All Posts By

Craig

Tournaments

DREADBALL TOURNAMENT

Posted on January 26, 2014

If you, or anyone you know, plays Dreadball…or even has any models sitting around from the Kickstarter that they’ve never used, let them know about this.

February 23rd, 2014 at the Eagle’s Club in North Vancouver starting at 12:30pm I’m holding a one-day Dreadball league.

My goal is to bring some people together and play this great game in a league setting for the first time. We’ll do 3 games and then bring everyone together for a game of Ultimate, which should be insane and awesome. I’m going to hold a raffle for those attending for an item or two, more if I get more sign-ups.

I don’t even care if the models are painted, or if you’ve never played. We won’t be teaching, so be sure to know the rules, but I think that there will be only 2 people there who’ve had more than 2 games.

We’re going to play 1020mc. I’ll have a league-package available shortly to sort out the details, but you’ll be able to buy ranks for your guys, or extra dice, etc at the usual tournament rates.

Send me an e-mail (chopwarhammer@gmail.com), or Facebook (facebook.com/CHOPGaming) or whatever floats your boat to sign up.

Featured Images

Plaguebearers – Close Up

Posted on January 24, 2014

Derrick asked recently if I would post some photos of a single plaguebearer from the unit I painted. I told him I’d do it that weekend…it is no longer “that weekend”, but it is a weekend, so that counts, right?

Musings & Meta

Little People

Posted on January 17, 2014

We had some of my girlfriend’s little cousins over recently. By “little”, I mean an 8 year old boy and an 11 year old girl. She’s been telling them they could have a sleepover for several years, but not until they learned to follow instructions a bit better! We spent the early afternoon at the Extreme Air Park, the late afternoon at Science World and in the evening (after an amazing day!) we came back to our apartment.

Our original plan was to sit down and play some Carcassonne for the evening, watch a movie and then pass out. We got distracted – it turns out that my apartment is a paradise for children…I have toys and gadgets and games all over the place. >.<

The boy saw my models and immediately started playing with them and having them fight and all that. I saw an opportunity for more…

I pulled out a my bag of bloodletter pieces, opened it up over my desk and asked him if he wanted to build something. He picked the pieces, and I glued them together (after a careful talk about the dangers of super glue…).

It was hard going – even though we were both having fun, ours is not a hobby for the short of attention span. In the end, we had that game of Carcassonne, and we had built a 4 armed bloodletter. It reminded me that kids as young as him get into this hobby, and stay with it for decades. It also reminded me that no matter how many rules you layer on top of it, we’re all just a bunch of kids playing with toy soldiers, and loving the shit out of every minute of it!

Work-in-progress

Display Board – Day 2

Posted on January 15, 2014

I did this part on my own – getting together can be difficult, and there wasn’t much that needed doing aside from filling in all of the cracks in the pink foam.

I picked up a product called Model Lite from Magic Box Hobbies. It’s an interesting product with a texture a little like grainy CoolWhip. I tried to apply it using some sort of tool, but in the end just used my fingers. It dries and hardens in less than 10 minutes, creating a plaster layer on my fingers, but it washed off with soap and water no problem.

Patrick is planning to put a sloped cobblestone road on his section, so I carefully carved a piece of foam out so it would fit.

Work-in-progress

Display Board – Day 1

Posted on January 12, 2014

On Patrick’s and mine drive back from AdeptiCon last year, we had the most amazing conversation, planning and scheming about what we would do next year. That’s…this year. April 3rd-6th, specifically. I’m a planner. I love to plan things, it gives me a little thrill to have my little schedule in mind and to check items off of it. The biggest and riskiest item still on that list is the display board we had planned out. I called him up, and we got together to get some work done on this thing!

Our original plan was that he would be playing Tomb Kings, partnered with my new Daemons and the TK would be sacrificing things to Chaos, and we’d have this 300-like pit in the middle of the board, with men being thrown into it and come out the other side and have both sides of the board be reflections of each other.

He changed his mind a few times, and is now working on a Chaos-themed Empire army. Like Traitor Guard. Or maybe he’ll revert back to Warriors of Chaos. But he’s still thumbing through the TK book…either way, I’m bringing Daemons and we’re building this thing!

He’s been keeping a mini sketch book, which is pretty awesome to flip through, and has done a dozen drawings of what this board would look like. I wanted to put some foam on the table, put some models on the foam and really set down what we would do.

Measuring is good. You can see The Notebook (not related to the movie) just above the foam.

We’ve got a 3/4 inch piece of pink foam and a bunch of models. Took a sharpie to the foam and marked a bunch of things down.

I drew a slope up and some parts to cut out. Patrick drew unit placements, a side slope and a little ruin.

Many many many years ago, a good friend of mine and I built a ton of Necromunda terrain. We built a bunch of tall boards and a few short boards, and I ended up keeping the foam mountains we’d built for one of the short boards. It’s crap terrain, in hindsight, so I was super glad to be able to re-use it for this project. We cut it up and glued it down.

One of the things we learned from last year was that tall terrain catches more eyes. We’re flying down, so we can’t build a 6 foot tall Chaos Dwarf cave with an idyllic fishing village on top of it…but we can build some stuff that lies flat, or can be packed into a suitcase or similar and get the height through modularity.

We’ve got some height to build.

Stay tuned, I’ll be posting on this incredible project regularly, and this hobby duo is going to produce something absolutely amazing!

Work-in-progress

Herald of Nurgle – Basecoat

Posted on January 9, 2014

After working on Plaguebearers for months, it was nice to sit down and start working on a Plaguebearer. Damnit. >.<

The upside is that although I’m using the same scheme as for the infantry, I can spend some more time on this guy because there’s just one of him. I’m trying two new things with him, in addition to just being more careful.

Cloak Front

It’s yellow. I want it to be an orange colour by the time I’m done, but it’s yellow right now. We’ll see where this goes.

Cloak Back

I didn’t take any photos of it, but I’m sure you all know the Skulltaker back. Lotta skulls! Inbetween each skull I painted some Blazing Orange, before doing Ushapti Bone on the skulls themselves. I was hoping to use a similar but different colour to give the cloak some more interest. Unfortunately, after washing in the shadows, it looks pretty much like I just used the Ushapti everywhere. When it comes time to work on the cloak detail, I’ll have to see what I can do with this.

I also noticed that I didn’t include him in my List of Adepticon Things. Whoops!

Musings & Meta

2nd Annual Malifaux Holiday Miniature Exchange

Posted on January 7, 2014

Even though I’d only been on the forums for 1 post at the time, I decided to see about joining in on the Wyrd Forums Malifaux Holiday Miniature Exchange. (I’ve since gotten more involved :))

The rules were super simple: minimum of $20, don’t send something painted/assembled unless you send the minimum plus that. No problem, I can do that!

I signed up and a week or so later received word that I was sending to a gentleman in Kent, UK. Malifaux Mark told me his secret of finding a store in the location you’re sending to, and ordering from there. I did so, and sent my new friend a Waldgeist and a December Acolyte. One of the things I love most about Malifaux is the exploration of different avenues of list building, and I wanted to share that joy with others.

My own gift has been in the mail for just short of an entire month. I had just sent my gifter a private forum message this morning saying that it hadn’t arrived, just to let him know that it hadn’t arrived yet.

And it showed up this evening.

BAMF! CHRISTMAS!

That’s…

Malifools pink wristbands!
Malifools “Stolestone” poker chips!
Malifools brand coasters!
Rail Golem!
Willie!
Arcane Effigy!
A wood laser-cut lamp light terrain!

I’m astounded. I’ve done it wrong. I followed the minimum requirements, not realizing that no one does the minimum.

I’ve been working on making some small changes to my Scheme cards. Imma send him a few packs of those when I make a new order. >.>

Featured Images

Plaguebearers – Final, Portal

Posted on January 6, 2014

Here’s the promised post on the portal. I was once again inspired by Mr. Wappel and his Chaos Portal, but I wanted something a lot more colourful and out there. When you see Patrick’s and my display board (yet to be started…) you’ll understand this unit a bit more.

Sunburst Yellow. I did my best to make sure it’s all yellow, but decided it wasn’t critical.

Mixed that with Blazing Orange, such that there is 3 levels of colour between the orange and the yellow. I mixed this on my palette so I could use all 3 at once. I painted in semi-random circular patterns around the models, making sure not to completely cover a layer underneath. I want to cover a good chunk of the base yellow with these 3 colours.

I mixed Blood Red with the last Blazing Orange and started tightening the circles around the Plaguebearers a bit. Mixed more and more of the red in and making the circles tighter, occasionally going over a previous outer layer slightly. These are still big and casual paint strokes.

I mixed Alaitoc Blue with the Blood Red. This was much to dark, so I mixed some of the Sunburst Yellow back in to lighten it. Now I started to make the circles more deliberate and careful. Near the end of this part, I had very small strokes of the blue and red mix and painted these in smaller areas to “highlight” the more broad blue+red+yellow strokes.

Unfortunately, I had been careless while painting the Plaguebearers green many days ago, and inside the portal circles were shadows of the teal where it had spilled and I hadn’t been able to cover it well enough with the base yellow. I mixed some Sotek Green with the Blood Red and really watered it down, and made a glaze to lightly cover the inside of the circle. In spots this left little bubbles by accident, and I let those remain so they dried to create little dark spots – a happy accident! This layer also served to mask the darker green under layer.

Lastly, I re-did the Sunburst Yellow on the very top edge of the plasticard.

Super happy with how it turned out!

Featured Images

Plaguebearers – Final

Posted on January 3, 2014

A lot went into this unit.

I haven’t painted a whole new unit in ages, and now I remember why. I always start with the idea that it will be perfect, that I’ll paint everything perfectly. As I start, I get bored…painting 16+unit filler of the same model over and over again is boring. I’m glad that I’m done with the infantry for my daemons now!

I’m also glad that they turned out at all good. These models were second hand, with primer and a base coat on them already when I bought them. They fell apart if I looked at them funny. It’s a miracle that they’re done!

Their Backs

The backs were slightly painful – they have a lot of little dots on their back. I did a messy wet brush of Ushapti Bone onto those dots. Then Lamenters Yellow over it, leaving it pretty yellow with yellow tint to the green skin surrounding. Then I did a drybrush of Ushapti again. Lastly, I mixed 2:1 Water and Secret Weapon Soft Body Black.

It’s not perfect, but it’s good enough.

Swords

I was trying to figure out how to do a glowing white sword. I thought I might do a pink/purple force weapon look similar to my Old Blood. Then I realized that this was not going to get finished…it took an evening to do a single sword, I wasn’t going to do 18 of them.

So I came up with a different scheme that I think looks pretty damn good. I did watered down Camo Green over the white primer. This dried with darker bits in the middle and lighter at the edges, which is a good start.

I painted edge highlights of Rotting Flesh, and did a light feathering of the same colour on the flat of the blade.

Lastly, Skull White on the tips of the spikes and tip of the sword.

The Photos, Already.

Here’s the unit, in all of it’s green glory.

Oh yeah, I painted the portal too. 😛 I’ll have a post devoted to that upcoming in a couple days.

I thought of doing a fancy design on the banner, but in the end the simplicity of this weathered green really appealed to me. Camo Green, Soft Body Black and then I stipled Zamesi Desert with a piece of sponge. I think it looks fantastic.

What’s Next?

On the road to Adepticon, I still have to paint:

2-4 Beasts of Nurgle. 2 of them have a base coat and nothing else.
Skull Cannon. Patrick made me a fantastic conversion for this!
Deadzone strike force. Playing in the Deadzone “big game”.
Some reinforcements for my Dreadball rats. Playing in the “league in a night”, so I have to figure out what that means.
Ever more Malifaux. I have a handful of toolbox models I want to add to my crew for the 2-day Malifaux tournament! December Acolyte, The Firestarter, maybe some of the Kaeris crew. Taelor…Oiran…Johan…

Work-in-progress

Slightly delayed posting…building the plaguebearer portal.

Posted on January 1, 2014

Found some photos in my upload folder…turns out these are a few steps back in my plaguebearer work.

You’ll have noticed last post that I own a Dremel. I originally bought it so that I could cut up plasticard and MDF board easily, and that’s how I used it on this project.

The portal is just two pieces of fairly thick plasticard.

To give the vertical piece some stability and strength, I pinned it three times across it’s length. I glued the base to 2 pieces of 50mm bases, which is how many plaguebearers it is supposed to represent.

This part was scary. I mean…I have a lot of bloodletter models kicking around my bitz box, but if this hadn’t worked I wasn’t certain what else I would do to get the effect properly! I used an old GW hand saw down the center of this model to split it into two.

Glue both sides of the model appropriately on either side of the portal, and you have one model entering and exiting from a portal!

I’ll have some more photos of these guys…finished…in a day or two!

Older Posts

Newer Posts