Infinity... and beyond!

For my last game in Winnipeg, Byron treated me with an introductory game of Infinity. I have read a few battle reports on this blog and I was intrigued by the game system. Furthermore, I am myself a big fan of Japanese anime and the game is obviously inspired by shows like Bubblegum Crisis, Appleseed, Ghost in the Shell, or Blame. So reasons were many to try this game.

Byron set up a cool urban terrain with buildings he made. Games are usually played on a 4' x 4' area, but this one was a bit smaller.

For the first basic scenario, we both had three basic troopers. I set up one of my guys on the roof providing cover fire to his buddies moving forward. Everything just felt right.

Here is a ground view of the battlefield. The game is only three turns, but there is always lots of action. While one player makes his units execute orders, the other player must be attentive for any opportunity for reaction fire.

For the next scenario, I took command of a Panocean squad which included three regular trooper, one elite, one sniper, one close combat specialist and one commando. All these figurines were masterfully painted by Byron.

The objective was to claim the central building by being the last and only side standing on the roof. One security guard had to be "pacified" in the process.

Panocean troopers looking over the buildings at the 500' enemy commander.

The game uses "real" line of sight. So the little guy in the red circle could shoot at my guy in the foreground.

Troops supporting each other, getting ready to advance into the building.

We played three games in about 3.5 hours, and each scenario was providing the right feeling about fighting on the street with fire weapons, as well as a good dose of anime cinematic. All-in-all, it was very fun and I am even considering collecting a faction. But for sure I will be looking forward to play Infinity again and come back to Winnipeg next year for more discoveries and fun.

Thanks again to Byron for a great opportunity to try a new game that I truly appreciated.

Some Random Painting Projects

It's been a while since I have posted, so I figured it was time to put up something.  Over the last few weeks I have been working away on a number of completely different painting projects in a couple of completely different styles.  Just trying to learn and improve on some of my painting skills.   Hope you like.


Kingdom Death Dung Beetle Knight


This was a piece I have wanted to paint for a long while but wasn't quiet sure how to go about it.  I wanted it to have an iridescent look like some insects have, but wasn't sure how to do it.  I decided to give the Forge World transparent airbrush paints a shot and am pretty happy with the results.

I painted the whole model silver, then clear coated it and did a pin wash with black oil paint to get all the crevasses black, then wiped up the model with white spirits so that there was no black outside the recesses and clear coated it again.  I then airbrushed on some clear green over the silver and then yellow at the highest points.  I then hit the wings with some purples and greens to give a shimmer to them. 

The "fur" type areas and everything else were done with my normal painting methods as this piece was just to play with that clear metallic look, which I think came out pretty well, especially in person.


Arena Rex Beast Master

This model is another great Arena Rex figure that has so much character.  Not really much new tried here other than some blending to get the transition on the hyena right.  I had a lot of fun with this one though.  Same NMM as on the other Arena Rex gladiator I did previously.

His tartan was fun to do, but not super clean, the lines are not all completely even.  Freehand is something I will have to work on sometime soon as well.

Ultramarine Space Marine

This figure was done to play more with glazes.  He was painted with a black base colour and then zenithal highlighted with grey and white with an airbrush.  Then the blue on him is a single shade of blue glazed over in thin coats, then glazed over again with an off-white mixed in for the highlights.

While I have glazed before, I wanted to do a test piece with the simplest colour to do (blue) to play around with what results I could get.

Since I was spending some time on him, I also decided to do NMM for the shoulder pad and chest, but used normal metallic paint for his shoulder pad trim and the teeth on his sword.

I then weathered him up with chipping and scratches and then attached him to the base.

Looking at him now, I may need to go back and transition the caution stripes to fit the rest of the transitions, but you don't really notice that in person it's only the camera that catches it.

Death Guard Knight

Last up is a piece I have wanted to do for a long time and just never have gotten around to. It was another chance to work even more on my weathering and rust effects, this time adding the cool new AK Oilbrushers product to the mix.

I wasn't really sure how to go about painting or converting this model as ideally I wanted it usable in both my 30k and 40k Death Guard armies.  I decided in the end that since Knights would generally be by house and not legion that I could get away with a lot, so went with a look similar to my 30k force which is old and weathered, since I am going for a look of the guys that followed Garro and had to weather the bombardment of Istavan IV.

I started by painting the whole model black, but leaving all the armour plates off.  I then painted the armour plates in various shades or brown, red, and oranges with the airbrush.  I kept the paint thick and the air pressure super low so that it splattered on in random patches, and kept layering in colours.  Once that was done I put on AK chipping and scratch solutions in various areas, and then painted on the bone and green colours.  Once that was all done the magic begins.  I spray the paint with water and then start brushing it, and it just starts pealing off randomly, revealing the under colour.



Once all the chipping was done, it was time to break our the AK Oilbrushers (pre-thinned oil paints in mascara type bottles) and use them to apply dots of colour to the chips.  I then used white spirits to pull that down into smooth rust and dirt streaks.

The entire mechanical skeletal parts were done black, then shaded up with 3 silver colours, and then treated to the same Oilbrusher treatment.  I put browns, oranges, and even yellows in to get the blends looking like rust.  I may go back and add even more.



Last up was "blueing" the barrels which I did mainly with the Forge World transparent airbrush paints I got for the Dung Beetle Knight from earlier.  I started with doing 1/2 the barrel copper (Vallejo) and then did purple over most of that, then blue over part of the purple, and then black over the very end.  I think it came out ok and looks close to realistic.

Onto other projects now...

So there you have it, 4 recent painting projects with 4 fairly different styles.  I am now moving onto a few new projects including even more different looks.  Currently on the painting table are some heavily converted Death Guard vehicles (with even more spikes, tentacles, pus, and skulls, because I know how Greg loves all that stuff on GW models), some alternate Sisters of Battle figures, another Arena Rex figure or two, and some modern stuff from Spectre. 

OH, and a pile of terrain that I need to paint up as demo pieces now that I am producing that again as well!

How to make proper Wargame Trees - Quest for a Shrubbery Part 2

Last year I posted all about my quest for proper wargame trees in my post about "The quest for shrubbery".   I got lots of positive feedback from our local group about them, and several questions about how to do them online through here and facebook messages.  So, since I needed to make more anyway, I decided to create a how to article on how I did it.

A few words of warning though, while none of this is hard to do, it is time consuming.  Especially the first few times you do it.  I think the first tree I made took me almost 5 hours to figure everything out, that's a lot of time for 1 tree.  Now that I know what I am doing and have a system its probably around an hour or two per tree (for 5-6" tall ones), but that's still not insignificant.  There is a reason that trees like this commonly sell to model railroaders for between $60 and $200 US each (for 5" through 12" tall), there is a lot of time investment to make them look good.  Also the materials to make them are not cheap so the base manufacturing price can stack up quickly too, my current estimate is between $15 and $20 Canadian per tree.


So let's start with a materials list:

• Sagebrush tree armatures (real sagebrush clippings from http://modeltreestore.com/)
• Super Leaf flock (realistic leaves from http://www.sceneryexpress.com/)
• Static Grass tufts (pre-made tufts from  http://www.tajima1.co.uk/)
• Static Grass
• Green Poly fiber
• 50mm - 80mm wood bases
• Washers for weight
• Brass rod
• Liquitex Resin or Natural Sand medium
• Zap (super glue) and White glue
• Spray Adhesive (3m 777 spray glue or Elmer's Spray Adhesive)

Step 1 - Prepping Sagebrush Armatures

Sagebrush makes the perfect armatures for model trees as it grows like a full size tree, but in miniature.  The structure of the bark and limbs mimics full size trees almost exactly.  You can create trees using any twigs you want, but look closely at the pictures of sagebrush then at the twigs you generally find, if your going to spend your time making something, do it right and start with something that will look real.

Sagebrush is extremely common across the USA, however does not grow near me in Canada so I had to get a hold of some. I came across a website that supplies Sagebrush for model railroaders called Modeltreestore.com.   The operator Mike is extremely easy to deal with and will even find branches that look similar to specific real life trees if you send photos!  I have dealt with him several times already and he is awesome to deal with.  This however is the biggest part of the expense, due in most part to shipping and exchange.  It ends up costing about $65 CND to get 10 armatures here, so almost $7 a tree.

Anyway, onto prep.  The armatures come from Mike in a large bag in a box as shown above, and should be baked to sterilize them before use.  Just through them on a cookie sheet and onto the BBQ on low for a few hours and you should be good to go. You could use the stove but Sagebrush has a strong aroma and most of our wives wouldn't appreciate baking trees in the oven (or at least mine wouldn't, so I didn't even try).

Once baked and dried, you start to work the armatures to clean them up.  Just pull all the leaves off and slide your fingers down each branch and pull off all the tiny branches that are loose.  You want them all off now, rather than later after everything is together and then starts to fall apart when bumped!

Step 2 - Basing

Now that the branches are prepped it's time to base them.  Cut the branch to have a flat surface at the angle and location you want (if not happy with how it came cut) and then drill a small hole in the bottom.  Super glue a short length of brass rod into the tree leaving about 2.5 - 3mm sticking out (longer if you are going to use thicker bases or if you are inserting into a foam table).

Next drill a hole in a wooden base (I used 60mm round 3mm thick MDF bases) wherever works best for the tree placement on the base. At this point for any tree over about 4" tall I also glue a heavy and thick washer around the hole on the base (but one that the tree will still fit through the inner diameter of so that it sits flat on the base) to provide weight so it doesn't tip easily when done.

Super glue the tree to the base and let it dry. Then use liquitex to build up the base around the tree and washer and to blend everything together while adding texture all at once.

Step 3 - Poly Fiber

Once everything is dried you can move onto stretching poly fiber over the trees.  This is the most time consuming part and needs to be done right to look correct in the end. It will take you a few hours a tree at the start but get significantly faster once you get the hang of it. Take small pieces of poly fiber (I mean really small, like the size of a marble) and start pulling it apart and stretching it. Take a few threads from this clump and twist them around a branch several times.  Most of the time if you do this with tension the bark with grab the fiber and hold it tight, if not apply a drop of super glue to secure it.  Take another few threads and to it again on another area of the same branch.  Once done stretch and pull the poly fiber around that branch until you can barely see it.  It should look like a spider web and like it is way to thinned out.  Don't worry it will fill in once you flock it, it will amaze you.

I played with the contrast on the pictures so that you can see the poly easily, but its really not that dense.  A marble sized clump gets expanded to about 2" cubed.

Continue this process on each little branch or tight cluster of branch ends.  You may be tempted to use one big piece and stretch it all over the whole tree at once.... DON'T!  It will not look right, it will look like exactly that, one big clump.  Doing it one branch at a time takes longer, but looks significantly better.  If your in this to do it, do it right.

I also chose to paint the base a basic brown at this point.

Step 4 - Super Leaf 

The Super Leaf product is the other big part of what makes these trees look real.  Rather than the typical clump foliage or powdery flock this stuff looks like leaf bits.  No one around here carries it though so again I had to order.  To do it right I got a large container of medium green and a small container of light and dark green.  That is enough to do about 20 trees.

Setup an area to spray the trees with the spray adhesive (not watered down glue and a sprayer, this is aerosol based glue and can be found at any fabric shop, Canadian tire, Walmart, etc). and an area to flock the trees (using several sheets of paper to collect the excess flock to return to the container.  Start by spraying from the underside of the tree trying to only hit the poly fiber then rotate the tree to get the sides and top of the poly fiber. The poly will turn white once enough glue is on it.

Next flock the poly fiber with the medium green Super Leaf to build the basic bulk of leaf structure for the tree.  Simple use the Super Leaf shaker to sprinkle it onto the poly fiber and the glue will hold most of it there.  Shake the tree and tap the base to knock off the loose particles and then collect the excess from the paper and put it back in the shaker. If the tree does not look full enough you can play repeat this process a second time.


Time to do that again but this time only spray the poly (and medium green foliage) from the underside of the tree and only lightly.  Use the dark green Super Leaf to flock the underside of the branches to provide a shaded look.  Again shake the tree and knock of excess and collect it to use again.

One more time, this time only spray the top of the tree lightly and then apply the light green Super Leaf to provide a look of sunlight hitting the tops of the trees.

I chose to do these trees as a normal green shade, but you can just as easily do them in autumn colours or add some light sprinkles of a flower type colour to represent fruit trees in bloom.  There are lots of options.

Step 5 - Finishing work

You are almost done now.  It is time to paint the base (if you didn't earlier) and then dry brush it so that all the texture from the liquitex shows.

Once that is done I put white glue onto the base in various areas and flock it with normal static grass.  If this is good enough for you, you can skip the next paragraph.

Once the static grass has dried I go back and add some more interest to the base with various clumps of flowers and grass from http://www.tajima1.co.uk/, which makes some amazing tufts that add a lot of realism to any project.  I added a few bits of heather to each tree base and a few clumps of various sizes and colours of grass as well.  Something like 8 - 12 clumps per tree looks about right to me, but you can do more or less as you choose.

Last step here is to clear coat the trees with a satin or flat clear coat spray. Apply a few thin layers allowing each to dry before applying the next.  This adds some additional bonding to help keep the foliage on the tree.  You can use a few thin layers of the spay adhesive before clear coating them to further strengthen it, but you need to be extremely careful as if put on to thick it will produce a haze effect on the leaves, so while I have tried it, its hard to pull off, so I just use a few thin coats of clear coat.

FINISHED!!!

See, I did warn you that it would take a while.  Now you are done though, and have some of the best looking trees for wargaming out there (at least in my not so humble opinion)!  While they look better than almost everything else out there, they are NOT super durable.  You will need to be careful with them and pack them gently and upright.  They are not meant to be used for wargames at all but more for permanent railroad setups. After seeing them done this way though and having looked so long for realistic looking trees, I was willing to deal with that for my own personal use.

As a disclaimer, I can not take credit for coming up with this methodology.  This is all based on the work of model railroaders and pulled together from various forums and posts around the internet.  I just organized bits and pieces into my own workflow, there are many other smart people that came up with the method that deserve all the credit (I just never kept track of the forums I visited last year doing research so can't provide names, sorry).

The above image shows the scale of these trees, which is what really led me to doing them this way.  I got tired of all the store bought model trees which end up being about 3-4 times the height of a model and not really looking like trees in a forest which are huge compared to a normal person.  These I think give the right feel for a forest.  What is shown are 5 of the smallest trees I did, there are some almost 2x that height and I now have almost 20 complete.

All the trees I have done now are shown here filling a 3'x3' space far denser than you are likely to game with.  A lot of work, but I am really happy with the results.

Byron's Painting Challenge Theme Week Submissions and Results

One of my goals every year when entering Curts Analogue Painting challenge is to try and get better at painting.  We can all learn and improve over time, but it takes a lot of time to paint the best we can, so most of us don't do it often.  I try to paint my best for the theme week entries that Curt has throughout the challenge, and see if I can do some new things on them.


My goal in the theme week entries is to come in the top 5 each time, as past that you really have no control.  As with shows like the Golden Demon or Crystal Brush (of which I will never even qualify for either!) the top group are all amazing, and then which wins comes down to the judges preferences of the day.  Any of the top 5 are really good, so even though this is a much smaller pool of painters, that is my goal here as well.  If I can get into the top 5, I have done well.

This year I managed to win 2, place 2nd once, 4th once, and 6th once over the course of the 5 themes.  Not bad considering 1 of those pieces I decided on 2 days before the closing of submissions (obviously the 6th place).  So, almost met my goal of top 5 each time, but I think 2 wins can almost let me count the 6th as ok, right?  It is the closest I have come so far, so I think I can safely say I am getting better, which is what I am aiming to measure anyway!

Theme week 1 - Armour - Sedition Wars APC (5th)

This one was a very cool piece to work on, and while the photos wash it out a bit, it still shows very well considering that it is mainly white.  I used a lot of tips and tricks that Greg shared from his learning from Tacobat about hard edge highlight and shadow.  I really thought it would place better than it did, but oh well.

Theme week 2 - East - Arena Rex Egyptian Gladiator (1st)

This is probably one of my best pieces yet.  I finally learned to do NMM correctly, and learned that it is in no way worth the damn effort.... I also tried different skin tones, and glazes to a much higher degree than I have done before.  I even tried crackle medium for the base for the first time.

Theme week 3 -Terrain (Home) - Middle Eastern Compound (6th)

I had so many plans for this theme week and kept delaying them and eventually ran out of time.  So I just grabbed some of my Middle Eastern MDF buildings, coated them with stucco and painted them up.  Nothing fancy, but I needed them done anyway. Over all though, pretty sad from a guy who loves making terrain!  In my defense though I had just forced my way through several Napoleonic regiments!

Theme week 4 - West - Chinese Rail Crew from Malifaux (2nd)

I was pleasantly surprised with this entry, both in how they came out and how they were received.  I played around with a super fine airbrush tip to do all the flesh on these figures and I was really happy with the result.  It was a new way to do something so small, yet worked very well in my opinion.  It was also probably a very good thing I didn't win, as I was the sponsor for this round and gave away a western MDF building to the winner.

Theme week 5 - Movie character - Mary Poppins & Bert - for Kim (1st)

A really fun set of characters to paint, and one that I used a new glazing method for the dress on.  Apparently I have been going about glazing all wrong in the past (according to an excellent new painting book by Arsies anyway) so tried to learn the "correct" way (I am sure there are many ways that work just fine, I just mean correct according to the guide I read).  The results were super smooth on her dress and the faces.  I was very happy with the result here, and another of some of my best figures (I think).

Overall, I am pretty damn happy with how my entries did.  The only slacker being my 2 day terrain project, which was my own fault, and I am actually lucky it came as high as it did!  Oh well, until next year, were I will try to learn more and improve my painting level yet again.

Byron's 8th through 13th Analogue painting challenge entries

Well, yet another year has almost past in Curt's Analogue Hobbies Painting challenge, and yet again, I keep forgetting to update our own blog about my progress.  Greg is great about cross posting, but I always get sidetracked and think well it's up someplace already...  So, with the end nearing, I figured I should at least post a few images here again and some cross links for any of the Fawcett Crew that haven't been following the other blog.

Byron's 8th Entry - All Quiet on the Martian Front - Misc. Vehicles

Several strange contraptions in 18mm for AQotMF, including some mono-wheel tanks (with training wheels), a tank with a gattling turret, and a Tesla Cannon tank.

Byron's 9th Entry - UCM ships for Dropfleet Commander

A collection of plastic space ships that in my mind combine the best of both of Babylon 5's and Battlestar Galactica's aesthetic.  For a very cool new game where the actual combat and kills don't win you the game, it's all about landing troops on the planet!

Byron's 10th Entry - Late Swiss DBA army

This has been on my to do list for a long time, and I finally got around to it, my very first DBA army!  Which I fondly refer to as my skittles army since they are random colours.  I wanted to do better on them, but once I started I got a little lost on what is what on them (breast plates, shirts, greaves, elbow guards, etc) and as a result I ended up short cutting some things, so they are definitely table worthy, but not my best work.  That's what I get for knowing nothing about a period that I am trying to paint, I just wanted to paint some pikemen, so that's how I picked the army.

Byron's 11 Entry - 30k Drop pods and assault troops

Some very cool 3d printed drop pods for my 30k Epic force along with some jump troops to help out in the assault.

Byron's 12th Entry - Kingdom Death Butcher and Malifaux Rail Golem

These were two pieces I tried OSL lighting on, in two different ways wet dotting and air brushing.  Not sure I like either result, but they do work, they just don't fit what I pictured in my head.

Byron's 13th Entry - French Napoleonic command stand for Curt (from MikeA, SteveB, and Myself)

The entrance fee this year as a shared project submission.  I dug around and found some extra Napoleonics that I know Curt likes and conscripted Mike and Steve as my partners to submit this piece.

More to come...

I have a few other small projects in the works, but I have managed to pass my 1000 point goal by 50% so have kind of slowed down at this point.  I have already started planning the madness for next year though!

Byron's 5th, 6th, and 7th Painting Challenge Submissions

Another week has past, and with it some additional submissions to Curt's Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge.  After a super slow week last week due to being sick, I had a whole pile of things ready to go live, so even though it was one week, I had 3 submissions.

Entry #5 - Small Scale Items

This entry was a whole bunch of random small scale items.

Great War Naval Forces - 1/3000 scale Dreadnoughts

Having done WW1 in 28mm over the last few years, I started reading more and more of the history around the whole war.  The naval aspect of the war caught my fancy and I thought, why not do some ships to have some small games at some point.  After all, you don't need that many ships, and how hard could they be to paint?

Well, the answer to that last part is, very hard if the sculpts are not great.  I got my ships from Mick Yarrow Miniatures after searching around for a while, they had decent reviews online and they were cheap so I figured why not.  Well, they are cheap, but the quality is pretty horrible.  They must be using molds made around the same time these ships were really sailing!  Some were concave, some had bubbles, some were missing guns, some were 2-3mm thick and others were 7-10mm thick, making them all very inconsistent.  They were CHEAP though, so I guess I should have known.

 
Epic 30k - Death Guard (Part 2)
 
Thanks to Greg, I got corrupted and dragged along with the Epic 30k madness that he has descended into.  Luckily, I have only gone partially insane as I am sticking to one single faction and a small force of them at that.  

 
Team Yankee 6mm - American Reinforcements

 
I have been working on both Russian and American forces to do Team Yankee in 6mm, but basing them on a desert conflict so that I can use them for a cold war gone hot like Team Yankee or for theoretical or real gulf war games.  Anyway, I have most of the forces done already, but needed some additional infantry, so banged off another unit of American infantry and their transports, which have to be one of the ugliest transports ever invented.

Entry #6 - Arena Rex 35mm Beasts

My friend Steve picked up a new game a little while back, and after seeing the quality of the figs I just had to get some to paint up.  That game is Arena Rex, a 35mm skirmish Fantasy Gladiator game. The figures are just stunning up close, the detail is amazing.  The only down side, the price is stunning as well!

The rules are available for free though, and I tried a game with some proxy figured with Steve before I ordered my own.  It is one of those rare games that looks super simplistic at first glance, but has an amazing amount of depth hidden in it.  It has strategy, tactics, resource management, and more all rolled up in to what seems at first glance a simplistic smash-up gladiator game.

 I wanted to really sell the Arena setting of the figures, but also make them usable for other things, so... I picture that arena with a sand based floor I wanted to do something sand based.  However, not wanting something as mundane as simple flat sand, I decided to try some cracked earth effects in parts of the base.  I picture this as areas where the arena got wet from blood, thrown beverages from hecklers, or hell where a horse or bull took a leak, and now the sand and mud has dried and cracked.  I also added just a few tufts of dead grass to the base to add a bit more interest.  Again, probably not seen in a lot of arenas, but if you picture a weekend circus and then time passing before the next big event it is possible that some small tufts find a way to grow. especially around the dried cracked mud that has extra nutrients added.  That's my story anyway, I don't care if you buy it, I can live with it.

Onto the beasts themselves, I did almost everything with my new toy (a Harder & Steenback Infinity CRplus 0.15mm airbrush, which is AMAZING to work with!).  The beasts were done with black primer, then white or grey zenithal highlights and then many thin layers of glazes for colours.  I know Greg's eye is twitching over all that, but it really was simple and fast.  WAY faster than trying to get the same results with a brush.  I honestly believe that the Scorpion was done (primer - clear coat) in less than an hour of work time, and by brush I know I would have spent 4-6 hours to get the same effect.

These guys are HUGE, they are 35mm scale, the WW1 infantry
model is a 28mm scale fig to show just how big these are.

Entry #7 - 28mm Napoleonic Artillery Teams

Last up for the week was three teams of French Napoleonic Artillery all done on some huge diorama-like stands (60mm wide x 120mm deep).

Four years ago now, I started doing some French Napoleonic figures as a promise to Curt that I would at least try doing something historical for my first painting challenge.  It was a unit of Perry line infantry, and my first exposure to painting the madness that is Napoleonic uniforms! UGGG!

Four years later I finally have enough done to think about some small games!  Something Greg and I will have to arrange sometime soon for the group.

Having completed some pretty big projects in the challenge lately, I am pretty tapped out, and will not have much ready to go live this coming week, so I may not have another update here for a few weeks (other than the theme week entry).