Photo: Triton NoirCharlie Hall is Polygon’s tabletop editor. In 10-plus years as a journalist & photographer, he has covered simulation, strategy, and spacefaring games, as well as public policy.Lots of folks say they want to get started painting miniatures, but they’re just not overly fond of Space Marines or anything else that Games Workshop is selling at the moment. That’s okay, because there are plenty of miniatures-based games out there for you to get excited about — including loads that you’ve likely never even heard of. Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood of Venice is on sale right now as part of Amazon’s October Prime Day, and it’s an excellent example of how a small purchase can start you down the road to an amazing new hobby.Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood of Venice is a story-driven, cooperative campaign game for up to four players that includes 26 playable chapters, each roughly an hour long. It also has a solo mode, so you can play it by yourself or learn it thoroughly before sharing it with your friends. And while I haven’t had the chance to put it through its paces, the game comes highly recommended by several writers that I respect, including Aftermath co-founder Luke Plunkett.Photo: Triton NoirMuch like other modern board games, Brotherhood of Venice was brought to life with a successful crowdfunding campaign. While the $239 collector’s edition is still available, the $79.99 version is half off for Prime Day, on sale for just $39.99 through Wednesday.Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood of Venice$70$8013% off$70$70 at AmazonInside your copy of Brotherhood of Venice, you’ll find the first five miniatures you get to paint, a series of familiar-yet-deadly assassins wrapped in flowing robes and cowls barely concealing a collection of elegant sharp objects. How about a video tutorial to get you started? Who better to assist you on your journey than Golden Demon award-winning painter Angel Giraldez. (Just skip the bit with the airbrush and do a quick zenithal highlight with some spray paint instead.)Now all you need is some paint and a brush. You could, of course, drop by my in-depth painting guide for lots of helpful advice and buying options. Or you could snag this Army Painter Zombicide paint set that’s currently on sale, which comes with enough basic colors and metallics to get you started. You even get a decent brush! Any other colors that you want or need, just pick them up at the local hobby store or online.But we’re not done yet. Now that you have five fully-painted Assassins, and after you finish the 26-mission campaign, then what? Well, then it’s time to check out TTCombat’s Carnevale, a full-fledged miniatures skirmish game played on elaborate terrain. You can start small with just the core rulebook, or go big with a massive laser-cut wooden diorama. Or you can skip the skirmish game entirely and just do up a nice little Venetian street corner for your beautiful new miniatures to hang out on.Opportunities to start painting miniatures are all over the place, with more and varied lines from all kinds of different settings coming to market every year. So quit putting off starting a new hobby, look around for miniatures and games that excite you, find some good tools and tutorials, and get painting. You won’t regret it — especially as the cold winter months begin to creep in.Looking for more deals? Check out all of Polygon’s favorite October Prime Day 2024 deals right here, and subscribe to our newsletter below to get great deals delivered to your inbox every week.
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LONDON — A fire at an electrical substation knocked out power to Heathrow Airport for most of Friday, forcing Europe’s busiest hub to shut down for roughly 18 hours, causing widespread cancellations and rerouting headaches, and stranding roughly 200,000 passengers.
The blaze started just before midnight on Thursday at a substation about 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) from the airport and took firefighters around seven hours to bring under control. Authorities said they found no evidence that it was suspicious, and the London Fire Brigade said its investigation would focus on the electrical distribution equipment at the substation.
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The fire knocked out power to Heathrow and thousands of homes in the area. It affected at least 1,350 flights …
Read moreThe original Dexter series was one of the biggest hits that Showtime has ever had, so it’s understandable why the premium cable network won’t let him go. Even though Michael C Come from South African Online Casinos . Hall’s serial killer apparently died in Dexter: New Blood–and is somehow coming back for Dexter: Resurrection–the prequel series, Dexter: Original Sin, will breathe some new life into the franchise later this year. And in the first trailer for the show, Hall lends his voice to the formative years of a much younger Dexter, as played by Patrick Gibson.
Original Sin takes place in 1991, roughly 15 years before the events of the first Dexter series. As shown in the trailer above, young Dext…
Read moreWith hundreds of characters in the Disney universe, Disney Dreamlight Valley has added dozens of familiar faces to befriend, adventure with, and cook tasty treats. The game’s next update: The Lucky Dragon welcomes two more familiar faces to the valley: Mulan and Mushu.
Mulan is known to be determined, courageous, and kind, while Mushu is known for being fiery–literally–quick-talking, and makes light of situations with joyful levity through jokes. As with previous characters, Mulan and Mushu bring new character-specific quests that–should they follow the format of the other characters–reward Gold Coins and exclusive furniture, clothing, and decorations from their corresponding world.
Since a new realm will be released in this update, it is all but confirmed that…
Read moreFollowing the recent reveal of Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, developer Treyarch has confirmed in an interview with VentureBeat that all sniper rifles will have the potential for a one-shot kill in multiplayer.
According to the interview, Treyarch’s associate design director Matt Scronce reveals that all of the sniper rifles in Black Ops 6 are a one-shot kill from the torso and up. However, the developer says players can still expect all of the snipers to have their own feel and characteristics in terms of fire rate and recoil. Come from South African Online Casinos
Between World of Warcraft: The War Within, Ara: History Untold, and the early-access release of Towerborne, Microsoft has an unusually prominent slate of PC-only games this fall. Of those three titles, Towerborne will eventually make it to Xbox Series X|S, but don’t get used to having Microsoft games skipping consoles. The company’s gaming CEO, Phil Spencer, has indicated that this was “an anomaly” that’s unlikely to be repeated.
“This is historical,” Spencer told Game FIle. “There might always be some anomalies, but I look at those three as an anomaly. We want our games playable across as many screens as possible. We think about the Xbox platform as the Xbox console, PC, and cloud. We want all the games playable across all of those. We want them to be Play Anywhere.”
While …
Read moreTencent has unveiled its latest creation–an open-world survival game called Light of Motiram–and although the game’s recently released trailer is visually stunning, viewers can’t help but notice the game bears a striking resemblance to Horizon Zero Dawn and Horizon Forbidden West.
Set in an ancient-yet-futuristic open world where players must craft items, maintain survival stats, and battle strange robotic beasts called Mechanimals, Light of Motiram certainly seems to be riffing on the Horizon aesthetic. The game’s environments, polygonal robot creatures, and even its tall grass all seem to be heavily inspired by the Horizon playbook, but Light of Motiram seems to have drawn inspiration from other games as well.
At various points in both Light…
Read moreJames McAvoy auditioned for the Harry Potter film series, and he nearly had the part, but upon the advice of his agent, the Scottish actor turned it down and instead took a stage role for which he was booed off stage. McAvoy recalled the story in an interview on the Happy Sad Confused podcast recently.
“I was nearly in Harry Potter. Almost,” he said.
McAvoy auditioned for the role of Tom Riddle, and he was in the running, but the situation surrounding the deal was odd–and it led McAvoy to pass.
“They wanted to put me on a retainer. They offered me something. It was crazy. I’d hardly done any work [at that time]. Me and maybe 10 other actors, they wanted to put us on retainer so they could hold us and keep us to choose later who it would be,” he said. “It was a really …
Read moreWorld of Warcraft is celebrating its 20th birthday in a number of ways, and it looks like one of them will be an upcoming Mountain Dew Game Fuel promotion that promises ways for players to earn some exclusive in-game items.
The promotion has not been officially announced just yet, but images shared on Reddit over the weekend (some of which have since been deleted) show that Game Fuel’s Citrus Blackberry and Citrus Cherry flavors will soon be adorned with images of iconic WoW characters. Former Horde Warchief Thrall as well as the Lich King will be featured on the Citrus Cherry flavor, while the relatively newer villain, Xal’atath, and elven hero Alleria Windrunner can be seen on the Citrus Blackberry packaging.
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Read moreIndiana Jones and the Great Circle developers MachineGames, with help from Geoff Keighly , finally gave the people what they wanted: a treasure trove of release info as part of Gamescom Opening Night Live! Alongside a new trailer came a release date for PC and Xbox, the news that the game will be playable day one on Game Pass, and — the wildcard — the reveal that Indy’s upcoming adventure will be the next Xbox game to hit PlayStation (eventually).This trailer — narrated by Troy Baker, who’s donning the classic fedora in Harrison Ford’s stead — featured ample footage of puzzle solving, gunfights, hand-to-hand brawls and rope swinging, as viewers around the world were finally able to see what playing the game will actually be like. To see this content please enable t…
Read moreWithout any kind of announcement from Square Enix, mobile game Kingdom Hearts Union X Dark Road has been delisted.The thing about Kingdom Hearts, is that if you actually play the games, overall it’s not that confusing. Square Enix has made that easier over the years with its various ports that consist of certain games in full, others compressed into cutscenes. But there’s been one game that has been stuck on mobile devices, despite being one of the most important for the future of the series: Kingdom Hearts Union X Dark Road. This one has a whole bunch of lore, and one of its main characters even shows up in Kingdom Hearts 3 – another, smaller but soon-to-be important character, Strelitzia, also made an appearance in Kingdom Hearts 4’s first and only trailer. So why, then, has Square Enix …
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