Tattered Angles French Roast Color Wash Paint Vs Games Workshop Agrax Earthshade

 I was in Hobby Lobby a few days ago and I saw this "Tattered Angles" color wash tint and I wondered if it would hold up against Games Workshop shades. 

 I selected the "French Roast" color because I wanted to see how it looked against Agrax Earthshade and it looked like the darkest brown wash available in the line.  The "Tattered Angles" line comes in 59ml bottles for $2.99 U.S. vs the 24ml Games Workshop bottles that I payed $7.50 U.S. for at my FLGS.  Now the "Tattered Angles" web site had these colors listed for $4.99 and the Games Workshop site had their shades listed at $7.80 but the Tattered Angles is a clear winner on price for volume. 
   

I painted up a couple of zombie miniatures with as close to an identical paint job as possible.  I used cheapo Delta Ceramcot for the base.  The only difference between the two zombies is their hair color.

I applied both washes liberally straight from the bottle with no dilution.  I could tell at this point that the French Roast was going to be a darker and cooler wash than the Agrax Earthshade.  Tattered Angles do have a "Latte" color that I may try to see if it matches Agrax Earthshade better.  Both washes seemed to behave in a similar fashion flowing nicely into the recessed areas without tide marks or over staining the highlights. 

Both washes dried as I expected.  The Agrax Earthshade was warmer and lighter in tone.  The French Roast was cooler and a little darker.  I think both shades preformed nicely.  I have a slight preference for the Agrax Earthshade on this model but I'm not put off by the French Roast now that I know how to handle it.  I think it will make a particularly nice armor wash.  For the price difference I really like the Tattered Angles wash.  It did seem to dry a little flatter than the Games Workshop shade which some people may or may not like.  If I was needed a dark wash for a big project I would seriously consider it.  

July Painting with Games Workshop Contrast Paints and Reaper Miniatures.

I finally accomplished one of those hobby goals that every painter swears they are going to start doing.  I finally finished a batch of miniatures I ordered before making my next order.  I got this order of Reaper Miniatures at the end of June and I just finished painting them before the end of July which was my goal.  It's only 17 miniatures but that's pretty good with my schedule. 

I used the new Games Workshop contrast paints over a dry brushed under painting like I did on my Death Guard Plague Marines. I like the contrast paints but they are really expensive.  They work well for this technique but they take some getting used to.  I don't think they make good paints for beginners because of the amount of brush control they require and that fact that you need to think about layers in reverse like you do when painting with watercolors.  You can't just fix a problem by painting over it unless you paint your primer layer back first.  In that respect they are very unforgiving for a new painter but they are very similar to the glazing technique I have been using a lot lately so for me they work.  It's convenient not to have to mix up the glazes before painting and the have a better pigment ratio than my own glazing technique.  They do require some getting used to but I think I'm getting better with them. 

I did paint a batch of minis with Contrast paint in June.  About 8 mostly Wizkids unpainted minis for D&D and Pathfinder.  I never got around to posting them but some of them turned out really nice. 

 I really like these two new Bones Black minis from Reaper.  They are the Crimson Herald and the Dreadmere Wight. I think I would like to get some Zombies and paint them up with the Nurgle flesh green color I used here to make some minions for this pair. 

I knew when I saw the Herald figure how I wanted to paint him and I'm really happy with the way he turned out.  I was able to use the GW contrast paints to pretty good effect by glazing the pink color over the green color where the tentacles transitioned from green to pink.  I also added some pink stippling which I think really gave the model some atmosphere. 

These are some old Reaper lizard men but I really like these sculpts.  For some reason they just give off a classic lizard man vibe. 

I like the way the contrast paints worked on these as well.  They seem to really shine on creatures and other organic models.  I tried to stick with the classic lizard man green look here.  

This was the free promo figure for the month of June Garghuk the Ogre.  This mini was an awesome sculpt and a lot of fun to paint.  He's simple but still looks really nice and his details are well defined.  The pose was not complicated so it was easy to get a brush around the model.  If I was doing a "learn to paint" class I would strongly consider using this model. 

I had a little trouble using the contrast paint on the skin tones because of the large surface but it wasn't too hard to get the problems worked out.  I really like the way the Snake Bite Leather and Gor Guntha Fur turned out in particular. 

 These are a combination of the Bones Black Dreadmere Mercenaries, the Dreadmere Ranger, and Fruella Dreadmere mercenary packs.  The later two are metal minis.  Of course these all have a similar style so I thought I would paint them up as an irregular unit.  I think they would make a good Sheriff and Posse or a Ranger and Woodsmen.  Some group of NPCs that might be encountered in a dark forest. 
 

 I did have a little trouble with the contrast paints rubbing off the coats on these minis while I was painting them.  I've had this problem with other glazing techniques as well. 
   

These are a couple of metal Reaper figures from the Dark Heaven line.  Brother Roberto, cleric and Erick Paladin Initiate.  I liked the medieval fantasy feel of both of these minis.  They looked like they would make good companion pieces.  The cleric is really quite well dressed.  I painted him up to look a bit like a traveling Jesuate but he could be done us as more of a cardinal.    

The priest was the hardest to paint with the contrast paints.  The bottom parts of his over robe got really dark because I tend to do my dry brushing lighter at the top and darker at the bottom.  I had to go back in a paint in highlights then glaze them again with the grey contrast paint to get the details.  I really enjoyed painting the armor on the paladin but it didn't photograph very well.  In fact both of these models look a lot better in person but that happens some time.  I think they are quite worthy of my tabletop however so over all they were a success.  

I still have pretty mixed feelings about the GW contrast paints.  I feel like they play to my style pretty well and I have enough experience to handle them but I think a lot of new painters will be frustrated by them.  A lot of the darker tones really need to be thinned down and it's really hard to tell the difference between the browns in particular until you use them a while.  Some of the colors shift quite a bit when you thin them as well.  You really have to be able to block in large areas on a mini in one go to make these work which takes good control and if you are not careful they rub off pretty easily.  The skin tones are also kind of hard to work with.  I was fine to use my dry brush technique on the male models that I wanted to look ruff but I had to paint light grey back onto the face of the one female model I did this month to avoid giving her a five o'clock shadow.  Since I've been using similar techniques for a while I was able to predict this.  All in all I'm happy with them but buyer beware for those unfamiliar with using glazing techniques.   

Ziggurat of Happiness!

 Just got in a Ziggurat of Battlemechs in the form of the new Alpha Strike Lance packs.  I purchased all 8 lance packs and got an extra Striker lance to bring the total to 36 mechs or 3 companies.

I also picked up two of the new Shadowhawk 2H models based on the new artwork.  They look beautiful!
 

Here is the Command Lance painted up.  I picked up one of these and a Pursuit lance a few weeks ago.  These have really great detail.  In some ways better than the metal minis.  I would have to say that these mechs are some of the best plastic minis I have ever purchased.  They also had very little in the way of mold lines or flaws.  For table top purposes you can paint them straight out of the box.  

Little box of joy from Khurasan Miniatures! Federal Infantry

 This last Sunday I placed and order to Khurasan Miniatures for a platoon of Federal Riflemen plus some support weapons.  35 miniatures came to a total of $53.95 with shipping!  That's roughly $1.54 per miniature.  What a steal!  Not to mention I got the order today.  Just 3 business days after I placed the order.  I'm very impressed.    

 The miniatures are very nice.  Not the best sculpts but they are very good and very well styled.  The weapons seem reasonably sized and their equipment is very "Soldier of the Future" in nature.  There are 17 different sculpts in this line and a good selection of heavy type weapons.  Easily enough to make a nice platoon sized force for a 28mm skirmish game.

They fit well with other 28mm lines.  They are a bit on the shorter and slender side and don't scale quite as well with more "heroic" scale lines but they look acceptable for most of the lines I use.

I plan to use these guys as Marines for the Confederacy of Outlying Systems in my Moon Miners and Terraformers setting.

Medium hover tank for Hell Knights and two new Mecha toys!

 So I picked up three Matchbox tank toys over a year ago with bog clunky wheels and started messing around with one of them to try and turn it into a hover tank.  Here is the original thread. Progress went pretty slow on it but I finally finished it.  This was one of those projects that got put on the back burner for no particular reason.
The original toy had a fixed turret but I managed to fix that problem.  The turret still hangs up a bit on the pilots hatch but it won't really affect it's play ability and it's still much more useful than having a fixed turret.  I had to glue a piece of plastic pipe into the top turret and then I glued a piece of heavy cardboard under the turret hole with a hole in it to make the turret turn.  Nothing on the conversion was all that technical so I'm not sure why I kept putting it off.  It's going to serve as a medium hover tank for my Hell Knights army.

 I went out today and picked up two new Mecha models from the new Pacific Rim movie.  I know almost nothing about the movie but the toys looked like they had potential.  They both stand about 7.5 inches tall which puts them in about the right size for medium mecha in my setting.  I'm going to do some conversion on both of these models.  The extra arm on the red one will be turned into some kind of over the shoulder weapons mount and I will probably add some weapons to the blue one.  The models cost $19.95 each at Hastings which I thought was a pretty good value.
There are some down sides to these toys.  There seem to be made with quite a few vinyl parts which will make them difficult to paint without dealing with off gassing.  I think the Krylon "Fusion" paints may work the best.  They are a good selection when painting any plastic toy and they seem to have worked out fairly well when I have used them on similar projects.  Another issue is that they have very odd articulation.  It's likely I'll pick a pose and glue them into place anyway but it's still annoying.  They are also lacking in weapons so I will have to add a few to them.

I think they blue one has a striking resemblance to the Quasit Militia Mech from the Battletech setting.  I've been wanting to do some 28mm Battletech mechs so I may pick up another one or two for that purpose.

Pegasus Sandbags and my Improvised Military Base

I picked up a couple packs of Pegasus Hobbies Sandbag packs to create an improvised military base for an Episode of Maxed Out my science fiction Savage Worlds game.  I picked up a set of "Straights" and a set of "Corners".  Each set was $20.00 a piece.  I really like these.  They are nicely detailed and finished and they are ready to use out of the box.  I think they worked well in this situation.

It's like Christmas in August!

So today the delivery guy dropped off what may be must last serious game purchase in a while. My shiny new copy of AE Bounty and a box of Wargames Factory Shock Troopers. I'm not normally one to pick up things brand new to the market but like many burnt out fans of a certain company and game who will remain nameless I was eager for some new Sci-Fi gaming alternatives. Something less Gothic and more space opera. :) Although you could argue that the Shock Troopers are kinda Gothic at least they aren't dripping with spiky bits and skulls.

The first thing I did was un-box the Shock Troopers. The pictures on the web do not do them justice. They are solidly in the 28-30mm category. Not too big or too small. Just about average in size and they look quite compatible with many of the other Sci-Fi lines. I was concerned about this because I had picked up a package of Wargames Factory Zombies a while back and felt they were under scale compared to most of the lines I use. The box comes with six sprues that each have three troopers and a ton of options.

Just check out all these heads. A couple of helmet options, several gas mask heads. A sergeant head with a side cap and even one head with just hair. There is also the alien head option which looks very Cthulhu inspired.

Here is a shot of two sprues from both sides. I like the level of detail Wargames Factory achieved on this set. Seems pretty crisp and comparable with some of the better multi part plastics out there.

I haven't really had a chance to read the AE Bounty book. I'm writing this blog entry perhaps 45 minutes after the box hit my door step. The book however looks nice. It's got full color illustrations and several nice shots of miniatures from the AE Bounty line although the game makers stress that you can use these rules with any minis and any setting. Darkson Designs do provide a setting for the rules and their miniatures which seems interesting and well thought out but the rules are designed to be generic. I've very excited to see how this game plays out and I hope to have a battle report and better review in a couple of days.