Maggie Peruses the Weyland-Yutani Report While Contemplating the Blood of the Cosmos and 3D Printers

Anyone who has been following my blog, even for a few months, will know just how obsessed I am with the Alien franchise. I have tons of figures, quite a few books and comics, the movies, of course and the pride of my collection – my Colonial Marine armor and M41A Pulse Rifle. I spent in excess of $2500 for the latter so it had better be the center of my collection!

Why am I starting my blog with this?

Last year I had learned there was a book called the Weyland-Yutani Report by S.D. Perry. I immediately went to see about buying a copy and found only the limited edition with the Alien cover was available.

And it cost $300 US.

You’re probably sitting there and asking – why didn’t I buy it? After all, if you’re going to spend that kind of money on cosplay…

Several reasons, of which most I won’t get into, but I will state I had far more important things to spend my money on.

I decided to wait patiently to get the mass market version, which finally appeared on Amazon.ca. As soon as I discovered it, I purchased it. The book arrived last week and I finished going through it on Saturday.

The book was presented almost like a corporation briefing, with a ton of pictures from the franchise (which included Prometheus), as well as references to Alien: Isolation and at least one of the novels which was released in the past two years.

As a book it is quite beautiful, with tons of stills from the movies, but lots of original artwork too.  Furthermore, there were quite a few interesting sidelines from various character points of view, stuff which was never mentioned in the movies, as well as brief bios of the various characters, including full names and the like.

If you’re a fan of the franchise like I am, then pick this book up!  I need to thank my beautiful and supportive wife for allowing me to purchase this book as an early father’s day gift.

Oh and it’ll be awesome collecting another seven autographs on my armor, as the cast of Aliens will be at Comicpalooza! I do believe I mentioned that before.

As I had with last week’s blog, this time I’m going to mix it up again, just to be different.

I finished book two of Kevin J. Andersons Saga of Shadows: Blood of the Cosmos. The story is a trilogy set twenty years after the Elemental war described in the Saga of the Seven Suns series. The horrific shadow creatures, working alongside the evil insectoid robots continue to strike at outposts, ships and colonies in the Spiral Arm. The allies of the Elemental Wars hunt for weapons to fight back against these insipid and deadly creatures while personal dramas continue to unfold. And what exactly are the bloaters and why have so many begun to appear in the Spiral arm?

I know I am being damned vague here, but the novel contains just so much! And I’m too lazy to look up the actual names of the races in order to spell them correctly. =)

Hey it is worth your time to pick up this new series and hopefully it won’t be long before the conclusion is released.

No new RPG books this week – I kind of need to be working again before I can justify making such purchases!

Considering it was a rather hectic week for job hunting and taking care of chores my wife wanted me to do, I only managed to watch a single movie. This was a totally different take on the whole zombie genre starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. It was called Maggie and it was about a zombie apocalypse in which those bitten did not die and turn right away, it was a slow process which could take up to eight weeks. So civilization did not crumble but the danger was still out there.

A very slow moving drama about a father having to deal with the fact his daughter was bitten and is slowly dying, transforming into the walking dead, and having to deal with the consequences.

If you were hoping for action, then you are going to be disappointed. Since Arnold is getting so old, it is good to see he’s trying to get into acting roles which do not demand so much out of him.

Would I recommend it? Yes but only if you are looking for a drama, not action.

I’m pretty sure I have brought this up in the past, but I figure, what the hell since its on my mind. In the next few years I am going to be upgrading to a brand new computer system and one of the additional purchases I plan on making is a 3D printer.

Being a table-top role player and gamer I love to use miniatures and would really like to be able to use terrain and buildings. I have thousands upon thousands of miniatures to use, but would very much like to increase the amount I own.

How better than to make your own using a 3D printer. I can also do terrain and buildings using these.

I can see the future where companies like DrivethruRPG will not only sell PDF’s of books, but 3D models you can use to print out various miniatures and what I have already mentioned.

I do believe I’ll start with a bare-bones basic model for a few hundred dollars and wait until new models will be able to print using multiple colors and then make a really expensive purchase.

There are sites out there which have taken all the monsters from the original Monster Manuals and have rendered them as 3D images so you can essentially plug and play and print them out on your own.

Nothing new when it comes to releases from Skirmisher, and don’t expect anything over the next two weeks, probably longer, as at this time in two weeks I’ll be wrapping up my last day at Comicpalooza!

I wrote up several new conversions in my race to hit that magical 300 mark. After posting one of them on Facebook, one of my readers requested I do them up as PDF’s. I had to decline because of several factors. First it would require so much time and effort! I have 298 creatures on the Skirmisher site and the time it would take to do so is staggering.

Besides after I hit the three hundred mark and get the Weapons compilation finished (see below), I will be going through, editing the shit out of the book, and adding a ton of additional material as well as changing names and so forth to keep from getting sued!

So be patient. You will get a far better version of this book in the future, both in PDF and in soft cover!

Speaking of, here is a list of the conversions I wrote up this week. Mire Lurker - Red Death, Mire Lurker – Hunter, Undying – Fog, and the Gwolf. As you can see all conversions were from Fallout 4.

Also the usual two New Mutant Monday Series Two entries were posted – the Time Jumper and Dark Crawlers.

Finally I managed to force myself to work on the weapons compilation from Wisdom from the Wastelands. I don’t know why I find it so hard to work on this project, it should have been one of the easiest for me to finish!

I have decided to add two more issues of mine, specifically the Radiation Sickness and Alternate Types of Radiation to the book, since both are technically weapons.

So there you have it. Another week come and gone and another blog up and ready for your reading.

Until next Sunday, stay happy and continue to enjoy life!