Kickstarters and Patreons

I used to say I didn't like kickstarter. I still don't think I'm in love with the concept or the service as a whole to be honest but my complete lack of impulse control has now made me up to my eyeballs in it. I recently wrote an intro type article over on Michtoy From the Front about 3d Printing that covers the basics and where I'm at with it which you can read HERE. Since writing that article I've discovered a few kickstarters I really think are worth highlighting as well as dived head first into the wild west that is Patreon.

Kickstarters First

Brave New Worlds by Printable Scenery

I've been a big fan of Printable Scenery for a while now, they have quite a few really neat designs that are already on my tables and after seeing the last kickstarter I told myself "whatever they do next, back the Kickstarter"
Brave New Worlds is a collection of 3 different Themed sets of Terrain. New Eden is an alien/aztec inspired set of jungle type ruins and temples. Sanctuary 17 is a moon base styled set of rooms and corridors perfect for sci-fi gaming. Wasteworld (pictured above) is a post apocalyptic playground with a ton of great options.
The pledges let you choose from any combination of the three, and the stretch goals have skyrocketed through the campaign, including all sorts of amazing scenery to print at home. I have a feeling te Wasteworld one will be the most printed for me, but the reasonable price (around 100 bucks) for the all in pledge made this one an impulse buy.

Ignis Quadrant by EC3D

I'm a big fan of Necromunda, Judge Dredd, and Star Breach. Ignis Quadrant is a pile of 3D printable files including figures, scatter terrain and vehicles. Having recently finished up the Death Ray Designs table and continuing to chip away on both the Zone mortalis Board and Hive City board, I thought there was enough in here to merit the all in pledge. When the campaign ended there were hundreds of files including all sorts of cool stuff to scatter around a table. The All-in pledge was a mere 40 bucks and was worth it solely for the vehicles that I'll add to my 28mm city to make it appropriately cyberpunk. This was the moment in the Kickstarter I was sold:

The creator has two more Kickstarters currently planned; one about sci fi ships and another one for 28mm sci fi figures set in this universe. I'm thrilled with how this was handled and am definitely keeping my eyes peeled for those.

Hexton Hills by Graven Guild

Like the others this is a digital file campaign. Hexton Hills is a collection of 3d map tiles perfect for RPGs, Wargame Campaigns, or whatever else. As a map nerd, I'm frankly excited for them even without a second use. The stretch goals and add-ons have brought the total tiles to over 200 designs and each tile is printable in fdm or resin. My plans include some sort of To the strongest map campaign among other things. Of their modest goal of 2k, theyve just passed 100k in total raised funds. This is a company and kickstarter to keep an eye on and I'll post more about these in the future.

Survivors of Serath by 3DartDigital

This one is a collection of figures and terrain with a fantasy theme. The company that did this had previously done a kickstarter for some really amazing fantasy busts. An early bird special for this caught my eye as at the price point, it'd be worth it for the terrain alone. The stretch goals in this one are a little ambitious but even at the base level I think the terrain alone was a good investment. Some of the figures look great to paint even if I can't think of a good use for them. At the time of posting this one has just reached 90k and most of the stretch goals that enticed me in are unlocked.

A modified version of this article appeared on Michigan Toy Soldiers News from the Front.

High Elves (1) - Project Plans

I've mentioned this a few times before but I've been struggling hard to get motivated through the quarantine. I've found it incredibly difficult to get the motivation necessary to shake the ever looming feeling of "sure, wargame figures are neat but what's the point if I'll never see anyone again." In the span of the quarantine, I've found myself motivated by exactly 3 things. Finally getting my High Elves Playable, a new fantasy skirmish game that's in the works, and 3D Printing Patreons. I'm gonna do some sort of write up on the other two motivators at some point down the road but for now my focus is on high elves.

I do this a lot if you haven't noticed, where I plan out a project and almost immediately lose steam. This is a project that I've been trying to accomplish for a long time. When I first got into Age of Sigmar, I had some left over High Elf stuff from my warhammer fantasy days, all unpainted of course. I slowly aquirred bits here and there through trades and ebay. I'm sure if I took the time to sort it all and point it out it'd be in the realm of 3000 to 4000 points but almost the whole lot is no longer usable in Age of Sigmar.

With the Arrival of  Cities of Sigmar, a lot of the models I fell in love with dissapeared. I was a little bitter frankly, but more importantly the motivation was lost. Most of the project was shelved and I set my sites on other forces.

Heres the new project all laid out. Using the Cities of Sigmar book I've made a 1000 point list, that uses all High Elf models as proxies.

Here's the list generated from the warscroll builder
Allegiance: Order
Cogsmith (60)
Battlemage (90)
Freeguild General (100) - General
Battlemage (90)
10 x Freeguild Greatswords (160)
10 x Freeguild Greatswords (160)
5 x Freeguild Pistoliers (100)
Helblaster Volley Gun (120)
Helblaster Volley Gun (120) Total: 1000 / 2000 Extra Command Points: 0 Allies: 0 / 400 Wounds: 64

The plan model wise is somewhat self explanatory, with the mage and Loremaster being Battlemages. The only model not pictured is the High Elf Banner Bearer who will act as the Cogsmith, rallying the two Volley guns in the form of Elf Balistas. The General will be the Leader from the Skycutter kit and the Pistoliers are going to be Reavers.  

Its a 35 model force all told and frankly I dont think it matters to me if it ever sees the table. I haven't played aos in months anyway but I've always had a soft spot for these models. With the other fantasy game in the works, I thought it made some sense to get some elf models ready anyway so here we are. 

So the plan.

The Lore master is painted but not based. The banner/cogsmith is completely finished.
The Swordmasters on the left are about 70% done, everything else is grey.

The plan as it stands now, is to get the whole army assembled, glued to bases and then painted. I'll do all the basing at the end. I figure in addition to games like Age of Sigmar, this will give me a good start for Oathmark if my copy ever arrives, as well as some models for a skirmish game.

Wish me luck

Building a Better Workbench - Painting on The Go

I suppose "Better" might be the wrong word choice here. In the days before the quarantine, (henceforth referred to as "the before times") I found myself painting at the shop once a week and frequently spending time outside of the house. At Cold Wars I spent quite a bit of time with the wonderful folks over at Hobby U chatting and painting. Thankfully everyone there was kind enough to provide or share supplies but I found myself spending a lot of time thinking of what kind of things I'd need for a travel set up, for things like shows, paint nights etc. After talking a bit with Impending Duff and seeing his set up at a class he ran here, I opted for the Creature Caster carrying case. This post is one part a review of that and one part my "must-have" tools, supplies, etc.

First up the bag.

I ordered the bag around the time Adepticon would have happened and postal issues aside received it pretty quickly. I opted to add on a couple extra trays but I'll get back to that in a moment. The bag by itself comes with a tray that will hold 48 paints and a sheet of 3" pluck foam.

As you can see the bag also has a strap and extra pockets for holding odds and ends. This pocket here has specific holders for brushes as well. Probably more slots than I'll need but a nice option.  The bag is high quality and at first glance at least seems to fill all my needs. of course this is before trying to fill it. 

I won't pretend to want to drag my (incredibly) messy desk with me on the road but it would be nice to be able to bring a single project with me depending on where I'm going. I think the bag was designed pretty clearly with the Pro-Acryl paints in mind but the Vallejo Bottles seem to fit just fine.

When picking and choosing what I want to bring with me I set out with the intention of basically having a home set up and a road set up separate. I'm incredibly fortunate to have easy access to a hobby shop so my original plan was to simply buy doubles of the key paints as a sort of neutral palette to start.

Here are what I deem "essential" These are basically paints that I use in the majority of my projects.

Vallejo

Leather Brown

Black Grey

Iraqi Sand

Burnt Umber

Beige Brown

Ivory

Panzer Aces

Flesh Base

Old Wood

Army Painter

Strong Tone

Dark Tone

Chainmail

Citadel

Fleshshade

Retributor Armor

Greenstuff World

Black Ink

This leaves 34 slots to add specific colors for specific tasks which should be more than enough. My one critcism is that the slots really aren't wide enough for the citadel bottles but The majority of my citadel "must haves" have been transfered into empty vallejo style bottles. If you're mostly using citadel, p3 or Tamiya for example, you'll want to take advantage of the pluck foam.

The next step in the storage war is essential painting accessories.

List is as follows

Red Grass Games Palette

Red Grass Games Palette Paper

Brushes

Hobby Knife

Super Glue

Citadel Handle

I'm sure it doesn't need much explaining as the logic here is pretty simple. The bare essentials for any given paint session. Not pictured is the wavy attachment for the palette but I definitely made sure to bring that with me as I use a lot of washes and that attachment is essential for that.

At this point I packed the bag up and discovered a pretty major criticism. The way the straps attach to the bag, picking the bag up by the strap results in it tipping 90 degrees immediately. If it was easier to keep level I'd be comfortable leaving it on with paint in the pallet but as is, I took the strap off. Perhaps loaded completely with paint it does level out but I don't see myself filling the case every time.

All in all I'm happy with the bag, even more so after taking the set up out of my normal hobby area and into the living room to test it out. I'm sure it'll get use when the isolation is over.

You can see that it really does have the room to get some painting done "on the go." In the future, I'll use the spare foams to pack specific projects to work on and switch out on the fly. The case would easily double as a carrying case for skirmish games like Kill Team as well which is a nice bonus. All in All I'm pretty happy and can recommend it. 

Heres what I managed to get done before retreating back into the hobby room.

Checking in from Quarantine

I'll admit I'm having some difficulty adjusting to the quarantine times and my actual hobby time has been a little sparse to say the least. It's been hard to paint wargame stuff when I'm not sure I'll get to use it again. With that in mind, I've shifted my focus over to finishing my Sisters of Battle in time for Stellacon. I painted this one during one of hour TrenchRunner Google Hangout Sessions.
This is the new Sisters of Battle Imagifier. I tried out contrast paints on the "statue" but probably could have achieved the same effect with a sepia wash or thinned out Iraqui sand. Can you tell I've been working on my Photo Booth?

Unfortunately that has been the only figure I've finished. We've been passing a lot of the time with Pandemic Legacy. For people not familiar with Pandemic, it's a co-op boardgame about dashing around the world and curing diseases. Players take actions each turn to treat diseases, move, or research the cure. Legacy cranks all this up to 11 by adding a campaign of sorts where actions in one game can affect the next. In legacy, you add stickers to the board and cards, tear things up and even open secret boxes that change the way the game works. It's all very exciting for someone who loves game design to see how it all comes together. I wont spoil anything else but if you're a fan of the original it is definitely worth checking out.

Finally I've been taking some stock on where I really want to go next. I had a big grand ambition to paint my game of thrones stuff but its been hard to be motivated to paint it right now with my regular gaming partner isolating. I recently interview Robey Jenkins about Horizon Wars: Zero Dark and I think I may try some solo Sci-fi gaming. Oathmarks caught my eye and I may give that a shot. All in all things will be scattered while I try and sort through finding my motivation

AHPC X (5) - Post Challenge Check In

As everyone is aware at this point, the Tenth Annual Analogue Hobbies Paint Challenge is over. I thought I'd take this opportunity to talk a bit about the challenge and outline my plan of attack for the next few months.

I've harped on this over and over and over throughout the challenge that I'd like to paint and play a few different games. In particular; This is Not a Test, Necromunda, Age of Hannibal, and Poseidon's Warriors. Shortly into the challenge I also made the point that I'd love to play through War in Rohan before the next book comes out and as a result I think I mostly painted towards these goals.

The vast majority of my points this time around came from Necromunda. I finished the plastic box sets for Cawdor, Delaque, and Goliath as well as started on a lot of terrain. I now have 3 full tables worth of terrain for these games and in particular I finished and entered the Death Ray Designs Armageddon table into the challenge.

This being done will now give me enough terrain to totally play a game of necromunda with totally painted everything which for me is a rare feat. I found some lists for the plastic box sets so I figure I'll be trying it sooner rather than later and because it was all painted in the challenge I'm counting this as a win.

I also managed to finish all of the boats for the roman naval game. I'm not smitten with the rules yet but because I printed everything I really didnt waste a lot of money on the project and will be trying it again.

Now, in the not so great news, I've completely stalled out on Age of Hannibal. I knew painting 10mm figures was a bit of a chore and I just completely sidelined the project. The original hope was to get the game cracked out and playable but I think I'll just chip away on it here and there. Everything I've painted so far for it was posted in the previous post on this blog.

This is Not a Test is an interesting one. Once I have enough stuff to play this game, I'll be able to try out 7TV Apocalypse as well so its definitely high on my list. I even went as far as to prep a bunch of figures for it. The only thing that I painted unfortunately was the shanty building but I now have a absolute pile of stuff from crooked dice and a bunch of stuff primed and ready and will be simply rolling this project into the next wave.

On the Lord of the Rings front, I painted a dozen riders of Rohan, 10 Beserkers and a few characters. I've been given the go ahead to showcase a big diorama piece in the shop so it is in my best interest to get moving on this and my plan now is to paint up all my dunlending figures before tackling the Warriors of Rohan. They announced a hobby book for LoTR so I think I still have a bit of time before the next book in the series comes out.

Going Forward
I think one of my major motivators was structuring my painting into specific games. I'll be continuing this trend going forward and picking 3 or so specific projects to focus on. I really want to begin thinning my hoarde this year and I think its a good way to motivate myself. That said...

This next wave of painting's projects includes:
This is Not a Test
This is a no brainer. I own such a pile of stuff for it and have been printing more buildings for it. I have some giant ants and some mutants by Crooked Dice on the table now and after that I think I'll make some lists and try the game out with some basic terrain. This is also going to open the table to games like 7TV Apocalypse and Zone Alfa.

Game of Thrones
I bought heavily into this game while I was at Cold Wars and got a chance to try it. So far I love it and am in love with the figures and cannot wait to play more and start painting. I've basically got enough stuff for 4 factions now and am probably going to start painting that soon.

Sisters of Battle
I'm really into painting these figures and would like to finish the ones I have at least and get 500 points or so ready for some games we have planned this summer. I just finished the first squad of Seraphim in the challenge and ordered one of the new characters to paint. I haven't bought too crazily into the army yet so I'd like to get ahead of it for once.

Blood and Valor
Finally WWI has been on my radar for a long time and I'd really like to get a game of it on the table soon. I have a pretty big pile of the amera vacuform trench already done and a platoons worth of british painted and ready to go (though I may rebase just to match my more modern basing sensibilities.)
I put together a 150 point German list and am eagerly awaiting a test game.

So there you have it. In no particular order there are a few projects that didnt make this "work on immediately" cut or that I'll probably chip away on including but not limited to;
Oak and Iron, Age of Hannibal, Zone Raiders, Infinity, Crisis Protocol, Batman ect
Additionally I'd really like to take a short break from wargame painting to finish a bust or figure kit just for my display case. In the wake of all this Covid-19 crazyness I have no idea if I'll be entering in shows this year so I think it's important to me to continue to crack out projects like these.

Some stuff to look forward to for sure!

Shanty Town (1) - Building Something from Nothing

Something I've mentioned before is my growing interest in post apocalypse gaming. I've long been a fan of This is Not a Test and back in November at Fall-in I picked up the 7TV Post-Apocalypse Starter Set (and a small fortune in figures from Crooked Dice) from my friends over at Phalanx Consortium. This have sat idly by while I've debated what exactly I wanted to do with the project. In the mean time, I've also picked up a bunch of the Lead Adventure Forum Stalker Figures and have decided it was time to get some terrain going. The stage is set, lets dive right into the content.

This article was also published on the Michigan Toy Soldier News From the Front Blog

Building a Shanty Town: Painting Tutorial


Every so often, I'll come across some sort of figure, terrain piece, vehicle, whatever that just screams "paint me!" While browsing thingiverse after game night one week, I discovered this amazing bundle of files to make a totally modular Shanty Town by Terrain4Print. If you have a printer of your own and want to follow along with my guide the files are available below. Here's the example photo that started it all.
Buildings
Barricades
Junk
Obstacles

Any 3D printing project is gonna start in the same place, at the slicer. I kept my settings pretty standard and opted for a .2 layer height using prusaslicers default .2(Speed) profile. Let's address something up front, Layer Lines. I don't deal with them. When comparing the costs, availability of models, ease of access, range, modularity etc etc etc between 3D printed terrain and commecially available stuff, layer lines are simply part of the equation. If you don't like the lines (and honestly, I don't love them) you can spend some time sanding, then finish with a primer like 3D Prime from Badger to hide as many of the lines as possible. You can also limit the lines from the beginning by printing at a smaller layer height but because of the sheer volume of stuff coming off my Prusa Printer, I almost always choose to opt for speed over detail. Once a part is loaded into the slicer, its off to the printer to wait.

In this particular pack from Thingiverse, you simply pick 4 walls you like, 2 short and 2 long, and print the roof that fits to that design. I chose 4 walls, 2 with doors and windows, found the correct roof and began printing. The total print time for the 5 parts for this building was around 20 hours and was printed in Prusament Vanilla White

I assembled the building in the usual way with super glue. There's a pretty easy system for making the roofs removable but I decided to glue the roof on for stability.

Once the building is assembled it's time to hit it with some paint. I usually prime all my 3D printed stuff. I decided to prime these with Army Painter Gun Metal spray. The majority of our building is this metalic corrugated metal material and this will save a lot of time in the long run.

The first step is pretty simple. Wash a handful of the panels with Black and a handful with dark brown. There's no right or wrong here just, vary the colors a bit so its not all the same shade of metalic.

Next up, I took the building to the workbench to basecoat all those non-metallic details (bricks, tires, wood, cloth) in what ever colors I felt like. I used my usual colors for these, Old Wood and Flesh Shadows from the Vallejo Panzer Aces line for the wood and bricks, Vallejo Black Grey for the tires and Brown Violet for the cans.

Once all the colors are laid down and we're happy with the general scheme it's time to do some weathering. I took the building back down to my game room, grabbed some Vallejo Acrylic Washes and Weathering Effects and a cheap flat AK brush and went to town.  I used the following washes to get the job done.

At this point you simply want to weather the model, I started by washing all of the "details" with black or dark brown depending on the material. The wooden bits and brick parts got a brown wash whereas the tires and washing machine got a black wash. The cans got both. Using the dark rust wash, I painted splotches (technical term) any where the metal was worn or I wanted to break up the color a bit, typically where two panels met but again there is no wrong answer. The Rust texture is "stippled on" roughly. over areas where the rust should look really bad. There's just a hint of texture to this one and I love the effect it leaves. Finally, I sparingly added some streaking grime near where the roof meets the wall in spots to show a gross build up.

At this point I'm calling the piece done. This is the kind of project you can pant in a day and with how quick these paint up, I'll be able to cover a small table in a weekend. I also think its a great first project for someone wanting to dip their toes into a terrain project because, believe it or not, this is actually only the second terrain piece I've ever finished painting. Most of the terrain I've done has either been pre-painted or I've had it painted by someone else.

Next up on my agenda for this project is to start doing some multi floor buildings, then its time to print and paint scatter terrain. Finally, I'll finish the project with a wall to defend the town.

Flintcon 2020

Each year in Flint Michigan, a friend of ours runs a nice little convention called FlintCon. Its a pretty short drive, there's usually a decent turn out for the flea market and the games are usually pretty good. I'm very much so a "convention-fan" so I don't usually miss an opportunity to go to a show more or less in my backyard.

Photos after the Jump