Tag Archives: hobby

Assorted, brief topics

Leave a reply

After seeing this post about Secret Weapon Miniatures‘ tutorials on Tabletop Gaming News (you’ve got that in your RSS reader, right?), I decided to take MisterJustin at his word and e-mail him to request a tutorial on using their Oxide Weathering Pigments.

That kicked off an e-mail exchange with some solid advice about how I’d go about integrating them with the way I’m currently doing brass/bronze that made me feel comfortable enough ordering the powders to play around with.

I mention it because I was really impressed with the quick and extremely helpful response.  That’s fantastic customer support, that is.

Last night, I had an interview with Pat from The 11th Company.

Given that I’m still confused as to why anyone would bother reading anything I’d have to write about hobby stuff, I’m truly bewildered that anyone would want to listen to anything I’d have to say.  I think the chat went well: I’ll make a note here to let folks know when they can tune in and hear me sound like an idiot.

It looks like the Forgeworld Friendly Tournament I’ve been planning to run next weekend is probably going to be cancelled, which is disappointing.

There was a good initial wave of “I’ll be there!,” but now that we’re at a week out, we’ve still only got one (1) preregistration… so it seems like it’s probably for the best just to call it.  It’s a shame, because I think it could have filled a lack that the club’s had pretty much since 5th Ed. came out… but c’est la vie.

Since there’s no point in wasting them, I figure I might as well post the scenarios I’d been planning on using.  (Apologies for imperfect formatting; I uploaded the Word doc into Google Docs, and that made things a little wonky.)  They were all pretty straightforward: core book missions modified just a little bit:

  • Seize Ground, but with objective points accruing as the game proceeds… not just at the end of the game.
  • Annihilation, but with Kill Points weighted by Force Org chart
  • Capture & Control, but without objective control being determined by the last scoring unit to be near it.

I’d just recycle these for use in the IFL RTT in July, but given its proximity to the NoVA Open, we’re going to use that format.

Painting Progress – 20100610

Leave a reply

Not much to report, I’m afraid.

Painting this second quartet of Bloodcrushers has been like pulling teeth, I swear.  It’s been inexplicably hard to motivate myself to work on them.  I’ve had them assembled for over two weeks now… and they’re maybe three-quarters of the way done.

As you can see, the brass is wrapped up, but I’ve got to do pretty much everything else.  I’m hoping I can power through them later this week… just to have them done.  I’ve got 1) objective markers and 2) other stuff to work on!

Because the ‘Crushers were being frustrating, and I really felt the need to accomplish something, I painted up the Ruins of Osgiliath I picked up back when.  This is a pretty solid kit and it painted up ridiculously easily.

Sadly, I’m not posting pictures of it.  Clearly, an upcoming weekend project needs to be “Build a light box;” the color of the picture came out so damn weird, there’s no point in them.  Anyway..

I wanted to do something a little different than the Charcoal Grey -> Medium Grey -> Light Grey scheme I use with pretty much all of my other terrain, so I went with the colors I used on the base for my Dark Heresy character: P3 Cryx Bane Base -> P3 Cryx Bane Highlight -> P3 Hammerfall Khaki.  I think I went a bit too heavy with the khaki highlights, but it still came out pretty well.  It’s a lot brighter and looks older, I think.

For the wood, I did something similar: I used P3 Hammerfall Khaki as a base and highlighted it with Khemri Brown before washing over it with some Devlan Mud.  I’m extremely happy with how that came out.  I like the result enough that I’m half thinking about figuring out an army I can paint this way (more or less).

When I wrapped that up, instead of returning to the Bloodcrushers, I did some gap filling on the marine statue from the Honored Imperium kit; I’ll be doing that with metal and verdigris, so I wanted to clean up the somewhat substantial gaps in the otherwise awesome model.

Battlefoam

Leave a reply

Last night, I finally sat down and started mapping out a Battlefoam order for my Daemons.  I’ve been putting it off because it’s… not a small investment, but I’ve reached the end of my rope with dealing with the crappy transport solution I have for my Soul Grinders.

I’ve come to the conclusion that Battlefoam gives you too much power over what they do for you.  It’s not an understatement to say that the bulk of the reason I’ve put this off as long as I have is option paralysis: so many different things I can do in so many different ways and, because this stuff is as expensive as it is, I want to get it perfect.

I finally resigned myself to shoot for as good as possible rather than perfect and got the ball rolling.

The driving force behind doing all of this was storing the two Soul Grinders.  Bill assured me that the Soul Grinder trays would handle them just fine, but I’ve also got two Bloodthirsters I need to handle, too.  Given that all four of them are just at about 6″ even, that means I need to fit all four of them in a single tray (or I’ve got 12″ of foam dedicated to four models).  This might be a bit of a longshot.  Furthermore, I’ve also got two Bloodcrushers w/ Icons that are 5″ tall: in a perfect world, I’d fit them in the same tray, but I don’t think that’s going to happen.

I wasn’t particularly confident that the generic Chaos Daemon tray would work.  Plaguebearers, maybe, but not Bloodletters with their Hellblades pointing out all over the place.  So, I did some tracing:

And realized I was being dumb.  When you do shapes that custom, you’ve always got to put the right mini back in the right slot, which is easier said than done.  I fell in this trap when I used pluck foam: by the time I really picked up steam, I’d learned that it was much easier to just use regular shapes that I could fit my minis in.  So, instead, I measured out the boxes most of them would fit in:

1.25″ x 2″ for most of them.  A few at 1.25″ x3″ and 1.74″ x4″ for the icons. Just as well I didn’t try relying on the generic tray, since that’s got a lot of 1″ x 1.75″ and 1.5″ x 2.25″ slots (plus it 1-1.5″ thick, and these trays need to be 2″ thick).  That one tray will hold my 25 Bloodletters, with room for another ~9, plus 2 more icons.

Next up are the Flesh Hounds.  They’re basically Terminator bases, which is easy, right?  Except they poke a little bit out at each end, and the custom terminator shape doesn’t really support that.  So, I had to draw up a custom shape that’s basically room for a 40mm base with some notches at either end (sort of like a Kermit the Frog’s eye, though with different proportions).  This tray also needs room for Karanak and the four objective markers (terminator bases with no overhang).  Since I wanted to check the viablility of this, I also mapped out a tray for this.

I’ll be including instructions to replace the 3″ x 2″ ovals with the Flesh Hound shapes, fitting in as many as possible.  This tray’s also got to be 2″ tall, thanks to leaping Flesh Hounds and Karanak being… not small.

That covers everything, except the Daemon Princes and Bloodcrushers.  I’ll have eight Bloodcrushers (as soon as I finish the second quartet) and three Daemon Princes.  The Crushers are 3″ tall, the Daemon Princes 3.5″ tall.  We should be able to fit six  (because we want to try to fit the two Icons in the deep tray) to eight ‘Crushers and the three princes in a single tray.

Unfortunately, this means I have 6″ + 3.5″ + 2″ + 2″ worth of foam.  That’s 13.5″ of foam: 14.5 inches if you account for the .25″ padding that’s the bottom of the tray.  Fuck.  Not only does this mean I can’t even think about going with the 12″ deep  PACK 720, I’m going to have problems fitting this into the PACK 1520.  Spread across both sub-bags, it holds 22″ of foam, but that’s with a 14″ sub-bag and an 8″ sub-bag.  At the very least, I’d be nice to fit everything in one sub-bag (and leave the other one at home… but that isn’t going to happen.

It has just occurred to me that I might be able to lay the Daemon Princes down, in which case I could do the Bloodcrushers/Princes with a 3″ tray instead of the 3.5″ tray, which would make everything fit in the bottom bag… I’ll have to trace them out and see.  I’m not optimistic that I’d be able to do that and fit everything onto the tray that I need to if I do that, however.

Of course, that assumes I can fit the Bloodcrusher Icons into the tray with the Soul Grinders and Bloodthirsters.  If I can’t, I’ve got to upgrade the 3.5″ tray to a 5″ tray.  Blech.  Then I’ve got 16″ of tray.  Of course, down the line if/when I pick up a third Soul Grinder, I’ll need to cram in another 6″ tray, which will be just about right. (Though I’ll be .25″ short on room?)

I was concerned that, if I went with the 1520, I’d be boned and be stuck with 8.5″-9″ of tray I wouldn’t know what to do with, but then I realized that I can just order the bag empty and the trays separate (as opposed to the bag with custom trays), which would let me focus on just what I need and would save me ~$45.  If I had two more custom trays that I knew I needed, then it would make sense to get the thing filled with foam (even if there were a few inches I didn’t know what to do with), since they’re $30 a pop.  Maybe I just go ahead and order the tray for the third Soul Grinder now.

Plus, I’m going to order a PACK MINI to hold RPG minis; I asked last night if I could get it without the hobby tools tray (because it’s ridiculous), and was told that I absolutely can, which is great.

I’d planned on putting the order in today, but now I feel like I need to investigate laying down the Daemon Princes, first.  So, maybe this afternoon/evening when I’m home and can put my hands on them.

(I don’t know how this blog post will read: I went back and thought out loud about eight times through it… like I said, “option paralysis.”)

Painting Progress – 20100602

Leave a reply

Despite the long weekend, I got next to nothing done, hobby-wise.

I’d really hoped to bang out a lot of progress on my second quartet of Bloodcrushers… but it wasn’t meant to me.  They’ve been basecoated Bestial Brown, but my drybrush of Shining Gold wasn’t as thorough as I thought it was; every few minutes while highlighting the gold, I’d find another spot that needed touching up.  This would do a fantastic job of breaking my momentum.

On Monday (last Monday, not yesterday), I did manage to finish my Witchling Stalkers.

The brown is a bit more khaki than I’d like, and the red isn’t as deep, but it’ll do.  Both sections of cloth got a glaze: my first attempt at doing anything more involved than a simple wash/watered down wash.  This time, I threw in some matte medium (so it was 1:1:2 GW wash, matte medium, water).  Looking at the models, I can see no evidence of the glaze… but at the same time it was quite obvious when I set a glazed model next to an unglazed one.

For the metal, I used P3’s Armor Wash, a favorite of mine that I’ve shifted away from lately.  I threw in a little Leviathan Purple for the hell of it: I’m pleased with the result.

I also tried my hand at verdigris for the first time, using B.Smoove’s technique.  It didn’t come out all that well: not enough Goblin Green, for one, and the consistency of the whole thing was off… either too thin or not thin enough; I’m not sure.  It’ll take some more fiddling, I think.

I’ve also made some progress in how to do macro photography with my new camera; the short version is I’m going to have to build a lightbox, or these pictures are going to continue coming out funny looking.

Malifaux Card – Lamination

Leave a reply

One of the other Malifaux players in the area, Dan, has had all his stat cards laminated.

This is, in a word, genius.

Malifaux stat cards suck.  You use them to track damage so, like Warmachine cards, they need to live in plastic card sleeves.  Unlike Warmachine cards, though, they’re not single cards: they’re two cards wide and fold in half… with all of the special rules and things that get referenced on the inside.

After three sessions of Malifaux, the sleeve I’d been keeping Sonnia Criid’s card in has torn open… something that’s never happened to me with Warmachine (where I use the same card sleeves).

So, lamination is (again) genius.

I stopped by Kinko’s last night to laminate my cards.  Not too many Guild cards, but there are kind of a ton of Gremlin cards.  Although I could have maybe laid out my cards more efficiently, I don’t think I could have reduced the number of lamination sheets I ultimately needed to use.  The whole thing cost me < $12 and the frustration reduction will totally be worth it. Chris suggested that you’d get four cards per 8.5″x11″ sheet.  Necessity drove me to fit five on one sheet, with the pattern:

I did most of my cards in 11″x17″ sheets (8 per sheet in pretty lose formation).  What I couldn’t fit in those (5), I did in the single 8.5″x11″ sheet.   That means I probably could have 10 cards per 11″x17″ sheet (but would have been left with one I couldn’t fit).

The 11″x17″ sheets were just a hair over $4 each and the 8.5″x11″ was $2.50.  So, on a big sheet, you’re looking at 50¢ a card if you’re lazy and do 8, 40¢ if you fit 10.  On the smaller sheets, it’s 63¢ if you only do 4 cards, 50¢ if you do 5.  So, try to do as many as possible at a time and cram them onto the big sheets.

Miniature Transport and Storage

Leave a reply

A friend of Chris’ asked me about how I go about magnetizing my miniatures for transport.  Rather than just e-mail it to him, I figured I’d dump it here.  You never know who might find this helpful.

A lot of people I know store and transport their minis this way, which is why I started doing it.  At first, I kept my minis in Sabol trays, but they’re 1) not inexpensive, 2) inflexible once you’ve plucked out the foam and, most significantly (for me, at least) 3) they take up waaay too much space.  Now, I store almost all of my minis this way.  There are some drawbacks, however, that I’ll get into.

What I’m Talking About

Basically, I take cheap plastic drawers, glue magnetic sheets to the bottom of it.  Then, I glue washers to the bases of my minis.

The magnetic sheet holds the washer pretty well.  Then, instead of carrying around bags of foam trays, I just carry around a small stack of drawers.

What I Use

Drawers

Right now, I’ve got two kinds of drawers: Office Depot drawers and Sterilite drawers.

I started with the Sterilite drawers.  I like them, because they’re wide (something like 14″x14″) and they’ve got lids, which keeps dust off of whatever’s inside and provides a little piece of mind.  If things go horribly wrong, the lids will keep everything inside, right?

I moved to the Office Depot drawers for a few reasons.  They’re cheaper, for one.  You can buy just a few or a lot, depending on your needs.  More significantly, they’re variable height: there are shallow drawers and deep drawers.  This is key.  I had a great deal of difficulty storing anything taller than a regular infantry model in the Sterilite drawers, as they’re only a few inches deep.  The shallow Office Depot drawers are significantly deeper, and the deep ones provide enough height for damn near anything.  I can fit all of my non-Bloodthirster, non-Soul Grinder daemon models  (pushing up against 2,000 points’ worth) in one shallow and one deep drawer.

What specific brand drawers you use doesn’t matter in the slightest.  The key is to make sure you have enough vertical space for your minis.  It’s annoying to have to figure out another way to store your dreadnoughts ’cause they’re too tall for the drawers all your other Dark Angels live in.

Magnets

I cannot stress this enough: unless you want your minis to be too busy humping each others’ legs to visit destruction on your foes, you need to magnetize the drawers and not the minis.  Rare Earth magnets are strong, people.

I buy packs of business card magnets from the office supply store.  One side is adhesive, the other magnetic.  I stick ’em to the bottom of the drawer.  It’s that simple.

I will note that Wargame Accessories, the company that cuts the steel rectangular and square bits for gluing to the bottom of your Fantasy minis sells magnetic sheets.  I’m too lazy this morning to figure out which is more cost-effective (buying business card magnets vs. magnetic sheets), but the magnetic pull of the sheets is much stronger than that of the business card magnets.  Harry, another IFL member, has convinced me of this.

Metal Bits

To get the minis to stick to the magnets, you’ve got to glue metal stuff to the bottom of them.

For square/rectangular bases, you need either square/rectangular bits like the ones Wargame Accessories sell or actual magnetic bases like the ones Gale Force 9 sells.  I (and, as far as I can tell, everyone else locally) use the former.

For round bases, life is easier: washers.  1″ washers for 25mm bases, 1.5″ washers for 40mm bases.

At first, I used just plain ol’ whatever washers from Home Depot but, when I started playing War of the Ring, I moved to fender washers in hopes of actually fitting them in the movement trays.  That didn’t follow through, but I still prefer the fender washers: they’ve got more surface area (which I think makes for a better hold against the magnet), are thinner (so they’re less noticable) and are more precise (as in, they’re more likely to be the size they say they are).

Here’s a comparison: the Haradrim is on a fender washer, the Dark Angel is on a whatever washer.

What’s nice is that the washer also provides some weight at the bottom of the base.  That gives plastic minis a better heft and makes everything more stable.

For larger models, with 60mm bases, you’re going to have trouble finding a big enough washer.  So, for these, I use Gale Force 9’s rubber steel.  I just glue the base to the steel, and cut it to shape.

Issues

This isn’t a perfect system, and I really need to call out where it fails.

It does a poor job with vehicles, or really anything that doesn’t have a base you can glue a metal thing to.  I always end up keeping and transporting my vehicles in Sabol foam trays.  You could do rare earth magnets business card magnets on the bottom of the vehicles, but I’ve been pretty unimpressed with the results.  It’s just easier to keep them in the foam.

It can’t handle top-heavy models.  I transport my Bloodcrushers this way, and it works fine.  They’re heavy as hell, but have a low center of gravity.  My Bloodthirsters… not so much.  Those enormous metal wings.  Ugh. This wouldn’t work for them, so I have to store and transport them in foam, too.

I’m also not sure that I’d transport Warjacks or Warbeasts this way.  Privateer Press infantry, for sure, but not sure if I’d feel safe doing it with the big hunks of metal with the weedy legs.

If something goes wrong, this doesn’t do much for you.  It’s cheaper, and takes up less space, yes, but it doesn’t protect your models as well as foam if you get in a car accident or fall down the stairs.  Foam will only do so much, but this does less.

I also have to provide the disclaimer that I’m currently eyeballing Battlefoam.  This system does just fine for me, but it completely fails my Soul Grinders.  I can’t store them in drawers, so I keep them in foam.  They’re so large, though, that they don’t fit well in the foam at all.  I’ve had a number of accidents with them, and I’m disinclined to glue them back together ever again, so it’s my hope Battlefoam will fix that.  And, if I’m putting some of my daemons in a Battlefoam case, I might as well put all of them in.  I won’t be moving all of my minis to foam, though, that’s for sure.

Weekend Accomplishments

Leave a reply

I got to do something on Saturday I haven’t been able to do in kind of a while: nothing.  My wife and I puttered around all day, sleeping in and catching up on the new Doctor Who.  That meant I had a lot of time to sit at my desk and get some things done.

I haven’t really accomplished much of anything, hobby-wise, since I wrapped up the Sternguard, so this was nice.

First off, I finished painting the mini for my Dark Heresy character: Caleb Plex, Scum.

The base is a Micro Art Studio Temple base, and it’s pretty swank.

I’m unhappy with the stubble effect, though.  I’ve done it before, successfully, but here it comes across more like a beard than stubble.  I probably needed to mix a bit of brown in there.

Additionally, I managed to assemble a second quartet of Bloodcrushers.

Nothing fancy, here.  Pretty much just the same thing I had before.  The other unpainted guys are Forgeworld Renegade Psykers, which I’m going to use as objective markers.  I need to paint them, as well.

Finally, because I had to wait on greenstuff to cure and because it was on my mind, I started painting a few Malifaux minis.  Specifically, three Witchling Stalkers.

They’re actually pretty close to being done: just need to do the bases, the swords and the boots.  I experimented with them a bit, and I’ll probably get into a little more detail  about how when they’re done.

State of the (Future) Greater Good

Leave a reply
So: Tau.  I’ve been thinking about them.
I’ve taken some folks’ advice and juggled the lists around a bit.  
(lists go here)

So, assuming that’s what I run at 1,500 points… what do I need to buy to put it on the table?

Surprisingly, kind of a lot.

My plastic Tau infantry is all fully painted.  I’ve never had much success stripping plastic.  So, I’d have to buy the Fire Warriors and Kroot from scratch.    I’ve got an unreasonable number of unpainted, but assembled Crisis Suits… which would be great except my plans call for heavy conversion of the XV8s.  So, them, too.  I’ve got a primed Hammerhead I could use… except I didn’t know what the hell I was doing when I put it together… so it looks okay, but not great.  Plus, I have notions of not putting the doors on them and having smooth sides instead of hatches on the tank that has no transport capacity.  I need more Broadsides, and have decided to go with the Forgeworld ones because they’re much nicer and cost something like $2-$3 more than GW ones.

What do I have?  A ton of XV15 suits, which I like just as much as XV25 suits… maybe a smidge more.  I’ve got a couple of metal Pathfinders, but not enough.  I might just convert them from Fire Warriors.  I’ve certainly done it before.  I’ve got a primed Devilfish I might or might not use: conversion’s not necessary here.

I also have the resin, ready to go.  So, that’s the Barracuda and the Remora Drones.

The current plan is to put them all on Dragonforge Lost Empires bases.

Because my brain works like that, I’ve dumped all of this into a spreadsheet that tells me all of this (if I don’t reuse the Hammerhead and Devilfish), I’m looking at ~$350.  Ouch.  I mean, armies aren’t cheap, and I’m certainly at peace with that, but that’s kind of a steep ticket for an army I already have.

What does this mean?

I’m going to tinker with paint schemes.  I’ve got a a mini assembled and ready to go for this.  

If and when I get something I like the look of, I’ll assemble and paint the Forgeworld stuff and play with what I have: most of it the existing stuff.  If I decide I like things, I’ll probably slowly replace units.  It’ll be unit by unit… I just can’t swallow dropping that much on a new army I already have, you know?
So, this will be something approached in the long-term.  NOT a buy-it-all-at-once, paint it over 3 months project.
On thing I am excited about is that I’m talking to the awesome Thomas Wynn about the feasibility of cutting out some alternative sept symbols.  I’d like to replace all of the T’au symbols with symbols from Elsy’eir symbols:
You can see an attempt at doing this with greenstuff on the mini above.  If that isn’t proof that I’ll have to do this with plasticard and not greenstuff, I don’t know what is.

What’s next

Leave a reply
This weekend, in addition to wrapping up the last of the Sternguard, I also managed to put together all of the Deathwing Terminators I need for ‘Ard Boyz: 16 of them.  They’re all done, except I need another hooded Dark Angels veteran head for one of the three sergeants I put together.  Since it’s just ‘Ard Boyz, I’m not too worried about it for now.  The key is having the wargear accurately reflected.
Watching Iron Man 2 really stoked my fire and locked in my resolve to redo my Tau.  I’m debating keeping with my current paint scheme, which I both love and think is really unique (a bright, clean turquoise, with light grey as a secondary color), or switching to a realistic battleship grey scheme that leverages Vallejo Model Colors.
At the same time, having just put together so many damn terminators, though, I think I’m officially burned out on assembling models.  So, for the short term, I’m done putting stuff together.  I need a break.  I’ve got to focus on 1) gaming and 2) painting.  That means I’ll probably finish painting my Dark Heresy mini and then maybe do some Malifaux stuff or something.