Progress Report: Scrapjack is finished

Quick update today.

Finished painting Scrapjack on Friday but didn't got time to post pictures until today.

Scrapjack

Now some group photos with its master, the Old Witch. In the end I decided to leave Old Witch as she was instead of repainting the shoulder pads white. What I did was retouching a bit the green glow effect on the left shoulder pad and in all the skulls. The skulls in the back of Scrapjack also have the green glowing effect to tie the two together a bit more. It is also the reason for the green glow in Scrapjack's eyes.

And finally as a bonus, a picture of the Old Witch on her own as suggested by my girlfriend as she realised that the angle on the pictures in the previous entry didn't show her face too much. This time I opted to use the tripod that came with the kit and put the miniatures over some boxes so they were almost at the same level as the camera.

That's all folks. Tomorrow I will run a Warmahordes demo/intro game for a new member of the club and I will try to squeeze a bit of painting during the week.

Progress Report: Photos, photos everywhere

Hi again,

First of all, sorry for not being able to post pictures of last Monday game but it was so fun I completely forgot my intention of taking pictures. Nice victory of Vlad2 (Khador) against Haley1 (Cygnar). His turn feat is devastating with Man-O-Wars, just saying. I will try to take pics next time.

So now that we got that out of the way, let's get to the main topic of the post.

Today I received my new light box so now I should be able to take better photos. Still a lot of advice to apply and tricks to learn but I couldn't wait to flood the internet with photos of everything so far. I will even include a few shots of the latest model I have been painting, the Scrapjack, which is still a Work In Progress.

So, without further ado, let's show the pics.

Khador Destroyer Warjack

War Dog

The Old Witch of Khador

Scrapjack (Work in Progress)

I hope to finish the Scrapjack during the weekend. What to paint next, no clue.

Blast away! An area template mini tutorial

Hello again.

I haven't painted much lately but there is still something to show that I....actually, we (thanks darling) did last week, and no, it is not anything dirty. 

It's all about templates. Most wargames use templates to see what models are affected by area damage, be it explosions, flamethrowers or any other nastiness that can kill several models at once. Pictured above is the set of templates that Warmachine and Hordes use. It is in fact a must to play the game. You can opt for the free version, photocopying the page in the manual that shows the templates but having the acrylic ones is way better. These templates and how many different ones are there, their rules and so on will differ from game to game but usually there is at least one spray/flamer kind of template with a tear drop shape and one or more circular templates for explosions.

In Warmachine/Hordes there are circular blast templates of 3",4" and 5" diameter and a spray template that is more an elongated triangle than a tear drop, more angular and less rounded. For most situations, you just purchase the official template pack pictured above and you are good to go, but this particular game has another quirk: there are a lot of effects that last for a whole round. This means, you put them in place during your turn but they will be in play and have a certain effect during your opponent's turn. Examples of this are explosions that leave a crater that is then considered rough terrain, areas that someone is constantly firing upon and will damage any enemy models that cross the area, models that use smoke grenades to provide a cloud effect as cover for friendly models and things like that. 

Example of templates in play, image from http://mageknightkevin.blogspot.co.uk/

What that means is that there are a lot of situations where you really need to put something in the table to represent the area of these persisting effects. If you have few of these effects and you don't use them often you could probably just put your existing template in place, but as soon as you need it for another shot you have to resort to mark the area with dice, removing the template and putting it back when you are finished, and that kind of shenanigans.

Introduce the blast markers. Several companies produce game aids like tokens and templates for different games in a variety of materials: laser cut MDF and acrylics, resin, even metal. The only problem with those is that they usually don't come cheap and if you are in a budget you would probably prefer to spend your bucks into new shiny models to use than in gaming miscellanea. 

I had seen a lot of people in video reports using very simple metal rings to just mark the border of the effects instead of the whole area. That has an advantage in that the process of placing and removing them is less disruptive as you can usually leave the models where they are instead of removing them from the table and sliding the template under them before returning them to their previous positions.

So, with that in mind and looking for something relatively cheap I had been searching all over the interwebs for that kind of metal rings. So far, I hadn't had any luck, finding some overpriced websites, others that didn't really provide any reliable measurements (a must for this hobby, the templates need to be exactly their supposed size to avoid discussions during the game) until I finally found a craft shop that had exactly what I was looking for. They sold them for people that wanted to create their own lamp shades. Each of them was less than a pound and they had a lot of different sizes, including the required 3", 4" and 5".

And now, the tutorial part on how to personalise those metal rings to fit better with the army.

Before...

On inspection it was very clear that the soldering on the rings was a bit rough so I decided to use my dremel to fix it. 

... and after

As the main colour of the army was going to be red (or as explained in the previous entry it will still contain a lot of red) I decided I wanted to have them on that colour. I could just paint them but I decided to go with a different approach and cover them with electrical insulation tape. This serves another purpose in that it would provide a softer surface so there are less chances of chipping paint on the models when placing or removing them.

Some photos of the process, courtesy of my girlfriend who is more skilled than me in this sort of crafts and arts processes.

Beginning of the process

The tape was to wide and was leaving some wrinkles because of that so it was cut to half width with scissors. Then the tape was carefully stretched around the outside of the ring, which proved to be a mistake, more on that later. 

Placement of the tape is finished

 Now carefully twist the tape around the inside of the ring, pressing with your fingers until it is completely round and hopefully without any wrinkles.

And finally this is the finished product

In total I decided to do 7 of the 3", 3 of the 4" and 3 of the 5", just in case.

The day after finishing we discovered that it was a bad idea to stretch the tape so much along the edge while placing it. Electrical insulation tape is somewhat elastic and it has shrunk in size a bit leaving small gaps where the bare metal is still showing. Nothing that cannot be fixed by just applying a bit more of tape but could have been prevented for a smoother finish.

That's all folks, hoping to get a good game next bank holiday and hopefully put a battle report if I manage to take some pictures.

Progress Report: photo quality and other concerns

Let's start with the progress report.

There has been some progress during the last week. However, if we measure progress by a ratio of models painted / total models it could be considered negative. One miniature, the Old Witch has been painted but several miniatures have been bought and assembled which in effect decreases that ratio. Anyway, as some people in the club say, if you can see out of the window you have not got enough toys in the lead mountain.

The most important thing to do at the moment is to do something about the photo quality. I have had some really good advice from a friend (thanks Ivan) about how to improve the images I post. I definitely need to apply some of that advice and improve the lighting, and the setup I use for taking pictures. So far, pics have been quickly taken with my mobile against a white background with a single lamp providing illumination. The photos were taken just to share them with friends. Now that I am running a blog I should care a bit more about their overall quality.

So, the next thing to do is to create or obtain a proper photo-box. I have found a few that are fairly cheap on eBay (around 30 pounds depending on size) that come with the lights, tripod and all but I am not sure about their quality. On the other hand, it would probably end up being more expensive in materials to make my own so it's worth a try.

There is also a ton of videos and tutorials about how to take good photos of your painted miniatures all over the internet, including some about how to create your own light box setup for cheap.

Because I intend to do something about the photos and hopefully get better ones soon(ish) I will only post a couple of pics of the painted Old Witch as a preview including a Work In Progress photo.

On another topic, I start to have some doubts about the paint scheme and feel that switching the proportions of white and red in the paint scheme would end up nicer. I will have to experiment a bit but maybe in the repost her shoulder pads will be white instead. The reasoning behind the switch is that weathering and rust effects look a lot better over white as there is more contrast.

I guess it is better to make those changes now that only three models have been finished, isn't it?

Progress Report: The story so far

As I mentioned on the introduction, the main purpose of this blog was to serve as a painting progress of my Khador army for the upcoming SmogCon.

So, let's talk about the progress before the start of the blog. Not counting some colour scheme tests, the tally count so far is an astonishing 2 models! I must definitely increase the pace or this will never end on time.

Before showing the actual models let's talk a bit about inspiration. The official colour scheme from Privateer Press for the Khador army is mostly red.

And I like it, but would prefer to use a darker shade of red as a basis as the highlights would end up being a bit orange otherwise. So that is the first step of the plan, start from a reddish brown and highlight up to a bright red. 

There are other sources of inspiration for the colour scheme I went with.

Personally, I don't like the "fresh from the factory" look. I prefer the model's armour to show some signs of damage, paint that has been chipped, some rust, and that in general shows that it has seen some action. That is why I loved the models I first saw on eBay from Tiny Worlds, definitely some of the best weathering I have seen on Khador models. I loved the addition of white parts to break the red monotony so much I decided I would steal that idea and incorporate it as well.

I had also seen some mostly white Khador models and I liked their looks so much as to struggle to decide if I wanted my army mostly red or mostly white. White has the advantage for weathering as if you go for chipping effects and rust, the contrast is way better than between rust and red. Another good example of this and good weathering as well is this model from RAMTRAZ.

Finally to add a third colour that is also very common in Khador armies I decided to go with black after seeing those models from Mike Mutiny in the Privateer Press forums. Those are probably one of the most perfectly executed and clean paint jobs I have seen. He has added some really effective weathering without overdoing it but is still a neat paint job, I am jealous :)

So, dark red-white-black it was. With heavy weathering. Let's start the show. The first model to be finished was:

Khador Destroyer Warjack

There have been a few issues with this model as it was the first done from start to finish. It ended up being darker than I was hoping for because of excessive darkening after applying the oil washes and the matt varnish. Also, as I was using some new techniques that I was learning I seriously blotched it when applying the dry pigments and ended up doing a mess that forced me to race to the bathroom to remove the excess with tap water and redoing most of the weathering, which didn't look as clean as the first time I had done them. Lessons learned and I hope to do it better on the next warjack.

The second model to be finished was:

Khador War Dog

The trusty canine companion preferred by all Khadoran warcasters. I am very happy with how this ended up looking.

So that is it so far. I plan to do The Old Witch of Khador and her companion Scrapjack for the next blog entry, hopefully sometime this week.