Nebulization

Airbrushing the night away

So I recently got hold of an air brush. It was something I've been wanting to get for while. Learning all the ins and outs has been fun. Using it is definitely a skill I want to improve on if not master. A few of the things I have learned so far are.

• Keep it clean
• Flush with water after every use
• Clean the needle and nozzle regularly
• thin the paint. nope still too thick thin it more
• Clean and flush it again  
• Use thin paint, very thin paint
• If you're going to have a problem its probably a dirty nossle or needle  

Beast of war have an excellent selection of introductory air-brushing videos for their backstages

Since I got this shiny new toy I figured I better use it. My first attempts were just on paper but I soon tried it out on some minis. I was a little over painting my imperial guard so I practily jumped a friends offer to help him with some Shadow of Brimstone miniatures. He backed the kickstarter and now had too many miniatures than he knew what to do with. Further more he isn't a wargamer so he wasn't used to the heaps of multipart plastic miniatures in sprue form, and wasn't relishing the prospect assembling them. I however enjoy all three sides to the hobby triangle. (assembly, painting, and playing) the miniatures were of acceptable quality, but lacking the multitude of fine detail found on GW miniatures that I have become accustomed to. The vent lines in the sprue were a little thick for my liking and made it a little difficuled when removing them from the sprue. Upon assembly I noticed another minor fault with the minis. Although they fitted together well the smother sculpts made for easily identifiably joins. Other companies have learned to hide joins like these under the edge of some detail like armour or cloth. Perhaps the visible joins were a symptom of an emerging company just starting out, poor quality control of a mass manufactured product that was rushed out to fulfil a kickstarter promise, or perhaps a sign of an uncompromising design direction; to create smother organic looking miniatures on a budget.  You'd think Liquid GreenStuff from GW would be the perfect thing to fix this problem, but you'd be wrong.

 

Harbinger I filled the gaps with liquid green stuff twice.

Yep looks good. Smoothed out those join lines





Goliath I filled the joins four times. The gaps were much more pronounced.

I think they still need work, but I just got sick of green stuffing and waiting for it to dry. 

First time air brushing. First I coated the mini in red then I browned the bony structure of the wings. The blue tack is to protect from over spray.

Next step is a flesh tone on the wings. The air brush laid down a very smooth layer of paint.



Green and flesh base colours.

Highlights, glaze, and gloss varnish to make it look wet and slimy  



I think it worked

Air brush and dry brushing. I used blue tack to protect the different shades of green from over spray.

Terraforming  

For the longest time I've wanted a Gaming table. But I've also wanted the opportunity to play on a variety of terrain, and I don't have the space to store a 4' by 6' table. The solution I figured was a modular table with modular terrain. Several companies have offered different types of tile. Even GW but I was never happy with tether the cost or the size, So begun a slow burning idea for 1' by 1' custom terrain tiles. I figured  I could create a variety of tiles all the same thickness and size. And as my collection grew I could mix the different stiles together. I could have battle scared cityscape slowly transfer into a cratered muddy no-mans land then finally into a trench network; then change it up the next time I played.  The best bit would be that the tiles would be thick enough so that the craters and trenches were actually in the ground rather than the typical wargaming terrain sitting on top.  I started out drawing the designs on top of 5mm tick foam-core then I would stick that on top of insulation foam sheets. For years I've been looking for a local supplier of insulation foam. This wonders material than every hobby blog said to use and would be available in any hardware store. Perhaps North Australia isn't in need of as much insulation as North America or Europe because I could never find the stuff. Then one day when I was looking to order some from the cooler states down south I found a stock listing for a local hardware store "pink foam; perfect for insulation and hobby needs" so I decided to make up some test pieces to see if my idea was sound. I decided on a urban road theme for my test.          

I sandwiched two layers of foam core together drew on the design and scored the lines for the concrete joins.  Then painted the scores black to hide the white foam core and provide shading.



I used textured paint for the concrete

I had to make up some textured paint for the asphalt






Sand box sand and black craft paint. Yum.

A stepped creator or collapsed road






Each step is wide enough for a mini

Each sheet is 30mm perfect for a GW mini






Air brush to stencil on the white lines

I think my concept is sound



The next step is to see if my local hobby club is interested in using this system for their tables. If so then I can utilized their expertise to create better tiles before producing a full set for myself.

 

Hobby Accomplishments

It's been awhile since I posted anything about my hobbying that didn't relate to the GMing of my Rogue Trader campaign. While GMing takes up a large part of my spare time, I do have a few other geeky events of note.

The Kickmaster

After

Before

My Reaper Bones Kickstarter minis arrived. I have long enjoyed reaper's excellent range of metal minis. When I first heard about the bones Kickstarter I was very interested, a huge assortment of great sculpts for an unbelievable price. I instantly backed it at the Vampire level and eagerly awaited for the arrival of more RPG minis then I could ever use. At first I was overwhelmed with the sheer number of figures that were supplied. But when I had the chance to sit and check over each of the miniatures, I noticed some imperfections. Nothing serious just some warping of blades and barrels, and some loss of detail in the sculpts. I already had several metal Reaper miniatures and they were far superior to the bones versions of the miniatures. The warping bothered me a bit so I endeavored to see if I could straiten the new plastic material that Reaper used to produce the bones.  I used hot water to soften the plastic and as I held the plastic straight I dipped the figure into a bowl of chilled water. So far the miniatures have remained straight even when subjected the tropical North-Queensland summer. I am still a little concerned about the strength of some of the thinner bits like spear shafts and ankles on some minis.

some very nice sculpts

Kickstarter contents 

Another box of minis from a different Kickstarter also arrived. Wild West Exodus, I liked the idea of WWX as soon as I heard about it. The brain child of Romeo the owner and host of 40k Radio &  Battle Foam. I first heard about it on 40K Radio and The D6 Generation podcasts. A Weird Wild West setting consisting of an alternate history infused with SiFi technology. I think Romeo really liked the movie John Carpenter of Mars, there are a few similar themes and the WWX Dark Council bare some striking similarities to the Therns in the movie. Romeo regularly talks about some of the business practices that GW employ and why they mystify him. Outspoken criticism on how GW does things and how they should be done is one of the reasons I enjoy listening 40k Radio when Romeo is on. It's great to see him literally putting his money where his mouth is, employing modern plastic injection moulding and detailed resin casting practices to produce miniatures with as much detail and character as Games Workshop's. WWX also employs some nifty retail practices, $5 minis and neat a return policy for retailers. Unfortunately no one locally besides myself backed it. I hope in the future it gains a local following.

Role Play Shenanigans 

Beyond the Thunder-Dome

Attack on a hill top emplacement

Recently I GMed an extra long session of Rogue Trader. The plan was to bring the current story ark to a satisfactory conclusion, before two of the players moved away. It was a great day and I got to use a bunch of my old 40k Ork minis as they rampaged over the world of Damaris. Unfortunately we did not get to complete the final grand space battle that would sever the Ork Warlords control of his forces I did get to run a couple of other encounters that included some vehicles. An Ork junk fort full of looted equipment that had been re-purposed into Killa Kanz, and some high speed highway Madmax themed combat. The players pulled some shenanigans and circumvented my brutally hard combat challenges. First they requisitioned some mining explosives and jerry-rigged them to use in an airstrike. Second while being chased by speed crazed aliens on an assortment of ramshackle vehicles the party's navigator used his lidless warp infused third eye to melt the drivers faces. At first I was a little peeved that the players bypassed all my work, but the spectacle of the crashing Ork trucks still loaded with boys & the plume of a flame filled oily mushroom cloud rising from the ruins of the Ork fort were great role-playing events.

Print is a dying Medium

So I have previously talked about the fine people at Urban Laser Craft, and how they were nice enough the reward me monetarily for my CAD work with MDF & acrylic terrain. I was very pleased when the owner Will informed me that his product line would be featured in the Cool Mini Or Not magazine Ravage. So despite paper being a vestigial method of information dissemination I am still immensely proud that my designs will be immortalized in a physical medium. I do have a little pang of regret that I signed over my copyrights when I sold my designs, it would have been neat to see my name in the article. 

In Capitalist America Hobby Earns You Money.

Streetscape Props

So last time I spoke about lasers, I talked about the fine people at Urban Lasercraft that wanted to use some of my designs. Well my designs are up on the laser craft site and for sale, check them out here. I did the smaller stuff, the buildings were all done in house. There is still another wave of my stuff to come. I will post again when the next wave of designs are released. 

more Streetscape props

Classic corner Saloon

In related laser capers I noticed that the founder of laser craft has been experimenting with some Wild West designs. He has themed  them for the upcoming Wild West Exodus. He posted a couple examples on the Lasercraft Facebook page, some nice looking stuff. I also backed the WWX kickstarter but I didn't pledge enough to get the excellent terrain packs from Micro arts Studios that were on offer. I did however start to design some of my own. First up I decided to design standard Wild West buildings. Easy enough as there is a tonne of reference material out there. Then I just needed to add a sheet-metal pattern of engraving on the roofs and cut the sign lettering out of acrylic so they look like neon tubes. Put it together and wallah you a have steampunk wild west  architecture. So I offered to share a bunch of my designs. I hope they help inspire Urbanlaser to release a new line of WWX terrain.

It was tempting to build a whole
town of 3D renders 

Standard Old West shops

Check out the 3D renders I did I think they look cool. They are lacking the detail of the engraving, but cool none the less.

Old school open air train platform and
with attached warehouse. 

Some tall skinny shops just because

Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation

So lately I've continued with my dabbling in the use of lasers to produce wargaming terrain.

I contacted Crag Gallant from the D6G and he put me in contact with some of his mates who have lasers and sell there designs online. 

I was just enjoying the exchange of information with someone who was interested in laser cut Terrain. Turns out that one of them liked the cut of my jib and offered me money to provide some designs. Who was I to refuse this opportunity? Normally my hobby s just cost me money, usually too much money. So now I had a chance to get payed for something I was literally doing purely for the enjoyment of it. I actually feel a little bit guilty about it. 

The coolest thing about this is my designs are going to be sold online. The image in my head of gaming tables around the world filled with my terrain is kinda ridiculous. 

My stuff is still not ready yet but when it is it will be on Urban Lasercraft  in the meantime they have some very neat looking templates and tokens for X-Wing and Malifaux. Check them out.

So here are some of items I've been working on. They are meant to be street props for generic 28mm SiFi gaming.

All of these designs are protected by copyright.  

I can see what you see not.

Gaming Achievements

Eldar physic node
 floating in space

Rogue Trader adventure has been cumming along nicely. The party has completed there first story ark. I ran the Lure of the Expanse adventure from Fantasy Flight the party ended the adventure by escaping an Eldar maiden world after their unbridled pillaging drove an Eldar farseer to intervene by raising a army of Wrathguard  and close the world off from the universe with a warpstorm. I think the party has done alright through this adventure. They have amassed a sizable fortune, established several interplanetary  trade-routes and acquired an additional warship. All for the price of a navigator's leg, Seneschal's skin and two burnt fate points. However the party's attempts to establish a dynasty has raised the ire of several  powerful adversary s including several other Rogue Traders. Also not least amongst them is the odors Xenos of the Holy Inquisition.


I have something special planed for advancing the story this ark will be of my own creation and I plan some more 3D terrain for the more important combat encounters.

My party was smart enough to
avoid combat but they were still
nearly court in a demolition blast

Besides Rouge trader I also ran a one-two shot of Deathwatch. I enjoyed running the session but I think I got the short end of the fun stick. The party of three Space Marines managed to live up to the GW fluff. They prevented a planetary uprising from taking hold in the capital of an Agri-world. In the process they managed to save the life of the planetary governor and personally kill hundreds of rebels as well as a dozen Genestealers and there Brood Lord .

Pax-Aus came and went unfortunately I was unable to attend. Fortunately one of my gaming mates did and managed to pick up some bits and bobs for me! Starwars X-wing is a very neat game. Simple to pick up and plays fast and fun. I have only played a few games and so far loved every one. My 6yo son also loves it and he easily grasps the beginners rules. Under the Starwars skin it is a great system. I imagine it would easily be expanded upon into a ground combat or fleet engagement format. Truthfully the game would sell well just because of the excellent pre-painted miniatures even if it had a mediocre rules system. With ships like the iconic Millenium Falcon and Slave-I along side the classic X-wing and TIE-fighters Fantasy Flight surely has created a licence to print money.

TIE Advanced. Nice detail and prepainted 

You can nearly see Darth Vader.

Negative Die pool 

One other thing that came back from Melbourne for me was the StarWas Edge of the Empire core rule book and GM kit. Another bloke also got the beginners box set. We had the game of the one shot adventure that came packaged with the beginners kit.  I don't know if I could find the words to describe how much fun I had  but Penny Arcade did a comic that captures the gist of my feelings. The adventure is super simple we just jumped right in. It came with some very nice maps a set of the custom dice needed for play.

Positive Die pool

I liked the dice mechanic you roll a set of custom D12s, D8s and D6s determined by your skill and  any advantages for the task you are attempting. These dice are opposed by a different set of D12s, D8s and D6s depending on the difficultly of the task and and disadvantages hindering you preforming the task.  The dice are marked with pips representing success and advantage on the positive dice and failure and threat on the negative dice. this created a system that allows for raging success or crushing defeats as well situations were you may fail forward or succeed with unexpected consensuses. I personally found it really discourages meta gaming when planning for a dice roll and encourages role play. Rouge has a nice simple percentage system that makes the math easy. But when you know that you have a 35% chance to succeed and a ability that grants a additional 10% chance its pretty easy to forget to just have fun and roll for it.

Force Die and force tokens.

Perhaps the game is horribly flawed and it's just the StarWars nostalgia and the fact I got to just play a game instead of running an entire universe that has tinted my perception. Hopefully one of the other players steps up to GM a few games before my veneer of smoke an mirrors is shattered. If there is as much fan service in the next adventure as there was in the first then I good time is bound to be had.

  Cast down into the Halls of the Blind.

More Lasers

So its been awhile since I posted anything about laser cut terrain. last time I had  received some test cuts from a local fabricator with a laser. I had to redesign my walkways, the ramps were too steep and too narrow. I have refined my designs and have now produced several more. I am now reaching out to a couple of blokes in the United States that are also interested in laser cut terrain. I have been bouncing ideas back and forth with them and they may even be interested in producing some of my designs.

Perhaps next pay day I will get some more test cut made.

Here is a bunch of 3D renders showing some of my new designs.

These were inspired by the Hab-blocks in the MassEffect  games they should be fun to play 40K and infinity with.

These were inspired by the plastic bulkheads that come with the Necromunda box set.  

It is a modular system allowing the construction of buildings and hallways there are even removable doors.

This would be great for a game of Rogue Trader. The party exploring a maze of  corridors as they are stalked by Genestealers. 

I couldn't afford add the terrain or the excellent armored train to my WWX kickstrater pledge so I decided to draw up some of my own. 

Drew up a hole train set with rails box, flat, coal, passenger cars and a engine.  

I also drew up a whole towns worth of buildings Shops, houses a train station and this  saloon.

I worked out a way so all the wheels will turn and the carriages link together. I can't wait to stage a train robbery with my WWX outlaws.