Category Archives: Games

Vampire Blegh

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I knew as soon as I painted the Vampire’s shirt red, and did the hack-black-wash job on the cloak that I’d ruined the entire piece.  Oh well, now I’m just slapping paint on it to finish it up as quickly as possible.

I’ve never been able to do convincing red-clothing, it’s surprisingly annoying.  Although if I did real blending instead of just wash/dry-brushing it would be easier (in the sense that blending works better with reds, but since I can’t blend well it’s a moot point).

Edit: Updating rather than posting a fresh post.  It’s finished – here and here.

Got some painting done

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Did quite a bit.  Finished up the Elmore piece I started an absolute age ago.  Looks ok real-size, looks terrible photographed, I have to work out if there’s a better way (been saying that for 10 years).  Made a start on three Rackham miniatures, did a tiny bit on a vampire and kept going with the 20 zombies.  Doing the zombies is kinda cool, don’t have to be too careful, slap a lot of random colours on that no self respecting heroic single miniature would wear, try out different things to see what works.  The contrast with working on hugely detailed pieces like the Rackham miniatures is incredible, everything takes longer, everything has to be planned out carefully.

The hardest part is seeing what you want to do with the miniature – once you’ve got that in your head it’s just a matter of making it happen.  I’m struggling with the vampire because I don’t know how I want it to look, blacks? purples? oranges? reds? some mixture?  Greys?  Not sure.  Once I have that sorted it’ll be a lot easier.

Happy Geek

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Today I am a happy geek.  I’ve ticked all my boxes.

  • Fantasy Miniatures – check
  • Blogging – check
  • Photography – check
  • Using Picasa to manage photo’s – check
  • Using Picasaweb albums – check

Pretty good day.  We popped into the Games Workshop Warhammer World shop to pick up some paints (white and black) that I’m missing (I can cope with other colours missing, but white and black are pretty essential).  The guy behind the counter was as chatty as they always are in Games Workshop shops, and he was asking what I was painting (I said undead), and if I was looking at getting any other miniatures.  I sort of laughed and said no, I had plenty to keep me going.  He asked what I was interested in, and I had to just say, “I’ve been painting for over 20 years, with some breaks, I’m really not into playing, just painting the miniatures”.

It was a number I plucked out of the air (20 years), but it turns out it was pretty accurate.  Started when I was 14ish, which makes it 23 years.  I’ve probably been painting for longer than the shop assistant has been alive.  When I started painting the miniatures were made out of real lead (probably).

So anyway, didn’t manage to get any painting done this evening but I did end up finding a lot of miniatures I’d forgotten about, and did some web geekery, so yeh, pretty happy.

Fantasy Miniatures, photos

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So I spent the evening going through my collection of miniatures, re-photographing them and uploading those pictures to Picasa.

A disclaimer before you go look (if you were thinking of looking).  Yes, there are far too many half-naked nubile unfeasibly dressed female miniatures, so sue me.  Yes, I suck at painting eyes.  In fact, yes, in general, the painting sucks.  These things are designed to look ok from about 3 feet away and are 1-2 inches high usually, so when you photograph them from 7 inches away and blow them up, they look pretty cruddy (well, mine do).

First up, a collection of my oldest miniatures.

Next, some of my more recent butcher paint jobs.

And finally, a bunch of stuff I’ve not started yet.

Click the images to link to the Picasa albums.  I’ll sort out some photo’s and post some stuff I’m half way done on at some stage.

Edit: In-progress album now up.

Smaller pictures

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Looks like just keeping the images smaller helps, they look more like they would if you were holding them or looking at them on a table.

One of those (left) is a macro shot from earlier, and the other is just a regular shot from distance.

Therapeutic

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So it turns out painting is pretty therapeutic, and I’m still pleased with what I’m able to achieve.  So, good news about the paints, and I don’t seem to have backtracked too far since I last picked up a brush.  I’ve started on some cannon-fodder zombies so that I don’t have to worry too much about the fine detail, the whole point is they’re supposed to be gore splattered and broad-stroked.

Here’s the one I just did.

Click on the images for the full size shots.  One of the major problems I have with macro mode on digital cameras is that they really do bring out the worst in the painting 🙂 I need to get a good shot, with good lighting at range, so the figures look more like that do when you’re holding them in your hands.  I’ll play with that I guess.

Painting

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I have an increasing urge to break out the miniatures, paints and associated paraphernalia and see what’s worth keeping and what needs to be chucked / replaced, and then maybe trying some painting and seeing how much skill I’ve lost in the last 8 years since EQ took over my life.

I’ve ‘restarted’ painting a few times over the years, each time it’s expensive (replacing a lot of paint and brushes) and each time it takes longer to get back to a point I’m happy with my skill.

I certainly have more time for it these days I think, now that my MMORPG habits are seriously curtailed.  I’m not even sure what the market for miniatures is like, I guess Warhammer / Games Workshop has pretty much cornered the miniatures market in the UK.  I see that 4th Edition D&D has some plastic pre-painted miniatures for use with the game.

D&D 4th Edition first two encounters

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We ran through a couple of encounters last night in our new roleplaying campaign.  First time we’ve used the 4th edition rules in anger, so all of us were a little slow and spent time referring to stuff in the rulebook.

I have to say, I was surprised it ran as smoothly as it did, the positional issues didn’t affect us as much as I feared, and provided a decent tactical element.  The use of powers instead of basic attacks is the real difference, and it certainly gave my character (straight forward fighter) more options during the fight, without having to rely on feats.  For example, my fighter has two ‘at will’ powers which are essentially regular attacks.  One (Cleave) allows him to hit a second target for a small amount of damage if he hits the first target, and the second causes minor damage to a single target even if the swing misses.  So depending on how many targets are adjacent to him, he gets to pick which makes more sense.

Also, we had a Warlord in the group, who has a power which provides additional damage to basic attacks so during one combat round I used a base attack to benefit from that.

All-in-all the combat seems ok, we’ll see how it ramps up.  At the moment, I still feel bereft without haste, multiple attacks, dual wield and stat increasing spells (Bull’s Strength!) which were such a strong feature of 3rd edition, but I’m sure we’ll get used to them not being there.

The two major things I learned yesterday about 4th edition,

  1. You don’t roll saving throws any more, they work like AC (i.e. they have a static value which the attacker has to beat).  This is going to take some getting used to.  You do still make some saving throw rolls, but they’re a straight d20 and succeed on 10-20 (I think), they’re used when you’re under the effects of spells (for example, sleep).
  2. Everything about combat has bigger damage numbers, and everyone has more hitpoints.  It’s going to take some getting used to.  In earlier editions not being hit was key early on, but in 4th edition everyone has far more hitpoints at first level, including the bad guys.

Oh, and being able to Shift in combat makes much more sense, it may only allow you to move 1-square at a time, but at least you can shift through the enemy without incurring opportunity attacks if you need to.