GW's Crazy-Making Labour Practices

Yes, it's a one-man band at our local Games Workshop retail store.  Visiting there Saturday to pick up some paint has prompted me to unload with a Burch-style rant...

Got to the store about 3pm on Saturday afternoon.  There was a crowd of 10 or so people outside the door.  The reason was on a handwritten sign taped to the glass.  "Back at 3:20"

Apparently our local GW store is now a one-man show.  There is one employee: the manager, "Pete".  He is the only person who works there.  He must close the store to take his legally mandated lunch break.  If he wants to take a day off (other than normal store closing days) he has to close the store.  (In fact it will be closed Nov. 10 and 12 this week). 

I feel bad for Pete, although he seemed completely OK with the arrangement when I raised it with him.  I just think that this is super-crappy of GW to be doing.

Band of Bi#ches

As the title says, here is a band of Birches, a band of Maples, a band of Elms and a band of Oaks. I bought the band of Dryads on the right side already painted, but added a quick drybrush to make the texture dry, as the original models were heavily washed a looked a little wet. I also painted the leaves, because I think it's the signature feature of this model. I think they are the better looking of the lot, which suggest that I should learn new techniques to improve my painting skills.

The Wood Elves Army now has 4 "orchards" of Dryads, at 144 points each. I intend to use them as screens to protect the Glade Guards, who are efficient at range, but desperatly weak in melee. If they fight well, I might treat my Dryads with potash, now that the resource is secured in Saskatchewan.

24 Pretty Horsies

I've just finished a batch of cavalrymen for my Wood Elves Army. On the left are 10 Glade Riders, light cavalrymen with spears and long bows. In the center are 4 characters: 2 mounted wizards, 1 mounted battle standard and 1 mounted lord. On the right are 10 Wild Riders, supposedly "heavy" light cavalry, armed with spears and fury. I bought 3 battalion boxes for the Wood Elves and ended up with 24 riders. So instead of making them all into Glade Riders, I've painted them into different troop types. Besides, I found odd that the "official" Wild Riders, who are supposed to have a better armor save than the Glade Riders, are riding bare chest. So I've painted the armor as leather for the Glade Riders and as metal for the Wild Riders.

Here is the charge of the Wood Elf Light Cavalry. Since my last batch, I am making better bases, but I still need to work on contrast for the horses. The darker ones are OK, but the white ones need more depth.

Wild Riders en route to intercept the vanguard of the Beastmen Hord of Kurtz the Unperfumed. I've used light cavalry in 2 games so far and they already have forged a reputation for dying spectacularly tragic and sudden death within the first 2 turns: they were fried by the ray of a Skaven Doomwheel in their first battle, then mowed down by an Empire "Gatling" (I forgot the official name) in the second one.

On a different subject, here is my painting station. For some reason, the picture turned out dark, but I can assure you that the room is brightly lit. One special feature is that the shelves are hinged. All the paint containers can fit in the sides and the two blue sections can be folded in. The idea is to be able to shut down the station when guests are sleeping in the room. The little stuffed buffalo is used to rest my elbow when I paint and my daughter keeps on stealing it from me.

Before I end this post, here is a link I would like to share with the conscripts.

It is a battle report from the blog of Kage, a friend in Regina with whom I played a game of FOW some time ago. The boards, scenery, Soviets and Fallschirmjägers are mine. The Stugs and barbed wires are his. The first picture is a vibrant example of the one thing that bugs me most about FOW: cramped deployment zones. All my units were literally in base contact. Anyway, it became a fun game after some of my units were killed, allowing for more dispersal.

Someone call about bugs?

Tonight my 40k Imperial Guardsmen will face the might of Hive Fleet Nostromo. I have been looking through the Imperial Guard Codex, which is full of new vehicles, and I figure that a bug problem calls for some fumigation. So over the weekend I assembled and painted one of the new GW 40k Hellhound kits. I built it as the "Banewolf" variant - basically it pukes out poison gas. How very "Imperium".



Full marks to GW on the new kit. Lots of options, and it goes together smoothly compared to the previous Chimera-type kits. Fellow Conscripts know of I my short fuse when it comes to building models (and threepio, and Sony, and dwarves, etc. etc.). The Chimera, an important vehicle chassis for the Imperial Guard collection, was always a major pain in the arse to assemble, especially the tracks, so I always hated doing them. These new kits are much more idiot proof (i.e. Greg compliant) and a breeze to put together, so watch for some heavy mechanization going forward!



We all know what happens to new models - this tank will probably be toast by the first or second turn. But hopefully this sucker will get a chance to spew malathion on some genestealers or something before the Carnifexes rip it to pieces.

See you tonight!

Masterclass Painting 101

Conscript Perry G. sends this guest post.  Over to you, Perry...

"This last weekend (Oct 30 and 31, 2010) I took part in a “masterclass” miniatures painting workshop taught by multi Golden Daemon award winner Mathieu Fontaine. His website is here (www.akaranseth.com) if you are interested in looking at his work, which is pretty damn good. A lot of the minis you see in the gallery he actually brought with him (I was too frightened to actually hold one when he was passing it around!)

"In any case, the class was fantastic. It was geared towards anyone with an interest in painting minis, whether you were a beginner and hadn’t picked up a brush before, or an expert army painter with several thousand French legion[aires?] under your belt. There were 15 in the class, and we had a good mix of ages (a couple of teenagers, and some old sods). No stinky girls though. ;-) And Bill who frequents the occasional miniatures battle on Chestnut was there as well!

The class was stretched (crammed?) into two intensive days: Saturday from 9am till 6pm and Sunday from 9am till 6pm (although we were done by 4:30). Day one was about priming, some basic techniques, blending, and working on painting cloth and flesh. The evening was all about colour theory, focus and a little art history. Sunday was about painting faces, using metallics and having fun with tattoos, nicks and scratches. We practiced all the techniques on GW ogres, which are nice and big, and allowed for plenty of “moob” jokes. The class also allowed plenty of one-on-one with Mathieu, and time to practice painting, gabbing with classmates, and sharing stories over a glass or two of wine!

All in all an amazing experience, although very intense and sometimes depressing – blending ain’t for the faint of heart! My own conclusion was loud and clear: give me that Devlan Mud Wash! STAT! (Mathieu was quite against washing for the sake of washing, so it was an ongoing gag for us to mumble “pass the wash” over the course of the weekend.). I definitely took a lot away from that class, and will be using at least some of those techniques in my future paint jobs.

A special thank you to Neil Berrington who arranged the entire class, brought Mathieu to Winnipeg and took us all out to dinner on Saturday night! His hospitality was amazing. For my $80 I truly got my money’s worth!

Bring in the consultants

It's not exactly KPMG or IBM, but one new wrinkle in the Imperial Guard set-up is the introduction of "advisors", essentially figures that represent bonuses available to Imperial Guard players in 40k. As part of the new codex released last year, GW issued three new models to represent what are essentially bonus traits for an Imperial Command section. The figures are mail-order only, but I was able to acquire a pack of these from Dave V (thanks Dave!) a while ago and I finally got around to painting them on the weekend.



From left to right, the advisors represent an Imperial Fleet Officer, a Master of Ordnance, and an Astropath. The Fleet Officer puts a -1 on reserve rolls of your opponent (presumably they are too busy dodging orbital bombardment to arrive on time). The Astropath adds +1 to your reserve rolls ("Your platoon arrived just in time - like you read my mind"). The Ordnance chap has a more direct effect on the table, allowing the Guard player to drop a template every turn - it still deviates (double, I think) but hey - it's cheaper than a basilisk.

At first, I thought these were pretty trivial bonuses (with the possible exception of the Ordnance dude), but having played some 40k recently, I can see how they can impact a game. I hope to try these guys out this week against Hive Fleet Nostromo. If that Navy guy can keep the damn Trygon out of my lines for even one more turn, he will be worth it.

The models were a lot of fun to paint - I particularly like the fleet officer, holding his gloves in one hand like some kind of royal officer. The sculpt exudes an event horizon or aristocratic smugness that only navy officers can summon. One wonders what he screwed up back on the fleet to end up assigned as a liaison to ground-pounding Imperial Guard infantry...

Where do You Like to do Your Thang?

Being incurably snoopy I've always been fascinated to discover how others pursue their hobby, namely seeing what they do for their painting/modeling areas. Over the years I've worked in the whole gambit of locations: kitchen tables, coffee tables, a corner of the bedroom, my own games room (on Fawcett) and in a hulking Ikea armoire.

So, Conscripts, where do you do your hobby thang? Send in a photo. Describe your geek-lair. I remember going to Kev's place years ago and marveling at his setup. He had yards of wondrous figures/models spread all over the place in his rumpus room, and in amongst that he worked in what looked to be a 6 inch square 'clearing' on the rec room bar. That's where all the magic happened - very cool.

In our new 'old' house I have a room dedicated for my Napoleonic library, office, screening room and hobby space (Hmm, I 'spose that's not too 'dedicated' is it? Whatever). The room has two decent-sized closets that both are wired so I thought I'd tuck my iMac and AV gear into one closet and use the other for my hobby space.

I purchased a suspended railing system from Rona that screws directly into the wall studs which can then accommodate heavy-duty shelving brackets. I then cut some fir-ply boards (thanks to Sylvain's circular saw), stained them, and added some trim to finish the shelves.

Its worked out pretty well. The small space forces me to be neater than usual and it has the added bonus of having doors to just close up when we need the room for other stuff. This way I get to leave my stuff 'out' yet still have use of the room if company comes or if Sarah wants to play a Halo deathmatch on the Xbox (as if).

I recently picked up a pair of OttLite's from Costco as I heard that they give a good light. They're actually pretty awesome and would highly recommend them if you see some on sale (they can be expensive). Of course none of this helps my glacial output but it does make it more comfortable!

Anyway, come on Conscrips, show us where you do your thang!