Painting some Reaper Bones Scenery

This weekend, with a lot of tidying going on for the housemove, I realised that I had cleared a space to my painting table, and there was actually some space to get some painting done. Revelling in the novelty of this, I settled down at the table in my tidying breaks to get a little painting done.

I decided the easiest "quick win" I had lying around were some larger pieces of scatter terrain from the Reaper Bones line. I'd already cleaned them up, done what little assembly they merited, and given them a basic undercoat.

Given that Bones is hydrophobic, I started off by giving them a brush basecoat in a dark brown. Even this was still pretty streaky, but it gave me enough to make do.

I played around with a couple of techniques on this "weapons locker". I tried drybrushing in circular motions, as recommended in the GW scenery videos, but I found my tiny drybrush really wasn't doing it. I managed some beautiful stippling, but it was hugely time consuming. I reverted to a sort of half drybrush, half paint still on the brush approach. I then gave it a thick wash of Typhus Corrosion, wiping off the worst with a piece of kitchen roll. This made it far too dark, so I went back in with a really light orange to drybrush a few corners to give it a lazy edge highlight.

The following day, I'd had an opportunity to pop into my local gaming store and grabbed a GW scenery drybrush. All of a sudden, everything made sense. It gave some lovely textured coverage with very little effort -this is a rough blue over the brown base. I then added another lighter drybrush with a lighter blue to give more contrast.

Again, I repeated the Typhus Corrosion wash and wipe off technique, followed by a final bright blue highlight on edges and the centre of the corrugation of bin lid to brighten it up.

This said, once I looked at the scenery pieces under natural light, rather than my painting light, they looked a bit dark. Let me demonstrate using my lightbox.

This is the weapons locker, on a white background with an LED light strip illumination, and my iPhone camera told to balance for the white. It's a little washed out, but you can see all the gorgeous texture and colours, with browns, reds and even oranges that fade towards yellows.

And then this is what it looks like when I balance the iPhone camera on the storage locker itself. Incredibly dark, and I lose a lot of the detail because the light doesn't pick it up. Let's try it again with the bin I painted...

Here we are focussing in on the white. This one barely even looks washed out - you can see the different levels of blue, the sponge chipping of metal, the built up grime...

And then we focus on the colour balance here. Again, it looks just a little too dark. It's not terrible - scenery shouldn't be too bright as you need to focus on the minatures they're next to instead. But I think I need to have a think about how I paint and perceive colour to stop painting too much too dark.

And I leave you with another teaser for next week's post, as I've done a bit of a photo shoot for some of my commissioned Infinity figures. Two weeks in a row with new paint jobs! Some of you may die of shock...

Old Warhammer World photos: Converted Vehicles

Back in 2013, I went up to an open day at Warhammer World, and at one point went around taking a bunch of modelling reference photos of some of the various gaming tables they have up there. I've been doing a bit of maintenance on old folders and found these during the clear out, and thought people might be interested.

This set of photos is of a series of abandoned construction vehicle conversions scattered around a dig site. There's also a couple of some of the buildings on the rest of the table. I believe the table they're from is now retired.

 

Daydreaming about future plans

While still not able to really do much hobby during the move, I thought I'd ponder some of the things I'm looking forward to getting into once we're settled in to the new flat.

Adeptus Titanicus

My darling wife is super excited about this, as she's always been a titan fan. We need to have a chat about who is going Loyalist and who is playing the Traitors, but otherwise I'm just looking forward to some nice meticulous modelling and painting. The game play demos I've seen also appeal, with resource management per titan, tracking sheets, and lots of lovely crunchy stuff.

Age of Sigmar

I've been meaning to get into Age of Sigmar forever. I think it probably merits it's own dedicated post at some point, as I probably need to rationalise the projects I've got and focus on something in particular. Right now, I've got Chaos, Order and Goblins, and that's probably too much. Working out what to drop is proving a challenge, though.

Warhammer 40,000

So, I love the look of the new edition. I haven't played it once. Part of the problem is, I think, playing Guard is proving to be a challenge in terms of storage space and getting stuff to a game. Originally, I'd planned to get over this by moving to a mixed Imperium force with tons of bits and pieces from all over. Unfortunately, the easiest way to get a balanced pick up game when you don't play very often is to use the matched play rules, but they've updated those rules to remove the ability to use the "Imperium" keyword to pick an army due to an assortment of abuses in tournaments. I'm left not really sure what it is I want to be doing in 40K...

Kill Team

While Warhammer 40,000 requires this big bucket of effort to get the army out, find time to play, and all that stuff, Kill Team is looking like an excellent low effort alternative. Less space to store, fewer models to paint. I hear it's pretty balanced too. Definitely one for quick games with my wife after work.

Necromunda

Basically, everything I just said about Kill Team above. Small units, I can use the same terrain for both, and you can get a game done in a reasonable time frame. It's mostly just a case of working out what gang I want to run and picking it up... I used to run Cawdor back in the day, but both Orlock and Van Saar look tempting today.

Shadespire

Again, a nice looking game with pretty miniatures, small cost of entry and minimal storage requirements. What's not to like? Once I'm moved, I'm keen to get a demo game in to work out how quickly to get it, but its definitely something I'm excited about.

Blood Bowl

The only real question is what team to get. I ran a Blood Bowl League in my school when the last edition was released. It's stood the test of time and I adore it. I still have my old Skaven metal team, but they may end up getting sold on - the new Chaos cheerleaders are tempting me towards a more fighty game than a running and passing one.

Warhammer Quest

I have Silver Tower, and the Hammerhal version also looks like it's Even More My Jam than Silver Tower is. Plenty of gorgeous models to paint up, though it's quite a few to paint in one go before you can start play, so likely to be something I do after getting one of the games with a smaller barrier to entry done first.

Aristeia!

Like Shadespire, but in the Infinity universe. I've been offered a demo game down at HATE, which I hope to fit in at some point. The base game comes with 8 models, and you need a team of 4. These are the sort of painting numbers I can feasibly achieve. Very tempting!

Malifaux

The announcement of Malifaux 3E has both excited me and persuaded me to pause on my Infinity stuff for now. The game had been suffering from bloat, and play had been dropping off a bit, too. I'm not painting anything up until the new edition drops, so I can decide whether to stick with my current faction or switch to another one. Collodi, my main master, has dropped from tournament play, which is where I get most of my games. While I realise most UK tournaments will include the "Dead Man's Hand" rules to allow the lost Masters to be played, this edition change would be the best opportunity to switch factions.

As more information about 3E comes out, I'll pull together a few thoughts about which way I'm pulled to play, and what I'm considering.

Paint job by Aodhan

Infinity

In the language of the modern youth (I believe), Infinity is bae. It's my gaming love right now, and I'm really enjoying it. ITS Season 10 is around the corner in September, and my Druze Bayram Security will be taking the field for it. Expect more photos soon of Aodhan's brilliant paint jobs.

Decisions, Decisions

I'm not pinning myself down or committing to anything until the move is done. At that point, I'll pick up some small hobby projects and start working from there. If the blog is a bit quiet, the move will be eating into my hobby time, but I hope to try and keep semi regular posts up in the meantime.

Weren't you moving house?

Yes, dear reader, as I mentioned before, I am totally moving house. Above, you can see the hobby desks taking shape in the new flat. I'm super excited. We'll be moving pretty soon, and everything is starting to come together.

Apparently, in order to move house, you need to put your stuff in boxes. This has meant addressing the pile of junk in the room, namely the dining room table, or "hobby table". It's been a bit of a state...

Making it back as far as the painting area itself, I found goodness knows how many half done projects. You can see some part painted Anvil Industry female zombies I grabbed as a quick paint job several months ago...

As I tidied things into boxes for transport, I realised that there are a lot of old projects I may not be in love with any more, and my priorities may have shifted. I think part of the unpacking process is going to need to include a bit of a frank assessment of priorities as well...

One reassuring thing is that as I was packing up, I found a few of my Infinity miniatures who'd taken a knock in transport at some point. It was actually easier for me to quickly add glue and repair them before packing them away, as it reduced the risk of my losing bits.

Oh my goodness, did it feel good to get any kind of hobby done, even if it was repairing three or four figures that needed an errant part re-attaching. I had forgotten how rewarding it is to get a bit of hobby work done! Rest assured that as soon as we're landed in the new place, there's going to be some hobby pretty early on!

Infinity Tournament: St Albans Smackdown III

So, a short while ago I and a couple of the other members of HATE headed up to St Albans for "St Albans Smackdown III". I was rocking my usual Corregidor and aiming to get two wins out of three games - historically I usually get a win and two losses, and I'm just trying to edge my game up to that second win.

First up, I was playing The Gungrave in a Corredigor mirror match, with the mission being Acquisition. Well, I say mirror. More "beautifully painted Corregidor against unpainted Corregidor". I have a plan to deal with that so I won't dwell on it further.

I had some pretty poor luck in addition to being outplayed. The combination of the two didn't do well for me. My 3 person Mobile Brigada link lost the HMG to two failures with me at optimum range and the target well otu of it. So frustrating!

Meanwhile, the Gungrave was running an Alguacile link with missile launcher and Lupe, who did some real work. He meticulously took me apart.

A bit too meticulously, in fact! Putting me into retreat, he wasn't able to move up to score, leaving us tied for the game, due to a retreating prone bandit holding a crate. A 2-2 draw, which for a short moment we thought I'd won until we realised the Gungrave was unintentionally securing the HVT. I had a mere 57 points alive at the end of the game. Brutal!

Next up, I played a local, Nog, who was running Steel Phalanx. He won the Lieutenant roll, and as the mission was Frontline, chose to go second. It was a really good solid "back and forth" firefight, with both of us challenged for most of the game, but in the end, the second turn advantage helped him get the game. While I had slightly more points surviving (a difference of only 14 points), he was controlling all three zones for a solid 9-0 defeat on objective points.

And finally, a nice simple Firefight against Jerp, who was running vanilla Haqqislam.

This game could roughly be summed up as "I still don't know how to deal with Fidays". A boarding shotgun ruined the Wildcat link, and I never really recovered.

Even bringing on a Spitfire Hellcat was ineffective, as Tarik took all the shots into his back, turned around and crit the Hellcat off the table. If anyone has any good anti Fiday advice, it would be much appreciated. I took a thorough 10-0 drubbing with only 52 points left on the table.

Ooft. Aiming for two wins, and only a single draw to show for it. Still, everyone I played was lovely, and it was good to meet a new Infinity scene. Team HATE went for a pub dinner afterwards once we found somewhere without too many football fans in. I was feeling a bit demoralised, but we had a good chat about the wider Infinity meta and future plans.

Solving the painting problem

Photo by Aodhan

With time remaining a precious commodity, I've decided to engage the services of some commission painters to get some painted models on the table. First up is Aodhan, a fellow member of HATE. I've asked him to paint up the models I have picked up for Druze Bayram Security, for Infinity. I'm intending to use them for ITS Season 10, which starts after the Interplanetario tournament in August.

Photo by Aodhan

Aodhan and I have been talking about this colour scheme for a while as he finished up some previous commissions. Using a couple of his own models, he sketched in a rough idea of what the figures woudl look like as I am really bad at visualising things. I found this super useful to get an idea of what the models would look like when done.

Photo by Aodhan

Once the plan for the figure and the base were agreed, he's cracked on with the models, as in the first photo. Now, the 'sketching' isn't free - I'm paying him for his time! But it's a really useful thing you can sometimes do which really helps communicate between commissioner and artist.

Aodhan will have a few more batches of Druze to come once he's got through the batch he has now. I'm really looking forward to getting a fully painted force for Infinity onto the tabletop... Meanwhile, once the house move is done, I plan on starting to paint up my Nomads, but I suspect that is going to take me a while, even with a dedicated painting area.

Meanwhile, I've sent an assortment of goblins off to Brushchewer Inc, a painting service up in Scotland. I've realised that really, what I'm excited about with my massive goblin collection is the idea of the visual of the army, not necessarily painting it for myself!

So, with AoS 2E having released, I've asked Brushchewer to punch out a regiment of 20 assorted goblins to see how they do. If it goes well, I'll keep pushing them goblins until they're sick of them! My idea with this is to get a playable 2,000 point Age of Sigmar force painted up and start playing some games to learn it. I may not keep the goblins forever - I have an Order force in particular I have some ideas for - but they will exist in the world and I'll be happy about that, even if I end up selling them on to a new home after playing with them a while.

The new hobby area isn't quite there yet, but I'm pleased I've managed to come up with a way of getting some hobby progressing along!

Infinity Tournament: essexdave is getting married!

With the weather lovely, we heard the news that essexdave, the player who organises the Infinity tournaments at Wayland Games, is getting married. In order to celebrate this, he organised an Infinity tournament...

We were playing 300 points, with the modifiers "Limited Insertion" (keeping us to one combat group) and "Soldiers of Fortune" allowing us to taken mercenaries. I am continuing with my plan of running Corregidor - running one list with a Mobile Brigada link and Avicenna, and a second for Transmission Matrix, with a weird smorgasboard of bits and pieces, including McMurrough, Senor Massacre and Avicenna.

My first game, Firefight, was against aphexblue, who was playing the Shock Army of Acontecimento. He tried to pin me down with a Bagh-Mari fireteam and a TAG, but by a bit of aggressive play and some lucky crits, I got them neutralised. A Naga hacker in the midfield on a roof caused me some woe, but I managed to pin it down with Crazy Koalas, leaving the Brigadas able to run and get an extra panoply. A last ditch effort by Stephen Rao to take the link out was stopped short with a crit, leaving me winning 5-0.

Next up was the terrifying Bobman in Transmission Matrix. He was running the new Tunguska, with bikes that transform into robots, brutal hacking and general woe. Senor Massacre was given the job of taking out the Designated Target, and then failed multiple orders to try and land Eclipse smoke in the right place, then on his last order made it into hand to hand only to have the target crit it's dodge.

It went downhill from there. Bobman would feed units into the central objective to score the points each turn, and while I'd shoot them down in my turn, he'd just replenish them, scoring him an 8-2 win as we ran out of turns before he ran out of models!

And finally, it was Frontline, where NiceGuyRosen demonstrated that getting into a straight firefight with a full Hospitaller link with Joan is not going to go well... The game ended with me having nothing on the table, and he picked up a solid 7-1 win.

As always, the games at Wayland were excellent. The heat was a bit much, but we soldiered through. I was joined by three other members of HATE who were good company on the train there and back. I'll definitely be along again when the tournaments start up again.