WIP – Mercenaries for Privateer Press Weekend

WIP – Mercenaries for Privateer Press Weekend

ByDankelzahn
Experimenting with a quick wash
Wash Experiment

As I mentioned before, the local Warmachine community held Privateer Press Weekend at DieCon 8 last year here in St. Louis.  This year we’re going to be doing it again.  And like last year I’ve been tapped to paint some miniatures to be given away as door prizes to attendees.  Last year I painted up a Broadsides Bart but this year I signed up to do a trio of Mercenaries – Dougal McNaile, Thor Steinhammer, and Orin Midwinter.  Given how much of my own stuff I’d like to have done by the convention it may be a tall order but I’m going to give it a shot.

So far the work I’ve done on Dougal and Orin has been mostly preliminary stuff.  I basecoated their skin with P3 Midlund Flesh  and washed them with a diluted mix of GW Brown Ink, P3 Flesh Wash, and some glaze medium.  From there I’ll start highlighting the skin back up, but before I do that I’m going to get Thor caught up so I can do all three at once.  Dougal also got his pants based in Reaper Master Series Yellowed Bone, then I washed them with the same shade I used on both models’ exposed skin.  With a little cleanup I think it’s going to look pretty nice.

GW's Red Foundatin's Performance
GW Foundation Red

The red on Orin is from a pot of GW Foundation Red that I was given a ways back.  It’s a little thick but even watered down the paint has excellent coverage and really helped get him started.  I plan on washing his coat with a dark red/black to help define the shadow areas before I start doing any actual blending.  I plan on blending over the wash but it’ll help give me a reference point on where to start.

I’ve already mentioned the GW and P3 paint lines that I use, but they’re not the only paint lines I use.  My paint organizer has bottles from both Vallejo’s lines, Reaper Master Series, some artist paint additives and even some craft paints that still see use on my models.  Some painters will  swear by a single line and stick with it but I’m a big fan of picking and choosing to find the tools that best work with your style and your palette needs.

Chill of Winter & Shiny Paint

ByDankelzahn

I haven’t decided what I want to field this year at Hardcore at Privateer Press Weekend at DieCon 9 this year – my Protectorate of Menoth or my Legion of Everblight.  Most of what I’d want to field with my Protectorate is already painted so I’m going to try and get a lot of work done on my Legion before hand so I can make the final decision.

My current project is a pair of Warmonger War Chiefs that I’m painting to match the Blighted Ogrun Warmongers that I painted back in 2007. I’ve included a couple of picture my my photography rig probably won’t be up for another week or so so the quality is pretty lacking.  I really wanted to get back to posting pictures though so it’s a start.

There’s still plenty of work to do – attaching the right arm for instance.  There’s also the bone spines on the back of the left arm which haven’t been shaded yet and are still base-coated in Reaper Master Series Yellowed Bone.  And the Ogrun’s talons and the claws on his pelt that need some work as well as some more general touch-up and detailing.

As I worked on my warmongers my biggest concern was being able to match the colors on models that I painted almost two years ago but for the most part that’s been relatively a non-issue.  I had written down the flesh colors and the armor is very strait forward; the only real issue was the fur on the boots/back but I was able to match that fairly closely to my existing Warmongers’ boots.  My recipe for doing so used a few washes with P3 Armor Wash though, which reminded me how much I hate some of the paints I also think are the easiest to use – the shiny finish.

The effect I see usually happens with either hobby paints that use liquid pigments (Reaper Master Series, Formula P3) or certain washes – that being a shiny finish on the coat of paint after applying it to the model.  The problem is easily solved at the end of the painting process during final sealing when I use Testors Dullcoat but until that time the areas that are painted with these paints are pretty reflective and can obscure detail.

These reflections make it difficult – for me at least – to pick out my own highlighting as I work which has been extremely frustrating at times.  It can be very annoying to seal a model and then realize that the paint job doesn’t actually look like I thought it did when the reflected highlights are are removed.  Even with the glossy finish good paint is good paint so I’ll stick with using the RMS and P3 lines.  The paints apply and blend too smooth and easily for me for it to be worth switching.

Although I’m concentrating on my Legion, I plan on switching gears for the next post.  I’m hoping that alternating between the groups of WIPs will help prevent burnout.  So next post I’ll provide some pictures of a different project I’m working on for DieCon, and with any luck my photo rig will be set back up and they’ll be much higher quality!

Hey, Check Out My Junk!

ByDankelzahn

My Junk is Tiny
My junk is tiny

Most weekends I host a weekly roleplaying game at my house, but this week instead of getting out the rule books and character sheets I got my junk out and set it on the table.

I game with the hosts of the Fear the Boot podcast, and after mentioning Wizkid’s Pirates pocket model game during   a recording a fan donated a ton of ships for them to use at Fear the Con 2, the upcoming local convention here in St. Louis that they’re hosting March 6th – 7th.

We started out picking out a few ships (each of which has a points value) to throw into a few test fleets to learn the game.   Each ships have a different number of health/speed/cargo capacity and a point cost so you can mix and match to create a strategy that favors one goal or the other if you want.   I’m not going to give the game an in-depth review here – it’s been around a while and there are far more detailed descriptions out there on the intertubes by far more experienced players – but I will say it was a fun little game.

Le Loup Garou
Le Loup Garou

After learning the basics we all chose a nationality and picked a few ships to have small personal collections.   Then we sat down and put together over sixty 40-point fleets from the rest of the collection.   These fleets will be taken to Fear the Con and put at an open gaming table for attendees to grab, assemble, play the game, and then keep if they want them.   Should be a good time so if you want to swing by and try a game and get some free plasticard ships, please do!

Overall the game was good clean fun.   I don’t think it’s the type of game I’d want as my primary game but I foresee enjoying having a small fleet around to bring out for random games with my gaming group.   The game is collectible and so you could easily fall into the trap of victory through fatter wallet but you’d probably get a lot of millage out of   picking up a few packs to serve as a community pool for you and your gamers to build fleets in to play as a side game.

I need to ram more stuff with my junk!

Miniature Painting – Truth or Myth?

ByDankelzahn

As I speculated earlier, work on The Iron Agenda has really hurt my posting schedule here on Dankelblarg.   Fallout 3 hasn’t helped a whole lot either but podcasting has wound up consuming a lot of my free time since we started.   As a result I haven’t made as much progress painting-wise as I would have liked – and I haven’t updated Diminutive Denizens in ages -   but I have been able to get some work done since July.

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Where’s the WIP?

ByDankelzahn

Boy, have I been slacking as of late.   Part of that has been gearing up the Iron Agenda but everything started with the beginning of the summer Con season.   In preparation for Privateer Press Weekend at DieCon here in St. Louis (which I’ve written about already) I joined in with some fellow Podthralls listeners in starting our own version of the Gamer Journal that Privateer Press had featured in what was then the most recent issue of No Quarter (at the expense of posting my WIPs here).

I have added news feeds from Diminutive Denizens, my miniature gallery web sit, to try and make sure that I can keep producing some content, but when my camera got borrowed for a couple months even that slowed down.   I’m working on getting back into the swing of things… we’ll just have to see what sort of progress I can make.

Game Scribe

ByDankelzahn

A couple of friends of mine have started a blog called Game Scribe which chronicles their exeriences is (primarily) online gaming.   In the past they focused on Lord of the Rings Online and Team Fortress 2, but with the imminent release of Warhammer Online that game will be getting more and more attention in the near future.

I haven’t really kept up with the video game hobby in a while so when I was asked to contribute I had to think a while before I came up with something I could actually write about.   In the end I wound up agreeing to write an intermittent series on some of the older PC games that I’ve played as a sort of “blast from the past,” starting with Deus Ex.

With the launch of the Iron Agenda keeping up with Game Scribe posts (let alone here) is going to be a challenge for me, but Moondog and Ravious certainly maintain regular updates.   If you’re interested in following a few gamers’ romp through their virtual playgrounds be sure to check out their site!

Introducing the Iron Agenda

ByDankelzahn

Iron Agenda: The podcast about Warmachine, Hordes, and whatever else is on our minds.

We’re finally ready for an official announcement!   The Iron Agenda Podcast is an hour long discussion in which we will try to cover two topics – one strategic topic and one more meta-related topic – when discussing Privateer Press miniature games. That said we’re certainly going to stray from this format from time to time. In fact we’re occasionally going to stray from PP games entirely – we already have plans for a Pulp City episode for example.

In addition to the regular hosts you’ll hear other voices from time to time as we have some of the other locals on to provide additional views on whatever topics we happen to be discussing.

Our first episode has been released on our web site as well as an initial Episode 0 designed as an introduction to our show. Episode 2 and Bonus Episode 1 have both been recorded and are currently being edited – our feed will be updated as soon as they drop.

We’re still finding our voices and settling into things but we’d love to get feedback from anyone who cares to listen.

Monsterpocalypse – First Impressions

ByDankelzahn

Privateer Press brought a sneak peak release of Monsterpocalypse starter boxes and boosters to GenCon this year and I decided to pick one up to see how the game played.   I’ve never been a fan of collectible games but Monsterpocalypse’s relatively lax rarity distribution seemed like it might not be too bad for casual play.   After a few games I’m not 100% sold but the game showed enough promise to be worth a critical review.

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Earthdawn – Savaged: Season 1

ByDankelzahn

A month or so ago my Earthdawn: Savaged campaign wound up to a close. The early summer/late fall months brought a rash of player absences and missed sessions which seemed to sap everyone’s motivation. So although I very much enjoyed returning to the Earthdawn world our game ended rather anticlimactically.

At least I was able to do the experimentation with Savage Worlds that I wanted to. I learned a number of valuable lessons about the system from behind the GM’s screen. I plan on going into more detail about what modifications I plan on making to Savage Worlds in a short series of articles but I wanted to take this opportunity to summarize our campaign and my thoughts on it.

Our small group consisted of a few adepts who had banded together in defense of a Rex, a small village in the hinterlands north of Bartertown, and forged their group in tribute to the dwarven weaponsmith who had brought them together and gave his life in defense of the innocent. Thus The Hounds of Askari were born.

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DieCon/Privateer Press Weekend Wrap-Up

ByDankelzahn

Privateer Press Weekend 2008 in St. Louis, MO

As exhausting and draining as it was, Privateer Weekend was a phenomenal success. The PP Weekend committee did a fantastic job organizing the events and putting the weekend together. We had a number of great players come in from the surrounding areas and every tournament that was run was packed. And to top it all off we were able to reach the 32-man requirement for our Official Hardcore tournament and still had about a dozen people playing in a Hordes Steamroller event that ran simultaneously!

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