Using Snow Effects

There has been some talk of the snow effects used on the Orc army and I wanted share my experiences using Woodland Scenics Snow Flakes. Mr. Justin has a great tutorial about using Snow Flakes which was my starting point.

Here is the effect used with WS's Realistic Water. I don't like it, to be honest. True it makes a wet snow appearance. But it doesn't have the pop that I was looking for. It was very realistic, but did catch my eye. You can also see that Realistic Water is somewhat expensive, and this technique uses a fair amount of the water (and less of the cheaper snow flakes).

Here is the effect with PVA glue which I liked much more. First off, it gives a much sharper contrast against the dark colors on the orcs. True it does look like 'fresh' snow and I used it on models that I thought would be 'out front' more in this army. It also was placed on models where I thought snow would collect. Its also much cheaper. I currently buy my PVA glue by the gallon. Its cheaper than RW (by far!) and has far more uses. Face it, at this stage of the hobby you should by buying your PVA glue by the gallon!

How To Deal With an Orc Horde (As a Painter)

The Orc Horde is upon us!

Ranking models for Warhammer Fantasy is a much different task than arranging individual models for Warhammer 40K. You have to keep models, in rows of five or ten around four rows deep, lined up in a (near) perfect square. This is great when dealing with models like goblins, elfs, and humans. When it comes to orcs, the process sucks. Big Time. These Goblins have it easy.

40K orks are allowed to be more free-form but in WFB the bulky arms and legs are nearly impossible to keep square without making the models all face the same direction. When Jason and I first started talking about the army, it was clear we both liked the 'chaos' of having spears, swords, and shields sticking out in all directions. Its a far cry from the old days of WFB where metal models all faced the same diagonal direction. Those were dark days of modeling!


The easiest way to make these models form up, is to cheat. By making use of the long bases and and the square bases from Citadel you can break up the boring squares and add some depth to some of the filler models. You can take advantage of being able to squeeze four models closer together than on four individual bases leaving room to rank up all the models around the larger bases. Here I used the 50mm Monster Bases to squeeze these orcs together to protect them from the incoming arrow fire.

"Watch 'ur 'eads mates!"

"Oi, not in me eye!"

With the Savage Orc Boys I need to pull a different trick out the box. Jason wanted to have the ability to run one forty orcs unit or two twenty orc strong units, each with banners and musicians. The problem was that I was only given forty models.  So naturally two, models were taken out as extra musician and banner which allowed me to put one model in a spot for two in the main rank.(Here I used two 25mm x 50mm bases). Because of the chaos from the unit, you don't even miss those two orcs. That is the true nature of orcs I guess. 

Its only kinda cheating. 

So the full squad contains 38 models with two extra stand-ins!

And they get to play king of the hill.

The last thing I wanted to do but just wasn't able to make it work with the orcs is to make a formidable shield wall, like the Greek Hoplites. It was outside of my ability and didn't fit the aggressive nature of the orcs. I compromised.  So the front rank here was pushed far forward to make room for the second rank of models. I also positioned orcs taking the ranged shooting while getting ready for the initial hand to hand combat.

Perhaps another army can hide behind large shields. I'm looking at you Men-At-Arms!

Lastly, I used a number and letter system with stick on labels pasted to the bottom of each model. That way units can be assembled quickly and easily. 

What I Learned at Adepticon

Adpeticon has come and gone, and I've (finally) recovered from the Con. Before moving on to GenCon and the other summer cons (as well as getting back to painting) I wanted to share my thoughts about what has become the best miniature wargaming con in the land.

Adepticon is still the premier wargaming con, bar none (you've heard that already).  Don't believe the blogs and what not- the tournaments are only a small part of the experience. Though most of the events are tournament related, most of the players are just here for the experience, meet up with old friends, and games in a well organized area. Its still a Gentlemen's Gaming Con.

Just an 'average' hobbyist army! No, this was seriously cool DE army display board.

Special Operations: Kill Zone was a blast. You can read more about that here.

Giving away a Battlefoam Bag is a recipe to get 1,000 gamers to line up hours before registration begins. I was especially thankful for getting a VIG badge. I'll put that on the list for next year as well! On that note, the Adepticon swag bag has already been a thing of legend. Please keep it that way. Well worth the trip, just to get the bag. This year's special miniatures were nothing short of awesome.

The only camera I used was my iPhone 4GS. No DSL-R for me this year. And the pictures I got were just a great as any with my big camera. As an added plus, the iPhone was with me everywhere and I wasn't constantly looking after my big camera making sure it didn't sprout legs and wonder off.



No need to carry that big camera around anymore fellas!


Registration for an event is purely optional. Despite most events (at least 40K related) being sold out months ago, there were a lot of no-shows for nearly every event. Its certainly possible to show up early and get in an already full event. Trust me. I did it for several events!

In a sense, this event has become "Lobby Con" for me. Two nights we sat in the Lobby drinking beer and eating (usually pizza) just hanging out, seeing old friends, making new friends, and just talking to other hobbyist. Just hanging out seems to be a very reasonable way to spend a lot of time at Adepticon.

Unidentified friend enjoying Lobby Con... very

The Team Tournament still remains the highlight of the weekend. The amount of awesome armies and awesome people will never be forgotten. Three of our games were spectacular. And while one game fell flat, the team captain sought me out the next day to apologize and promised a better game next year if were to ever play. So sign me up, we'll be back again for the Team Tournament.

Big Display armies for the Team Tournament. This from our friends at the Axis of Ignorance.

Our Team- Hot Wings sporting dual Raven Wing armies. Complete with custom templates we gave out to our opponents.

Justin of Secret Weapon Miniatures is a stud teacher. It was my only hobby class this year, but was well worth getting out of bed on Sunday for. You'll be seeing plenty of weathering effects in the coming months. Everyone should do at least one hobby event every year. You will grow as a hobbyist, promise!

Mr. Justin.



My Death Wing terminators and my 'old' rust effect.





It would be cool to see more "small" vendors in the back halls. Battle Ready Figs and Techtonic (laser cut MDF) had booths set up. But I could envision small vendors with unique hobby supplies or supplements with a very low cost, fan friendly set up. The main vendor hall was nice (as always) but I am interested in seeing what the small guy has up his sleeve.

One of about 1,000 Psy-Bolt Dreadnoughts.

I just love the Chaos fliers. Come on GW and give us some flyer love this summer!!

I was shocked to see the 'lack' of hobbyist involvement with Warmachine. No doubt there were lots of players present, but the amount of cool looking armies was low. In fact, there were many unpainted models. In contrast Warhammer Fantasy and Flames of War had as many players, with many fantastic looking armies. Malifaux remained small, but had a dedicated following. The new Dust Tactics/Warfare game was constantly drawing people's attention. It will be interesting to see what happens to the game in the next year or so. Mantic had their new space dwarves and space 'rats' (i.e. skaven) on display. Expect to see even more 'counts-as' armies next year!





I expect to be painting some of these soon. I've been wanting to do Space Skaven for nearly a decade now.

All of Your Bases

... belong to me bitch!
Heh, I always wanted to say that, don't know why.
Anyway I have started on my way making custom resin bases, for my Cadian Imperial Guard.

This project resurfaced a couple of months ago when reading on the 40KHobbyBlog about making your own resin bases. Since then, I've been going strong to create some resin. Add to my hobby projects Adepticon 2011 Team Tournament and wanting to have unified bases for our team, this seemed like the perfect thing to do.  One of the best places to learn about this is Tap Plastics.  Their tutorial videos are excellent.  Until my tutorial is posted (probably a few weeks), look at the Tap videos over and over again!
First things first, a test on the Cadians. I picked up a kit from Alumiite (available at my local train store) for about $60 total. The Silicone is 'Quick Set' and the resin is 'Regular'. Though next time I will try to order from Tap Plastics directly.


Taking some bases created for the test run, I ran the kit and created a pretty nice silicone mold.
The result- some bases I love! My guard army is a bit of hack together of learning new techniques and playing around. These bases won't break that trend anytime soon.

After doing a couple of resin molds, here is what popped out. The bases held their shape very well and the detail that came out was great. As each cast was done, the sand and defects were 'removed' from the mold.
The paint scheme is supposed to represent a "Mars" theme planet that the Black Jacks have been fighting on for some time. I'm not so sure about the colors at the moment because the GW Baal Red seems to have too much yellow/orange color for my taste. We shall see after a few of the guard get plopped on the bases.

However, here are a few things I learned during the test process:

• Make sure you have read all the instructions and have all of your material well before hand. This didn't bother me during this run, but is good advise all the same.
• I used sand on the bases and gave them a copule of coats of 'white' glue and varnish- however, while the sand stuck to itself it didn't stick to the base. The result was when I pulled the bases from the mold, part of the base stayed behind.  It took awhile to clean he mold up and when I did, some of the detail was lost. 
• Make sure you add a filler to the bases before doing the mold or make sure you have them well glued to the casting surface. I had some of the mold sneak under the bases leaving a lot of trimming of the mold and eventually each base. It would be so much easter just to put some putty or green stuff and 'fill' the bottom of the bases. 
• Don't spread out the bases so much on the mold, and don't pour so much. Despite being as scientific as possible, I greatly overestimated how much mold I'd need- wasting about half a jar of the stuff (CYA $15!).  There is a better plan for next time!
• Be sure to 'scrape' the top of the mold before it sets so that that bottom of the bases don't 'bellow' out. It just adds time to the clean up process. 
• DO THIS!  This was fun, exciting, nerve racking, but still fun. You should try it. :)
• A full tutorial to follow....