Monday, December 22, 2008

La Confrérie de La Mort Rouge


Well I actually did a project in the last few days pretty much start to finish. I painted up 10 Cultist from Bob Murch's Pulp Figures line as La Confrérie de La Mort Rouge (The Brotherhood of the Red Death) for my B.M.A.P. pulp game. These are pretty rushed paint jobs but I like the way they came out.

Wednesday, October 22, 2008

No Battle Reports?

Well there has been a distinct lack of battle reports on my blog of late. In fact the last actual battle report I wrote was way back in March. This is mostly due to the fact that I've not been playing a lot of miniature games. I've been playing quite a few role playing games and using miniatures for them but I haven't been playing many miniature games. It's harder to write rpg reports than miniature game reports because there is usually much more information and not as much miniature use. I tend to use miniatures for combat in RPGs but I don't always have combat in my game sessions and also we sometimes use battle maps or dry erase maps instead of terrain and while that's ok for gameing it hardly seems worth taking pictures and posting them.

Hopefully that will change soon. I'm going to start running some Pulp miniature adventure games using the Savage Worlds rules and nice terrain. I'm pretty well adjusted to my new home and I have most of my miniature and terrain stuff unpacked and sorted out so hopefully I'll be able to get back into the swing of making terrain for nice battle reports.

With any luck I'll have some kind of game report up in the next week.

Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Freikorps Squad 2

Well I started working on my 2nd squad for my German Freikorps army. I'm pretty happy with the way it's turning out. I'm about 89% done with the base colors and I should have the wash on by the end of the day. I think they will look good next to my finished unit. After this I have a light assault unit and a Maxim machine gun unit to finish. I'd like to have one more regular squad and one or two more machine gun squads then I'd like to get some armored cars and tanks together for them as well as some trucks and light artilery. I think I'm going to go with mostly captured Mark IVs and Whippits for tanks and some captured armored cars as well.


Monday, October 13, 2008

Sister Sisters.

Well I'm trying to get my Sisters of Battle.... er.... um..... Witch Hunters army done to play 40k at the local shops and such because that's pretty much all anyone plays. I've had most of these models for years but I've added a few recently. These Sisters are from the Order of the Iron Rose my own custom convent. So far they are comming along. At the rate I'm going I'll have about 1000 points done in a couple weeks. Now if I could only get that motivated on my other projects. Sadly it's a lot easier to stay motivated when you know you can actually find people to play the game with than when your trying to get people interested in something new or different.

Here's the Cannoness. She's nearly done. I'm going for a character leve table top look on this fig. Nothing special. In fact I'm trying to paint my army too a "good" standard and intentionally trying not to spend too much time on them. I need to scale back on the quality for bigger projects.


Here's my old Mark I Immolater. I decided to use the green that I'm using on the inside of the sister's tabbards as my main tank color. I think it looks snazzy. This tank will get a umber wash and highlights and details of course.


Squad Alpha is tabletop ready. I think I did an ok job matching the armor though it's not perfect. The new models are what most of my army will look like anyway. They are the ones with the static grass. Eventually I'll re-work the bases on the older models and give them a bit more highlighting but for now that's going to have to wait.


Squad Beta is comming along. I've only got a few hours in them so far. When painting squads I try to start with the big areas then work to the smaller areas that way the steps get shorter and shorter.


Monday, September 22, 2008

Oops!

Well I've decided to try and get back into 40K and since I already had a lot of Sisters of Battle I decided to start painting them up. My sisters are the army I collected but never painted up during 2nd edition so I still had a lot of them left over. I did have a convent name "Order of the Iron Rose" and I had painted a five sister squad and had half painted a squad of Seraphim. Now back in the day I used a lot of craft paints and these days I use mostly miniature paints. Anyway now the minimum squad size for battle sisters is 10 figs and not 5 so I needed to finish up this squad and paint another battle sister squad to get my army started. Problem is I decided to paint the spares while the five I had painted were sitting on the shelf in the other room. Well of course with no refference I got the armour way too bright.


Oops! Well I didn't expect an exact match but these are a full shade brighter. I use to make medieval armour with a guy who would say that the difference between a master and everyone else was that the master could fix his fuck ups. Now I wonder if I can fix this fuck up. I'm pretty sure I'm going to go with a wash. Hopefully that will get them close enough.

Sunday, September 21, 2008

Pegasus Hobbies Gothic Church

Well I went down to my local FLGS today and picked up a Pegasus Hobbies Gothic City Buildings small set #2 or the Gothic Church as I like to call it. The retail price was $30.00 which is very good for a building of this size. As you can see Gordon got the box open right away and there are several parts.


Straight out of the box the most disappointing thing is the lack of instructions. In fact the instructions were a one side one sheet affair. Gordon can't understand it either.


The first thing we did was put together the parts that did have instructions. The flying buttresses, rose window, and roof arches. These went together easily. There are some chunky flash areas and some other bits that need to be trimmed up a bit but a big exacto is the only tool I used in the basic assembly.


Oddly enough the hardest bit to assemble were the doors although they were not all that hard. You want to set them up to swing out like this.


Here are the doors and walls. They go together fairly easily I wouldn't personally recommend gluing these parts until you at least dry fit the entire structure together first.

It's actually a bit tricky to put all the parts together and I strongly suggest you dry fit everything before you use any glue. Make sure everything is snug and take your time putting the thing together. The walls fit together via a tab and slot system which is really quite ingenious and there is some play in the whole structure which makes it easier to assemble. The tabs that show on the outside can be filled with the decorative elements that come with the kit or filled with putty or something. The only loose parts I had at this point were the flying buttresses. I'm going to be gluing mine together on the final assembly.

Anyway that's basic assemble of this kit. I'm really happy with it so far. I think I have fewer than three hours on the assemble and I was bumbling around a bit. I would say that this kit could go together in less than an hour if someone was really in a rush or they had some experiences with the other kits like it. I'll follow this up with final assembly and painting. With any luck I'll have a new building for my table by the end of the week!

Another New Studio

Well our last landlords here in Warrensburg apparently fell off the face of the planet so we had to move house unexpectedly. We managed to find a much larger rental property for only about $150.00 more than we were paying a month and we were paying very low rent there. It's a three bedroom house with a separate garage and a really big yard. Still moving cuts into painting and terrain making time not to mention game time. The studio is about 50% larger than the old studio but I couldn't get as much shelving into it as I could the last one due to the layout so I put a lot of my model kits and long term WIPs on my other two shelves out in the laundry room. I think it's going to work out pretty well and I don't feel so crowded in this room.

Here is the left side wall from the door. I managed to get two five tier shelves up. I still need to rearrange my shelves to get the most important projects in each room. There is quite a bit of finished terrain on these two shelves. Eventually I want to have only WIPs on these shelves but I don't have enough nice shelving in the living room to display it.


Here's my painting desk in the right wall. I've got a smaller five tier shelf in the corner because that's all that would fit there. My paint desk is still not in order but it is in place.


Here's a shot of the left hand corner behind the door. I have some more short shelves and as you can see there is a small closet in this room as well.


Ah yes and here's Gordon the studio gorilla reading my copy of Savage Worlds a game I haven't played yet but am dying to try. Gordon seems to like it anyway.


I've shown you what is and now you get to see what could be. This is the garage. The last people who rented this place apparently stole the garage door. They also stole the refrigerator and stove. I'm not sure why. Anyway we're trying to get the door replaced and I hope to get the garage re-wired since the old wiring has been cut. Pretty soon I hope to turn this into the uber terrain studio.

Sunday, September 7, 2008

Technical Difficulties.

I've been having computer problems lately so I haven't been able to update anything. I think I've got things figured out so I should be able to add some new post soon. Stay Tuned.

Thursday, August 21, 2008

Longest "Speed Paint" project ever.


So I've decided to do a Warhammer 40K army and the only I still have enough figures for is my Sister's of Battle army. I started collecting this army several years ago. I'm thinking at least nine years ago and perhaps longer. I painted up a five sister battle squad straight away because in their first incarnation the minimum squad size was five then I started painting these seraphim. I got everything done on them other than their hair, weapons, and other small details then let them sit on my shelf collecting dust because I decided I hated 3rd edition. So Wednesday night I pulled them out dusted them off and finished them up. My painting style has changed over the years but I think these gals came out as a good table top squad. They arn't very heavily highlighted or tightly detailed but they they do have enough contrast for army figs. For instance their armor is just one layer of drybrushing over black but it gave me the exact look I wanted for them. They are from the Order of the Iron Rose my own order and I wanted their armor to look like brushed iron. Now I need to try to keep the rest of the troops painted to this level and try not to over work them. Of course I plan to paint the characters to a higher level but I'm pretty happy with this level as a squad.

Wednesday, August 13, 2008

Gamer ADD

Howdy folks. Sorry about the lack of quality updates. I have been working on things. Too many things. In fact it's starting to look like a case of Gamer Attention Deficit Disorder. I have just way too many ideas and not enough time to work them all out. No amount of organization or planning seems to be helping me. As soon as I get stuck in on one project I get another "great idea" that diverts my attention and resources away from projects I should be working on. I hate it when this happens as it usually just causes me to have a lot of unfinished stuff laying around.

Games I'm currently involved in:

Shadowrun: Fortunately as a player and we aren't real miniatures heavy on the Shadowrun game. The GM has a bunch of the old Ral Partha Shadowrun minis in various stages of somewhat painted. I'm glad at least he's doing miniatures in some form because SR combat can get "interesting".

Serenity: I'm running this game and doing a ton of miniature projects for it but I'm starting to waver. I've only finished minis for about half the party and one of the PCs doesn't have a mini at all finished or not. I've still got a half painted fed squad and a pack of reavers that are still in their blisters. I have finished several NPC types but I'd say I still have 50-100 minis to finish for this project. The game is currently on hold until September due to schedule conflicts among the players.

BMAP: This is my family pulp adventure game and it's stalled due to the fact that I'm not ready to continue to the next scenario due to not having all the minis or terrain done yet. Moving house really hurt this campaign and our one non family member player now lives like 90 miles away. Hopefully I'll get back on this "soon"

Games I'm suppose to be working on:

Blackfeather: Another pulp adventure game set in the U.S. Only played one session of this game so far.

Star Wars Star Destroyer Liberty: I was suppose to start this Clone Wars era campaign over a month ago but I just can't get it together.

Warhammer Fantasy Battles: I'm suppose to be helping get a Warhammer league going at one of the local game shops but I'm not up on the current rules yet and my armies are still half packed up from the move.

Warhammer 40k: Never tell anyone you have enough minis to make an army for this game. They will immediately start pressuring you to join their 40k game group.

Games I really, really, really, want to play:

Sky Pirates: Still working slowly on a campaign that I plan to run spanning both "Weird Wars". I have planes and some minis but can't get a group interested yet. Probably a good thing due to other projects. This one will have to simmer on the back burner for a while I'm afraid. I'll certainly work on it but only a little at a time.

Santa Carlito Zombie Republic: A recent idea for a Zombie outbreak game I plan to set on the fictitious Caribbean island of Santa Carlito. I may even do this as a multi group campaign where each "team" can affect the story line.

Other game project ideas:

The Adventures of Jack Harrison: A pulp adventure featuring the Jack Harrison model by Reaper Miniatures. I plan to use only Reaper miniatures for this game and their RAGE engine for the rules. I plan to make it a convention game and hope to run it at Recruits Convention in Lee's Summit Missouri some time in the future.

Starfarers of Sol: A sci-fi setting based entirely on our own solar system without aliens.

Deadlands: I'd really like to play a Deadlands campaign.

Pirates: Yeah pirates.

Arthurian: I've had a number of abortative attempts at doing a rpg set in Arthurian England.

Warhammer Fantasy Roleplaying: I keep buying the books but can't get people interested.

Mordheim/Necromunda: Yeah the two GW games I actually want to play but everyone else wants to play the money pit games.

Thursday, August 7, 2008

Dry Brushing Update

I have started a unit of Dwarf Clansmen from the Warhammer Fantasy "Battle for Skull Pass" boxed set. I'll try to add some pics tonight but it's been a really busy week. I think they are going pretty well though.

Tuesday, July 29, 2008

August painting project "Speed Techniques"

Alright my July miniature a day project was a bit of a bust but I still finished quite a few more minis than I have on several previous months so it wasn't a total loss. Now I've decided to do another speed oriented project exploring the usefulness of various speed techniques I've encountered over the years. I'll try a different technique each week and I'll try for about five models per technique.

Dry Brushing
First up will be dry brushing. Now dry brushing is considered a very basic technique and it's often looked down on by contest and display painters but it can be a very good way to achieve quick and dramatic results. I will try to paint five models using entirely dry brushing as a means of highlighting and I will try to get the best results I can as quickly as possible.

Minwax Dip
I've never actually tried this technique but I've seen it used in several tutorials. Basically you block in the colors on a miniature then dip the mini in a pot of Minwax finish and shake off the excess paint. I think the trick to this technique is to use colors a shade or two brighter than you normally would to get the best results. I'm gonna give it a try anyway.

Emphasised Washes
This is a new technique I've never seen but it makes sense. I first heard of it on the Reaper forums in the speed painting section but the origional article was posted on Cool Mini or Not. I've not tried this one either so it will be a first. Here is the article.

Tanks and Trolls Wash and Highlight technique
I've been using this technique a lot lately although I think I've been taking it a bit further than the origional article. Still it's faster than doing different color washes for each color. I'm going to see if I can't cut back a bit and do some more like the origional article.

Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Miniature or more a day update.

Well sadly all good things must come to an end. I just can't keep up. I'm now four days behind and I had better quit before I burn myself out. I still managed to get quite a few minis done than I did last month and I may paint a few more by the 31st but I'm not going to push myself to get 31 done. I've just got too much going on between working full time and running a weekly game not to mention family time. Perhaps some day I'll be able to do it again and do better but right now is not the time.

Sunday, July 20, 2008

Miniature or more a day 18

Well now I'm two days behind. Weekends are in reality the worst days to get minis done. I run my Serenity Campaign on Saturday and Sunday is usually housework day. Today however I went to a birthday party 15 miles out of town then make a 120 mile trip to take my mother, who was staying the weekend with us back home. I just managed to finish one mini over the entire weekend. Another Copplestone babe.


Saturday, July 19, 2008

Miniature a day update

Well tonight things just didn't work out. I just had too many things to do after I got off work. I only managed to get to the wash stage but I'm going to go ahead and finish this mini up tonight and if I can finish it and another by tomorrow night then that's just going to have to do. I think I'm just going to see if I can manage to get 31 done by the end of the month.

Thursday, July 17, 2008

Miniature a Day 17

Well I'm getting a bit burned out on the project which is ironic because my speed is getting better. Getting myself to sit down and paint every night is getting harder and there are other things I need and want to do. I'm still trying to stick with it until the end of the month but after that I'm going to have to do some terrain or something totally different for a couple weeks.

Here's a scavenger from Copplestone Castings Future Wars. He's begging to get written into a zombie game sometime in the future but for now he'll probably play the part of random gun toating NPC in my Serenity RPG.


Miniature a Day 16

Here's number 16. Another one barely under the wire. Couldn't quite manage to get it posted until after midnight. Sorry the photo is not so hot on this one. I don't have time to re-shoot it at this time though.


Wednesday, July 16, 2008

Miniature a Day 15

So here is my July 15th 11:59 pm miniature. Another Copplestone Casting Babe with Gun from my paint table with love.


Miniature a day update

I just finished tonights litterally at 11:59 on my clock. I'm still clear coating the mini and I won't be able to post it until later but I'm still on target even if only just barely.

Monday, July 14, 2008

Miniature or more a Day 14

Well I managed to get one done today. I was pretty tired from work and I wasn't sure if I'd be able to finish one. This is from Copplestone Castings again. One of the Babes with Guns from the Future Wars line.


Sunday, July 13, 2008

Miniature or more in a day 13

Yes I skipped ahead. I didn't like the way I was numbering them so now I'll just use the date when I post.

Well it's the 13th of the month and I've just finished the 13th miniature. It's the last of my Alliance Militia which is cool. I was starting to get tired of them. I was going to try and finish up my fed squad but they have very similar colors so I'm just going to do up some PCs and random NPCs over the next week. I need a break from using the same six pots of paint over and over again.



I may be able to get more done today and if so I'll post them later but my studio is trashed and I need to mow the lawn so I'm not making any promises.

Friday, July 11, 2008

Miniature or More in a Day update.

Well I didn't finish a miniature tonight. I got about half done with one but I didn't finish it. So I've got 12 minis done in 10 days and it does seem like a shame just to drop the project so I'm not going to count the last strike unless my number of finished minis is less than the number of days that have passed. For instance if on Day 16 I have only 15 minis done then I'm counting myself out. I hate to change the rules but this doesn't let me off the hook compleatly.

Thursday, July 10, 2008

Miniature or More a Day 8

Ok the varnish dried enough he didn't look to shiny to photograph. I only have one more milita guy to do after this one. I'm pretty happy with the way these guys turned out but I'll also be happy to work on some other minis for a while.


Wednesday, July 9, 2008

Miniature a day short update.

I finished another militia tonight but his varnish is still drying so I can't post pics until after midnight. I'll have him up soon.

Tuesday, July 8, 2008

Miniature a Day Strike Two

Ummm strike two. Just ran out of time. Had to do the laundry. Things ain't lookin good.

Monday, July 7, 2008

Miniature a Day 7

Just barely got this guy done today. I really didn't feel like painting tonight but I decided to sit down and get one done. This is another militia trooper. I only have two more and I'm going to get them done in the next two days.



Sunday, July 6, 2008

Miniatuer a Day 6

Got a couple more militia done today. Just three more militia to go and I'll be done with them.




Miniature a day Strike One....



Strike one.Well this was more of a foul ball that looked like a home run but went just the wrong side of the pole. I got about 90% done with two more of my militia figs but I just couldn't wrap them up. We had a party to go to late in the afternoon and so I only had about 4-5 hours to paint. I would still have probably finished but I spent at least two of those hours playing WoW. It was for a good cause though. We had our game groups 4th of July party on the 5th. Actually it was more than just our game group. About 30 or so people were there. One of the GMs in our group has a really nice house out in the country about 15 miles from town. We had great food and drink and all the Dads had fun shooting various firearms on the property owners firing range. The AK-47 was my favorite. One of the guys in the group worked at a fireworks stand so he came with about $1,000 in fireworks. Best show I've ever seen at a private party.Anyway I should be able to finish what I started today quite easily tomorrow but I'm afraid I may end up getting another strike on Tuesday because I have to be out of town that day.

Friday, July 4, 2008

Miniatuer a Day 4


Well I got three done today since I had a day off. These three are also Alliance militia for my Serenity game. I've got five more militia then I will be done with that group. These turned out ok I guess. They are just troops after all.




Thursday, July 3, 2008

Miniature a Day 3

Well I finished up the two I started yesterday. Might get another done by midnight but I need to do some assembly and stuff so I might put the brushes down for tonight.

This guy turned out alright but I rushed his eyes a bit and you can tell.

Both of these are from Copplestone Castings Future Wars line. They are civilian militia and I intend to use them as Alliance Militia for my Serenity RPG game.

Wednesday, July 2, 2008

Miniature a Day 2

Well I got cocky. Got home a bit early from work, went to the store and picked up a few things and still got to sit down at my table much earlier than normal. So I decided to paint three minis tonight instead of just one. Unfortunately I only finished one and he's a bit dodgy even for a speed paint. Oh well I think he's still tabletop and the other guys are 85% done so I sort of have a good start on tomorrow. Front and back pics this time because his back is more interesting than his front.




Most of these mini a day figures will be for my Serenity game. This is a GW Van Saar fig but he'll be an Alliance sniper in my Serenity RPG.

Tuesday, July 1, 2008

Miniature a day 1.5

Well today turned out to be one of those "or more" days. This guy is about a 3.5 hour job and he's an NPC for my Serenity game. Guess which side he fought on during the Unification War.

Miniature or more a day project!

Ok well my last couple months production have been kinda lackluster so I decided to try and see how many days I can manage to complete at least one miniature. I'm shooting for a month and I'm going to give myself three strikes which will be day's I don't finish a miniature before I count myself out. At the end of the month if I'm feeling burnt out I'm going to go back to just painting at my leasure. These will be speed paints of course 2-4 hours maximum. I'm working full time again so I won't have a whole lot time to go for a longer paintjob. Right now I have pleanty of models primed for this type of thing so it's a good time to try it. Please feel free to join me if you like. Don't count any strikes until you get your first mini posted.


Here's my day one entry. July 1st 2008

Sunday, June 22, 2008

Serenity: a WIP shot and a new vehical.

Still doing work on Serenity stuff. My campaign will be called "Midnight Rider". I have a blog set up for it. You can find it in my profile. I'll probably only show mostly finished projects there though. The meaty WIPs will remain here.

The blond with the gun is a player character for the game named Kate. The green John Deer thing will get re painted and converted into a pretty battered looking utility truck.

Thursday, June 12, 2008

More Serenity Miniature Work

Got some more work done on my Serenity project. Unfortunately I thought I would have until at least the end of the month to work on projects but due to a really botched Shadow Run job our group decided to take a break from Shadowrun and run Serenity now so I will be working on things as the game is in progress.
Got a little further on the Fed Squad. All 10 of the troopers have highlighted jumpsuits and I started on the webbing gear and purple markings. So far I've just got these two at that stage but I don't think it will take long to finish up from here.


I also started working on the PC minis. This is a miniature from Urban Mamoths Urban War line. The character's name is Ben and he's the groups pilot and face man.


The player who is going to be playing Ben sent me this render of his character. The thing about minis is that you can't always match your mini to exactly what the character looks like. I think I made a pretty good match for this character. The hair is different and the render doesn't have facial hair but the basic elements of the character are the same and I tried to make my paintjob match his concept as best I could.
This is Toni the crew's mechanic. It's my wife's character and she did the paintjob on this one. I think it turned out real nice.

I expect to do a lot more Serenity projects in the next few months. Watch this spot.

Friday, June 6, 2008

Alliance Fedrals for Serenity

An update a real update. Well we've almost finished the move and we now have our phone and Internet service up at our new place. As I said in the reorganization post my new game group wants me to run the Serenity RPG in July. I already had a box of Starship Troopers Light Armoured Troopers from Mongoose Publishings Starship Trooper game that I picked up for the last Serenity campaign I ran. I never got the point where I needed them last time so I never painted any of them up. The costume designers for the Firefly TV show used the armor and helmets from the Starship Troopers movies for the Alliance federals in "The Train Job", "Bushwhacked", and "Safe" episodes. The miniatures were not the best sculpts and definitely not the best cast and they are on the large side for the 28-30mm scale of miniatures but they are the best match to the troops from the show available.


I decided to speed paint these guys in the same fashion I've been doing my speed paints recently. First I blocked in the colors on the whole squad and even the base on these troops. The box set came with 20 troopers but my experience with the Serenity rules left me feeling the rules didn't support really large combat encounters very well so I decided to pick only 10 troopers to paint. I decided on pretty much just troops with regular weapons though I did pick the sniper and communications officer as well.


After I block in the colors I washed the whole squad with a wash mixed from burnt umber, dark blue, and a drop or future floor wash diluted with water until I got the consistency I liked. I then start my highlighting with the color I used as a base and two additional layers of lighter highlights. As you can see I'm highlighting pretty loosely. These are definitely table top paint jobs and I'm trying to keep the time down on these. I hope they will end up looking nice but they are in no way display models.


So far I've been able to get the jumpsuits highlighted on five of the troops. I've only got about 3-4 hours painting this squad so that's not bad. I usually work from large area to small when doing this stage of highlights. It makes each stage go faster than the previous stage which is a great help when doing larger squads.