Tuesday 27 March 2018

Requiem For Uncharted Seas, Part I: Thaniras Elves Battleships

Once upon a time, some friends and me were playing a promising tabletop game called Uncharted Seas. Fantasy warships, airships and monsters cruising through, well, unknown and uncharted seas, battling others in the usual struggle for supremacy.
After said promising start, within a one or two years or so, new releases stopped as the producer Spartan Games discovered that its SciFi setting Firestorm Armada and Steampunk setting Dystopian Wars sold better (admittedly, if Dystopian Wars came first I would never have bothered with Uncharted Seas too). Without releases and a broad fanbase the actually pretty reasonably priced game did wither away (at least I know no one playing it anymore and have so far unsuccessfully tried to ell my minis in Austria).
Using the newly inaugurated photo box, I decided to do a pictoral requiem for the two fleets I have collected. One, the Thaniras Elves fleet, is fully painted, while the other, Sky Pirates got stuck in WIP. I had done a few conversions with models from other factions, as only two different models were ever released.

But without further ado, let's start with the two kind of battleship the Thaniras Elves fleets can muster:





As you can see, I went for a dark wood, golden trimmings and black flag design with this fleet. One remarkable detail: For all ship sizes, this fleet features classes using sails (depending on the winds) and classes using magical orbs for propulsion (independent of the winds and my favourites).

My general impression was that this fleet was on the lower end of power, with squishy ships and low boarding power. I know, squishy elves and such, but their background makes them incredibly warlike, but in practice everyone can bash their heads in.

Next time: Heavy cruisers.


Stay Epic!

Sunday 25 March 2018

Science communication: Where you can find me speaking and presenting in the near future

In my opinion, as important as science-ing is the communication of your topic and results to the interested public. Therefore I strife to do exactly this, resulting in some events/event participations to announce!

For starters, the "Lange Nacht der Forschung" i.e. the long night of science on the 13.4.2018 draws closer. Our centre will show of our equipment and research in guided tours between 17:00 and 20:00.  As soon as the details are available online, you will find them here! If you cannot come or represent a bigger group, please feel free to contact me for an extra tour at another date.

Soon afterwards, I will talk about the effects of magnetic field onto humans at the Volkshochschule Donaustadt (adult education centre), details are available here.

I will also present a poster about my recent scientific work at the CCC-TRIO – Translational Research & Immuno-Oncology symposium here in Vienna on the 6.4.2018, but this is a bit too specific for the general audience, I guess.

For the younger generation, I will also organise courses for the children's university in summer, but its program will only be online in May.

More interesting will be a special surprise for late 2018 that I will announce in the future.

Stay tuned and epic and see you soon.