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.
Related Posts
By Matt Peckham
Call it “standalone DLC” for TIME top 10 pick Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End if you must, it’s effectively a new PlayStation 4 Uncharted game from studio Naughty Dog that brings back a character we haven’t seen since Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception.
It’s called Uncharted: The Lost Legacy, and Sony teased gamers for several minutes at the outset of its PlayStation Experience in Los Angeles on Saturday with a video of said character disguised in a hijab before revealing it was i…
Read moreA Tomb Raider TV series in the works from Emmy-winning writer Phoebe Waller-Bridge, and now two names have surfaced for who could play the lead role of Lara Croft.
Deadline reported that Game of Thrones star Sophie Turner and Bohemian Rhapsody’s Lucy Boynton are on the “wishlist” to play the role. The site said they have not auditioned yet but are among those being seriously considered for the part.
Oscar-winner Angelina Jolie played the role of Lara Croft in multiple Tomb Raider movies over the years, while another Academy Award-winner, Alicia Vikander, portrayed Lara Croft in 2018’s Tomb Raider.
Deadline said the audition process for the new Tomb Raider show has been “shrouded in secrecy,” and noted that the casting process to find Lara Croft could be “one of the hot…
Read moreHorizon Zero Dawn Remastered has been rated by the ESRB, suggesting that an upgraded version of the open-world game is in development for PS5 and PC Come from South African Online Casinos . First released for the PS4 in 2017, Horizon Zero Dawn was later ported to PC in 2020 and received a sequel–Horizon Forbidden West–in 2023. Rumors of a remaster first popped up in 2022, as a report claimed that accessibility features, graphical modes, and quality-of-life improvements to the gameplay itself would bring the game up to the same standard as its sequel.
The listing, which is still live at the time of writing, details the basic plot of the game, as well as small references to sexual material, fictional dr…
Read moreiGaming Ontario, unsurprisingly, welcomed the judgement.
Ontario’s Supreme Court has ruled that iGaming Ontario operates in accordance with the Criminal Code. The regulatory body for the Canadian province of Ontario welcomes the decision regarding how it conducts and manages iGaming. In a press statement, the Executive Director of iGaming Ontario, Martha Otton, stated…
“We have always been confident in our model and are pleased that the court has ruled in our favor, and that Ontarians can continue to play with confidence in our regulated iGaming market.”
She reiterated that…
“Ontario’s model meets the requirements and contributes to the public good by protecting players, their data and their funds…
Read moreThe Three Mile Island nuclear power plant–the site where an infamous partial nuclear meltdown occurred in 1979–might have a new owner soon. Microsoft has signed a power purchase agreement with the current owner of the plant, Constellation, and the deal now needs to go through regulators to be approved. If successful, Microsoft will have exclusive rights to 100% of the output from the plant for 20 years, which will be used to fuel its AI data center requirements.
Interestingly, the plant is located next to a unit that was shut down in 1979 after the Three-Mile Island accident, but it was retired in 2019. Microsoft will reopen it if the sale goes through, and it’s expected to generate 837 megawatts of energy, enough power for more than 800,000 homes. Come from Read more
One of the best video games of the past decade, Nier: Automata, recently got an anime adaptation. The series was praised for its faithful retelling of the acclaimed video game’s mind-bending narrative, and soon fans will be able to add the full run to their Blu-ray collection with the Nier: Automata Ver. 1.1a Collector’s Edition. The Blu-ray set is available exclusively through the Crunchyroll Store, and preorders are now live ahead of its October 15 release date.
Preorder Nier: Automata Ver. 1.1a Collector’s Edition
$120 ($150)
This four-disc set includes the full run of the Nier Automata series plus extra content like promotional trailers, clean versions of the intro and ending credit sequences, and a bunch of physical goodies including:…
Read moreIf you’re looking for a fun way to listen to your favorite music, take a look at the Udreamer Vinyl Wireless Record Player. Amazon is running a limited-time deal that brings its price to just $36 (was $70) when you redeem the coupon code on its Amazon store page. This is the lowest price we’ve ever seen for the Bluetooth record player, though it’s unclear how long the discount will last, so be sure to grab this deal while you can. Luckily, most locations can have it delivered before Christmas, making this a fun holiday gift for the music lover in your life.
If you want to snag a few records to go with your new record player, a bunch of cool gaming soundtracks are available at Am…
Read moreIf you enjoyed Batman: Caped Crusader on Prime Video and are interested in revisiting the superhero’s past animated adventures, Amazon has some excellent deals on Batman Blu-ray box sets for Black Friday 2024. For Caped Crusader fans, the most notable deal of the bunch is Batman: The Complete Animated Series on Blu-ray for $30 (was $71). Caped Crusader is considered a spiritual successor to this beloved series, and the early ’90s series still stands tall as the best animated Batman TV series of all time.
Batman: The Complete Animated Series (Blu-ray)
$30 ($71)
This 12-disc box set includes all 85 episodes of the original animated series that ran from 1992-95, as well as the complete arc of The New Batman Adventures, …
Read moreA new teaser trailer for The Monkey, the latest film from Longlegs director Osgood Perkins, will probably put you off those awful cymbal clashing toys for good.Back in August, the first trailer for The Monkey didn’t show off all that much, just the titular monkey doing a light spot of drumming with a shot of lead actor Theo James covered in a lot of blood. Just yesterday, Neon put out another teaser trailer, this time a redband one, so it’s got more of that classic horror stuff: violence. A lot of it is just implied, the calm before the storm when it comes to deaths, instilling a strong sense of anxiety around swimming pools, hibachi chefs, and, well, drumming. Much like Longelgs, the vibes look quite strong once again, though that film’s ending was a bit pants so I have some reservations …
Read moreDuring last night’s Gamescom Opening Night Live, veteran developer Peter Molyneux took to the stage to properly reveal his latest project, a god game called Masters of Albion. While there was plenty about it that’s designed to remind people of classic Fable, it seems the game also bears some similarities to Molyneux’s ill-fated blockchain game, Legacy.For a bit of context, Legacy was announced back in 2021 by Molyneux and his company 22cans, with the pitch being that it was a blockchain-based business sim in which players would buy NFT ‘plots’ of land using cryptocurrency, as, to paraphrase Grandpa Simpson, was a bit of a style at the time. The game was released late last year, and is still a live thing, even if the NFT bubble it was designed to captilise on f…
Read more