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Craig

Drone – Letting the Magic Blue Smoke out

Posted on December 6, 2015

With the wedding done (and the ring done), Russ and I can put more attention on building our drones. The weather may stop us from flying for a bit, but building is a lot of fun! (and occasionally frustrating)

My PDB came in, which was conveniently timed for when I had more time. And it fit, unlike the last one. Here’s a photo of the correct PDB, and coincidentally the incorrect one is that white board below it.

This is also a photo of the Magic Blue Smoke not being inside anymore. If you look carefully at the board, there are 2 black chips in the middle of it. The left chip has a hole in it. Why does it have a hole in it Craig? If you look at the right of the board, at the top is a section labelled “5V” and below that still on the edge is a section labelled “12V”. That “12V” is not for 12V of input. It is for 12V of output. Output. It turns out that if you put 12V into the output, that chip on the left sparks, and the Magic Blue Smoke escapes through a hole that’s just been created. No bueno.

There’s still lots to do, so while it’s silly that I have to order yet another board, it’s fine. The board will arrive in a couple weeks, and in the meantime I’ve soldering all of my parts to the wrong board (the white one), because it still works as a PDB, it’s just the wrong size. Russ, who has a working and correctly sized PDB, has screwed all of his parts onto his copter frame and has something that resembles a copter.

However, functionality wise they’re in the same place. We plugged the receiver in, plugged the battery in, bound the transmitter to the receiver and…nothing. We thought the little motors would spin up.

We assumed that something needed configuring in the flight controller (FC), so we plugged that in and started poking around. No luck. And in the meantime, Russ snapped the USB port off his FC, so now we needed to figure out how to use the bluetooth module with it. We have bluetooth modules, but I’d been waiting to figure them out. No longer…

We had some pizza and mucked about until it was time to put it all done.

I’m surprised that I’m not frustrated by my PDB exploding. I guess I’m just taking it in stride that electronics take time and patience, but it’s very unlike me. 😛 I remember building a computer with my Dad in the early 1990s for the first time, and the weeks of trying new things and playing until it finally turned on without beeping endlessly at us. This is no different, except that now we have the internet (we had internet then, but it wasn’t nearly as populated!).

Work-in-progress

Skorne – Krea – In Progress

Posted on December 2, 2015

This guy was primed and sitting on my desk at the same time as the Beast Handlers, so I painted some of him with left over colours from them, mostly.

White primer again. The metal was as previous. The skin is still in progress, but right now it’s the SW Red Black, SW Amethyst and some Dheneb Stone in places to clean up spilling from other areas. The downside of deciding to keep a surface white-ish, is that when you aren’t careful with other colours, you have to fix it up later.

I tried to use my phones flash here because it was really late and there wasn’t enough light. I think while it didn’t wash out my colours, it’s still a little odd looking. Or maybe the paint job is just odd…

Work-in-progress

Skorne – Paingiver Beast Handlers

Posted on November 28, 2015

These guys are the basis of most armies that I’ll be making with Skorne, so they were pretty high priority to get painted up. I kept thinking of taking photos mid-steps, but instead kept painting. It felt pretty good to finish them over the weekend, but now you only get 2 photos. 🙂

I started with white primer (thank heavens) and Basius bases.

The cloaks started with Bloodletter glaze, which is super orange. Then Secret Weapon Red Black, which wasn’t enough again. Then Seraphim Sepia. Then I realized what I wrote wrong when I wrote about Morghoul — I’d done another layer of Bloodletter. The thing about this second layer, is that because now it’s going over a brown, it tames out the orange and makes it RED, which is awesome and very satisfying to finally get to the colour you were hoping for. 🙂

The scarves/ribbons/whatever are Tallarn Sand, Seraphim Sepia, Tallarn, Ushapti. Before the Ushapti everything felt like it was melding together, as I had a bunch of pale orange/pale beige together. One downside of the white primer+glaze technique is that it does require a lot of faith in your layers, because before I near the final stages it’s all very pale and washed out.

The metal was as I’ve done in previous Skorne models. And the bases were a modification of the Immortals — Abbadon Black watered down, drybrush Codex and Fortress, Guilliman Blue, I think some Secret Weapon Heavy Body Black, then some more drybrushing. The tracks were Tallarn, Sepia, Tallarn, and a drybrush of Ushapti.

Super happy they’re done! Unfortunately, I still don’t have a 50 point army fully painted and I’m hoping to play in Foodmachine (which may have passed by the time you read this :)). Realistically I’ve got the Swordsmen and Arcuarii still to paint for 50 points (I keep wanting to write “50ss”…) full painted, which is 12 models in a week and a half, which isn’t going to happen.

Looking at War Room, if I painted the Bronzeback I would have 50 points with Morghoul fully painted. But it would not be a finely tuned list, and would probably frenzy almost every round due to Fury issues. BUT IT WOULD BE PAINTED!

Featured Images

Hordes – Cyclops Brute

Posted on November 24, 2015

When I get into a new game, I need something visual to draw me to it. I consider myself a game player primarily, despite this blog, but I like cool looking things more than I like powerful things. (Malifaux is an excellent game, because everything is cool looking, and everything is powerful!)

When I first found Warmachine/Hordes many years ago, I looked though their catalog to find models that spoke to me. The Cyclops Brute in the Skorne faction was the model that did it for me, with the Immortals being the next ones. Then when the big stompy elephants were pretty cool looking (as opposed to all of the Warjacks of the game, which look bloody stupid!), I was sold!

This was the only model painted in the army for the longest time. When I got into it, I noticed that very few people had painted models, at all. (Todd, who is now an excellent commission painter, was an exception). I wanted to be different, so I painted this guy.

After I was unable to convince anyone to play it with me, he sat unused for a long while. He might have been the first time I used a GW wash and white primer! I remember his pants are white primer, with a red wash and then a black wash and that’s it and I thought they looked so cool! (I still kind of do, although I can see how simple they are :))

Still really love the look of the cyclopses in this game! Plus the fluff…they are all but brutal animals, but they can see into the near future and can predict what their opponent will do.

Featured Images

Hordes – Titan Gladiator Final

Posted on November 20, 2015

After my last section, I did the red glaze on the skin, but I wasn’t super happy with it so I ended up going back in with really thin layers of the lighter and darker grey, as well as with the amethyst combination in the under areas.

I did the green glaze over all the gold and I really liked it, but went a little far. As well, with all of the other glazes the gold had lost it’s shine, so I went back along 30% of the edges with the Dwarf Bronze, and then 5% of the edges with Mithril Silver to give some variation. This gold is most of the model, so it was important to change it up a little.

The back banner was fun and a little frustrating. I used a couple layers of the Bloodletter glaze which was still super orange. I did a layer of the SW Red Black, and decided to get some more red in it and did some really light layers of Mephiston Red which made it a lot redder. Then I took the Amethyst mix and weathered the banner a bunch. I got impatient in a few spots, and the glaze had dried along the edges and was still wet in the middle and it left a big ring. So I had to go back with the Mephiston and start again.

Lastly I took a number of really light layers of Vallejo Amarillo Lunar Moon Yellow and lightly painted in the yellow star, to help keep the banner visible even under the layers.

Here’s the metal one!

And here’s the new plastic one! Much easier to paint because it’s so light!

And here they are together!

Musings & Meta

Actually playing 40k?

Posted on November 16, 2015

I don’t remember the last time I played 40k. (though here’s the last time I painted something 40k, and the last time I played in a 40k tournament!) Duke asked me the other week if I wanted a game, for old times sake and I said sure, if he organized it. Turns out he was more motivated than I thought, because we played the next weekend. 🙂

The rules were: 7th edition 40k, 1000 points, standard Combined Arms detachments, “no fuckiness” (no Lords of War, purchased terrain or flyers), and discard/redraw Maelstrom mission cards that were impossible (“impossible”, not “really hard”). I pulled out my Ork codex and started reading, as I think I’ve had a single game with this book, and maybe a single game in 7th ed. I couldn’t promise I would try to play 6th ed instead.

First — the new books are absolutely stunning. The ork codex made me desperately want to buy new models, the Gorka/Morkanauts are gorgeous, all the paint jobs are great and the page references back and forth are well done enough that it feels easy to find what you’re looking for.

I built a list to throw Duke off — no vehicles. I usually play all vehicles. 🙂 I took a Weirdboy, because PSYCHIC POWERS, 2 units of 24 boyz with 2 rokkits and a nob with pkeach, a unit of 12ish shootas, 1 unit of 12 lootas and 2 units of 5 deffkoptas.

Duke also tried to throw me off by playing Guard instead of Tau! He had a Russ, a Chimera full of vets, 3 sentinels, some autocannons, some lascannons, some Guardsmen, some of them with heavier weapons than others.

We rolled a Maelstrom mission scenario that had us drawing up to 3 Maelstrom mission cards at the start of each round. I really wanted to draw at the end of each round, because one of the things I miss about other games is the need to be involved in the game when it isn’t your turn. 40k is almost “sit back and wait” on your turn, except for some armour saves. Having next rounds cards in my hand during my opponents turn would give me something to scheme about, and also give me a bit more information on how to make tactical decisions about where to Jink/Go to Ground (just about the only decisions you have to make on your opponents turn).

We set up, and I outflanked with the 2 units of deffkoptas, and him with his sentinels. I put down my 3 units of boyz and lootas, screening my lootas behind the boyz. I discarded 3 Maelstrom mission cards before my turn started — the last of which because Duke’s only Psycher’s head exploded on his first turn! Turns 1 and 2 were mostly jockeying for position. The lack of Warboss in my list meant I couldn’t Waaagh to ensure I could get into his men! I don’t like forced models, and it’s disappointing that I think to play the melee game with Orks you need the Warboss. Also disappointing the the Weirdboy doesn’t have “first class” gear support — he can’t buy anything. Whereas you can buy the Big Mek things and maybe, with the right list, make him your Warlord.

A photo to break it up. I think near the end of turn 3. I’d had some lucky draws with mission cards and had cards for objectives that I already held. I gave them up, because I needed to press forward to clear out some of his firepower. My Weirdboy jumped a unit, trying to get onto an objective, but scattered away and landed in a pie-plate shaped huddle, no where that was useful. Duke wandered his vets over, cleared them off the board and then had free reign of my left flank.

One unit of deffkoptas didn’t come on until turn 4, which was very bad for me, and when they did come on they were on the wrong side! This left the above vets available to claim objectives in my deployment zone, as well as claiming Linebreaker (1VP for being in enemy deployment at end of the game) and some other mission cards.

Duke was ahead 9 to 4 at one point, and I was getting a little down because the dice weren’t pulling it off for me. Turn 3 I scored no points at all. The mission we drew, you had to score every turn. Because you draw up to 3, having cards still in your hand at the end of the round meant you had fewer available options to score points. I discarded a card that looked hard to get (which I ended up regretting) just to keep some variability in my hand. Particularly near the end of the game, drawing more cards gives you more options to get the +D3 VP cards, which is huge in winning. I got 3VPs from a card for killing his leader, another 1 because of just killing his leader, and 1 more from shooting an entire unit down, putting it at 9-9 which brought my spirits back up.

The thing I don’t like about certain games, is when you don’t feel like you have a game to play. If I hadn’t scored 5 in that round, it would have been a severe Duke-win, which means my turns 4-5-6 would just be me wandering around and seeing if I could stop Duke from scoring more, rather than having the ability to win. Getting those cards in hand, studying the board to determine how to get them, and executing the best I could, and then being rewarded for it, felt absolutely amazing.

This game feels more like Malifaux than it does 40k — you aren’t necessarily trying to kill everything to get points. The problem with “kill everything” games, is that the goal is to remove your opponents power from the board. To remove their agency, and their ability to play. When you make things other than killing the objective, you ensure that both players can continue to have fun because you still have things you can do. This is why Malifaux is brilliant, and why the core 40k ruleset is brilliant.

At the end, half of my deffkoptas performed well, and the other half failed repeated Ld7 tests to get me points. I didn’t have enough models in turn 6 to win the game, but did have enough to leave the game feeling like I’d done my best. The score, as shown above, was 15 to 12 for Duke.

Afterwards we talked a bit about the meta-game. Duke’s plan was to have a game, to see if it was still fun. If it wasn’t, that would have been another nail in the coffin of 40k — we haven’t played for a while, and if it hadn’t been fun then what would be the reason to keep all these hundreds of models around?

I went home and re-opened my codex and started dreaming of how to fit a [G|M]orkanaut into my case.

Work-in-progress

Drone – The sound of little motors

Posted on November 16, 2015

I’m stuck right now because the PCB I bought doesn’t fit on my frame (round peg, square hole problem) so I ordered another one and am waiting for it to arrive (and my local postman is a fucking idiot who can’t figure out “16th floor” means “put it in the mail slot for 1600”). We decided to assemble the motor system so we could figure out what direction the props were spinning in — you need 2 to spin clockwise and the other 2 to spin counter-clockwise.

We soldered the ESC to the motor, plugged the receiver into the ESC, and used some alligator clips to connect the battery to the ESC. Then we turned on a transmitter for the first time! It was super exciting when, minutes later, we had a motor spinning!

The problem was that the motors were (mostly) all spinning the same direction, which was bad because we thought we’d crossed enough wires to have half spin the other direction. We starred at them for a long while. Russ had 1 motor that was spinning counter-clockwise, and we couldn’t figure out how it was different from another one that was wired identically, but was spinning clockwise. Until I noticed that one of the two ESCs was upside down (it’s just a bundle of wires and micro-controller wrapped in black electrical tape…). Russ unsoldered it, and re-did it right side up and it spun counter-clockwise! He’d accidentally done one of his correctly!

Unfortunately, I’d accidentally done none of mine correctly, so I spent some time right it all.

Hoping my PCB comes in soon so I can assemble the brains of the copter!

(Using terms possibly wrong: every writer/blogger I read says “PCB” and I didn’t know what that stood for. It’s “printed circuit board”. Which is correct…but not nearly specific enough. In this context, the PCB is a “power distribution board” and should be initialismed “PDB”. But no one does, that I can see.)

Work-in-progress

Skorne – Immortals, pt 2

Posted on November 12, 2015

After Kelly commented that my Immortals looked ethereal like Return of the King, and some other dude said “they’re coming along!” I decided my Immortals apparently didn’t look finished. >.>

I don’t want to pull out my camera setup without a big pile of models to photograph, so here they are again via phone-camera and desk lamp.

Seething Ginger (who is posting a lot about Zaal 2!) posted this art for Immortals with the UA that I had already half-way copied, so I finished the job. Burnished Gold on the edges, with Nuln Oil to calm the brightness down and to re-shade the recesses. Blood for the Blood God for a quick’n’dirty gem paint job. Much less ethereal, I think! Do you think? 🙂

Featured Images

Hordes – Agonizer

Posted on November 8, 2015

Painting this guy was really neat. I did a really thin wash of Codex Grey over his entire body, and had planned to highlight up and shade down…except that because of the white primer he was already pretty contrasty.

I started from there by mixing SW Amethyst with some Golden matte medium and water and painted that into most of the crevasses and under him. The matte solves the problem I had of the SW washes being overly shiny in some places.

I used a wash of GW Abaddon Black, then the Waywatcher Green glaze in places to mix it up. Then highlighted back up with Codex Grey and then Fortress Grey, then mixed in some SW Amethyst to darken a bit, then mix in Dheneb Stone for the last highlight.

Work-in-progress

Drone – Another Hobby

Posted on November 4, 2015

I like typing, and I hope you like reading, so I’m going to write a bit about a new hobby for the winter – First Person View drone racing.

The hobby, for me, starts a lot earlier than actually racing with actual FPV. About a month ago Russ asked if I wanted to get into this. The price seemed right (like all hobbies, the price was a lie), so why not. We started from this article, which outlines all of the things you need to build a really inexpensive drone from parts. Which is why I’m writing about it here, because it involves building things!

The price started at $250ish USD, as the article says. We got the parts shipped from Banggood, no problem. I told Russ that I needed to focus on the ring first, as without the ring my wedding was going to end up a disaster and that took priority! We got started on this while waiting for the ring investment to bake. 🙂

The article pretty much outlines the parts you start with, so go read it rather than me writing it all down in summary again.

A pile of parts. My first task was to figure out what bits I needed first, and what I needed last, because I need to get this pile organized before I can start.

Russ and I set out the bits in a draft circuit, like this.

The battery connects to the power distribution board (aka a PCB). The ESC (electronic speed control) connects to the PCB for power, and the flight controller for instructions. The ESC connects on the other side to the motor. The flight controller connects on the other side to the receiver, which gets instructions from the transmitter (not shown).

You need 1 battery, 1 PCB, 4 ESCs, 4 motors, 1 flight controller and 1 receiver. Oh, and a frame. And tools to put it all together.

We assembled and re-assembled the frame a few times. Because the base is made of 2 layers, sometimes I needed to get a screwdriver into that thin area between them, so I had to take it all apart again. It’s a lot of screws to take the base plate off!

When we had our little panic moment with the ring, the drone was left like this. I’d screwed the flight controller into a little bed so it wasn’t directly touching the frame (something about vibration control) and had screwed one of the motors onto one of the legs.

I still need to figure out exactly where my PCB is going, because the more I look at it, the more it doesn’t fit at all in this frame. Some minor futzing around is necessary.

Russ and I are each building our own planes, so by the time we’re done we’ll have one each to go fly around. 🙂

The last thing to mention, and the part about the price being a lie, is that I needed to buy a transmitter. So I could control the thing. Turns out the transmitter of best use was $170, and the receiver component was $70! Almost doubling the cost of the rest of the parts!

Building things is wicked fun! I’m stoked to sit and solder things together to build a little plane! 😀

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