Fully Painted: Radioactive Space Mutants

After seeing Karl's Sedition Wars Vanguard troops, I decided to paint up the Strain figures to oppose them. Since I had also split Deadzone with Karl and had the Plague figures from that waiting for paint, I opted to join these two forces together with a common paint job. Both sets of figures are slimy space mutants with a love of capri pants, so they fit together naturally.

I chose a cartoony, radiation-burned, bright, and sloppy paint scheme for these figures to highlight their relatively soft details. Overall, these are good but not amazing sculpts. The Sedition Wars figures have more (but shallower) details on the bodies, but details like faces and hands on both lines tend to melt into blobs.  Like Karl, I ran into a few pieces that did not quite fit together, especially the two halves of the Strain stage 4 body.  I was able to fit them together by softening  the smaller piece in hot water and pressing it into place.

The Plague and Strain figures are both split into a series that get progressively larger and more infected.

Plague stage 3, two Strain phase 1, Plague stage 3, and Strain phase 2

Strain phase 2, Plague stage 2

Plague stage 1, Strain phase 4

I chose not to paint the Scythe Witch and Cthonian sculpts from Sedition Wars at this time, because I do not feel they fit with the rest of these figures.

-- Tim, Chicago Skirmish Wargames club member

Would You Explore These Dark Depths?

Right on schedule, my shipment from 2014's Dwarven Forge Caverns Kickstarter arrived last fall. I participated in the Dungeon Tiles Kickstarter as well, so I was excited to use these new pieces on the table alongside my existing collection.

First, though, I needed a paint scheme. Aside from a few splatters of blood, slime and ooze, my dungeon tiles were mostly monochromatic, as you can see in this pic from a recent game.

That's fine for a dungeon, but the level of sculpting and detail on these cavern pieces begged for a more diverse palette. So I tried added in some bursts of color to the various textures and growths on the cavern walls. Depending on the scenario, these scenic bits can either represent verdant fungi, toxic mold, or even precious gems and ores to be mined and extracted by an enterprising underground expedition.

You be the judge. Would you light a torch and plumb these dark depths?

- Patrick, Chicago Skirmish Wargames club member

A Sci-Fi Salvage Crew, and Six Reason to Support a Kickstarter

At the club we often trade projects, and here's a look at one such transaction. My end of the deal included this small chem station terrain piece and a yet-to-be-finished vehicle. The figures below are Pat's side of the deal. I based them up and gave a thorough review of these guys more than two years ago, so it was high time to actually get some paint on these models. A project exchange seemed like the perfect chance to finally get this diverse crew of space salvagers painted up.

Like the Van Saar, this crew also gets its own cigar box carrying case. I've really enjoyed converting these into classy storage for miniature warbands.

Let's open it up shall we and see what surprises Pat has in store for us?

 
First off, we have an Alpha Forge Salvage Crew member, Reaper Chronoscope's "Rosie Chronotechnician" and a Rezolution "CSO Classic Field Engineer." The Salvage Crew member is out of production, but the others are still available. The Field Engineer is a particularly good bargain. He and most of the CSO Classic figures from the Rezolution game retail for only $3 each, and that includes some nice sci-fi troopers.

I love all the gear on these guys. Rosie doesn't even have a gun, and it's up to the gamer whether the instrument in the Engineer's hand is a weapon or hand tool. It's rare to find so many unarmed sci-fi figs, but they're great for a ship's crew.

The next six figures are from the "Salvage Crew" line. Originally made by Alpha Forge for the Star Mogul game and later re-released by Mega Minis, they represent six fantastic reasons to pledge for the the Salvage Crew Kickstarter that is wrapping up this month.

When he closed the doors on Mega Miniatures and sold off its masters and molds, owner Johnny Lauck kept a batch for himself, and now they're available through this Kickstarter. It may be one of the last chances to get ahold of these figures, and it's certainly the biggest bargain they've ever been offered in. The $30 buy-in includes shipping and currently gets you 27 miniatures! Here's the breakdown so far.

• 15 Alpha Forge Salvage Crew (modified from separate head models to single piece)
• 5 Demonblade Games figures (some with minor mods, mostly removing mutations)
• 5 Multi-part droids from Alpha Forge 
• 2 Additional droids 

I'm a fan of both these lines of figures, was glad when Johnny got them back in production the first time and am very pleased they've got another another shot here.

So here's a taste of what's in the Kickstarter. Note that the figures below are the previous versions that had separate heads chosen from a random selection, so they are slightly different from what's in the Kickstarter. Also I've done a bit of modding that I'll note where necessary. The bases and angles may make their heights irregular, but they're all solidly heroic, averaging 28mm from sole to eye.

Here's the SAW gunner, a crew member security guard and salvage tech.

Like Rosie and the engineer, I love that the technician has some heavy cutting equipment and a torch that leaves it up to the player whether he's armed or not. With a chunky assault rifle (boltgun?) and a shotgun on his back, the guard could easily serve as a bounty hunter in Necromunda.

Here's the last of the crew. The trenchcoated leader has a Pig Iron head. The woman with the center is a missile launcher trooper in the Kickstarter, but I've swapped in a Heresy Miniatures assault rifle.

There's nothing too interesting on the back, just a nice assortment of packs for stowing salvage. I probably should have removed the brace of missiles from the lady, but they could be some sort of salvage.

There you have it. a very nice flavorful salvage crew. I've got a couple more working-class sci-fi crew figures like these. Hopefully I'll find some way to con Pat into painting them and grow the team a bit. I've got a soft spot for these kind of rag-tag space travelers. The sort of folks who just want to survive in the 'verse, find a crew, find a job and keep on flying.

-- Karl, Chicago Skirmish Wargames club member

Painting Nethyrmaul, the Undying

Last fall, when several club members were gleefully pawing through the treasure trove of Reaper Bones figures from their first Kickstarter campaign, I was twiddling my thumbs in anticipation, hoping for a chance to trade or buy a few choice figures from various club members. I got my chance when Jon hooked me up with Nethyrmaul the Undying, a colossal undead dragon. Here he is in unpainted PVC.

I've got a fairly large undead army at this point, so Nethyrmaul will make for a gloriously gruesome centerpiece if I ever get it on the field at the same time (maybe for a Kings of War mega-game?).

This figure was by far the largest individual miniature (can I even use that word? This thing is bigger than a Barbie doll!) that I've ever assembled and painted. As with many multi-part kits from the Bones line, the various pieces didn't quite line up perfectly, so I had to do some trimming, sanding and clamping during assembly.

Once I primed it with gesso, I was suddenly paralyzed with indecision -- confronted with a blank canvas, how would I decide on a neat-o paint scheme to truly leave my mark on this epic miniature? I finally opted for deep green scales drybrushed up through yellow and white, alongside mottled purple and magenta for the exposed rotting fleshy bits. The figure had a pretty impressive integral base, so I glued the whole thing onto a CD and added gravel, wood bark chips, flocking and grass tufts to finish off the base. Here's a look at the finished product.

Visually speaking, Nethyrmaul is going to absolutely dominate the battlefield whenever he shows up. Now I've just go to convince the club to play some more Kings of War, and soon!

-- Patrick, Chicago Skirmish Wargames club member

Exploring the Underworld with Dwarven Forge Game Tiles

I backed the Dwarven Forge Game Tiles Kickstarter earlier this year, and last week my pledge awards arrived: three sets of basic tiles plus all the extras that were unlocked during the (extremely) successful campaign. I was literally awash in rectangular dungeon walls and floors, and I immediately set about painting my dungeon tiles in preparation for last week's game night.

The appeal of dungeon tiles is that they paint up fast and easy. They're made of a hard PVC-type plastic material that is dark green/brown right out of the box, and they don't require any sort of priming or undercoating, so I was literally able to paint about half of my loot (20 pounds or so) in about two days of casual work. My formula (shamelessly borrowed from the Dwarven Forge guys) was to pick out one or two bricks per wall with a detail color like brown or green, then drybrush the whole thing with gray. An individual piece could be completed in about two minutes at this rate.

Anyway, I set up a serviceable dungeon layout using my available tiles. I've got future plans to drastically increase the potential floor space of my layouts by using vinyl flooring tiles from the home improvement store, instead of the little 2x2 floor pieces that shipped with the Dwarven Forge Kickstarter, but for now I just used whatever I had managed to paint up. Here's the layout I came up with.

We decided to run a quick game of Song of Blades & Heroes, our go-to fantasy ruleset, to put these new dungeon tiles through their paces. I put together a warband of ratmen led by a pair of fearsome gnoll warriors and backed up by a shambling sewer monster. Josh fielded a band of werewolves that he painted up for our fantasy campaign. And with that, we were off!

Josh's werewolves loped forward from their deployment zone, seeking parcels of treasure that were scattered around the dungeon. 

Ganesha Games publishes an excellent dungeon-crawling supplement called Song of Gold & Darkness, but we didn't opt to use that this time -- we just used straight-up SBH.

Across the board, my ratmen hissed and skittered through the dungeon. 

We didn't distribute the treasure parcels quite right, so Josh was able to pounce on the scenario objectives and get in position to win the game, but that didn't stop us from having a good old-fashioned dungeon brawl in the damp, gloomy depths.

So, are you sick of the color gray yet? You better not be -- I've got another 20 pounds of this stuff to paint up! My plan is to go back and paint some little details in the halls and corridors: slime puddles, blood splatters, maybe throw in a few discarded weapons or armor or bones. What you see in the pics above is just a starting point for my dungeon odyssey.

But in all seriousness, I've got to say that I had a fantastic experience as a backer of this Dwarven Forge Kickstarter. They are consummate professionals and kept up communication with their backers throughout the entire journey. Everything was delivered on time (no easy feat considering there were more than 5,000 individual backers on this KS) and reports of missing pieces are rare. I'll definitely consider pledging again if they do a follow-up efforts to make more dungeon tiles.

I'll leave you with this awesome pic, showing three of my ratmen squaring off against Josh's monster bird creature. So awesome!

Stay tuned for more dungeon delves featuring this fun new terrain!

-- Patrick, Chicago Skirmish Wargames club member

A Visit to Adepticon 2013

Mike and I spent Saturday at Adepticon. This was my first time at a gaming convention, and it was rewarding to see so many gamers congregating in one place. We got there bright and early at 9 a.m. when the vendor hall opened. The first thing I picked up was the swag bag! I registered late, so I got a small bag. Inside were a few assorted Secret Weapon bases, a Minitaire paint sample (orange), and two miniatures: a Brushfire fantasy mouse, and some sort of goat man with a flame thrower. Here they are:

I had a coupon in my swag bag for a free mini from Ninja Division to promote their Robotech RPG Tactics Kickstarter, so I visited their booth and picked out a Zentraedi Regult Battlepod. Unfortunately, their booth was packed, so I didn't get a chance to demo the game. From what I saw, the game looked really cool. The free mini is metal, although I believe the Kickstarter will be producing plastic figures.

I stopped by Forge World next and picked up a model that I have wanted for a while: a Dark Angels Venerable Dreadnought. I also snagged dual autocannon arms for it. I was hoping to pick up some Tau stuff, but they were already cleaned out, since Tau is the flavor of the week.

While wandering the vendor room, I spotted a familiar piece of terrain. A while back, I had helped Karl paint one of these buildings for our upcoming Little Wars event. I stopped at the booth to chat, and discovered Rust Forge LLC -- they work with Proxie Models, and were representing them at the convention. They had some great modular shipping crate kits available, so I picked up a three-pack. These can be built a number of different ways. Look for an in-depth review here soon!

My wife asked me to find her a wolf miniature. Always happy to please, I stopped by the WarGamma booth and picked up a rearing battle wolf.

With that important mission completed, we stopped by the Spikey Bits booth next. They were clearing out their 40k bits due to changes in Games Workshop's sales agreements. Mike took advantage of this, big time. Here's a list of what he picked up at Spikey Bits:

• 4 packs of Cadian shock troops 
• 5 heavy weapon squads 
• 4 sentinels 
• 21 kneeling legs 
• part of an IG heavy weapon team 
• a Space Wolves something or other gun 
• a space marine scout heavy bolter 
• three bits bags of heavy weapons crews 
• a tank commander with dual machine guns 
• four assembled shock troopers 
• some dice including a scatter die 
• a couple heavy weapon tripods 
• a pack of Necron warriors 
• two Basilisks that are missing the railing for the gun deck 

I think he cleared them out of Imperial Guard bits bags. I picked up a Warmachine Cygnar Battlegroup, because I like the models, although I have never played it before. I also bought a Tau Cadre Fireblade on sale. At this point, having dropped a sizable chunk of cash between the two of us, we decided to go check out some of the tournament and demo rooms. On the way to the main hall, though, I stopped at the Badger booth, and acquired a quick release attachment for my airbrushes.

The first place we visited in the main hall was the Wreck-Age display. I had heard a little about the game and was eager to learn more about it. The demo table was full, so I chatted for a while with Matt Sears from Hyacinth Games. Turns out he's a regular reader of the Chicago Skirmish Wargames blog! He explained the basics of the game and showed me the model line.

Once the demo table cleared, Mike and I sat down to try it out. It was a fun, streamlined post-apocalyptic ruleset set in a world being rebuilt by survivors. I really enjoyed it -- the game is very episodic, with continuity between scenarios. In the playtest, I fielded a faction called the Stakers, tasked with protecting a homestead. My goal was to stop the intruders at all costs. I only controlled two models: a guy with a rifle perched on a rooftop, and a guy patrolling near a fence with a shotgun. Here they are:

Mike was representing the Drifters, a group of nomads, looking to raid the settlement's food stores. His warband consisted of 1 human and a pair of boars strapped with explosives!

Mike's goal was to get the boars up to the fence so they could blow it up. He advanced, but I got in a lucky shot, hitting the first boar and detonating its explosives! The second boar died on the next turn, with the fence still intact. The Drifter retreated, planning to return in the next scenario with reinforcements. The homestead was safe! After the demo, we each picked out a free Wreck-Age mini from a big box of random figures.

After talking to the guys and playing the game, I was really excited about it, and picked up a special Adepticon-only starter set. It came with 14 minis (Stakers and Drifters, including exploding boars, of course!), a two-part resin fence, a dilapidated vendor cart, rules, counters, and scenarios. One really nice touch to this set is that it came with both standard slotted bases, and lipped bases for each figure! In addition, I bought a second vendor cart and some fantastic vagrant minis. These new additions will add some flavor to many different games.

Matt and I discussed having a Wreck-Age demo day with CSW at some point in the near future, so keep an eye out for news about that.

Shortly after that, Mike had to leave, so I decided to try out a Warmachine game (since I picked up a starter set, after all). I played a demo game and had a great time! I've already got a good start on my Cygnar faction.

Up next on my schedule was a painting seminar given by Les Bursly from AwesomePaintJob.com. He demonstrated some advanced airbrush techniques for lighting and gradient effects, and then showed us some fantastic weathering techniques, including paint chips, engine exhaust, and rust streaks. I'm going to try these out on the shipping crates I purchased.

He blew my mind when he showed us what he uses as a gloss coat: Pledge floor wax! For attending the seminar, I got a 12-pack of the new Minitaire Ghost Tints. These are fantastic airbrush-ready candy style paints. You can use them for tinting existing colors, or doing all sorts of special effects. On the way out I stopped by the Paulson Games table. He was still setting up, but took some time to talk with me about his conversion bits line, and his upcoming game Mecha Front. There will be a Kickstarter for this game starting soon, so keep an eye out.

It was a fantastic, but long day! I'm looking forward to next year. And now, if you'll excuse me, I've got a huge new pile of stuff to build and paint!

-- Josh, Chicago Skirmish Wargames club member

Fully Painted: Stonehaven Dwarven Adventurers

Last November, I received my batch of loot from the fully funded Stonehaven Dwarven Adventurers Kickstarter campaign. As this was the first (and to date, only) Kickstarter I've ever been a part of, I've gotta say it was a great experience. The Stonehaven guys sent out timely, informative updates throughout the process, and my miniatures (15 dwarves covering a ton of possible archetypes and loadouts) arrived basically on time.

Since then I've been working my way slowly through them. Here's the first batch of completed figures. From left, we have: bard, berserker, fallen king, necromancer, mage, rogue and highwayman. Very cool figures, with tons of character! Those are resin flagstone bases that were supplied with the Kickstarter. 

I undercoated these guys in light gray -- as opposed to black, my longtime undercoat -- and tried to give the figures a brighter, more colorful paintjob than I usually do. What can I say, the sculpts seem a bit more lighthearted than the typical dark fantasy guy from Reaper or Games Workshop.

-- Patrick, Chicago Skirmish Wargames club member