The Dusty Bookshelf

Let's WAB!

2011-09-10T19:53:00.000+01:00

The other day I was having a conversation about wargaming with my best mate from Hungary and we realised that there aren't any games left that we both play. Confrontation long dead and Warhammer kicking its last kicks, all we have is Blood Bowl, and so he has drawn my attention to historical wargaming - Warhammer Ancient Battles in particular.

Although I was never a fan of the sort, I like history and I was always interested in the history and culture of the ancient Celts so I kinda decided (well it was more sort of an ad-hoc order made after a few pints - damn you mobile internet) to build a small ancient Celtic army. Since I already have a hundred and one projects running I vowed not to start buying heaps before finishing some other stuff (Malifaux, Infinity, BloodBowl, Cutlass, etc...) but I did my research nonetheless and ordered two boxes of models. I still tell myself that this is only research, not buying new stuff and as long as I can convince myself, it's all good.

Because historical games involve bigger armies (I think ~200 models will bring me to standard 2000 points) I don't want any metals. Plastic is sturdier and lighter and thus much less of a pain to transport. I found that the two main companies producing plastic Celts are Wargames Factory and Warlord Games. Although Warlord doesn't do any cavalry, their infantry seems to be more popular among historical gamers and you get more models in the box for your pounds. As I couldn't find any site or blog that compares them, the obvious solution was (well, as I said after a few pints it seemed to be, anyway) to order one box each of Warlord's Celtic Warriors (40 dudes with random weapons and full command group) and WF's Celt Cavalry (12 riders on ponies). This suits me just fine, worst case scenario I will have one box worth of minis that will be for trying new paints, conversions, bitz-box, etc, or if they are both fine I have a nice starter pack of a bunch of warriors and a dozen riders...

Without further ado, here come the pictures - and first impressions.

Both boxes as they arrived. The Warlord Games' box (on the right) is what you would expect; standard sized flat box, nice design. The Wargames Factory's one on the other hand is a weird sized brick - some might even call it awkward to handle - with an ugly and badly designed and printed sticker on the front. Lucky I bought it online, because in the shop I would skip right over anything that is packed like this.

Excitedly ripping the boxes to get to the contents like a 4 year old on Christmas Eve I found the reason for the awkward packaging of the WF cavalry: the sprues all slot in together!

This is a bit freaky and definitely not space / sprue efficient, but I managed to spend a good few minutes playing with the weird tube effect when looking through the whole lot:

However, this unfortunately will not matter once the sprues are cut, so I looked at the details and general state of the models. The first on the left is one 'command sprue' with extra shields, spears and a few fancy helmets (all 'authentic' based on actual findings from celt diggings) for the noble leaders. The middle ones are 6 rider sprues with 4 bodies, 6 heads, saddles, weapons, a banner pole and a carnyx each. To be honest I would rather have the carnyx and the banner on the command sprue and put an extra body design on the sprues but that's just my opinion. All this stuff may come handy if someone wants to build a unit of real cheerleaders with 6 banners and 6 musicians, for example. The last bunch on the right are the horses' sprues.

As you can see none of this is exactly GW plastic quality. Hardly any variation of poses (2 rider poses, both with and without chainmail, 3 horse bodies and 4 heads), mashed up, blurry details, and terrible mould lines across faces and hands. They will either need a lot of cleaning up, or will look a bit crap after painting.

There are a few good things as well, though; firstly that the horses are separate from the saddles and riders, so they could be used for any conversions, like carts and workhorses... The other thing is that there are 24 rider bodies in the box, 12 in chainmail and 12 in tunics, so you can actually decide whether you want a light or heavy cavalry unit without having to buy more boxes and combine the bits. All in all not a great set, but still incredible amount of stuff for the price (I think they go for about £15 a box at the moment) especially compared to other historical sets.

Here's one bloke I blu-tac'd together for a quick star-shot:

Now let's have a look at the Warlord Games Celtic Warriors Set.

Standard sprues, much better organised then the WF were. 3 of them are the main warrior sprues, the last one is the command sprue. The only difference is that the command one hasn't got any heads, and the space thus saved is filled with the carnyx, different icons and standards, fancy helmets (just like the other set was) and so on.

The difference in quality is obvious at first glance; now I know why this set is preferred over other companies ones. There are a few little extra bits on the sprue to make the models look a little different if the 10 different torsos and 10 different legs were not enough (yes, that is 100 different combinations, and then there are 15 different heads, 4 different shield options, etc). Although the torsos are one piece with both arms so no changing that, these guys will still not look boring even in big numbers.

Here's one guy blu-tac'd like the WF rider.

And a shot of both of them together for size, proportion and quality comparison. Although the photos are not that hot so that may not be that clear...

All in all I am quite happy with both sets, I wish the WF cavalry box was a bit better quality, but I still think they will look all right side by side and both sets are great value for money. If I ever get down to building an army I may use some of the WG torsos on the WF riders and also buy a box of WF warriors just to make some more options, but for now I am happy with them as they are.

Dark Heresy chaos sorceror

2011-09-04T15:02:00.000+01:00

A good friend of mine asked me to help him with a model he converted. It is made of different GW parts and is going to be a chaos sorceror in his Dark Heresy campaign.

He did all the basing and gluing together and everything, only asked me to slap some putty on the dude as his hood was missing and there were big gaps on his cloak where the different parts fit together. It was a quick thing, not much to do on him but thought I would upload it anyway as I like the model.

This is it, I'm just gonna wait for the putty to dry then wash the cloak with Milliput Superfine solution to make those remaining little gaps disappear.

Big Update - I'm back!

2011-08-30T01:21:00.001+01:00

After six months of absence I am back to blow the dust from the shelves again and begin updating my blog about what I have been up to recently.

As a friend of mine put it 'if I don't have much spare time for my hobby I rather spend it gaming then writing about gaming' and he is right. About half a year ago a couple of things happened at once and as a result I cut my blogging time to have more gaming time. First of all I have become a Malifaux Henchman for Wyrd. I have been thinking about this one for a long time as I didn't want to take responsibility or sacrifice my little hobby time to be a rep, but in the end I decided to give it a go, and I am very happy I took the plunge. For this I needed to finish painting the Ortegas (see the other post I backdated to March) and get a bit more cosy with my local store. So I have run demos and a tournament, and at the moment I'm working on a story campaign. Just for the record: if you're in London and looking for an intro to Malifaux, looking for a gaming group or even just want to get a game in with someone new, write me here or on the Wyrdboards.

The second big thing was that I was invited to be committe member at my local club. This I'm really happy about as the community down there is amazing and the club 'facilities' are first class. Very nice tables and terrain, plenty of gaming time (3 sessions per week plus Sunday for board games and RPGs), great range of games (Warhammer /40k, WM/H, Malifaux, Infinity, Cutlass, BloodBowl, Epic, Dystopian Wars, and so on) and last but not least, a nice range of beer and very good menu at the bar.

So besides these, a full time job, the occasional freelancing, a girlfriend and actual gaming, I didn't want to spend my remaining time in front of the computer. As things have now settled a bit I will try and occasionally update the blog. Starting right here and now with the few projects I have been working on recently (see actual posts through the links).

I already mentioned the finished Ortegas and backdated a post for them. [link]

I have also bought and painted a proxy for the Dead Rider for Malifaux, which wasn't released yet at the time of my last tournament. Since then the official mini is out and I am planning to buy and paint that too but it's not on the top of my list. [link]

A somewhat bigger project was my new BloodBowl Lizardmen team. I tried to convert the GW fantasy lizardmen to look a bit more like the ones in the video game and I'm quite happy with them. [link]

Next in line will be a Lost Boys themed crew (from Peter Pan) for Cutlass. I originally wanted to buy some models for this from various companies but in the end I couldn't justify the cost. So I made some sketches I will try my hand at sculpting from scratch.

Any way, it's good to be back and to put something new on the shelves, I hope I will be able to stay disciplined and write new updates on a more regular basis.

BloodBowl Lizardmen - Painting #1 - Saurus

2011-08-21T14:19:00.002+01:00

I am probably the last person who still didn't try the fancy new washes that appeared in the stores of many leading companies of late. This is about to change with my new Lizardmen BloodBowl team.

That's right, after using the blatant shortcut called 'Army Painter Colour Primer' I am going to give in a little more by using GW foundation paints and washes. For a start I bought 2 foundation paints (bone white and something similar to scab red) and 3 washes (devlan mud, sepia and purple wash). There is another 'first time' in this process, at least first time in a long while. I am using metallic paints on these guys. Nmm is nice and pro and all that but it is too much a hassle and sometimes a bit out of character for the models. So the plan is to basecoat, wash then re-basecoat and highlight the lizardmen. This is about as close to dipping as I will ever go, but I really want to see how much quality will one have to sacrifice on the altar of speed. So without further ado, here is the first set of players to be painted this way.

I'm not gonna take a photo of every model after every step, instead I will make a step by step on one Saurus and take a group shot when I get to the end of a painting session. So the step by step starts here:

Painting the basecoat colours, starting with the bones and lighter parts,

Followed by brown for the brown and for the golden bits. I am told that brown undercoat makes for richer gold so I tried it.

Then the reds,

Bone white again for details,

Red again to tidy up around the edges and gold metallic coat,

And finally the whole model washed with Devlan Mud.

Here's a nice groupshot, this is how far we got in only a few hours.

I'm gonna leave them like this for now, get the skinks up to this level, then re-base coat and highlight them all. I am really happy with the results so far. Although obviously they will never be more then ttq models, that is exactly what I was after. And the speed and ease that comes with using washes is amazing, I regret not trying this stuff earlier. Although I hardly had any models I could have painted this way until now...

And finally, some better pics for the end so there is something to drool on until next time. :P

BloodBowl Lizardmen - Building the team

2011-08-14T00:46:00.001+01:00

In the last few years I haven't been playing blood bowl on the tabletop, but used the pc / psp version instead. And since it is much easier to try new teams I abandoned my long time favourite orcs and gave some others a go. Of all the teams that I tried I liked the playstyle of the Lizardmen the most, so I decided to make a tabletop crew for them.

However I didn't like the look of the official GW models that have probably been designed some time before man invented fire. I looked around on the internet for alternative teams (such as the excellent Sarcos or the Horned Frogs from Greebo) but most of them were, unfortunately, over the budget. I also tend to like 'exclusive' stuff (like everyone else in this hobby) so in the end I decided to convert my own team from GW fantasy Lizardmen based on the video game's designs made by Cyanide Studio.

So I went shopping on the various 'bitz box' sites and ebay stores and managed to buy 6 skinks and 6 temple guards for about £5.00. Then I dug into the bits box of my local club and rescued 3 painted skinks and a painted kroxigor. This latter one is a rather old sculpt and looks a bit wimpy next to the newer temple guards so I'm still not sure if I will use it or get an alternative model.

I carefully sorted the bits and mixed the arms and heads around as not to have duplicate models, then started converting them. First off the Skinks. I didn't want all of them to look the same so I used the design with 'backward loincloths' on 4 of them, one of the 'armoured' designs on another four, and the last design on the last skink that I decided will be the star player Hemlock.

Then I got on with the Saurii

Finally the skink starplayer, Hemlock. To represent his special ability 'stab' I used some tusks from the remaining bits with some greenstuff, giving him a long sharp piece of bone strapped to his arm.

After the groupshot I realised that I completely forgot about the skinks' shoulder pads, so I chopped up some plastic tube and greenstuffed it onto their shoulders.

And here they are, all ready for priming. Stay tuned, I will upload the painting process in new posts.

A thing that goes bump in the dark...

2011-03-17T23:31:00.042Z

The ClaphamWargamers Guild organised a Malifaux story event day and I intend to take a Dead Rider in my crew. As the official model is not out yet, I looked around for a few proxies.

These were the ones I found sufficient:

Cryx Solo from Privateer Press

Drune Riders from Rackham

Acheron Necromancer from Rackham

Fir Bolg Wraith on Steed from Brigade Models (Celtos)

After little contemplating I decided that since this is a proxy and I need to paint it quickly there is no point buying an expensive model that I will want to work on for a long time to do it justice, so settled on the Wraith from Brigade Models. It is good looking enough to be on the table as part of my Malifaux crew but quite simple to paint.

After cleaning and washing and pinning I started playing around with the parts. The horse itself came in two bits: right side with head and left side. The interesting thing about the model is that it is hollow and you can see into its belly even after assembly, so, since this is a skeletal horse, I painted the ribs on the inside of it.

After the bone parts were done I glued the sides together and started the base it was to stand on. Nothing fancy here, just some milliput on the normal 50 mm base for an uneven ground. While the milliput was drying I started converting the rider himself. Cut off the right arm (holding a mini hand-scythe) and get rid of the handle of the scythe. With a simple brass rod I made the armature for a decent sized scythe and pushed some green stuff on it. Again, nothing fancy, but it does the job.

Now the milliput was dry so I finished the base with some sand painted black/grey and a little burnt out grass (also known as old bamboo paintbrush). All parts ready I tried them together to see if everything is right.

Then came painting the horse. I remembered a tutorial in an old Cry Havoc magazine for weathered bronze that I wanted to try and this model seemed perfect for that. So I primed the armour and basecoated with an ochre colour. Then added some green to the paint for the darker areas and used white for highlighting. I added both with little care, in fact quite roughly which only enhanced the battered look. Then painted some cuts / scratches on it which didn't turn out to be great, but being short of time I decided not to clean them up.

Next up was the weathering with faint blues and greens and some light grey / white in places.

I was happy with the armour so moved on to the fabric bits. Primed it with black and based with purple, then worked shadows and highlights buy adding black and white - respectively.

Last thing left was the rider himself. I just primed him all black and added some grey to highlight his armour. Based the handle of the scythe brown and drybrushed it with a lighter shade. Then painted the scythe itself with greys for a lousy nmm effect. And voila: from £3.50, a little green stuff and milliput and 2 evenings of painting I have my Dead Rider proxy ready to go.

I left the rider pinned without gluing him to the horse so it is easier to transport him in a case. The horse itself is blocky with no poking out bits and the rider fits in a normal infantry slot on the tray so it's just perfect.

Speedpainting the Ortegas - Part 2

2011-03-05T21:22:00.003Z

Not much to write about... Finished painting the ortega crew for my Malifaux demos and took some photos with both demo crews and the books.

The crew doesn't look 'great' but it is better then plain ttq minis, so I'm happy with them. There are a few bits that need finishing (metal bits, few buttons here and there, etc) but those will wait until I get bored of painting everything else.

Speed-painting the Ortegas

2011-02-19T22:29:00.045Z

Last weekend I went through my cases to see how I was doing with painted minis. I realised that on the bottom of it there was a crew that I practically did not touch for many months. The Ortegas.

I usually only use them for intros and demo games because they are really easy to start with and they are a formidable enemy to my preferred rezzer crews so people with no experience can have an enjoyable game with them. But since they are not painted, they hardly ever stir interest. So I decided to speed-paint them, or at least paint them as quick as I can up to a good tabletop standard. Also, if I paint them up I will apply for the henchmen program at Wyrd miniatures, so finally our club will have a resident rep for Malifaux.

So here's the process I made so far:

Hour 0 - assembled and primed as they were.

Hour 4 - all faces and skin areas painted.
This took me a lot longer then I thought it would, but, on the other hand, it was one of the most difficult parts of painting them. I wanted to have a little Mediterranean feel on these guys so the skin tone I used is more orange then normally. Not sure if it is what I was after, but doesn't look bad at all.

Hour 6 - lighter, buff fabrics and all jeans basecoated. All eyes painted (man, were they really crap sculpts), but might have to go back to correct Francisco's.

Hour 8 - some leathers and some black areas basecoated, mainly progress on Perdita: hair painted, shirt painted all leathers basecoated, finally could glue her hat on. I tried to copy the hair from the studio mini (I think painted by Eric Jones) so no credits for me there. Although not as good as his version, it still looks pretty cool.

Hour 10 - Perdita finished, all other guys' jeans shaded / highlighted. Papa Loco tin plate on the head painted. This was an interesting bit, I did not even notice it until I painted his hair. Only then it was sort of sticking out as something too geometrical to be hair. Might go back on it with some rust to make it pop. I am very happy with how Perdita turned out. I spent a little more time on her, being the head of the family. The 'fabric effect' on her jeans is something I'm proud of; I did not plan to do it originally and even if I did, I had no idea how to. So it was kind of instinctive and looks better then planned. She's got loads of small fiddly metal bits that were particularly difficult and time consuming but overall the mini looks good and I'm happy I spent the time on her.

Do zombies dream of undead sheep?

2011-02-16T22:11:00.021Z

On my first day back at the club I had a game against Wills and his Dreamer crew. I was happy to see a new master in game but I was also a bit uneasy as they have got quite a reputation on the forums. I very soon realized why.

We flipped an outside location and Hag's territory; for special event the Ancient Monument came out that we placed at the centre of the table.

Wills strategy was Treasure Hunt and I got Claim Jump that I put in the high weedy marsh area on my left.

We decided not to take any schemes as it was only Wills' second game of Malifaux. (Although he played like a pro already so I don't think we will need such restrictions next time)

Crews

Wills - Dreamer / LCB

Coppelius

2 Stitched together

3 daydreams

5SS cache

Ish – Seamus

Copycat Killer

2 Belles

2 Crooked men

Convict gunslinger

3SS cache

Deployment

We got standard deployment and I had to deploy first. I split my crew in 3 parts hoping that each of them is strong enough to stand the nightmares first rush on their own, giving a chance to the rest to catch up and help out. So I had a belle and the gunslinger on the left, Seamus and a crooked man not far away in the middle and the remaining belle, crooked man and the copycat on the right.

Wills only deployed the dreamer and one daydream on his left behind a giant tree stump, keeping the rest of the nightmares in the Dreamer's head.

Decks re-shuffled and hands drawn, we got the game going!

Turn 1

Dreamer won initiative, moved up behind the tree stump with the daydream and popped one stitched right next to the treasure counter.

I moved up keeping my formation but Seamus drifting to the right a bit, hoping to stop the stitched somehow.

That of course didn’t happen and the stitched activated, picking up the counter, moving back a bit and popping fog. From this point I had no LoS to him so the only way of stopping him was to get up close enough. Obviously the Dreamer was not going to sit and watch me doing that.

Turn 2

Dreamer won initiative, moved across from behind the tree stump into the high grass, getting soft cover, and popping all the nightmares right in front of my advancing crew, blocking my claim marker. Two well placed shafted markers scared them off, however so I got to keep them at bay for now. I managed to kill one daydream that was annoyingly close to the Dreamer, then Seamus run up and took aim at him with his flintlock. Won the duel 17-16 and the Dreamer couldn’t cheat or soulstone it any further so I was sure I would take him down. All I needed was a moderate damage on a (-) flip, but even a weak would have caused him trouble. First card: 10 of Rams, second card: Black Joker. So much about my high hopes.

The stitched carrying the treasure ran even further and popped fog again. A daydream turned the Dreamer into Chompy and attacked Seamus, not causing any wounds thanks to a Black Joker on the damage flip, then turned back to the Dreamer, failing to do anything notable. At least I was not the only one with bad luck. I tried to run up the Copycat killer and swap places with Seamus but unfortunately the little bugger was too deep in the high grass and could not see anything.

Turn 3

This was the most crucial initiative flip in the game and the Dreamer won it. While Seamus was desperately trying to fix his jammed flintlock the Dreamer cast some de-buff on him, giving (-) on defence flips against nightmares. Then he turned into Lord Chompy Bits and started chewing through Seamus’s legendary arsenal of survivability taking him down to 1 wound in 3 attacks, triggering an extra attack and finally killing him. On my left Coppelius charged the belle-gunslinger duo, knocking the Belle down to 1wd, miraculously not killing anything. The gunslinger shot back thanks to ‘Gunfighter’ causing 4 wounds. With Seamus dead I had no chance of winning but a draw was still possible so that’s what I had to aim for. LCB turned back into the Dreamer and run back into the safety of the marsh. I started slowly advancing, dropping shafted markers and luring stuff into them. I managed to kill another daydream and wound a stitched.

Turn 4

Dreamer won initiative.

Not entirely sure what happened in this turn but Coppelius killed a belle, further wounded the gunslinger but failed to make him flee. The gunslinger in return killed him and stayed alone out in the open. More stuff got lured into shafts and then the nightmares rearranged around my claim.

Turn 5

Dreamer won initiative, popped LCB and killed the gunslinger. For some reason he didn’t turn back into the dreamer so I got to drop a blast on the whole bunch standing on my objective. It went off of the stitched, giving it 2 wounds, killing a daydream and wounding LCB too. Now with the daydreams all dead and Chompy already activated the Dreamer couldn’t come out anymore. I managed to paralyze, then kill the stitched too (that still got reactivate and wounded the belle) so I was getting close to that draw.

Turn 6

I won initiative (finally)! Instead of rushing things I activated the crooked man on the left, dropping 2 markers. One right in front of Chompy, and one a bit closer between my belle and the other miner. This way he couldn’t move in my direction without risking getting wounded, paralyzed or even killed. Wills decided to keep LCB for after my activation and just passed with the remaining stitched (carrying the treasure, now in his deployment zone). I saw my chance and lured the big freak with the belle. First lure successful, shafted goes off on him, causing paralyzed; second lure successful, second shafted goes off, paralyzed again. Free attack causing 1 wd. The remaining crooked man moved twice up to the claim, stopping just 2,5” away from it. It was quarter to midnight at this point but we flipped for a seventh round anyway; it did not happen. 4VP each we shook hands and packed the table, both of us with a stupid grin on the face.

It was a great game indeed, with amazingly bad and good flips alike. We both made mistakes, as usual, but got to the end of the game achieving our strategies. For my part at least it was great fun – despite losing Seamus in the beginning of turn #3.

Some things to remember in future games: we did not take the extra soulstones for not playing schemes; I don't remember halving damage when hitting the daydreams (I think they are spirit), worth looking out for in the future; I have to take more photos or write notes so that I can remember what happened in every turn.

Desert effect - test run

2011-02-12T00:03:00.000Z

Coming back from holiday I have decided to try a few new techniques. One of them is the use of antique effect varnish or crackle paint. I intended to use this for making cracked earth style desert bases - mainly for the ortegas, but might come handy for latter projects too.

The instructions say I have to paint the surface with one colour, then apply the varnish, then a second layer of paint. This second layer cracks while drying showing the other colour underneath. As I never actually used this stuff before I made a few test patches on a plain 60mm base and an old blister pack. I did two sets, each of the sets consisting of 3 patches. First applying the varnish in one direction, then applying it in two layers crossing each other, then applying it with circular movements of the brush. First set is left drying slowly as it would, the second set dried under hair dryer.

The results are below; on the clear plastic left to right: one direction, cross directions, circular, all dried naturally/slowly; on the black plastic base left to right: one direction, cross directions, circular, all dried with blow dryer.

I think the best result is the cross applied and blow dried one, though the single direction slow drying one is surprisingly good too. I think the reason for that is the fact that I applied too much varnish on that one and it did not dry before I painted over it. I may have to do some more test with different amounts of varnish, or applying the second layer of paint at different stages.

Back from holiday

2011-02-11T18:25:00.004Z

I have been on holiday during the past 10 days. I went home, to Hungary, to see my family and friends and be away from the usual everyday things, including gaming. Despite this I managed to buy a Feldherr case, pick up a new game system and my best friend who still lives there and is a gamer too has introduced me to a fairly new club and shop. I thought this lot, and the club in particular, is worth posting about. It is called Gólem Művek (Golem Works).

Although it is located a few streets off the avenue and the busy shopping areas of Pest it is not difficult to find. The reason why the caught my attention is the fact that they do almost exclusively small skirmish games instead of the good ol' gw-and-a-few-bits-and-pieces.

Entering Golem Művek you will find a small staircase with displays on both sides, leading to the shop. Further down on one side there is a separate painting area where they hold their weekly painting school. On the other side there are some displays with gorgeous painted minis and 7 smallish, skirmish size (4' x 4') tables with loads of great terrain for fantasy, modern and sci-fi settings alike.

Then there are more shelves with some popular rpg rulebooks, boardgames and whatnot. Even further in there is another room that hosts a coffee shop and another entrance for that. This is one of the great things about the club; no membership fee, there is only 500 Forints (~£1.50) booking fee for the table that can be used as a voucher in the coffee shop.

On their shelves you'll find Alkemy, Corvus Belli & Infinity, Eden, Malifaux, Mindstalkers, Urban Mammoth's Urban War & Metropolis, Uncharted Seas, Warheadz and more, along with Army Painter products and Feldherr cases and trays.

If you happen to be in Budapest, be sure to check them out!

Website (unfortunately only in Hungarian but it's not very cryptic)

Facebook

Although I did not want to spend on mini stuff while on holiday I couldn't resist to pick up a Feldherr Mini Plus case with some trays for my infinity crew. This was the exact case I was after and because they had a lot of different trays to choose from it seemed like a good opportunity / excuse to break my vow. :)

I also got two books from my friend as a present. They are about building dioramas and wargaming terrain from household materials. The guy who wrote them won many competitions and awards and browsing through the book I shortly understood why. Liberal use of the plainest materials through the easiest (but not most obvious) procedures with great sense of colour and weathering, resulting in such a perfect piece that you cannot tell it is not real, would you only see the photo. I shall be using a few of his techniques in my future products hopefully for better results.

I got introduced to a new historical WWII Skirmish game called 1-48 Combat. As you can guess the game uses 1:48 scale miniatures. The rules are fairly simple but still make for an interesting gameplay. Gaming area of 2' x 2' is ideal and everything you need for the game is included in the blisters. One character comes with a 60mm round terrain element that can be used as terrain and is slotted for a 25mm round base so works as a beautiful mini-diorama on the shelf. There are also 5 pewter tokens in every blister, a wound marker, a suppression fire marker, a target marker and two command counters. The characters have stat cards that have all their abilities, equipment and statistics written on both sides; one unharmed and one wounded side. Some effects (such as head-shot on two sixes rolled, or a grenade exploding in their face) kill characters out right, others (shooting, or hand to hand combat) only cause the model to be wounded. In this case you just turn the card and use those stats. At the moment there are only two factions, Russians and Germans with 6-6 characters each. And, as it is so common nowadays, you can download all rules and stat cards for free on their website.

Hopefully no one will read this down the club, or else there might be a danger of a new system eating up my savings account...

A bit of painting

2011-01-31T00:24:00.004Z

Trying to keep my progress I continued painting Seamus & Co. Although there are still parts I want to finish on them I decided to do their bases so that they feel more like actual pieces rather then wip bits.

The first belle I ever painted was the one in the green dress so I tested the colour scheme on that one. First the wood looked a little too yellow but finally I managed to get it right and done it on all the others too. Then the green one got some blood splatters on her and spilt blood on the floor as planned on the display diorama.

There were a few bits that I needed to finish like the shading between fingers, some nmm, the blonde hair, the inside of the red parasol and things like that bit now they will just get a varnish and they are finished. Apart from the blonde one in the blue dress, her face is still very sketchy.

Now Seamus got some nmm and finally assembled but there's quite a lot to do on him. I tried to paint wood grains on the flintlock but it went completely wrong so that will have to go back to brown. The hat needs highlighting and more smoothing on the coat. The nmm bit on the toecap got chipped while I was putting him on the base so that has to be fixed too but I like him already.

Lastly I did a bit of the Punk Zombies bases but nothing crucial. New pics taken anyway.

Seamus vs. Lucius

2011-01-26T18:42:00.004Z

As promised the report of the 30SS game I had against Talos's Lucius crew. Talos flipped for location and Special occurance and got badlands and Soulstone Vein, although we actually had a pioneer town, using the great new terrain pieces in the club.

We flipped for Strategies on the expanded encounter chart; Lucius got Claim Jump (placed it on the big stack of crates on my right) and chose to keep it (Lucius can freely re-flip strategies if he wants to) and I got Deliver a message. I never had to play this before so I was happy to try it.

Crews picked:

Talos - Lucius with 3SS cache

Guild Guard captain - 7

Lawyer - 7

Austringer - 5

3 Guild Guards - 12

Ish - Seamus with 2SS cache
Copycat Killer - 2
Dead Rider (proxied by Hamelin) - 10
2 Rotten Belles - 8
2 Punk Zombies - 10

Schemes picked:
Talos - Bodyguard [announced] and Kill Protégée [announced]
Ish - Steal Relic [hidden] and Army of the Dead [announced]

Diagonal deployment. Lucius crew deployed first.

Turn 1
Seamus won the initiative flip. Both crews moved up. I split my crew up to 2; Seamus a belle a zombie and the little fella straight up in the middle towards the ss-vein and the rest sneaking around the left. Talos kept his crew together behind a building but with a chance of going on either sides of it.

Turn 2
Lucius won initiative and moved a guard up a bit, ready for reactivation. Seamus activated simultaneously with the copycat moving into position and opening one hell of a fire on the guards around the corner, killing the Guild Guard Captain and 1 guard with some really lucky cards on the damage. Then the austringer and one other guard returned the fire reducing Seamus to 1 Wd! A belle on the left lured in the remaining guard (twice) causing some minor damage, but more importantly getting him within charge range of the rider. Rider moved on with Mounted Combat killing the guard. Things got really messy unusually early in the game, Seamus actually had to burn a soulstone to prevent damage to even survive the turn.

Turn 3
Seamus won initiative. Activated with a belle who moved next to him and lured the rider a bit closer. Seamus killed the belle with live for pain healing up to 11Wd ready for the next wave of attack from the guild. More shooting happened but no one died this turn thanks to the rider running up into melee range of the austringer and Lucius.

Turn 4
Seamus won initiative. The Rider activated moving closer to Lucius and delivering the message, earning 4VP. The Guild concentrated on killing him now to get the Scheme done but he miraculously survived. The remaining belle lured him out of combat and a punk zombie ran up to get in the way of any chasers. On the other side of the building Seamus activated the Trail of Fear and run up to Lucius, collecting corpses and stealing the relic for another 1 VP. Then the leprechaun swapped places with him to make sure he escapes the fight.

Turn 5
There was some more punching about and Lucius took his revenge on a punk zombie, killing it dead. Seamus and the rider ran back to the far corners and into safety, ending the game.

Unfortunately I couldn't scoop up more then 3 corpses with Seamus and Talos had 3 models left at the end of the game but it was enough for victory as the Lucius couldn't break through the shambling zombies to stake his claim.

Victory points
Seamus - 6VP; Deliver a message (4) Army of the Dead (1) and Steal Relic (1)
Lucius - 2VP; Bodyguard

It was a really fun game, was good to see the rider in action and being less frail then the rouge necromancy was last week. And it was educational to see the power of indirect fire from the austringer under the command of the governor's secretary; I hope I will never have to fight 2 austringers in the same time.

Malifaux testplay

2011-01-18T23:34:00.005Z

Just a quick update for today; we had a bit of Malifaux playtesting of the new minions from Rising Powers with Bill.

40SS game so we can add some new guys without losing the idea of how our crews work.

I brought:

Seamus [Cache: 3SS]

Sybelle [6SS]

Grave Spirit [1SS]

3 Belles [12SS]

2 Punk Zombies [10SS]

Rogue Necromancy [10SS]

Bill’s crew:

Lillith [Cache: 6SS]

Cherub [2SS]

Lelu [7SS?]

Lilitu [7SS?]

Mature Nephilim [10SS]

Young Nephilim [6SS]

2 Terror Tots [6SS]

The strategies were quite unfortunate, I got Turf War and Bill flipped Contain Power; neither of them seemed possible to achieve given that we already picked crews (should have chosen strategies according to crews this time). We picked 2 schemes each to compensate. I went for Stake Your Claim and Breakthrough and Bill chose Breakthrough and Kidnap on the belles. We both announced breakthrough and kept the other hidden.

After the usual running up in Turn 1 I dug myself in behind the 2 buildings on the middle of the table, ready to face the Neverborn horde. Bill’s Terror tots run up on the middle, the mature nephilim on my left flank and everyone else on the right.

I decided to go for the big guys first and take them out one by one, so in Turn 3 a Belle lured in the mature nephilim causing 1 wd with the free attack. The nephilim hit back and killed the bell. Slow to die action was undress giving the neph -2Df for the rest of the turn. The punk zombie nearby spent its activation further damaging the nephilim reducing it to 1 wd, then the grave spirit killed it with it’s chill touch. That was the best killing I have ever done, a 10 SS killing machine taken out by a 1 SS totem… :P

Seamus on the middle was waiting for his opportunity to kill stuff as the terror tots cowed back into cover. On the left flank Lilith charged the other punk zombie and a belle, both of them miraculously surviving. Then the young nephilim charged in killing the belle. Lilitu lured Sybelle out of the mess and started working on her with Lelu. This is where I thought the Rogue Necromancy will come handy. Spat acid on the melee on the right, with some very unfortunate flips reducing my own punk zombie and not even causing blast damage on the nephilims. Moved in to combat and attacked Lilith once and the young nephilim once. Lilith just laughed in its face and shook all attacks off with ease but the young nephilim died due to a red joker on the damage flip.

Turn 4 was where everything turned from bad to worse for me. With almost all my minions wounded, stuck in melee, having absolutely no chance of getting anywhere near my objectives, Lilith won the initiative flip. In her activation she killed the Rogue Necromancy which brought to my attention that it is neither hard to kill nor slow to die! That is pretty unusual for any decent undead stuff. Anyway, Seamus shot her in the face and then retreated to hide behind the buildings, possibly sneaking closer to Bill’s deployment zone. The remaining belles got killed by Lilith achieving Kidnap, the grave spirit still in melee and still resisting every attack. Sybelle died to Lelu and Lilitu.

The bunch of corpses on the left are the nephilim and the belle, the bigger load in the middle is the leftover of the rouge necromancy and whatever was around it...

Turn 5 we run around a bit more, I summoned a belle and ran back to my deployment zone preventing Bill from getting breakthrough and we called it the end of the game. He won 1-0 anyway and we got to try our precious (or rather, expensive) new toys. Next week I’ll see how the Dead Rider plays against a Lucius crew.

Shopping and getting sidetracked

2011-01-16T22:05:00.004Z

Having run out of some main materials over the holidays I thought it was time to stock up a bit. Fortunately CassArt had a sale on so I could save some money on this.

Or more like I could have as I got over excited and bought some more stuff that I didn't actually need... Firstly a pack of clear resin for water effects that was half price. I was meaning to try this out for a long time but somehow never got down to it so this seemed like a great opportunity. Then I bought some x-acto blades, super glue, big pots of acrylic paints for terrain painting and foamboard. Then I went to DarkSphere to pick up an order and they happened to have some Wyrd graveyard base inserts. I normally don't buy pre-made bases but these seemed to compliment the canine remains well. After cleaning and filing them I figured that I can only use 3 of them for the dogs so the remaining 2 went to two mindless dead. So I ended up cleaning and assembling all the dogs and mindless zombies instead of painting. I had two packs of mindless dead as Nico needs at least 4-5 of them in a game, sometimes more. I have drawn sketches about converting these but yet again this got lost in the bottomless dark box of wip projects. So some puttying and and filing and sculpting later I am not any closer completing my January to do list but I have some half ready conversions and a bunch of more models ready to paint...

Punk Zombies - still not finished

2011-01-10T22:06:00.003Z

I finished painting quite late last night so I did not update but I managed to carry on painting the punks. They are nowhere near finished yet though.

Still not my favourite minis but I think I will paint them up just fine. For some reason the purples went pale on the photo, I think the intensity of reds and greens killed them. I might need to upgrade my photo 'studio' (well, more of a corner, but photos are being made nontheless).

Punk Zombies - step 2

2011-01-09T09:58:00.002Z

Just a quick update from yesterday, more to come later on today. Trying to keep my schedule, I got on with the half-painted Punk Zombies yesterday.

I took all the pics with my phone so not the best photos but they're ok. I have painted their skin ages ago and posted it too, then carried on with the base layers for their outfit but I never seem to have posted that. Now I further painted their clothes and started on the swords as well. Not my favourite minis, nor my best paint job but I think they will look all right in the end.

One more thing I started is sculpting their bases, including Nicodems. I am rather happy with these.

Hopefully I will be able to finish all of them today.

All that made it to the shelves in 2010

2011-01-02T17:39:00.002Z

Rather then making resolutions I decided to write a summary for myself with the start of the new year; this way I can see how much I've done and can aim to do more in the next 12 months.

Fully painted, based, finished minis:

Grave Spirit
2 Rotten Belles
Madame Sybelle
1 Hanged
Bete Noire
3 Crooked Men

9 in total.

Partially painted minis:

1 Rotten Belle
1 Hanged
3 Punk Zombies
Seamus
Copycat Killer

7 in total.

Assembled, basecoated minis:

Nicodem (converted)
2 Vultures (1 converted)
3 Mindless Dead
McMourning
Zombie Chihuahua
4 Canine Remains
2 Flesh Constructs (converted)
Nurse
3 Necrounks
Supply Wagon
Hamelin
Convict Gunslinger
5 Ortegas
4 PanO Fusiliers
ORC Trooper
Croc-man

32 in Total

New, still in box minis:

3 Mindless Dead awaiting conversion
1 Flesh construct

4 in total

Other projects in progress:

Malifaux counters and markers
Malifaux buildings (Mining Town + crew displays)
PanO Remote proxies (Tachikomas) sculpting

In a nutshell I have not done that well last year, but I had a lot of fun. If I finish the 7 almost ready minis I can say I painted 1 model every month, so I will try and do them by the end of January.

Then I will want to have the Seamus crew completely finished so I will get on with the Gunslinger and Hamelin. I am also eager on painting Nicodem with the lantern as my first go at OSL.

I will run a story campaign for Malifaux down the club starting some time in February so that will take up most of my time, but I might get a few more buildings or minis done anyway.

After that I will take a break from Malifaux and get my Infinity force together. I will need to finish 11 models, including 2 scratch built remotes.

If I happen to do all this before the end of the year I will get back to painting the Malifaux minis, including those released in book 2 and 3 (that's approx 15-20 more models). Though I think I could make much better progress if I didn't have to go to work every day so my main goal is going to be winning the lottery...

Malifaux Merry Christmas

2010-12-29T15:31:00.092Z

As I mentioned earlier there was a day of playing the Malifaux Christmas story encounters at mine where we used the new half-ready mining town as the scene.

Unfortunately we forgot to take any photos during the game but here is one of the board with the wip saloon and a few models in it. (I took the side and back walls off so the models are visible giving a size reference.)

The encounter we played was 'Christmas Shopping' where you have to collect presents. There was a Christmas tree in the centre of the board as well but it went up in a cloud of splinters, shot with a well aimed bullet from Seamus's flintlock.

I wanted to try a plain crew without any fancy models in it so I brought Seamus, Sybelle with a grave spirit linked to her, 2 belles, 2 punk zombies and a crooked man against Jon's Nevrborn crew featuring Pandora with Kade, three sorrows and a manikin-performer duo. I am not going to write a report on the battle; Jon has already done a great write up that you can find on his blog. It was a great game with a few turns of fate, good lot of action, loads of zombie corpses and Jon's winning with the one remaining present in the end.

I will definitely try more of these story encounters, they are really fun to play.

No Christmas holiday without getting stuck abroad

2010-12-19T23:03:00.000Z

The weather conditions of London and British Airways made a team effort and gave us a few extra days of holiday. No progress this weekend...

Mining Town construction

2010-12-12T18:03:00.078Z

I didn't really feel like painting in the weekend but I still wanted to do some progress. As I organised a day of gaming at mine for after Christmas I thought it would be a good idea to build some terrain.

The obvious choice for Malifaux is old western style mining town. I have been collecting pictures of old american ghost towns and such for a while for this purpose so it was time to get those pics out and make some sketches.

For making the buildings I used 3mm foamboard and wooden coffee stirrers (or hobby sticks). I also used the same binding methods on the walls as I did for the saloon I started building for my Seamus crew a while ago.

Now some pics; the first few buildings (left to right): Gunsmith; General Store; Bar / Saloon; Church

Church with the roof on and the back window detail.

While waiting for the buildings to dry I started doing the wooden bits. The inevitable piece for any decent western town, the gate with the town's name and population. (To be frank I have no idea what these were used for in the old west but they appear in every single western movie or picture and I thought they look cool.) And the other one is a water tank. I also started making a classic American windmill-waterpump but it's not in the state of taking photos yet.

And finally a group shot of the small buildings with wooden front walls attached.

More to come, stay tuned! ;)

More Seamus and Copycat Killer

2010-11-24T01:48:00.003Z

I had some more time to do some painting on Monday and today so I carried on with my new favourites. They are coming along nicely, I might actually finish them within reasonable time.

I think I'm finished with their coats although it looks a bit too light on Seamus. Might have to go back and darken it but I will wait to see the whole model finished first. Apart from that I only painted a couple of base layers of black where needed so not much, but still they look a lot more finished already.

And I had my first win in Infinity this night at the club. Two wins in fact; both against Yu-Jing with the Section 9 themed PanOceania list I've been working on for a while, so I'm really pleased. Once I'm done with my Malifaux crews I will get the infinity team together.

Seamus and the little fella

2010-11-21T22:07:00.055Z

This weekend I finally got around to start painting Seamus and the Copycat Killer. I only finished their faces but I am really happy that I took my time and paid these pieces the attention they deserve.

Before I post the pictures I have to tell how scared I was of painting these minis. Seamus is the leader of the Redchappel gang and thus the master I field the most and the Copycat Killer is his little Leprechaun sidekick. These are basically the two most important models for me so I really want to paint them well and this made me do everything else instead of these to avoid disappointing myself. Now that I did start painting I am really happy because these faces turned out just as well as I wanted. It should be noted that these are amazing sculpts and a lot easier to paint then they seem - or at least seemed to me. I even found a surprising little detail on the copycat while painting: a tiny ponytail. :P

First a couple of shots of the Leprechaun:

Close ups of both faces:

The rest is going to be fairly simple, Seamus will get the original colour scheme (not the studio mini, the artwork from p78 of the Malifaux rulebook); ochre frock coat, black top hat and white pants and the totem will stay as close to that scheme as possible.

To be honest I am so pleased with the faces that I'm gonna be happy with these minis however they turn out.

Malifaux markers #2

2010-11-14T20:35:00.000Z

forgot to post this up, all coming soon...

Counters, markers and bases for Malifaux

2010-11-01T00:40:00.083Z

The tournament is next weekend. I have already given up on painting all my minis but I have to get ready with all markers and counters for my crew.

First of all I wanted to make the 'Evidence' objective markers for Seamus. I will need 3 of these so I decided to make a top hat, a bag of tools and a pocketwatch.

Unfortunately I dropped the watch before I could glue it to the base and add the chain so I didn't finish that one.

Next on the to-do list were the shafted markers.

Although I won't need it for the tournie, but reading through the Encounters section of the rulebook I realized that I have a model stashed away that would be perfect for the Supply Wagon mission so I got it on the table to check if it fits on the 50 mm base as needed. It's a little corpse and soil cart pulled by a leper dwarf. The model is originally a Mid Nor character in Rackham's Cadwallon.

Last but not least I based Hamelin, the Copycat Killer and Bete Noire. Below is the group shot of everything I've done in the weekend.

And because I didn't have time to do more I just printed some Corpse and Blast markers made by Max von D and glued them on their bases.

The pied piper of Hamelin wip#1

2010-10-24T20:01:00.001+01:00

Hamelin the Ratcatcher is a mercenary character in the Malifaux universe themed around the old fable of the pied piper of Hamelin. And a very nice sculpt with exciting details.

I originally wanted to paint this model for the painting competition back in July but unfortunately it didn't arrive on time. Now I've got it, though, and finally unpacked it to get ready for painting. As Isaid before I really like the sculpt but still managed to find some things that I want to change. He has a belt hanging from his shoulder and some dead rats tied to it. I kind of had the feeling that it was meant to be a satchel but the sculptor forgot to finish it so I slapped some putty on it. The othe thing was Nix's (thats the dog) lead. It is in one piece with Hamelin's hand and then you would have to glue the other end to Nix's collar. I thought that would be the first place where the model breaks so I just curled it back to Hamelin's hand leaving Nix running free, chasing rats.

I'll wait for the putty to cure, then I'll base and hopefully paint him on time for the Tournament on 6th November.

Dead miners finished!

2010-10-17T19:32:00.003+01:00

Now that the weather turns and I tend to spend more and more nights indoors, I am trying to get back into the habit of regular painting. This weekend I picked the crooked men I based and primed a while back.

When I first saw the preview pics of these minis I was not impressed but bought them anyway because they are awfully useful in game. As I was preparing them a started to spot more and more little details that eventually made them exciting and made me want to paint them. I based them really quickly for the same reason and I am particularly happy with how these bases turned out. First I painted the bases because I wanted to experiment a bit on painting rust and decayed old wood.

The worn down stone floor isn't as good as I wanted it to be but I'm very happy with the rest. I put the primed models on them and realized that I needed something of lighter colour so I added some cat litter and painted them as Soulstones; these lads are resurrected labourers from one of the guild's many Soulstone mines after all.

At this point I decided that their uniform should be in guild colours as well. After this everything came obvious; grey skin with a greenish hue, black boots, dirt stained deep red trousers and cheap wood and iron tools. All in all I think they turned out pretty well and finally I feel like I painted some minis that I don't have to come back to later on. :)

'Vintage' w40k Tau army

2010-09-11T16:02:00.005+01:00

I dug up my old Tau army and had a game of 40k with a friend just for old times sake. I am trying to decide wether I want to finish them or just sell them. Either way I will want to post them sooner or later so here we go...

Back then when I painted them the only thing that mattered was to get them on the table as soon as I could so I used a very simple colour scheme: black primer, some gw scab red panels and golden bits. Brown outfit for the infantry guys and ready. Nothing spectacular and yet I never finished them.

The whole army list as follows:

12 fire warriors with pulse carbines
12 fire warriors with pulse rifles
20 kroot carnivores
1 metal kroot shaper
2 kroot hounds
1 krootox
6 XV8 Battlesuits
3 XV88 Broadsides
1 Hammerhead
1 Devilfish
2 Pathfinders with pulse carbines
1 Pathfinder leader with pulse carbine
3 Pathfinders with rail rifles
4 XV15 stealth suits
1 XV15 stealth suit leader
1 Sniper drone team

Some of the painted ones from close-up

And the slightly converted XV8 commander (back then there were no special commander models)

Infinity! PanO starter set

2010-08-07T23:12:00.003+01:00

After a trial game in the club some time ago I bought a PanOceania starter box for Infinity but I never assembled them. Until now.

It took me a bit of effort to clean and pin them simply because they are so full of beautiful details that I didn't want to ruin them. After priming them I started thinking about the bases. I have seen some really good ideas on Antenociti's Workshop but as I didn't want to wait for getting them in the post I just got the milliput and my tools out of the box. 4 out of 6 are finished and the other 2 will be soon.

Can't wait to finally paint them!

More dead stuff

2010-07-28T20:10:00.001+01:00

My latest order has arrived!

A Crooked men blister and a second Mindless dead pack. I want to field the miners next week so I quickly assembled primed and based them. The minis look so great looking that I wanted to do something nice for their bases. I figured that old train tracks will fit their character well.

Unfortunately the photo is not very good quality as I took it with my phone, but you can still make out the details. The actual rail is missing but will put them on for the next wip pics.

I also started converting the mindless zombies. Not many pics yet.

Béte Noire in 6 hrs

2010-07-20T22:30:00.051+01:00

There was a Malifaux painting contest announced in the club ages ago but I was too busy / lazy and haven't painted anything. The closing date was today so last night I finally stopped panicking and started painting.

I 'finished' the mini in 6 hours. It's not gorgeous and I didn't do anything complex on it but I painted it nonetheless. I have been eyeballing the new Aleph minis for a while and only after I finished Béte I realized how much they got in my mind. As per usual I will want to come back to this piece some time and touch it up a bit, tho it's likely I never will.

Still here

2010-07-19T19:48:00.001+01:00

... just a bit busy. ;_;

McMourning's Morgue - WIP #1

2010-05-09T23:55:00.017+01:00

I have done these bases for McMourning and his crew a few months back, but haven't had the chance to post them until now.

Unfortunately I only took photos at the beginning and the end of the process. I got so involved in pushing the stuff around that I simply forgot about it. A few pics anyway:

The idea is the same as with the other display bases (see post before this one). I usually print out two versions of the final concept: one with notes on it, marked bases so I will remember what model goes where; and one without any text and with transparent bases, so I see what the exact pattern is going to be on the actual base. This allows me to make the bases and the terrain separately and still have them perfectly fitted.

On a sidenote the crew is not the original box-set. I am not a big fan of the nurses nor the flesh construct, so I bought the Sister of Mercy from Freebooter and Carlos from Artefactory to proxy them. I don't see the point of having 2 nurses in one game anyway, and I thought it would be stupid buying a box of 5 minis then use only 2 of them.

Madame Sybelle's Saloon of Affordable Love - WIP #1

2010-05-09T23:52:00.005+01:00

I made a few sketches of terrain elements as displays for my resurrectionist crews ages ago. I was going to post them but then I forgot and the files got lost in the maze of wip-projects on my pc. I came across them while looking for something else and thought 'hell, why not?'

The main idea of these displays is to make playable terrain pieces that can be used as display (or diorama if you prefer) for the crews. As I usually play with my minis I designed these displays for standard gaming bases, but I will sink them in the terrain. This would leave a hole when the minis are not in there so there are additional pieces that fit in the hole so all terrain is playable. Some details would make gaming awkward so in the same fashion, some elements are removable. Basically I'm gonna strip the whole stuff when gaming.

All displays are themed for a crew's background story. There are four of them so far:

no.1 - Sybelles Saloon for Seamus and Co.

no.2 - Crypt for Nicodem, Vultures and Punk Zombies

no.3 - Morgue for McMourning and Co.

no.4 - A tomb with some memorials and Mausoleums around for the Necropunks

As most of Seamus' crew is kind of painted I decided on starting with the saloon. I bought balsa ages ago and started making the bases already as you could have seen on the belles, had all my tools and glues already. All I missed was foamboard so I set off to the local arty shop to buy some.

I will write a step-by-step from here; mostly as a reminder to my self rather then as a tutorial - the net is full of them already anyway. This way I can see where I go wrong (if I do and surely I will) and will be able to avoid the same mistake in the future.

Step 1

Cutting the base piece to size, drawing main details on it, cutting and carving the floor pattern into the balsa. The pattern is so faint that I had to outline it with psychedelic green to make it visible on the photo.

Step 2

Placing the minis, cutting out the holes for them.
First I cut the holes from the balsa, then I placed it on the foamboard and outlined the holes, then cut the foamboard. I did not cut the bottom layer of the board but scraped the foam out instead. This way I have support for the models already, they cannot 'fall out' or anything

Step 3

Drawing the second floor's plan, then cutting.

[I don't actually have pictures of this as I have just done it all at once, but it's important to do before the walls for the upstairs windows and doors]
Step 4

Drawing the walls on the foamcore, then cutting.

Step 5

Cutting joints, assembling the building. As I mentioned before I wanted to keep it playable and as a display I will want good visibility. For these reasons the building is going to be made of three separate parts: front and left side walls stuck on the base/floor piece; first floor, back and right side walls stuck together; roof.

At this point I called it a day as I forgot to buy adhesive paper and I need to print some tapestry before I can carry on building. I will also need more wood. Not balsa, just normal hobby sticks for the outside of the building, and some timbers to make that floor sturdy enough for heavy models.

Zombie Time! + yesterday's game

2010-05-06T01:54:00.006+01:00

Further advancing in my plan to paint all my crews I started the Punk Zombies tonight.

I had some vague ideas of what I wanted to do with the skin but nothing certain. I didn't want to go for any green 'glowing' zombie scheme and experimenting on the belles showed me that I have a long way to go before I will paint skin properly so I put my vote on grey. And to have some otherworldly feel to it I mixed in some purple.

I'm happy with them so far, tho the supewhite light I use for taking the pics actually makes some shades disappear, they look a bit better in RL. The further use of VGC glaze-medium made the gradients really easy, so I might try to paint their swords nmm. I will need some more highlight on them and then I can paint some different hues on different parts; greens on the rotting sides and reds on the fresh cuts. I didn't really like the models first but I have to admid that they are real fun to paint, very well sculpted minis, so I recommend them to anyone who likes to paint dead stuff.

I had a game yesterday against Max von D. I brought my usual Redchappel Gang reinforced with the punks and Max played the Ortegas. You can find a very good narrative battle report on his site. (the link is on the right in the section 'Blogs I Follow' or just click here.)

Weeping-Rusty-Sado-Madonna wip#3 - half term

2010-05-03T23:17:00.002+01:00

A bit of painting through the weekend got me here. There are many things to fix on her, but for now I'll leave the mini as it is.

I put a few more highlights on the latex and done some rust on the rod and the fan. Pinned / gstuffed her on the base and ready to go. ^ ^ As I said it's good enough for now, when I'll have my crews mostly painted I will have time to touch up some of these little things but as I'm playing more and more I'm getting frustrated by not having my models available because they are still in pieces. I didn't get to carry on painting the other hooker, so that's gonna be the project for next weekend.

The Third Belle

2010-05-02T22:10:00.007+01:00

Having two of them painted and Sybelle 'on the way' I decided to slap some colours on the last Belle too so I would have my crew mostly painted for the next game.

To be honest I started painting her well before sybelle, but only got as far as messing up the face so it wasn't worth mentioning. Now the skin is finished, she is the most 'alive' of the 4 girls. The face is still messy, those eyes need sorting out, but the dress is pretty much ready. I wanted to keep it plain and simple, so I didn't start painting the little fiddly bits, I can still come back to the mini later if I feel up for it. I will finish the metallic parts of the umbrella and the fan and paint her hair blonde and consider her finished - hopefully before Tuesday.

Weeping Sado-Madonna, Wip #2

2010-04-30T23:59:00.003+01:00

Someone popped the idea of doing monthly vows of what minis we will be painting. As there were only a few days left of April the obvious choice for me was to finish Sybelle. I failed, of course.

I still have done a lot and once again I tried something new (glaze medium) so I'm happy. The part that I was most afraid of in painting this mini was the latex suit. It is so difficult to make something so little give the same impression as something that completely relies on the reflection of light in normal size. The other good example for this issue is nmm at which I'm still quite crap. I did some research on what black latex really looks like. (strictly scientific reasons, you see...)

So I found these different styles and decided that the shiny but not wet-look is the most reasonable. (second from left) The first, wet-look one is just beyond my painting abilities and the other two would just look like any other black. So now I had to figure out how to reach this awesome effect and I already had an idea how I could pull it off without much effort. I wanted to paint the whole surface dark grey and shade it with black (so far as normal). But then, instead of highlighting, simply apply gloss finish for the supershiny effect.

However, when I was done with the shading it just liked it so much that I didn't want to ruin it with an experiment. I already mentioned that I tried using glaze medium for the first time, I think that helped me make the shading a lot better then I normally could. So instead of varnishing I just kept highlighting it (still with glaze medium added to my greys) until I reached what you see now.

Unfortunately this took me a lot longer then I expected so the mini is still not ready. I added some greys to the stockings to enchance the transparent effect. Done the main gradient on the fan, now I'll just have to pick the frame to make it divide. I painted up the main gradients on the metallic surfaces (rod, little blades on the fan). Still want to further highlight the latex areas, shade the skin/flesh areas a little more (I have noticed that none of my minis have proper contrast on their skin). Finish the metallic surfaces and then start painting rust on them. Add a brown hue to the stocking to make it look more real. After that is all done I can call the mini ready for basing. So no win fro me this month, maybe in May I'll finish what I want...

Freebooter's Fate - review in a nutshell

2010-04-24T23:26:00.005+01:00

Today I had the opportunity to have a look at Freebooter’s new game the “Freebooter’s Fate” at Salute 2010. I was lucky enough to be introduced to it by Werner Klocke himself, whose work I have long admired.

(In case you don’t know he is the man behind Freebooter, he makes all the concepts and minis, one of the best sculptors in the hobby) However I didn’t have time for a demo game so I can only tell of the things he said and what I saw while others were playing demos.

The Freebooter’s Fate is a skirmish size pirate game, played by 2 players, using the absolutely lovely Freebooter minis. The rulebook is just as awesome as the minis themselves, reminds me of my all time favorite, Confrontation. You will find loads of beautiful artwork, a fair bit of fluff, all the rules and all the models’ statistics inside. It has a great atmosphere and everything you need to play.

Crews consist of a Leader, some Deckhands and a few Specialists. Leaders are the heart of the crew, their commander, master, whatever. Deckhands are the cheap linemen and Specialists are, well, the specialists. :D All minis come with standard size stat cards (just as well designed as the rulebook itself).

The game uses card mechanics [seems to be fashion nowadays ;) ] instead of dice. The deck you use for gaming is a specialized deck with values from 1 to 10; hit cards (that determine what part of the body you hit) and random events cards. You will only need one deck of cards for 2 players. The trick is that there are various amounts of cards of each value in the deck. So there are 2 cards with the value ‘10’, 3 cards with value ‘1’ and 4-6 cards of everything else. As both player draw from the same deck it makes these cards very valuable, also If you remember that ie. both ‘10’s were used already your opponent will have less chance counter attacking so you can charge him without much risk.

The activation of the minis go 1 by 1 (so player 1 activates one mini first, then player 2, then 1 again…) until a player runs out of minis, so the opposing player activates everything that’s left. This gives a great balance to the game as stronger, faster, harder minis will be more expensive, therefore the cheaper minis will have the advantage of activating together without reaction from the enemy.

All models have Action Points (generally 2) that they can use to perform several simple, or one special action. Another fashion in skirmish games, very much to my liking.

The game is objective based so not beating your opponent is not the end of the world. That is a good thing as all models have multiple wounds and there are healer crew members described in the book already, so overkill might not be the way to go. Wounding the enemy models give them certain disadvantages, you will need to determine where the damage takes place – Head, Torso, Left Arm, Right Arm, Abdomen or Legs. The wounded part of the body cannot use the stats/equipments linked to it on full burst. Someone with wounded legs will only be able to make half movement, a swordsman will drop its blade if shot in the right arm, etc…

The other thing that really grabbed me is that shooty crews are no longer overpowered; if you fire your weapon in one turn, you will have to reload in the next as a special action. So no more shoot and run - shoot and run style game. This also makes support characters more valuable, for instance a weapon bearer can reload your weapon so you can use your action points for other things.

This is pretty much what I remember from the game, 99% sure on what I wrote but of course my memory might fail some times. :)

The following factions are available in the game (pics are from Freebooter)

The Imperial Armada

Soldiers, sailors, knights and governors. Mainly ranged specialists as they have easy access to gunpowder and good metals. Needless to say they are not very good at fighting and have average stats.

Pirates

A bit of a Jack-of-all-trades faction. Anyone can be a pirate so you will find every kind of various characters here.

Goblin Pirates

Greenskin scum. An orc captain (the best melee model in game, according to the game designers) and his crazy goblin crew. Not very strong, but always have the advantage of having more models. Also a lot of tricks such as exploding barrels and whatnot…

The Brotherhood

Assassins, bouncers and corrupt noblemen. Fast and lethal models but they lack ranged weapons and strength.

This is pretty much it, I really enjoyed being introduced to this game and chatting with such great artists. The only thing that held me back from picking up the game then and there is the price. As much as I love Werner Klocke sculpts, £9 for one model is a bit pricey. If only I could afford it, I would not hesitate for a second. They had a special deal going on for the convention only; buy a rulebook (£21), a deck of cards (£5), a leader character (£10.95), a deckhand crew (2 models - £12) and a specialist character (£9) for £50 all together.

Although I did not pick the game up, I am still thinking about it. If some more people from the club will buy in I’ll get a Brotherhood crew and eat pasta with cheese for a month…

Gaming, gaming and more gaming

2010-04-21T21:16:00.002+01:00

I find this club (CGC) better and better every time I go there. Yesterday there was Infinity intro night in which I wanted to participate as I long wished to try this game.
The organisers made small (60 points, I think) groups to fight each other just by core rules and game mechanics. The whole thing turned out to be a lot of fun, it reminded me of old times when I used to play paintball; you have to look behind every corner and wall and bush and whatnot, remember where your mates were and try to calculate where your enemies might be by now. Look out for blind spots and nasty hiding places; shortly this game has everything that makes a tactical game enjoyable. Infinity is the most strategy based tabletop-strategy game I have seen so far. The rules seem to be very difficult and awkward but in game they make a lot of sense and turn the game into something more realistic then any other system I know of. I highly recommend the game to anyone who is fond of sci-fi tactical games, be it video games such as Commandos, X-com or Command & Conquer; or tabletop games as Necromunda, AT-43 or VOR the Maelstorm.

After the intro session I had a Malifaux game against Pandora and Co. This was - so far - the most enjoyable Mfx game I played. I'm not gonna write Battle report as I have some ideas for the future and also because it was an intro kind of game as my opponent hasn't played before.

Altogether I had a great night and I got a new game on the to-do list.

Not much...

2010-04-18T20:30:00.013+01:00

I have done almost nothing hobby-wise this weekend. I was gonna paint Sybelle up but then the we had such nice weather and I just couldn't stay in. :D

I'm gonna be fairly busy all week and next Saturday is Salute, so probably won't paint for another week or so...

I have done some more sketches for some of my many side-projects and I had another great game on Tuesday against a different Guild crew.

The Weeping Madonna wip#1

2010-04-13T03:52:00.001+01:00

Started painting Sybelle...
I always thought that she looked like she's crying, so I got the idea to try and paint her as the Weeping Madonna. :) This is how far I got, will post more later.

Shot twice by the Ortegas, then frosted by Rasputina...

2010-04-08T18:22:00.019+01:00

Finally I have found a great club in Central London where people are at least interested in Malifaux.
(Cross Gaming Club, see link on the right) On the last two Tuesdays we ran small intro games with a guy there, fielding Seamus & Co. vs the Ortega family. We have picked up the mechanics pretty easily and clarified some shaky rules as well as the changes due to erratas. As the intent was to learn the game we didn't play ant strategies or schemes just yet so I won't go into details about them. After these lurning sessions we organised a game with a guy from the Wyrd Forums, 25 SS Arcanists vs Resurrectionists.

Arcanists:
Rasputina - 4 SS cache
Wendigo - 2 SS
Ice Gamins x3 - 12 SS
Hoarcat Pride - 5 SS
December Acolyte - 6 SS

Resurrectionists
Seamus - 6 SS cache
Grave Spirit - 1 SS
Sybelle - 6 SS
Rotten Belle - 4 SS
Punk Zombie x2 - 10 SS

Strategies:
both Assasinate

no Schemes

We made two mistakes, one was chosing to play on 4' x 4' board, the other was not picking any schemes. We ended up spending most of the time trying to get into position, then, as we both were very cautious hardly managed to make any damage.

There were a few nice moments, mainly the ice gamins taking out the grave spirit, then slowly taking out Sybelle; the belle luring the acolyte off a cliff, that plunging into the deep.

Seamus and Rasputina were too afraid to get close to each other, instead they were operating from behind their minions. 'Tina dropping pillars, keeping the punk zombies busy with them, Seamus shooting everything that got past sybelle.

After 6 turns the game ended with 0-0 VPs on both sides. Note to self: next time play on a 3'square board, get schemes and be more aggressive.

Bloody Parasol...

2010-04-05T23:00:00.048+01:00

I have finished painting the second Belle. Including the freehand on the parasol and the fishnet gloves. It certainly was a good experiment, but hell I won't paint small fiddely bits for a while that's for sure!

I have decided on the fishnets in the end, even if they don't look grand, but the mini just looked odd without it. The parasol took me quite an effort and still not perfectly finished, but I want to leave it for a while. It just got a bit frustrating in the end when I accidentally touched the brush down on it, closing the pattern on one side. So that will need fixing, plus the grey highlight areas of the black lacing are not done at all. I will also want to go through the golden handle once again, I feel like there's not enough highlight on it. So once I feel up for the challenge again, I'll come back to this piece. And probably the first (green dress) one too, Realized how much more I could do with those eyes.

Anyway, here's some pics of the new one, and one with both of them. Enjoy.

Undead Hooker #2

2010-03-28T23:56:00.079+01:00

I have a game on Tuesday so I wanted to finish painting the Seamus box to have fully painted crew on the table, but I'm so miserably slow that I could only do one more Belle this weekend. And I haven't even finished it! But the good news is that I've got my cam and made time to take photos of everything I missed lately so soon all posts will have the pics uploaded.

For this belle I used the same skin tone as for the first one, but the dress is now red/black so it matches up a lot better. After I have done the first red layer on the dress I thought that it needed something more and soon I decided on making it stripy. Black and red is a classic chaotic combination, also black covers the red without any mess underneath, so it seemed to be the easiest way to go. I'm really happy with the result. In fact it gave me the courage to try some freehand on the parasol. That I did not have time for, however, so next time...

So Ive got a mini with red/black dress and parasol, usual leather stiletto boots and gloves and stocking that I don't know what to do with. I tried to paint them kinda transparent like irl. I wasn't happy with my take on transparent (it's just simply crap) so I went for all or nothing and experimentally painted fishnet pattern on the stocking. I will still have to decide if I like it or not, so I didn't do the same with the gloves just yet.

The parts I'm definitely happy with are the face, the dress, the parasol's cane and its nmm handle. The boots and the hair are ok, tho could be better. The scarf is absolute crap but hopefully the other details will take the attention and it can go unnoticed. :P

All in all I'm happy so far, there are a few lines to be tidied on the dress and of course the scAARRRf, plus have to make a decision about the fishnets. Should finish it over the week and then I'll pop it on CMON to see if I went horribly wrong with the piece or not. ^^

More Malifaux

2010-03-21T21:28:00.004Z

I gave this whole painting thing a second thought and started painting my Belles aka 'Undead Hookers'.

I chose them because they are good practice for Bete Noire and because it's a lot more likely that I use them than Bete (or Mindless Zombies as I want to play with Seamus for now). So the new schedule is Rotten Belles, Madame Sybelle, Bete Noire and Seamus. But I will probably change my mind fifteen times before I actually get there...

Anyway, I have one Belle finished, the other two are waiting for the brush. As this was the first one I didn't quite know what colour I should paint the skin to. The ones on the featured pictures are too alive for my taste, so I tried a light, pale, slightly greenish tone. It did look very good until I painted the dress dark green. I should have thought that two greens won't go well together. Now it looks rather sickly yellow. I will however keep this skin tone for the others as they will have different coloured dresses, so it should work fine. I made the bases for the whole crew already, but they will obviously need the finishing touches once the painted minis are on them and I want to do them all together, so this will stay as it is now.

I also re-painted one Hanged model cause I couldn't bear looking at them like that. Still not perfect but getting there. The paint is still only reasonably thick on it (tho it is already more than what I like) so I will try the other one as well. If I can manage that at least as good as this then I won't need to buy new ones after all. :)

The last thing I busied myself with was drawing some sketches for converting the Mindless Zombies. There are only three sculpts but I will need at least twice as many of them once I start playing Nicodem. Just the sketch for now, I will make a separate post when I start converting them.

First Malifaux minis painted

2010-03-14T21:31:00.009Z

As promised to my self I started painting my Resurrectionists for Malifaux. I picked the 'spirit' models first as I had something in mind for them (namely the Hanged and the Grave Spirit).
Much to my disappointment the Hanged turned out to be probably the worst minis I've ever painted so far. I wanted to use very muted colours for the clothes with the rope kind of 'burning' around them. The result is a couple of dudes probably found guilty in committing fashion crime and punished to death by hanging with psychedelic orange rope. They were meant to be experimental but not this much. Probably I'll buy a new blister and paint them again and these can be converted and re-painted to hang on the Hanging Tree I'm working on.

After this little accident, I would call it, I needed something to lift my spirits. Something easy to paint but still attractive. So I dumped the original idea of the Mindless Dead and did the Grave Spirit instead. Straightforward piece, i made a good base for it and I had the simple but attractive colours in mind already. It probably looked slightly better before I attempted to make osl on it but I just couldn't resist... This is where I always go wrong. Just cannot wait with my bloody ideas. Anyway, I am happy with it, the bronze helmet turned out great, the tombstone is as good as I wanted it (apart from the fingerprint on the back that stayed hidden in the putty until the basecoat went on it), and the gradient is good enough (from me that is).

Now at least I know that I have to be patient with the rest of them and plan well, don't just jump into any kind of crazy ideas as I did now. I'm not gonna paint the masters just yet so next I'll go for Bete Noire and then probably the mindless dead. I still have a lot of sculpting to do such as the bases for the Necropunks and for the entire Undertaker's Lot crew and several counters and markers, but basically I have everything to play, I 'just' have to paint the crews so that's gonna be first priority for now.

Back on line

2010-03-10T22:35:00.001Z

It's been two long months since I last posted anything here (or been on the net at all as a matter of fact). In this time I have moved flat and went on holiday. I hardly had any free time for doing anything hobby wise but I managed to base some minis and got some new stuff in, including a beautiful sculpt from Werner Klocke (Freeboter Miniatures) and one figure from Artefactory. I will be back on the weekend with pictures and will start painting my Resurrectionists in several waves, probably starting with The Hanged and Mindless Zombies.

Nicodem convert finished + some Totems

2010-01-10T23:55:00.009Z

After I let the putty cure all day yesterday I could finish Nicodem today. The lantern got two bars on the sides and an extra rim on the base and I completed Nico's hand.
I am not perfectly satisfied with the lantern, next time I should probably make it separately from the arm as sculpting something hanging in the air is a bit difficult and that shows up on the piece. Not detailed enough and a bit rough on the surfaces. The hand however is very good, better than I expected from me in fact, but the whole work will really only show up after painting.

Now that he's done I wanted to make his totems - the Vultures. Originally there is only one sculpt but he can field two of them in the same time. Although I love the original sculpt I don't want to have two of them looking the exact same so I used the one from the graveyard accessory set for the second one. That is by the way the same sculpt as the one on his arm and signifcantly smaller then the totem piece so I had to mount it on something. Fortunately I have some gremlins put aside that I only bought because they look fun to paint. Them gremlins come with little piglets that look like the perfect meal for a vulture. So I picked one and tried to dissect it a bit around the belly shoving up some ribs and bowels. I also made a hole in one of the eye-sockets to play on the general idea about the evergreen relationship of a beak and an eyeball.

The last piece I have worked on this weekend is the Grave Spirit - an other Totem for the Resurrectionists. The mini is pretty straightforward, fits the base perfectly so I only added some rocks around to fill out all the space and a gravestone for the background.

The stone reads 'Philip Tombers.' He is a key character of the Earthlings history in Malifaux. A student archeologist wandering in the world of Malifaux following his dead mentor's notes. He read the notes but the knowledge drove him crazy and brought his death in the end as he ended up in an asylum from where he was kidnapped and killed in the process. And still, that knowledge was not entirely lost, his tomb was robbed, the arcanist Rasputina putting her hands on his -and his mentor's- journal and Seamus resurrecting his remaining and most precious part: his head. For the stories download Wyrd Chronicles from the Wyrd website. Follow Mr Tombers' Head's tweets.

Nicodem grows a hand

2010-01-08T23:02:00.038Z

My better half is out with colleagues so I got a quiet night in. :) Therefore I carried on with Nico's right arm.

I cut off most of what I had done on the lantern and redesigned it a bit. I didn't want to go for a hexagonal moroccan style lantern as first thought I would so I looked around on the net a bit and decided on a gas-lamp design. Apart from this I amended the handle piece so that it was in the right position and built up the hand as well. The lantern is missing some parts and Nicodem has no thumb yet, but I'll finish these last bits when this layer cured.

I also found this great weblog: TableTop Geeks. These guys have built a superb folding gaming table with modular terrain boards. Tho it is still a work in progress it is an awesome project, definitely worth checking out.

On a sidenote: they also have a page for Malifaux downloads including trigger sheets, reference cards and whatnot.

New year, new Nicodem

2010-01-03T23:51:00.009Z

Back on the Wyrd Forum I saw a very nice conversion for Nicodem, the undertaker. Originally Nico has a vulture resting on his right arm. AntiZombie took the bird off and gave him a lantern (see thread here). As much as I like the vulture I think the lantern suits the mini more, so I stole the idea.

The original mini and AntiZombie's version:

First I cleaned and filed the mini, then drilled two holes in the body where the right arm should join. I needed two holes because I wanted to use two pieces of wire twisted around one another to give a better foundation for the putty. In the same time I didn't want to make it too fat nor too weak so I used a thin and a thicker piece.

I also wanted to save my self the pain of trying to sculpt the handle of the lantern out of putty so I bent the end part of the thinner wire for that purpose.

After this I tried to cut and shape the wires to the size and positure of the arm, checking them on the mini every now and then.

I saw that the lantern piece was left too long so I doubled it up. This also made it thicker so I wont waste putty on it and it gives a firm frame. When all was set and ready I glued the wire on to the body and started to build up the arm.

Unfortunately the camera didn't want to focus on the green so the sculpted parts are slightly blurry. I mainly followed the shape of the original metal piece. However that has a heavy leather hawking glove on (it wouldnt do much good to your favourite jacket to let vultures sit on them, would it?) that is obviously not needed for handling a lantern so I tried to keep the same style as on the left arm: jacket's cuff folded back with long shirt hanging out.

Now I need to wait for the putty to dry before I can carry on with it. Having a second look I noticed that the lantern is somewhat too small and the handle is a bit too low compared to the hand (or where the hand will be anyway) so I will have to do something with that. I might make the handle into an 8 shape so the upper circle will fit in the hand properly. So much about not sculpting the handle... ¬.¬

Hanging Tree #3

2010-01-03T23:13:00.014Z

I also carried on making the Hanging Tree by sculpting up the trunk. I can already see that this plasticlay won't work out well. It dries very easily and probably shrinks so it will crack on the wire.

Another long weekend - and a lot of progress

2010-01-03T22:55:00.005Z

This weekend I didn't start painting a new mini yet, but assembled and cleaned all my Resurrectionists for Malifaux instead. All except one: Seamus the mad hatter. I dont think I'll have time to paint anything for a while and even if I would, I'd need some place to prime them. So not for at least two more weeks when I'm moving in to the new flat.

Some pics of the cleaned and assembled (or in some cases ready to be assembled) minis:

Mortimer the Gravedigger and 3 Necropunks

Punk Zombies

Rotten Belles and Madame Sybelle

The Resurrectionist Totems

Copycat Killer, Zombie Chihuahua, Vulture and the Grave Spirit

I cant wait to paint them. :D

Marco Colombo finished! ...well... for now

2009-12-28T20:18:00.027Z

I tried to make use of having one more day left before going back to work and finished painting Marco Colombo. Or at least I have done all I could at the moment...
I believe I have reached the table top quality I aimed for, though it took a lot longer then it should have. Hopefully with more painting I'll get quicker. Any way I am happy I have done it this year, now I can concentrate on moving and then I'll have more space and hopefully time to fiddle with them minis.

Some old stuff

2009-12-27T21:25:00.046Z

Christmas over, I'm back from holiday and I have not come with hands empty. I brought some of my old minis back with me and now I took photos of them.
Mind you these minis are 4-5 , some even 6-7 years old. The pics in order: Cynwall Azure Hunter from Rackham; some kind of elven ranger from Mage Knight Metal; Cynwall Selsym Warrior from Rackham front and shield view; Cynwall Asadar from Rackham front and rear view; Cynwall Construct original head, body and base built from greenstuff - I made this mini for Cadwallon, it was the automaton familiar for my character - unfortunately it is very badly painted, but I wish to do it again; two goblins from my Bloodbowl team, both converted, originally from Rackham; and on the last picture all of them standing on a home made terrain element based on Rackham's studio piece. As it is quite obvious I was really fond of Rackham minis, however I never got the skills to paint them up properly, which is why most people started to dislike them. The sculpts are just too amazing for an average or bad paint job. Fortunately I stocked up before they stopped molding the metals so as soon as I feel ready for the challenge I'll start painting all the minis I have from them.

Christmas mayhem & Hanging Tree #2

2009-12-13T23:48:00.004Z

I'm completely stuck with the mini. I just don't know what to do with the bloody feathers. I tried quite a few colours and some gradients from black to colour, white to colour, color to colour but nothing seems right. :(
As I couldn't paint I just did a little work on the Hanging Tree: mounted it on a 50mm base so that I can use it for the game. The base arrived with all the stuff from Wyrd, the minis look awesome as always, but I won't touch them 'till I finish painting MC. This is not likely to happen this year as it is almost Christmas already, I have lots of work to do and only 3 days before I go on holiday. Maybe I'll take the mini and the paints with me...

A few pics on the tree wip:

Steampunk Oxford and RM disaster

2009-12-10T21:28:00.003Z

I went to Oxford yesterday with a friend to see The Steampunk Exhibition. My girlfriend found the exhibition advertised on the BBC website saying 'something like those toys you play with'. :D
Very nice displays, loads of inspiration and the atmosphere of 'something old, yet excitingly new' awaits the visitors. I won't write a review - there's dozens on the web already, and anyway, go and see for your self, - but I can tell it is definately worth it.

The cherry on the top was a screening later on in the evening.

Programme:

Two short films:

The Mysterious Geographic Explorations of Jasper Morello - a very interesting and stylish mixed technic animation

A Gentlemen's Duel - a short, funny 3D animation

The movie (Misty-mation as they called it,) The Fabulous World of Jules Verne - an interesting film tho a bit slow for the mind trained on modern cinema.

All in all it was lots of fun and a good charge of ideas for terrain pieces, themes, etc. for Malifaux.

And on my arrival back home I've found a note from Royal Mail saying that a bunch of little critters are roaming around in the Post Office, terrorizing staff and customers alike, so they would be most grateful if I could go and take them away...

( My order has arrived :) )

Gems and glasses

2009-12-07T00:39:00.003Z

This week I only wanted to paint the Gems and the lenses of the spyglass but I got carried away and cleaned up a lot of little things.
The mini is almost ready, but now I dont know what to do with the feathers and the hilt of the sword. I'll try I few coulours in photoshop before I paint them. The lamp is still amazing, it's my new 'best spent £20 ever' item.

Hanging Tree

2009-11-29T22:12:00.007Z

My eyes decided that I don't want to paint any more today, so I had to find something else to do. I wanted to make some terrain elements for Malifaux anyway, so I started with a Hanging Tree.
This is only the wire frame, I will need to mount it on a base and then build up the shape and texture but I am still waiting for the bases to arrive so that I will leave for later.

A new lamp and NMM attempt

2009-11-29T21:46:00.131Z

I bought a nice new lamp during the week. I didn't actually realize how bad the spotlight I used was until I tried the new one. It is a halogenic magnifying lamp.
Tho the magnifier is a bit creepy and difficult to work with, It is good to stop every now and then and have a look at the mini under it. Fortunately it can be used as just anormal lamp with the lens-cap on. The light it gives is really good, feels like painting in daylight and It's almost not heating at all whereas the spot was blinding and hot.

Shiny new lamp set up, spirit's high, time to get on with painting the metallic parts as a next step. To be honest I never really liked metallic paints so I always tried to avoid leaving any metal surface on my minis. Having played mainly W40k with Tau this wasn't very difficult. If you have a look at the original plan I made for Marco Colombo, you will see that there are only a few golden areas, mainly thin edges and studs. So, although I wasn't planning to, seeing other painter's work I just couldn't resist trying to paint NMM on this mini.

When I started playing Confrontation I just couldn't put myself up to painting any of Rackham's beautiful minis. They simply looked too good to ruin them with average quality painting. (I think this is what put most people off from playing Confrontation / Rag-Narok.) There were only a few cynwall elves I painted and that was the first (and last until now) time I tried to paint nmm. But that was years ago, since that I realized that I have to paint some trash to progress. :D

I am, unfortunately, not good at blending yet, so it is not half as good as the ones that have given me the inspiration, but I'm still pleased with the result. If I never do anything worse than this, I'll be one happy man.

The photos are a lot better quality too, thanks to the new lamp. :)

Cleaning up

2009-11-21T21:09:00.003Z

I finally got down to painting today. I cleaned up the reds of the cloak, painted the mustard-yellows of the outfit and added an extra shade of brown to the skin.
And used the rest of the brown ink for the golden-to-be areas of the armour and jewellery. For some weird reason the brown ink looks like copper on the photos and it screws up the look of the skin as well. It actually is brown tho. I am very pleased with the new paints I used for the yellows (Vallejo), will try some other colours for sure.

Still no painting

2009-11-15T17:13:00.041Z

Now this is getting embarrassing... I haven't touched that mini for a month or so. Last weekend I carried on cleaning the new ones, made some nice bases and thought a lot of a theme for them. I also bought some new ones for the same faction from a gaming shop (apparently the only one that sells this range in London). And today I and a friend of mine just couldn't resist trying out the game with the bare metal minis and some counters.

Kinda funny, I started playing before I even finished painting the first mini (not counting the drybrush horror). But this is just how it goes. I swear not to buy any more stuff until I finish the painting of what I already have and then I just leave them on the shelf, buy new ones, swear not to buy any more... rinse, repeat.

But at least I know that I've found an amazing game that I enjoy very much.

A little work and a little fun

2009-10-25T19:56:00.024Z

My rulebook and the starter box have arrived. Absolutely no painting this weekend as I had some work to do on Friday and Saturday. Today I was just unwrapping the new stuff and cleaning the minis. Also started to read the book as I am intrigued by the diceless system and love the fluff.

And I already know that I won't spend Halloween painting either, so finishing even one mini will take ages... as usual.

Some painting + falling in love with new minis

2009-10-18T21:35:00.074+01:00

Unfortunately I only have time to paint on weekends. On Saturday I did the first layers of skin, some reds and blacks. A bit random but I don't really remember how I used to do this so now I just go for what I feel like.
Today I tried some shading on the skin and on the cloak, and painted up some of the green stuffed base. It's far from ready yet, but hey, at least its getting there. :)

There is quite a lot to practice. There is absolutely no blending on the cloak, looks as if it was drybrushed. :( And also made a huge mistake by using black for the darker shades of red. But right after the brush touched the mini I realized, I should have used green. My arts teacher would most probably kick my arse for this... Oh well, next time.

A couple of weeks ago I was looking around on the web and I've found a shiny new game that seems perfect for my taste. Highly tactic oriented skirmish game with reasonably sized teams (not armies of 100 minis). The style is a complete mixture of western, victorian-horror, steampunk and whatnot. The minis are awesome and the background is original. The name is 'Malifaux' from a small American company: Wyrd. I remember seeing their stylish minis some time back but now they made a game for them, so I could not resist ordering a rulebook and a starter box.

More next week, hope RM won't lose my parcel...

Painting attempt #2

2009-10-10T10:21:00.070+01:00

Time to get on with painting again. I need a piece that has enough details on it to practice the fiddly parts and also big surfaces to incrase my paint control skills.

The mini I picked to paint is Marco Colombo from Games Workshop, an explorer of the empire (I think... to be honest I was never really into the world of Warhammer Fantasy). He has a nice rippled cloak to practice shading plain colours, a small piece of armour with some ornaments and a spyglass for different nmm projects and some bits and bobs to make the mini really interesting. I think it will be a lot of fun to paint this piece.

I already cleaned and basecoated it back then before I put it away so I won't need to bother with spraying in my flat. However I did not make a nice scene for him but just simply glued the mini on a plain gw plastic base so now I have to struggle making a thin layer of green stuff under his feet. While waiting for the putty to dry I'm making a rough plan of the colours I will use.

I've found this picture somewhere on google, this gave me the main idea for the colours but I wanted black armour-plates with golden inserts and studs.

To be continued...

First steps

2009-10-04T20:10:00.037+01:00

On my return to England I took a few minis with me as well as all my old paints and brushes and some of my tools. Unfortunately half the paints were dry or at least too thick so I had to get rid of them. :(

The miniatures are some random orcs and goblins from Rackham I wanted to convert for my Blood Bowl team, a couple of Ral-Partha monsters, a few more random pieces from Rackham and a GW mini (Marco Colombo) I got as a present from a friend. I'll try to paint some of these before I start painting any of those I will possibly field.

The first one I chose was a crystal/ice-elemental from Ral-Partha that seemed simple enough to finish it quickly with some easy drybrushing and still have an acceptable result.

Clearly, I was wrong.

Painting minies required a lot more patience and focus then I remembered. But no despair, I already picked an other one to paint, paying more attention to the painting part this time.

The shelf

2009-10-03T00:00:00.002+01:00

Not so long ago I visited my parents in the old family house for the first time in years. After the usual hugging around, having a little talk with every one and tucking down the 4-course dinner my mum cooked for me, I retired to my old room.

Everything was pretty much the same as when I moved out. The bed that suddenly seemed way too small; the desk full of colourful stains and doodles, with comic books and scrap papers hanging out of its drawers; the ever so comfortable armchair that I fell asleep in many times while reading a good book overnight; the baggy clothes that make me smile everytime I open the wardrobe; and the bookshelves filled with everything that didn't fit in the rest of the room. All the things just as I left them, if not a little cleaner and less messy, thanks to the caring hands of my mother.

Exept the one bookshelf in the corner of the room.

The one bookshelf not even my mother touched however dusty it became over time.
A bookshelf filled with tiny statues, houses and trees and mountains Heroes fighting monsters in dungeons, armies battleing through forests, fields and villages, and warriors, thieves and wizards sharing their adventures in taverns. All like dozens of tales frozen in time, sealed by a misty layer of dust.

Memories of a long gone hobby, of endless nights of modelling and painting, of days spent with friends in game clubs rolling - and, on occasion, cursing - the dice, fighting battles on the tabletop. Memories I would like to live again.

Therefore I blew the dust off that shelf, deciding to start again.

I would like to dedicate this journal to my new-old hobby, miniature painting and wargaming.