Warhammer 40K (1) - Road to Armageddon

 

This, like all my part 1's, is a bit of a rambler. 

As many of you are probably aware, I used to work in a hobby shop. I worked there for the better part of 10 years and in my time there became very interwoven with the hobby. Debatably interwoven enough to do things like start a blog, or a podcast.  Since "leaving the industry" some odd five years ago I've flirted, probably more than casually with the hobby in various ways. Always participating in some capacity but discovering how I interface with it in a very different way from "the outside." I could really wax lyrical about that for hours at this point but I say all this to say I had a really interesting day. 

See, when you surround yourself 22 hours a day with "hobby people" you tend to forget what it's like for "non hobby people." I think this goes without saying but though I'm referring specifically to Wargames, Painting, Boardgames and RPG when I say "hobby,"  I do truly believe this sentiment extends to any sort of "enthusiast. Whether you collect comics, sports memorabilia, vintage 90's Vampire the Masquerade novels, or are more of bowler, golfer, sporty type, I do think that outside looking in, our hobbies tend to be a bit of a great unknown. 

This all comes to an interesting head today. Part of the company culture at the company I work for now includes a sort of annual check in. Similar to a review, you meet with your direct boss and discuss things like goals and plans for the future. Less of a review by the numbers and more a personable check in. Now obviously these are conversations any manager worth their salt should be having anyway but I think the process is a good one and it leads to interesting conversations and shared experiences. See, part of what makes these consultations so interesting is that the people giving them are sort of explicitly instructed to do "some sort of activity, that the employee chooses" they're told to get out of the office and not just go for lunch or something. My teammates chose things like the firing range, or bow hunting in the woods.  

This was something we did last year and now for two years we've chosen an activity that I think really gets to show my interests and gets me talking. Today was the second of these I've done and for the second year in a row, I've chosen to go tour a few hobby shops in our area and show my boss some of what I get into in my free time.                                

My boss is a bit of a nerd as well and is definitely aware of things like Warhammer, even having read several of the black library novels. So none of this was "new" in that sense but as he looked at some of the kits, games, books etc, beyond sticker shock, he had several questions that I really enjoyed answering because it gave me a chance to sort of be the expert and share something I take such enjoyment from. 

 One question in particular was "so is there's just a guy in here? already painted?" in reference to the Lion El Johnson kit. I found a clamshell blister and began explaining sprues and such. Also humorously he said "he's older than I imagined" to which I responded with a comment about yeah, you haven't seen him in 10,000 years, not since the heresy." 

It did really get me thinking though. I realize that most of my readers (all 8 of you) are really aware of what this hobby entails but it was an interesting peek in from the outside again. I explained sprue cutters and how the game is kind of like risk but more complicated. We had a very long talk about "if all the games are the same or if they're totally different."  For a lot of the conversation though, the subject of sticker shock, pricing, and content per dollar came up. When I first got into the hobby, 3-4 hundred bought you a decent army and now, 300 is the asking price of 2 750 point starters in the Armageddon box. 

Mostly, what got me to open up this old blog though was the thought of step by step document just how much I'm "getting out of this hobby" so to speak. I redownloaded Brushrage and was thinking about documenting fully, the painting of this box set.

To start however, since I plan on sharing this entire entry/series with my boss to show him as well, I wanted to actually take the box out, open it up and show exactly whats in it from a new persons eyes. 

You've seen the box art up top but here's what's advertised on the back, promises of miniatures and rules and more. Oddly this box contains no dice or measuring devices, making it technically unplayable as a single purchase, paint supplies not withstanding. Part of what makes the "starter sets" their own thing is inclusion of those elements.

 

 

 Opening the box we are immediately greeted by a pile of plastic frames and bases. 

 Here I've got all the Space Marine sprues laid out, with a standard mechanical pencil for scale. 

 For the most part, space marines come on one frame, orks are separate. The Comanders for each side share a sprue in this case. Presumably because they only come in this box and arent available outside of it but thats just me guessing. 

 These are each of the Ork sprues. You get two of the bottom left sprue so I've only shown one.

 

This sprue in particular I find kind of strange as it comes with 10 orks and 5 goblins by my quick glance, meaning those units are sold as one kit. I am wondering what the long term plan is for those, whether they'll be getting another set with more options or what. I have gone into this project without reading much discourse and will have to see what the community thinks. 

 The banner is sculpted but has room for an included decal or freehand design

 Below all this plastic is a pile of paper in the form of several books and cards. Having not played any of 10th edition, I don't know the role of all these components but if the project goes long enough may revisit this later. Personally, I bought these to paint and collect but am interested in giving 11th a go. 

 The core rulebook is actually a smaller format than I was expecting which is great as it makes it easier to lug to a game. In it are just rules, no story lore etc. Included is an instruction booklet that comes full of painted examples. For a new person, this is useful but a bit of a disclaimer, theres no painting instructions beyond cursory inspiration.

Another super interesting thing here to me, is this Operation Imperator hardcover book. I am at a point where I'm done buying codex's, do with that what you will. All of the lore has been pulled out of the book and sent over to this book giving some background, setting and character information. This makes this book an entirely self contained story book as it were meaning in a year or so when all the rules are invalidated with updates, this book can stay as an art book/ novella. A smart choice IMO.

I'm currently finishing another project which I'll post shortly but the next step for the Armageddon project is to pick a unit and show exactly what goes in to painting it. The plan is to share this article/series with some of my non hobby people and just give a little insight into what it is I love about this. 
 

 

 

 

 

Works in Progress (2) - End of the Season Labors

 I decided to extend that "clean of the workbench" project a bit to the start of the AHPC. Here's a couple of things I've painted since then.

Hydra Miniatures Atomic tank. There's more coming on this but here's most of the robots

I also managed to finally finish one of the two forces for BLKOUT

Art the clown is nearly done, hes actually farther along than in this photo, the base is started i just need to do some washes and paint the "concrete" hes sitting on.I will probably finish this during the challenge even if it's not going to count for points.

AHPC starts tomorrow and I've done 0 prep. I'm going to try and paint in no particular order; The Dungeon, Some adventurers, BloodBowl Season 3 starter, The Chaos Dwarf Box, a proxy force for Shadow War Armageddon, Some Napoleonic British, More Atomic Tank, Breachers for my Word Bearers. Wish me Luck

Retro Sci-Fi (1) - Hydra Miniatures Retro Raygun Dr. Zahn

 That's right! Another project log. This is mostly because I want paint colors documented. I took a half hour or so to "Marine Juice" the first figure for a collection. Back when I worked at the Hobby Shop, we carried Hydra Miniatures. I picked up the odd figure here and there to just sort of have without any sort of real plan. Hydra's getting ready to release Atomic Tank, which looks to be a sort of Retro Raygun at Epic scale (10mm I believe in this case). I have some early test models to paint up from that range but wanted to sort of start chipping away at the 28mm stuff. 

First up is Dr. Zahn. Colors are Caledor Sky, Tenebrous Grey, White Grey, Gunmetal, Blood Red, marine juice. Super quick Paint Job as usual. I have some other figures from the range I'll probably get painted up soon. I've got a little more SAGA stuff to get off the bench next but for now, this was a nice break. 

 

Boarding Actions Build Log (1)

 I've always maintained that I like the idea of 40k even if I don't adore the game itself. The idea of a 2k army is daunting and expensive for my ADD riddled brain. I have been flirting with the idea of a zone mortalis board for a long time (see earlier posts on this very blog) but to be honest with the new Boarding Actions Game mode and terrain I'm probably scrapping that terrain. You can google Boarding actions to look at the pretty pile of sprues but in short, the idea is "lil fights in spaceships" 500 Points, limited options, quicker games.

I wasn't super interested in the box itself until I stumbled across this originally on reddit. Orkitect Studio has produced a 3d printable version of the board. Thinking I could save a bit of money, I opted to start printing.

When these tiles work they are absolutely incredible. There's a whole system in place for magnets and wires to make the tiles pop together, there's options for all magnets or snap fits for no magnets and the designer has already modeled and released some of the neat unique bits from one of the expansions. 

Cue the sound effect of the record scratch

I wrote the above in march of 2023. Its why "finish boarding actions board" made my list two years in a row. Because I'm lazy. In my defense this time I have some legitimate concerns.

The text you're reading now replaces a pretty lengthy paragraph I had written back in march and the keen eyed among you may notice the pieces are made of two different materials if you look close. One of the issues I had in 2023 was that my prusa finally took a crap and blobbed up. I spent the better part of a week disassembling and what have you to clear jams and scrape plastic. I finally came to the determination it was gonna need a new thermistor, then a new hot end, then this then that. I tore the thing apart and chipped away on repairing it for a few months where it sat unused next to my Mars 3. An idea sparked and I decided to start this project on the Mars. I won't bore you with too many details but needless to say, it was not the right medium for this project. I spent a small fortune in failed prints and broken resin and fails and cleanings. I said I'd fix the printer but with my day job (fixing 2d printers) I never had the drive to actually finish it. Around Christmas I ran some numbers and made a decision to replace the device with a new Bambu P1S. There will be more on that at a later date, but the main take away here is this

I went from this

to this in about a week.

So what you see now, is a whole boarding actions table. I purchased a cardboard mat from one of the starter sets and have since this photo glued in all the magnets. Next up is painting and wire on the column pieces.

Demonship (1) - It's Here!

 As I mentioned in the Adepticon wrap-up. Demonship is a new "microgame" from MalevMinis and Blacksite studio. Its basically a sci-fi solo dungeon crawl. I managed to get a set of the terrain preordered at Adepticon and it arrived on Friday. I've got it all built now and wanted to show it off. 

 All in all it was a relatively straight-forward build. I accidentally left out a couple magnets in the "palete" looking bit. I got the whole thing built in an evening and a half and didn't really count the magnets until I realized I had already glued it together. 

 

The "alpha" rulebook I picked up at the show is neat and I am looking forward to trying the game out but since building this set the "finished" game is now available for pre-order HERE

 The set is great. Super modular, its a blast just showing it off and setting up little rooms. I was super excited to see it came with magnets and the whole thing stores right inside the base. No room for figures but I think the alpha book may fit though I haven't tried yet.

I'll check back when I've gotten the game on the table but for now, this was a reasonable build and it seriously checks my "minatures are cute" checkbox where small stuff is just sorta neat.

Lunar (1) - The Haul

 Oh look, It's another "Matt posts a pile of stuff because he has no impulse control" Post.

 This time it's Lunar by, you guessed it, Blacksite Studios. Lunar is a skirmish game set during the Cold War on the moon. It's roughly 3 to 5 figures a player and is all about fighting for resources on the moon. There's a campaign, lovely components and great resin figures.

Inside the starter you get dice, tokens, a rulebook and 10 figures as well as the cards to play with everything. Unlike Violent dark this set also comes with some clips to track all the stats with. 

The resin sets are basically a bag full of options. The game isn't WYSIWYG so I opted for stuff that'd be fun to paint and look at. The figures didnt require much clean up and went together nice. 

 Unlike Violent Dark, we got a game in already and I'm actually interested in playing more of the game. We got one game in at the "small" size and actually really enjoyed it. I was a little skeptical after our test game of Violent Dark that maybe DLB was a flash in the pan but I think VD just needs some ironing out and am going to finish painting it but wait until theres more content to revisit it. 

Next time I post about Lunar, I'll give some thoughts on the game as well as showcase what got painted already. Long story short though, this ones a winner.

Experimenting with Slap Chop and Modulorka

Hi, Long time no see.
I won't bore you with the details but it's been a busy while since I've seen you last. I changed careers, moved, and got married since I last sat down to write an actual article. Needless to say, I had a busy year. Let's dive right into the topic of discussion though and wrap with some thoughts on what's next at the end. 

If you're like me and you tend to put YouTube or miniature podcasts on in the background while you paint, you've almost definitely heard of SlapChop painting by now. The term seems to have been coined by The Honest Wargamer and you can see his original video here. Long story short the technique is as follows. Prime Black, Drybrush grey and then pure white, finally slather the mini with "contrast" paints. I put contrast in air quotes now because the technique is definitely not limited to Games Workshop's official contrast range and will definitely work with other companies equivalent ranges (like the new Army Painter Speed Paints or the upcoming Vallejo Xpress Color)

 

When I first saw this I was skeptical. My first thought was definitely something to the effect of "yeah, its called painting, why bother with the fancy names?" I'm a big fan of contrast style paints and my biggest criticism comes down to the marketing approach of "one thick coat" not being the whole story. I think like any other paint, its a tool and it should be used "correctly." The main focus of the technique is to get stuff on the table, in a reasonable amount of time, to a decent standard.

As I mentioned, this is pretty topical now, with several content creators all posting their take on it. I wanted to give it a go myself but was looking for a project to use it on. This Video by Miniature Hobbyist popped up on my feed right around the same time This Video popped up by On Table Top. GorkaMorka, 3d printing and a quick project all in one go. The stars have aligned. Modulorka is basically a free to play Ork on Ork skirmish game. Currently free to download, they also have a kickstarter and a patreon going if you want to support them. The free rules bundle comes with a single ork infantry figure. It took about two hours to print and came with both supported and unsupported versions. There was a super minor defect on my print that is more than likely my settings but I left it as it looked more orky to me anyway. 

 I printed, cured and then cleaned up the pieces and then followed the steps as instructed. Black, grey, white primer applied I began with the slapping.

 I used the relatively new Gutrippa Flesh for the skin, and then Snakebite Leather, Wyldwood, and Black Templar for the majority of the details. I was originally going to paint the club the old fashioned way but settled on the new Garaghak's Sewer. I wasn't willing to skip metalic paints however and painted all of those details with 3G Gunmetal. I also painted the base in my usual methods with a block paint and few layers of drybrushing. 

Here's the kicker. It's just like using contrasts normally but I think generally speaking the results are a lot better. In particular what this method did to the skin, club, and boots, I'm thrilled with. Some issues that stood out are the usual issues with contrast, you still need to be wary of pooling and the reality is some colors simply don't show up over dark surfaces (like the skeleton horde I used on the teeth.)
 
As I said earlier, I was a little hesitant when I first came across this whole viral sensation. Not necesarily because I didn't think it would work but more so because it was sort of being sold as a one stop shop in the same way contrast was originally. Theres still certain things I'll always paint traditionally (mostly metalics) but in general I was pretty pleased. I used the brushrage app while I painted and the whole model including the base and drybrushing was less than an hour. Now that I've done it once I could easily cut that time per model down drastically and I definitely think the added step of drybrushing is easy enough that I can't imagine using contrasts over just a white primer any more. 

It gets better

After painting this guy, writing this article and sitting down to another paint session I did an entire starter force for modulorka. All 4 guys including the bases came in at 1 hour and 46 minutes once I had a scheme. 

 

This was originally written in October of 2022.

Violent Dark (1) - Intro and Other Games April

 Hello

No secrets here that I'm sort of a fan of Black Site Studios. I think the stuff they make is neat. Our game of the year on the podcast the year it was released was Don't Look Back (second edition preordered already) and I have most of their games. There's a neat push right now through several content creators for what is being referred to as "Other Games April" this Miniac video sums it up but basically its a spotlight on indie games. In honor of the event and because I never touched this stuff after the first week, I decided I wanted to focus in and try and get my Black Site Games on the table this month if at all possible. DemonShip is coming (not soon enough) and we're going to start with Violent Dark

I backed this project through the BSS Backroom program which is a sorta-kickstarter program. I backed the second highest tier as I didn't think I needed the mdf terrain. At adepticon last year I picked up most of the other releases I didn't have. Here's the haul

Violent Dark is a co-op and solo focused space thriller in the vein of aliens. You control 4 crew members, theres missions, its got fun looking rules that I'll cover once the game's hit the table. 

Aparently I got as far as assembling the core set and getting paint on two pieces. It looks like I printed the bases for most of the crew but as the FDM printer is currently down, I've got a back up plan for the rest. 

The aliens we're a very slight disapointment. Mostly, I wish they fit on the bases provided. The resin is a touch spindly and bendy and they just don't sit nice on the slightly too small bases. I'm not sure how I'm going to paint these yet. You do get a ton of bits for them which is neat.

As a part of the initial buy in, and available later, there are a few expansion type pieces. One of these is rogue synths which adds a new type of threat. 

There was also a vac-suit and xenos hugger type of expansion

The xenos one comes with new rules for the threat. These are almost definitely my favorite sculpts in the set.

These expansions came packaged in the same bags as the bonus minis. The bonus minis were a few more crew, some turret guns and this cat.

After digging everything out I got most of everything built save for a couple aliens and the turrets. I also opted to leave the synths in the box for now. The plan is to get this on the table soon so we're going to start with an alien and two more crew as a minimum. 

Will report back soon