Photo Setup Improvements

Finally got about to trialling a new setup for miniatures photography.  Took two desk lamps and replaced the bulbs with 'daylight' grade LED bulbs.  Massive increase in brightness and a bright white hue as well.

The result: a dramatic increase in brightness and proper colour.  Witness below, some Eldar models (three warlocks and a Bonesinger).  Much better colour than some previous photos.

This last one I cropped it a bit and touched the brightness up a hair, so there's room to improve.

Granted, still needs some work on tweaking the grey behind (it's actually a white page).  I have some references for setting the white balance on the camera, so that will be the next step.  This was a simple setup on the gaming table with the models on a bright white piece of paper, and two desk lights aimed at them camera A/B style.  Keeps the shadows to a minimum.

Some Reaper Miniatures minis had the same effect, though backing away a little and zooming in seemed to work a bit better.
A lovely rogue mini that just yelled 'red' at me when I was choosing the colour.

The photos are much better, you can see the green mildew at the base of the stone wall.

This Succubus was a tough one to paint.  Flesh tones, especially on a model that is little else, are harder than they look.  Turned out fairly well, though in my experimentation I found a slightly darker skin tone I can use in the future.  More of an olive-skinned look.

I'm going to have to revisit this guy's varnish a bit.  He's a bit shiny, and I'm not sure what happened there. The photo came out well though.

That went well, for some quick experimentation and a very quick setup.  More fiddling around is needed but I'm on a much better path than before.  This post is Ironclad-approved!

Ironclad approved

Over the last few months (and by last few I mean September and onwards), I managed to get a fair bit of painting done.  That, of course, when I wasn't working, doing family things or otherwise engaged.

From the cabinet comes my warjacks from the journeyman league last summer, who contributed to my 'best painted' award at the end.

For starters, the Ironclad.  A heavy warjack with a quake hammer and open fist.  The colours are very traditional Cygnar, which is one of the things I was initially attracted to.

The blue is the Cygnar Blue base shaded first with Exile Blue then Exile and Umbral Umber.  Careful on the blue/brown mix as you want to avoid muddiness.  Then use Cygnar Blue Highlight in several layers (increasing the mix of highlight until you're pure Cygnar Blue Highlight) with a finish layer of Highlight mixed with a touch of Morrow White.

The gold is Rhulic Gold shaded by brown ink/Sanguine Base mix, then some Umbral Umber into that mix for a final wash.  Clean up with Rhulic Gold again and highlight with Shining Gold.

The steel portions are pig iron followed by a mix of Exile Blue and Armour Wash.  Add in some Umbral Umber for a final shade (not too much or it gets 'muddy' looking).  Highlight with Cold Steel and Quicksilver and done!

Normally I paint from the inside out, meaning the areas recessed farthest in get done first.  In this case it was eyes and boiler grille first, using Heartfire and Ember Orange to give it a warm, firey glow.  The arcane bits in blue on the hammer are Arcane Blue with blue ink and Meredius Blue, using Morrow White for the mix.  Dials and gauges on the back are Hammerfall Khaki  with Morrow White.

The Cygnus on the hull was tough as yellow is a pain in the butt sometimes.  However, keeping the paint fluid and gradually building up from Rucksack Ran to Cygnar Yellow and beyond with Menoth White Highlight made it stand out nicely.

The bases on all of them are a wet layer of Umbral Umber (somewhere between a wash and paint) to get into all the recesses.  This is followed by a heavy drybrush of Bootstrap Leather and a final touch of Rucksack Tan.  Two thin lines for front/back facing and a cleanup of the black rim and the base is done.

Here's his buddy the Charger, a lovely 'jack with a dual cannon and a hammer for squashing those who get too close.  Same techniques on this one, and I think he looks rather spiffy.  Ready to lay some smack on the enemies of Cygnar.

Finally, a group shot with Major Beth Maddox.

And two more photos of the warlock mini from the previous post.  A bit better photo quality.

Warcasters and other miniature goodness

Another hiatus, and another long dearth of posting.

For those who might care, it happened that my later summer/fall got slammed with waaaaay too much work.  After my boss retired I took his duties for a month or so, then went full bore into teaching for 6+ hours a day, every day for most of October and half of November.  I'm still digging out from the pile, but am managing to leave (mostly) on time.  It's been a treat.

That said, prior to the madness, there was a Warmachine/Hordes Journeyman League held at Everything Games this past summer to coincide with the release of the Warmachine and Hordes mark III rules.  As such, my youngest and I participated in the league and had an absolute blast.  For those not in the know, a Journeyman league involves building your force from a starter box (essentially one warlock/warcaster and from two to four warbeasts/warjacks) to a mighty army of 75 points.  It also served to bring us up to speed on the new rules which, while not super different from mark II, had a few key changes.  Mostly, it sped up gameplay and made for more aggressive maneuvering and action, so overall, mark III gets a resounding thumbs up.

The league gives points for defeating opponents as well as painting miniatures over the course of the league.  You get a point per week for each win, as well as a point for having more painted (that means completed) models than the previous week.  The scenarios change as well, forcing you to give up your one-trick tactic and do something different.

Overall, a lot of fun, and I met a lot of cool players at EG who I would happily cross swords with again.  Sadly, the final tournament didn't happen as only three people showed up.  However, my youngest daughter took the Destroyer award (for most games won) while I took the Creator award (for best painted).  Out of a field of 20 or so, I'll take that!

Speaking of painted, I made good progress on my models for my Cygnar force.  First off is my warcaster, Major Beth Maddox.  She is new to the mark III release, and while it took me a game or three to start getting the hang of her gameplay, she turned out to be one of my favourite warcasters.

As a Stormblade turned warcaster, she is full of electro-goodness.  This gives her good synergy with other units, such as Stormblades or warjacks like the Firefly.  Frankly, she does a great job supporting an elite troop and several warjacks, by the end of the league I was really enjoying her and her battlegroup.

I do need to work on a better photo setup though.  Ah well, one thing at a time.

More model photos to follow, and a dissection of the list I finally developed during the league.

Reconditioning Terrain - Part One

As a side project while on leave, I decided to recondition some old wargaming terrain I had lying about. These hills are decent, made about twenty years ago, but show their age.  They're a bit faded, and the grass covering and the way they are sculpted is very 1990s.  Nothing wrong with that, but I wanted to update them and bring them into line with my more modern terrain collection.  This way everything will match and look cohesive.

As you can see, they're kind of squarish, and not that interesting.  Again, nothing wrong with them, but let's give them a nice, hard composite coating and update the paint to match the latest terrain boards, shall we?

First, get your materials together.  For this you'll need:

• White glue - I recommend Rona or Home Depot and get the big jug.  Not only will it last you the project you're working on, I've had my jug since 2007-ish
• Paintbrush (maybe more than one) - again, the building store.  You need a big one, and since it will handle glue, sand and paint it doesn't have to be high end.
• Builder's sand - I bought the 30lb bag years ago and I've still not made a dent in it, despite basing legions of models, making 40 square feet of terrain boards, as well as some miscellaneous hills and other features.
• Newspaper - lots and lots and lots of newspaper.  This WILL get messy.

Additionally, have a nice, open space to work on.  For me, the gaming table works well, but you could do it on the floor, outside, garage, large table, etc.

Don't forget the caffeine either.  

Make sure everything is laid out and you have plenty of room.  The newspaper should be double layer at minimum, quadruple layer is better.  This will get messy, and there's glue involved.  Don't say I didn't warn you.

Next is to take as much white glue as you think you need (it's okay to be conservative, you can always mix up more) and mix it with about one fifth of water.  You can play around with it to check the consistency, but it should flow readily from the brush while staying exactly where you want on the workpiece.

It's hard to tell from a still photo but the glue is slightly more runny than you'd get straight out of the bottle.  I use an old sour cream or yogurt container to mix in.  The advantage is that you can put the lid back on if you have to stop or are doing multiple larger pieces over several days if you don't have the space to lay them out. In this case, it's only a few hills so no problem with keeping extra glue mix.

Now you apply to the surface of the item.  This initial layer makes the terrain piece 'sticky' so that when you put the sand on it it doesn't go scattering all over the place.  As an aside, I chose not to change the shape of the hills due to a mix of nostalgia, laziness and the fact that stepped hills make for easier model placement during a game.  

Here you can see the initial layer of glue:

Now, it's time to add the sand.  Just normal, everyday builders' sand.  As you can see, the 30lb bag lasts for a long time.  I've kept it in an old cat litter bucket for ease of handling.

I normally sprinkle a good amount of sand over the upper surface of whatever I'm working on, like so:

The next step is where the magic happens.  Actually, not so much magic, but materials engineering (yeah, I had to throw that in there).  Once you've got a good bit of sand on, you get some extra glue mix on the brush and you pat it down so that you have a glue and sand slurry over the object you're making.  As needed, add extra sand and pat that down too.  You want to have a thorough mixture and a good coating over the entire workpiece.

You can see how the glue and sand forms a mix on the surface.  Don't be afraid to adjust the mix.  More sand makes for a more rugged surface.  Less sand makes the 'dirt' a bit smoother.  Make sure, as in the case here, to run your mix down the sides.  That way the edges of the hills are thoroughly covered as well.  Watch out for brushstrokes in the surface, as that will make it look a bit odd.  If you have to move sand around with your brush use a circular motion or move the brush from several directions.

A big benefit of this method is that the terrain pieces will end up with a nice, hard coating of sand and glue mixture.  It makes them quite durable, and if you're reconditioning old pieces like I am here, it will pretty much cover any previous decoration.  In this case it was a type of modelling grass that was very stiff and scratchy, not as nice as static grass.  Once the composite is on, you would never know it had a previous covering.

Once you're done all the pieces you want to do, lay them up somewhere you can let them dry for a while. Sometimes that will be the table or workspace, such as a full terrain board. Normally, I let them dry overnight, that way the glue has lots of time to fully polymerize before you do anything else with it.  In this case, I had a shelf that is destined to be moved upstairs, but for now it's empty.  I laid out some newspaper, as well as some old blister pack blisters:

The reason to raise the hills above the paper is to keep them from getting glued down.  As the next photo shows, gravity always wins so you will tend to have a little bit of pooling at the lowest edge.  

To avoid this, I put some blisters from old miniature packaging underneath the centre of each piece.

These have been set to dry overnight.  In the case of large items, such as a full terrain board, I've found a small, desktop fan can help.  That said, even on 2'x4' boards 24 hours has generally been sufficient.  Once that's done, the hills will be ready for painting.  However, that's part two...

Battle in the Glimmerwood

A fine battle was had this past weekend between my stepson and I.  His forces from the Protectorate of Menoth thought they could move through the Glimmerwood unchallenged, but they did not account for the Druids of Orboros.

Here we see some calculations after much 'jack bowling' was done.  It's impressive what a light warjack can do to a host of warriors when thrown through them with the full strength of a Feral Warpwolf.

Despite being initially set back on my heels in the early game (and set on fire a lot), I managed to endure the flame and finally take down Feora for the caster kill and the win.  Overall, it was a battlebox size game (only 14 pts) that we thought was going to be a quickie, and leave time for another game.  Instead, it turned into a 7 round beatdown with no quarter asked or given.  

Well played, Erik, well played, but you'll have to bring more to challenge the Devourer Wurm next time.  It was a great game, with each turn of each round pushing the 'lead' back and forth.  Just what a good game of Warmachine/Hordes should be.

Here's some detail of the next to last round, right before Kaya moved up to a better position, was charged by Feora who couldn't quite take her out, and the Warpwolf came thundering in to finish her.