Menoth Closes Out the Year

Well, managed to finish off the pieces for my Epic Feora 50 pt list this morning. I've played the list twice with incomplete models, but that abomination ends in 2012!

A full unit of Exemplar Bastions.

I used a cool blue for the unit color cloth.

Also finished off the Menoth Heavy Jack kit as a Vanquisher.

I tried something different with the Menoth White this time. After spraying the two tones of white paint, I added a really thin wash of Devlan Mud.

If the Feora list does consistently well, I'll post some tactica for it.

OK...that's it for 2011. I hope you had a great year and got some fun games in. I'll post an annual wrap up in a couple of days.

'Til next time...

Star Wars Christmas

If you've been following this blog for a while, you know I don't talk much about my work. This is the exception post that proves that rule...

I've spent the last two years working on the space combat mini-game for the just-released MMORPG, Star Wars: The Old Republic.

SWTOR has been running live for nearly two weeks now, and I'm happy to say that it is being well received and looks like it will be a popular and viable online game for some time to come. I've been playing the game since launch day, and it's really awesome to see all the various game systems, worked on by the project's many teams, come together so well. I quickly worked my character up to level 14, got my space ship, and tried out space combat in the live environment. Everything worked! I was very relieved.

Here's some concept art for the minefield mission.

Someone posted a screenshot of their Bounty Hunter's ship in the ice field mission.

I'm very proud of all the great people I've been working with on SWTOR for the past couple of years.

Now, back to the hobby! This past Tuesday was club night, and I ran a Kursk scenario (Wounded Tiger) from the Conflict of Heroes game system. My opponent was Mark Wall, and we played twice, switching sides for the second game.

I used micro armor for all the game pieces (just laid the bases right over the game counters).

The German rescue column.

The Russian T34s and T70s rushed in to knock out the immobilized Tiger before it could be towed off the board. The Russians wound up winning both playthroughs of this scenario...volume trumps quality again, it seems.

I leave you this week with best wishes for your Christmas season. If you have time off over the holidays, hope you can get some painting in!

'Til next time.

Crusader...No, Templar

A couple of years back, I bought some Warmachine models from a guy at work who was getting out of the game. I picked up his built Crusader for about $10, and it then sat on the table here for...well, a long time. Now, I recently picked up the plastic Menoth Heavy 'Jack kit to make a Blood of Martyrs character 'jack. As a result, I had some spare parts to make a Templar. Crusader chassis...Templar shield and flail...well, the result is a quick and cheap Templar.

I'm using a very simple paint scheme, so this conversion fell together quite quickly.

The holidays are nearly here...can't wait!

'Til next time.

Mixed Bag

It was an active hobby and gaming week...even with a trip to Austin thrown in.

Started off by finishing up Epic Feora, a Menoth caster who I've been interested in playing at 50 points recently.

Her molded base is a carpet of flame which I struggled a little bit to paint, but it turned out in a passable state.

Now, I also finished off two Menoth Temple Flameguard. These two pieces (on the outer edges of this photo) finish off a maximum unit...a unit I actually started painting over five years ago. As you can see from the pieces now all arrayed, the painted styles and colors are a little different between many of the models...that's what you get for doing a unit piecemeal.

Last Tuesday night, the Edmonton Wargame Group moved into its new venue, at the Riverbend community league in the city's southwest. It's a little more homey and suburban than our prior digs over at the Warriors In Time club, but everyone seemed to like the change. We also held our semi-annual auction, which raised several month's rent for the coming year. WhooHoooo.

Finally, I got those T-70s done for the Conflict of Heroes Kursk scenario I want to put together. These are 6mm micro armor pieces mounted on 1" square metal bases.

The weather's turning colder and the hobby room is heating up.

'Til next time.

Vessel of Judgement

Ever had a project that you really weren't that interested in doing...but you did it anyway because you felt like you had to? Well, here's mine: the Vessel of Judgement.

This is the Menoth battle engine. It's a fine piece for Warmachine, coming in at 9 points with a great selection of abilities...but for some reason, I just wasn't that keen on building it.

I think it's the design...maybe it just looks goofy, or over-wrought, or unbalanced.

Whatever the reason, I really don't like the look of it, wasn't that interested in building it, and really didn't put as much effort into it as was needed to get it cleaned up and made into a stunning kit.

Don't get me wrong...as a hobby project, I think I put in enough effort to field it proudly...it's just that I don't like it as much as I think I should. Hmmm, maybe the moon is just in the wrong phase for me this week.

'Til next time.

Saxon Orrik

I've been working on a couple of large projects, but really don't have anything to show yet. However, this week I did finish off Saxon Orrik for my Kreoss anti-Hordes list.

Most of the paint on this guy is from Foundry. The cloak is painted with the Base Sand set...I think the intention is to use this paint as coloration for desert bases. But I contend that it makes a great buff color, and I like the end result on the cloak.

Hope to have something big next post.

'Til next time.

Epic Lylyth and Her Striders

OK, back to a little bit of Warmachine and Hordes...

My attention has been wandering back to Legion of Everblight, so I put together an Epic Lylyth shooting list. As a consequence, it was time to finish painting Lylyth, along with the Strider Officer and Musician. A couple of Shepherds got caught up in the painting frenzy.

Striders work really well in an Epic Lylyth list, so I decided to paint Lylyth up in my Strider paint scheme, to make them look like a unified force.

Here is the complete Strider unit, along with the unit attachment and Deathstalker solo...and Lylyth. Here's to hoping they do well on the game table!

'Til next time.

Tutorial: Painting Horses, 28mm

Continuing on with some Middle-earth figures this week...and I thought it might be a good idea to publish a step-by-step for painting horses for those who are interested in the subject.

So, starting out with the Valiant Rohirrim box...

We find that there are 18 cavalry figures in here. But only two different horse sculpts. What!?! So I'm going to end up with 9 horses with heads up and 9 horses with heads down. That's ridiculous. Now, having said that, the horse sculpts you do get are excellent. They are two very beautiful models.

I'm painting these guys up for my Middle-earth game, so I thought I'd go to the internet to get some source material. Looking at Hasufel, the Chestnut ridden by Aragorn in this pic, and Arod, the Grey ridden by Legolas, I decided to use these two for the inspiration for the pair of models I was going to do for this tutorial.

Another Grey. This one is Snowmane...Theodin's horse.

And Aragorn on Hasufel again.

There are a number of color variations for Chestnuts and Greys (as well as any other type of horse), so I used a couple of other photos for guidelines. Another Grey here. Notice the dark legs and nose.

And a Chestnut glamor shot. I liked this one because it showed off some nice white socks.

Well, with source material sorted out, I started into contruction. These are just two-piece figures, and they went together without any trouble. There was a slight seam between the two halves, so I busted out the great new liquid green stuff filler from GW. You know, GW puts out a lot of hobby crap. A lot of over-priced hobby crap in most instances. However, I have to say that the new liquid green stuff is magic in a jar.

OK...primed white.

Black wash. As always, this defines the detail on the figure and gets some base line shading in.

Base coats. I'm using Foundry's Arctic Grey set on the Grey horse, and Chestnut for the...Chestnut. The base coat is put down very thin.

Some darker shading next. I'm using Vallejo washes most of the time now. This is a great new product line. The Grey gets a wash of black, and I also added a little black paint to the wash to do the legs. I washed the Chestnut with a mix of Umber and Fleshtone. I think the challenge with a Chestnut, which is essentially a mono-color horse, is to get a convincing tone of paint. Mixing these two washes helped achieve that (I hope).

I darkened up the Grey's mane and tail, and then when on to highlighting. The muscle articulation on the sculpts was subtle, but very nice. I just used the sculpt as a guideline for laying down the highlights, which were painted on as fairly light glazes. Just a few passes each. The Grey gets the mid-tone Arctic Grey and then a little White. The Chestnut just gets the mid-tone Chestnut paint. I didn't go any lighter, because the second paint in this set is light enough for the color I was looking for.

OK, with the coat colors down, I went in and did the hooves (Rawhide for the Chestnut). I also did the socks on the Chestnut, starting with grey and then highlighting in white. There isn't a lot of tack on these horses. Just the armored head piece, some leather straps, a saddle blanket and the saddle. Didn't pay too much attention here, since the rider figure covers most of the saddle. Finally did the base as well, and that's it. Two horses from Middle-earth (or New Zealand, or where ever).

Popped on the riders, and Bob's your uncle.

Hope you found this tutorial useful. If you have suggestions for how I can make posts more useful for you, just send a note.

'Til next time.

Blue Trolls...And When I Say Blue...

So, over at the office, Elliot and Scott talked another Scott into joining our Warmachine/Hordes lunchtime game group. He picked Trollbloods as his faction (or more likely Elliot and Scott talked him into that). Anyway, the new Scott is not a hobbiest, so I told him if he assembled his starting army, I'd "paint" them for him. I qualified this by saying I'd spray down a base coat for his troops which he could then add detail to if he ever felt the urge.

These trolls started with black primer and a pre-shading spray of white. I then went in with the airbrush and did a pass with French Blue and an overspray of Pale Blue. Each of the figures then got a wash of dark brown and blue, and a final highlight spray of Pale Blue. Elapsed time...maybe two hours. It all went pretty fast as you can imagine.

The next morning I did the bases, and voila, some "table-ready" trolls for Scott to learn Hordes with. Well, let's put it this way...at least he won't be playing with bare metal.

'Til next time.

My Favorite Day of the Year

"Fall back one hour."

Every Fall, Daylight Savings Time ends, and it is always my favorite day of the year when it happens. One extra hour to do anything you want! Well, it seems that every year, I use this extra hour to finish off a cool project...well, cool for me anyway.

This year, I got up on the first morning of Standard Time and worked away on finishing off a company of 21 Dwarves I need for my Middle-earth RPG campaign.

Well, the banner isn't done yet...but the rest of these GW Dwarven Warriors are ready for the battlefield.

I've decided that next May, when our local MayDay convention rolls around, I'm going to run a SAGA game based in Middle-earth. So, these guys are going to see double duty. Dwarves will be using the Viking SAGA dice table with one or two custom abilities thrown in for good measure. But that's a ways off...time to think about the next project on the hobby table.

'Til next time.

Tutorial: Dwarven Warrior from Middle-earth

This week my attention turned to some more Middle-earth miniatures for our ongoing RPG campaign. I need Dwarves!

I picked up a box of Dwarf Warriors from eBay for about $10 off of retail...not a bad deal I suppose. The box contained 24 plastic Dwarves. I only needed 21 for the campaign, so those got clipped and assembled.

The castings were good and they went together quickly. I needed one standard bearer, so I cut the two-handed axe off of one of the models and inserted a fantasy banner from Reaper.

So...starting with the bare plastic model, I went ahead and put the basing sand on straight away.

Primed in white. I wanted a light surface to paint on. Dwarves are small, and they really need to pop on the table or your eye skips right over them. So I'm going to try to stick with some lighter colors (or as light as I can get away with, anyway).

A black ink wash. I do this to see where the detail on the figure is. Gives me a better chance of not missing anything on the mini.

I started with the skin and used Foundry's standard 3 skin tones with a wash of GW Ogryn Flesh wash in between the first and second tones. I also did the shield at this point...no particular reason other than painting 200 Dwarf fingers all in a row is boring. I needed a break.

Metal next. The armor is Reaper Aged Bronze with a P3 Armor Wash followed with a drybrush of Reaper Tarnished Brass. The helm is Reaper Aged Gold with a wash of the dark orange ink/matt medium I mixed up a month ago. It also has a highlight of Bright Gold. Iron trim and the axe head are Reaper Shadowed Steel with a highlight of Reaper Polished Silver.

Next I did leather, cloth and wood. The jerkin is in Foundry's Rich Butternut paint series, while the shirt is Foundry's Tomb Blue. I used Vallejo New Wood for the shaft of the axe.

Finally I moved onto the hair and used Reaper's excellent red head paint series (which includes the Carrot Top paint color...excellent name!).

At this point I finished off the base with orange and off-white, shot the fig with Tester's Dullcoat and then added the static grass with some white glue.

And done.

I tell you...after doing that cavalry last week, Dwarves are a godsend. They're small, and simple, and quick as lightening to pump out. These GW sculpts and casts are very smooth and a pleasure to work with.

I'll post pics of the entire finished company in a week or two.

'Til next time.