Author Archives: Rushputin

About Rushputin

I've been painting minis for 30 years, and this is my hobby blog!

Damage Assessment

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In the end, things were worse than I’d have liked, but much better than they could have been.  Given that I had something like 23 models on the tray: only 3 were damaged (so far as I can tell).  That’s fabulous.

The worst was probably the Tsylong/Lunokhod – that stupid fender was a pain to get on there, and the fin in the back even harder.  I’m not surprised those went, and I guess I need to be thankful that only one fender broke.

The second worst is probably the Salyut: those antenna sucked to get on there, and although the antenna in the middle looked like it snapped, it was only bent.  The paint split along the bend, but that’s all.

The least extreme but most troubling was the Iguana. There’s a paint chip on his shoulder and his arm is extremely loose.  Shifting him jiggles it.  I need to decide if I want to pull it out and reglue it or just wait for it to come off before repairing it.  Regardless, I probably need to just keep in in the display case from now on.

I’ve already started gluing the remotes back together.  Hopefully that last fin doesn’t give me too much trouble.

Baltimore Brawl IV

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High off of a great NOVA Infinity experience, I was pretty hyped for the Baltimore Brawl.  It was a great day of Infinity, though it did end on kind of a rough note.

The Brawl was a single-day, four game event at Games N Stuff in Glen Burnie.  I’ve heard lots of great things about GNS as a store, but had never been able to make it up there before.

Google Maps suggested it’d be between an hour and a half and two to get up there, so I left early; unfortunately, I’d mixed up setup times with check-in times and Google was overly pessimistic about the travel time, which meant I got there a good hour and a half or so earlier than I needed to.  Chatting outside the store wasn’t a bad way to spend the morning, but I wouldn’t have regretted an extra hour’s sleep.

These were my lists:

  • List A – Frontline, Acquisition, Supplies
  • List B – Firefight

I wanted to run the Kriza, but that sucker is so expensive the next thing I knew I was looking at 11 order lists, and at that point it made sense to dial it in to a single, full group.  I don’t think I like running things so tight; you have less wiggle room, and if there’s one thing I need, it’s wiggle room.  I think my List B shook out to be just a bad list,

Game 1 was against Justin (J-Skewers)’s Qapu Khalqi.  I had a great time playing with Justin, but every. single. roll. went my way.  When nothing goes wrong, that means everything’s going wrong for your opponent, and having been on the other end of that, I felt pretty bad for him.  It didn’t really phase him at all, though.  I won this 9-0 without losing a single model.

The most notable moment for me was using the Tsyklon to fire a Pitcher next to Justin’s hacker and then using the Interventor to Isolate, then incapacitate her.  I also made the right call with Intelcom and revealing my Hidden Deployed Spektr to push into his sector at the bottom of turn three to eke out dominance by the skin of my teeth.

Game 2 was against John (JBear)’s Hassassin Bahram.  I got my clock cleaned pretty thoroughly: where all my rolls went my way in Game 1, they pretty much didn’t go my way in Game 2.  I also made a couple of mistakes in terms of positioning, and I made the wrong decision re: going first (which was a theme for the rest of the day).  Even though I lost this one 0-10, I had a great time, and came away learning some stuff.

Not much in the way of memorable moments about the game (besides John’s graciousness as he kicked my ass up and down the table).  I kept forgetting my Stempler Zond was knocked out.  The Kriza performed well, but wasn’t even close to closing any sort of gap.

Game 3 was against Wilson (Masterofmelee)’s Bakunin.  Wilson’s one of the top players in the world (we had a couple of those: I think four of the top twenty at the Brawl), and I’d been second guessing this list since I made it, I didn’t expect to do well in the match.  I didn’t, but I do think I held my own.  I definitely goofed by choosing  to not go first. He knocked my teeth in in the first turn, but I was able to bounce back, hold my ground, and squeeze out a couple of OP.  Even though I lost this one 2-9, I’m proud of my performance.

In turn one, Wilson used his Morlocks to throw smoke and tear ass down the edge of the board and cover the approach of his Überfallkommando, who nuked my Interventor Lt and Iguana before I knew what was happening, so I started the game in Loss of Lieutenant.   After that, though, Kriza Boracs was able to hold the line, my Morans were able to defend themselves against the Morlocks and Zeroes sent against them.  What appeared to be an Intruder turned out to be my one specialist: the Bandit Hacker, who was able to nail both Classifieds.

Game 4 was against Chris(?) (Zah90)’s vanilla Haqqislam.  This game was brief: again, I made the wrong decision by not going first.  He had me in Retreat before my first turn, which was rough, but did mean I didn’t have to wallow in my poor choices for too long.  I lost this one 0-1; he’d have likely have gotten 10 OP except he pushed too hard and had me in retreat too soon.

This wasn’t an easy game, but I handled it well, I think.  I’m not very good at this game, and when you’re not good, you’re going to have games where you just get the shit beat out of you and you can either roll with it and try to learn something from the experience (I think I did) or you can find a different game to play.

So, I was in a perfectly fine mood (three great games, one learning experience)… until he spun his open bag around and his open bag front swept across my entire army tray.  It’s been a couple of days, and just thinking about it now makes my adrenaline race.  I still don’t know the full extent of the damage, but he definitely broke two of my S5 remotes: one of them had four pieces broken off, and another had two pieces broken off and one piece actually broken (as in what was cast as one piece is now more than one).  I don’t know what, if anything is or isn’t broken.  I put everything away as quickly as I could and sat outside counting to 10 for a while.

This sort of thing happens.  It’s happened before, it will likely happen again.  It’s never not traumatic, though, and the carelessness, the extent of it, and combined with it being done by someone with a bunch of unpainted minis (which, fairly or unfairly equates to “doesn’t give a shit about minis” in my mind) makes it really upsetting.  The last time something like this happened to my minis (my fault: I slipped and fell down the stairs carrying my Khornate Daemons), I couldn’t bear to look at them for a year and a half.  I need to psyche myself up to look at the damage.

Despite the upsetting end to the day, I had a great time.  John Junghans ran a great event, the Infinity community is really the best, healthiest game community I’ve ever experienced.  It’s tough to have a bad game of Infinity: I find losing games as or more satisfying than winning games, because I come away knowing a bit more about the game.  I can’t not point out that of four opponents, two were painted, two were unpainted and that’s something I’d love to see change: the lack of painting expectation is the greatest flaw with the game.

Anyway, I’ll definitely be back again next year.

It came from the lightbox: Shadespire Sepulchral Guard

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Of the four warbands I’ve painted for Shadespire, I’m easily the most happy with these. These specific models are why I picked up Shadespire; that they turned out the way they did makes me even happier with them.

Ironskull's Boyz

It came from the lightbox: Shadespire Ironjaws

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I’m only somewhat satisfied with these boyz: the chipping on the armor is awful, and the checks and dags aren’t as tight as I’d like.  If I had a time machine, I’d go back and leave the yellow armor untouched.

But they’re done and I’m ready to Shade some Spires.

Weekend Workbench

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A little late, but I spent this weekend wrapping up the Skylancer box for Dark Age, and getting a start on the Ironjaws and Sepulchral Guard boxes for Shadespire.

I also had a substantial order from Warsen.al show up Thursday evening.  I have to keep reminding myself that it’s not a race, and that if it takes me a month to build all this, that’s okay.

But I did start assembling some of it (the Top Down Terrain Horizon Grid buildings showed up two weeks ago, but I built the Dark Age scatter, and the small Infinity kits).

It came from the lightbox: Dark Age Forsaken

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I picked up four boxes of Dark Age Forsaken Prevailers at NOVA, and have been steadily making progress on them.

In fact: I was almost fully painted with them when I took these photos:

Just five models to go.  Of course, since then, another twelve have shown up (I’ve had to acknowledge that Warknights don’t really align with my playstyle), but they’ll get painted up rapidly, I think.

Now, getting things models together has been a rocky road.  Best case scenario, stuff is falling apart.  Worst case scenario, shit is just flat out breaking for being breathed on.

That Warknight Captain is going to run around with a bladeless hilt for the rest of his existence because that blade will. not. go. back. on.

I’m painting some Skylancers right now: one of them melted.  Literally.  Literally.  I was priming it and holding it at an angle (like you do, when you’re trying to get good coverage), and the ankles on the model just… decided that the rest of the model was too much weight and just noodled all the way over and then broke off before my eyes.  It was dramatic enough that my current theory is that there might have been some chemical reaction between the primer (Vallejo airbrush primer) and the chalky metal they use.

After some cussing, I drilled a hole up her butt, stuck a paperclip in there, and am relying on the paperclip to support her.  It’s worked out so far, as it has for the Warwind.  I ended up doing this for two of the Repentants, and I’m starting to think I need to do it for the other two.  At this point, I’m confident they’re going to fall apart.

This has had a drastic impact on my inclination to put time into these models.  I like the game, I’m starting to appreciate… if not the fluff, then the tone of the game.  But if I’m going to have to fucking fight these models to bring them to the table, I’m going to get them painted and leave it at that.

So, I’d say most of these are tabletop quality and probably not much more.  I’m pleased with the Banes, satisfied with most of the Command models, and I’m just glad to be done with the Warknights.

 

Targor

It came from the lightbox: Shadespire

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These guys were speedpainted, so there are definitely things that could use touching up, but I’m satisfied with them.  In fact, while I’m “These are OK” about the Sigmarite Steelheart’s Champions, I’m actually very pleased with how the Khornate Garrek’s Reavers turned out.  Not perfect, but striking.

Shadespire – First Impressions

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I wasn’t especially excited about Shadespire; the limited number of figures was attractive, but Games Workshop’s hyperbolic claims about it being the ULTIMATE COMPETITIVE MINIATURES GAME really turned me off.  GW doesn’t have a history of producing the most competitive, balanced games.  I’d seen some Geek & Sundry articles about it, the breathlessness of which would compel me to ask about ethics in game journalism (if doing so wasn’t a short path to demonstrating that one is an asshat).

Anyway, I picked it up on launch day, looking forward to knocking out the 8 figures in no time and being able to play it fully painted.  So: speedpainted the figures (a little bit on Sunday, Tuesday, Wednesday, mostly on Monday), and got the chance to actually play the game on Thursday.

You know what? I really liked it!

It plays insanely fast, is incredibly straightforward. I’m sure there are more competitive games out there, but there’s some decision-making that needs to go into building one’s decks and every. single. decision. matters.

The game is really easy to pick up, and scales up simply: I played a couple of games with each warband and then we doubled-down and went four player to teach the game to two other players… very smoothly.

One of the cool things about Infinity is the urgency around the game: you get three turns, not six.  If you want something done, you need to start working on it ASAP because there’s no time to screw around.  Also, with the orders system, the game is very much a resource management game: how many orders do you have, how many orders do you need, and how many orders will you have to spend to mitigate odds or compensate for them?  This is just as true of Shadespire, too: you have three turns and four actions a turn.  That’s it.  Twelve actions. 

The playstyles of the two warbands are very different; between that and the distinct objective decks, the game plays very differently between the two warbands.  The Sigmarites are playing their game, the Marauders are playing a different one.

I’m really looking forward to picking up the next two warbands: it’ll be very interesting to see how the Undead, with seven models, gets around with only four actions a turn, and I’m sure the Orks will be right up my alley.

1:72 vs. 28mm Miniatures

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Once every couple of weeks, I see someone ask about using 1:72 scaled miniatures along with their 28mm miniatures.

This isn’t a dumb question: I’ve certainly asked it myself! There’s a plethora of inexpensive 1:72 stuff out there, and 28mm is kind of a weird, messy scale that doesn’t have a convenient 1:something ratio and is often accompanied by freakish, unusual proportions.

1:72 is a fine scale (I find it unsatisfying from a hobby perspective, but I’ve been convinced that from a gaming perspective it’s the greatest of scales), but it is wildly out of whack with 28mm miniatures.

As you can see: the 1:72 scale miniature is about half as tall as a 28mm scaled miniature.  The two scales are simply aren’t even close.  The only scenario in which one might want to mix the two scales would be if they wanted to use the 1:72 figures as halflings.

If you’re looking for something you can use with 28mm figures, look instead for something between 1:43 and 1:56 or O scale.

Bolt Action is good proof of this: Warlord’s figures are 28mm and their vehicles are Italeri 1:56 models.  To my tastes, I find the vehicles on the small side, but some of that is caused by Warlord’s heroic scale proportions (the pumpkin-sized heads and baseball mitt-sized hands I prefer).

The tank on the left is a 1:56 Company B Sherman Tank, with a Warlord/Italeri tank driver sticking out of the the top.  Compare the size on the head of the tank driver, who is 1:56, to the 28mm Warlord Marines.  The car on the right is a 1:43 Greenlight Fast & Furious Dodge Charger.

When it came time to buy some trucks for my Bolt Action French Resistance, I picked up some Welly/Ledo models: the one on the left is (I believe) a 1:64 Ledo Days Gone truck and the one on the right is the same vehicle, but in 1:43 and manufactured by Welly.  The former is clearly too small and the latter just right.

I don’t have any 1:72 cars or tanks, but I believe this is a 1:72 Mustang next to a 28mm Warlord Marine.  Compare the size of the heads.

So: 1:56 is close enough but on the small side, 1:43 is close enough but on the large side.  1:72 is just all wrong.

I hope this is helpful, and that person who’s trying to math their way into proving that 1:72 is, indeed, close enough to use with 28mm miniatures (there’s always at least one); I’m sure they’re well-intentioned but they don’t know what the hell they’re talking about.

Weekend Workbench

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Wrapped up some Dark Age Prevailers. Of what I picked up at NOVA, I’ve got 5 left to paint.

Speaking of which, :sigh: :

Then I started working on Shadespire: I’m trying to speedpaint these, so we’ll see if I can knock out at least one faction before I get the chance to play it.