Monthly Archives: March 2020

Nesting Infinity N3 Silhouettes

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I’ve been frustrated by how to manage my silhouette markers. I’ve got the old Warsenal double-sided ones, stuffed in an empty plastic card box. The S4/S7 marker has some weak magnets in the base and marker component because together it’s just too big to conveniently pack away. I’d considered going back and doing the same to the rest of the markers, decided I’d rather do it with fresh ones, realized Warsenal doesn’t sell the double-sided ones any more, and gave up on that idea.

So, over the weekend, I got into TinkerCAD and worked out a set of markers that could fit into each other to minimize the hassle.

Started out by clustering them into base sizes and considering the volume of the “smaller” sizes as constituent parts of the “larger” ones.

The core idea was that if I wanted an S1, for example, I’d use the S1. If I wanted an S2, I’d flip the 25mm tall S1 marker over and stack the 15mm S2 marker onto it, producing the 40mm tall volume the S2 requires.

Then, assuming they’re hollow (for the smaller sizes to fit in), I iterated over a couple of wall widths that would be sturdy enough but also allow for the smaller base sizes to fit inside. Settled on 4mm wide, but with a 3mm deep x 2mm wide lip. The bottom/top of each was also 3mm, except for the top of the S5, which had to have an additional ring to accommodate the S6 marker. When in doubt, I erred on the side of thickness.

I could have shaved the internal volume of the S5 a bit more aggressively, maybe, but to no point. Although the only wonky thing is that the S1+S2 markers don’t fit perfectly into the S3+S5, there’s no way I could have gotten them to fit perfectly: the base and top would have had to be 2.5mm thick on the S3 & S5, and I think it would have been too risky for the S5. Everything overall does fit into the S4+S7, though, which was the whole point of the exercise.

Although I’m printing off a few copies for folks for a few bucks, I also put the STLs up on Cults for $5.

Here’s the final product. I’m extremely pleased with the results.

Patches

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Infinity has a strong patch culture. Corvus Belli includes several patches in each of their tournament kits, every Real Event has its own patch, and a number of metas and individuals have their own patches.

I’ve had a number of patches produced over the past year. I’m proud of them. Two of them, the ODD patches, were commissioned, but I designed the other two myself if GIMP. These were then produced via The/Studio.

Old Dominion Disagreement 2019 patch

I had a lot of trouble getting the first ODD logo designed. I’d had in mind the Seal of VIrginia, but Infinity-fied. The person I worked with couldn’t be bothered to look at the reference materials, though, so I ended up having to half-assed copy & paste art from some dossiers and saying “make it look like this” so of course, they just traced over that.

Old Dominion 2020 Patch

For this year’s ODD, I reached out to someone who’s designed a number of patches for the Infinity community, Tim Toolen. Minimal adjustments as we went and ended up with what I think is a great design for the patch.

Mid-Atlantic Infinity Weakest Link patch

My first Rumble on Rt 66 was last year, and I was repping Virginia with the legendary Myomer and highly ranked Wattewerfer. I can hang, but I’m not in their tier of play at all. Similarly, of my Maryland friends, Top-10 players Cobraprime and Masterofmelee and… Psybilliah, who also can hang but is in a different tier.

So, we made this patch to demonstrate ownership of our (relatively) weak play.

Beltway Bandit patch

The DMV area has three major Infinity tournaments, now: ODD in February, NOVA Open in September, and Baltimore Brawl in November. I thought it’d be fun to reflect that, so I designed this patch to give to everyone who participated in all three events. For those unfamiliar, this is based on the 495 Capital Beltway sign that graces the beltway that surrounds Washington, DC.

The Dirty Deutsch patch

We have a German stationed here and, while on a tear suggested that the Anaconda is an excellent source of unexpected smoke. That one could cunningly sacrifice an Anaconda to pull of an MSV2 smoke trick. “They never see it coming,” he declared. We declared such a maneuver “Pulling a Dirty Deutsch” and that anyone who performed or was on the receiving end of such a feat would be given a patch commemorating such a ridiculous stratagem. (Fact: it’s been done twice, in both cases to the same person. “The second time, you definitely see it coming,” he says.)

Self-Portrait

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Someone pointed out that the Metal Oak Casting Studios’ Futuretech Specialist looked a lot like me, so as a raging narcissist, I picked up a couple and painted one as an HVT up for the ODD prize pool.

It Came from the Lightbox: Malifaux Arcanists

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I picked up some M3E models late last year and speedpainted them. They’re not worth getting too excited about, but they came out alright. The fire effects came out pretty well, I think. Of course, I’ve played the game once….

2019 Year in Review

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I actually started this in January, I swear!

Weirdly, because WP pushed a theme update that prepends the featured image above the post and since I’ve been doing that manually for, like, years, all of my posts look like a lunatic made them now and that’s been irrationally discouraging. Also, boy-howdy is uploading photos via the WordPress app anything less than incredibly unreliable and, as a result, frustrating. I blame those facts on my falling off on posting here. I need to channel my frustration with Facebook and the active degrading effect it’s having on our democracy into motivation to post here more.

I played a wagonload of Infinity this year but, despite it being a second year of Infinity for me, I painted hardly any Infinity models. Looking back: I came very close to not painting any at all.

Year in Review

January was preoccupied with planning for The Old Dominion Disagreement, a tournament I organized and ran in February. It was kind of a big deal: a 50 person tournament with $1,500 to spend on prizes, patches, food, etc. It was the first time I’d done something quite so large and intense. It was a success: we’re actually a Satellite in 2020 and, as I write this, I’m mostly thinking about the next one in, uh, a month. I also became a Warcor the literal week of the tournament, which was fortuitous timing.

I also finished painting up my Adeptus Titanicus. I’m really happy with how they came out, but have yet to play the game a single time.

February saw little action: I got the flu at ODD, also there was our now-annual vacation to Playa del Carmen.

March saw a LOT of activity with building minis. I also got started on painting up Monsterpocalypse, which is a fun game that I haven’t played in months.

April & May were more of the same: painting Monsterpocalypse. In April, I traveled to Albuquerque for the first time since leaving Kemtah to play in my first Rumble on Rt 66. It was, of course, an enormous blast and I’m going back this year.

In June, I started painting up a new Infinity table. I love my Warsenal table, but it. is. a. bitch. to transport, setup, and break down. I’m quite pleased with how Tanuki Town came out: I think it looks great, but also vastly more practical than Xi Guan. I also won my first ITS up in Hagerstown, and traveled to Ohio for friend Lee’s Rustbelt Ruckus (which is now also a Satellite tournament and feels like a sister event to the ODD).

July – more Tanuki Town painting. I spent 2+ months on that thing.

August – finished Tanuki Town and painted up all of the Warcry starter box (minus the Untamed Beasts I sold off). I also painted up all of Minimoto for Bushido. There was, of course, NOVA, where I played Infinity all weekend long.

September & October – I painted some Bushido Ronin, as well as a table for Bushido. If you’re keeping track, that’s 3 tables in 4 months. I also started painting up Malifaux, for the heck of it.

In November, I finished painting up 2 masters & their 3E available models for Malifaux (Kaeris & Mei Feng). Also, envious of a couple of folks I know with the same, I bought an LCD SLA printer.

December saw the first actual Infinity models of the year, as I got a start on painting Combined Army. I also screwed up with the printer a lot, but I did manage to paint something I’d printed which felt like a big milestone.

Hobby Charts

These remain incredibly interesting and motivating to me, even if I don’t have the gumption to type out my thoughts about them.

I’ve got a full ten years’ worth of data now, which I think is really cool.

This is a GREAT painting-to-building ratio!

Goals

My 2019 goals were the standard three. “I feel less driven to do specific things.  It’s hard for me to project what I’ll be working on 6 months from now, and the games I’m playing don’t really call for that.    I’m going to leave the standard three in place for 2019, but that’s it. “

  • Finish, Paint – Success. I painted a lot of armies for a lot of games. I took on discrete, achievable projects and completed them. Hell yeah!
  • Compete – Success. I did a fair amount of traveling for Infinity, and I had a blast doing it.

For 2020,

  • Finish
  • Paint
  • Compete
  • Backlog – I’ve maintained a ratio of model spend vs. the cost of my painted models for several years now, with the intent of keeping the spend at <= what I’m painting. I’ve done a very bad job of doing that… but I’ve painted 2-3x times as much as I’ve picked up since November and if I can keep things where they are, that’d be great.
  • Blacklog (Part 2) – I’m very close to being able to say that every model I have bought in 2020 I have painted. I don’t expect that state to persist but I’d like to achieve it.
  • Print – In the past few months, I’ve picked up both a filament and resin printer. I’ve been printing stuff with them; it’d be cool if I kept that up.
  • Rumble Ready – This is a bit of a cheat, but late in 2019 I decided I was going to paint a new army to take to Rumble on Rt 66 in April. I achieved that earlier last week, but at the top of the year it was a goal so I’m listing it.