New Product - Kickstarter - Litchmyre Dungeon

My 6 year old daughter who has been a regular bystander on our weekly Wednesday night RPG gaming sessions turned to me the other day and asked to play herself.

Great I thought my daughter wants to play the kind of games that I enjoy, how awesome!. Then the little alarm bell in the back of my mind went off that for the last 3 years I have been running a horror campaign in which I have nearly traumatised my grown players let alone the developing mind of my very own 6 year old. So plan B was born.

I have dusted off my old copy of Heroquest from back in the days when GW needed to team up with MB to make the mass market and D&D was only in its most famous 'Red Book' second edition.

Of course before I can introduce my daughter to the wonderous world that started a lifelong gaming obsession for me I need to paint the sad looking monochromatic plastic figures contained in this ancient artifact (This may become the subject of a later post watch this space). I was struck by how simple these figures are when compared against the great creations that are coming out of every model studio now. and as if in answer to my thoughts about how cool it would be to see this board game revisited with todays skilled figure artists what should flutter past my screen but a Kickstarter tackling that very topic thus I present to you Zealot Miniatures Litchmyre Dungeon.

Zealot Miniatures -Twisting Catacombs Litchmyre Dungeon Project

Review - Software - Campaign Logger

Well after a absence of over a year from writing any entries here I am returning with a product reveiw.

Unlike most of my content on here, this review relates to a digital product and doesn't involve anything I get to apply a coat of paint to.

Anybody who knows me would be well aware that my gaming does not just relate to Games Workshop games, and more often is old school RPG, such as our regular D&D campaign (many thanks to our most excellent GM Karl).

Recently it came my turn to run a game and while I am quite experienced as a player I am in fairness quite a newbie as a GM. As such I am always on the lookout for anything that will help me keep track of the millions of threads a game played at the level we do often produces.

Much of my GM'ing is done on the fly as I have a plot in mind and a few set peices but much of what happens in between is player driven so can't really be to planned.

I am the recipient of a weekly newsletter that comes from a vastly more experienced GM than my self - I refer of course to Johnn Four. Which led me to investigate his very own product Campaign Logger Campaign Logger Website.

This is a particularly useful product which allows you to tag your notes which allows you to very quickly reference all occurrences which use that tag.
The program uses an almost web like interface and by annotating objects of interest with one of the special characters (§+@^#$!%*~+)

What the addition of these special tags does is marks the texts that follows it as a link, this in turn allows you to see any entry that shares the same link (for example NPC name) at once.

How does this help? I hear you cry, well if you have players like mine they like details and a detail created on the fly 2 years ago can very easily become plot pivots and hooks so being able to quickly refer to any information and pull up its history on the fly has got to be helpful.


I am a convert to this product and my simple words do not reflect how powerful a tool this is so please check it out for yourself at https://campaign-logger.com/

Showcase - Necron Doom Sythe

Well with my 41'st (Millennium) Birthday just past, I was given a shiney Necron flyer as a most thoughtful gift.

Never having tackled large Necron vehicles before I had to re-think the way I paint a bit for this as these need a different skill set to painting my more normal fare of high elves and space wolves. So undaunted I dusted off my far to idle airbrush to provide some soft panel edging before striking hard and fast with the brush for edge highlighting.

I'm pleased with the result, see what you think

 

Tutorial - Sculpting - Modelling Mushrooms

After a massive absence from the Blog entirely caused by real life, work and all those other things we hate, I am returning with a quick tutorial on how to sculpt mushrooms. One of the facebook groups I am a member of had a fellow hobbyist who found the need to sculpt some giant mushrooms for his night goblin army, but lacked the knowledge on how to go about such a feat, so he asked the community how and I offered this solution.

Top Tip - Recipe Cards

Today I'm gonna share with you one of the techniques I use to achieve consistency across a given force (the one shown is the photos is my Space Wolves but that's just as the photo has a perfect demonstration in it).

We all know that painting a reasonable size army is not only a labour of love but also very time consuming meaning a force can often take years to finish (especially with rule changes and changes to force distribution and 'new stuff' to include) that being the case how do you paint something the same way as you did that miniature you painted two years ago?

Most of us are blessed with the ability to just about remember how it was done and with a bit of trial and error can do a reasonable copy of the original. My method removes the trial and error part and allows you to focus on the fun part the actual painting.

I call it the Recipe Card  (wonders if he should try and trademark this as its so simple)............

Showcase - Female Elven Archer

Today I'm posting up a piece of work I finished a few days ago (and oddly this is not the first place its been shown I displayed firstly on the facebook site 'eavier metal) the figure comes from Avatars Of War and is a lovely sculpt with very few mould lines to clean off. the only real additions to this fine figure is the base and the arrow which I will describe details on, after the pictures.

Showcase - Twin Linked Knights

Today was have a showcase of a pair of miniatures I painted as a birthday gift for a friend ( He is somewhat partial to playing paladins and has a particular liking for certain shades of blue)

The colour palettes were chosen from his personal tastes and for the alternative scheme the choice of colour was down to my 2 year old daughter.

Enjoy...

Long time gone....

Well it's been a very rough 6 months or so here (very ill relatives, and two deaths in the family to boot) as such time has been a distinct premium. When that happens the first thing to go is any hobby time and that's what's happened here.
However I'm starting to make my way back into the realms of hobby time and have managed to actually get brush to metal and have painted this as my first offering of the year.

Tutorial - Basic Techniques - Overbrushing/Drybrushing

Following on from the last Basic skills tutorial (which can be found here) we were left with a Space Wolf base coated and washed to really darken those recessed areas (see Picture below)

This tutorial will introduce the first step in highlighting the raised area of the miniature, and this step is called Overbrushing, while often called drybrushing, this is actually incorrect as drybrushing and overbrushing share the same technique but differ in paint saturation.

Tutorial - Basic Techniques - The Wash

I was in my local Games Workshop yesterday to do some painting and due to some case confusion picked up my space wolves not my high elves thereby confounding the painting plan, however being in the store anyway I was chatting to another fellow hobbyist, and as these thing always do talk very quickly turned to painting techniques.
It transpired that my fellow hobbyist had little experience with the wonder that is the world of washes and it has occurred to me that there may be a few painters out there that don't know just what washes will do for them.
So for my first ever Tutorial I have chosen this very topic.

Showcase - High Elves Frost Pheonix

Todays showcase is yet another of the many, many, many high elves that will populate this blog (after all that is the army I am currently building very slowly).

Due to the size of this model and my somewhat limited photographic skills these do not follow my normal 'showcase' photo format but features a somewhat more 'in game' feel.

Showcase - Chaos Space Marine Dark Apostle

As a bonus post for the day I thought I would put up another one of those miniatures that's just hanging about in the battle bunker (that's the nickname given to my hobby room in case you hadn't guessed).
Again this was done for a painting contest with the theme of Heroes in the Peterborough Games Workshop store (my local one) and features a couple of minor conversions.

WIP - High Elves Spearmen

Well silly season is upon us and everyone is gearing up to party or working overtime (that would be me :( ) as such hobby time is quite slim on the ground at the moment however I have managed to find a bit of time to make a start on some spearmen for the high elves army that I am building at the moment. So it is time for yet another Work In Progress picture

At this stage they have only been undercoated white and very roughly painted with a base steel colour (Citadel Base Paint - Leadbelcher) as much of these miniatures is scale mail or helm this seemed the most sane base to work from.

Showcase : Battle For Blood Island - Warhammer Style

A while ago my local Games Workshop Store (Peterborough) ran a contest with the title and theme of conflict, it was intended to be a conflict between two (or more) heroes battling it out, This is what I entered

Battle For Blood Island

The Bad Paint Monkey Says Sorry

As  an apology for all the posts this poor paint monkey has not done recently I thought as well as a WIP post I should do a Bonus Showcase to say sorry for my lack of updates

Bad Paint Monkey!

Yep I know I have been slacking..... no new posts for a while .... Bad me!!!
Well real life has infected me with a job and as such hobby time is greatly reduced, however today I have a WIP photo of those Sisters Of Avelorn I unboxed the other week , see this post for the reveiw.

Totally legless

Some Pictures From Games Day 2013

As a regional winner for Armies On Parade I was fortunate enough to go to Games Workshops flagship event Games Day this year and as I'm sure you can imagine I did spend a good deal of time taking hints and tips from my fellow competitors many of  these ideas I recorded in the form of photos and here are a few of them

Unboxing the sisters of Avelorn

Ok here are my first impressions of this kit from Games Workshop for their high elf army. Firstly this kit produces two different troop choices (this seems to be their latest production gem, I would guess to save on tooling swaps in the machine shops) . With all the others kits they have made in this duel unit format this one produces the most divergent options I have ever seen.Now what does this mean to you and me? In one short sentence lots of bits for conversions etc.

The origin of inspiration

Entering Armies on parade 2013 has made me sit down on think about the origin of inspiration, certainly from an artistic/modelling perspective. For this year's entry mine was one of the great number of Space Wolves entries and as far as inspiration always a simple choice for me as many years ago when I last had a 40k army it was space wolves so the history was a well known beast to me. Using this knowledge of the background fluff I selected an iconic location (in this case Fenris the space wolves home planet) for this kind of work I always think it's best to use something instantly recognizable to your target audience,  this in many way will dictate the look your finished work should portray.

The Finished Item

A New Hope.....

Well here goes nothing. I have over the last few years pondered why anyone ever does these blog's however after recent events I am starting to understand.First of all a little about me, I am late 30 something man, with to many hobbies, not the least of which is my addiction to painting 'toy soldiers' in other words wargaming miniatures. Recently I found myself entering the Games Workshop contest Armies on parade and to my surprise actually won my regional heat and went through to compete at the national finals at gamesday this year (where I was soundly thrashed by some very impressive work). However this event has made me consider recording the thoughts and processes that go into things like that and perhaps share some of my painting successes (and failures).
I intend to record the journey of the many on going miniatures projects that I have on the go and plan on updating this with regular WIP (Work In Progress) photos and blurb. I might even review the odd product or two and reveal some of my tricks of the trade and a few that I have learned from others on the way.
Who know perhaps somebody might even read this, here hoping.......