Every year for Christmas, I pick a few people I know and make presents for them. The list of recipients changes every year, with the idea that everyone I know will get something eventually, even if some need to wait a decade before their name comes up. This is primarily a method of suppressing insurrection against my rule of the local community; I tend to treat those around me as poorly as I can get away with, and they tolerate the abuse in the faint hope that it will all be worth it someday when they are gifted with a small clay man that is different from their other plastic and metal men.

Though the Space Mounties have been fighting valiantly to protect their country’s interests across the galaxy, they have found themselves outflanked by superior enemy firepower and discourteous sneakiness. In the face of this pressure, the NeoCanadian Courtesy Division has called in for the transfer of its most elite troops to reinforce the Canadian line.

Part 1: Arctic Space Ninja

The first to arrive was a representative of the deadliest regiment NeoCanada can muster: the Ijurujuq, an elite Inuit stealth corps that mercily stalk the snowbound lands of Space Nunavut.

The Inuit forces would be represented on the field by the Swiss Guard, also known as “the deadliest model in PanOceania”. The NeoTerra starter I picked up contained a Swiss Guard model that I’ve never liked, awkwardly one-handing a missile launcher while pointlessly brandishing a knife. Once I had the model in my hands, though, I realized that the torso and legs of this model are absolutely gorgeous in their design, detailing, and posing, and it was really only the arms that had always made me dislike the model. This ended up working perfectly– I had planned to perform a weapon swap anyway, so if I just sculpted him a new set of arms I could very easily jettison everything I didn’t like about the model and be left with an utterly badass pile of Arctic pewter and putty. 🙂

I first published my Classified Objectives deck in march, and the response since then has been fantastic. I was recently approached by the French Infinity community at Bureau-Aegis to produce a translation of the cards, which I was happy to help with as I get very few opportunities to speak en Français, and it’s fun when the opportunity arises. 🙂

While working on the translation project, I made some adjustments to the card template to add features that had been requested by both the English and French communities:

1. Enlarged objective text – it turns out I was wasting a lot of real estate in the title bar; shrinking that down gave me enough space to increase the objective text by two font sizes:

2. Card backs in multiple colours – so that several players at the same table can tell their decks apart:

3. Professionally-printed copies – thanks to an awesome site called PrinterStudio.com that E-Warden directed me to; I uploaded the images to their service and made the designs available for anyone to buy. I picked up enough copies for my store to use and the quality’s pretty good– comparable to a standard deck of playing cards (though a bit thinner than, say, a Magic or other CCG card).

4. English and French versions of all of the above – thanks to the awesome translation work of Anaris and his friends from the Bureau-Aegis community!

All of the above combine together to result in 20 (!) printable PDF versions of the deck and 10 purchasable versions, all of which are available on a new Infinity Tools page linked in the top menu, which also contains a link to the Hacking Helper, and will house anything else I make in the future.

And yes, there will be more. Stay tuned. 🙂

-Spud

Je commencerai par souhaiter bienvenue au public Français de quel je viens tout récemment de découvrir que j’en possède. Il me remplit de fierté de connaître que les légendes de mon incroyableté ne s’arrêtent pas sur les bornes politiques, linguistiques, ni même océaniques. Je vous remercis pour votre adulation, et je vous assure que ces contes ne sont d’une partie miniscule du vrai étonnance que j’en offre ici.

De rien.

Celà dit, tournons-nous au sujet principal. Deux semaines passés, je me suis trouvé contacté par un certain Mr. Anaris, représentatif du communauté d’Infinity en France, qui m’a enquêté s’il existait la possibility de produire une version Française de mes cartes d’objectifs classifiés. Je doute qu’il le connaissait à ce moment, mais ton hôte se compte parmi les rangs de la populace frissonant du Canada; de plus, il est né dans l’enclave exotique et mystérieux du Québec, où les sauvages habitants l’ont enseigné leur système primitive de sifflets et clics, ce qui se descend jadis du temps avant les premier Canadiens ont accueillis, imités, et finalement mangés les premiers colons Français. La dialècte d’aujourd’hui n’a plus qu’un similarité passant au véritable langue du France, mais ça suffit pour communiquer les grands idées si c’est aidé par des gestes de mains assez descriptifs.

I’ve now been playing Infinity for just about a year. I’m still absolutely in love with the game and kicking all kinds of ass with my Space Catholics, but I’ve had a hankering lately to expand my horizons a bit, and this has led me to put some time into assembling a new force: The NeoCanadian Courtesy Division.

I picked up most of the models for this army about eight months ago, but I’ve avoided playing them until I could field a mostly painted force. Mechanically, the army plays under the Neoterran Capitaline Army sectorial rules, but I’m going to be extensively converting models within the force to represent the military might of Space Canada.

Hey, stop laughing.

Canada totally has military might.

We’ve got those two boats and everything!

My sister had some sort of party two weeks ago and my family insisted that I go.

I checked to see if I had D&D or an Infinity event that weekend, but they were both the week before, so I was clear to attend.

“Oh, and make sure to bring a statue of me,” she said. “To go on a cake.”

Kind of a weird request, I thought, but I shrugged and knocked out some sketches. They were going pretty well for the most part, but something in the composition seemed off.

“It looks really weird to have just one person on a cake. The balance isn’t right.”

“Fine,” she huffed. “Throw someone else on there too if you want.”

“Mmkay. Anyone in particular?”

“Ehh.”

“Oooookay then.”

I dug around on her Facebook for some pictures to use as reference. There were a lot of this dude.

“Hey, will this guy be at the party? There’s a lot of reference here for him.”

She thought for a moment.

“I’d have to check, but I think so.”