More Guild Ball - Masons

Entering the home stretch for my Masons team.  Despite the delay in this post, I did actually get these done in time for the NOVA Open.  And then I decided not the play at the NOVA Open.  I thought this would be the last of them but I recently sourced Veteran Chisel and the dual faction Lucky model.  I need to still paint a ball, of all things.  And a bout of OCD will probably have me finally tackle the original Harmony model I don't like and finally make a goal marker.  Nonetheless, they have been a nice break from all the Bolt Action stuff lately.

Four new members.

This particular batch of models (with the exception of Granite) caused me a lot anxiety, leading me to hold off for a long time before painting them.  I was really worried with Hammer because I had never painted dark skin before and thought I would butcher it.  He turned out pretty good ok though, I think.  I also dreaded the mascots because I had no idea how to paint either one.  While I waited for an intermediate layer of varnish to dry on Granite and Hammer, I decided to throw caution to the wind and just grabbed paints and gave it a try.  I think it worked out well enough.

Here they are with the rest of the team that is completed so far.

Obviously looking at the picture above, I need to go back and repaint the base rims.  Again.  For some reason my black paint is just not taking a liking to those rims.  The mud basing is pretty simple and some point I think I will go back and add some vertical components to them (tufts, rocks, something) but I'm going to wait on that awhile.  I tried tufts with Brick and spent a considerable amount of time trying to undo the damage I caused.  

Anyway, for my records here how I painted them:

• Granite/Hammer - The same as my previous Mason models.  Hammer of course used the Reaper Dark Skin triad.
• Wrecker - Other than the shell, the rest as my previous Masons.
• Shell - RMS Stained Ivory (Shade), RMS Yellowed Bone (Base), RMS Creamy Ivory (Highlight).  Followed by 2-3 applications of thinned AP Strong Tone
• Marbles - No idea what I used on the branch.
• Fur - RMS Bone Shadow (Shade), RMS Aged Bone (Base), RMS Polished Bone (Highlight).  
• Skin - RMS Blackened Brown and I tried to feather/wet blend it into the fur colors.

September/October Recap

It's almost Thanksgiving and I still had not caught up with September & October recaps.  Mostly due to not having much activity gaming wise the past couple of months.  However, I have gotten some hobbying done and got several miniatures fully painted in the past 2 months.  Hopefully I will get these posted up soon.

For both September and October, I only managed to get in 2 games of Guild Ball.  Both of those games were in September, so sadly I have not tried Season 4, yet.  It looks pretty good for the Masons but only time will tell.  I had hoped that Season 4 would streamline some things and reduce some of the inter-dependencies, and in a lot of cases it did but not so much for the Masons.

Also, despite running an escalation league for Konflikt 47 I did not manage to get any games in for the past two months (at the 750pt or 1000pt increments).  As the organizer, I needed to bow out when there were an odd number of players which was the trend for those months.  We ended up wrapping the league up a couple of weeks early to avoid overlapping a couple of major events at the game store.  Since the league was not anything I would call a success, that was more than fine by me.  

Lots of exciting news, IMO, hit toward the end of the October (maybe some of this is technically November).  The minds behind Test of Honour announced a similar game coming out called Mortal Gods: Test of Courage.  Ancient Greeks!  The figures are looking fantastic and should be very similar ruleset to Test of Hounor.  The other exciting tidbit is there seems to be some changes on the horizon for Test of Honour, which the creators taking it back over (or something).  Here is hoping they will break the horrible sales model that the game has suffered under (IMO).  Also, good news for SAGA in that the Book of Battles recently released containing new/revised scenarios usable for all the variations of SAGA.  This was followed up with the announcement that the Age of Magic would be the next expansion, bringing "fantasy" to the SAGA system!  

Coupled with an Adepticon challenge for 2019 and a new Bolt Action league kicking off, looks like my painting queue is going to stay packed.  Very packed.  

Lastly, some personal disheartening hobby news:  My new accountant discovered an egregious error in the book keeping.  While I thought I had managed to stay amazingly on track budget wise, he unearthed the fact that 3-4 months of purchases from early in 2019 had not be logged.  With virtually no time to "repair" the damage before the end of the year, looks like I'm really going to bust my budget for the year.  Of course the devil on my shoulder is shouting "Well, if you are going to break that goal, break it goooooood.  Real good."

Anyway, more soon.  Hopefully...

August Recap

I really should have written this before the NOVA Open, everything is a bit fuzzy now.  Anyway, fairly decent month of gaming for August.  As part of running the Konflikt 47 league, I managed to play two games at the monthly point level of 500 pts.  I also showed a new player Bolt Action with a small 500 pt game.

The rest of the month was pretty much consumed with painting.  From recent posts, you can see I knocked out a Firefly Jump Infantry squad for Konflikt 47, 2 new cars for Gaslands and a few Guild Ball Mason models.  I technically achieved my goals of having Guild Ball and Konflikt painted up for the NOVA Open, but with very limited selections for both.  Still, a win is a win.

Moving on to the NOVA Open, I'll go ahead and include that in this post while it is fresh in my mind.  Returning to the NOVA Open after a multi-year absence was pretty good.  It was really good to see many familiar faces and spend time with some great people.

Thursday was a pretty slow day for me.  I was registered to play in the Konflikt 47 tournament but multiple factors convinced me to bail on it.  I spent most of the day just wondering around and catching up with people.  For my taste and interest, the vendor hall did not offer much of a distraction and I ended the convention only spending $40 on the new Warlord US Infantry box (different sculpts that, hopefully, will help me get over the hump of not wanting to paint any more infantry units).  Mostly though, I just harassed my buddy John from the 40k Hobby blog.  This included Dave Taylor and I jumping into the photo shoot for John's amazing titan that was part of the charity auction.

Shamelessly stolen photo.

Friday I was scheduled for a Falconer's flight for Guild Ball, but again I let multiple factors convince me to bail on it.  Mostly because I am not sure I completely like Guild Ball and did not want to suffer through multiple rounds of it.  Instead, John's buddy Brian left a beautiful 4x4 terrain board in the dedicated hobby area that only had basic priming done to it.  He had hoped to have it completely finished by Sunday for a game, so John and I decided to surprise him while he was downstairs playing 30k.

On the left is basically what we started with, the right is
what we got done Friday in about 6 hours.

While we did have an airbrush to paint the crashed ship, our other
"tools" were pretty limited.

Aside from the ship and the scattered structures, this was
pretty much the definition of "finger" painting.

We rounded out Friday night with Brian buying us an awesome dinner for all of our work.  Later we managed to find a secluded corner of the hotel bar and were joined by several more awesome people.

Saturday saw the arrival of my wife and kids early that morning (their Friday night flight having been cancelled).  I met them at the nearby airport and helped them get the rental car loaded up and squared away, before being dropped back off at the hotel for my first event I would actually attend:  A seminar by Vince Venturella.  I've never taken a class with Vince but turns out he does a really nice job with his classes and, much like his "Hobby Cheating" series on YouTube, focused very precisely on the seminar topic of Battle Damage.  Having taken other vehicle based weathering classes this class was a very good compliment (for me) focusing on smaller scale damage (such as space marines).  Vince does a great job with his classes and I'm glad I took this one.

Saturday night was a Wrath of Kings narrative event I had signed up for.  It was 3 vs 3 player game, having the Hadross defending their home from a multi-faction invasion hell bent on stealing Hadross's latest genetic manipulation feat.  I played as one of the 3 Hadross players who successfully fended off werewolves, celestial animals, and mask wearing demon women.

Another shameless stolen photo.

It was a fun game on a beautiful board.  The scenario ended up being a little lopsided for the other team, even as we made adjustments on the fly to let them bring reinforcements back on.  Still though, I think everyone ended up having a good time.  Along with my 2 teammates, I walked away with WoK two player starter box.  The event reminded me of just how great of a game Wrath of Kings is,  to bad it appears CMON is letting it atrophy and die a slow death.  I wrapped up the evening talking with Todd, from the weekly hobby hangout, while he waited for his dinner and ate.

That pretty much wrapped up the NOVA Open for me.  While I did not fly back till late Monday afternoon, the conclusion of Saturday night had me back on family duty.  Sunday morning we met our close friends and their kids at the national zoo and had fun catching up.  That night, I just hung out with Alex while the girls went to the spa.

Anyway, that's it with August and with the NOVA Open behind me time to move on to:  more K47 stuff, more BA stuff, wrapping odds-n-ends up, and new projects.

Returning to Guild Ball - Masons

Continuing to resurrect old projects, I decided I needed to finish painting my Guild Ball Masons team since I've been playing it a bit lately.  Plus, I'm signed up for an event at the NOVA Open so I wanted to have them wrapped up for that.  Here is where I left off 2 years (oh my) ago:

I did finally do the basing on these guys.  Recently...

Wow, that was awhile ago.  And look, all boys...  Not sure that was a conscience decision or not.  One thing I do remember though is those models seemed to have taken me forever.  By contrast, these seemed to fly by at a pretty decent pace (for me):

They didn't really turn out the way I hoped.  Honour (middle) and Harmony (right) experienced some pretty bad texture on the facial skin (not really visible in these photos).  And I happened to save that part for last!  Anyway, I was not going to strip everything down just to try it again, so I pretty much just decided to accept it and didn't put in a lot more work after that.  Just want some respectable on the tabletop and at tabletop distances.  Speaking of which, I still don't feel like I'm pushing my contrast far enough.  *sigh*

These are same colors I used on that original batch, so for my reference they are:  Masons Basecoat, Shade, and Highlight.  The hair was done differently than the first batch, but I didn't take notes.  From memory though:

• Chisel (left):  Very dark dark blue base, highlighted first pass with Vallejo Panzer Aces Dark Rubber, second pass with Light Rubber.  Shadows with VMC Black.
• Honour (middle):  Pretty much RMS Blonde Triad
• Harmony (right):  Very similar to Brick from the first batch, although a stronger highlight was added with something...

While doing the basing and sealing for these, I actually knocked out Marbles but I'll post that up with next group:  Wrecker, Granite, Hammer.

July Recap

Another good month of gaming goodness.  I kicked off July with a game of Gaslands at the local tap room.  We had two tables going with incredible tables by Darren over at Broken Sword Studios.

Table 1 is simply stunning.

Table 2 is not shabby either.

Both tables played Death Race with 5 players per table (a really great turn out).  Everyone had a really great time, although I believe both games were called not long after cars finally got past the first gate.  The game bogs down a bit in death race, esp with that many players.  Plus pretty much everyone was new to the game.  A week or two later, I got in another game of Gaslands where we played the zombie scenario, again with 5 players.  Definitely a much better scenario for that many players but it does still take a while to play.  All that being said, the abstractions of the game are simply amazing.  For me, it gives just the right balance of simulation and simplification.  Not only can I not wait to play again, I can't wait to see what Mike Hutchinson does for his next game.

With the Bolt Action league having concluded, we have transitioned to open play and gearing up for a short Konflikt '47 escalation league.  Having shown up one day to work on Konflikt league rules, I got pulled into playing Bolt Action with a perspective player.  I borrowed a 1250 pt Finnish tournament list (he wanted the "full" experience) and showed him the ropes.  He was sold, so we added another to our ranks.  I also ran another person through a 500 pt Konflikt game to acquaint her with the rules and to sate her excitement for the upcoming league.

Rounding things out, I squeezed a game of Guild Ball in on the very last day of July.  I really want to love Guild Ball, but I'm just not sold.  It definitely is not a bad game, although I think it should be "quicker."  It's just that the game requires very good knowledge of your opponents models and requires/rewards excessive pre-measuring.  Still, I will continue to give it a go a bit longer and finish up painting the models I have.

That pretty much rounds out July.  I made some really good progress on painting and I will post that up soon.  I'm not sure I will make either of my painting goals for the NOVA Open but I'm not sure the two events I am painting for are even going to happen due to low registration numbers.  We'll see.  Also August sees the kick off of two new leagues:  the Konflikt '47 league I'm running and a Gaslands league.  Feast or famine.  lol

June Recap

Despite my yearly family vacation eating up two of my weekends during June, I did manage to get respectable amount of games in as well as getting a full 1000 pts painted in time for the Bolt Action D-Day game (albeit a sub-optimal 1000 pts).  I had two normal games of Bolt Action, at 1000 pts, for the month.  In addition, I was one of 5 allied players that participated in the D-Day game.  Unfortunately, we had 7 axis players show up.  The reality is that we would probably have needed 4x the numbers as the Axis team.

Beautiful beach landing area for D-Day.

The nearby town, center board.

The nearby rural area.

Via roll-off, I ended up being the top allied player coming in at 8th place.  In case you have already forgotten, there were 7 axis players...  It was not a good day for the allies.

In other gaming news, it turned out that the Guild Ball group on the other side of town that I had never been able to make it out to had mostly fallen apart.  In an effort to rebuild the community, the organizer moved it over to my side of town at Lucky Dice Cafe and changed the night to one that I happen to be available for (at least for the summer).  So I jumped in on that twice in June, the first time just playing a small 4v4 to shake the dust off and introduce a new guy to the game.  The second game was a full game against an experienced and returning player.  I still want to really like this game but I'm just not sure about the game length and the intimate knowledge of your opponents team that is really required.  Ok, it is not really "required" but I don't respond well when I am caught off guard by something I flat out did not know my opponents guy could do, it doesn't make for a good play experience for me and can cause an entire turn of Guild Ball to collapse.  Anyway, I'll keep trying to give it a go as long as my schedule permits.

While on vacation, I also had a chance to duck into Mrytle Beach Games, which was a nice little game store.  They had a good selection of board games and as well as your typical Magic the Gathering selection/support.  They had a smattering of Warmachine, Guild Ball and Reaper Bones miniatures as well as selection of hobby supplies.  Nice clean store and bit spacious.  I don't know the history of the place (new?) but it did seem like they were still in the process of figuring out how to utilize their space.  I think I will definitely swing by there again next year to see how it is coming along.

Lastly, right before my vacation I linked up with a local guy I had spotted on facebook that was doing incredible stuff for Gaslands.  I tied him in with some others I knew were interested, a bingo they all hit the ground running.  And I subsequently missed 2 games of Gaslands while I was on vacation!  I did eventually get a game in but technically that was in July, so more on that next month.

August Recap

Well, it seems somehow along the way I have adequately managed to capture my August activity with other posts (mostly):

• Painting Guild Ball Masons - Basecoat
• Painting Guild Ball Masons - Shade
• Painting Guild Ball Masons - Highlight
• Game of Kings of War

I do still need to finish up those Mason models.  I did a few of the washes/glazes I mentioned as remaining to do's in the Highlight post but still have a few things left to do.  The big one is weathering and basing, for that I needed to order some supplies that just came in (along with some extra stuff because who can order just what they "need").

A lot of this stuff is new to me, so I will try to post up my thoughts about them as I use them, although some of them were pre-planning or illusions of grandeur (ie, may not be in the immediate future).

Also this past month, Derek over at Throne of Angels mentioned in Episode 54 a game he checked out and brought home from GenCon:  Drakerys.  I was intrigued, so I did a read through of the rules which you can find here.  I will post a first impressions of the rules in next couple of days.

Other than that, as I write this the NOVA Open is coming to a close (or is over by the time I post this).  I really wish I could have swung attending this year and seeing my Virginia/Maryland/DC friends.  I hope the convention went wonderfully and that I can make it next year.

Lastly, toward the end of this month I made a grave mistake regarding my hobby-ing.  I bought Overwatch for the Xbox One and pretty much have not done any hobby stuff since.  That being said, the luster of playing in PUGs has begun to wear off and at the moment I don't have much of friends list to group up with (I'm late to the Xbox One party, having just gotten it a couple of months ago), so hopefully I should be back on track shortly (or at least more on track).  Maybe...

Well, gotta run.  Happy Labor Day.

Painting Guild Ball Masons - Highlight

Moving on with my Mason models, the next step was to begin highlighting.  If you haven't figured it out yet, I am a fan of Reaper Triads.  For whatever reason, I like these paints and I like being able to quickly grab a base, shade and highlight.  That being said, I have from past experience found that their highlight colors seem a little to "stark" to me, so my first pass used a ~1:2 ratio of paint to Vallejo Glaze Medium despite finding this was too subtle for the shadows.

• RMS  Tanned Highlight - Skin Highlight
• RMS Ashen Blue - Clothing Highlight
• RMS Leather Brown - Leather Highlight
• AP Gun Metal - Armor First Highlight
• AP Shining Silver - Armor Second Highlight

It may be hard to tell from my photos below, but I am fairly happy with how the skin and clothing highlights turned out.  They are maybe too subtle but I can live with them and move on.

The leather highlights, esp in some cases, came in too harsh/different or I just plain screwed them up.  I think I am definitely going to put a wash/glaze over leather areas to tone them down/smooth them out.

The 2 armor highlights I think worked fairly well.  I mostly stayed to just edge highlighting but in the future I think I will definitely spread these out over more of the area (the upper part of Brick's breastplate is a prime target).

Individual shots:

Everything is probably too subtle but I'm going to move on.  Right now getting models actually painted, practicing and getting into the grove is the priority.  So, all that I have left (in my eyes) is:

• Leather wash/glaze - Mellow some of the highlights
• Skin wash/glaze - Mellow some of the shading
• Deciding if I'm going to do any other washes/glazes - Not sure the clothing would benefit, for the armor Dave Taylor's guide recommends a blue or purple glaze
• Some clean up - Odds and ends, mostly a few messy/stray marks, hit some of the buckles/buttons again
• Sealing
• Basing (yeah, should have figured this out from the beginning) - Probably muddy or dry dirt field
• And maybe a little weathering (new ground for me) - I'm thinking because of the basing mentioned above, a little weathering on shoes/feet/knees would be appropriate
• And if I want to ensure I screw these up, I can try painting the eyes.  Or I can just continue to believe they blink every time I look at them.  Probably should consider giving them eyebrows and doing something for the lips.  We'll see.

Painting Guild Ball Masons - Shade

The next step on my Mason models was to begin shading.  My first pass through used ~1:2 ratio* of paint to Vallejo Glaze Medium**.  The following were applied into the deeper areas of the models and where shadows should (mostly) naturally fall from an overhead light source:

• RMS  Tanned Shadow - Skin Shade
• RMS Breonne Blue - Clothing Shade
• RMS Muddy Brown - Leather Shade
• AP Dark Tone - Armor Shade.  Brick, Tower and Flints hair Shade
• Dave Taylor's Magic Armor Wash - Armor Second Shade

With the exception of the shading done with the AP Dark Tone, I thought the shading applied was way to subtle, even after a couple of passes.  This was most true for the Skin Shade.  I should have taken pictures at this point to show but I forgot.

In any case, I decided to do another pass with less glaze medium (~1:1 ratio*) into the deeper areas.  For the skin tone on the second pass I used a thinned:

• RMS Tanned Shadow mixed with RMS Chestnut Brown (~1:1)

Individual shots:

I think things are still too subtle with the shading and I have gotten a little sloppy, but I'm going to press on to highlighting.

*Remember, part of the purpose of this write up is for my own reference.  I am not advocating this particular thinning ratio or thinning ratios in general.  All things matter and affect these kind of ratios:  age of your paint, your thinner, your style, palette preference, how bad a day you had, etc.  I always hear the "thin to the consistency of skim milk" but honestly feel like that is just as much of a crap response as any other.  My advice, grab a scrap of paper that has text printed on it and do a test stroke across the text.  Does it have the opacity that you want?  Does it seem smooth?  Does it flow off brush evenly and well?

**Note, like in part one on the Basecoat and thinning airbrush paints, for brush painting I also once narrowed several choices down to this being my preferred thinner.  I'm not advocating it, there are other good options I just found this seemed to work well for me.

Painting Guild Ball Masons - Basecoat

For my Guild Ball Masons team, I decided to basically mimic (as best I could) the studio art scheme seen in the picture above.  For simplicity, personal preference and laziness I planned a few minor deviations but in general, this is what I was shooting for.  Sure a bit uninspired but painted models are painted models.

Not sure if anyone finds the amount of detail I'm about to give interesting, but I'm going to make a slight detour after the first batch of these guys are done.  So, I'm going to be fairly descriptive in what I did for my own sake when I return back to them.  Maybe I can even learn and remember what I did wrong or badly through this process also.  Anyway...

The gang all primed.

Just Brick.

For priming, I used a 4 step zenithal approach with my airbrush:

• Vallejo Black Airbrush Primer - From bottom and concentrated shadows
• Mix of Vallejo Black and White Airbrush Primer (for Grey) - Perpendicular to model
• Vallejo Skelton Bone- 45 deg angle from above
• Vallejo White Airbrush Primer - Directly above

The main goal for me, with the 4 step zenithal was to understand the shadows and highlights a little better, and why stop at 2 when you could go 3 or 4 (with the airbrush, it really didn't take that much longer).  That being said, as you may see (or not) from the above photos, I think I mixed my grey too light which ultimately washed out some of the definition I was going for.  For next time, I picked up a bottle of Vallejo Grey Primer to avoid some of my color mixing issues (I tend to mix colors toward my personal preferences versus what I need - like in this instance I prefer light grey over dark grey).  I took individual photos of all the models at 90 degree rotation increments to serve as reference if I lost my way.  To take full advantage of all this photography I really need to improve my photo setup and actually sit down and learn how to use my camera.  

From the primed model pool, I down selected to a more manageable 4 figures to concentrate on.  My intent was to airbrush as much of the base colors, working from the inside out, as I could.  For my previous airbrushing I had tried a number of thinning approaches and ultimately selected Lester Bursley's custom mix (winning out over pure water, water/alcohol mixtures, Vallejo Glaze Medium and Vallejo Thinner).  Back when I went through this process, I had meant to try/evaluate Vallejo Airbrush Thinner but never did.  This time around (mostly because I didn't feel like remixing Les' formula) I finally picked up bottle of Vallejo Airbrush Thinner to try out on these models and I am really happy with it so far.

Most of the base colors blocked in, except the hair and a few details

The base colors, in the order they were applied with the airbrush:

• RMS Tanned Skin - Skin Base
• RMS Templar Blue - Clothing Base
• RMS Earth Brown - Leather Base

For the skin, I planned on following the recipe from David Powell, over at Powell's Painting Projects.  I'm trying the second male recipe.

After those colors above were blocked in with the airbrush, I went back in with a regular brush and cleaned up the over spray.  Using the airbrush, for me at least, was out of the question for the armor sections due to their locations and managing the overspray.

For the armor, I planned to follow Dave Taylor's Liber Metallica method for Polished Steel (a great class at Adepticon for beginners+ if you like his Mechanicum Army).  This meant, first painting all the armor areas black before beginning.  

• VMC Black - Pre-Armor
• AP Gun Metal - Armor Base*

Some the accents (buttons, buckles, etc) where hit with:

• VGC Polished Gold mixed with VMC Smoke - Gold accents**

After I got to this point, I hit a wall.  The hair was the last base color I was going to block in but I really didn't know "what" I wanted to do or "how" to do it.  Eventually, I just went for it (after all, they are just going to be tabletop quality, I hope):

• Brick - 50% RMS Chestnut Brown and RMS Mahogany Brown
• Tower - Light Sand
• Mallet - VMC Light Sand w/several thin VMC Black washes of black afterwards
• Flint - VMC Dark Prussian Blue w/VMC Black over most of it afterwards

For Brick, I'm not sure why I went with this combination/color as I intended a more brown color.  I may have thought if I highlight with a more suitable brown it will all come together but who knows but I like it as is.

Tower, not sure this is going to work (or anything will) because his "hair" has almost no detail and therefore I have no idea what to do.

The method for Mallet kind of worked out, since I envisioned him as an older veteran player that is grey-ing but upon closer inspection, it actually looks like he dyed his "tips" (maybe should have used a grey instead of Light Sand).  I think I can live with it though.

The thought for Flint, based on some reading on the web, was to use a dark blue since cool colors give a sense of depth and then highlight black.  Maybe it's a bad method, maybe my blue was not dark enough or maybe I just did it wrong but it just did not work for me/on this model.  All I could see, even at distance, was blue.  So I got really heavy handed with black and called the base colors blocked in/done.

Individual shots:

Sorry for the bad photos, esp these last two.  I tried gain adjusting some of them after the fact.  And since I had already moved on to the next step(s), I couldn't just retake the photos.  Anyway, I will eventually try to learn how to use my camera and take better photos, someday.

They definitely could use a few more colors and variations but I'm trying to manage how much time I spend on these models.  There are a lot of other miniatures that are getting jealous of these guys having paint.  Next up, shading.

*Note, I am really please and impressed with this color.  See right below this partly why I am so happy with it and why I will be checking out more of the range.

**Note, when it came time to do my gold accents (buckles, buttons, etc) I became extremely disappointed about my Vallejo Air Metallics.  I had originally transition to them because they were the only paints I had found that I felt like I could actually brush paint on reasonably well.  But when I reached for my Vallejo Air Metallic Gold, the practically brand new bottle was all clumped up and unusable,  along with every other (about 5) Air Metallic I had.

July Recap

By the time I post this, my daughter will be back in school so I guess summer is kind of over (of course it is still hot enough here to convince me otherwise).  It sure did not feel like a summer break/vacation and sure as hell was not long enough.

Anyway, at the beginning of July I did indeed get in a game of Guild Ball with my buddy Mike.  This time around we tried out using chess clocks to speed up the game play.  I do think it significantly helped but is definitely something to get used to.  When the first player was out of time, we decided to call the game at the end of the current turn.  As our games have been lately, it turned into pretty much a stalemate.  I managed to sneak Honour in for goal but also put Flint in a position to be beat into a bloody mess.  So the game indeed 4-2 but only thanks to extreme heroics (and luck, lots of it) of Marbles to tackle the ball away from one of the Fishermen.  Given the probabilities though, Mike really should have had a chance to go up 4-6.

Speaking of Guild Ball, I managed to finish the base colors on the 4 Masons I was painting, including the hair.  I had serious paralysis when it came to painting the hair and I'm not terribly pleased with the results but I think I will let them stand.  Now I need to move on to shading and highlighting and get them off the table.

I also finished assembling the 2 Riflemen (Battletech name).  Just as painful as the others, at least I only have a few more to do to satisfy my craving.  Of course it always seems like just a few more.

I also recently happened upon something slightly interesting.  My first year in attending Adepticon, I demoed a Robotech miniature game and was given a free miniature for trying it out.  Now as I recall, there was a bit of funny-ness that went on with all that before the Kickstarter (something about 2 versions by different people comes to mind, idk) but I believe what and who I demoed indeed up being same thing that went to Kickstarter.  So it is kind of sad and frustrating to see that model (pre-Kickstarter) in it's pre-assembled form versus what eventually was delivered:

Hmm, 8 parts vs 20+...  

Speaking of satisfying cravings, I fell further prone to Mecha fever and a extremely good deal on Amazon and picked up the Battletech Intro Box set (the 2nd one with the better sculpts) to add to the mix.  From that set, these are the ones I wanted/could tolerate:

*sigh*  Also tempted by the Armored Core and CAV Kickstarters for even more Mecha goodness.  Hmm, looks like that Armored Core Kickstarter had to change it's name, that might not be a good sign.  Anyway, I'm confident I will hold out against these temptations due to a competing weakness/priority:

"I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror [joy] and were suddenly silenced [very poor]."  Obi-Wan Kenobi [quix42]

 OMFG!  Must resist.  Must not give in to temptation.  Awww fuck it, I'm pre-ordering.

Anyway, back to topic(s).  Not surprising I got very little done at the beach on the family vacation.  I did manage to finish cleaning up the Blood Bowl miniatures I took with me but I'm pretty sure I did a crappy job and need to revisit them.  Also identified some minis I need to paint and acquire/paint for my Kings of War army.

Since I've been back, I have also tackled going through my boxes of shame to try to thin the herd, consolidate things together and into smaller form factors.  I was completely unsuccessful in pulling anything out to add to my trade stock (I have a hard time letting go or just figure no one would ever want some of this stuff).  But at least things are (more) organized and sorted so I can find things, for now...

Lastly, I'm sad to say for numerous reason I decided to pull the plug on attending the NOVA Open this year.  Right before our family vacation I took the last step toward accepting this fact and cancelled my hotel.  I'm really sad I wont be there and get to see at lot of old friends, participate in some really great side games that I hear are brewing and taking some really awesome seminars.  And then there is the fact that GenCon just came and went.  *cry*  Adepticon seems so far away now.

May Recap

Whew, May is over.  1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 family birthdays in this month, my mom visiting for my daughter's birthday, birthday party for my daughter, my wife getting sick, me getting sick, having to get up at 5am for work most days to offset the time off I have to take for all the birthdays and activities.  Ugh.

All these things considered, a pretty productive month, although I still haven't put actual colors onto my Guild Ball models (but I bought the paints!  lol) or worked on the Pegasus further (yes, the wings are still not attached - it will require some green stuff and I haven't felt like pulling that out).  So what did I actually manage to accomplish...

Well, I did get 2 different games of Guild Ball in with Mike over at Mini Mayhem.  Mike provides some nice pictures and a recap of the (partial) games here and here.  Both games dragged out a bit and subsequently called early.  Mike cites himself for the slow play but I contributed as well.  We were very rusty and also had to look up a couple rule things too, which was compounded by the new Season 2 rulebook and it's new layout/format.  I do have to say, I do like the new rulebook but it still nags me in the back of my head whether or not it could be organized better.  I suspect that there is not a great solution since you are dealing with so many disparate rules:  combat, different types of kicks, playbooks, 2 different sources of resources, etc.

We both would really like to see our games speed up too.  It would be nice to be able to either play multiple games or 2 different games in one get together.  We have decided to try implementing a chess clock, which is likely to make us more prone to tactical errors but maybe the burnt hand will teach best...

On the hobby side, I unearthed what seems like a butt load (to me) of Warriors of Chaos models that will be re-purposed for Kings of War.  It took a lot of work to get the models sorted out, repaired and modified for magnetic transport but it is pretty much done now.  If I just hadn't discovered a set of sprues for Mounted Marauders that I, of course, am compelled to assemble now.  Ok, there are few stragglers still left to repair and the heavy metal models appear to need an alternative transport solution that will somehow be compatible with the overall magnetic solution approach.

Light at the end of the tunnel

At least I don't have to paint most of these guys

Or these

Ugh that is a lot to paint, someday

More to paint, someday *sigh*

Some side notes regarding the Warriors of Chaos above.  These were all bought second hand, in two separate purchases.  What is painted, was painted by the previous owners.  That being said, even just glimpsing at the unpainted models compels me to think "who the hell signs up for this kind of madness."  Seriously.  Even thinking about assembling that many models for just one faction/game system, let alone purchasing that many models for one faction/game system.  And if a game system "requires" that many models, why at that scale!  I just hope (pray) that a viable army resides somewhere in there.

That is pretty much it.  June will see some colors on those Guild Ball models and maybe either a game or two of Frostgrave, Kings of War or Mini Mayhem (Mike's homebrew system).  I will also be attempting to index (and share - as part of public self-shaming) my started but not completed hobby projects, so that I can begin to knock those out.

And as a parting note:  FUCK PRODOS GAMES.  3 years since the AvP kickstarter and nothing but occasional excuses, smoke screens, offers to (basically) pay for your own shipping (again, IMO) or picking your shit up at some convention.  Meanwhile, they continue to sell this shit, develop and release new shit and distribute all their shit to retailers (including AvP!).  Seriously, I've been ripped off (completely ripped off) on just one kickstarter yet this Prodos/AvP is an even worse experience!  Sad since I desperately wanted some Warzone Mashima models but you (Prodos Games) are now on my manufacture shit list.  Congratulations on joining such a small, elite group.  Oh well.

April Recap

Due to some motivational problems, not a lot of hobby progress/activities to recap for the month of April.  Of course, there are the previous posts about Adepticon but real life stuff managed to crush my normal post convention hobby enthusiasm.  Over the past week I did try to get back in the saddle though and got Hammer for Guild Ball assembled.  Also did a quick trial run of Happy Seppuku's latest textured base stamps with very positive results, I should write something up about those someday.

Anyway, I also got my airbrush station setup and running in (albeit it is beyond cluttered right now - still trying to find a home for everything).  Ok, everything in my new man cave is beyond cluttered right now.  I've hit a very slow spot where I identify where I want something but something else is already there, so then I need to find that a new home or it just replaces the original homeless something as homeless.  Ugh.

Nonetheless, with the airbrush up and running, I decided to start working on my Masons Guild Ball team!  With the family gone for the weekend, I had the lofty goal of getting all my colors blocked in.  Everything, outside of hobby, taking much longer than I anticipated only left me with Sunday morning to actually tackle blocking in the colors and that was short circuited by the family getting home a few hours earlier than expected.

Lower your expectations for when these will be done...

I tried to do some zenithal highlighting on the priming but I think I was a little heavy handed with the subsequent layers.  Also, I think my "grey" was a little to white.  Not really a loss though since I haven't utilized this technique in the past and is still helping (just not as much as I wanted) to understand where my shadows and highlights will be.

I also worked on trying to locate some of my missing stuff, organize things and in general find things a proper home.  At the end of the night of doing this, I plopped done at my desk and proceed to try to zone out watching tv.  Not terribly interested in what I was watching, or anything else available, my eyes crossed paths with an unpainted model (of course) I unearthed and had not just tossed back into a box.  This model has to be from when I was a teenager, putting it at approximately 27 years old (that is just my ownership of it - you read that right, I have owned this model for at least 27 years I think).

As I sat staring at it, with the wings broken off (I didn't know about pinning back then), I started to notice and appreciate that despite it's age it is a very nice model.  The level of detail is much higher than I would have expected for most models of this vintage - although that may be nostalgia speaking.  Anyway, the next thing I knew I had a hobby knife in my hand scrapping away mold lines (yeah, apparently I didn't know, or care, about doing that back then either) and then pin vice for the wings.

Ral Partha, 2nd Edition AD&D

Despite having no game use for it and not particularly a fan of Pegasus, I am strangely excited to paint this model.  Perhaps it's guilt or just a need or desire to restore something so neglected or some kind of childhood flashback.  Given my skill level, I probably wont due it justice but I'm sure it will fight like hell for me in the afterlife if I get it painted up.

Anyway, hopefully there will be some more progress on the Masons team soon but then again May is looking pretty crazy already with real life stuff and I have that Pegasus above trying to distract me.

January Recap

Been a little quiet on the blog, so I thought I would post a quick update recapping January.  I'm not sure a monthly recap is going to be a regular thing or not, I had actually planned to post most of this as more individual updates but never got around to it.  We will see...

On the "hobbying" front I have managed to get in a little bit of modelling every week.  No actual painting though.  Surprisingly time consuming, I did get my Malifaux and MERCS models transitioned from foam storage/transport to magnetic tray storage/transport (btw, I believe MERCS second edition comes up in Feb/Mar and includes rules to use a standard tape measure instead of the card based movement - should be interesting to see).  I also got 4 new guys for my Hadross Wrath of Kings assembled and based:  I wasn't really satisfy by (game play wise) one of the specialist from the starter set, so I wanted to either try a different specialist or add another taxi crab.

(The loner off to the side of the group was actually assembled last year)

I have also gotten 4 games of Guild Ball in over the month with Mike over at Mini Mayhem.  I continue to be impressed with the game.  So far Mike and I have only gotten 1 game in at the full team and table size (without terrain).  I'm holding off a post with more thoughts on the game until I get a few more under my belt.

I've gotten a little more connected into the Kings of War and (separate) Malifaux communities.  It has been a little hard but I think I'm starting to unravel the fractured gaming community here.  We will see.  I would really like to get out to one of the weekly Malifaux nights that has been re-established to show support but so far I just haven't been able to juggle it into the mix.  Hopefully soon.  There have been some rumblings about Frostgrave too, so I picked up the rules for that but haven't digested them yet.  It really looks like I am going to have to bite the bullet and get into Facebook though to help integrate into the gaming community down here.  *sigh*

The only other thing to note for January is I started and finished reading Caliban's War.  The second book in the Expanse series  Again, I can not believe that such frantic pacing can be maintained for the entire length of a book.  It manages to introduced some really great new characters that I hope to see again.  Hopefully this puts me far enough ahead that I can now watch the first season of the SyFy series.  For reading though, I think I am going to take a little break from this series and read something lighter, probably one of the new Star Wars books.  But then again Lois McMaster Bujold has a new book out:

This month (/next) we appear to be on course for closing and moving into a new house.  That should see the establishment of my new man cave, the return of all my tiny soldiers and my airbrush!  The harsh reality of this is that I probably wont have much actual time for hobbying for the rest of February and maybe part of March.