantula made almost real. The 'Designer's notes' tag has more on good sources.

The latest post is also in this vein, a couple of links on real-life apocalyptic scenarios and contamination. Here's a quote from the first of the two, an article in The New York Times:

"It is a very grim read," Mr. Younkins said. "This is for potentially very grim situations in which difficult decisions have to be made."

That, beyond the vivid colours, is a A Field Guide To Doomsday too.


The earlier PROTOSTARS! are also well worth a visit.

• ix
• Confessions of a 40K addict
• Super Galactic Dreadnought
• Fire Broadside!
• Blighty Waaagh Boys, including the intro to the series 

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PROTOSTARS!

No difference and every difference this time. I'm aiming to satisfy most of the pulp wargamers and still keep the promise to Harald, to recommend a blog which is pure roleplaying and storytelling.

It's ix.

What's the blog all about? All I can say with a certainty is the parts are wondrous, but the whole is something else. I can give you links, but you need to feel your way in.

PROTOSTARS!

A new PROTOSTAR!, a gaming blog of such quality it deserves 113 followers rather than 13. I'm not superstitious, but we do need to get it off that number.

The attractions then, and they are many.

Terrain-building - an excellent tower, designed for sci-fi, but close to Orthanc in design, and part of a larger outpost, as well as a stunning Gothic cathedral tower, a Tyranid reclamation pool, sci-fi containers and a superb modular hill. Pages of inspiration, advice and pretty pictures, and downloadable plans too.

Red planet - getting a good red planet tabletop, a technique also suitable for many a battlemat, and basing miniatures in the style.

Painting - a superb and thorough Tervigon tutorial, but with much for all, especially painters of Tyranids, pulp aliens and monsters, and stranger creatures in general.

Miniatures - classic 40K space marines and their wargear as well as classic Epic-scale models including titans - a Warlord, a brace of Warhounds and a Reaver (mentioned here before) - and examples from two topical space marine chapters: the rejuvenated Dark Angels and the Ultramarines of movie fame.

And if you want to know more about the blogger, here's a post with a surprising but satisfying blend - ninjas, D&D, Blood Bowl and LARPing.

The moreish Confessions of a 40K addict. You might develop a habit.

Don't forget the previous PROTOSTARS!

• Super Galactic Dreadnought
• Fire Broadside!
• Blighty Waaagh Boys, including the intro to the series

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PROTOSTARS!

Today's blog I think deserves more readers is Super Galactic Dreadnought.

Why? The first reason is ships - spaceships to be exact - and we may all feel a bond, whatever our fiction. Super Galactic Dreadnought has a lot to say about them, whether it's spaceship design and designers, model scale, ship naming or spaceship gaming.

Wargamers more interested in terra firma - or even extraterra firma - might like the recent branching out into Ogre by one of the Steve Jacksons, with its robotic tanks. The introduction is here, and the first part and second parts of the model review here and here. SGD also has a clear liking for Hordes of the Things, which gets played monthly.

Roleplayers of all settings might like the recent world and system building post and its links to some powerful tools. (A tabletop world is built here.) Fantasy roleplayers in particular may be surprised to hear that ckutalik of Hill Cantons fame dropped by a week or so ago - in physical form no less! - to play a game of starship combat. And he liked it.

So strap yourself in, power up the turbos and go engage. Super Galactic Dreadnought. It's super. It's galactic. There's nought to dread, except missing out.

Don't forget the previous PROTOSTARS!, also well worth a look.

• Fire Broadside!
• Blighty Waaagh Boys, including the intro to the series

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PROTOSTARS!

Today the hot blog is Fire Broadside!, which also has a pulp exclamation mark. These exclamation marks could be big again.

Where to start with this one? I've got it listed in the fuller spectrum blogroll, meaning it spans game types or approaches. In this case it's a bridge between what we call roleplaying and what we call wargaming, but also takes in board games.

And it does all of this stunningly well. Visit the blog and look at the list of games recently played at the bottom of the right-hand column. How many of us can match that? More to the point, how many of us have shared thoughts on even half that number?

Matching the eloquence on display would be a challenge even if we had. See the last post but one, Earth Reborn - Buzzsaw Wielding Zombies!, for a taste of this. The eloquence is on display too in the Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay session write-ups, the atmosphere-rich Investigations in Stromdorf for example.

The blog also has a love of space and space exploration, and posts with this theme pop up every now and again, like yesterday's wonderful The Pale Blue Dot.

As if that were not enough, the site is a pleasure to browse - clean, well arranged and with a strong, attractive design.

Want to know more? For a review of 2010 and plans for 2011 there's this post.

That's Fire Broadside!

If you haven't read the first in this series yet, check out Blighty Waaagh Boys.
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PROTOSTARS!

Here we are then, the first top blog I believe has too few followers.

I've gone with the series title PROTOSTARS! because it's very pulp, but also because if the blogrolls are home to stars of hobbyspace, those with less followers can be thought of as protostars. It's not to patronise - the point is not that the blogs are young or new, just that I think they deserve more readers - but if you feel it's patronising, it can change.

They got lucky really, because they could have been Porky's Golden Truffles. I thought about it. Then again, a protostar becomes a star when it gets T Tauri wind, so if they're getting wind from Porky, perhaps luck's the wrong word...

The capital letters are to just grab maximum attention, plus they're pulp. Everyone knows exclamation marks are pulp too.

Enough theory. Today I want to thrust Blighty Waaagh Boys into the light of the assembled constellations. You are the assembled constellations.