Weekly Hobby Group: Kroot-a-saurus Coming Together

 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

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

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!

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!

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

Harlequin Nearly Complete

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

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:

1. But Bill Heilman said it was ok!
2. Nooo! My pilot's license!
3. Now who will run Appworx?
4. This still beats The Bay.
5. I wonder what's in the safe.
6. So what's for lunch?
7. 4...8...7...3...1...4...1...
8. Just when I got WiFi signal...
9. echo "Fail"
10. Is it safe?
11. Shoulda... worked... from... home.
12. Hey, the Black & White manual!
13. PRETTY BIRD!
14. Shoulda gone to the zoo...
15. Whatcha know about "crushed by falling safe"?
16. Falling safes are bordering on assault.
17. This will affect my ECD.
18. First of all, it's safe.
19. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzz
20. 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"

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?!

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

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

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

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

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.

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!

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!

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

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

 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

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

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.