A detailed account of my various commission/hobby projects.
Warhammer 40,000 - Forgeworld makes some beautiful stuff. The chapter/legion specific doors are a great way to add some additional character to your transports and give them that little extra pop.
Read MoreBoard Games - Scythe is a new board game that features steampunk robots and cool characters with animal companions. It's set in the 1920's in an alternate reality just after World War I. One of my regular board game clients just dropped these off to me to have painted. Her primary request was to make the robots look beat up and mostly metal with chipping paint and grime.
Read MoreBoard Games - Sometimes you get the coolest effects without planning on it. My latest batch of board game bits comes from the Greed expansion for The Others: Seven Sins. For those of you unfamiliar with the game it pits Hellboy-esque agents of FAITH against the otherworldly threat of The Others. It's a bit Cthulu-esque mixed in with the traditional Seven Deadly Sins. The core box gets you two of the major sins with their minions and the other five sins are available individually.
Read MoreWarhammer 40,000 - This is the third part of my series about building terrain for a winter themed mining complex. My goal is to get a full table built and playable as quickly as possible to take advantage of the excitement my group has about SWA at the moment. More detail will be added to these pieces at a later date.
Read MoreWarhammer 40,000 - This is the second article in my series about building a winter themed mining complex for Warhammer 40,000 and Shadow War: Armageddon. You can read the first part here.
Read MoreWarhammer 40,000 - Terrain is vital to create a immersive game. Miniatures can only take you so far. I've always been a terrain guy, no matter the system I build at least one new terrain set anytime I start anew game. It's been forever since my group played Necromunda so any terrain I had has long since been trashed or donated. While I really like the new terrain kits Games Workshophas put out I wanted to do something different. I still had a bunch of Mantic terrain from the first Deadzone Kickstarter that I never did anything with so I took that, some cans I've been saving, pink foam and some parts from the industrial terrain to build a new battlefield.
This terrain set is going to go on an Alpine FAT Mat that I picked up before FLG and Tablewar went their separate ways. It's a nice thick mouse pad style mat with a beautiful snow/rock print. When I resurface the top of my gaming table I think I'm going to invest in a few of these to replace the textured boards I usually use. Dice roll better on them, they're easier to store and the flat surface makes it easier to place terrain in various positions without getting caught up on some random rock of sand bit.
Once I finish painting all the pieces for this terrain set I'll add some snow effect to the edges of each base to help them blend in to the mat and tie the whole theme together.
The first piece I built for this set is the landing pad. It's primarily made out of Mantic Battlefields panels with a MDF hexagon for the landing pad. I detailed it out with some Games Workshop bits from my bits box and other random resin pieces I've made copies of over the years. (I've found that if I find a cool bit its best to make a silicone mold of it because I'll inevitably forget where it came from or be unable to track down more in the future.)
After laying out the panels in a rough idea of what I wanted to do I used a jigsaw to cut a piece of MDF that I textured previously with drywall tape and cardstock. I then glued pink foam to the base and used a razor knife to carve out the shapes I wanted. From there it's just a matter of gluing the parts in place and painting.
I base coat everything with a Behr paint and primer that I had the guys at Home depot match to the hobby paint I use. The wash is a Minwax water based stain that I thin down 2 parts water to 1 part stain. A base coat, dry brush and wash gets this piece to a playable state quickly and I'll detail it out after I've tested it in game to be sure nothing needs to change.
Board Games - Egypt has always been a place that interests me. The mysteries of the pyramids, Indiana Jones and The Mummy have always held my attention. When a client brought me Kemet to paint I was a excited to paint some Egyptian monsters, Of course the boatload of tiny plastic people would be its own challenge.
Read MoreBoard Games - I'm a bit bummed I haven't had a chance to put The Others: Seven Sins on the table. The game look great and from what I've heard it plays well too. I've already painted a Sons of Ragnorak hero set for one of my board game clients. This time around she gave me the core heroes and the large sin monster: Pride.
Read MoreShadow War Armageddon - recently I had a chance to run my night lords kill team in two multiplayer SW:A games. In multiplayer I the game feels very different, potshots can come from anywhere and you never know who will find a temporary alliance to their benefit. Rolling for initiative every round made a significant difference in how everyone played no longer could you rely on the player to your left always being predictable or counting on the guy that's pinned not to getup before you can go.
Read MoreWarhammer 40,000 - I recently had a chance to play in a team tournament at Imperium Games (formerly Flatlands Games). The event was a team event where each player brought a 750 point CAD and played as a team through three missions: Purge the Alien, Relic and Tactical Escalation. Over all the event was really fun my opponents in the second and third rounds were amazingly cool guys and were a blast to play against.
Read MoreWarhammer 40,000 - I love Shadow War so much so that I built a second Kill Team from my Genestealer Cult army. I wasn't loving how the GSC played in 40k right now, so I temporarily shelved them to work on my Night Lords. With 8th edition looming I'm reluctant to do to much more with either force as the formations that make up the lists might not be valid or optimal under the new rules. So instead I'll work on small kill teams to play in Shadow War right now.
Read MoreWarhammer 40,000 - One of my Chaos Space Marine clients recently dropped off a bunch of Nurgle Daemons to get painted. He's starting up new force in preparation for 8th where it's thought that Nurgle will see some serious love. Based on what I've seen in the rumor mill and in the official releases that should be the case.
Read MoreWarhammer 40,000 - Soon a new edition of 40K will completely replace everything you own. Let that sink in for a second. EVERYTHING. Something like this hasn't happened since the change from second to third edition. Crazier still is the sheer amount of content that came out during 7th edition, between the multiple codexes for most armies the warzone books and the gathering storm books I think I bought twelve books. Add to that the fact that I abandoned my Space Marines only pledge when the Genestealer Cult and Black Crusade books came out, now I'm sitting on a pile of psychic cards, strategy cards and other stuff that won't be usable in the new edition.
I know that I can probably repurpose some of the stuff and the books all have really good stories and background info, but it's a little over an entire shelf taken up by this stuff. I'm just not sure what to do with it as I'm sure 8th with probably have a plethora of stuff to replace it
Warhammer 40,000 - I miss being able to play 40K 2-3 times a week. Back when I could play more often I think I was either significantly better or my opponents were significantly worse. Regardless I was glad to take some of my toys for a spin on the new terrain set I've been working on to make sure it's functional before I finish painting up this set of mining company terrain. I'll post about it's construction at a later date as I need to make a few more pieces to fill out the table.
Board Games - The new King Arthur movie comes out soon and to get in the mood I recommend Shadows Over Camelot. Hidden traitor games are tons of fun to play with friends and this is one of the better ones.
Read MoreBoard Games - Cute little animals seem to be all the rage right now. I can't say that I mind it's pretty fun to paint the miniatures in this line. They're well sculpted and have cool little details like sea shell armor and sand dollar shields.
Read MoreWarhammer 40,000 - Time is something no one in the hobby has enough of. Which tends to work out when you're a commission painter.
Read MoreWarhammer 40,000 - Green is good. I find it really fun to paint models for my Salamandar client. He always seems to come across models from all different periods of the space marine range. Painting them at the same time I can really appreciate how far the Predator Kit has come from the hybrid metal plastic kit based on the original plastic rhino. I'm happy that the rivets on the tanks have been reduced and don't feel so clunky.
Also in this batch are several versions of the landspeeder kit. The metal plastic hybrid, a pure plastic older kit and the most recent variation of the kit (which is a dream to put together compared to the older kits).
With all five of these speeders I had to figure out a way to mount multimeltas to both the rail and on the hull. The meltas come from a variety of sources since unfortunately the current kit doesn't include two of each weapon option.
The scouts are a basic squad with bolters to act as a basic troop unit with a little bit of extra range.
Warhammer 40,000 - Games Workshop has been bringing back some of the older metal models from their ranges with a cast on demand program. It's a cool idea that gives players access to models they may have missed before or lost over the years.
One of my regular Salamanders clients recently picked up Chaplain Xavier and sent him over to be painted. Sadly this character doesn't have rules in the current codex but you can build a replica with the current armory.
Warhammer 40,000 - Not all the commission work I do falls within the level two table top or higher end display quality. Quite often a client will come to me with a model that has been previously painted and need me to match the quality and style as close as possible. Most of the time this falls into the three color or economy levels of painting.
My most recent Imperial Guard project is one of these match it projects. My client had about a dozen heavy weapons teams and a few special characters that needed to match the sample model he had.
Overall it's a simple scheme castellan green, raw sienna and an earthshade wash for the uniform. Gunmetal and sterling silver for the guns with a Nuln Oil wash. An a simple flock base.
