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.
Home
News
The Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood of Venice board game is half off and full of detailed minis to paint
Related Posts
NBA 2K25 is already a huge thing, and it’s about to get even larger, thanks to fact its second season of content is launching alongside a new paid DLC game mode thingy that’ll see you try to outscore your mates while flying about on a futuristic multitiered court littered with power-ups.Yep, it’s called Gravity Ball and it’ll be accessible via The City – 2K25’s already bustling MyPlayer hub that, as I covered in my review, contains a building that’s half Roman Colosseum and half portrait of Michael Jordan’s face this year. Naturally, there are also a tonne of more regular additions coming with the new season.To see this content please enable targeting cookies.Manage cookie settings Both NBA 2K25 Season 2 and Gravity Ball are both set to arrive this Friday, October 18. 2K describes the latt…
Read moreGamescom Opening Night Live was yesterday, and there was a bunch of news for those who’ve got an Xbox Game Pass subsciption they use to hop into the still decent array of titles the service boasts. So, here’s a quick roundup of all the Game Pass titles shown, as well as the fresh additions coming in August that Xbox announced not long before ONL kicked off.Starting with the ones you almost defintely heard about, Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 offered a big look at gameplay from its campaign and an open beta date, Starfield’s Shattered Space DLC got a release date alongside the free arrival of a moon buggy, and Indiana Jones had its release date and planned arrival on PlayStation revealed.To see this content please enable targeting cookies.Manage cookie settings Then, there were the games that g…
Read moreBaldur’s Gate 3 does a lot to let you get up close and personal with some, er, bizarre stuff. You know the kind of thing I’m talking about, you DnDeviant. As it turns out, one of those encounters ended up how it is due Larian electing to violate its own camera distance guidelines, after going for the cinematic conversations we know and love over more Bethesda-style first person dialogue exchanges.This change in thinking came up during a panel at PAX West Larian put on to commemorate the game having been a fully released thing for a year (congrats). It features Swen Vincke in full armour and a teddy bear named Felix sat at the desk with the devs, because of course it does.To see this content please enable targeting cookies.Manage cookie settings In a section of the discussion that ended up …
Read moreIndiana Jones and the Great Circle might be first-person, but that doesn’t mean MachineGames is making it an outright shooter.MachineGames is pretty well known for its first-person shooters – in fact, it’s even lauded for them, in particular its affinity towards games that let you absolutely wreck Nazis (i.e., Wolfenstein), something Indiana Jones does a lot as well. But something Indy doesn’t do all that much is use guns (apart from that one famous scene). He’s more of a whip and fists kind of guy, and recently the game’s creative director Axel Torvenius spoke with Edge magazine (via GamesRadar) about not relying on gunplay too much, which the team views more of a “fallback solution” than anything else.To see this content please enable targeting cookies.Manage cookie settings “We do not e…
Read moreAll 25 members of staff on the gaming team at Annapurna Interactive – publisher of acclaimed indies like Outer Wilds, Stray and Neon White – have reportedly resigned after talks to spin-off the division as an “independent entity” broke down.According to a report from Bloomberg, corroborated by IGN, Annapurna president of interactive and new media Hector Sanchez has reassured partner developers that the company will continue its existing contracts.To see this content please enable targeting cookies.Manage cookie settings The report states that Annapurna Interactive President Nathan Gary and his team had been negotiating with Annapurna Pictures owner Megan Ellison over spinning off the gaming division into “independent entity”, with Ellison pulling out of these negotiations at some juncture.…
Read moreJames Gunn’s Superman film is still mostly being kept under wraps, but it seems like a certain super pup will be making an appearance somewhere along the line.As of right now, storywise, we really don’t know all that much about Superman, previously known as Superman: Legacy, other than what we’ve seen from set photos. Those set photos did raise some questions though, particularly one of a dog dressed up as Superman (which admittedly is likely just a crew member’s dog). But it seems like the number one super dog around, Krypto, might actually be in the film. As spotted by Collider, Superman comic writer Mark Waid recently made an appearance on the Capes and Lunatics Podcast, where he spoke about all manner of comics related things. In it, Waid seemed to have accidentally shared that Krypto …
Read moreZenless Zone Zero is gettings its much-awaited 1.2 update later this month, which is promising to bring a variety of new and exciting content to the game. But, revealed earlier today through a lenghty “face-to-face” video, the team has also announced that it’s bringing out of the best quality of life features from Honkai Star Rail to the game, among other nice tweaks.This addition is a back-up battery charge system, which stores excess battery (used to do certain combat challenges for upgrade material) above the daily limit. This is great news for those who can’t always get a Zenless session in every day, or for those who want a break from the game without having to worry about wasted resources.To see this content please enable targeting cookies.Manage cookie settings Present in Honkai Sta…
Read moreCyberpunk 2077’s developers once brainstormed ideas for a quest in which the player “became a construct, essentially able to do millions of things at once” via some Superhot-style time mechanics, similar to those a modder has just managed to add to the game.Yep, forget about missions involving giant killer robots that’re designed to make you feel a bit like Frodo Baggins, you might’ve gotten a chance to see what Johnny Silverhand does as he swims around in V’s brain following a certain digital neural engram chip incident.To see this content please enable targeting cookies.Manage cookie settings Responding to an IGN article about a mod that brings time mechanics similar to indie puzzle game Superhot to Cyberpunk, CD Projekt narrative director Philipp Weber wrote that this was “cool to see” …
Read moreAfter Spider-Man: No Way Home successfully brought his Spider-Man back for a multiversal event, is there a future for more Andrew Garfield under the webslinger’s mask? He’s certainly open to the idea.Esquire’s article on the actor (which is a fantastic read) explores his past, present, and future. Of course, the almost career-defining role of Peter Parker in the two Amazing Spider-Man movies is brought up repeatedly, and that includes his surprising part in the Tom Holland-led threequel which was a massive success in late 2021 and early 2022. Would he come back as Spider-Man for another adventure? He’s 100% down to do so, but under the right circumstances.To see this content please enable targeting cookies.Manage cookie settings Garfield admits Sony Pictures’ The Amazing Spider-Man 2, whic…
Read moreVariousThere are so many ways to be a Dungeons & Dragons fan these days. The tabletop RPG mainstay has been synonymous with pen-and-paper adventuring for 50 years now, and 2024 marks a major reworking of its core rulebooks to make the game more approachable. Anyone who’s played even just a couple of sessions knows how easy it can be to covet a friend’s set of custom dice, appreciate the care a Dungeon Master has taken in setting the right ambience for a crafted campaign, or even obsess over their choice of pen and notebook — after all, it’s what you’ll be spending a large chunk of time staring into as you ponder your character’s next heroic action.But what’s amazing is that you can be a huge D&D fan without ever touching a character sheet. D&D and the Forgotten R…
Read more