A detailed account of my various commission/hobby projects.
Batman Miniatures Game – The Batman miniatures game is now in its third edition, I thought I was going to try it in the second edition but sadly after picking up a bunch of models I couldn’t squeeze in a game.
Read MoreTerrain – 3D printing is all the rage these days. There are some amazing designers selling stuff on Shapeways, super creative generous people that upload designs to thingiverse and a plethora of etsy shops that specialize in table top accessories. In fact there’s so much cool stuff out there it’s sometimes hard to cut through the clutter and find the best stuff.
Read MoreHOBBY GOALS - Every year in late December/early January bloggers everywhere post about their goals for the new year. Not one to be left out I figure I’d follow suit.
Read MoreTerrain Building – Blade Runner really set the tone for me as to what a dystopian future would look like. Dirty, crowded and dark. Ultimately that's the look I'm going for with my city table. Ideally this terrain will be "useable" across several different rules sets like 40K, Necromunda and Batman as well as any other random "near-future" sci-fi games I might find myself interested in.
Read MoreBatman Miniatures Game – Back in the 90's I remember reading the Preview Catalog about the Knightfall Story Arc and being so excited. Back then everyone was going to get rich off collectiong comics with all the "ground-breaking" stories being told. Paralyzing heroes leads to killing heroes leads to crazy-ass costumes with tons of pouches and extra pointy bits the 90's were EXTREME.
Read MoreTerrain Building – Last Christmas I received several buildings from Knights of Dice in their Sentry City Chinatown Range. For some reason I had shelved these with some other "rainy-day" projects. I pulled these out while I was looking for another box and decided to make some time to get a simple paint job on them and assemble the buildings so I can use them for some games.
Read MoreRandom – Every year I seem to make a bunch of resolutions for the new year that may or may not get accomplished. Regardless of the likely-hood of these actually being done I feel keeping the tradition alive is important.
Read MoreModern Tabletop – I love amazon wishlist. As a gamer it's very difficult for my friends and family to understand the things I like. To avoid getting another shirt I may or may not fit into or wear I started using amazon wish list a few years ago. Now I keep one for myself and the kids, if someone is looking for a gift idea I send them a link of they can search amazon to find it themself. For the kids it's help to keep their gifts age appropriate, within their interests and most importantly not duplicated so I don't have to return stuff.
Read MoreBatman: The Miniatures Game – I finally picked up the rule book for this and my Suicide Squad starter box arrived so I'm trying to get models to at least a basic minimum paint job before I put it on the table. It's not the most efficient way to paint but for getting things on the table it's quick to block in the colors and put down a wash. Then I can go back and birng them up to a higher level at a later date.
Read MoreBatman: The Miniature Game – Moving right along I just finished up a Dark Knight Trilogy Batman model, this is a pretty cool model, of course when a model is primarily black it's tricky to make it stand out (one of the reasons for the Blue/Grey Batman Costume). In the films and "Real Life" all black makes perfect sense when you want to see what the character is doing or to see the details other colors make a bit more sense. I think I might stick with the black and gray scheme of the Bat-Fleck version.
Read MoreTerrain Building/Batman Miniatures Game – After building the apartment building from TT Combat, I started putting together the Old Town Warehouse, Abbandoned Brownstone and some random scatter terrain.
Read MoreTerrain – So I've been bit by the Batman bug (I hope it didn't have rabies.) The idea of a dirty dark city appeals to me (maybe that's why I live in Metro-Detroit) so when I started painting some models for a client for the Batman Miniatures game I started doing some research and found some pretty nice MDF terrain. I know, I know groan sigh more crap that needs to be air-brushed to show any detail right? In fact sir that would be where you're wrong.
Read MoreBatman Miniatures Game – Ok so I've painted a few of these crews for a client and really liked the models, in fact I like them so much that I started doing so research into the game and feeling out what models I would like for my own collection. Of course then they released a Suicide Squad box set based on the film and I jumped in. The character design from the movie was really unique and fits my tastes better than some of the more outlandish traditional batman villain costumes.
Read MoreWork in Progress – Wow, aside from a report on the play when I was in High School I never imagined I'd be using menagerie to describe anything let alone my painting table.
Read MoreTerrain Review – Awhile back I picked up the El Tarasco Bar from Burn In Designs. This is a cool laser cut MDF kit that is part of his Old West Rock Ridge line. I'm not going to be using it for that but will rather use it as part of my desert board as a random back water outpost.
Read MoreTerrain Making – A while back a friend was kind enough to gift me a 3D Printer, up until recently I haven't had time to really do much more with it than take it out of the box. (Initially the issue was my old ass Mac wouldn't run the software which turned into not having time to mess with it). Last weekend I finally got it up and running and downloaded a few designs from thingiverse.com to try printing.
Read MoreTerrain Making – Next up in my quest to complete this giant terrain set are a few of the standard side rooms. These attach to a corridor section and swap out with the narrow side rooms (for if you need to put a bunch of rooms next to each other.) Painting these uses the same technique as the other sections which you can read about here.
Read MoreTerrain Making – Slow and steady is a reasonable pace or at least that's what I keep telling myself. I've been doing pretty good sticking with this project for most of the month so far and am really happy with my progress so far.
Read MoreTerrain Making – After making the initial 3'x3' city block board with 3"x3" squares I decided that I needed to go all out and do a 4'x6' table. Between the two smaller near future boards I've been working on I have enough buildings to populate a larger area. I've always wanted to do a full city so I decided now is the time to do it. Having been successful with the smaller board I have a good grasp of what works and what doesn't. I made a quick trip to Home Depot to pick up a 1" thick sheet of insulation foam to act as the topper for my 4'x6' table. A quick stop at Michael's for some clean sheets of foam core and I was ready to go.
After trimming the insulation foam to fit within my tabletop I then measured out a 3"x3" grid over the entire surface. Once the grid was in place I moved the buildings I have around on the board until I was happy with the layout. My goal was to have some straight road sections without have a clear shot straight across the board. From prior experience, city blocks set up on a standard grid make for boring battlefields as their are to many "kill zones" that allow over watchers or snipers to control to much of the board. With the layout I settled on there are enough blind spots to offer cover from the various sniper nests.
The tedious part of the job took me two nights of cutting 3"x3" squares of foam core. While I probably could have just painted the grid on to these I find having the physical separation of the individual blocks to be more visually pleasing. Once I cut them all to size I set off with a large bottle of tacky glue and began gluing down the foam core to the insulation foam base. This process took another night of tedious work but the final result fit exactly what I had in mind.
I then cut out storm drains from granny grate and glued them in place at various points along the street sections. Little details like this help to bring the whole city to life. I opted to not include sewer drain covers at this time. I may change my mind before painting begins but right now I don't think I want to add them.
Once everything had dried overnight I took the sheet out to the garage and began applying the sand texture. For this I use a gallon of wood glue. I've found that wood glue adheres to the foam pretty good and dries solid enough to withstand the rigors of gaming. Working in sections I paint the glue down with a wide brush and then liberally coat the glue with sand. More is better at this point, you want to have the sand piled on thick enough so it will sink into the sand and give you the texture you want.
After this dries for a few days (you have to be sure the glue has set otherwise you'll get weird marks in the final texture) I use a shop vac to remove the excess sand. If you're smart and clean the shop vac prior to vacuuming the sand you'll be able to salvage the excess for the next project.
After everything dried I painted the whole board with Behr Premium Paint + Primer. I find this covers well, is durable and comes in colors that match my other paints. After the base coat I went in with my airbrush and painted everything else. Starting with black I slowly worked up highlights to get a decent transition for the concrete slabs. Overall I'm happy with the results thus far.
Terrain Making – I seem to be getting better with the airbrush, after the primer dried on the 3x3 city board I went in and air brushed the city streets and the the blocks. The trick is to apply the paint in layers starting with the darkest and then building up to get a smooth transition between colors.
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