Adepticon 2010 is rolling out a strong line up of hobby seminars. Top of the line instructor are available to help take your hobby skills to the next level. Be sure to register early, the most popular seminars sell out early.
The Hirst Arts terrain seminar will be returning. I always have fun teaching this class – the seminar is all hands on and very approachable. Rest asured, I am no Golden Demon winner – working with Hirst molds is a skill anyone can learn.
Miniature Design Studios is hosting their second Design Challenge. Send MDS an email at info@miniaturedesignstudio.co.uk with your idea of what miniatures they should create. Sounds like they are looking for both figure ideas and a bit of motivation. One entry will be picked at random – then MDS has 21 days to produce the figures and get them into their web cart -or- give you a £25.00 credit.
Here are the rules of the challenge:
The scale will be 28mm
The troop type must be rank and file infantry
The subject must be either Biblical, Ancient or Dark Age (we don’t sell WW2!)
The figure will be designed in three variant poses (To be agreed)
Only one entry per person (I will check!)
All entries must reach MDS via email by 12.00pm, Friday 9th October 2009
My entry to them is for Hannibal’s Veterans.
The Veterans of Hannibal’s 2nd Punic war should be a rag-tag band of killers who spent a decade marching up and down Italy. Isolated and cut off from the home land, the army was forced to “resupply” in the field. Other companies produce Veterans who are cookie cutter copies of each other. Instead – I want to see 1 African, 1 Celt and 1 Iberian in looted Roman mail each with a unique helmet and shield. Figures are armed with long spears and swords at the belt. Spears are held upright & figures should rank cleanly on a 20×20 base.
Extra credit – make the heads on a separate sprue for additional figure variations.
I base this vision of the Veteran units on a paragraph from The Fall of Carthage by Adrian Goldsworthy which describes Hannibal’s warriors as a diverse and ill-provisioned group. Any other credible sources out there?
GWpertinet is holding a old school 40K mini “contest”, looking for the oldest, painted GW figure in people’s collection. This kicked off a trip to Stuff of Legends to see what I had in my collection. I started playing in 1997, but most of my old school minis have been picked up second hand. My oldest figures come from the Eldar command unit from the March 1988 catalog – including the harpist, Champion and both standard bearers. I even have the back packs for the standards – I always figured they belonged to the harpist, not the meta gunner!
However – the contest calls for painted figure. Once again, I was surprised to find the Space Marine Commander ranks with the oldest and dates to the 1991 catalog. The figure was painted in 1998 or 1999 and was probably amongst the first 50 figures I painted. Good to see I’ve learned something in the past 10 years – like how to high light and to always under coat metal with black.
Speaking of history. In my collection, I found 3 beaky marines with 1987 stamped on the tab. In only 4 years GW managed to jump from the bent over, scrawny proto Space Marine to the commander pictured above. While the over all style has change a bit over the years, this commander shares more similarities with Marines of 2009 than 1987. I don’t know if that’s a sign of a strong design or stagnation…..
We are launching an online Warhammer Ancient Battles classical campaign. Results of the campaign will feed into concluding events at Adepticon 2010. Rules of the event are free and easy – its more of way to get a few games in than a simulation of the Successor Wars/Punic Wars. If your interested in signing up, visit WAB.Adepticon.org for all the details.
As an aside – the web site is my creation. I’ve been reading about web design for the past year & this is my first chance at a live site. The base of the site is a template used as a starting point. Version 2.0 should come later this summer (after I get my campaign army finished!) with a whole new, and original layout. If anyone has feed back on the design, I’d love to hear from you.
Gorgon Studios launches with their first miniature; Temperance, a 40mm collectors scale figure. Soon to follow are two line of Classics miniatures sculpted by Steve Saleh: early Spartans and Etruscans.
I know the folks behind Gorgon Studios. I’m both excited to see what they have to offer and confident that they can deliver quality productsto the gaming community.
Terrain building is more fun with a constant stream of inspiring sources. Look outside the typical hobby forums for photographs (and photoshops) of real life.
Source: bpkelesy photo used without permission
Could this become a Hirst Castle on an ice peak? Why does our gaming terrain always have to be flat!
It does not take Photoshop to make something incredible, history is still in the world around us. Travel logs are rich in photos of castles, forts, churches and abbeys.
The world of architecture has plenty to offer:
Deviant Art is a constant source of images, both real and imagined. Search by Urban and Ruin for a world fit for any battle field.
Painting decay, rust and ruin can be difficult to master. Look to real examples to get the tone right at Smashing Magazine.
Source: daniel cheong photo used without permission
Finally, web design sites provide a plethora of textures. Look at steel, stone, marble, rust and bone for real world color.
Table Top World is a new resin terrain company creating fantasy buildings. Not only do they have 3 three very nice kits to launch their web store, but their build style is completely unique. When creating a stone effect, they literally use stone to create the model. Read all about the method in this interview with the owners/sculptors on Cianty’s Tabletop Wargames. Additional images posted to photobucket.
Wonderful unit of Saracen infantry at Jons Mini Blog. Even if you not into historical figs, you’ll want to check out the brush work. Strong unifying color with individual accents to both bind the unit and keep each figure unique.
I’ll be sure to return to Jons blog when I get back to my own Arab army project this summer.
Photo credit: Jons Mini Blog
Terrain Putty is a two part resin marketed by Kraftmark as a terrain builder’s solution. The product is light weight and produces a dough like putty when mixed. Combining the resin and hardener is a messy job, frequently getting putty all over one’s fingers. The resin half is a bit “lumpy” and requires careful attention for a smoothly mix. The baking analogy continues with the combined product as the putty feels and acts in the fashion of a sugar cookie dough. The putty pushes and shapes very well, but has limited ability to pull or stretch. Water functions as a tool lubricant & smoothing agent. While working time is advertised as 2 hours, I had no opportunity to work the putty past 90 minutes.
Sculpting: Terrain Putty did a fine job of taking and holding sculpted detail. The putty is very receptive to finger shaping and able to hold a respectable edge with little work. Care needs to be taken with the uncured putty, as it has little strength. Only after 24-48 hours does Terrain Putty develop its full durability.
Patching: As a gap filling product for a resin kit, Terrain Putty does poorly. The lack of elasticity in the putty makes working a “sausage” into a gap a bit of a chore.
Molding: Terrain Putty does take a texture stamp with some success, although the putty does leave residue on the stamp. The putty can also be used as a casting material in an RTV mold (such as the Hirst Arts molds). Terrain Putty is adequate at taking detail & could be used as a substitute for a limited number of pieces if casting resin is not available.
Over all I rate the product a B. The ultra small grain of the epoxy holds detail and takes compression molding very well. Finally, the price does seem a bit high when compared with other product s on the market.
Project photos: Terrain Putty on the gaming table.
Favthumbs is a handy mashup site which displays a site thumb nail for each of your Delicious links. You don’t even need to have a Delicious account – the interface will display links from any user. Only draw back I see is a 100 thumb nail limit – but a little bit of tag browsing should get around that.
Do you use Delicious? Link up your Favthumbs/Delicious account in the comments.
March 12-2009: Favthumbs is gone. The owners were not able to support the site & have turned the address into an ad site.
Too bad – I really liked the ability to see the bookmarks as thumbnails.
From the Warp is sponsoring a best base contest. Getting motivated was a bit of a problem until I needed a proof of concept test for a pot topper.
What’s a pot topper? It is a 6 inch disk of static grass used with silk flower arrangements that can also be cannibalized for miniature ground cover. Look for pot toppers at Michaels Arts and Crafts – mine cost $1.99. Opening the topper took a sharp scissors and a bit of patience. The static grass sheet is stiff and full of texture. When cut apart, the clumps are between 4 & 6 mm tall. At this point, I’m not certain if they are any improvement over loose static grass, but I see great potential for the grass on larger projects such as terrain. In any case, the clumps are a much cheaper alternative to Silfor.
The rest of the base is made from more conventional materials: a bit of bark for the stone & field grass for the tall plant spikes. Painting is a simple combination of dry brush and wash. The whole project took about 2 nights of puttering around time in front of the TV.
Okko is a two player game of samurai warriors based on the comic by the same name. Published as board game with paper figures, the game was originally intended to be played with pewter miniatures. YIU (who did such an excellent job with the Alkemy jungle board) created a set of terrain features to support the 3D aspect of the game.
The French language Okko forums contain two WIP threads: tower and compound. Additional notes in English at the Wyrd forum. Check out the Fortin and Okko galleries on Photobucket or the unofficial Okko blog.
A handy trick to create rocky ground using a heat gun over insulation foam. Finished effects shown above in the display bases.
A wonderful new batch of terrain created by Marcin for Adepticon 09. He has a great eye for detail – perfectly straight plastic card, more rivets than I care to count and no fear of departing from a box design. The fantasy pieces pleasantly incorporate GW plastic kits and show off some putty work. Check out the thread on Cool Mini forums for even more pics. While there, be sure to review Marcin’s collected works.
Adepticon 2009 is open for registration. I will be returning once more to teach my Hirst Arts seminar on Saturday. My big project for this year will be a pirate castle for the High Seas games on Friday and Saturday night. I’m sure I’ll have plenty of other projects going onto too – 40K terrain, mission objectives and maybe even time to finish my WAB Arab force.
Add one more casting material to the list: drywall! The paper/plaster hybrid seems a natural combo for first sketching out the design, then carving with basic tools. Check out the results at Xedrodome where the Xedric uses this method to create large scale chaos stars for a scratch built chaos titan. Follow his most recent work on the rest of his Noise Marine army on Dakka Dakka.
Photo credit xedric
A new crew roster sheet for Legends of the High Seas is available from Warhammer Historicals.
Good News! 100,000 Hits – thanks for coming by everyone. WP tends to over count hits, but Site Meter tells me about 150 daily visitors grace the pages of CTF. This blog is now 1.75 years old with 111 posts. To help find your way around, I’ve created an Post Archive page with a complete list of posts. Coincidentally, WP has released a new theme today – let me know what you think of the new format. You’ll need to click through to some of the larger pictures, but I like the clean layout and the easy access to the static pages.
Now for the bad news. I’m in the last class of my MBA program & I’ll have very little time to work on the hobby projects that are the content of this blog. I hope I can get a few hours to photograph the rest of my painted armies – I still have the bulk of a fantasy chaos army plus a 40K Chaos Space marine army and an Eldar army.
Once class wrapps, you can look forward to a steady stream of projects in time for Adepticon 09.
Reinforcements have arrived! For the second phase of my Arab army I selected Magister Militum miniatures. Customer service was excellent – each of my emails was promptly answered. The order took four days to process and about a week to ship from the UK to the US. All of the figures are well cast with minor flash and mold lines. Sculpting quality is average to above average, although there does seem to be a bit of flattening from the spin casting process.
I believe this line of miniatures used to be called Navigator – I don’t know if Magister purchased the product line, or simply re-sell the product. In any case – the Magister web site is still a work in progress. In the two weeks since I order, prices and packaging methods have changed. Even with the changes – the unit deal (24 figures) still seems the best way to buy in.
The Magister Arabs fit well with my existing Gripping Beast (cast by Old Glory 15). Foot solders match well for height – eye ball to eye ball the figures are the same size. The Magister minis are a bit bigger about the chest and perhaps a bit longer in the arm. I’ll have to mix a few into a unit, but I suspect the size differences will naturally blend as normal human variations.
Magister on the left. Gripping Beast on the right.
The Syrian Heavy cavalry are a more mixed lot. The riders are very upright (side effect of a one piece figure) and sit taller in the saddle than the crouching bowman. Trying to get the riders to fit their mounts will take a bit of pliers work – the legs are either too narrow or too wide.
Magister horses are a bit thin, short in length but stand taller than the Gripping Beast horse.
RastlCon is a new gaming/hobby convention coming to the Kenosha, WI area 11-22-2008. An event list seem to be a work in progress, but Rastl is a known Hirst Arts fan & that can only be a sign of good things to come.
GW white primer has been my go to spray primer for about a decade. I use past tense because GW has seen fit to replace their spray primer with spray paint and my can is about to run dry. Paint is fine for all the plastic kits GW produces these days, but primer makes a world of difference on metal figures. A bit of research turned up a number of discussions on the subject: ReaperMini forums brought me to a test site on Maximusinminimis for various primer products. TMP and Dakka also added their 2 cents to the topic. Be sure to check out the scratch test results for the rather popular choice of Krylon black.
The top recommendations were:
I wanted a product that I could buy locally – no need to pay more for shipping than the product. After a bit of shopping, I found Plasti-Kote white sandable primer at Micheal’s Arts and Crafts for less than $4.00 per can. Perfect! Now to try it out.
Primer Test: Plasti-Kote left and right. GW center.
The Plasti-Kote primer is as smooth or better than the GW primer. Drying time is similar and plasti-kote was able to spray clean dispite the humidity of July in Chicago. The only test left is to see how well the primer takes paint. Short of some sort of disaster with paint – I think I’ve found my new brand of primer.
Testing a variety of color schemes for my new Arab army. The goal is to have a variety of colors scattered through out the army. All too often my figures are too similar – unity in an army is an important quality to have, but I seem to take it to extremes at times. So far I have found little information/inspiration for painting an Arab WAB army. Osprey has a number of tiles for the time period – I purchased Armies of the Caliphates and Saracen Faris. Both book depicted the solders of the period in a variety of primary (if pastel) colors with soft brown leather foot ware and gear. Darrel Hindley creates a very different view of the Arab world with a controlled pallet of white and blue – check the bottom of his Figure Painter blog page.
Additional Sources:
Of the 6 figures – I’m most satisfied with the three in the front rank. The primary color pattern is much cleaner than the three brown figures in the back row. I really like the red – but a whole army in red robes would look too much like some chaos death cult. On the next set of figures, I need to revisit the brown & see if I can create a softer result.
All figures primed white and washed with a brown ink.
Spears: Vermin Brown (GW)
Bows: Tan Yellow (V)
Green: Orkhide Shade (GW), Snot Green (GW), 50/50 Snot Green/Ivory (V)
Red: Burnt Cad. Red (V), Beige Red (V), 50/50 Beige/White
White: Astronomican Grey (GW), white
Blue: Regal Blue (GW), Ultramarine Blue (GW), 50/50 Ultramarine Blue/Ivory
Flesh: Medium Flesh (V), Gryphonne Sepia (GW) (Borrowed this wash hint from Five Armies)
Brown: assorted combinations of Calthan Brown (GW), Iyanden Darksun (GW), Bubonic Brown (GW), Ivory, Sepia and Devlan Mud (GW)
Shoes: Tanned Flesh (GW) or Iyanden Darksun
Shield: Red Leather (V)
For my daughter’s 3rd birth day we threw her a pirate themed party – and that required a pirate flag. The skull and crossbones shape is a hand drawn stencil applied to a standard black plastic tablecloth using doubled sided Scotch tape. The spray paint took well to the plastic sheet, bleed thru was minor around the stencile, over spray was moderate (windy day) and the double stick tape holding the stencil easily pulled off with the paper.
As a gaming aid, I can see a lot of uses for table mats created using this method. Imperial Eagles, cammo patterns, cobble stone streets – just about anything could be cut into a stencil and sprayed onto a plastic sheet. Don’t feel like making your own – check out Litko’s selection of pre-made stencils.
I’ve taken a recent interest in Warhammer Ancient Battles. Building a list is a bit more complicated than the 40K/WFB rosters I’m used to, not only do I need to figure out a new set of rules with hundreds of army lists available – but I also need to hunt down appropriate figures for the army.
When creating a new army I look to balance four elements:
I think a Muslim force may meet all of these goals. The units are well priced for both calvary and infantry. In the absence of any true heavy cavalry in the game, skilled horse archers will need to take care of my need to play with horses. The list has access to Elephants and flame throwing archers – how cool is that! The Arab style units with robes and turbans will allow for natural color choices and keep metallics to a minimum. I’ve also been advised that the list covers about 800 years, making it an easy army to keep in period. Finally, the list can also be allied to a Crusader force – a good way to recycle units if the list does not work out.
General – composite bow, light armor, shield, Warhorse 152 pts
Arab Light Cav #6 with Thrusting Spear, Light Armor and Shield. Leader, Standard, Musician 135 pts
Turkish Light Cav #6 with Composite Bow, Leader and Musician 118 pts
Turkish Light Cav #6 with Composite Bow, Leader and Musician 118 pts
Arab Spearmen #24 with Leader, standard, musician, Thrusting Spear and Shield 183 pts
Religious Volunteers #23 with Leader, Standard, Musician, Hand weapon and Shield 153 pts
Auxilliary Infanty #7 with Javelins, Shield and Naffatun 62 pts
Arab Archers #10 with short bow, Musician and Naffatun 79 pts
Arab/Moor forces are produced by a variety of companies, most of whom are based in the UK but have retained US distributors for those of us who like to shop in dollars and want nothing to do with customs roulette.
Perry Bros on sale at War Store : Well done figures in the Crusades – Islam army, but I’ve been advised that the figures are a true 25mm and may not fit well with other figure lines.
Musketeer Minis on sale at Little Wars: More pleasant looking figures in the Armies of the Caliphates line, price is similar to the Perry Brothers with $6 horsemen and $2.50 infantry.
Gripping Beast on sale at Old Glory 15s: This group may well be the winner. Not only are the figures recommended, but the line prices well with $4 horsemen and $1.50 infantry. One slight problem, Old Glory has the Moors product line on their web site, but not the Armies of Islam line. I may need to do a bit of mix and match if I can’t get cavalry in the US. edit: Appears that Old Glory 15 is no longer carrying Gripping Beast – the product is no longer posted on their web cart.
Artizan Designs on sale at BrigadeGames: Forgot to mention this line of Moors. The infantry are attractive, the calvary not so much. But to their credit, Artizan is one of the few to post large, clear photos of their figures. Price point is $2.50 infantry and $6.50 calvary.
One minor rant – I had trouble finding lines on the US retailers at both War Store and Old Glory 15. For reasons know only to themselves, the product lines are re-titled in the US listings, causing all sorts of confusion for a WAB rookie like me. Fortunately, both stores promptly returned emails detailing were the product was listed.
Spectre Hobbies is now stocking gaming products cast by Chicago Terrain Factory. The initial release includes:
Look for the Chicago Terrain Factory products in the Bases category.
Fabulous 4×4 jungle temple board created for the Alkemy game.
Drop by the Alkemy forums for 27 more pics of this board, discussion in French. Work-in-Progress shots also on Alkemy. Discussions in English by the builder on Wyrd forums.
Construction appears to be mostly foam board shaved to fit with details scribed in pencil. Statues could be aquarium pieces. Figures in relief are gaming figures. All terrain items are modular – enhancing the playability of the board.
I particularly like this board because it would be so flexible to play on. Alkemy is a medieval fantasy game, but the board would work equally well for pulp adventure or High Seas with a eastern spin.
Update 12-3-2008: updated forum link for the jungle board. Th original forum post was hacked. Follow this link to see the rest of the pics.
If there is one thing gamers like, its free stuff and the web is full of open source and advertiser supported programs to help out your gamer hobby.
Before those pictures of the new project can be posted online – the pics will need a little clean up. Paint.net is my current favorite editor to crop, size and retouch photos. Picasa can do a lot of the same and can help organize & post your photo collection. For heavy duty work GIMP is the one you want (be warned – the tool bar has enough buttons to launch the space shuttle). Or for light work, check the various online editors.
Getting ready for the weekend game? Write up your roster or track the league play at Zoho or Google Docs. Need a bit of artwork to spice up the list? Inkscape will let you create the vector drawings needed for a new look.
If you’re reading this post, chances are you already have a blog. But if you don’t and want to jump in and start your own, WordPress and Blogger are both self hosted (and nearly idiot proof) platforms. Want to go old school & write your own web site? Kompozer & Coffee Cup have free HTML editors and the web is full of free hosting sites. Don’t forget the forum, us gamers love to talk. Ever wonder why a lot of hobby stores look alike? They are all using the same shopping cart.
This post is just the tip of the iceberg. What software and services do you like to use with your gamer hobby?
Cleaned up my bookmark collection and posted the links to Del.icio.us. 350 book marks to various terrain builders, gaming forums and figure painting gallerys along with a few links to the technology sites that I have been reading lately. The collection is still a work in progress, I have links from several other sources that need to be integrated such as the blog list found on the Community RSS FAQ page.
Three fast tutorials for small, but interesting objects
Wooden Crates: crates with a realistic wood grain finish made from balsa.
Or if you prefer – flat grain Wooden Crates made from plastic card.
Pic credit to Cree1978 originally posted to Privateer Press forums
Bead Bottles: Snitchythedog was showing off some new Hirst crate pieces when everyone jumped on the cool looking bottles he included as extra detail. KeeblerOrc followed up with pics of his own using the methods layed out by Snitchy. The bottle solution is simply beads on a straight pin held in place with a spot of glue.
Pic credit to KeeblerOrc originally posted to Hirst Arts forums
Or at least a new PC. After 7 years, it was time to deep 6 the old Gateway and get a new computer. Through two days of playing around with the new computer, I can’t believe I waited this long. Its like moving from a Model T to a Corvette.
Dell Vostro 400
- Intel Core2 Quad Q6600 (2.40GHz, 1066FSB, 8MB L2)
- 3GB memory
- 256MB NVIDIA GeForce 8600GTS 2DVI.
- 22 inch Widescreen monitor
And due to Dell’s end of the fiscal year savings it turned out to be rather affordable. FYI -If you are looking for an XP machine, check Dell small business (and no need to be a small business). They are still providing XP as an OS option in that department
February has been a very busy month, and very little of it was able to be posted to the blog. Most importantly, C. was born January 27th – giving me two little girls to chase around the house. They say adding a second child is harder to adjust to than the first – but I don’t think its true. After L. I did not pick up a figure for six months. This time I’ve been able to keep at least a hour or two per week to myself. Cute little bug, isn’t she.
I’ve been casting up a pile of resin objective markers for Adepticon – 440 tokens needed for the tournaments and more for the convention sales. The blocks for the Hirst Seminars are about two thirds done.
Two weeks ago I took a Web design seminar as part of my MBA program. The seminar was a bit week, but it gave me a taste of HTML. Since then I have been reading up on the subject and playing around with products from Komposer and Coffee Cup. Komposer is an open source WYSIWYG HTML editor with very few frills. Coffee Cup has a large line of products including both a Visual and WYSIWYG HTML editor – both have 30 day trial downloads! The class was taught with FrontPage 2003 – a nice enough program ( for a HTML rookie) – but I have concerns about witting pages in a format that requires the web server to have proprietary software.
After far too much effort, I finally have my Legend of the High Seas book from The Warstore. Contrary to popular opinion – this store is not the best to be found on the web: shipping delays, out of stock products and a failure to send the right product will keep me from ordering again. Despite all of that, I did get a group of Foundry pirates Scurvy Swabs to add to the pirate collection. Knew they were small (actually advertised as 28mm on the foundry site)- but these figs are tiny. They will look like children on the table compared with the GW, PP and Black Scorpion figures.
March is not going to be much better for blogging than February. Expect to see more pictures of armies buried in my gaming closet. I have 4000-5000 points of WFB Chaos, so plenty more of them to see. I also have an Eldar (well painted for 2002) and Chaos Space Marine army (not so well painted from 1999) if anyone would rather see pics from those collections.
Wyrd Miniatures has released a new 46 page Ezine called Wyrd Chronicles. The magazine contains a healthy batch of background information on the Wyrd mini sets, an interview with the company founder, tips for figure bases, sculpting walk thru, as well as tantalizing pics of some upcoming releases. The file is a bit large & not the sort of thing I normally read online – I’ll need to “borrow” the company printer tomorrow to get a hard copy for some in-depth reading.
I recently broke my 10 year White Dwarf addiction (yes, I do measure my WD collection in linear feet) and have been looking for a replacement hobby magazine. The local library carries Fine Scale Modeler in the periodicals section & I’ve been reading through a few back issues to get a feel for the magazine. Fine Scale has always been referenced in the best light, and after reading two issues – the accolades seem well deserved. This 80+ page magazine generally publishes 4 or 5 step-by-step articles where a modeler demonstrates the use of various techniques used in the creation of a stunning tank, plane, boat or diorama. Also included in FS are 8 to 10 model kit previews/reviews and a health portion of advertising pages. Over all, a rather pleasant product filled with new ideas, but I’m not sure I’ll make a habit of purchasing this $6.50 magazine. Instead, I will continue to pick up a copies from the library to page through.
When comparing the two magazines, I find it amusing that the standard GW fanboy complaints about WD carry over to Fine Scale:
WD retails for $6.00 and delivers 140+ pages, FS retails for $6.50 at 80+ pages. So much for WD being too expensive.
Fully a third of FS is advertising for various model makers. Granted, the adverts come from a large number of companies instead of one and might actually be useful or interesting- but the principle is the same. In addition a substantial page count is given over to reviews of new kits by various modelers. In the WD, it is common for GW to preview new products – an effort that is dismissed by many readers as just more advertising.
The main articles in FS are high end modeling content designed to raise the bar for its gronard readers. Most of the articles seem to first present a technique, then show how it is used on the model but fail to actually demonstrate how to achieve the effect. WD focus on beginning to intermediate articles that attempt to teach the new hobbyist the basic skill set (build,paint, play) needed to use the game. WD achives its goal of educating the reader as much or more so than FS.
Let the old farts read FS and let the young turks read WD – just don’t confuse the target market & everyone will stay happy.
If you have not already noticed, I’ve added a community RSS feed to the side bar. The feed includes 30+ hobby & gaming blogs repackaged as a single list, allowing you to drop by for your daily gaming fix. Tell me what you think – is it a cool way to keep track of everyone’s projects? – is it a distraction from original content? -do you want more?
Don’t see your name on the list & want to join in? Leave a comment on this post with your blog address or email me at ChicagoTerrainFactory at Gmail.com. Blogs should be focused on miniature wargaming with a minimal amount of social, political or religious commentary. There are plenty of other places to be pissed at the world, no need to have it in your hobby too.
RSS Feed List: updated 1-17-08
Hirst Arts has updated their site with a host of new molds & new Tips and Tricks. The new molds support building dungeons for a pair of old, dungeon crawl, board games. Plus there are instructions for making Gelatenous Cubes – and who would not like that.
PS – this is a test post direct from Google Docs.
PPS – had a bit of trouble getting the post to publish, needed to fiddle with the post time. I may start using Google Docs a bit more, just need to experiment to see how well Docs can post pics.
For some time now I’ve been working to improve my miniature picture taking skills. The best I can understand it, there is some strong voodoo involved in getting a clean shot of a miniature under artificial light using a Canon Power Shot A95. After much toil, I may finally have the settings I need to take crystal clear pics. Several references recommend using the AV setting with the aperture set to 9 (my Cannon seems to stop at 8 ) for max clarity of small objects. With this setting, I find Evaluate: Spot is critical to get the proper lighting on the figures. The default Evaluate creates a much to dark picture. The big winner is Drive Mode 2 – what is this cryptic setting? Timer 2 second delay. The timer is magic – even with a tripod, the act of taking the picture disrupts the camera.
examples with different degrees of post processing.
One other function I played around with is the Exposure setting. Pushing this setting from zero to +1 displayed a washed out, over exposed pic on the camera LCD screen. However, once the pic is loaded to the PC, the setting returns a well lite picture. This function may have some use as a workaround for a poor lighting or to tweak a shot that is proving difficult to light.
Learning links
http://www.nirya.be/snv/ttm/archives/000035.html
http://www.ifelix.co.uk/phomin.html
Update: converation with John over at Plastic Legions about the picture taking learning curve.
Series:
Legends of the High Seas is a new pirate game soon to be released by Warhammer Historical. By all accounts, the game is skirmish scale played campaign style using a variant of the Lord of the Rings game system. I was a big fan of Mordhiem when that game first came out and look forward to the same sort of gang/crew development that takes place over a series of games. On top of the excitement over getting to be a pirate, I will be assisting the author – Tim Kulinski- run LotHS demo games at Adepticon 08. To stay on top of all the updates visit the Yahoo High Seas group.
The first batch of pirates for the demo games are the Sea Dogs from Privateer Press. At this point, I’m going to call the crew a work in progress. One of the “problems” with photographing your miniatures is that every flaw and missed spot jumps out of the pic and screams for your attention. The faces need a bit more attention and I see little bits of under coat peaking out.
Check out Scratchbuilt Starships at The Redoubt. The author has posted a collection of fleet scale starships crafted from plastic card. Excellent demonstration of how to sculpt without ever picking up epoxy. On top of that, he’s promised a step-by-step article in the future. Stay tuned – I’ll be sure to link in any how to that comes along.
A pair of wonderful gaming tables that I need to make note of. Each has an increadible level of detail and resourcefulness of basic hobby materials that must be appreciated.
Bridges over Troubled Waters by Kendoka. A full sized Cities of Death 40K table. If you try real hard, you’ll find bits from GW COD, Pegasus buildings and bridges, Hirst blocks and IMEX.
Aquaducts by Snitchythedog. The center piece of the table is an aquaduct constructed from Hirst bricks. The other table elements appear to be scratch built.
Shifting Lands is the home of Geboom and his marvelous resin cast boats, buildings and docks. The linked page takes you to a tutorial on how he builds his manor house kits but be sure to roam about the whole site.
The tutorial boils down to four steps:
Aside from the “insert artistic ability here” step, the process is a good guild to scratch building large objects using plaster as a base. One modification to this process that may save a bit of RTV would be to use the craft foam method developed by Dlmos. The craft foam process uses layers of 2mm foam to create a rough mold for plaster casting. No great amount of detail is going to be applied by the foam mold, but that’s OK – the goal is to create a basic (but accurate) shape to carve on.
In a way, you could call Geboom a graduate of the Hirst school of plaster. His earlier works with the Hirst blocks show a great deal of creativity but it appears that he has grown beyond the Hirst bricks and moved on to 100% self created projects. I see more and more of this sort of thing happening on the Hirst message boards – long time builders having been exposed to casting & mold making skills are now busy on their own projects.
A five-hour whirlwind tour of the Gen Con vendor hall. This Saturday marked my very first Gen Con. Over all, I expected enormous event but instead found the convention to be merely huge. As you can tell from this blog, my interests run to war gaming, miniatures, terrain, resin, and sculpting – most of these areas were underrepresented in the vendor hall. The majority of the vendors catered to RPGs and CCGs, fortunately, I’ve enjoyed these genres in previous gamer lives. Finally, I was surprised by the number of costume & weapon sellers – never realized that Gen Con was such a draw for dress up.
The big find for me was Wyrd Miniatures. Their miniatures were familiar to me, but I had not given them much thought until seeing the figs in person. Their prices are reasonable too, the pics below left was only $6.50.
Aberant Games was a pleasant find. I liked a number of their figures, but was disappointed when the figure I wanted was part of a $30 box set. They have Saga – a Conan style fantasy game coming out soon, which should be a good source of human fantasy figs.
I could not pass on the opportunity to drop by the Hirst Arts booth. I wanted to meet Bruce & thank him for his support of the Adepticon Hirst Arts seminars. Also, the new Ruined Fieldstone mold is out – lucky me, I was able to buy the last one right off the display table.
Other random coolness: Picked up ProCreate from a Kraftmark rep working the paint and take. Ninja Magic was there with both their space ship figs & their magnetic connecter system. The new 40K RPG is due out Spring 08. Apparently the due date was pushed back when a third author was added. I have a mini-adventure book – the stats look a lot like the INQ game. Dark Age was there – unfortunately all of my pics failed to come out.
In addition to evaluating the products for sale, Dan (friend of mine with an eye for design) & I had great fun in evaluating the presentation of the booths themselves. Many sellers need to focus on their sales efforts – on more than one occasion we were forced to ask what the vendor was selling because the booth flash was confusing or incomplete.
Best Booth: Privateer Press did an excellent job of presenting their wares. The sales area contained 6-8 demo tables, a wealth of staff, many painted figure examples, a painting contest, accessible product and a central information booth. Now I just need to find those pirate figs they had in the display case. EDIT: make that Sea Dogs.
Worst Booth: Rackham was a mess with just three demo tables, only a handful of painted figures & product hidden in the back corner of their area. This is a company that wows me every day on line, but all the super cool painting and exceptional terrain must have been left in Europe.
Honorable Mention Worst Booth: Somebody is learning how to throw money away on RPGs. This booth took up an entire row, featured 2 actors in high quality Angel/Demon costume and a full-length professional backdrop. But their whole sales effort were two staffers doing demos with non-descript figures on a generic square grid. No sales material was available & the staff was busy running demos. You notice I don’t include a company name or link- I never did learn who they were or what the name of the product was.
Meta Gaming Two vendors were on site to help gamers turn their own games into reality. Lulu is a print on demand publisher – here is your chance to publish a book, one customer at a time. Toy Tech is a Chinese game manufacture that can create cards, board games and tokens.
Figures from the Gen Con painting contest.
Gaming tables that caught my eye.
Prophet Miniatures is a sculpting tools and tips site. The latest addition to the tutorials section is a Materials Primer covering just about every sculpting material used in the miniatures hobby. The review gives the low down on Green stuff, Brown stuff, ProCreate and even Apoxie Sculpt & Sculpey. While your there, be sure to check out the other tutorials on tools and texture stamps.
The Phoenix Club is site dedicated to the idea that gamers don’t have to wait for companies to product models that they are interested in purchasing. Instead, member brain storm ideas, select projects, then fund the creation of small scale model projects. The champion of the site is ‘Doctor Thunder’ who blazed the trail with his female Cadian project. Despite being a new site, the forum is rather busy and has a lot of good project ideas flying around. I intend on keeping an eye on this group to see what sort of out of the box projects they come up with.
Rackham has a new resin casting division: Fire Industries. The web site is rather basic and without much information beyond the displayed product, but in true Rackham fashion – what they do have listed is worth drooling over. Be sure to check out the Griffon Ruins, this piece has more detail than most figures.
I’ll need to keep an eye on this site in the hope that they will not only grow the product line, but add in painting/tutorial information.
Story lifted from Tabletop Gaming News.
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WarGamers Market a new gamer run auction site.
Feed up with rising fees and endless clutter on Ebay, these guys decided to open their own site. Basic listings are free, with addon charges for upgrades.
Hard to beat those prices for listing. It’s entirly possible you will see Chicago Terrain Factory castings posted for sale in the near future. All that remains to be seen, is if the site will pull in enough volume to make ‘free’ worth the effort of listing.
Leman Russ Annihilator for 40K
Forge world has come out with a las-cannon equipt Leman Russ. The trial rules have the tank listed at 145 pts, which gets you a twin link LC in the turret & one more in the hull. A bit less fire power than a predator, but more armor. For the same 145 points I can get 1.5 IG squads armed with LC. Seems like at least an adaquate deal for IG. Only down side is it eats up heavy slots normally used for templates.I like it, a dedicated tank buster with lots of staying power. Best part – a simple turret swap turns a normal Russ into an Annihilator and back again.
Every good gamer has more projects on their plate than they can ever hope to accomplish. Two of my more grandiose ideas are:
How about some gaming terrain that is not gothic or bombed out. Both qualities are a bit more complicated to achieve over the normal 40K gaming terrain. Link to TMP discussion about the same, including a number of good image links. TMP
Idea number two. GW is coming out with a large battles book. Released with the codex is expected to be the long awaited Bane Blade, and (if rumor is to be believed) war machine scale demon engines. Home brewed demon engines is a great kit idea. Design a big grinning mouth around a huge cannon & your half way to a design that is IP infringement free. On top of that, the organic look is both forgiving to a beginner green stuff sculptor and easy to cast/mold.
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