Morbious, over at Showcase Terrain is running a zombie diorama contest. I love the premise of this, as I do the other one I mentioned today. I like how the two are so different, and are both so effective at helping to create a sense of community within this great group that happens to scattered around the world.
For anyone that might be interested in jumping into a friendly competition to create a zombie miniature diorama (built onto a cd) go here: http://www.showcaseterrain.blogspot.com/p/contest-registration_6123.html
I'm looking forward to this!
Sunday, June 17, 2012
Contest by Gunners Wargaming Blog
The original post can be found over on Gunners Wargaming.
I think this is BRILLIANT. I love the spirit of generosity that I SO often find within the wargaming community. This idea will net him new followers AND let him do something cool for another gamer out there.
In the age of internet trolls and jackasses causing trouble everywhere, it's the wargamers as a whole that seem to be holding the line at civil community discourse. For the most part I've found them (especially in the blogosphere) to be incredibly generous with time, support, advice, and encouragement.
This contest, and another that I'm signing up for, really make me excited about blogging, and as a newbie here, I need that!
I think this is BRILLIANT. I love the spirit of generosity that I SO often find within the wargaming community. This idea will net him new followers AND let him do something cool for another gamer out there.
In the age of internet trolls and jackasses causing trouble everywhere, it's the wargamers as a whole that seem to be holding the line at civil community discourse. For the most part I've found them (especially in the blogosphere) to be incredibly generous with time, support, advice, and encouragement.
This contest, and another that I'm signing up for, really make me excited about blogging, and as a newbie here, I need that!
Work Space and Work Flow
Most of my progress with miniatures this past week was in the realm of my work area. For two years in this house (living with my parents while I go to school, I'm INCREDIBLY grateful to them for the chance) I have tried running my hobby from my computer desk....and from piles all over my room. Eventually I just got swamped, and couldn't even function. After a couple of conversations with my parents (that resulted in their permission to do this!) I took over the art studio area of their basement.
So, I've spent a bit of time digging out the floor of my room (not done yet!) and getting stuff into that new (to me) space.
So, I've spent a bit of time digging out the floor of my room (not done yet!) and getting stuff into that new (to me) space.
I have a while to go to get it completely organized... I got to the point that I realized I had a LOT of really cool stuff, and no way to do anything with it. This gives me the chance to do so much more!
The plan is for the extra space, especially in storage capacity, I'll be able to work smoothly enough to actually become productive in hobby terms! It seems to be working pretty well so far. With moving down into the basement still, there's not been as much hands on hobby time as I might like. I see that time as an investment, it's only going to help in the long run.
On the work list, in no particular order, I have:
A Collodi themed supply wagon, built on a 50mm base) for Malifaux. It's used for a specific strategy in the game, and eventually I want supply wagons that are themed for every Master/Henchman that I play.
A 40K Techpriest and Retinue for the Rogue Trader RPG campaign I'm playing in.
GW LoTR evil force. I'd like to hammer an Angmar force out of it, we'll see where this goes.
Orks and Grots. I hope to use these for Gorka Morka!
GW Fantasy Ogres. These will be used for either Mordheim (there are some great community rules for Ogre warbands) or converted into combat servitors for my Techpriest.
GW Fantasy Empire militia box. This should get converted into another warband for Mordheim.
A handful of Skaven stuff, a lot of it older metal figures. Again, this will be for Mordheim.
Mixed manufacturers horror miniatures. These will be for Gothic Horror games. As of now I plan to use them for Chaos in Carpathia.
Mixed Egyptianesque miniatures, mostly from GW. These are going to be used for Chaos in Cairo.
Lead Adventures Miniatures VSF collection, almost complete. Combined with Ramshackle Games Brass Coffin (x2), their gasmask conversion heads, and Wargames Factory British from the Anglo-Zulu Wars, this will be the core of a Steampunk British Force.
Errr.... There's more....like a lot of us in this hobby, I collect and collect....
Yeah.. As so many of us have said, I need to get better about building and painting!
I hope things are going well for you! Thanks for checking it out.
Monday, June 11, 2012
Horde pt 2
I realized, while adding some detail to the models in my zombie horde, that the Wargames Factory model detail really IS incredibly shallow. I don't think it's a bad thing at all. I think it just requires planning to deal with painting.
If dipping, with any of the commercial products or homemade recipes, be sure to thin it to ensure you don't lose detail. Again, I would suggest using rubbing alcohol to thin the mix down to allow it to flow off of raised surfaces. Losing this detail wasn't an issue for me as I expect that horde as a mass is still pretty impressive looking on the table.
If painting be sure to use thin coats! I know people say this ALL the time, it really is true. Don't glob paint all over any model, and it will look better. With these models this is possibly even more critical as you can lose detail so quickly.
You have to be careful even with drybrushing. If you rub your brush across the model the same as you would on a high relief model you could quite easily put your pigment into crevices that you don't want to have color.
If doing LOTS of models, definitely work in batches. This isn't specific to that company's product, it was just reinforced today how helpful I find this to be.
Sunday, June 10, 2012
Sometimes you just need a horde of zombies....
..and fast!
This is a record of how I built one (with a little help from some friends...) last year in time for a special event. I needed something that looked like this:
I started with a pile that looked like this:
There were 240 zombies in the boxes and on the cardboard in that picture. There were also a comparable amount of 30mm bases, which were necessary for the game system I was going to be using for this event.
What really helps me to finish this sort of thing is to break things down into the smallest tasks possible, and to track my process. At the beginning it feels like I have an unconquerable mountain ahead of me, by the time I really start into it I'm pretty excited about every little milestone.
I started by deciding to work one box at a time. I thought it would help keep me as organized as possible. It turns out I was right, and I'm glad I did it this way. Each box, in turn, was snipped from the sprues, cleaned up, and glued together. I even systematized the building. I glued legs down to the bases, bodies to legs, arms to bodies, then finally, heads to bodies. By the time I finished each body part the first models down were okay to be handled. I used a plastic weld for this, as I wanted the solid bond between the pieces. Eventually I stopped at 180 zombies built. I figured it was enough for my purposes, and I have to admit, I was sick of looking at them by that point.
Then started the basing! Like the assembly a lot of this was done at my computer desk, watching simple science fiction shows that I could only half pay attention to, and be okay with. I believe at this point it was Stargate, possibly the Atlantis series. Each model had some sand (lifted from the local volleyball court in the neighborhood park) mixed with a tiny bit of chopped sprue.
At this point (a couple of days into the project) I ended up in the garage of a friend, ready with Army Painter's Necrotic Flesh, as well as their Dark Shade (black) dip. I started spraying, using a box as a booth, batches of zeds until the whole lot were complete.
After letting the entire little horde dry a while we started a two person assembly line to dip these guys. Rather then go through the entire mess I think it might be best to point out what I learned!
1. Thin the dip a bit with rubbing alcohol. Before we did this the dip wouldn't flow off raised surfaces very well, and made the entire model look..... gummy? I'm not sure, it was just too thick on the surfaces to look correct to my eye.
2. Spin each and every model. Seriously, this in itself was liquid miracle that made the whole process worthwhile. We used a GW clear flying base inserted into the business end of a household drill. We used poster tack to affix the model to the bottom of the base, and gave them a quick spin. The entire assembly should be covered over by a heavy brown paper bag. Otherwise you're in for quite a mess. We ended up swapping the bag for a new about halfway through the horde, that's how much extra stuff came off.
3 Mix colors! We ended up running low on the dip. We poured in a bit of a dark red, cherry stain into the black, also adding in a bit more rubbing alcohol to ensure it flowed properly. It gave a bit more color to the model. A pure black often sucks the life out of whatever you happen to be working on, yet adding in a tiny bit of another color makes it really pop. I learned this trick in a painting class years ago, and apparently my instructor learned it from a printer, that always adds yellow to his black.
Each model then had a bit of drybrushing, both on the model and the base. There really wasn't much done to them in this case. It was just done, mostly in the same tones already used, to bring a couple of details out. Then a small amount of white glue was painted on to each base, which was immediately dipped into a mix of flock and static grass, then tapped off to ensure the loose stuff came off. Incidentally this seemed to help lift the static grass up and down, rather than just laying over on its side.
At this point I called them good! There is still some work to be done on them, little things that I want to do to make them stand out a bit more. For a horde of zombies done in less than a week, I feel pretty good about them.
For anyone out there reading this....what would you add to them? I'm not willing to strip this lot down in order to add a lot more color, and painting over the dip would probably not yield great results. Any ideas?
Have any of you speed built a zombie horde? How did the project turn out?
This is a record of how I built one (with a little help from some friends...) last year in time for a special event. I needed something that looked like this:
I started with a pile that looked like this:
What really helps me to finish this sort of thing is to break things down into the smallest tasks possible, and to track my process. At the beginning it feels like I have an unconquerable mountain ahead of me, by the time I really start into it I'm pretty excited about every little milestone.
I started by deciding to work one box at a time. I thought it would help keep me as organized as possible. It turns out I was right, and I'm glad I did it this way. Each box, in turn, was snipped from the sprues, cleaned up, and glued together. I even systematized the building. I glued legs down to the bases, bodies to legs, arms to bodies, then finally, heads to bodies. By the time I finished each body part the first models down were okay to be handled. I used a plastic weld for this, as I wanted the solid bond between the pieces. Eventually I stopped at 180 zombies built. I figured it was enough for my purposes, and I have to admit, I was sick of looking at them by that point.
Then started the basing! Like the assembly a lot of this was done at my computer desk, watching simple science fiction shows that I could only half pay attention to, and be okay with. I believe at this point it was Stargate, possibly the Atlantis series. Each model had some sand (lifted from the local volleyball court in the neighborhood park) mixed with a tiny bit of chopped sprue.
At this point (a couple of days into the project) I ended up in the garage of a friend, ready with Army Painter's Necrotic Flesh, as well as their Dark Shade (black) dip. I started spraying, using a box as a booth, batches of zeds until the whole lot were complete.
After letting the entire little horde dry a while we started a two person assembly line to dip these guys. Rather then go through the entire mess I think it might be best to point out what I learned!
1. Thin the dip a bit with rubbing alcohol. Before we did this the dip wouldn't flow off raised surfaces very well, and made the entire model look..... gummy? I'm not sure, it was just too thick on the surfaces to look correct to my eye.
2. Spin each and every model. Seriously, this in itself was liquid miracle that made the whole process worthwhile. We used a GW clear flying base inserted into the business end of a household drill. We used poster tack to affix the model to the bottom of the base, and gave them a quick spin. The entire assembly should be covered over by a heavy brown paper bag. Otherwise you're in for quite a mess. We ended up swapping the bag for a new about halfway through the horde, that's how much extra stuff came off.
3 Mix colors! We ended up running low on the dip. We poured in a bit of a dark red, cherry stain into the black, also adding in a bit more rubbing alcohol to ensure it flowed properly. It gave a bit more color to the model. A pure black often sucks the life out of whatever you happen to be working on, yet adding in a tiny bit of another color makes it really pop. I learned this trick in a painting class years ago, and apparently my instructor learned it from a printer, that always adds yellow to his black.
Each model then had a bit of drybrushing, both on the model and the base. There really wasn't much done to them in this case. It was just done, mostly in the same tones already used, to bring a couple of details out. Then a small amount of white glue was painted on to each base, which was immediately dipped into a mix of flock and static grass, then tapped off to ensure the loose stuff came off. Incidentally this seemed to help lift the static grass up and down, rather than just laying over on its side.
At this point I called them good! There is still some work to be done on them, little things that I want to do to make them stand out a bit more. For a horde of zombies done in less than a week, I feel pretty good about them.
Have any of you speed built a zombie horde? How did the project turn out?
Thursday, June 7, 2012
The future of this blog...
Wow. I really need to either shit or get off the pot when it comes to this blog.
I read just over sixty blogs myself, and love every one of them. Some, like VampiFan's and From the Warp's are just amazing, in very different ways. I always look forward to seeing updates to ANY of the blogs I follow, maybe even more so about these two.
With that said. I'm going to run with this blog. I'm shooting for Sunday updates, and this next one is, as they say, in the can!
I read just over sixty blogs myself, and love every one of them. Some, like VampiFan's and From the Warp's are just amazing, in very different ways. I always look forward to seeing updates to ANY of the blogs I follow, maybe even more so about these two.
With that said. I'm going to run with this blog. I'm shooting for Sunday updates, and this next one is, as they say, in the can!
Monday, October 31, 2011
Puppet Wars
After a year of not doing anything with this blog I got the itch to start chronicling some of what I'm doing. I was starting to pull together some information for a post or two when the call went out for some Puppet Wars reviews.
I think I can do that.... It's suitably Halloween in its theme, and that, I believe, is where we'll start.
Have you ever seen the old holiday shows that deal with toys that come to life to save Christmas for a family, or usually more specifically, a child? Yeah? Good. Stay with me. How about that creepy house on the edge of town that looks like it's right in place in a Hitchcock movie? Still here? Now, imagine a woman that manipulates the fates of thousands, and an entire world. Now, picture this powerful old woman living in a deep swamp, in that creepy house of your childhood. This story isn't about her though... It's about her handicrafts. Dolls come to life. Voodoo Dolls to be exact. They come alive when she leaves the house, much like those toys that are trying to save someone in another story. No longer content to clean up, do good things, or make her life a bit more cheery, they instead now fight, brawl.... one might even say they war with one another.
Still here? Seems a little twisted doesn't it? Welcome to Wyrd Miniatures. Puppet Wars is their first board game, based in the world of Malifaux. I'll be talking a bit (a lot) in future posts about Malifaux, for now I'd like to share just a bit to give context to Puppet Wars. Malifaux is a world that shares a border with one much like our own, of about a hundred years ago, that uses magic. In fact magic fuels their entire economy. Magic is driven by soulstones, which are mined in this other world, the main entrance to which is found next to the old city of Malifaux. There are a few factions fighting for dominance, with rivals to be found both between factions, and often even within them.
The puppets in the hut that is the back drop for our story, and game, are loosely based on these characters. They childishly emulate them, with humorous results for those of that know the original setting. The setting is dark, twisted, funny as hell, and very, very rich. The system does a wonderful job of matching it.
The people that decide to play the game are encouraged to sit down together, each with their deck of cards. Everyone draws a card, with the highest number starting off. That player chooses from the cards for the Masters. He or she then passes the rest of the cards to the next player who repeats the process. This happens until all players have chosen a Master. The last player to have chosen then chooses the first Sidekick or Pawn card, then passes the remaining to the next player in line, and this continues until everyone has made enough selections to fill their Toy Box with the agreed upon number of puppets.
This process could look very different if the players so choose! Be warned, some people might even decide they really want to win, and put together tough teams. It could get vicious, with the stuffing, and cute little button eyes, flying everywhere!
Without delving any farther into its system I'd like to point a couple of things out about the game. I like it. A lot. I'm a fairly regular board, card, and miniatures game player. This actually bridges all three to some extent. It's played on a board, with fairly normal board gaming rules. It uses a card mechanic, both for conflict resolution and for creating lists for your groups of horrible little puppets. It's also a miniatures game. The game pieces are cast pewter, will need to be put together, and many of us decide to paint them as well. The game follows the living system, often used by Fantasy Flight Games in their card systems. What this means is that any time you buy a box of Puppet Wars you will know exactly what it includes, and you can collect multiple boxes in order to create specific lists with multiples of some pieces. Also, there are randomly inserted Teddy miniatures. There is one sculpt with five different cards, one for each faction within the world of Malifaux.
They (these Teddies) are terrible pieces, and if you should find yourself in possession of one I would bear the heavy burden of taking it off of your hands. I would do this for you, my dear reader free of charge. I might even consider paying for shipping in order to protect you from this horrific fate!
I may, or may not, have been over exaggerating something in that last paragraph.
At the time of this typing there is a base set, an expansion pack to take the player count to four, and three boosters sets. Total for all five boxes came to about $200 US. I have considered it well worth it, even on my meager student income. Hanging out playing something as fun as Puppet Wars that I KNOW will see a lot of use within a sometimes picky gaming group is no small treat.
Resources!
Official Site, if you end up on the forums, say hi. I'm Ciaran there.
Another blog that did a fantastic review, with video!
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