The Old Guards and the New

Do Wraithguard have a rule that prevents them from being photographed in focus?
I'm pretty sure they do.

I assembled/magnetized a box of Wraithguard/Wraithblades this weekend. I was a little surprised at how much bigger the new models are compared to the old metal models. Even with the wider stance, the new one here is significantly taller than the old one. They also changed the base size to 40mm, which is fine with me. I thought the old models looked crowded on their tiny bases.

So, the Eldar army marches on toward field-ability. I am getting to the point that I need to be more selective about what to assemble in what order if I want to sprint to a 2000 pt game. Considering I started buying Eldar withe the last book came out, it's about time I started playing them.

Sedition Wars Glue, Avatar Train-Wreck and Sneak Preview

First off, the biggest news. I found something other than cyanoacrylate that works to glue sedition wars minis together, and does so in much the same way that styrene glue works.

Ambroid ProWeld professional plastic welder works on tons of different materials. I tried to apply it like styrene glue at first, which failed. Once I read the instructions (and followed them!) it made a bond that is quite strong. I dropped this Strain mini onto a linoleum floor from a height of 5 feet or so repeatedly and the minis never popped off the base. I'm sold. It also works exceedingly well at removing the mold lines, a trick scale modelers gave me. I was skeptical that solvent could do a decent job at mold line removal, but it really seems to work as long as you don't douse the mini. If nothing else it makes the plastic easier to work with temporarily.

Update: I tried this stuff on Reaper Bones minis to see if it worked. No dice, I'm afraid.

I've been buying Eldar for ages with the intent to play them. Now that they have a new book, I figured I'd better paint a second model for my army. One per edition. Now that's speed. So I tackled my Avatar last night. Umm.... yeah. Not fantastic.

The theory was to paint the inner portions fluorescent yellow/orange to show off his molten interior, but make the exterior dark to heighten the contrast. Sure, this is a one night paint job, but it just fails to pop on so many levels. Even that guardian looks skeptical. "That is supposed to inspire me to be fearless? Not feelin' it, boss."

Lastly, I've been working on a little project based on some artwork from a 1987 Battletech manual that utilizes some old Japanese models I had, modded a fair bit. I'm posting WIP as I go on the Battletech forums to get feedback from that community, since it's their domain of expertise. 

 I'll post a full write up here when I'm done and can get some decent pics.

Battletech Locust Scale Comparison

The recent Robotech kickstart has me thinking about all the old Battletech mecha that were based on Japanese IP, almost all Macross and Dougram. The light mech "Locust" was the "Ostall Hunter" from the movie Crusher Joe. More on that in a sec.

We played Battletech when the pieces were cardboard stand-ups on a hex board and we used grease pencils to mark damage on spec sheets protected in clear plastic binders. Some of you have probably never even seen a grease pencil, since dry erase markers took over that role completely. They had the coolest method for revealing more of the colored core, a string you would pull slightly to cut into the wound paper, which would then fall away in a wonderful spiral. I can't imagine playing Battletech or Star Fleet Battles without grease pencils. Anyway, enough waxing nostalgic.

When I first saw the movie Crusher Joe I was already familiar with Battletech in general and the Locust specifically. I was quite surprised to see how much smaller the mech was in the movie than I had expected, given the way it's portrayed in Battletech. Here's a picture of a Locust with pilot. In the background you can see a Macross VF-1A Valkyrie (a Stinger in Battletech, I believe.) I've replicated the pilot to scale the mech roughly. If we assume the pilot is 6' tall, that puts the highest point on the Locust's main body at about 4.5 man-heights, or about 27'.

a pile of dudes with binoculars is not an effective recon method

Figuring the height of the Ostall from the movie is a bit harder. According to the opening sequence, the character Talos is 209cm tall.

I'm surprised it didn't include blood type

I grabbed a frame from the movie where Ostalls are chasing Talos and Ricky in a hover technical thingy. Talos is in the back, firing a machine gun at the pursuing pack of Ostalls. I've tried to roughly represent his frame with the yellow line.

I then straightened out (more or less) the line with a rotate tool and placed it in front of the Talos to see how it measures up. From here it looks to be about 1.75 Talos's tall, or about 366cm (12 ft.) 12 feet tall compared to 27 feet tall. Big difference. But wait! There's more!

I acquired some model kits of these a long time ago. The Dougram mechs it turns out were being sold as "Battledroids", which was the precursor to Battletech. They even have the spec sheet on the back, naming each as its Battletech equivalent Griffin and Wolverine. Sadly, I can't find my model of C.A. Bigfoot, aka old school Battlemaster.

Combat Armor Soltic = old school Griffon

C.A. Blockhead = old school Wolverine

Ostall = old school Locust

Instructions on inside of Ostall box... odd

They are each 1/144 scale. The Ostall/Locust is 1/48 scale, a factor of 3x over the others. Doing the maths though show that the Locust was probably scaled in Battledroids to allow 1/48 scale model be used with the 1/144 Dougram/Macross models. Combat Armor Soltic (aka Griffon) is listed as 10.02m tall on the spec sheet that came with the model. Scaled down 1/144 gives us about 70mm, or 2.75 inches. Scaling the Ostall model the same way based on the Battletech pic should give us a 2.25" model, which is almost exactly how tall the model is, depending on how the legs are bent.

Executive summary: Locust size in Battletech was retcon-ed from a differently scaled model kit.

Queadluun Rau (oh no, my wallet)

What anime nerd from the 80's doesn't immediately recognize this mecha as the female power armor from Macross? This has been one of the universal favorites among fans of the show for decades. Want a kit/figure of this girl? Better be willing to fork over a lot of money. Check eBay. Go ahead. Yikes.

Another 80's staple was the paper and pencil roll playing game played with real live filthy humans. Let's face it... computer RPG's back then were a novelty compared to the marathon gaming sessions playing RPG's with actual friends. My nerd buddies and I at Michigan Tech actually played Palladium Books' Robotech RPG. Yeah, I even admit it publicly. I can't say I remember much about the game system, but the idea of the mecha and the setting were enough to be compelling. That same crowd also played Battletech when the best mechs were the ones taken directly from Macross, Dougram and (in at least one case, and so far out of scale as to be laughable) the movie Crusher Joe. Those designs are long past available.... sort of.

Oh, no. Another kickstart. Yeah, all that for the current price of a Queadluun Rau kit. And the stretch goals just a keep on coming. Miria is included in the set, and a squadron of three QR suits is currently a $30 add-on. One upcoming stretch goal is to switch the male version of the power armor (Nousjadeul-Ger... yeah, Zentraedi names are weird) to be included in this pledge level rather than extra cost. I'm kind of hoping that adding QR's to this level is one of the high level goals.

Battletech/Mechwarrior people, do you see the old school Stinger, Wasp, Phoenix Hawk (Hybrid and LAM), Marauder, Ostroc, Warhammer, Archer, Rifleman and Longbow? The Behemoth (Mk II Monster in Macross) is available as an add-on purchase too. The Crusader (Armored Valkyrie) is a future stretch goal. (The "fast pack" upgrade for the Stinger/Wasp/PH aka "Super Valkyrie" is also an add-on.)

Here is the scale compared to something we can all get a feel for... it looks to me like 15mm terrain might work well for them.

I actually own some model kits about this scale (they are really old....) that are about the same scale. You don't want to know what I paid for them. I dug them out of the basement for this photo, taken about 10 days ago. SD Zeta Gundam and Giant Gorg are making an appearance because they were stored in the same box.

I thought these were awesome paint jobs in 1987

Yeah, I need another 50 or 60 miniatures (or a new gaming system for that matter) like I need a hole in the head, but.... actually, now that I'm thinking about it, the benefits of trepanation are well documented. Hmmmm.

Game in a Weekend: Ludum Dare Success

Ludum Dare is over, and the result is I now have a "D" next to my name on Kongregate. The "D" dear readers, stands for developer. I have now published a game on Kongregate. My development partner has published his own entries on his Kong account, so I got to put this one on mine.

Here it is: http://www.kongregate.com/games/hakoMike/fade

The theme of the event was "minimalism" and graphically it is quite minimal. Is it great? No, not at all. Is it a functional game (albeit with no losing condition) created in a portion of a weekend? Yes. Yes it is. As a learning experience it was great. I feel equipped to take on more ambitious gamedev projects now. You will likely hear of them here.

Ludum Dare ... Game Jam Time!

This weekend is Ludum Dare, the themed game development compo/jam across the world. I attempted to do something solo for the competition a while ago but didn't get very far. This time around I will be working with my coworker jomomomo and our families to produce something for the "game jam" portion. There's no competition for this part, but you get an extra day and we're looking forward to using what we've learned on our gamedev lunch sessions.

So far, we've been putting together a quickie vertical scroller, which will eventually become a shooter. It's hosted at http://github.com/jmorast/LunchHaxe if you want to see the code. It's all in Haxe using the NME and Flixel libraries. Good stuff, Maynard. The cool part is it ports directly to my android phone with no coding changes required.
And now I'm going attempt to embed the silly little WIP.....


Hey, it looks like it worked! The arrow keys move left and right... and that's it! No shooting. No collision. Nothing. Yay. The part about cross development for Android is exciting to me. It can do iPhone as well, but I'm skeptical about my ability to do this with no iPhone or Mac of my own. From what I can tell in this how-to videos, the process isn't entirely straightforward.

I just can't connect all the dots from start to finish...

 The Ludum Dare theme will be announced at 9:00PM Eastern time!

Legend of the Nurglecorn

In the grim darkness of the far future, yadda yadda yadda. From the same novelty store that sold the flies that I made into Nurgle Furies, this $0.99 plastic unicorn becomes ... something. I'm not sure what yet. He's on a 40mm base, so I could either use him as a spawn, a beast of Nurgle, or maybe even something like putting a chaos space marine lord on him and counting it as a bike. Or a palanquin of Nurgle maybe... the options are endless.

I started by hollowing out the abdominal cavity some (influenced by the KD:M antelope no doubt) and carving the mouth back and the eyes out. The original mouth was closed, so that was a bit of work. The intestines are milliput rolled out and given segmentation by rolling a stick of balsa at intervals. My wife suggested the ragged skin at the abdominal opening (love that woman!) and that is made from thin paper towel and super glue. I just tore a strip of paper and glued it to the border, soaking the strip, The tear was ragged enough to do most of the work, but I reshaped some of it with snips after the fact.

The mane and tail were, go figure, originally green. The unicorn was pink, I think. Funny, I can't remember now. Anyway, he got a base of the usual corrugated styrene that I've been using plus some Vallejo heavy gel with a light drybrush of Praxeti white. If you haven't used the new Citadel dry colors, they are awfully strange, more like a gel than a paint. They remind me of oatmeal with not quite enough liquid in it.

All those years in art school won't help you now Eldar

Kingdom Death Resin First Model

I know Monster is a long way off, but I thought I'd show my one and only Kingdom Death model, in all its completely unassembled glory. The model in question is "Beyond the Wall" which depicts a survivor hiding, terrified. The vignette feels like there is more going on than one can see. I love that untold story feeling. The pic on their site shows the model well.

Notice the "not aimed at crotch" angle

The packaging shows how a boutique manufacturer differs from a mass manufacturer. From the stamped card box to the included art print, even to the black tissue used to pad the mailing box, it just drips with classy execution.

Presentation means a lot here

The resin is absolutely gorgeous. I don't have a ton of experience with resin models, but this one is far superior to what I'm used to. The cast is absolutely flawless. Only the McVey models I have rival this level of quality. Two torsos are included, one of which is dressed as in the illustration. The alternate torso does not have all the armor but is still clothed (to an extent.) The legs join the torso where the stockings end, so assembly should not require too much smoothing. The head is my favorite part, with deep crevices in the tousled hair and great expressive eyes.

pictured with the art card in the box

The base is nondescript, and honestly a bit disappointing. The wall is nice, but the circle is just too plain to warrant using resin. A 50mm styrene base would have accomplished about the same. I will probably either paint faces into it (a la Monster) or sculpt something more interesting.

The piece also comes with a postcard artwork prominently displaying the subject's crotch. Way to keep it classy, guys.

This is in contrast to the portion of the illustration shown on their web site, which oddly enough is the exact aspect ratio of a postcard in landscape. Oh, the choices we make.

Eye-rolling aside, it's a nice model. The attention to detail on the sculpt and casting makes me anticipate getting Monster all the more. 

The $5 Nurgle Fury Unit

I have been playing around with Chaos Daemons, more from a fun approach than a game approach. There is a local novelty store across the street from The Model Cave, so I decided to see what they had in terms of a fly for a fury proxy.

As it turns out, the plastic flies they had were pretty much perfect and I bought a full unit's worth for $5. To bulk them up a little and give someplace to put the brass rod I added some black milliput to the abdominal cavity. The paint job is mostly Nurgling Green drybrushing, with some of a lighter green too (the name of which I can't remember.) Tamiya clear yellow (thank you, Javi!) was used to tint the wings. The eyes are Vallejo air color silver (my single favorite brush on silver of all time) with a coat of Tamiya clear yellow over it, then a green wash on the bottom half of the eyes. The legs are not changed. 

A base, a little cork and some Vallejo plastic putty snow later we have a full unit of these pretties.

Ultraforge Greater Plague Demon

Not bad for a night's work. I am slightly mystified at this model's disappearance from the Ultraforge lineup. Dakka Dakka forum threads as long ago as 2009 confirm that it's gone and not coming back, and theorize that GW cease-and-desisted poor Sophia. All blame casting aside, I am glad that I have one of these.

You like grilled cheese?

Like all Ultraforge minis, he's resin and horrifically hydrophobic. Seriously getting this guy even primed was like putting two like pole magnets together. Scrub and scrub these minis until you don't think there could possibly be any mold release left, then double the time spent scrubbing. I kind of surprised myself painting him this far in one night. It was regular hobby night and we started early, so this is maybe 4.5 hours work. He was only primed before that.

Oh, and he's big. Like Forgeworld GUO big.

You! Stand still laddie!

We Need More Zombie Antelope

I finalized my Kingdom Death Monster Kickstarter pledge today. Realization: I really need to stay off Kickstarter.

Imma hoof you!

I really find the artistic direction of Kingdom Death appealing. All fantasy is a collection of tropes and cliches at this point, and a good execution requires expertly picking your cliches and fitting them to your imagery. Say what you will about the hyper-sexualization of that world, Kingdom Death Monster is stylish, disturbing and consistent.

The mini I am most excited about painting from the game is the never-really-mentioned antelope. He appears for a moment in the Kickstarter pitch video and in group shots of the game contents, but that's it. I l love the eviscerated abdominal cavity, the exposed musculature, the bushy tail, all of it! It's the sort of mini that I want to show to every manufacturer as an example of how to still be original with cliches like zombie animals.

Sanguinary Guard and a Sandwich

Yes, they're very gold. It's kinda their thing.

 The Sanguinary Guard are complete. Well, at least as complete as they are going to get because I'm giving them to their recipient now. It's March, and we're getting into ridiculous territory for late Christmas present. Talking with my friend today, he mentioned selling some of his Blood Angels, so I may deliver these guys just in time to be complete pointless. Whoops.

CMON link for attractive, intelligent people.

==== Completely Unrelated ====

Take a Wendy's Crispy Chicken sandwich, no mayo. Take a Wendy's Junior Bacon Cheeseburger, also no mayo. Take the bottom bun off the chicken sandwich and the top bun off the burger, then combine them to make The Barnyard. Chicken, cow and pig surrounded by lettuce, tomato, cheese and wheat. I feel so rustic. Also fat.

Man's Greatest Culinary Triumph

The Plan Backfires

In an attempt to diverge from the path of "everything 30% complete" that I seemed to have been on lately, I attempted a new policy of not switching figures once I started painting one. I would paint it start to finish. Wow, did that go wrong. Instead of focusing me on painting one model, I ended up just not painting if I didn't feel like painting the current exclusive model-of-the-moment. Whoops.

Anyway, here is the current thing I am finishing. Yes, that's the same model that was going to be part of someone's Christmas gift. It still is, just a tad belated.

A few things need completion (including the gems and top piece) and there is some cleanup to do. I tried to stick to the box art for the banner as much as possible, but I'll be going with a darker cloth base to match the wings I did with the darker interior.  I did learn one thing with this... don't make the background of any detail work a series of paints and washes. You will inevitably need to fix some slop and you'll never get it right if the fix is elaborate. Stick to paint color that you can reproduce easily in one small spot.

I have been trying to transition to the new GW paint set someone bought me for Christmas. Ouch. I am surprised how much of my planning involved knowing the colors of the old range. I find myself scanning the cardboard "chest" that holds the paint jars (a great idea if you ask me) for something that looks like color x.

Thrift Store Treasure = Good Photography

So I found myself at a Salvation Army thrift store recently. Now typically I can't stand pawing through thrift stores or garage sales... that's not to say that good things can't be had, only that I have no talent for finding them. (In contrast, my brother-in-law excels at finding things that will have 10x eBay value.) Anywho, I come across a "Clairol True-To-Light VIII" in the electronics area, which looks to be a lighted vanity for seeing how your makeup looks in various light-types. There are settings for day, office, evening and home. Two fluorescent tubes provide the light, and colored filters provide the difference in light coloring. On a whim I dropped the $6 figuring I could try it for photographing minis.

Here is the setup I contrived. I took out the central rotating mirror from the vanity and stuck a plastic tab on the bottom with construction adhesive. The stand it came with was made to tip it back so one could look slightly downward at it, not really conducive to my intended purpose. The backdrop for the mini is a 40k Razorback box I hacked up with a piece of thick gray poster-board nestled in it.

So then I started taking some pictures... and .... wow!

I have never, never gotten a good photo of this guy. Until now. This was my first attempt at a Golden Daemon entry and it got an honorable mention, finishing just behind Cathy Wappel's bronze winning Chaos Spawn.  I'm tempted to throw this guy back up on cmon now that I have a decent pic.
 

And this feller is what I actually won a daemon for. Again, a better photo than I have ever taken of him.

Best $6 I've spent this year.

The Perils of Low Light Painting

No no no no NO. How many times will I fall into this trap of stupidity.

So, there I was, painting up some Sedition Wars Vanguard troopers. They weren't anything special, just tabletop quality. A little clean, a little dirty. I have enough of these that I can use a few to get a feel for the model before I try to make anything look nice. Still, I was pretty happy with the overall effect.

30 points of shooty goodness

For reasons of sheer laziness I had painted under my kitchen overhead lights instead of my Ott or gooseneck CF lamps. I thought, "Hey, the light isn't that different, right? I mean, how much could light affect my ... OH MY LANDS WHAT HAPPENED TO YOUR FACE, WOMAN?"

Looks like phase 2 infection to me

Seriously, what looked like a smooth skin tone and decent eyes from my overhead light looked like horrible acne scar makeup death mask under real light. On top of the acrylic texture issues, the mold line remnants don't help one bit. So are they getting repainted? Noop! Like I said, I have so many of these that I don't care all that much if some look like crap. I'm certainly capable of painting faces (shameless, I know) but this one is going to stay disfigured. Maybe I'll paint a big scar there. I dunno.

I still haven't come to grips with this plastic either. The mold lines are just torture to remove for me. Maybe I should have bid for the chance to spend the day with Mike & Aly at their paint studio just to learn how to clean the models. Sigh.

Ubuntu Wireless and 2Wire U-verse wifi

Ah, technology. It enables us to do so many things, yet spend so many hours banging our heads against a brick wall trying to get the simplest thing working. Like Wifi and my Ubuntu laptop. For the longest time it just worked with my home network. Then it didn't. Then it did. Nothing that I am aware of changed.

Finally, after a little poking around I determined the problem was the Wifi encryption protocol. Ubuntu and the 2Wire router play just fine with WPA-PSK (TKIP) but not with WPA2-PSK (AES). So when the router is set to use either, of course the two of them negotiate to use the one that doesn't work. Yay, technology. The solution was the tell the router to only use WPA-PSK (TKIP). Every other router I've tried just works with my laptop, but something about those 2Wire routers is just odd.

Anyway.... played Sedition Wars for the first time last night. Lots of rule questions. Lots of inconsistent terminology in the rulebook. I guess it's a matter of "come for the miniatures, stay for the voluminous FAQ and errata." All the same it has a lot of fun potential, and the wonderful cinematic climax to scenario 1 was worth the game. Everyone was pretty happy at the end. Vanguard won, by the skin of their teeth. One more turn would have ended it. I love a close game.

Sedition Wars: Patient Zero Identified

Last night was hobby night and the first of the Sedition Wars: Battle for Alabaster minis got painted. There are maybe 100 figs total in the "Biohazard" level Kickstart package, so assuming one model per night I have a good amount of painting ahead of me. 

This is a start to finish one night paint job, and that leads to my new "thing." I'm going to try and stay focused on any model I start to paint until it's finished. I have way too many models at the 25% completion level, and I want them to be done. They don't have to be painting competition level or perfunctory level, just done. Like Mr. Revenant here. Done. 1% of the way to fully painted SW:BfA set. I am not limiting myself in the same way for building models, since I might want to assemble some for gaming, but once paint touches a model all others shall be forsaken until that one is done.

In other news, Khador Brian brought in FFG's X-Wing and we played at lunch. Wow, is that fun. Simple rules and nice pre-painted models meant everyone could get into the game easily. Matt immediately realized that he would be dropping a lot of money on this game, and I know he was shopping online shortly after lunch. Larger battles appear to be in our future.

Last Of The Horsemen

An epic poem of seriously inside humor

No more the crack of salty seeds
no more the jest at some's expense
the final horseman met his end
hear now his final tale

In days gone by of fleeting youth
the horseman stood flanked by his peers
but years did pass and fade they did
and left him last to stand alone

Though challengers arose in turn
outlast each one in turn he did
as years went by he persevered
by moving not an inch

But at last the vicious beast
reared its vile head and roared
Amperdragon was its name
Its bane a thing of arcane lore

Long fought the two in fields of strife
What manner of epic conflict this?
What can you say of struggles such?
What knowledge can you lend?

At last the arcane lore revealed
the beast was slain and vanish did
to be replaced by the next threat
an endless queue of ceaseless foes

But in the end the horseman's foe
revealed to be his hand alone
and now the horemen gone are they
their legacy to be forgot

=====

Have you ever wondered what could fill someone's shoes, only to discover that those shoes were actually rotting squirrel carcasses held together with scotch tape and bits of twine? Yeah, better buy some new shoes.

Overcoming the Sedition Wars Glass Ceiling

An analysis of the "Biohazard" level kickstarter rewards, Vanguard faction.

14 male Vanguard models

• 4 w/ heavy weapon (29%)
• 9 w/ helmet (64%)
• 2 hero classification (14%)

19 female Vanguard models

• 6 w/ heavy weapon (31%)
• 8 w/ helmet (42%)
• 1 hero classification (5%)
• 1 commander classification (5%)

If you are a female Vanguard you are less likely to be assigned a helmet and less likely to receive a promotion from trooper to hero. You are more likely to be promoted from hero to commander. You are slightly more likely to receive a heavy weapon. Those promoted to hero or assigned a heavy weapon cost the same as their male counterpart. 

Looking over the breakdown, I note that the two female Vanguard promoted to hero or above have some form of mechanical augmentation. Akosha Nama is a cyborg and Captain Kara Black has a bionic arm. Does this imply that females must suffer some mutilation to advance in the Vanguard ranks? Or perhaps that one must put herself in harm's way more than the average trooper to be considered for promotion? No Vanguard of hero level or above wears a helmet, save for Vade's rebreather mask. Could the stark discrepancy of helmet use between male and female troopers be an attempt by female troopers to show that they are like their superiors and not averse to risk?

I have daughters of my own, and should they choose the Vanguard as a career choice they should be able to advance within the ranks based on their talent, not their bionics or ability to stay perfectly coiffed through the entire scenario.

Stay tuned for the next article in this series where we tackle Strain bias against bipeds in high level classifications.

/// end transmission ///

I started building my Vanguard force last night, and I am torn between loving the models and feeling a little crazy about getting the mold lines cleaned off. I never got the hang of this new plastic, either in Privateer Press models or now McVey. I shudder to think of all the struggling I will do when my Bones vampire level gets here.

I love that they all come with bases like this, but having to pin each one onto the base is going to be a bit of a pain. I'm using a new alchemy called "Loctite Plastics Bonder" which is a combination activator and cyanoacrylate that they claim will create a very strong bond. I'll do a couple models to the base with this stuff and try a drop test and report back. The tests I've done so far seem like the stuff is pretty strong.

 Here's a little scale pic of the SW minis. From left, Warmachine Protectorate of Menoth Deliverer, Sedition Wars Vanguard Reaver, spess mreen, Wargames Factory shock trooper, GW Chaos cultist, Wargames Factory zombie. The primary difference I see is that the head is more adult proportioned than some of the heroic scale minis. That lends to the illusion that the mini is smaller/shorter even though they are comparable.

Can't wait to play some Sedition Wars!

I Will Finally Own A Quality Painted Miniature!

James Wappel, one of my painting heroes, has just kickstarted his series of painting tutorial DVD's. The full set is not, shall we say, inexpensive. At 100 minutes each, I also wonder why the colors red, blue and green need their own DVD, or why multiple flesh tones need their own DVD. Hey, you know what? It's his party and if I painted as well as him I'd be in a much better position to judge that.

Here's what I'm excited about: one of the reward levels gets you a DVD plus the miniature painted for the DVD. I don't think it's the actual mini painted for the tutorial... the text says "you will receive a PAINTED VERSION of the mini that is featured on the DVD!!"  If you've ever priced a really good commission figure you'll know that getting the DVD and the figure for $135 is a steal.