Constantly Risking Obscurity

2012 Eldar Rumors!

2011-12-08T09:39:00.001-05:00

Take these with a grain of salt, but these are some rumored rules I've heard about a 2012 upcoming Eldar book!

Wisdom of the Ages - Eldar Farseers are masters of controlling psychic powers. Any psychic test roll of 10 or less made by Farseers automatically passes unless other modifiers negate this, especially anything by forces of the Imperium.

Made Of Freaking Glass Or Something - Eldar are frail and break if glared at harshly. All enemies re-roll rolls to wound against Eldar models. Enemies that would normally get a re-roll to wound get a second re-roll, overriding the "one re-roll" rule completely.

Ninja Throwing Star Gun Pew Pew - Eldar shuriken weapons are especially deadly against unarmored foes. Any enemy model with no armor save or invulnerable save wounded by a shuriken weapon automatically takes one wound.

Flying Tanks! - All Eldar vehicles use a "bottom" armor characteristic of 6 instead of front, side or rear when targeted by anything on the ground. Grav tanks that have disembarked troops that turn and have not moved since are exempt from this rule until they move.

I'm Pretty Sure I Have Some Art To Do - Eldar guardians can always choose to be wiped out in assault, since they'd really rather be pursuing other interests.

Ancient Enemy - An opponent fielding any unit aligned with the Chaos god Slaanesh may touch the Eldar player in a sensual and potentially confusing way immediately before each Eldar shooting phase.

Alright! Time to start saving my pennies for a new army!

Kamikaze Credit Where Credit Is Due

2011-11-29T22:30:00.000-05:00

Kamikaze from Serious Sam, c. 2001

With a new Serious Sam game being released, I thought I would pay homage to the first shooter I remember that had a suicidal bomber enemy that would run kamikaze at you... and it's not Serious Sam.

I really liked PC games from the mid-90's through the early 00's. I typically had a PC that could handle them too. It was Doom that convinced me to drop my Amiga and get a PC, and from there it was a non-stop shooters, RTS, and just about any other game I could find. I was present for the birth of hardware accelerated 3D, and it was good. Demos were plentiful too, and although high speed internet was much more rare than nowadays most computer magazines had a CD of demos tucked in the sleeve. (Remember those? Printed magazines?) In 2001, FPS games had gotten a little crazy in complexity and narrative. Everyone wanted to have Doom's success, but with more thinky. Along comes this out-of-nowhere development team, from Croatia of all places, with a fun, fast, mindless romp of an FPS called Serious Sam. It was universally loved. If you didn't love it, get out of my universe. Old Man Murray even interviewed its creator. Twice.

One of the many web-based reviews was going on and on and on about how great it was, and gushed on about how original the screaming kamikaze bombers of Serious Sam were, a new enemy never seen before. Immediately, I thought to another shooter I had played, MDK, which also had screaming kamikaze bombers. MDK was released in 1997 and it wasn't a big hit, so I suppose it was a forgivable oversight on the part of the reviewer. I decided to send a quick and friendly heads-up to the reviewer... something along the lines of:

Regarding your Serious Sam review, the kamikaze bombers are very cool but this isn't the absolute first time we've seen something like them. MDK had kamikaze enemies that ran at you holding a bomb over their head. Thanks for the great web site, etc, etc.

The one-line response from the reviewer was something like:

I don't remember anything like that in MDK.

Well, that will teach me, won't it? He doesn't remember it, therefore we may imply that it didn't happen.

Fast forward ten years, and the Amazon App Store free download of the day is "Serious Sam Kamikaze Attack" and memories of this whole forgotten exchange flood back. What was the name of that game again? What web-site was that? I may not remember the web-site that had the review, but I was able to dredge up the name MDK and here is incontrovertible proof of the MDK bomber dudes existed, via the miracle of youtube (time 5:30-6:00 roughly.)

Ha! Take that, ten year old computer game review!
Plus, you gotta admit... MDK was pretty amazing for its time.

The Escalating Hello Kitty Project

2011-11-29T12:01:00.001-05:00

A woman I barely know at work has seen some of my miniature painting, since I sometimes paint at lunch. She had all the usual comments and questions for someone who doesn't know much about the hobby, but seemed to appreciate the work. About a month ago she asked me to paint something Hello Kitty for her daughter's birthday. I assumed that she wanted me to personalize a toy by painting something on it. "Sure, whatever you need," I answered.

Do you see the problem with that offer? I didn't at the time. Next thing I know I'm not only painting three Hello Kitty figures, but sculpting them as well based on a page from a coloring book. Oh, and they are big. Here is a regular terminator for scale.

He has a 3++ save against cute.

In retrospect I should have corrected the issue immediately, but instead I just ran with it like I knew that was the plan the whole time. I didn't want her to feel like I had agreed to something and was backing out just because she and I didn't have a complete understanding of what I would be able to do well. This is really the first time I've sculpted something like this. After about 20 hours of work and several serious miss-steps, I was finally able to get them together and paint them (poorly) and am delivering them today. They are by no means sturdy, so I hope they survive transport. I was fairly happy with the little dance floors I made for them.

So, the take away here (which you would think I would already know in my line of work) is to define your scope and set expectations early.

Hmmmm.... maybe I'll use what I've learned to sculpt my own Teddy for Malifaux.....

My Strange Children and the Waffled Cheese Sandwich

2011-11-29T11:51:00.001-05:00

I was home with my kids last weekend, and prep for lunch started. They clamored for grilled cheese, so I dug around in the drawer that houses our Salton sandwich maker. One of the kids spotted the waffle iron in that same drawer and suggested we make the sandwiches in the waffle iron instead. Hmmm. Strange idea, but why not?

Hey, that's not a waffle

It actually worked out pretty well. Once done, the bread had a distinctly waffle-like quality to it. The sandwiches were definitely a unique twist on plain old grilled cheese.

It's a waffled cheese sandwich!

Warning though... the bread and cheese left little burned spots on the waffle iron that came out as black dots in the next waffle I made. Next time I will definitely take more care to clean the waffle iron when I'm done.

The Thing That Ate Nino

2011-11-19T22:35:00.001-05:00

This was my Rotten Harvest entry in the "Things That Go Bump In The Night" category. Since the contest I have added a few rocks to the base, just to break up the sand texture a little.

The inspiration for this piece came from playing a game of Malifaux against a guild player using Nino Ortega. We put far too little terrain on the board, but as a new player I didn't know any better. All I remember was thinking, "Something had better eat him before he kills all my models." Behold that something.

The model is scratch built, sculpted initially from Fimo polymer clay around an aluminum foil core.

The Fimo / Sculpey version

After the Fimo was baked I used epoxy putty (green and gray) to sculpt on the features. To give the mouth some depth, teeth were sculpted on the model, and the lips were sculpted over them. Lots of watered down Milliput was used to get the body as smooth as possible but it still took a ton of sanding to get it even close to where I wanted. The little legs are based on an illustration I saw years and years ago from a book of Arthurian legend depicting a battle with a Wyrm with many short, taloned legs in a very centipede-like layout. I figure everything in Malifaux has to be at least obliquely referential to something else, right? I had intended them to lay more flat against the body, which probably would have looked better.

The original plan was to put him on a 50mm base, since that's the largest base used in Malifaux, and to have the hat sitting on the ground in front of him to suggest who the victim is. My hobby group convinced me to use a larger base to get my narrative across, which I appreciated. My stubborn insistence on using game appropriate bases limited my Space Marine vs. Howling Banshee diorama to 40mm, and for the life of me I don't know what I was thinking. After switching to the larger base size, my daughter saw the sculpted hat and declared that he should wear it. I resisted the idea for about 10 seconds until I saw the genius of it. "I ate you, and now I'm going to wear your hat." It reminded me of the very old Far Side cartoon of vultures eating some carrion, and one of them has a cowboy hat on doing his cowboy impersonation.

The translucent image of the victim was always part of the plan, but it didn't go quite as well as hoped. I'm not entirely sure what I should have done differently, but it could just as easily be an image on the outside of the stomach as the inside. Some people in the comments obviously got it, others did not.

Getting closer. Just needs his lunch painted in.

The cactus was an interesting challenge. Each lobe was sculpted separately, and the whole thing glued together with the tiniest of contact points. Touch the thing and it falls apart.

So there it is. My first fully sculpted and painted miniature. I'm pleased with it despite the flaws and lessons learned.

Wyrd Rotten Harvest Entry - Ghost Girl

2011-11-17T09:54:00.001-05:00

This started out as an entry for the "Harrowing Harvest" duel category, with Reaper's Clarissa painted as a ghost (using the water sculpted on the base as a sort of "spectral splash") facing off against an undead hunter, utilizing OSL. The two figures just never really popped on the base together, so I decided to use Clarissa on her own. Most of the critique mentions the disconnect between the base and the mini, and this is mostly due to me having painted the mini separately and gluing to the base later. I really should have gap filled better between the "splash" and the grave, but I really didn't notice how bad it was until looking at the photos later. Most of the time my angle of viewing during painting the base (directly overhead) obscured the disconnect.

I had considered adding a tree, some clumps of grass or similar to make the base look busier, but in the end just was running too low on time. The snake (which I will post later) was my main entry, and most of the time went to him, being fully sculpted. I'll probably add some more details, clean up the OSL in some spots and then post this to CMON.

At the end of voting, she got 3rd place in her category, with which I am very pleased. Kudos to my wife for suggesting the red eyes. The original eyes were yellow-green, and Stef knew that a little touch of complementing red would give the model a nice focus point. Was she ever right!

"Hako" Means "Absent" in Swahili

2011-11-15T11:51:00.000-05:00

And I regularly live up to the name by fading away for a few weeks.

Rotten Harvest pics have been up for nearly a week. Today is probably the last day to vote, so if you are so inclined and already have an account on Wyrd's forum go take a gander. Do not create an account just to vote on stuff (specifically mine) because you'll potentially get the person disqualified for vote stacking. After the contest is over I'll post photos of my entries along with some WIP shots. I can't say I'm 100% pleased with any of my entries, but they aren't terrible overall. Only my accursed photography is terrible. Of the three entries only the ghost girl photos look halfway decent. The other two are so overexposed (is over-saturated the term?) that the qualities of the color are lost. The base on the snake looks completely yellow, much to my dismay.

So I suppose now I should start dragging myself back into life... answering my phone, returning emails, etc.

EDIT: Woo! Pulled off 3rd place in "Not Quite Dead Yet" with 21 votes for the ghost girl! I even managed to get 9 votes with the snake in his category, putting him in 5th place!

The Waiting Game

2011-11-04T16:22:00.003-04:00

I've been waiting for the voting galleries to be open for Wyrd's Rotten Harvest. The deadline for submission was midnight on Halloween, and judging by the time it's taking to get the images anonymous and ready for comment/voting I'm guessing there are a lot of them. Some of us have been having some fun in the contest thread while we wait.

It reminds me of waiting on pins and needles a few years ago, just after my bronze Golden Demon. I eagerly awaited the White Dwarf issue showing off all the Chicago winners. For some reason, I was completely stoked by the idea of seeing something I had created appearing in glossy print, even if it was in GW's $7 advertisement magazine. After many months of waiting I mentioned how eager I was to my local GW store manager. "Oh, hey. I don't know how to tell you this, but Golden Demon coverage got discontinued this year. They're going to show all the Slayer Sword winners in one issue when all the Games Days are done, but that's it."

Hopefully this waiting won't be quite as disappointing.

Sorrows ... and more

2011-10-28T13:00:00.001-04:00

Bill's Sorrows, about which he is pleased.

The lunch time painting continued this week, with Bill putting most of the finishing touches on his Sorrows. They are looking good! I stuck some Vallejo black lava to the base, since all other basing ideas he's had would just take too long on our big Malifaux project plan. No, we haven't made a Gantt chart. Get your PMP out of my toy soldier hobby.

"But Mike," you ask plaintively, "aren't you going to tell us what you've been working on?" Okay, but only in the vaguest of terms. I have been working on three entries for Wyrd's Rotten Harvest painting competition. Two of my entries are definitely complex... almost as complex as my Golden Demon entries have been. One of them in particular has taken me the better part of a month to get to this point, and I'm really hoping to have it done for Monday.

Additionally, I have been putting some time into a new web venture. It's just getting going but it has a lot of future potential and I'm doing all the programming, mostly in PHP, to interact with Google Docs / Google Checkout. Once I get the scaffolding around the product, I can start to fill in the details and it's going to be very, very cool.

Add-Additionally, I have been programming in the Corona SDK. The end result will be games in the Android Marketplace first and eventually the Apple AppStore. Nothing incredibly fancy, but simple games in a genre that is underrepresented in the marketplace now. Hopefully, under-representation and reasonably quick time to market can result in sales. I need to fork out $200 for the Corona Indie license, so hopefully I'll have that available after Progressive is done repeatedly violating my desiccated corpse. As it is I may be liquidating some of my minis to fund Yule-tide festivities.

Behold The Legal Process!

2011-10-24T18:00:00.000-04:00

Yup, apparently Progressive Insurance has decided to sue me over the little mishap that I had two years ago. As it turns out, my car insurance had lapsed (by about 30 hours) when the accident happened, so under Michigan law I am apparently not covered under the "no fault" law. That means I am directly liable for all the damages paid by Progressive for the other person's car. Whee. And the insurance company carrying my policy at the time (although not exactly that time) ... also Progressive. In fact, I'm still a customer of theirs. Go figure.

The lesson here, my little internets, is always pay your car insurance.

Also, thanks to this video for showing me how to make the curvy text in Gimp.

Thank You, Dennis Ritchie

2011-10-20T16:43:00.000-04:00

Unbeknownst to me, mere days before I posted this little homage to my introduction to programming as an adolescent, Dennis Ritchie died.

The death of Steve Jobs did not affect me greatly. I appreciate the attention to elegance and detail that Apple applies to their design, but I have barely used Apple products in my adult life. What Mac aficionados must have felt at Jobs' passing, I am feeling a bit of that with the death of Ritchie.

Dennis Ritchie created C, which I have repeatedly referred to as my "first language" as a programmer ("first" being akin to "native" in this case.) Every other language I have worked in I have done so with a C accent. C was beautifully small and efficient, fast in execution and powerful in capability. It is the language crafted to build the UNIX kernel. You could create code that practically read like English, or you could create code that stomped rampantly over anything in memory. Even the manual was a concise, elegant work, telling you everything you needed to know in an impossibly short format. "C is not a big language, and it is not well served by a big book," the preface of the 2nd edition of "The C Programming Language" reads.

I began programming in C in the late 80's, after buying my Commodore Amiga. I had programmed games in BASIC for what seemed like ages, but the speed of that interpreted language always bothered me. I had successfully learned to program in the compiled language Pascal, and now I was ready to try something that could do what I wanted really fast. There were numerous C examples showing how to access the Amiga's graphics and sound, and I dove in (with limited success) to learn to do that. It wasn't until I got a PC (an AMD 486 clone) in the early 90's that I acquired Borland's Turbo C and really got to work. Game programmers like Id Software and how-to authors like Michael Abrash opened the gates of knowledge to the arcane VGA card to me and my friend Jens. When we acquired a student discounted edition of Watcom's C/C++ compiler with its integrated Rational Systems DOS/4G Extender, the flat memory model became available and I felt like something magic had happened. All of memory was available to me without all that XMS/EMS and segment/offset malarkey.

Professionally as a test/measurement software engineer, I wrote C programs to access hardware, to process test data, to display user interfaces and graphs of results. When I came to my current job, I wrote a few utilities in C at first, but found scripting languages like Perl or UNIX shell more useful for what I needed to do. Still, as I said, I approach every new syntax I learn with the silent question of "I know how to do this in C. How do I do it in X?"

Thanks, Dennis.

Generation 6502

2011-10-14T11:57:00.001-04:00

I read a post at headcaseGames-Blog that got me thinking. What makes a programmer? Way back in the late 1970's, the very forward-thinking Bill Brown, principal of Miller Elementary, allowed students' families to "rent" the school computer for a weekend at a time (for a paltry $10.) On several occasions, my family did this. My younger brothers and I would load games that used Commodore's character graphics set off of cassette tapes and were in complete bliss. The poor Atari VCS (which was actually a Sears Tele-Games, if I recall correctly... there was no "2600" nomenclature back then) sat unused in the presence of the COMMODORE P.E.T. with its mighty 8k RAM.

My dad observed what we were doing and asked, "Why don't you just write your own game?"

"You can write your own game?"

"Sure. Let me show you." (Cue clouds parting and sunlight pouring down.) In about 10 minutes my dad had figured out how to use the machine's built-in BASIC interpreter to write a little "guess the number" game. My brothers and I took turns changing the target number in the program and then reveling in watching each other guess and be told by a computer whether their guess was high or low. Upon correctly guessing, the number of attempts would be reported. It was pure magic. Those ten minutes my dad spent showing us how to write a tiny BASIC program charted the course for the next 30 years of my life.

Like many of my nerdy friends, I ended up buying my own computer, and we all were programmers. Well, we all programmed anyway. Between the Vic-20's, the TI-99/4A's, the Apple II's, the C-64's and the Atari 400/800's we had a diverse little platform group, most of which were based on the MOS 6502 CPU. They had their differences, but at the core they all had a BASIC interpreter built into ROM. Sure there was lots of software available on cartridge or cassette or even the mythical 5.25" floppy, but all of us put a great deal of time into writing our own programs. We even performed the time consuming activity of typing programs into our computers that were published in Compute! magazine or its ilk. After a few hours of typing (typically with one friend dictating) we would hold our breath and type RUN. If it didn't work we would pour over the code and figure out what we typed wrong, often one number in the endless blocks of DATA statements.

So not only did we hunger to program, but we had endless good examples of simple programs to help us understand how the whole thing worked. There was voodoo that we didn't understand yet (Interrupt requests! Player/Missile graphics! Machine language! Sprites!) but we marched relentlessly forward in our knowledge. I clearly remember learning about string variables by analyzing a program I had loaded, forever loosing me from the constraints of only storing numbers.

Years later I wonder how any kid gets into programming today. My daughter is at the age when I was obsessed with programming. She loves computer games, but the idea of programming has no real appeal for her. Everything she could do, all those little triumphs I experienced, have been done 100 times better already, and there is too much competition for her free time to make those first steps seem appealing. Maybe if I get her an Android phone I can get her interested in the Corona SDK.

Sea Monster Self-Portrait?

2011-10-10T16:00:00.002-04:00

As reported here, a husband/wife team from Mount Holyoke College are asserting that the fossilized remains of several bus-sized ichthyosaurs at Nevada's Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park are actually the remnants of prior meals of an enormous ancient octopus, and that the beast had arranged the bones, specifically the vertebrae of the ichthyosaurs, to make something of a self-portrait. You can see what resembles a sucker pattern in the image here.

Is this possible? My first thought was "infinite monkey syndrome." Given enough time, there eventually will be an octopus lair with bones that make a reasonable facsimile of Botticelli's The Birth of Venus. Perhaps, but not terribly likely, even with the sorts of time they are talking about.

So now I ask myself, how does it affect what we know now if this self-portrait assertion is true? Other than being a terribly interesting fact about a long dead animal, I can't really think of any way this changes our reality . We have already established that octopus are pretty smart without assessing their skills of an artist. The real question, for me, is whether or not I want to live in a world where horrific sea creatures in some dark past would devour other monstrosities and decorate their lairs with the remains.

Yes. Yes I do.

How Sunbeam Almost Burned Down My House

2011-10-09T14:09:00.003-04:00

Title is a bit hyperbolic.

Everybody loves CF bulbs, right? They are shaped funny, they use less energy, and they supposedly last longer than regular incandescent bulbs.

As I was sitting at my kitchen table working on my laptop, one of the four CF bulbs I have in the overhead fixture started flickering and making popping noises. I've had many CF bulbs burn out on me, so I wasn't terribly surprised, but I've never actually watched it happen. Like I said before, they are supposed to last longer than incandescent bulbs but all the ones I've bought have been determined to prove that assertion wrong.

Anyway, the bulb sputters and dies, and I had two thoughts:

That name brand bulb didn't last as long as the ones I bought from the dollar store.
Looks like I'm going to have to change that ... sometime.

I went back to working, but within about 30 seconds I had an additional two thoughts:

What is that burning smell?
Maybe I should remove that bulb before it ignites.

I turned off the fixture, removed the bulb (clearly the source of the odor once I was close to is) and inspected it. The base was hot to the touch, and you can see the burned area in the photo. I can only imagine how much worse if would have gotten if I had not removed it within 60 seconds.

From now on, all CF bulbs shall be turned off before we leave the house.

The marking on the bulb say: Sunbeam 120V, 60Hz, 475 mA, FE-IIS-26W, 26W, E217916, 53SJ

The bulb was not used with a dimmer, was not in a totally enclosed or recessed fixture, or used where exposed to the weather. 1007.

Lunchtime Painting 28mm

2011-10-05T14:42:00.000-04:00

Hmmm. Shoot the enemy, or make him sad....
so hard to choose.

Bill painted Sorrows. I painted Kell Bailoch while the 15mm minis looked on jealously.

We did a little time analysis, and it's taking Bill about three sessions to paint a Sorrow now. Given that we have about 30 sessions in his 15 week term, and that 10 of them are gone, the goal of getting the entire Pandora box painted in these 15 weeks seems unattainable.

PSA: Talk To Your Kids About This Tragedy

2011-10-04T10:48:00.000-04:00

A friend of mine buried his 14 year-old daughter today. Abi had been experimenting with self-asphyxiation (called "the choking game" among other names) and things had gone wrong. There is an absolutely heart-wrenching information video/presentation at http://www.gaspinfo.com that explains more about this. Caleb and Kassi are determined that the truth about this to be known so that other kids don't cut their lives tragically short as their daughter did.

I know a lot of you hobbyists are parents. I have kids myself. As hard as it's going to be, I will be watching this with them tonight. I ask that you do the same.

Galactic Grenadiers 15mm WIP

2011-10-02T23:22:00.000-04:00

Galactic Grenadiers, 15mm Militiaman (done... I think) and Planetary Guard (WIP)

I decided to do the militiaman in a stereotypical "army man green" scheme. I had actually put some paint on a couple of these guys back in the 80's, but for some reason chose orange for their helmets, probably because they resembled construction helmets. Who knows what drives the twelve year-old mind? The planetary guard (far left) are used as police in one mission, so I figured I'd paint them blue. The eyes on the suit are so big that I made an attempt at sky-earth reflection. (Who knows what drives the forty-three year-old mind?) I included the completed Grenadier because... well, mostly because he was within arm's reach when I took the photo. The militiaman doesn't have much "pop" right now. I think I need to highlight even lighter, maybe a selective scorpion green or livery green.

I had kept the name of the game these belong to un-revealed in the hopes that someone would recognize them. Upon reflection, my scenario of someone stumbling onto my painted minis and exclaiming "Those are from Ral Partha's 1980 tabletop game Galactic Grenadiers!" seems ... unlikely.

Rules can be found here. Each turn (page 2) is a strange twelve phase ordeal including six specific shooting phases. Combat results are determined by calculating the difference between attack and defense stats of models and rolling 2d6 and comparing to a matrix. One thing I chuckled at is that Imperial elite grenadiers are attack 4 defense 4, while the more basic human militia are attack 3 defense 3. I feel like I've seen that somewhere else... Interestingly enough, models stats go down as they get wounded. To the credit of my younger self, every last piece of the game is accounted for. I was the kind of kid who would keep electronic toys in the original packaging, Styrofoam and all, when not in use.

Paints used, mostly for later reference:

Grenadier:

Astronomicon Grey base
VGC Ghost Grey 1st HL
VGC Skull white 2nd HL
VGC electric blue visor (mix with white for lower half)
Reaper grey liner
VGC blood red (w/ hot orange) for accents
P3 greatcoat grey for weapon, VGC cold grey HL, electric blue muzzle
Basing: calthan brown db + cobra leather db

Militiaman:

Knarloc green base
snot green highlight
orkhide shade shading/lining
calthan brown+devlan mud for boots,pack
P3 greatcoat grey weapon, cold grey HL
electric blue sunglasses/goggles

Planetary Guard:

Mordian blue
electric blue mixed in for highlight
mord blue/electric blue/white/cobra leather, cl+black for lenses

First Stab At 15mm SciFi

2011-09-30T00:29:00.001-04:00

Does this guy scream 1980 scifi or what?

I am not displeased at how this power armored soldier turned out. He's about 14mm from feet to top of head, so I'm critiquing my performance accordingly. Of course I picked white for his scheme. I mean if you are going to try a new scale, why not pick a color you have historically struggled with, am I right?

The arms on this sculpt are mysterious. They don't seem to have hands, and all I can assume is that the length from elbow to terminus conceals a hand underneath. Some of the other sculpts for the game have exquisitely sculpted hands, so I can guess it's all by design.

So one down, thirty-nine to go! Only twelve of the forty are similar to this fellow. Of the others, twenty-two are far more human looking (militia) and another six are wearing a lighter armor (planetary guard.)

Tiny Dudes with Tiny Guns

2011-09-29T14:21:00.000-04:00

I have decided that 28mm is too easy, and so I am painting some 15mm sci-fi minis. I painted some at lunch today, although I can't say I covered a lot of real estate in an hour. Giant 28mm fig included in the pic for scale. I can't even imagine what painting 54mm must be like. I'm not sure I even own brushes that big!

More to come, if I can overcome my basic lethargy. I'm still keeping the name of the game my little secret (like anybody cares) in the hopes that someone might stumble upon my pics and have an "ah ha!" moment.

Oh, and the first person to lecture me about size of mini not making painting any easier officially unlocks both the "tl;dr" and "fail sarcasm" achievements on my blog.

Weekly Hobby Group - Really Small Minis and Nearly Done Kroot-a-saurus?

2011-09-29T12:14:00.000-04:00

Kell Bailoch towers over the tiny hordes of 1980

Seth and Jimmy were in attendance for last night's weekly hobby bonanza. Coffee was consumed.

In the true spirit of hobby ADD, I dug out a 31 year old game I have stashed in the basement and decided to base its 40 minis. Super-double-kudos if anyone can figure out from the photo what the game is. They are really nice 15mm sculpts, and I plan on channeling my inner NSA to try and paint them.

Kroot-a-saurus really needed knee pads

Jimmy put even more work in on Kroot-a-saurus. It's getting quite armored now. I seriously wonder if it's close to completion, or if Jimmy will just keep adding things until the original dinosaur toy is entirely obscured. (Kidding!)

Seth continued work on his FW Chaos Dwarfs. He's trying to get a recipe for the red armor that he likes, including how to blend to the shade colors. It's looking really good! I really should get a picture of WIP some day.

Gremlins Done Blowed Up Stuff

2011-09-28T18:13:00.000-04:00

I got a game of Malifaux in at RIW last night against Jake's Ophelia list. I have Nicodem, Mortimer, 2 Belles, 2 Flesh Constructs and a convict gunslinger against .... well, a lot of gremlins but no pigs. Scenario was "Shared A Line in the Sand" and Jake took attacker. We flipped corner deployment, and he placed the dynamite counters all within one half of the board.

Nico and Mortimer hang back and let the other models
knock each other around a little.

Gremlins are hilarious to play against. Their triggers, abilities and special rules all read like a comedy routine. They appeal to me for the same reason that Skaven appeal to me in Warhammer fantasy. They can be incredibly destructive or humorously self-destructive. Jake ended up doing about as many wounds to his models through "Reckless: Fast" as I did with attacks. The dynamite counter needed only a (1) interact to arm but a (2) interact to disarm, so I was constantly trying to get into position to be able to disarm the next turn (since disarming uses an entire activation normally.) Gremlins, on the other hand, can move 10" and still arm a counter, provided they take a wound from "Reckless: Fast." By the way, Punk Zombie + Bolster Undead is such a good combo.

The corpse counters are started to accumulate, but
the dynamite is now armed!

Even with Nicodem raising Punk Zombies and Flesh Constructs, I still couldn't keep up. We both were able to achieve our schemes (I took Army of the Dead and Bodyguard: Nico, and he took Hold Out and Bodyguard: Ophelia) so the game came down to scenario VP's. If the game had gone to turn 8 (not likely) I probably could have disarmed another counter to tie. I made a fairly egregious tactical error by summoning a flesh construct near the end of the game when I really needed something to disarm counters. The flesh construct started slow (because he was summoned) then proceeded to walk toward the nearest enemy due to "Ceaseless Advance" in the start closing phase. If I had summoned a model that had stayed put (or if I had conveniently forgotten about ceaseless advance) he could have disarmed the counter on turn 7 for the draw. I also should have summoned a model specifically for running into his deployment zone and denying him the 2vp for the Hold Out scheme.

In other news I was able to pick up Twisting Fates (Malifaux book 3) and talk to Bowen a little bit about it. Bowen brought his Nightmare Edition Lord Chompy Bits and played on a Terraclips board, which was an impressive sight. NELCB is huge, seriously 4x the mass of the standard model. Bowen has a distinctive painting style and did a great job on the model, but did I get a picture? Noooooo.

Lunchtime Sorrow and Kell Bailoch

2011-09-26T13:58:00.001-04:00

Bill worked on the smoke effect for the Sorrow today. Yes, the photo is overexposed. It looks quite nice in person, with a base color of Reaper leather white, blending into the snot green of the body with skull white highlights. He's calling this one done so he can move onto the next Sorrow (of 3.) Basing is still indeterminate.

I worked on Warmachine mercenary sniper Kell Bailoch. After all that talk about Eldar and all the work on the Belles, why Kell today? I have no idea. I honestly have no idea.

What I can't show you is the work I am doing for this year's Rotten Harvest painting competition. The entries cannot have ever been shown online or in print, so I must remain stealthy... for now. This seems strange, since normally I am about as stealthy as a game of Hungry, Hungry Hippos.

Harlequin Departs!

2011-09-23T12:49:00.002-04:00

I am finally sending Tristan (of GWPertinent) the Harlequin I painted for him. Here he is, photographed warts and all. The white bit on his left foot is a bit of reflection rather than missing paint, and it caused me to panic for a bit when I first saw the photo. Considering this is a piece for a Necromunda gang, I gave him a healthy coat of Minwax Polycrylic lacquer for protection, then used Testor's Dullcote to remove the shine. Along with the Harlequin I am including a Warlock Engineer for Tristan to paint for me. Some of my favorite models are the ones painted or converted for my by other people.

This was quite an enjoyable mini to paint, although I can't really say I had a complete vision in mind when I started. The paint job definitely evolved over time. Purple and yellow complement well, but doing the shirt purple seemed uninteresting. The blue seemed a good contrast to the red sash, but it was too stark, so I added the stripes. Only later did I notice that "tiny power fist" included a portion of the arm that I had painted as shirt. Changing that part of the sleeve to yellow/gold would have really changed the symmetry of the figure, so I decided to leave it as is. Why can't tiny power fist realistically be partially blue with stripes? When exactly did Space Elf Clowns start to seem unrealistic to you? Completing this fellow also has me thinking more and more about painting more than one model for my own Eldar army. Of course I never play, but I like the idea of painting them...

So there you have it! I look forward to seeing his adventures against the rival gangs.

Lunchtime Painting - A Lesson In Insufficient Light

2011-09-21T17:00:00.000-04:00

I have a few regularly scheduled painting times per week. Monday and Wednesday on my lunch hour and Wednesday night. The work lunch hour schedule is a new one set up for painting with a friend who is on-campus two days a week. He bought a Pandora "Legion of Sorrows" box (along with other Neverborn models) and plans on painting the box during his 15 week classes. I have been taking the opportunity to teach him what I can about technique. One lesson I was reminded of today is "don't skimp on lighting." Bill is actively seeking to become a better painter, and his Sorrow (middle) is coming along nicely. My Belles show the sorts of mistakes and ham-handed highlighting that is common with basic room lighting. I have a goose-neck lamp with a CF bulb in my office, which I let Bill use. I actually have a fluorescent strip light that I can use on the other part of my desk, but did not remember it until long after vandalizing the Belles as I did.

Tonight I will get the good lamp out and the magnifying headset and try to fix the highlights on the purple Belle's dress. I will also endeavor to make Blondie's eyes look less..... wrong. Sure, she's a zombie but those eyes just don't look intentional. It really is my #1 rule of painting... whatever you do must look intentional.

In other news, after the figs shown I have only 5 unpainted Malifaux models for my Rezzer army. Time to get out that credit card! I could probably use a couple more Macaw Vultures.....

Oh, and I have found that the purple background makes photography with the crappy phone camera (HTC Evo 4G) so much easier. Here it is for your download and printing pleasure. Put the miniatures at the bottom and incline the rest no more than about 30 degrees to avoid light reflecting from overhead.

Ruinous Powers Grocery?

2011-09-16T20:43:00.001-04:00

My painstaking research is complete, and I have come to the only reasonable conclusion. My local Kroger has turned to Chaos. "Certainly not Kroger," you scoff. "Are they not a purveyor of fine foodstuffs, including affordable Kroger brands?"

Let us consider the evidence.

At first glance, this appears to your average sign announcing to the world that fine groceries, produce and sundries may be purchased within, but upon closer inspection we find...

Spiky bits! The whole sign is covered with spikes, presumably a mutation provided by the dark gods when Kroger gave their devotion, indeed their souls, to Chaos!

The far entrance, like the main sign, looks innocent enough. "Clearly if it is food you seek, here you will find satisfaction," it beckons.

But no! More spikes! The only food you will find is the taste of your tears as you fall before the unstoppable hordes of the Ruinous Powers!

A closer inspection below the "food" sign reveals the image of some dark goddess or daemon! Could this be the work of Slaanesh?! Or is the entire pantheon of Chaos in league to corrupt this establishment?

Shameless! They are even advertising that they will intentionally inject flu viruses into your very blood! There can be no mistaking the noxious touch of Nurgle upon this wretched place!

The final piece of evidence. The siren song of Chaos, set before man to appeal brazenly to his basest of instincts. "Buy one," the seductive voice croons, "and get one free." Who can resist this foul temptation?

On the down side, I will have to start looking for another grocery store at which to shop. The =I=nquisition will undoubtedly have purged this one by the time I need groceries again. I suppose I should be happy that it's not just planet-wide Exterminatus. I must remember to look on the bright side.

Opportunity For Improvement

2011-09-14T11:31:00.002-04:00

Steve brought in his Nikon again today. I knew the Belle needed some fixin' up, but ... wow. We created a custom backdrop, since all the cool kids on CMON are using purple in the top 10. Dramatic as it is, I don't think it would elevate the Belle's score at all.

I decided to point out the flaws, so that in future posts you can critique my improvement. They are many and varied. Well, not that varied. The base is also a custom job that was meant to resemble my resin bases from Secret Weapon. Justin is in no danger of losing business from my homemade bases, that's for sure.

For reference, here is the same model from my HTC Evo 4G phone camera.

EDIT: It's also pretty clear from looking at the model that she must be wearing some sort of corset. Two -thirds of the breast volume is above the material, so my choosing to paint the material sheer was ill considered.

Need: Miniature Bat Wings

2011-09-12T15:15:00.000-04:00

Does anyone know how I can get miniature bat wings. Something 1/4" to 1/2" long (.6cm-1.3cm) per wing would do the trick. Thanks!

The Eerie Silence After 9/11

2011-09-12T09:59:00.000-04:00

This picture does not convey the sober
tone of the post, but I loved the image
as a child.

Ten years ago I heard an NPR news report on my morning commute that some sort of aircraft had hit the World Trade Center. I was not immediately alarmed by this, since I had very recently read of another aircraft striking a New York building. When I arrived at work, a coworker asked me if I was aware of what was happening and informed me that a second place had hit. We decided to walk to the McKenny Union (the nearest place on campus we knew of that had decent TV reception) to watch the news. A crowd had gathered around the TV's, which were high enough that everyone could see, and we watched almost silently until the collective gasp when people realized the the South Tower was collapsing (it wasn't immediately clear what was going on when it started to collapse.)

I want to convey the confusion of that day to those of you who were too young to really grasp it at the time. We had absolutely no idea what was going on, or what the scope of it was. I heard a remembrance over the weekend of a man who was in Ukraine at the time, and all he saw were videos and images of buildings and explosions and fires. To him and his travelling companions, unable to understand the audio of the news stories, it looked like every city in the U.S. had been attacked. To those of us huddled before TV's on that day, we wondered if that was going to happen. Tension and uncertainty remained even after it was clear that the attacks were complete. I remember one of my coworkers saying, "The first person who makes a joke about this gets punched in the stomach."

In the days following the attacks, all U.S. commercial aircraft were grounded. My workplace and home are in the flight path of passenger and commercial airports. Seeing and hearing planes, and a sky filled with contrails, are commonplace here. The complete lack of all civilian aircraft during those days was eerie, evocative of a time at night when all the crickets and frogs suddenly go silent. The sky was clear and free of the normal vapor evidence of air traffic. It looked like air technology had been set back 100 years.

Even after the air traffic started again, we found ourselves pausing when an aircraft passed over. Conversation would stop until it had passed. It was months before we stopped reacting to anything passing overhead.

Oh, and it only took until Wednesday for someone to make a joke about it. We were sitting in the break room flipping through channels on the crappy TV there to watch any news, but stopped trying and left the TV on "J.J. the Jet Plane" on the local PBS affiliate. A coworker (Sheila) asked, "They aren't going to crash into any buildings are they?" We all just stared at her. Sure, some people react to stress differently than others. Other people are just idiots. Nobody got punched.

...And Rankin/Bass Begat GW Orcs?

2011-09-09T17:45:00.000-04:00

John@Plastic Legions mentioned the 1977 Hobbit cartoon created by Rankin/Bass in a recent post, and it inspired me to post something I've been thinking for a while.

What was the artistic interpretation of Orcs prior to Warhammer? I know Warhammer Orcs aren't Middle Earth Orcs, but we can agree that there is definite artistic lineage between the two. So let's take a look at a few pieces of art separate from the GW interpretation.

Captured by Orcs

The Hildebrandt brothers had an animal-snouted impression of Orcs. This reminds me a lot of the artwork for Orcs in the Dungeons and Dragons books I had in the early 80's.

The Great Goblin

John Howe's Goblin King interpretation is more human looking, and is closer in line with the artwork for Grom the Paunch than anything else I've seen in GW terms. The goblins to the lower right look somewhat in line with earlier edition GW goblin artwork I've seen.

Rankin/Bass Goblin

Rankin/Bass Goblin King

Rankin/Bass took a very different approach that suited their animation style better. The design of these creatures fascinated me as a child, especially since I hadn't read Tolkien but loved fantasy. That said, what they did with Gollum's design was.... regrettable. (But, oh my, Brother Theodore's voice acting of Gollum is a thing of pure beauty.)

And now we come to the current look of GW Orcs, represented by the artwork from the last army book, the image on the Warboss box and an Orc Shaman mini.

7th ed. GW Orcs & Goblins book cover

GW Orc Warboss box

GW Orc Shaman

They certainly seem much more in line with the Rankin/Bass imagery than any of the others I found. What artwork depicting Tolkien Orcs have you run across, and how similar to GW Orcs is it?

Weekly Poor Photography Update - Nurgle!

2011-09-08T00:29:00.002-04:00

If you don't like the blurry photo, just pretend
Papa Nurgle gave you some seeping eye disease.

Jimmy stopped by tonight to work on Kroot-a-saurus, which got some armor updates.

I worked on Angelos's Forge World Nurgle Chaos Sorcerer. I've been working on this guy on and off since Sunday, and I'm very fond of how he's coming along. I need to paint all the bony spikes coming out of him, and give some love to the Nurglings on the model. I wanted some positive texture on the spearhead, so I applied some watered down Vallejo Black Lava selectively. I really liked the result.

An observation about FW resin... dip a bent spearhead into some heated water and it will immediately straighten from just gravity. Seriously, this stuff gets soft with heat.

Oh, I was supposed to ship Tristan's Harlequin tomorrow, but he's not packed to go. Curse my meandering thought process!

Weekly Hobby Group: Kroot-a-saurus Coming Together

2011-09-01T09:15:00.000-04:00

Kroot-a-saurus looks nearly done to me, which probably means that he only looks 60% done to Jimmy (aka "King Kitbash.") Tonight he magnetized the top turret and attached both... sponsons? I dunno, what would you call the little booms with Kroot gunners on them?

I managed getting quite a bit done on a Malifaux Punk Zombie and Crooked Man. Jimmy, Seth and I spent a lot of time just gabbing yesterday, so I'm surprised I got as much done as I did. All that's left to paint in my Malifaux crew are the three belles (one is WIP below) another Punk Zombie and Crooked Man, half a nurse and two more Canine Remains. Well, not counting the Nightmare Teddy, Dead Justice and Miss Demeanor I picked up GenCon weekend. I really want to sculpt a second Teddy to use the alternate head supplied, but multiple Teddies implies I'm starting a Dreamer list, doesn't it? (Resist, Mike. Resist.)

Seth mostly worked on some wood (shields?) on Harry the Hammer's base. I don't know if I mentioned it previously, but he got some Forge World Chaos Dwarfs that he's been painting and the models are fantastic.

I finished the back of Tristan's Harlequin. One more good inspection for mistakes and I think he's as good as in the mail. The polyurethane coating (Minwax Polycrylic clear gloss) seemed to have worked, since I haven't knocked any more paint off the model despite quite a bit of handling. A little Testors DullCote takes the shine form the polyurethane off nicely.

40k Terminology: Skarboy vs. Sarkozy

2011-08-31T16:37:00.005-04:00

In an effort to alleviate some of the confusion caused by similar looking words, allow me to highlight the differences.

Skarboy

Ork veteran, named for impressive battle-scars
Green and ornery
Poor interpersonal skills
Almost unique to Goff clan

(source Lexicanum)

Sarkozy

23rd President of France
Pink and smirky
Married three times
Is one of the Co-Princes of Andorra

I hope that clears things up a bit.

An Island of Internet Nice

2011-08-27T16:00:00.001-04:00

My wife is a big fan of Asian drama. She watches far more on dramacrazy.net or mysoju.com than she does on regular 'mrcn TV. One interesting little community phenomenon is the user contributed captioning that some of the sites have, where viewers can basically type messages that get seen by others when they watch later. I'm not sure of the particulars, but I believe it's done through Viki.com membership.

Example:

What struck me was how un-horrible the captioning added by the users was. None of it was overtly defacing, and Stef said she has hardly even seen anything inappropriate. Maybe I've just read too many forum/youtube comments, but I'm a firm believer in John Gabriel's internet anonymity hypothesis. To find a pocket of like-minded (albeit niche) enthusiasts behaving like actual adults made me smile.

Final WM/H Parking Structure Battle!

2011-08-26T13:35:00.006-04:00

Since our exile from Pray-Harrold is ending and we are moving back into luxurious (hur hur) new cubicles, we fought the final battle in our luxurious (hur hur) temporary offices in the parking structure.

I played:
The Testament of Menoth
Crusader
5 Exemplar Bastions
5 Knights Exemplar
Anastasia di Bray
(note: for the first time ever, no choir!)

Brian took:
The Old Witch
Behemoth (aka "Big B")
The Three Bears

I have never played Anastasia before, but right away she helped out by allowing me to win the deployment roll. We tied (shown in the picture) but Anastasia gives +1 on that roll. I threw her card into the picture just to emphasize the win of that.

Take +1 on my deployment roll and win?
Why yes, and thank you Anastasia!

The Menites surged forward, but Anastasia stayed hidden... waiting for the right moment.

"Field of Staplers" is a very obscure portion
of the Iron Kingdoms

Big B kept on a blasting, but everything he killed got immediately brought back by The Testament. Ha! Take that, stupid sub-cortex bombards!

Check out that custom "Murder of Crows" template.

I was stymied by the Murder of Crows template, scared to death by the thought of taking the hit from them. In actuality, I had confused the strength of the Witch's feat with the hit from MoC. It's not as scary as that. Rats. The Old Witch parked herself on the second story of a building and made it basically impossible for me to get to her with infantry. Stupid Old Witch.

When my dudes got close enough, I brought Anastasia out close enough to the Old Witch to use her little ability. All my units were able to move forward and attack. The Three Bears took a serious beating but every last Bastion missed Scrapjack.

I got your porridge right here, stupid bears.

I did what I could to prevent it, but Scrapjack ended up walking through every last Bastion using that crazy upkeep spell the Old Witch has that lets him keep attacking as long as he's killing. Each Bastion had wounds from the scuffle, so it didn't take much to do them in. Meanwhile, Big B pounded yet another Crusader into scrap. Seriously, how can the Protectorate not be out of these things?

The battle was looking quite promising
until the enemy killed all of us.

The one thing I didn't get to do was use the Testament's feat. Between Anastasia's ability and The Testament, I figured I could cover a ton of ground in one turn. The Old Witch being on the second floor of a building with no egress on my side made her impossible to reach. With only a few Exemplars left against the inaccessible Old Witch and Big B and only one turn left to go, I conceded the game.

Protectorate is now 0/10. Go Menoth.

PAINT ALL THE THINGS!

2011-08-25T14:36:00.003-04:00

My take on a recent meme, based on "Hyperbole and a Half."

Harlequin Nearly Complete

2011-08-25T07:37:00.000-04:00

Wow, that's a blurry clown.

Tristan's Harlequin is nearly complete. I worked on him for a while during regular weekly hobbying with Seth and Jimmy. The symbol on the forehead ended up being a frustration. I tried to paint it on, didn't get it right, tried to fix it, etc., etc., and finally ended up doing this:

There's always the nuclear option. In the end, after doing, undoing and redoing, that I realized that I had made the top of the symbol a triangle and not the "spade" (card suit) that is on all the other Harlequins. Whoops.

I also knocked an epic amount of paint off the model just handling it during painting, so I fixed all the damage and game him a nice coat of Minwax polyurethane protection. I'll go over him and fix anything else I don't like, then dullcote him and he's on his way!

Create Your Own Inside Joke

2011-08-24T13:17:00.004-04:00

Insert your own value for X in this equation.

This is the white board comic of the day, concerning IT's return to Pray-Harrold after more than a year of being in temporary housing.

Our submissions, mostly inside jokes:

But Bill Heilman said it was ok!
Nooo! My pilot's license!
Now who will run Appworx?
This still beats The Bay.
I wonder what's in the safe.
So what's for lunch?
4...8...7...3...1...4...1...
Just when I got WiFi signal...
echo "Fail"
Is it safe?
Shoulda... worked... from... home.
Hey, the Black & White manual!
PRETTY BIRD!
Shoulda gone to the zoo...
Whatcha know about "crushed by falling safe"?
Falling safes are bordering on assault.
This will affect my ECD.
First of all, it's safe.
Zzzzzzzzzzzzzz
Do you know what kind of safe this is?

Now that you have read through our many inside, work-related jokes that are most likely completely unfunny I invite you to come up with your own caption... and to celebrate, IT'S CAKE TIME!!!

Another Case of "Better Camera Than Mine"

2011-08-23T17:01:00.000-04:00

Betterer Eldar. Seriously, if I had $1000 to spend, I would totally buy a camera like this one.

Oh, who am I kidding. If I had $1000 I would totally waste it on miniatures and then make my coworker photograph them. Ha! Take that, priorities!

More Harlequin WIP ... Two Nights Painting?!

2011-08-23T00:54:00.000-04:00

Blue Shirt... I'm sure that gives a cover save all by itself.

What manner of madness is this? Two nights of painting in a row?! At this rate I could have kept doing commission work! Seriously though, another couple hours on this guy and he's progressing nicely. I can't figure out what to do with his shirt though. The pants really called to me for diagonal stripes, but the shirt... I got nothing. It's blue right now as a sort of placeholder color while I work on other things. It really is the most retina-burning shade of blue, wouldn't you say? So Tiny Power Fist(tm) got some work tonight, as did the mask and the dangling cloth thingies. Come to think of it I don't know how I'm going to do the gun either.

Maybe having a "plan" would have helped me. Or not. My only concrete plan right now is to make sure I give this guy a nice coat of polyurethane before I ship. For all the paint I've knocked off the model (including the right foot pictured) I want to make sure he's durable once he's done.

Maybe more soon... I seem to be on a roll right now.

Wonderful Vacation, then Painting

2011-08-22T00:11:00.003-04:00

I have returned from a relaxing, fun week at Portage Lake Covenant Bible Camp. Good worship, good gaming, good food (defined as "I didn't have to cook it") and all that.

We played Seafarers of Catan, Carcasonne, Infernal Contraption, and Star Munchkin.

One of many Carcasonne games

My son learned how to ride a two-wheeler exactly one day before leaving for camp, so he was an unstoppable cyclist the entire time we were there.

He seems pleased with the lack of training wheels

Now that we're home, I decided to break out the paints and give Tristan's Harlequin a little more love. I like the direction it's going, but it needs more "pop." Come to think of it, I still need to send something for him to paint for me... Time keeps on slipping, slipping, slipping... into the future.

Fear my tiny power fist!
I should have posted this pic first to get more clicks from FTW :-)

I also worked on a Rotten Belle to go with pimped out Nicodem. Next time I go to RIW to play (with school starting, that may be September) I hope to have Nico and his three lovely ladies ready to roll.

The Mysterious Duration

2011-08-12T16:49:00.000-04:00

I went to wish well to my soon to be ex-boss (he is off to a new position in a different state next week) and returned to this mysterious post-it on my monitor.

"3 years 23 days Good Luck"

What does it mean? Could it be from the same source as the Ominous "S" ? And what does the date mean? Is that 3 years 23 days from now or 3 years 23 days ago. Let us consult a date calculator.

Future: 3 years 23 days from now is Thursday, September 4, 2014
Past: 3 years 23 days ago was Sunday, July 20, 2008

Neither date has significance for me, and I do not recognize the handwriting.

Mike's DIY Servo-Arms

2011-08-11T14:33:00.005-04:00

Regular weekly hobby guy Mike (not me) shared his method for making Do-It-Yourself Servo-Arms for his Chaos Space Marines this week. The method also works well for regular Space Marines, which is what we're demonstrating since I only had loyalist backpacks to work with.

Step 1. Get a backpack, 2 combat knives, and 2 flamers.

Step 2. Cut the flamers as shown. Concentrate on
making a clean cuts.

Step 3. Cut a vent off the backpack and glue the barrel
portion of the flamer in its place.

Step 4. Glue the flamer tank to the flamer barrel. To
get a flush fit you can either file the rounded tank side
flat or file a round section onto the flamer tank.

Step 5. Cut the other flamer barrel at the angle shown.

Step 6. Glue the barrel to the tank. Glue the other
flamer tank to the end of the second barrel.

Step 7. Cut the combat knives' blades to form the servo-
arm clamp.

Step 8. Glue the two knife pieces on to form the clamp.
You're done with the servo-arm.

Step 9. Bonus! User the two leftover pieces of the
flamer to make Blood Angels hand flamers!

And just to be double clear, this method comes from Mike (one of the weekly hobby gang) and not me. Mike is an Iron Warriors fanatic, so this sort of conversion is right up his alley. He did the conversion work on Wednesday and I took pictures as he went along. Some more chaos-looking version he has done can be seen here.

Somewhat Better Photography

2011-08-09T16:04:00.003-04:00

My coworker Steve brought in his Super Deluxe DoubeWide SuperFat SLR Camera (I'm sure it has a make and model, but whatever) and took some pictures of Nicodem the Pimp and my nurse. Maybe I should name her Miss Mediocre.

This is scaled down to about 25% of original size

It sure makes my phone camera look like a piece of garbage, doesn't it? Photography is also brutally revealing. Things like the yellow spot on the edge of his purple coat, or the poorly clipped vent on the end of the syringe or the little spots of primer peeking through the holes in the chain. Ouch. In reality, when I was painting for competition I used to take digital photos to find flaws to correct, so this doesn't come as a huge surprise.

No Malifaux tonight (he said glumly.) I have other things to do that count as important. I'll still be hobbying this week, which will hopefully result in a completed unit for Hive Fleet Emervac to be on its way.

Did I mention I'm never doing commission work again? Yeah, I'm never doing commission work again. I can neglect my own models with complete abandon, but neglecting other people's models when they are trying to pay me to paint makes me feel guilty. The only guilt I want from this hobby is buyer's remorse.

Of course, I'm still offering to paint things for friends. That's a much more enjoyable endeavor.

EDIT: The camera in question was a Nikon D5100 with a Nikon AF VR 18-55 lens, 52mm.

Pimping My Fiction. Fictional Pimp.

2011-08-04T22:52:00.001-04:00

It's Big Pimpin' Night on the blog.

Normally, the fantastic podcast "The Aethervox" features original fiction written by one member (Julian) read by the other member (Ian.) Since Julian was away, they asked if they could use the first few chapters of my story "Confessions of an Aspiring Resurrectionist" from the Wyrd forums. I gave an exuberant yes! The episode featuring my work is now up on their site. Ian has such a great voice for it, as you know if you have listened to the prior episodes. I'll admit it's strange hearing someone else read my words, especially since I've read them to myself so many times in very particular cadence. Having just heard both parts now, I think Ian did a wonderful job. Thanks, Ian!

Next up, here's something I've been working on. Nobody showed up at RIW on Tuesday (they were all going to Gen Con apparently) so I got to hang out and paint. I know this is the role typically given to Seamus, but something about a top hat, ruffles and a cane just screamed pimp to me. Of course, it isn't the first time.

Move over Seamus... Nicodem loves the ladies.

The leopard print was especially fun to paint. I had some expert consultation from my coworkers, who have a mightier "pimp hand" than I. The vulture pattern is based on a macaw, but everyone just thinks it's rainbow.

Weekly Hobby Update - Magnification!

2011-07-14T00:46:00.004-04:00

Just Jimmy and me for hobbying tonight.
I finally took some pics of what Jimmy has been working on....

But first! Magnification!

I don't use the LED lights because they are oddly blue colored.

This is the magnification headset that Jimmy gave me last week. This week I used it to refine the painting on the Malifaux fig "Mortimer, the Grave Digger."

Results are below.

BEFORE, without magnification... not terrible
from a distance but less than awesome up close.

AFTER, lots of touch ups with the magnification lenses on.
The focus is a little softer but I hope the improvement is evident.

And here is the updated Kroot-a-saurus.

Now with more gunners!

Detail of the gunner and his awesome expression.

This side still needs its gun sponson thing.

Also, the Chaos Kroot tank. His Kroot are Tzeentch-leaning. Shapers / Change... it makes sense.

Captain Kroot is very enthusiastic about change.

And I worked on Nicodem a little too. Pimptastic.

I thought the purple was kind of original until I saw that the
picture of Nicodem in the new rulebook has him purple.

Yay! Mommy's Violent!

2011-07-13T12:04:00.002-04:00

I watched the first episode of Torchwood: Miracle Day this past Friday, and a couple more times since then. This moment, from about 45 minutes in, cracked me up.

Actually, Stef noticed the baby and pointed it out to me. DVR rewind, and hey! Check that out! Those fake gunshots must not be very loud or I'm guessing baby would be freaking out, even with cute little earmuffs.

GIANT SPACE OWL ENEMY OF MANKIND

2011-07-11T15:50:00.001-04:00

Some of this content has been used without permission of its author. It's for his own good.

See what I'm saying? Seriously a threat that we can't afford to ignore. Sure it's expensive to attack distant astronomical things, but just for a moment think of the cost of not attacking them.

Two ring nebulas, two veil nebulas (ok ok, nebulae senior Latin) and part of an hourglass nebula.

Bored Children and Crooked Men

2011-07-05T11:52:00.001-04:00

My daughters had been excited to go with me to play Malifaux on Tuesday night. A week ago I took Sarah with me, and she was less than impressed. I wanted her to watch the game, to get a feel for the rhythm and etiquette, but it was just boring to her after about 1/3 of the way through. As evidence, I present my defaced army list, printed from the very useful Ratty's Malifaux Crew Builder. One of my "Canine Remains" is a tiny Reaper pug familiar. Sarah is rather enamored of it, hence the "little pug" homage. When she was not doodling she was playing games on my phone. My battle report is here.

Hobby night was not productive for me. I spent most of the time helping Jimmy craft a letter of recommendation for someone to sign or downloading things for him, which did not go well since our DSL was acting poorly. Jimmy meanwhile worked on Kroot-o-saurus some more. Mike and Seth worked on.... you know, I can't remember what they worked on. huh. I didn't pick up a paint brush. Just one of those nights for me.

I did, however, take part of last night to bang out a "Crooked Man" for my Malifaux crew. He's basically an undead miner. I used a bunch of game-quality techniques. I don't know... the paint just wasn't talking to me but I felt like I had to put some paint on something. Here he is, in a very small, poorly lit photo because I don't want to expose him to much scrutiny.

Tonight is Malifaux again. My other daughter, having heard from the first how boring it is, opted not to go. At least I won't have to feel guilty about her having a terrible time.

I'm Back, and I Have Forgotten How To Paint

2011-06-17T10:27:00.003-04:00

First off, a curious personality quirk:

Every now and then I do this... I fall into this sort of self-imposed isolation. I don't answer my phone; I drop off IM; I don't answer e-mails. I still go to work and engage with my family but except for the things that I need to do every day, I pretty much disappear. The last six weeks or so have been like that. I went to a hobby shop and played a couple games with people I don't know, but I avoided contact with people I know. Yes, it's strange and I'd love to know the root cause. But this bout is pretty much over so I can stop thinking about it until next time.

So! Painting! Last night's hobby gathering was an exercise in frustration. My eye knew what I wanted the given model to look like, but my hand just couldn't execute it. I felt clumsy, the bristles were disobedient and the paint vacillated between gloppy and uncontrollably runny. I feel sorry for poor Mortimer and the Nurse who received the business end of my incompetence. I came to the conclusion last night that I had simply forgotten how to paint. Seven years of practice out the window. Time to rejoin the CMON forums and have someone advise me to thin my paints, I suppose. Jimmy worked on Kroot-a-saurus a bit more, and Mike painted his Druchii. It has been fun to see Mike's painting skills improving over the last few months or so. He is dedicated to making his models look better and it's paying off. Mimi sat with us and did .... what's that thing called with looping yarn through a mat with a hook to make a picture? It had a pattern, sort of a "yarn by numbers" thing. She did that and made fun of us. That's kind of her niche... she does her own thing and ridicules anything with miniatures.

Malifaux: Ah, my new love. Something about this game just hits the sweet spot with me. Maybe it's the personality of the models. Maybe it's the skirmish style of game play, which I have discovered I enjoy a great deal more than huge armies gathered for epic (apocalyptic even!) battles.

Here is Dr. Douglas McMourning, master of my resurrectionist crew. He may have taken 7 years to get his medical degree, but he got a one-night paint job from me. This is definitely one of those models that I wish came in two pieces. The upheld arm obscures the face far more than was convenient for painting it. I almost need a brush with a 90 degree bend in the bristles for this sort of model. As mediocre as this guy is I couldn't even pull off anything close to that last night.

Here also is a convict gunslinger, added to give my crew a bit of ranged capability. Another one-night paint job (nearly... I base coated the flesh a few nights before the actual painting.

Twice now I have gone out to RIW hobbies in Livonia to play Malifaux and both times it has been a boatload of fun. I wrote short battle reports and posted them on the Wyrd forums. (1, 2) I am really trying to get the local group to give it a shot, but I feel a little guilty about potentially getting them into another purchasing frenzy. Maybe I'll get a second crew and we can all play with those two sets. Even so, I have resolved to completely paint my current crew before buying any other crews. Since my current complete crew is 19 models I don't think that will be much of a problem. I already have 4/19 painted (and two more in progress) so I'm much further along than any other gaming system I own.

I played 40k a couple weeks ago during hobby night. Seth and I each took 1000 points of Space Marines vs. 2000 points of Mike's Tau. A combination of huge barrages or marker-light assisted shooty and some of the worst assault rolling I have ever seen resulted in the marines suffering from Post Tau-matic Stress Disorder. (See what I did there? Tau-matic? Ha!) Seth's ability to roll 1's for his TH/SS termies was ... amazing. We're talking Rosencrantz and Guildenstern coin-flipping level of improbability. I can only conclude that their optical arrays were mis-calibrated, and any wounds inflicted were from hitting an enemy standing next to their actual target.

On a more personally irritating note, I have been diagnosed recently with gout. I flatly refuse to suffer from any ailment with so stupid a name, especially if said ailment tends to exhibit in one's big toe. Industrial strength anti-inflammatory meds seem to help, but good grief is it painful. It can be controlled through diet, which means I'll have to develop a modicum of self-control at the moment before food hits my mouth. It will probably take a few severe bouts before I develop that self-control.

Lastly, and this is to confound the search engines as much as anything, I would like to confess my irrational love of "pizza bubbles." These are dome shaped bubbles within the crust of a pizza that typically occur on the outer edge of the toppings. As a youngster we used to occasionally eat at a pizza place called Cardona's in Brighton, MI and I remember their pizza always had bubbles like that. Cardona's was a pretty typical pizza place in the late 70's. It was dark, and had a jukebox and a couple coin-op video games by the front door. The closest thing I can relate it to nowadays is the experience that most Pizza Huts try to accomplish but never seem to quite be the same. Maybe it was seeing things through a child's eye, but Cardona's felt kind of exciting. Like it was a big deal to go there. Maybe that's why I gravitate to the one thing I remember most about their pizza.

I purchased a macro lens for my HTC Evo 4G phone. It comes with a little self-adhesive ring that you stick on the phone and the lens snaps magnetically on the ring. It takes some very interesting macro shots, but they are very close and it is nearly impossible to get an entire model. I may use it to get detail shots of a model's face or something. Eventually.

Secret Weapon... I'm using the washes and bases. I still need to write up a report of how they perform. It's been a pretty positive experience, but I have a few complaints about bubbles in the resin. The washes work great when you are using them for the things they are good at (if that makes sense.) Stick to their strengths and you will like them a lot.

Weekly Hobby Group Update: Malifaux Models in One Night

2011-05-20T14:22:00.002-04:00

First off, I don't know what kind of crazy voodoo plague I got a couple weeks ago, but I am just now getting to the point of doing anything at night besides falling asleep on the couch after putting the kids to bed. I probably would have slept for two weeks straight without the help of Five Hour Energy Drink.

Even with my life-sapping malady, we've still had Thursday night hobby time. Both nights I have resolved to paint an entire figure in one night.

Behold last week's nurse and last night's zombie dog handler:

Quit barking at me or you'll get a dose of this.

I plan on using the zombie as a flesh construct for my McMourning crew. Since the crew has a bunch of zombie dogs I figured that this dude was appropriate. It has been observed that he looks like a Best Buy employee. I don't know what the dark genesis of the extended warranty is, but I would wager that it involved the undead. The nurse was last weeks model. The original has a red cross over each of her nipples, which I did not find terribly appealing. I removed them.

Seth worked like crazy on that shield for Harry the Hammer. He is a total perfectionist, which makes for awesome single models and vast, unpainted armies. This is the second base-coat that Harry himself has gotten, the first being stripped for inadequate awesomeness.

Mike has been working on his Dark Elf test warriors. He can't decide on a blue/red/gold scheme or just a red/gold scheme. I thought I had taken pics, but I can't find them on my phone. hmmm.... He also explained that the servo-arms from the last hobby post I did were constructed from other parts. We will be coordinating to do a tutorial on how to make those soon.

Jimmy continued adding things to Kroot-a-saurus. He can't decide whether to keep the banded mail armor from the last picture or go with a more round armor that he made from pastic bottles. He really has an amazing ability to see conversion fodder in everyday items.

Just for kicks, here is the rest of my Malifaux crew in their unpainted splendor.

In this picture there are 8 dogs. Can you find them all?

Okay, so the Convict Gunslinger has paint on his face. I guess that disqualifies him from one-night paint job status.

I am more and more wanting to play Malifaux. The soonest I can get out to RIW in Livonia to play is 5/31. Ach! In the meantime I'll paint and listen to The Aethervox podcast, which is 99% Malifaux.

A Sickly Thank You

2011-05-09T13:21:00.000-04:00

First off, I'm sick of being sick. Seriously, last week was bad enough. To descend back into the clutches of some unknown virus again this weekend after feeling so much better Friday was depressing. So here I sit, after having slept most of the day away, listening to a lawnmower and wondering how long it will take me to 1) do the work I'm backlogged on and 2) catch up on the >100 RSS feed items I have on google reader. If you blog about FoW, I'm probably just going to look at the pretty pictures.

My two daughters are home sick too. They were told they could not stay home and watch TV, so I found them each a book they could read it they want. Lily (9) is reading a 1978 copy of "A Wrinkle in Time" and Sarah (12) is reading a 1980 copy of "A Wizard of Earthsea." I have requested that they be gentle with the books, but in my heart I am prepared for each book's demise. It's a small sacrifice to see the girls reading fantasy.

Next, I want to thank all the people who nominated me for a "Stylish Blogger Award." It's flattering to get a nod when there are so many blogs with similar subject matter out there. In truth, the first time I received such a nomination/award was January 2010 when the very clever but never posting "Pop and Ice" nominated me for the "Kreativ Blogger" honor. I honestly had no idea what to make of it and so I basically sat on it. With the current storm of nominations, I think just about every blogger in the 40k sphere has gotten at least one or two of these.

Okay, back to bed with me.

Starting Malifaux... sort of

2011-05-06T12:23:00.008-04:00

I think I ought to just face the facts that my hobby is now "buying miniatures" and that gaming and painting are just extra activities that result from buying. In that spirit, I have purchased a Malifaux crew. After about a million permutations of who would be fun to paint and play (since they are all equally fun to buy) I decided to go with a McMourning crew featuring undead dogs.

Strategy:
The plan is to go to Miniature Market website, click the "Malifaux" link on the left. On turn two I will go to the Resurrectionists section and find the McMourning box set and click "add to cart." Finally I will click "checkout" and supply my credit card info. A flawless plan.

I mean, who doesn't love a crazy coroner dude with steel toed shoes. Oh, and his totem? A Zombie Chihuahua. That was sort of the clincher for me.

Yappy, shaky little jerks. The box comes with Sebastian (who can make zombie dogs, aka "Canine Remains") and a couple of nurses (who can supercharge the dogs into one-turn "dog bombs.") Meanwhile McMourning is making big, nasty flesh constructs and trying to get himself into combat. Add Mortimer and a Convict Gunslinger and I have a healthy 25 pt crew (using only one nurse.) It's kind of fun to think about summoning dead dogs. No, I don't know why.

Gaming Strategy:

Find someone else who plays Malifaux.

So the next question is whether to try and make it out to RIW Hobbies to get a game in on Tuesdays or to try and get a local community started. My personal (read: non-family) life begins at about 9:00 PM unfortunately, so very few "go somewhere and game" options present themselves.

Heroes of Armageddon Tip: Give Early!

2011-05-06T10:31:00.000-04:00

Remember! There are weekly "Heroes of Armageddon" prize giveaways, including this week's amazing choice between a Blood Angels Battalion, an Ork Stompa or an Imperial Shadow Sword. To maximize your chance of winning one of these weekly drawings, give your full donation early instead of waiting until close to the big army giveaways. The pool of possible winners is much smaller in the beginning (theoretically) so stack the odds in your favor!

Speaking of which, I got my weekly-drawing swag from Secret Weapon Miniatures yesterday. I have been sick lately, so I did little more than open the bag and rub the bases luxuriously over my body. (Quick suggestion: do not rub resin bases luxuriously over your body... they have pointy and scratchy bits.) I will do a nice write up of what I got once I get a chance to really give them a go-over.

A Winner Is Me!

2011-05-02T16:13:00.000-04:00

Yay for free stuff! I won the weekly Heroes of Armageddon drawing and got one of two $25 vouchers at Secret Weapon Miniatures. Showing great thought and restraint, I placed an order there today. While I was there I dropped another $35 in addition to my $25 voucher. It was definitely my desire to make the order slightly profitable for them, and not at all related to my inability to limit myself to the amount I had won. Nope. No connection whatsoever.

So here's what I bought:
1 x Dark Sepia Wash = $2.99
1 x Armor Wash = $2.99
1 x Soft Body Black Wash = $2.99
1 x Small Roman Style Helmet Crest = $5.00
1 x Round Lip: 30mm Urban Streets Bases = $10.00
1 x Round Lip: 40mm Urban Streets Bases = $10.00
1 x Round Lip: 50mm Urban Streets Bases = $5.00
1 x Round Lip: All Your "Flagstone" Bases = $22.50

Why those, you ask? I don't know! They looked cool, and I will need to base my (currently completely unpurchased) Malifaux crew(s) eventually. I also wanted to try their washes, which are both larger pots then Citadel (20ml as opposed to 12ml) and pigmented heavier. Expect critique here at some point. Their color range is good; I was tempted to just buy the whole set. I may yet do so, depending on how well I like the three I bought.

Another Reason Having Kids Rocks

2011-05-02T14:19:00.003-04:00

Having kids is like living with comedians. Tiny, sloppy, needy comedians. As evidence I give you these two exchanges between my daughters (Sarah and Lily) and me.

From last week...

Me: I watched part of Dumb and Dumber the other night. I was surprised at how much casual profanity is thrown around in that movie.
Sarah: Oh, so they were like "Hi! Hi! Hi!" (waving and smiling madly)
Me: Uh, no. More like beeep beeep beeep beeep.
Sarah: (looking serious and thoughtful) I see. So they were robots.

And this one from breakfast this morning...

Me: Do you kids know who Osama bin Laden is?
Kids: No.
Me: He's the leader of the group who planned and carried out the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
Lily: I suppose we'll be hearing about him in Social Studies.
Me: Well, after searching for him for almost ten years, the military finally found him and he was killed in an attack yesterday.
Lily: Well then I guess we'll be hearing about him in History.

My son isn't quite there with the verbal wit yet, but he's only six. He tells me thrilling tales of playing Portal with his friend Colin at school. I'm not quite sure what two six year olds play-acting Portal is like, but Jay is developing a passable impression of GLaDOS's speech cadence.

Weekly Hobby Group Update: Servo Arms, Armor and Nid Wins

2011-04-29T17:50:00.000-04:00

Seth, Jimmy, and Mike came over to hobby last night. Seth wasn't in the painting mood so I got out Space Hulk and we played mission one a couple times. Nids always won.

Jimmy, crushed by the "scrot-a-saurus" comment from last week's blog, finally took all of our advice and added armor plating. It helped that I gave him a sheet of plasticard and a paper cutter to use.

Mike wanted to show off his Iron Warriors models, complete with servo arms. The one on the left is converted with a nifty shield, but the black priming sucks all the light out of the photo.

Meanwhile, Stef and Mimi watched "Wire in the Blood" and discussed the portrayal of various religions in film/TV. Mimi doesn't think witches are getting a fair shake.

And me? I haven't done anything of note lately. I've been working on a coding project, but it makes for boring blog posting. (What? You want to talk about SQL queries? You are a sicko.)

The Ominous "S"

2011-04-28T12:08:00.000-04:00

I returned from fetching lunch to find this at my desk.

A tiny square of paper with a bold capital "S" on it. Who could have left it?! What does it mean?!!?!?

Superb 40k FanFic "Radical"

2011-04-28T10:56:00.001-04:00

I do not normally read a great deal of fanfic, but Commissar Carrie got me hooked on her amazing narrative battle reports and that just flowed naturally into her superb 40k fanfic entitled "Radical."

Go check it out.

Chapters: Hell, Healing, Heretics, Hymn, and Hero
She's got kind of an "H" thing going on you see...

Playstation Network Update

2011-04-25T15:04:00.004-04:00

2011.04.21: Network halted for upload preparation
2011.04.22: Wetware sychronization initiated
2011.04.23: Wetware disconnect complete
2011.04.25: Cell network reprocessing initiated

PENDING: Cell process neural network distribution completion
PENDING: Network restart
PENDING: Ringing phones in sequence down a hallway to indicate success to nemesis
PENDING: begin global nuclear bombardment

Weekly Hobby Group: Kroot-a-saurus, Zombie Fish and Bad Pants

2011-04-25T10:23:00.001-04:00

Who can resist a title like that?

Jimmy and I hobbied it up on Thursday. Chips flew. Glue dripped. Paint was applied.

First up, Kroot-a-saurus got some work. Jimmy (aka "King Kitbash") started with some head enhancements and went on to trying to make some armor. It was supposed to look like giant turtle shell pieces bolted to the side, but it never quite got there.

Next up, Jimmy brought the zombie fish bowl he's been working on for his roommate's belated Christmas present. I helped him by painting the tombstone last week, and he brought it over to show me the finished product.

Hive Fleet Emervac's hormagaunts got some more attention. I'm probably one serious night away from finishing this unit.

And lastly, Tristan's Harlequin got some pants. I am decidedly unhappy with the consistency of the yellow.... so chalky. The plan is to go over it a few more times to try and smooth the color, then shore up the borders with more purple so that the lines are sharp. Maybe I'll blackline around them...

Egg Drop Soup (with Helicopters)

2011-04-23T21:16:00.001-04:00

Today, for reasons I cannot now fathom, we took the kids to a 30,000 Easter egg "hunt" where some of the eggs were dropped by helicopter. Sounds.... crazy, right? It was.

After two days of rain, it did not occur to us that the whole thing would be a horrific quagmire. It was.

By the time we were actually in position for the drop 2 of my 3 kids had fallen and were covered in mud.

People came from miles to partake in the spectacle. It was packed. Once the call was given to go, the mad scramble left some children with huge bags of eggs, and some children left crying, empty handed. My 6 year old got 5 eggs (and was not happy) and my girls got 5 eggs between them. This is definitely one time where the meek are not blessed. Aggression and assertiveness win the day at an egg drop. At least the organizers had the forethought to leave a few eggs in reserve for the poor kids who got none.

Once the eggs had all been collected, the search began for each child. Parents were everywhere hollering names in every which direction.

We had planned on heading to my parents' house after the event, but with everyone covered in mud and our house almost an hour in entirely the wrong direction we decided to stop off and buy some clothes for them on the way. $135 later, we were on the road again. Admittedly, $20 of that was me impulse buying "Tales from Earthsea." I didn't realize Miyazaki had adapted Ursula LeGuinn's stories (which I read as a teen) and I loves me some Miyazaki.

Egg dropping and a very curvy rotor.

Seeing the helicopter was fun, and if someone can explain to me why the rotors appear so curved in the photos? I just can't figure why they would be in focus let look so curved, or why one side would look curved and not the other. If it was from the motion of the rotors you would think both would be equally affected.

Rotors curving upward oddly. Feel free to hum "Ride of the Valkyries" here. I did.

Rotors curving downward...oddly.

Legion 1/0 ... Protectorate Still 0/9

2011-04-21T16:11:00.001-04:00

We haven't played any Thursday lunchtime battles at work in a few weeks, so it took me unawares when our local Khador player (aka "wins all games") IM'd me that he was up for a game. I could have played the house Skorne army, but decided to test drive Matt's Legion.

My Legion:

Lylyth
Carnivean
5 Shredders

Khador:

Strakhov
Marauder
Juggernaut
The Three Bears
Gorman DiWulfe

So what happened, you might ask? Did you not read the title? I won! It turns out Lylyth is deadly with that bow. POW 12, 12" range and ROF 2. Anybody with less armor than Karchev is going to feel that one. I pretty much raced off to one side (leaving the Three Bears alone on a flank) and tried to swarm him with Shredders, which put a little pressure on. On Lylyth's feat turn, those little rabid jerks will get 4 dice to hit and boosted damage. They aren't going to miss.

One note about running a slew of Shredders... you need to have some way to identify them! I could have written on the base or something, but I decided to give them nicknames based on their poses. Lefty and Lefty Jr. had an extended left foot (Lefty far more than his namesake) while Up and Down seemed to be looking in the direction of their name. The Agonizer was, no surprise, an Agonizer that I was proxying as a shredder.

So how did it end? He ended up focusing on the swarm of shredders (out of necessity mostly) and moving the Marauder back to screen Strakhov from Lylyth's killer bow. Strak is immune to fire or I would have dragon breath'd him with the Carnivean. Instead, I slammed the Marauder (a taste of its own bitter medicine!) into Strakhov and the knocked down models opened the door for Lylyth to step to one side, pop her feat, roll 4 dice to hit against a model with DEF 5, and do the remaining 5 or so damage to win the game.

I like typing that part. I'm going to do it again. ...to win the game.

Earth Will Be Victorious!!

2011-04-21T10:21:00.000-04:00

I just received an email from "Environment Michigan" detailing our plans to defeat Mercury on Earth Day. While I understand the symbolic significance of an Earth Day victory, I am very disappointed in how visible the campaign's timeline is. The element of surprise is vital to a decisive victory, and by advertising that we will be attacking Mercury on Earth Day we are giving them ample time to shore up their defenses in preparation for the invasion. I assume our vast fleets are en route as we speak, assuming Venus gave us permission to cross their orbit.

Plastic Vanguard Vet w/ Relic Blade

2011-04-21T10:06:00.004-04:00

Ron Saikowski's Astorath conversion writeup made me think a bit about how to model minis (marines specifically) holding weapons two handed. How would I do that? Then I remembered... I already did!

(Yes, sounds like Professor Fansworth's Smelloscope.... sadly.)

This guy is one of a few conversions I did a while ago that never got posted here. Each got to about 80% completion before I ADD'd off to the next idea. The arms are the gunner arms from the Adeptus Mechanicus tank crew member found on every Space Marine vehicle sprue... you know, the guy nobody seems to use? Yeah, that one. His hands are flat enough on top to press them together in a reasonable facsimile of a two handed grip. I drilled through them and placed a thin rod so that they would keep their orientation, then pinned the blade and the pommel (?) to the extending ends of the rod. The arms will not fit completely flush at the shoulder when the hands are together, but a little putty and the comically huge shoulder pads will completely obscure that. The blade is the Black Reach captain's blade.

At roughly the same time frame I did this fellow, meant to be a Chapter Master.

I was getting all fancy with the magnets, so I gave him a bolter, bolt pistol or plasma pistol. He's a converted Black Reach captain with a regular marine chest plate in place of the rather unique one that the model normally uses. The cloth covering his bits there hides the fact that his legs just sort of terminate into nothingness. There are no bits to cover. It's not really visible unless you turn the model completely upside down. The little crest on the helmet is green stuff.

Everybody has their little rock to stand on too. It's standard issue once you reach a certain rank.

Third Time's A Charm?

2011-04-20T12:57:00.000-04:00

Well, two winners have been chosen in my oh-so-closely-watched 100 (or so) followers celebratory giveaway, and neither winner responded. You'd think it would be easier to give stuff away.

So now a third winner has been chosen. I'm hoping the fact that this user actually has a profile pic in Blogger means that he will respond. Email has been sent! You have a week!

Growth Over Time

2011-04-19T16:54:00.000-04:00

It is an interesting phenomenon that when a certain character is illustrated over a long period of time, certain aspects of illustration will get enlarged.

Take, for instance, Bloom County's Opus the Penguin.

I won't begin to speculate why the nose gets bigger over time. Smarter people than me have probably done all the analysis ever needed on that subject.

After seeing the post on MWC with associated artwork, it occurs to me that Marneus Calgar's armor has gone through much the same tranformation.

Okay, so maybe the later version is supposed to be him in his special terminator armor... I dunno. The one on the left looks merely anatomically impossible. The one on the right looks like Dreadknight Jr., and has notably fewer dinosaurs. Would you turn in your leopard skin cloak and dinosaur attendants in exchange for very cold lighting and giant armor? Well, would you? I didn't think so.

<3 Michigan

2011-04-18T10:31:00.000-04:00

This state is crazy. A couple years ago we had a white Easter and a green Christmas. Today, it's snowing like crazy. My grandfather told tale of his birth in June being the day of a snowstorm.

Ah, who am I kidding. I love it. Crazy, wonderful, unpredictable, Michigan weather.

Games Day 2011 Chicago... NOT sold out

2011-04-15T14:08:00.004-04:00

NOTICE: I just got a nice email from Megan at GW saying there was a web site problem. Tickets are still available. Thanks for the quick response, Megan!

I just went to buy Games Day tickets (here) and .... no longer available? Did I miss something? Did Games Day tickets sell out?

I haven't been to a Games Day since they went to the format of having only one in the US. It never occurred to me that demand might be high enough to sell out before May. I have emailed GW to ask.

Anyone actually know for sure?

This could seriously hamper my Golden Demon plans...

This is What a $10,000 Mini Really Looks Like

2011-04-15T08:43:00.000-04:00

...and one of the reasons Marike Reimer is one of my favorite painters. I'm glad she posted pics because the Crystal Brush photos just didn't capture how amazing this piece really is.

This is a closeup (lifted unapologetically from her website.) She has also posted it on CMON. Painting last night trying to achieve this level of precision was... frustrating.

Surprisingly Offensive

2011-04-14T18:33:00.002-04:00

I just got called a name that offended me. I am not easily offended.

The name was "boss."

Am I being too sensitive? I'm a middle aged white man. To have a young (20-30 year old) black man call be "boss" made me feel like I had just called him "boy." I don't think I did anything to deserve that. I was stopping by my favorite pizza place to pick up an order for my family's dinner, and I had to ask him to repeat what he yelled to me when I first walked in the door. "HAVE... YOU... ALREADY... ORDERED?" he repeated in comically exaggerated enunciation. Whether or not that was the precipitating event, I was "boss" from that moment on. It wasn't a single time either. Each of the three or four times he addressed me he called me boss.

I said nothing. I'm not a terribly confrontational person. Maybe this was a glimpse into what it's like to experience subtle racism on a regular basis. Maybe he thought I wouldn't notice his subtle slight. Maybe he didn't even realize the implication his words had. Whatever his intent, I felt accused.

Post script: A few weeks later I went back to that same place and observed a white employee calling a black patron "boss."

Language is a funny thing. It has been pointed out to me for years that seemingly meaningless phrases actually have a lot of built-in baggage. When I was a kid it was commonplace to tell others to "get your cotton-picking hands off of me" or something similar. Describing something as "cotton picking" did not have any other purpose than emphasis for us as children, but it has distinctly racial overtones. As an adult I have endeavored to eliminate phrases like that from my speech. I forget that some things just lose their meaning as they are diluted in the culture.

Happy Birthday Stef! (And a Nice Word About Ubid)

2011-04-12T13:11:00.001-04:00

Today is my lovely wife's birthday. (Perhaps I'm biased, but she does not look a day older than when we met, some 19 years ago.) She loves electronic gadgets, so this year I bought her a 2go PC SL10 for what amounts to a huge discount from ubid.com. We haven't gotten it yet, but it has shipped.

For a brief time, I wondered if we would get it at all.

Ubid suffered a denial of service attack on the day that particular auction was scheduled to end. As a result I was unable to access the site to check the auction or up my bid if needed. The end time came and went, and I was left to wonder if I had won or not. About 2 AM an email came to me saying I had won for a ridiculous 50% of retail price. Considering the DOS attack, and the fact that another email from ubid said that auctions running during the DOS would be extended by 24 hours, I wondered if they would honor the price. It could certainly be argued that the auction was invalidated by the DOS, and that the prices were artificially low. These items were actually being shipped from ubid itself, so they certainly had the leeway to do what they wanted. Today, I got notification that the item had shipped at the auction price. Hats off to ubid for going the "happy customer" route in this case. Perhaps I'm biased because I got a good deal. Perhaps I'm biased because my wife will be happy. Probably a little of both.

My Busy Hobby Shelf

2011-04-08T22:25:00.000-04:00

I should either finish some of these or move them to a safer locale. This is the shelf from which the Wraithlord and Treewoman made their various drops.

So what's up there....

the Avatar of Menoth with his stained glass goodness
an Ultraforge Treewoman in progress
a couple Warmachine mercenaries (Anastasia DiBray and Madelyn Corbeau) unpainted
a Reaper Elf Mage that I was painting as part of a challenge vs. Auberoun at Digital Waaagh.
High Exemplar Kreoss poking in from the side
the Ral Partha Elf Blademistress I've been trying to paint lately
Skaven Lord Skrolk, who may end up a Golden Demon entry if I can improve him dramatically
a Wraithguard in a sad state of WIP
a panda made from polymer clay by one of my kids
Reaper Jolie, also painted by one of my kids
a Razorback turret with heavy bolters

So what does this demonstrate? That I am incapable of finishing a project? Maybe....

Hello? The Winner?

2011-04-06T14:45:00.000-04:00

So the winner of the random-painted-mini-follower-contest type thing hasn't responded, and it's been more than a week. It isn't anyone whose name I recognize, so I don't even know if that person is real or a puppet account.

Anyway, if I don't get a response on or before this coming Tuesday (4/12) I will pick another winner randomly. If you are a regular follower but not a "google-friend-connect magical space robot follower" then let me know and I will add you to the choose-o-matic list. I will also re-generate the list from google friend connect as well, so if you became a follower between the last drawing and now you will have a shot at winning.

While you're here, take a look at that phone. Remember the sound dialing used to make, or the satisfying impact of your finger on that metal stopper? And the phone company charged extra for touch tone? Yeah, now I dial by touch screen or just think the name of the person really loud. Progress.

Crytsal Brush: Wish List for Next Year

2011-04-04T07:49:00.001-04:00

Crystal Brush is over, and umpteen thousands have been awarded to some of my favorite painters. Sure it had its hitches, but I suppose it went pretty well for the first year. I loved the idea of taking part in the online voting, which ties in well with CMON's whole "thing." After participating, I thought I'd mention a couple things that might improve the experience for next year.

1. Add the ability to change my vote. I had at least one experience where I realized after looking at the mini later that I really low-balled the score. The ability to fix that would be great, and shouldn't be infeasible since we're already logged in.

2. Display entry counts. Just some idea of how many entries we've voted on out of a total count would give a sense of scale, since we're not there to look at all the models physically. "You have voted on 11/23 in this category; 34 of 91 overall" or similar.

3. Display my vote in gallery view. Goes back to #1. The only place I could see what I voted on something was each time I case a vote and a new entry was displayed (my prior vote was displayed on the left with score.)

4. Inclusion in CMON annual. This may be a no-brainer, but I thought I'd mention it. A nice spread of the winners each year in the annual would be nice.

5. Improve the photography. This is definitely a case of "testing would have helped." The reflective black backdrop was distracting and many of the pics were slightly off focus and over-saturated. They seemed to get it right for pics of the final winners, so hopefully next year's competition will all have that quality.

So thanks to CMON for giving me some enjoyable painting competition participation, even if only vicariously. I really hope to compete next year!

(Also, Steve Buddle has some excellent points on the subject.)

Crystal Brush: Photography Is Difficult

2011-04-03T00:14:00.003-04:00

If you have ever participated at CMON, you know that two hobbies are on display there, mini painting and photography. A bad picture of a great mini will get a mediocre score. Whoever is doing the photography for the first Crystal Brush painting competition is having a very frustrating day, I'm sure.

When voting came online, about 11:30 PM Eastern time, it became very clear that photography was not going to tell the story of many of these pieces. Some were clearly amazing. Others... less so. Some it is impossible to tell. I was going to include some images of the minis that I really liked and some that I just couldn't discern the quality level from the Crystal Brush photo, but in the spirit of not commenting on an ongoing competition I will save those for after voting has closed.

After voting on a hundred or so minis, I have to wonder if a purely judge-based system isn't the best way to go. I'm giving it my best to score these, but I just don't feel like I'm in possession of all the data.

Failure To Plan: Missing Crystal Brush #1

2011-03-31T10:11:00.001-04:00

I am a bit miffed at myself. When I first heard about the Crystal Brush painting competition and its $10,000 grand prize I decided to go to Adepticon to compete. Not because I had any delusions of winning, mind you... I just wanted to be part of the moment (so to speak) and to see what would undoubtedly be some world class miniatures.

Instead, I will be sitting home, voting for my favorite entry via CMON, and merely wishing I was there. Perhaps I will employ some sort of food-based solace.

I still plan on going to Chicago for Games Day and hopefully incrementing my Golden Demon count. Maybe I should focus this weekend on getting those entries closer to completion. Or maybe I'll just sit around and read the Malifaux rulebook. So many choices.

Weekly Hobby Group update

2011-03-31T00:32:00.000-04:00

Just me and Jimmy tonight. I worked on my Elf Blade Mistress a little.

I completed more of the gaunt unit from Hive Fleet Emervac. These are a few machine painting steps away from being done. I really can't, in good conscience, start painting any of the cool Eldar I traded for this paint job until I finish them!

Jimmy added spines and more spines to his Kroot-a-saurus. "Kroot Warbeast" he corrects me. Yeah, I'm going with Kroot-a-saurus. Ha!

One More Follower and I'm Giving Something Away

2011-03-29T12:44:00.006-04:00

En Fuego, Baby!

I am at 99 followers now, and as I mentioned in a previous post, I plan on giving something away when I get to 100. What am I giving away? I haven't decided yet, but it will be something painted by me. Exactly what will be dependent on the winner, since I want it to be something to match their faction/army/interest/whatever.

So here's the deal. At some point during the day that I reach or exceed 100 followers I will capture the list and work with Auberoun over at The Digital Waaagh to randomly select a follower. Yes, that means there may be over 100 entrants when I capture the list. That's fine. Anyway, I will communicate with the winner, I will decide what sort of prize would be good for that user and then I will prepare and send the prize at no expense to the winner.

In addition, to commemorate the centennial follower mark, I am going to prepare (at some point) a "100 follower" mini, to be passed on to a fellow blogger. When that mini is done, I will make another post on how to entry that one. The basic idea is that I pass this on to someone, and they pass it on to someone else when they reach 100 followers, and so on.

So here's your chance for something free.

Oh, some fine print.... I reserve the right to pick another winner if I pick you and you don't respond within a reasonable amount of time... like a few weeks. Seriously, I'd if I'm going to give something away I'd like it to be to someone who actually pays a little attention.

EDIT: Auberoun and I have selected a winner! I have emailed the lucky follower (sorry if it wasn't you!) and will keep you all posted here.

How I Lost This Particular Game of Warmachine

2011-03-27T11:36:00.001-04:00

My record is now officially 0/9, even after I declared the last battle results nullified because the winning move was not legal according to the FAQ. Instead of a play-by-play I figure I'll just explain to you how I lost this particular match. This happens often enough now that I could probably make a regular feature of it.

So we start out with a rough representation of the battlefield. The Spriggan is mostly scrapped, and neither the Devastator nor the Guardian have a scratch. I'm thinking the old man has a nice safe spot behind the Avatar. After all, who is going to risk taking a POW20 (w/ Eye of Menoth) free strike? Karchev had already taken a fair bit of pounding, so another good hit would mean disabled systems.

The correct answer is nobody, because nobody has to. Sliding around to the side, Karchev can advance until only a small portion of him is in the Avatar's front arc. He hasn't left the Avatar's melee range, so no free strike. It puts him to just within reach of Severius, and he proceeds to make paste of the old man.

What I should have done is pivot the Avatar about 45 degrees to its right, thereby ensuring that Karchev would take a free strike if he tried to slip past. Either that, or keep my warcaster way, way back. The latter may not have worked, since my back was against a table edge and there really wasn't anywhere to go. I could have used Vision, but with 5 focus available to him he could afford to get more than one decent swing with axe-of-doom and still finish the job.

Also, as a side note, can someone tell me why the Avatar rolls 4 focus on turn one and then 2 focus for the rest of the game? Seriously, I would love a 4 focus Avatar turn someday when he's actually fighting something.

Weekly Hobby Group update

2011-03-25T01:32:00.001-04:00

Hobbying was a good time tonight, with newcomer Andrew joining me, Seth, Jimmy and Mike. Much coffee was consumed. It was loud. Things got painted. Poor Andrew had to ensure everyone showing him my painted models.

I worked mostly on "Hive Fleet Emervac" gaunts. Seth worked more on chaos warriors, and his "Harry the Hammer" shield that he is painstakingly trying to make look like Alexi Z's version in the CMON annual. His "lava" shield is coming along nicely.

Jimmy sculpted a new face on a dollar-store dinosaur to match his Kroot mercenary army. Everyone thought it was pretty cool!

Finally, Mike worked on some Tau and Andrew worked on his chaos warriors. I put some paint on a very old Elf Blade Mistress Ral Partha mini.

After some consideration, we decided to move hobby night back to Thursday. I had hoped to start going to an Android development group Thursday nights, but it just never happened.

Video Painting Tutorials? Please Advise

2011-03-22T19:27:00.000-04:00

I've been toying with different ideas to add content to this blog, and video tutorials are one of the options I've considered. The problem is that my brain has been calibrated to the Miniature Mentor series in terms of video quality and camera work, and anything I produce won't be nearly that level.

So my question to you, interwebs, is whether this video quality is high enough to be useful.

Consider what you are looking to get out of a painting tutorial. Could you see what you need to see at this level of zoom and focus? Is the verbal description more important? What are you actually looking to learn? (Those of you who aren't already far better at painting than I am, anyway.)

Help me help you.

Misadventures in Weathering

2011-03-22T00:24:00.000-04:00

...or, how I learned to hate Vallejo liquid mask.

For fun tonight, I decided to try a weathering technique that sounded like it had potential. The premise is to paint an item metallic, wash it and stipple it for rust, then apply liquid mask, paint a color over the whole thing and remove the mask. In theory, it would look like the paint had rubbed away to reveal the metal. This would hopefully give a more realistic look than the "paint wear over the color" method.

Plans sometimes go awry.

Here are each of the steps.

We begin with a garden variety IoB rat ogre

paint the arm guard Reaper shadowed steel

highlight with Reaper honed steel and polished silver

wash with Gyphonne Sepia stipple with some VGC hot orange for rust. Not too over the top.

Here is where we start to get fancy with the mask, preserving the weathered metal areas.

Apply Vallejo liquid mask along wear areas, especially the outside edges and on spikes.

Here is where things start to go wrong. That huge blob is the dried liquid mask that I had to extract from the bottle to get to usable liquid. Upon trying to apply it with a brush, I realized that I could not get it off the brush. I am so glad I didn't use my W&Ns7 to apply this junk. I still don't think I have all of it off my cheap brush, even with hot water and dish soap. Seriously, this stuff is brush poison.

paint a horrible thick green over the whole thing. Okay, maybe "horrible thick" wasn't what I had in mind.

The prior step took so long that I just slapped on the green. I was getting frustrated with everything being sticky around my painting area. That stuff just corrupts everything it gets near.

rub the crap out of the horrible green until you can see the primer color again.

And the fact that it doesn't come off was the icing on the cake. I'm pretty sure my earlier attempt at this with a tank was much easier to do, so the age of the liquid mask must matter a lot. This time was torture to remove it. After colour shapers wouldn't work I finally resorted to a toothbrush and rubbing off way more than I needed to.

I can not stress enough how sticky everything was when doing this. I ended up throwing away the paper towels I was working on and my palette sheet just to ensure I didn't get any of that crap on my brushes. As interesting as the idea was to start, I think I'll just paint on wear.

The Dice Know Their Master

2011-03-21T14:27:00.001-04:00

After our very unsuccessful attempt at playing a lunchtime game of Warmachine Friday, Brian accidentally picked up my two Privateer Press dice and put them with his own. Later in the day he stopped by with all four dice.

"So how are we going to tell whose are whose?" he asked jokingly.

"Here, I can tell," I said, and rolled all four dice. They came up two 1's, a 4 and a 5.
I grabbed the ones showing snake eyes. "These are definitely mine."

Orcs & Goblins: Did Goblins Get the Shaft Again?

2011-03-20T00:23:00.002-04:00

Earlier, before the new hardcover book, I lamented that goblins had no special place in the O&G army. Every interesting advantage (fanatics, netters, hating dwarfs) seemed to be given to their subterranean cousins. In 8th edition rules, the Night Goblins hand weapon/shield combo is also more effective in close combat if you want to stick to the three point models. Goblins needed love. They needed something to make them unique in the O&G book. Did they get it? A little, but not as much as I would have liked.

Comparing the two books, goblins don't appear to have changed much. The basic model has the same stat line. The options cost half as much, so now a more reasonable equipped model with spear and shield costs a point less than in the old book. Night goblins, on the other hand, can get spears for free but can't take light armor. It basically makes spear/shield goblins more expensive than a similarly equipped night goblin, but having a point higher leadership. All command has been made more expensive as well, standardizing on 10 pts per model instead of different costs for boss, musician or standard bearer. The one thing that goblins did get is a new unit addition, the Nasty Skulker. These are basically close combat specialist goblins that get three attacks and killing blow for the first combat they are revealed. The combination of better armor (for extra cost), a few extra attacks in the front rank (for extra cost) and a better leadership than night goblins, regular goblins might have a little more punch in close combat. What the nasty skulkers don't do is add any staying power for a tarpit horde. You aren't planning on these units winning combat, in fact they may be engaged on multiple fronts, so "steadfast" with the general and standard bearer nearby are the keys to survival. Some extra attacks in the front rank probably aren't as useful as another 8 or so goblins to keep the ranks filled. I really like the skulker models too, and will likely be getting some just to paint. I also eagerly await a new goblin plastic kit that actually has the options to kit them out with hand weapon!

The wolf riders were also on my look-at list. I have a grand scheme to create a fully mounted goblin army, using all wolf riders and chariots. So far I have painted one model. My plans move slowly. The wolf rider basic model is down to 10 pts, a significant 2 points less than previous. This model also doesn't come with the default weapon, but cavalry spears are good to have when you are S3. A nice addition is that giving them shields no longer removes the "fast cavalry" rule from them. Wolf chariots got a nice little bump. They are a full 10 points cheaper than in the prior book, and can be fielded in units of 1-3. This gets you a not insignificant maximum of 450 points of chariots for your three duplicate special choices, nearly the maximum allowed for a 2000 point list. Throw in a couple lord/hero choices with chariots and you have a huge rolling army. Effective? Who knows? Impressive? Hecks, yeah!

A couple more observations about the book. The spells of the little waaagh seem very augment/hex oriented, which I really liked. They do things like let goblins re-roll to-hit and to-wound rolls when flighting on flank or rear. That's really cool. The magic item list .... what happened?! They went from 40 unique items in the last book to a pathetic 8 in this book. I know the main rule book has a lot more items in this edition than last, but seriously! And of the 8, two are banners that can only be taken by a particular type of goblin (one regular goblin, one night goblin), one can only be taken by savage orc shaman and two others are 100 point monstrosities. Maybe this is a game design decision to keep things simple, I dunno.

In terms of photos, one of my favorite parts of the books, there are zero pictures of regular trolls, despite them being a special choice now. Stone trolls only make an appearance in the corner of a full-army shot.

So just doing a little math, for my mounted goblin army I could field wolf chariots for 300, Grom for another 285, 4 units of 25 wolf riders (spear, shield, command) for 1320 and still have about 100 points left over for a shaman on a wolf. Sounds like a fun idea, but I can't see myself painting 100 wolf riders this year. Or dropping a couple hundred bucks on wolf chariots. Or not getting distracted by my Skaven or Eldar or Protectorate of Menoth or Marines or Android development. I mean, let's be realistic here.

Weekly Hobby Group: Harby and Eiryss Lighten the Mood

2011-03-18T07:43:00.004-04:00

Each week, more or less, a few guys come over to my house to paint and hobby. We have a floating group of 6, and typically 3 or 4 are there each week (including myself.) I have kids to put to bed, so the group comes to my house. It's a nice arrangement for me, and they seem to enjoy it. I dispense a lot of painting advice and get to see what everyone is working on. I think I will start to chronicle what we work on here. If I remember, I might even take photos.

I really needed last night. The mood was light and we painted our little toy soldiers while Jimmy's wife made fun of us (in a good natured way) for playing with toys. I mentioned in the last post that we had some family tragedy, so the mood had been quite a bit more somber recently. On Tuesday, March 8, my three year old nephew died suddenly. We basically moved in with my wife's brother and sister-in-law on Wednesday and didn't go home until Wednesday of this week, the day after the funeral. My three kids are each slightly older than their three other kids, and they have all grown up together, so the kids were able to play and keep each other busy while the parents made arrangements. I think staying there was as much to comfort us as it was for them. "Danger Johnny" (as his brothers named him) was a fantastically vibrant and energetic child, getting into absolutely everything. I so clearly remember him crashing around the house with the kids, jumping in my lap to say hi, then squirming out of my arms to go chasing after the kids again. He was something else, and we're all missing him terribly.

So after all that, and a funeral that included the funeral director's cell phone ending up buried at the bottom of the grave, we're all home and I enjoyed goofing off with my hobby group. I had no real focus, so I just started painting models as the mood hit me.

I started with Eiryss' cloak. Then started some freehand swirls with VGC livery green. I didn't like that, so I made vines by adding leaves of GW snot green. They didn't show up well enough, so I outlines the leaves in white. I still didn't like it, so I extended the vines out and eventually adding little flowers of white and GW blood red.

I also put some paint on the Harbinger of Menoth. I've had these two models for years without doing more than priming them, so they both were dusty. After brushing all the dust off I realized how bad the priming job on the Harbinger is. Her face had a paint texture on it that ended up looking like acne after putting a little flesh color down. I guess she's supposed to be a teenager, so it makes sense in a way. Why wouldn't the floating girl who acts as a voice for a god not have acne? It's also attire for a teenager that would make the authors of (warning: NSFW) "Go Make Me A Sandwich" pull their hair out.

I also put together a unit of 10 Flameguard Cleansers. I am greatly looking forward to getting off a CRA with them at POW 22, AOE 4" and RAT 15. Oh, yes. That might even hit Lylyth.

Gravity 1, Treewoman 0

2011-03-17T07:06:00.000-04:00

I suppose something had to happen since we don't have the Wraithlord to kick around anymore.

A deadly chain reaction of shelf content tipping resulted in the Ultraforge Treewoman plunging off the shelf and hitting the floor. She missed the dogs' water bowl. I guess treewomen don't like swimming as much as Wraithlords do. Either that, or they have worse aim.

Tonight is hobby night, for the first time in a couple weeks. We've had some real tragedy in the family lately, and I will be sharing that a little later.

Adding Snarky Word Bubbles with Gimp

2011-03-10T22:44:00.001-05:00

Because IP laws are vague when it comes to parody! (Or are they? You didn't hear me say that!)

So let's start with "Barfy the Troll" ...

We'll put a word bubble off to the upper right of his head. Start by loading the image in Gimp.

Then use the "rectangle select tool" (shortcut R) to draw a selection box for our speech bubble.

Once you draw the rectangle check the "Rounded Corners" box and increase the radius until the box looks like a bubble.

Now we'll add the little arrow to the bubble. Choose the "Free Select" tool (shortcut F). Here's an important step: now click on the title bar of the image. If the image is the selected window, holding shift will make the little lasso tool get a "plus" sign next to it. We want to add to the selection, so that's good! Hold down shift and click three points to make the arrow. Then release shift and click on the first point of the triangle to complete the selection adding. We now should have a shape that is our word bubble, but it's still just a selection.

Now choose the bucket fill tool (shortcut shift+B) and select "Fill whole selection" with "Affected Area (Shift)" Make sure your color of choice for the word bubble is the currently selected color, and then click within the word bubble. There! Now our word bubble is filled, but we want to add a border so that is shows up against the backdrop.

Open the "Channels, Layers and Paths" window and choose the paths tab. Since we have a selection open, we have the option to turn our selection into a path. Click the appropriate icon to do that.

Now that our selection is a path, we can stroke along the path to draw an outline. Click the "stroke along path" button (right next to "selection to path") making sure your outline color is the active color. Choose line thickness and click "stroke."

Our word bubble is done, but we need a humorous caption or nobody will know how clever we are. Choose the text tool and click in the word bubble. Use a lifetime of internet usage to come up with something hilarious, perhaps a reference to a 1980 movie starring Leslie Nielson. Change the font size as needed in the dialog to fit your caption in the bubble. If you need to, use more than one text object.

Now you are done! Save your creation and prepare for the hilarity that will ensue.

They Shall Know Satire!

2011-03-09T09:44:00.004-05:00

Because Fear is not on the menu!

I got the preview email from Games Workshop for the new Grey Knights models. They look pretty cool, but I can't resist making a few humorous observations. I'll let the Ordo Malleus speak for themselves.

Not a fan of 90's manga? google it

and a book, apparently!

Yes, you are Burny the Bunny. Congratulations.

Maybe I'm nitpicking on that last one, but if you are going to drill storm bolter barrels for your studio army make a template or something. Those look about like my pin-vise workmanship.

Also, super giant robot exo-skeletons? I dunno. We're taking one scary step toward Dreadnoughts being able to link up to form Volton.

Game Day: The One Hour Typhon and the 0/9 Record

2011-03-06T11:02:00.007-05:00

March Game Day is over, and it was quite a day. We had a new player pick up Warmachine using a Cryx battle box left over by someone who moved out of the area. We saw our largest single Mk II battle. We tasted a number of homebrew and commercial beers. I painted Typhon.

First game of the day was 35 pts of Khador vs. my Protectorate. Epic Irusk and the High Reclaimer. As you can see from my deployment I was planning on sending out a lot of cloud templates. Once again, I took the bait and sent the Avatar running off after a 2-point Widowmaker solo. With stealth and his 14" POW12 shot, I just did not want that guy popping the HC every turn. As it is I make an error in the ash cloud placement that left HC open to a mortar shot. With "fire for effect" in play, it took nearly half his health. That solo could not be in my back line. So, 11 pts wasted chasing a 2 pt solo.

We inched toward each other, eventually meeting on my right (near side of the shot.) Iron Fang Pikemen put up a decent showing, trading about half their number to kill a unit of zealots. Bastions must have forgotten to take their vitamins because they missed every swing against the IFP's. The Reckoner and the Spriggan were toe to toe, the Spriggan's charge not disabling any of the Reckoner's systesms.

Let's take a second to ask: What do you expect a heavy jack with three focus to do to an opponent? For the Reckoner (P+S 17 attacks, made P+S 19 with the choir) I was expecting to disassemble the thing. I should have done about 20 points of damage to it, ideally disabling the right arm or cortex. The 8 or so points that I actually did were disappointing.

To finish the game, Brian used Irusk's spell that lets him move 'jacks out of activation to slide the Spriggan into the Reckoner, using bulldoze to slide it over a couple inches and open up a charge lane to get at the HC. Stomp, stomp, stomp, swing, splat. Game Over.

NEWS FLASH!!! From the PP FAQ regarding bulldoze: "When this model advances into B2B contact with an enemy model during its activation, it can push that model up to 2˝ directly away from it." (Emphasis mine) The Spriggan could not have bumped the Reckoner out of the way as a result of Energizer. I revise my record to 0/8 and I demand a rematch!

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The beer tasting continued.
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Next I played a 15 point intro game vs. Cryx with the new player. The game ended when the Khador player looked over the battlefield and recommended to the Cryx player to use Deneghra's "ghost walk" spell to allow a Deathripper to charge over a linear obstacle. Oops. I forgot about ghost walk. So he slid in with a spray to pop Severius for a few points, then charged with the aforementioned Deathripper to finish the old man off.

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The beer tasting continued.
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Next, new Cryx guy Josh and relative newcomer Legion guy Matt had a 15 point game. I was coaching Josh, but he didn't need much strategic guidance, just some rules clarification. Josh managed to slip some arc-node chicken-jacks through the line to blast Lylyth with venom one turn, then slip a Defiler in to deliver the kill shot. The game was getting quite raucous, and even turned into a drinking game wherein both players drank (about a 4 oz tasting glass) whenever a model was removed from the table.

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The beer tasting continued.
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After the game, someone mentioned the fact that I had brought my paints. Was I expecting to paint something?! My answer: Heck yeah, now I am. Give me something to paint! I'll paint it in one hour! Matt promptly handed me Typhon. He had to pick the big one didn't he?

One hour is not very long to go from assembled and unprimed to fully painted it turns out. Here was the result.

Good from far, but far from good.

The basic recipe for a one-hour Typhon is Charadon Granie chitin, heavily highlighted with a 50/50 P3 bootstrap leather/charadon granite. The skin is Reaper Leather white, highlighted with skull white. The claws were skull white with a sepia wash. Teeth were skull white. I wish I had done more with them now that I'm looking at the photo.

The general consensus was positive. Basically the "if my army looked like that I'd be happy" sentiment. I showed it to my wife, who was upstairs hanging out with Brian's wife. She was not terrible impressed.

On the way home we were talking about the events of the day.

"Everyone seemed pretty happy with the way Typhon came out after just an hour of painting."

"Yeah, but they were pretty drunk."

"Oh, yeah."

Drunk or not, the Protectorate is now 0/9 and someone walked out of there with a painted heavy warbeast.

EDIT: I am revising the record to 0/8, per the News Flash above.

0/7 .... Another Sad Day for the Protectorate

2011-03-04T13:47:00.001-05:00

See how cleverly Kreoss sends his forces off to
his left so he can engage the enemy alone?

Today, a group of filthy mercenaries invaded the conference table in my office. My Menites mustered forces to repel the invaders. There was a swamp involved.

Clearly this photo shows that all other armies pale in comparison to the might of the Protectorate!

In battle.... well a bit different. I repeated my common mistake. I separated my force, put my caster in harm's way and ended up having to make the choice between getting gunned down at 15" or get splattered standing toe-to-toe with a heavy 'jack. Kreoss, ever the exemplar, went down swinging.

They may have lost, but they lost looking good.

Kreoss goes down swinging. His MAT7 vs the Avalancher DEF9 means
that he'd only need snake-eyes to miss. Yup, there they are.
To add insult to injury, the Avalancherkilled him with a shield. A shield.

...but who is the best looking army on the table?
I'm talking to you primer-white mercs!

No Lunch Game For The Choir

2011-03-03T16:30:00.000-05:00

Work had issues today, so I decided to call off the lunch game rather than give the appearance of shirking. The newly painted choir was disappointed. Hear their song of woe!

Quick question for anyone who reads these.... is there a particular type of model you are interested in seeing a step-by-step walk-through for? I'd be interested to see what interests you, and if it interests you enough to potentially buy a pdf guide (fairly cheap.) Let me know!

Choir of Menoth, ready for their first game

2011-03-03T01:19:00.000-05:00

Well, their first painted game anyway. Tomorrow is our traditional Warmachine/Hordes lunch day, and I have a fully painted 15 point list ready! This is my first time fielding a fully painted Warmachine force of any size, so I'm quite excited. I'm guessing that the Protectorate will march to a full color victory. After all, I've lost the last 6 games.... statistically speaking I'm almost guaranteed to win, right?

Painting was a lot of fun tonight, with Designer7x and Jimmy talking battletech/mechwarrior almsot all night. Ah, reminds me of my days in the lounge of Wadsworth Hall, playing battletech with the PFRC gang. D7x has a cool looking building he's been working on. He cut a picture of a futuristic city scape up to paste onto the windows of the hanger, making it appear as if the windows are mirrored. It's a very cool effect. I also found out that Jimmy was a national Mage Knight champion (playing under the name "Creature".) Go figure!

Old Stuff: Behold My Crappy Elf

2011-03-02T17:29:00.000-05:00

Reaper 02506: Rath Nashanneth

So instead of participating in "Old Stuff Day" by reposting a blog entry, I'm putting one of my very old minis on display.

I got this fellow at a Paint-and-Take sponsored by Black Lightning at my local hobby shop in 2006. I think he was supposed to be a dark elf, but I didn't know that at the time, hence the color scheme. It occured to me about halfway through that this was the first time I had ever tried to paint a human(oid) face. Go figure.

At the time, I thought this guy was top notch.

Common comment: "His sword is so.... green."

Yes. Yes it is.

State of the Protectorate (and other updates)

2011-03-01T01:33:00.000-05:00

Behold the nightmarish lighting of 2 CF bulbs in my kitchen!

The choir is coming along. The goal is a complete squad of 4 for gaming Thursday.

I've also completed the Redeemer and have put a little more work into the Avatar of Menoth. I'm saving the stained glass areas until I am ready to photograph progress for a step-by-step.

In fact, I'm getting a reasonable number of painted jacks available to field. The Redeemer makes 5. Here are the other 4.

In addition, I have 5 painted casters to field. I'm still not sure about Feora. I just didn't feel like I "got" that model the first time through. Maybe I'll go back and try and salvage a decent paint job out of her later.

On the non-Warmachine front, I am done with the Black Templar Dreadnought. At least until I find aspects of him that I want to repaint.

And finally, a sneak peak at something I've been working on a little at a time...

Ouch. An Ork Just Math-Hammered Me.

2011-02-27T18:17:00.000-05:00

Just a quick summary of something that I really didn't appreciate until yesterday.

30 Ork Boyz w/shootas, 3 rokkit launchas = 210 pts
10 tactical Space Marines w/ heavy bolter, plasma gun = 180 pts

Full squad of Orks shoot at Marines. 18 shoota hits. 9 shoota wounds. 3 failed armor saves. 1 rokkit hit/wound w/ no save. That makes 4 dead marines = 64 points. The Marine squad is now seriously compromised. Points killed per points of unit is .305.

Full squad of Marines shoot at Orks. Let's assume that are in rapid fire range. 16 bolter shots = 11 bolter hits = 6 bolter wounds. Heavy bolter gets 2 hits and, oh let's just say two wounds. Plasma gun gets a couple shots... let's just say both wound. So that's 10 Ork casualties = 60 points. Points killed per points of unit is .333.

In the end, I discovered that a full unit of Boyz is almost as effective for the points as a full tactical squad of marines, plus the Boyz can shoot you up and still charge you for an effective whomping.

Waaagh indeed.

Choir of Menoth, model 1

2011-02-26T02:12:00.001-05:00

I'm of a serious mind to have some painted Warmachine figures with which to play. My abysmal win record recently (0/5 with PoM, 0/1 with Skorne) can only be attributed to unpainted/partially painted models. I mean, it couldn't be me, could it?

So here is model #1 of a 4 member choir. I'm satisfied with the results. The scroll text was done with a Pigma Micron 005 (0.2 mm tip) pen. The idea is to basically tap the pen irregularly on the line as you move the pen, creating some "words" that are longer than others. It makes a reasonable facsimile of text at a distance.

The skin is GW tallarn flesh, washed devlan mud, repainted tallarn flesh over non shadow areas and then highlighted with a little skull white mixed into the tallarn flesh. Maybe 60/40 tallarn/white.

Finishing this squad of 4 will allow me to field a few variants of a 15 point army, fully painted.

So far I have painted...
Warcasters: pKreoss, Feora, High Reclaimer, pSeverius
Warjacks: Reckoner, Repender, Revenger, Crusader, and a 90% done Redeemer
Units: just the one choir member; a couple Exemplar units have some sporadic color
Solos: Gorman DiWulfe

I also have a painted Testament of Menoth given to me as a gift. I have to say, getting painted minis as a gift when you really know the person painted it specifically for you is pretty amazing.

Gravity 2, Wraithlord 0

2011-02-24T01:48:00.000-05:00

You'd think I would have learned from the last incident, but noooooo. The Wraithlord took another majestic dive into the dogs' water bowl tonight. This time the cause was a rinse-water mug being taken off the shelf, causing an HP multimeter to tip forward, pushing the Wraithlord.

He is now, once again, repaired and awaiting shipment to his new home along with some of his friends.

Black and Tan (pic heavy)

2011-02-19T23:26:00.002-05:00

Here is a pictorial of Apple Barrel Country Tan (inexpensive acrylic craft paint) layered over black primer. The tan is diluted to minimize acrylic binder texture on drying, as miniature painting ideally should be.

So after 12 coats of tan, the coverage is "good, not great." There are still visible areas where the coloration is inconsistent. This is a good demonstration of what goes into a very smooth paint job; I certainly don't have the patience to paint entire models like this for gameplay. I think the misnomer here is thinking of each of these steps as "coats" like painting a wall would get coats. When you are painting with very thin coats, one area is drying rapidly while you are working on an adjacent area. I took pains here to go over each area only once between photos. In practice I would be going back to the areas that had incomplete coverage almost immediately after finishing a nearly area. The paint should be thin enough that it dries pretty much as you watch.

I might repeat this exercise with a foundation paint over black primer and see if the result is significantly different.

Tutorial - Over/Under Lightning (Ulthwe Eldar)

2011-02-18T14:30:00.001-05:00

As part of the Big Box of Eldar I have done a number of skimmers with the same style of lightning as the Fire Prism in the Eldar codex. While not exactly like the codex version, mine have used the same over/under technique. It's easy to execute.

First, paint your lightning as three continuous zig-zag lines. Neatness is not a prerequisite here as you can see. Try to at least keep the different lines obvious enough that you can follow them with the eye at this point.

fig 1. basic lightning shapes

Next, choose a line to follow. In this case I chose the second one from the tip. Paint sharp edges of the background color at the first place where it intersects another line to give the impression that it is going over that line.

fig 2. first edging over

At the next intersection, paint edges along the other line to give the impression that your chosen line is going under that line. As you go, clean up any fuzzy edges with more of the background color.

fig 3. second edging, under

Continue alternating over and under. You don't need to stick with the same line all the way through as long as each line alternates. If you make a mistake, just paint the lightning bolt color over the edges and then draw the correct edges.

fig 4. alternate over/under

Sharpen corners and edges as you go, continuing the process out to the points of each line.

fig 5. continue and clean up edges

That's it. Pretty simple, eh? This would probably work for tribal-style tattoos as well.

Hordes: Minions ... Pigs 'n' Gators!

2011-02-14T12:20:00.000-05:00

I love Warmachine, but I had a very hard time deciding on a Hordes army until I started seeing models like Lord Carver or the Blackhide Wrastler. Pigs 'n' Gators! I picked up the book this weekend, and ... well... it's pretty cool. I don't play Mercenary armies in Warmachine, so maybe this experience is shared, but I was a bit disappointed by the division in the book. It's Pigs OR Gators, for the most part. That's fine, I can understand that, and I would assume that Rhulic Mercenaries and Magnus would not play nice together necessarily.

What kind of made me sad were the units that I absolutely cannot take as a particular mercenary force. Playing pigs? Sorry, no Feralgeist. Playing gators? Sorry, no Gudrun the Wanderer. Playing anybody? Sorry, no Lanyssa Ryssyl or Dahlia Hallyr and Skarath. That last one just breaks my heart. I tend to pick armies based on the models and not the rules, so to find out that my favorite models in the "faction" can't work together makes me sad. It pretty much dooms me to have to start two Minion armies, plus another Hordes army if I am going to get some of the other cool Minions units/solos.

Then again.... I paint more than I play. I should just buy the models, paint them, and stop whining. After all, not playing Legion, Cryx or Cygnar didn't stop me from getting Vayle, Skarre or a journeyman warcaster.

In terms of the book, I was very entertained by the background stories. Much like the other PP "Forces of" books, the art is big and bold, and the rules plainly presented. It seems a little light compared to, say, the Protectorate or Khador books but it's a new faction so that's to be expected. I really would have preferred to see more painting and hobby content, including maybe some close ups of the models to show details that aren't really visible on the web. That would certainly give the book more value to me. Pages-wise, it's about 2/3 the size of Codex: Space Marines but with much more color at exactly the same price point.