Sculpting Call Of Cthulhu investigator

I've been waiting for a while for an inspiration to sculpt something now that I have beesputty, as it should be a lot better than oven hardening Fimo.
After surfing the net for Call of Cthulhu investigator characters,  it became painfully obvious that Alienists (psychologists) do not exist.

First test figure for winter war ready

I could not resist the tempation to find a good recipe for painting white, so I took one winter war miniature and painted it yesterday. I'm trying to find a speedy method of painting white as there are lot of it in these guys. 

Winter (war) is coming!

The first shipment from Baker Company's Winter War kickstarter has arrived!

SAGA megabattle

Today we played the Battle of Brunaburgh with SAGA rules. Each of the 4 players commanded 18 points worth of troops. It was Norse-Gael with Scots against Saxons.

Mass basecoating

 I have previously used bluetact to attach figures to base before basecoating. It doesn't hold very well, and requires some (not much, but still) work to get all in place.
Well, not anymore :) I bought two-sided tape from Sinelli that is like made for the job.

Finishing touches on dark elves

I started my old hobby, american football again after 4 years of break. This means besides football practises, also increase of supporting training to help me keep up with my young teammates :)

Ahem, seems that the standard bearer is missing..

So that boils down to less time painting and modelling :( To make the most of my limited time, I made a list of things that need to be done with my WHFB dark elves, and started to go through it. My dark elf army has been painted in bursts so I could have used it in few tournaments. So there have been incomplete painting, missing shields etc.
My goal now is to get all incomplete units done, and then start painting something new for them.

New hobby products

Scale 75 paint sets

I have managed to buy some new stuff in past few weeks that I haven't tried out before, so I thought I'd write a short reviews about each.

Interview from the makers of SAGA

Teemu from our gaming club interviewed the makers of SAGA. The article has cool stuff in it, including few
glimpses to the future of the game. Well worth a read:
Interview

Cracking NMM gold and WIP dark riders.

Dark Riders, still wip except shoulders.

I set out to learn NMM a while ago. My goals were to first reach a stage where I could paint tabletop quality metals comfortably. After that I could move on and start honing the process, and get deeper into it.
I have reached a level that I feel is ok for tabletop quality with steel and iron with my orc BB team, so now I start working on gold/copper with my dark riders. Gold is in my opinion somewhat more difficult as it has a defining property in yellow color whereas steel can be done without saturation at all (but gets better with some saturation).

Orc team for BloodBowl ready

Just few pictures of my eurobowl team. I wanted to do all in NMM, so it took considerately more time to pain them, but I like the result.

Eurobowl 2013 in Vienna

Finnish team taking on Holland

So, eurobowl is now over. My initial target to win one game turned out to be three wins and three losses, so I'm really happy (and amazed) ..and hung over..

Team Finland ended up second to last (edit: one place higher), but everyone was having a great time, which was the important thing.

Saga Battlereport: Pagan Rus vs. Steppe Nomads

 We played a game of saga at Teemu's home. This time Teemu used WI :s Steppe Nomads, who have a capability to move fast and pulverize units with shooting.
I played Pagan Rus. It became apparent, that it is the anti shooting/movement faction with its battleboard..

Heres some music to go with the report :)

Battle against the painting queue

This week, Ive been mostly painting U.S rangers to get correct platoon composition for Chain of Command, I was missing riflemen mostly. After painting over 10k points worth of American troops to Flames of War, I have a pretty established routine of painting them, and it applies well to 28mm, I just tone the colours down a bit, 15mm needs more contrast and stronger colours overall.

Chain of Command rules review

We played our first game of Chain of Command from Too Fat Lardies.

Tip for basing your toy soldiers

Sometimes speed is essential in both painting and basing.
A while ago I managed to create a method that speeds up the process somewhat, and gives me ok look compared to my previous PVA glue + sand type basing.
This is also applicable to terrain making where you need to cover large surfaces fast.

Blood Bowl Troll ready

At last. After yesterday's SAGA tournament, I started painting this "beauty". With it, I tried a couple of new things.

BB troll update, assembly and basecoating done.

So, I got the troll's head glued to the body. After that, I did some cleaning up with sandpaper and liquid greenstuff, and primed the whole thing white.
I then washed it with slightly thinned agrax earthshade to bring out possible cracks and holes in the surface, and used a bit more liquid greenstuff.
I also realized that I hadn't done any measurements of if it fits to 25mm base or being prone in the field yet.. Luckily it does.
It has been now painted blue, and I can hopefully get working on painting it this sunday.

Sculpting a BB troll (WIP)

I'm starting to build a orc team to Blood Bowl, so I of course need a troll to go with it. As the rest of the team will most likely be converted from GW products, I looked GW trolls as well first. They were expensive and not very troll like in my humble opinion. So, I thought to give sculpting a try for the first time..

Latest Cowboys

These are the latest additions to my cowboy posse. I've been trying to vary colours and techniques as well as be bolder with highlights. I do struggle with saturation and colours in general, but they just need practise.

In her majesty's name. Round 2.

IHMN campaign's 2nd mission was to get out of the board with a boat. The boats started activating randomly from turn 1 onwards, and sailed offboard with growing speed unless boarded and taken into player control.

To get to the boats, one had to use a rowboat. It moved 1" for every model that elected to row, rowing models could not do anything else thet turn. So if 5/7 models would row, the remaining 2 could stil fire/move etc. Also swimming was 1".

Very fun mission! Many thanks to Mikko from smallcuts for setting it up.

Dark Elf core "nearing completion"

2 cowboys are feeling a bit neglected in the midst of all this..

My plan is to get at least the whole core painted until next sunday's tournament, I need 20 models anymore.
After initial experiments, I can now manage about 8 / evening, so it is doable + if I burn some midnight oil, I can get the hydra and chariot painted as well.

In her Majestys Name battle report

Our "In Her Majestys Name" campaign started with a clash of my wild west posse against Hassan and his strange bunch.
The rules are fun and fast, we got 2 games played within 4 hours even with all the rule reading and all. I can recommend them to casual gamers who want to have some fun and play that one group that has not existed in any other game.

As for my posse, Wild West Show seems to rely on it's speed and medicore firepower, the old hunter is really good with his rifle though. I think I'll remove some of the horses and get more boots on the ground for those points in future.. If i get to around painting them..

Big thanks to Mikko for setting up the games, they were really balanced and entertaining.

Following battle report of the first game has really no enemy movements or tactics, its more or less a narrative of my posse's actions.

Wild west posse 80% done

Today is the first game in our Club's IHMN campaign, and Ive been painting 250pts Wild West Show posse for it.

Productive day

Its been a while since I have managed to sit here enough to get as much done as today. I started learning faster painting to get stuff colored for fantasy battle tournament I registered today. One of my painpoints has been too slow painting style, I try to change that with my dark elves. I try to find optimal order and not care too much for mistakes.

So, at the end I got 8 elves, the test squad, finished. Also my wild west posse is cleaned and pinned for basing, they get basecoat tomorrow, and I get another batch of elves to the painting line.

Here's the day's work

Colours are too bland, but they are finished

 

Basing for desert

I suddenly remembered that I had one sample mini from Foundry that could be used in my upcoming posse of Wild West Show for In Her Majesty's Name. I slapped in some paint, but started working on creating a basing theme for the posse. As their numbers stay lowish, I thought I'd go on and do a bit extra, and try new stuff out.

Last of the vikings for now. ..and bloodbowlers

Managed to colorize the shieldmaiden group finally. Although I have a box full of pretty vikings waiting to be painted, I will take a short  break from them. Next up will be wild west show posse for the game In Her Majestys Name. Unless of course I have a really lucky break with matches, and manage to grow my BB team more, in which case a blitzer cuts in.

SAGA battlereport, The Battle For The Sheep!

Here is the latest battle for jomsvikings. My opponent now played against the wrath mechanic effectively not giving me nearly any wrath.
This means that I need to take a different approach to playing the battleboard, mainly relying more that he will rather give me activations etc. Also in battle there are pretty ok abilities even without wrath, I just need to start planning to use them.

In the escort scenario the other player tries to escort 3 assets over the field, and the other to prevent that.
Escorter wins if he gets 2 sheeps off the table, defender if he kills all 3 sheep. Any other result is a tie.

Onwards christian soldiers!

I bought wargames factory apocalypse survivors pack just for the heck of it, expecting really nothing. But boy, was I suprised.

The package is filled with armed civilian men parts, the conversion possibilities are endless with so many really nice improvised and conventional weapons.

2 weeks off from painting

1 week at Kos, then other at Bodrum, Turkey. Pretty damn refreshing!

As far as miniatures go, the nature here is a treasure chest. Small dry plants and plenty of clean uniform sand. Got to buy minigrip bags to hold everything.

Viginette for my girls

..and yea, thats a parking ticket at the background..

I was about to throw away a bunch of CD disks when the mad hobbyist woke in me and told me to find some use for them.

You guessed it, a shieldmaiden!

 

Third shieldmaiden is antishined, making it ready. Different than 2 previous ones, this lady had a lot more metal on, that gave a good challenge.

Second shieldmaiden

 Second shieldmaiden is now ready. With the time I am willing to put on painting, each takes me about 3 days which is acceptable as I really enjoy painting these.

Saga battlereport, homeland

 

We played another game of SAGA, this time a scenario called "homeland"

 

 

First shieldmaiden ready

I got my 1st Foundry shieldmaiden painted. I'm using them as Jarl's personal retinue. The sculpts are awesome, they range from classical heroic poses to half naked fat midget (yes..). Overall, seems that Foundry has sculpted their vikngs with more tongue-in-cheek style than GP or Black tree.

Saga battle report, sacred ground

I fought my second saga game, and first with my new jomsvikings. The scenario was sacred ground, where the objective is to keep and hold 3 terrain features with as many troops as long as you can.

Jarl's runestone base

Well, here it is. The stone got grey basecoat, nuln oil wash, red wash for runes, and couple quick drybrushes of grey.

The magnet is somewhat off, I gotta move it to the center of the hole.

Saga, and how to avoid painting an army.

I bought Saga rules, northern fury armybook and jomsviking / viking dice set. The rules are fun and fast to learn, and filled with testosterone. Jomsvikings are the biggest reason I got the set though. Viking mercenaries . There is two words that somehow just rhyme :)

Well, as it happens, jomsvikings do not get levies and archers, so my recently bought 30ish viking archers are useless.. So instead of doing anything useful for my warband I thought I'd pimp up my warlord. He'll be standing on a larger base, but be detachable, so I can change him if I get more intimidating model. The base will have a runestone that I sculpted from baked sculpey. Sculpey is perfect, it bends, but with sufficient force, will break like stone (more or less). After baking it is easily carveable and cuts easily.



I looked few pictures to get some idea how they looked in real life. I went with a dragon with random runes .

I drew the image with a pencil and carved it with hobby knife, brushed it clean, glued it to the base, and washed it with nuln oil to see how it turned out.

Nuln oil brings out the pattern nicely, ready for painting.

Warlord in his place

Next up is basing and painting. I'll go with grey stone and red image, it seems to be the prevalent combination. I really hope I can keep up the intrest for few days to finnish it..

Mork 'n Thorg

My next Blood Bowl game is against experienced norse team, so I get loads of inducements. To pack a bigger punch, I'm taking mr. M Thorg!

Descent 8.4

We managed to play another 2 games of decent, finished the first quest and started the second. Its pretty cool game, closest match IMO would be mmorpg like WoW or Guild Wars, holy trinity with tanks, healers and DPS seem to work nicely, and everything seems to be in balance.

Our runemaster got couple of new items, and begun resembling more of a tactical nuke in the last game, blasting away massive AOE while our druidy character used crowd control to keep them pesky dragons within his sights. The rest of us hung back and waited for teh l00t.

Thats me smacking the dragon with my Uber hammer!

2 tanky chars holding the door while runemaster is casting

 

Evil overlord is moving his minions

 

 




 

Nice little painting e-book

I stubled upon a nice little book in itunes bookstore: Miniature painting by R. Kaple.
The book itself is not very big, but the price is below 3€.
It contains instructions to both beginning and advanced painters, the topics include prepping miniatures, color theory, NMM and more.
In addition to normal text based explanations, there is well done little videos of various techniques that illustrate them better than just images and text.
The information contained is nothing one cannot scavenge from teh intewebs, but the presentation is clear and easy to absorb.
The quality and price combined make this a very attractive buy indeed, so do yourself a favor and check it out.

Descent demo game

Mika hosted a demo game of Descent 2 in our club yesterday. We played two missions and I started to get the hang of it. I'll definately want to play more of it, I want need to level up my cleric and get phat l00t for him!
The game itself is nice, fast paced, and seems to suit us non RPG people very well.

Intro mission

Bash in those goblin heads, green little bastards!

Flames of War Batrep, or how to lose a game in 1st turn..

I played FoW after a short break. I tried US trained tanks for the first time. I was facing rota razvedki, the same list and opponent who had beaten my gepanzerte panzerpionier to pulp in our last tournament.

Troll and NMM training

 Its been quiet in the painting front, I have not been really bothered to either play or paint as much as usually. I have been however practising NMM to the troll's trophies. They are supposed to be metal plates with engraved faces in them, so they are perfect for the task.

Windsor & Newton series 7 miniature brushes

My preciousssss, sizes 000 to 3

I acquired 6 W&N brushes recently, and christ, they are awesome.