Saturday, December 12, 2009 

Snow Days are for Painting

Over the last few weeks I’ve managed to get back to the painting table, and I’m making good progress on my Precursor Knights. The basecoat is done, and I started shading this morning (my favorite part!) They are coming along nicely, although I had forgotten how monotonous painting an entire unit + UA at once can be.



I’ve start to pick up the beginnings of a Khador army, so I’ve been doing quite a bit of pinning and gluing as a result. Cygnar will always be my main faction, and it remains my ultimate goal to have the entire Cygnar range fully painted and at my disposal. So, I’m going to pick up a second army (which I plan to play in naked pewter) to field while I leave my Cygnar on the painting table and not worry about packing/unpacking them every week. Once the Cygnar is done, I can turn my attention to the Reds.

So why Khador? To be honest, I’m a total fluff gamer. When I look at a new faction, I don’t look at the rules as much as I look for an army that has an aesthetic that appeals to me, looks fun to paint, and has characters and back-story that I enjoy - and Khador fits that bill. In fact, my initial army is going to be a berserker army lead by the Epic Butcher and full of things like Doom Reavers, Fenris, berserkers and extreme sculpt warjacks. This is going to be and army that looks imposing, and is as likely to kill itself as it is to kill my opponent.

When I need a break from unit painting, I’ve also been working on painting up my Space Hulk models. I’ve always been a fan of Space Marines and the 40K fiction, but never really could get into the tabletop game. Space Hulk seemed like a nice way to scratch that itch with a very small commitment. If you haven’t seen the game, the components that come with it are beautiful, from the models to the corridor tiles. The space marine models in particular are stunning, and almost demand to be painted. Instead of painting them all at once like I would a unit, I’m going to tackle each one individually, as they deserve that kind of attention. As far as the Genestealers (the alien models), I really don’t know what to do there – I don’t have a lot of interest in painting them myself… They might get sent out for commission work.

(It's too cold to seal him, so he's still a little shiny.)

Foodmachine is tomorrow at my FLGS. At this point I’m planning on playing, but I also feel like I’m getting sick. We’ll see how it goes. Oh yeah, and there are only thirteen days left until Christmas. If you haven’t started yet, it’s time to go buy some crap for the people you love. So get on it.

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12:45 PM | |

Sunday, August 30, 2009 

Painting for PAX

With PAX only four days away, my preparations have kicked into overdrive. I've have a ton of office work to get done before can I go, and I still have a bunch of painting I'd like to get done as well. Given that, my free time this weekend was all about speed painting.

First off, I'm signed up to play in a couple of different Living Forgotten Realms RPGA sessions. I'm not usually a Realms fan (I'd rather play Eberron or Pathfinder), so I wanted to play something straightforward that I had a good sense for the lore - which for me means dwarves. I can't quite decide what class to play yet (I'm torn between Paladin, Warlord or Cleric) but I knew I wanted a good-looking mini to put on the table.

I was surprised how hard it was to find a good dwarf model (especially considering that I was limited to what I could find locally - as I have no time left to order anything.) I finally settled on one of the Warhammer Fantasy Runelord models. Warhammer dwarves are a little shorter than I'd like, so I mounted him on a fancy Micro Art Studio resin base. I painted him up in just under a couple of hours. Now that I see it in the photo, there are a few little details that I need to touch up, but all in all, I like him, and I think he'll serve me well on the table - especially when put up against the cheap plastic WotC miniatures.

I also put the finishing touches on a lance of battlemechs I've been working on from the BattleTech Introductory Boxed Set. I'd like to have all of the mechs needed the three introductory missions painted up for PAX, but we'll see how far I get. This group represents the mechs required for one side to play the first couple of missions. I'd like to get the opponent mechs painted as well (red, of course, so we can have some iconic Red vs. Blue action.)

275 tons of 1-inch tall plastic fury.

On an unrelated note: Thursday night some folks at my local game store were playing a demo copy of the new Space Hulk, and I have to admit, I was impressed. The game has some nice production values and really great "table appeal." I never played the original, but watching them play this one, I found myself really wanting to pick it up. It might just be able to scratch the 40K itch without having to actually play 40K! Just what I need - another game.


The new Space Hulk. The minis look really great.

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5:46 PM | |

Friday, December 28, 2007 

Christmas Vacation!

A late Merry Christmas to everyone out there!

Every year around this time, I take a bunch of time off from work. It is one of my favorite breaks – not a lot is going on at the office, so I’m not worried about getting behind, and it’s the only time that I get to take time off and just stay home and just relax. We had company for the first half of the week, but the last of them went home this morning, leaving me next five days to relax and revel in geekish pleasures.

Knowing the break is coming, I laid out a laundry list of dorky activities I wanted to get accomplished. Of course, I wouldn’t be a true hobbyist if that list wasn’t several times larger than anything I could reasonably to hope to accomplish in the time allotted. Still, it’s my intention to give it a good effort. Here’s what I’ve got:

Wargaming: Warmachine Army

Since I got hooked on Warmachine over Thanksgiving, I’ve decided to put my Chaos Space Marine army on hold for a bit and focus on getting a full-fledged Warmachine army painted up. I have a significant amount of both Cryx and Cygnar pewter, but for now I decided to focus on Cygnar. I want to:

Finish my Trenchers. I’ve got three of ten trenchers painted now, and so far they look great. I think for the rest of them I’m going to experiment with a quasi-production line approach. I’m going to lay down the base color coats on all of them at the same time, and them probably shade and highlight them individually. As far as the models themselves, they are really beautiful and just ooze character. I am constantly amazed at the amount of detail Privateer Press puts into each model.

Finish my Stormblades. Okay, to be fair, the Stormblade unit is actually all finished, but I’m also working on the unit attachment. The Captain is done, but I still need finish the standard bearer. I’d love to leave the holiday break with two fully painted units.

Assemble my Sword Knights. I bought the Sword Knights unit boxed set along with an extra blister a while back, and then promptly stowed them away in the closet. After listening to the Pod Thralls list their “500 pts for 100 bucks” Cygnar list, I pulled them back out and decided they would be next up. Then I open the blister and looked at all the little parts. And then I puked a little in my mouth.

Roleplaying: Eberron Campaign

In my last post I talked a little bit about how much I like the Freeport setting. Over the last few weeks, I’ve spent a bunch of hours working on integrating it into my Eberron game, as our party will be spending a great deal of time in the Lhazaar Principalities. If there is any interest in seeing how I’m tying that all together, let me know, and I’ll post it. Beyond that, I’m “redeveloping” a significant portion of the Eyes of the Lich Queen to better fit our campaign and play style, so I’ve got a lot of work to do.

Video Games: A Cornucopia of XBOX Goodness

There is so much good stuff out on XBOX 360 right now that it is almost mind-numbing. I’ve been working through BioShock and Oblivion: The GOTY Edition, all the while playing through the Halo 3 campaign co-op over XBOX Live. To add to that already impressive list, my wife bought me Mass Effect for Christmas, and I used some Best Buy gift certificates to pick up The Orange Box. How I’m going to get through these and still take care of everything on the list above, I’m not sure, but it should be fun trying. That many A-List games at one time is truly remarkable, and that list still leaves CoD4: Modern Warfare and Assassin’s Creed waiting in the wings.

We live good lives.

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10:33 AM | |

Tuesday, November 06, 2007 

Work is the Hobbybane

Back to another busy week at work. Lately things have been really crazy at the office, leaving me basically only the weekends to indulge myself in geekish pastimes, and unfortunately I didn't get a whole lot accomplished from a miniatures standpoint this weekend. I did take advantage of a nice day to prime up my remaining Chaos Space Marines in preparation for painting.

I first started paining miniatures for roleplaying games, where each individual piece of pewter is its own work of art. They each were very different, and each was painted one at a time, with no thought to coordinating color pallets, etc. Painting armies for wargames is a world different, and that difference is especially exaggerated by the large units you find in WH40K stuff. Now I find myself looking at 15 space marine models that are all basically going to get the same paint job.

Logic tells that I should production line paint them, painting the same color elements across all the models at once, and then moving on to the next element. Unfortunately, while I think that would certainly be the fastest way to get them all turned out, I just hate the idea of painting that way. To me, it makes painting feel like work rather than a creative endeavor, and takes the joy out of it. So, I've resigned myself to painting these guys one at a time. As a compromise, I may try getting the base color across all of them, and then individually shade and detail them. We'll see...

It does make me wonder how most folks approach painting large units for wargames. At some level, I think almost all miniatures gamers are split along a fundamental line - those who love the figures themselves and enjoy collecting and painting them as the primary hobby, and those who love to play the game as a primary hobby. I am clearly in the first "painter" camp: At this point I own 1,500 pts each of two different Warmachine armies, as well as all four rule books (and two Hordes books!), and I've never played a single game.

What I would be curious to understand is how these two camps approach their painting. Do the "painters" attack a unit lovingly, one figure at a time, while the "gamers" production line through them to get them on the table as soon as possible? Or does your “gamer alignment” matter at all when it comes to how you paint? If you are a wargamer/painter/player and happen to find my little page, drop me a comment and let me know which camp you belong to, and how you approach painting a unit of models. In the mean time, I’ll be starting to paint my third space marine. ;-)

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7:49 PM | |

Tuesday, October 30, 2007 

True Colors

I spent a couple of days working out what I wanted for a color scheme for my Chaos Space Marine army. That's actually kind of a funny process - you start to realize just how big of a time investment you are going to put into paining an entire army, and you find yourself almost paralyzed trying to get it right. I'll also admit that I'm not the most creative when it comes to choosing color schemes, and I spend a lot of time looking for a pattern to emulate. Yes, emulate is a nice way of saying "steal."

I ended up with a couple of options that I really liked. The first was a scheme of dark green, black and brass, with hints of bone that would look really striking for chaos marines. I know it would look striking because it's basically the same scheme I used on the handful of Cryx figures I painted for Warmachine. It would be a great scheme for a Nurgle army, but because I decided to go with a blood-lusting horde of Khorne reavers, I needed something a little more agressive.

I settled on wanting red as a base color, with black for trim and hints of gold as highlights. Hints of gold... these are after all Chaos Marines, and I didn't want them looking too ornate. They have spent the last 10,000 years tear-assing across the galaxy raising hell - they should look like it. After a little digging around, I found the perfect pattern for what I was looking for in GW's Red Corsairs. These guys look great, and I liked the fact that they weren't a bright fire-engine red, but rather a more subdued, iron-oxide color. That is what I want.

Unfortunately, finding that shade of red proved more challenging than I expected. Most color ranges stick with either bright reds, or darker blood colors that lean toward burgundy. GW has a terracotta, but that comes off more brown than red. I finally found exactly what I was looking for in Privateer Presses P3 line - Skorne Red, which strikes the balance perfectly. (Yes, I could mix a color, but with a whole army to paint, constant mixing doesn't sound fun.)

After a quick coat of primer, I painted up a prototype, and here's what I came up with:

This was my first real experience with the P3 paints, which are a little different than what I'm used to from the GW line. P3 paints have liquid pigment (most use a powder), and are supposed to have superior coverage, etc. A few things I noticed working with them: I had to thin with water more than I was used to to get smooth overage with no brush lines; the paint seemed to dry slower, which can be both a blessing and a curse (blending was easier), and coverage wasn't as great as avertised - it still took several coats to cover black primer. I'm not a great painter, and I'm far from a conessuer, but they definately feel different coming off the brush - it will take some getting used to.

* * * * *

In other news, Privateer Press announced that they are getting into the collectable miniatures (CMG) space with an upcoming game called "Monsterpocalypse." While moving into CMGs is going to annoy the living hell out of their current player base, I'm pretty sure it's not really a game aimed at their current player base. Me, I like CMGs, and I'm excited to see what they come up with. The PP guys are great game designers and great sculptors, and they have some of the best production values and customer service in the business. Plus, what's not to like about a game of giant, 1950s0-style smashy monsters.

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4:57 PM | |

Sunday, October 28, 2007 

Blood for the Blood God!

I’ve always had a fascination with the Warhammer 40K universe. That has only been reinforced recently as I started reading the Horus Heresy series of novels. In general, I’m not really a huge fan a “licensed” fiction – the unholy union where bad writing meets contrived storylines is more than I can usually stand. So, I was thankfully surprised when I picked up the first book based on the cover alone. I wasn’t disappointed. The series tell the story of the Warmaster Horus, favored of the Emperor and leader of his great crusade as he is seduced and ultimately falls to the perilous forces of the Warp. The series is masterfully written, and deftly handles epic themes of honor, duty, faith, pride and hubris. Good stuff.

So, it was this newly-found Warhammer 40K fascination that left me particularly vulnerable when I saw Games Workshop’s new Chaos Space Marine Army box. Mmmmmmm…. Chaos.

“My wife was out of town for the weekend," I quickly rationalized, "I'll need something to pass the time." (Never mind the mountain of unprimed pewter sitting on the top shelf of my closet.) "Still, that's a lot of money to drop on a hobby... My wife won't like that." A silent moment passes as my better judgment almost gets the situation back under control. Almost - but too late. I'm already holding the box. How did that happen? "She may not like it, but that’s what she gets for leaving me alone - I can't be depended on to make good decisions by myself." So I bought it. It's her fault, really.

It’s a really nice set, with an almost overwhelming amount of plastic inside the box. Rather than taking the time to discuss the contents myself, I’ll send you over to Hyun at WeeToySoldiers.com. He has already posted a good review with pictures over there. (And if you have never been to this guy’s site, check out his hobby room. Holy shit, it's awesome.)

I don’t have a lot of experience with plastic miniatures, but I will admit that I have always had a natural bias towards metal miniatures. I’m not completely sure why that is… I guess it's because that’s the way they have always been, and because there is something reassuring about the weight of a good pewter miniature. Still, I have to admit that as I dug through the piles of sprues that came with my CSM army, I began to warm to the idea of plastics. As I started assembly, I found a couple of nice advantages:

First, assembly went a lot faster. With pewter models I pin everything. After seeing the kind of bond that I was getting out of plastic glue (which actually melts the parts together) I decided I probably only needed to pin high stress components, which saves a ton of time. In all, I found plastic assembly to be much faster and more pleasant than metals.

The second (and probably the more important) is in the huge amount of variety and personalization that is possible with plastic. With metal miniatures, a unit may contain 6-8 models that are typically composed of 2-3 different poses. I'm guessing that thanks to the low cost of plastics, they are able to give you a huge array of components that you can mix and match to come up with all kinds of different looks. I assembled fifteen chaos space marine models yesterday, and not one of them looks alike. On top of that, when I was all finished I still had a huge pile of unused bits on the sprue.

So, here is my fully-assembled CSM squad. I never liked the idea that chaos marines were just regular marines with horns, so I went out of my way to dress them up to better match the image of depraved psychopaths that they are supposed to be, adding lots of bayonets, chains and trophy spikes.

- Click for Larger Version -

Being new to the game side of 40K, there were a few choices that I felt poorly equipped to make - for example, which Chaos God I should choose for the unit icons, etc. From what fiction I do know, I'd really like to make a good Nurgle army, but that seems like it would take a ton of customization to really get right. (Something I'll probably still to come back to once I'm a little more grounded in the WH40K universe.) Instead, I settled on a Khorne army, as it seemed nice, straightforward choice for a first outing. Plus, I like the idea in-your-face melee monsters who like to stick their enemies heads on pikes.

Next thing to work on is a paint scheme, but I think I’ll save that for next time.

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11:21 AM | |

Sunday, April 01, 2007 

Purge the Xenos!

This week I picked up the Warhammer 40,000 intro box, The Battle for Macragge. I've been painting Warmachine minis for the past year, and it felt like time to switch things up a bit. The 40K universe has always been interesting to me, so when the time came to try something new, it was an easy choice.

The Battle for Macragge box is a great value. You can check out the full contents here, but in short you get 10 Space Marine models, 16 Tryanid models and some pretty nice terrain peices. You also get a book of quick play missions which do an excellent job of slowly introducing you to the 40K rules set. Finally, in a move I applaud, it contains a nice, glossy paged book with the complete rules set. All of the rules found in the $50 hard-cover rulebook appear here unchanged, and the only thing you miss out on is all of the background fluff and the hobby section. It's nice to see a company give you the full rules set in the intro box rather than a chopped-down, unit specific set of "quick start" rules.

I decided to start my painting with the Tyranids. To be honest, the space marines were just a little to close to the unit of Stormblades I've been painting for the last few weeks, and the idea of painting something a little more organic was appealing. I got the models assembled, puttied and primed, and then I just sat there, unsure of what kind of color scheme I wanted. From what I've seen, people tend to paint the Tyranids in either bright, very alien colors (purples, pinks, etc.) or in very camo-organic patterns. I decided that I was going to be part of the second camp, and this is what I eventually came up with:


I haven't hit it with dullcote yet, so it's still a little shiny from various layers of ink washes, but I think he looks nice. I'm happy with how it turned out, and I think an army of them will look pretty striking all clustered together on the table. I really want to see how this scheme looks on a big model like a Carnifex or a Hive Tyrant, but I'm trying to resit buying anything else until I have these painted. I don't want to re-create the mountain of unpainted models I already have for Warmachine. :-)

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9:58 AM | |

Sunday, April 16, 2006 

'Eavy Metal

Like I mentioned in my last post, my few sessions with Warhammer 40K: Dawn of War has kindled up an interest in tabletop wargamming. I've been playing collectable miniature games on and off for the last six months, mostly in the form of Mechwarrior and D&D Minatures, both of which are great little games. Both games are very skirmish-oriented, and offer fast action with a small number of units. Of course, they also both share the same, insidious quality that all collectable games possess: You end up buying a ton of boosters to build your collection, and after a while, you find yourself playing each and every game with the same handful of prized units, leaving the bulk of your collection gathering dust.

So, this week I decided to kill a rainy Saturday morning by going down to the local game shop and checking out some of the latest in miniture games. I was ready to take the next step from the pre-painted, collectable games to the good old-fashioned "build 'em and paint 'em" wargames. The collectable games have been my gateway drug, so to speak. Now I'm feeling like I'm ready for the good shit.

I wanted something generally sci-fi, with lots of cool-looking figures. It quickly became a tie between the granddaddy of the genre, Warhammer 40,000 and relative newcomer Warmachine. In the end, I dedcided to give Warmachine a try (which is ironic, considering it was an experience with 40K that piqued my interest in the first place.) After talking with some guys from the store who had played both, Warmachine seems a little more approachable, and it sounds like it scales well from small to large games, so it should be possible to ease my way into it.

If you haven't seen Warmachine, it's a pretty sweet looking game concept: gigantic steam-powered constructs controlled by battle-mages called Warcasters clash "with the destructive force of locomotives." The game has four main factions, each with their own disticitve hook. I decided to start with the Cryx, a race of necromancers and their undead thralls that fuel their warmachines with the tortured souls of their victims. Now that's my kind of race.

Unfortunately, the store was out of the core rulebook, but I decided to pick up a model and start painting anyway. By the time I bought paint, a pin vise, and a few other supplies, the tab was about four times more than I had expected to spend going in... Tabletop wargaming is apperantly not for the faint of heart (or budget.) I spent the better part of my free time over the weekend painting up my first unit, a monsterous "helljack" called a Harrower. I was pretty happy how my first effort turned out:
I was actually amazed how fast the whole model came together. I probably have six or seven hours into the project all together, not counting doing my homework before I got started. I was also surprised how complex the model was - assembling it was no small job, and I spent a good deal of time pinning and puttying to make it look good before primer. Painting it was a blast, but it only fed the urge to actually get some of these bad boys out on the table and play. I'm going to order the Cryx Battlegroup starter set and the core rulebook this week, and get painting.

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8:34 PM | |

Monday, April 10, 2006 

Down Time...

Well, I've managed to go well over a week without an update. While not my intention, this does put me on par with about 99% of all blogs out there. The truth of the matter is simply this - I blog about gaming, and not a lot of gaming has gone on for me over the past week. My wife is out of town visiting her sister in New York City, and so I'm doing the solo-daddy thing, or at least semi-solo. My mom and dad are in town to help out, which makes taking care of the kids that much easier, but just shifts my job to taking care of the grandma and grandpa.

As I mentioned in my last post, I haven't been feeling too hot lately, which is the other thing that has bit into my gaming time. A couple of nights back this culminated with me in the emergency room getting all kinds of pokes, prods and scans. Turns out that I've got a monster stone in my gall bladder, and I'll probably get to have surgury soon to take that bad boy out. At least a few days laid up in bed means I have a good chance to finally finish Grandia III.

I picked up the Dawn of War "Game of the Year" edition at the start of last week. I've always had some interest in Warhammer 40K, although I've never played the table top game. I've seen the minis at the hobby store for years, and I've always found them incredibly compelling on a visual level - it's cool looking stuff. I'm only a few missions in to the video game version, and so far I'm having a blast. It's a great counterpoint to the slow and deliberate pace of Oblivion. The intro sequence is spectacular - even if you know nothing about the Warhammer 40K universe, I can't imagine not being hooked after that intro. Makes me want to pick up a rule book and check out the table top version.

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7:50 AM | |