This’ll be my last Battletech batch for a while; getting a little burned out on them.
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Yearly Archives: 2021
It Came from the Lightbox: Aeronautica Imperialis
Who knows if I’ll ever get to play the game, but I do enjoy painting Aeronautica Imperialis.
I felt obligated to paint up the Adeptus Astartes aircraft the same way I’ve been painting my Crimson Fists. I’m very pleased with the results, but it does mean that I couldn’t use the basecoat/oil wash approach I’ve been using for the other AI models.
I was able to do that with the Arvus, though. Only complaint with these guys: I got too excited about wrapping them up I forgot to put some decals on them.
It took a goddamn month for Forgeworld to ship the ground assets I’d preordered but I’ve got a whole post about how utter crap GW/FW has been about shipping well and above any sort of logistical challenges posed by the ongoing pandemic that I need to write up.
I also banged out some ground assets for my Navy/Guard and Tau, using the quick and dirty approaches I used on their respective aircraft.
It Came from the Lightbox: More Battletech
Not really following official color schemes here, just doing what I felt like. So: the Clan Invasion ‘mechs with my Crimson Fist color scheme.
Wolf’s Dragoons were painted red. That’s close to the right color scheme? The green canopies feel great.
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Adeptus Titanicus Dice Tray
I knocked together a little dice tray for Adeptus Titanicus last month that I’m pretty satisfied with. I really enjoy doing stuff like this.
Because the provenance of the various images used for the slots is all over the dang place I’m not going to publish this to Cults but I’m sure I could make it available somehow if someone wanted a copy.
Monsterpocalypse Storage
I should have posted about this back in March (when I set the thing up) or a month ago (when the Kickstarter was running), but I’m lazy.
As much as I dislike Privateer, I actually like Monsterpocalypse a fair amount. I’m a sucker for the subject matter, and the game itself is a fun little thing. But: if you’re not doing foam, it’s kind of a bastard to store and transport because everything is on these clear acrylic bases.
The clear bases make sense when you consider how much of a boardgame the thing is and how you really do need to be able to see beneath the model (though I’m not sorry that the Mythic version has dumped it in favor of just normal plastic bases). Clear acrylic that’s only 3mm thick isn’t exactly conducive to magnetization.
So, I did what I did for Aeronautica Imperialis: I rigged up slots for the monsters and buildings to rest in.
They’re designed to rest inside of 11L Really Useful Boxes. I wasn’t able to track these down without just having to order them from RUB directly, but they had the best length x width for fitting a useful number of bases with a useful amount of space around each of them and the best height to be tall enough for these models without being too tall. They also come in regular and XL versions: same footprint but 91mm and 125mm deep internally, which further helps with the tall enough but not too tall requirement.
(I spent a lot of time noodling through the dimensions of their boxes.)
The slots are tall enough that nothing should shift, short of tossing the thing down the stairs or just shaking the dang thing.
I’ve also got some MDF apartment buildings from Phalanx Consortium (that are really great, if only because they were exponentially easier to paint than any other MonPoc building), so I put together little spacers for those to rest in because I didn’t bother mounting them to acrylic bases.
I haven’t done these for the minions, yet. I really should, and will likely get around to it before Mythic’s actually shipped anything. Foam works pretty well for them, since the 1″ foam slots hold the 30mm wide bases pretty snugly without grinding up against the models themselves… but why not? might as well make everything consistent.
I’ve published these to Cults: Monsterpocalypse Spacers.
It Came from the Lightbox: More Kryptboyz
I painted up a few more of my Orcs back in October (and forgot to post about them). This puts me at pretty close to having 100% of the Orcs I’ve bought at fully painted: I think everything’s done except a second, converted Mawkrusha (built from a Terrorgheist and a Savage Orc Boss) and 10 Boar Riders. I’m a little burnt out from painting these guys, so that’s likely going to stay that way for the foreseeable future.
Workbench
I don’t know why I’m painting up the Clan Invasion mechs as Crimson Fists, but I am. I’m not in love with it, and probably won’t paint more clan mechs this way.
It Came from the Lightbox: Battletech
I finished up the Battletech: A Game of Armored Combat box this weekend. I’m pretty happy with it, but I do have some thoughts.
The plan had always been to tackle these the way I blew through my Aeronautica Imperialis: just basecoat with the main color, oil wash, done. I decided to complicate it with edge highlights, and I think that was really effective and even went in and did points of an even lighter color on the corders.
Where things went a little south, though, was with the oil wash. On a whim I used a bottle of Mig Dark Brown Wash for Green Vehicles instead of making my own with oils and mineral spirits. I’d bought the bottle at a Historicon ages ago but had never used it. The results are fine but I don’t love them. The result’s a lot darker than I’d prefer, and it made it difficult to streak and filter with it. Lesson learned.
I also apparently had some issues varnishing sufficiently post-decals. You can see where parts of the decals came up; in some ways that’s fine but it’s notable.
I’ve got a bunch more Clanner mechs, but no Inner Sphere mechs to paint. They’re in the backlog.
600 Days of Pandemic Hobby
I hit 600 days* of lockdown last week, so I decided to put everything I painted during that time out on the table.
This isn’t quite 1 model/day, but it’s very, very close to it… and there are some chunky guys in there, so I feel like it counts. 2 AoS armies (3 if you count the Skaven I painted for Saga), 1 40K, Bushido, AT, Malifaux, at least 1 300 point Infinity list, 3 AI armies, an unreasonable amount of BFG, 2-3 Necromunda gangs, and a Heavy Gear army. So much stuff!
I’ll note, because I have to say it somewhere (and nobody reads this thing anyway): I do think it’s pretty nuts that people are doing Historicon this year. Me telling someone that I think they’re crazy isn’t going to accomplish anything but here, in this void: yikes. That’s cuckoo bananas.
* There some brief moments of starting to re-engage before delta hit.