I first got into miniatures gaming in the early '90s with the Milton Bradley/Games Workshop joint project Space Crusade. Overall, I think the game worked rather well. Three Marine players would board a drifting space hulk infested by an odd mix of Orks, Chaos Space Marines, Genestealers and the Necrons' great grandfather. We never could figure out why every faction outside of the Imperium and Eldar could get along so swimmingly when aboard a drifting hulk.
A friend of mine took a similar path into gaming, only he did it with the Mutant Chronicles version of Space Crusade: Siege of the Citadel.
Most of the gameplay is extremely similar (almost identical in places) to Space Crusade or Heroquest. And the game concept fit into the Mutant Chronicles universe much better than Space Crusade fit into 40k.
Like Space Crusade, this is meant as an introduction to miniatures gaming- the minis aren't as high a quality as the Heartbreaker line presented in Warzone. However, the gameplay is fast and crazy, and there's a lot of screw your buddy going on as the different corporate mercenaries try to obtain their objectives (and keep their friends from getting theirs).
In one of the scenarios we played, I got to play the undead Legion and was chasing down and eating the characters with a giant monster called an Ezoghoul.
Altogether, it was a great, lighthearted game. It actually makes me want to reconstruct my old Space Crusade set. I know for a fact that I've got enough Gretchin hanging around...
Have you ever gotten out some of those older minis and set them next to a newer one? Some of the older miniatures lines have been around for a while and gone through some big changes.
Once upon a time, 25mm was the standard size. You'll still find some older Sandra Garrity minis in 25mm from Reaper.
When people started making minis bigger than that, the standard became 28mm (or 'heroic' scale) and that lasted for a little while. When sculptors exaggerated 28 mm, we invented a thing called 30mm and even a 32mm for the exaggerations of the 30mm size.
Whatever anyone says, 32mm is pretty much the standard size right now, even though many companies claim 30mm and some- like Games Workshop- still claim that their minis are 28mm mini. But how serious can they be about it when they wrote scale creep into the Ork fluff.
One of my clients recently had me paint up a classic Ogryn mini to match a group. After he saw the minis together, he decided that the only way to pull this off is if an Ogryn adolescent were joining his seniors on the battlefield.
Here is a new Ogryn next to the old one. The white stripe on the smaller ogryn's helmet is to show that he is a rookie conscript.
Well, today we've just had some news about some outstanding upcoming miniatures. Man, sometimes these just make me so excited.
The first one is from Kingdom Death and he's called the Gorm. He's a rather large, fully resin miniature who is creepy as all hell and just opened up for pre-orders.
He's also Kingdom Death's first foray into the world of larger miniatures- and I wonder what else they might have in store.
The other piece of news today is that Privateer Press is following up their promise of a new Farrow faction with a great steam powered cyborg giant pig.
Really, what's not to love about that?
It seems that the Farrow faction might be following in the footsteps of their creator and completely raping nature to create crazy warpigs.
This mini is called a War Hog, and you should probably check out the 360 view of him at Privateer Press' gallery.
There, you will see that he actually has a boiler in his back. This is a steam powered pig.
Following the same basic pattern I used in painting the Paetorian Stormlord, I used quite a few known techniques when approaching this Shadowsword.
I think my favorite part of painting this tank was the freehand I did on the side. This time, rather than a fire breathing lion, I painted on a snarling saber-toothed lion face- in colors that I would normally use for a non-metallic gold color.
Overall, I was pleased with how this tank turned out.
So, a little while ago, I posted that Alliance Distribution had given us confirmation on a new Hordes faction- the Farrow.
At that point, all the solid info that we had were the names of the different characters (a new Minion Warlock named Lord Carver doesn't necessarily mean that he's a Farrow). He was coming out with a war-pig, but that still isn't complete confirmation.
Well, we now have absolute confirmation. Here is some Lord Carver concept art. We hope the mini looks as good as this.
I honestly am wondering if he'll fit on a small base.
I guess there was one other thing that I had been worried about. With full minion warlocks (rather than Lesser ones) Privateer really needs to be out-doing the sculpts on their Lessers. And they put the bar up pretty high with Wrong Eye and Snapjaw winning Tabletop Gaming New's reader's choice for mini of the year, and Rorsh and Brine are just some of my very favorite sculpts.
Anyway, so far, it looks like they knew that, and it looks like they'll be able to pull it off.
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
Ok, this guy needed to be mentioned. He's our first large base non-epic warlock for any Hordes faction, and he's quite the mammoth. I mean, he looks like he might have started out with a small base and worked his way up.
This is Dominar Rasheth- the only Skorne too lazy to walk onto the battlefield himself.
We know pretty much nothing about the rules for Rasheth, but the mini does look like we're seeing a little bit of a new direction for Skorne. As for speculation, a good look at his back in Privateer Press' 360 viewer will show that he seems to have abused his own skin in similar ways to the poor titan babies.
Anyway, this is a crazy good mini, and he's coming to Hordes in August.
With being a professional miniatures painter, I often get commissions for the most popular forces. That has never bothered me- rather I often get excited to paint the same minis in different ways (even the wiggle room within a single Space Marine chapter are pretty big).
Anyway, every once in a while I get something where my response is "Wow... I don't think I'll ever see that one again."
So, here's one of those. This is a set of Imperial Guardsmen from the long discontinued Praetorian platoon (one of the only platoons that isn't available from GW's Imperial Guard Collectors site). They are Rough Riders who have been mounted on bikes rather than horses. Mind, the bikes you see here are also very old discontinued mini.
Now, I could have repeat commissions for classic minis- that does happen. However, the bikes and the Praetorians were not contemporaries. These bikes come from the Rogue Trader days when minis came in packages with lead warnings on the side. The riders started out as resin cavalry riders from Colonel Gravis (I had do do some sculpting one each mid-section to make them lean forward to hold the handlebars). The heads are from a Empress Miniatures, and the arms are all the new plastic Cadians.
Ok, so what I'm basically saying here is, "Man, converted Rogue Trader bikes with converted Praetorian riders on them? Yep, this is my only chance to see those minis."
Ok, so you're done. So what do we know about this film? Well, from that article, I gleaned that it most likely won't be happening at all. Movie studios work that way- they option the rights for lots of properties (at relatively cheap prices) and then sell those rights to one another at a profit. Every studio has tons of rights to make lots of adaptations at any given moment, but they don't have the money to make large production films of even a tenth of them.
Currently, there is a chance (a 5-10% chance) that Monsterpocalypse will become a film right now, and there wasn't before. That's the good news.
The article also tells us that someone wishes Tim Burton would sign onto the project. I'm pretty sure that half the blockbuster films that get made wish they had Tim Burton on their project, though, so it doesn't really mean anything. And even though MonPoc is big news in the gaming community, Burton has probably never heard of it.
Compare that kind of name suggesting against the actual names we have working on the upcomming Ultramarines Movie. Directed by Martyn Pick, produced by David Kerney and Bob Thompson. Does everyone and their dog know who these people are? No, but that's because they aren't just names on someone's wish list for a project that hasn't solidified yet.
Now, Ultramarines is pretty far into production- but it is still a film that may never happen. Games Workshop has had film projects like it fizzle in the past. Does anyone remember Blood Quest?
Anyway, for right now I'm thinking of this film as a vapor project- at least until production starts in earnest and they have any names of real people working on teh project.
Back when I first started painting miniatures, there were some Star Wars minis I picked up. I thought that was a great idea, I loved Star Wars and there was just no reason why minis of those characters couldn't work.
Now, that line of minis wasn't great quality- all of my storm troopers helmets were lopsided or a little flat. But I still maintain that there was simply no reason why Star Wars shouldn't have great minis.
Well, Knight Models has just released the first four in a new line of 30mm Star Wars miniatures, and from the pics, they look great.
Knight Models has a large line of licensed miniatures- mostly in 70mm. Their quality is quite good (I've had a look at their Wolverine sculpt: he's pretty fantastic). They actually have had some 70mm Star Wars minis out and about also, but this is the first time since the early nineties that we've had pewter, paintable playable Star Wars minis.
I often look at the work of other painters to learn new techniques- and online there are hundreds of tutorials for every level of painter to be found.
Once upon a time, I was most excited about tutorials that would give me strong color recipes. I wanted to make my minis look exactly like the ones pictured, and I was often upset if I didn't have the same paint pots that the painter had used.
Nowdays, I'm a little of the opposite. I like to take a technique and try to push it a little farther, and press it a little harder until I find uses for it that I hadn't thought of before.
Here's an example. You can take the same Lightning Effect that I've used on power weapons and such, and alter it a little to make a cracked earth lava effect.
The big difference between the lightning and lava is the pattern. Lightning needs to fork outward, so you always have a definite direction for it to be traveling. The lava, on the other hand, simply needs to make shapes and connect with other strips of lava.
Alliance Game Distribution has recently posted up two interesting new additions to the Hordes range:
- Hordes: Minions Lord Carver, Bmmd, Esq. III $13.99 - Hordes: Minions War Hog $44.99
From the names and prices, it looks like we have some confirmation that there will be rules for a piggy faction in the upcoming Forces of Hordes: Minions book. We have at least one warlock and an accompanying warbeast for him.
So, if you thought it would have been pretty sour for a faction book to come out an not include any playable faction in it, it seems the guys at Privateer Press agree with you. I had thought as much ever since they announced that there would be a separate Minions faction book- and honestly if they want to fill a whole faction book with minions, there are going to have to be a good number of additions.
This posibility was left pretty open after the minion minor warlock cards were altered to include the possibility of more warbeasts available to them. At this point, it has crossed the line of speculation.
Now, all we really want is to see what the minis will look like.
The expansion is definitely going to have rules for new crews- it looks as though Wyrd is using Privateer Press' model of expanding all factions at once (although some have speculated that there will be five new factions instead).
Altogether, if you're familiar with Malifaux, have time to play test and think you'll be helpful in generating feedback, then get on over to Wyrd and apply.
Over the past couple of years, I've had a lot of questions about the way that I paint blood on weapons. I think that blood effects are something that almost everyone tries out at some point, but unfortunately a lot of people give up after a few tries.
I first started painting when I was eleven, and I first started painting blood on weapons almost immediately. The only trouble was that I was a terrible painter back then, so all of my minis looked like their axes and swords (and sometimes even guns) had been dipped in blood red paint. Which they were.
As I grew as a painter, I also grew out of the stage in my life where I wanted to throw tons of blood on everything. And since I wasn't having any luck with blood effects, I gave up on it.
A few years ago, I decided to give blood another chance. This time, I approached it as a multi-layered effect to add onto the weapon underneath. Here's my method:
First, start with bright '70's movie blood colored paint (that's Blood Red for fans of Citadel's line, and Khador Red Base for those who use P3). Mix it with black. You want this first mix to be almost totally black in color- more or less the color of a scab. Apply this to the edge of your weapon. This will end up being a layer of more dried blood.
From there, mix a little more red into your dark color, add a little bit of water and paint outward from the edge of the weapon.
You will mostly want to continue to do this, adding in more layers- and each layer gets closer to using pure red, while also getting thinner and also covering just a little bit more of the weapon.
After you have a pretty strong blood coloring on the weapon, you still aren't finished. You need to make it look wet. If you're going to seal your minis, make sure you do it before this step.
The last step is to apply Tamaya Clear Red over all of the areas you've painted with blood- and don't worry if you go just a little bit over the edge. Tamaya is just the perfect color to tint some of the darker shades and make the whole area look very fresh and gory.
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Just thought I'd share a little bit of small press miniatures new with you.
Smartmax- a company that does some wonderful and original Victorian Horror miniatures has given us a preview of their upcoming Jaybee the Ripper mini.
On another note, Scibor is releasing a strong addition to their "Celtic SciFi" range. I think it goes without saying that this mini would make a great Space Marine captain to the right chapter. Space Wolves come to mind.
Thursday, April 22, 2010
I recently painted up a third set of Space Hulk miniatures. I've now painted three sets of Terminators, and Two full sets of Genestealers (and I still haven't done my own).
I've been playing Space Hulk quite a bit too, and I'm really excited to try out some of the older 1st edition supplements (Deathwing had rules for a Terminator Captain, and there are rules that I've found for playing groups of Power Armored marines and even Imperial Guard).
Anyway, here are the latest set of painted miniatures:
The Garden Ninja store is currently having some problems, and the email function is not working correctly.
If you have emailed me any time in the past ten days and I have not answered, please email me directly. You can reach me through email at:
drew at mediawonder.com
I'm very sorry for any problems this has caused.
Thursday, April 15, 2010
Wyrd Miniatures has just posted up their April releases for Malifaux. And they've kept up their hard work, and are once more offering us some of the creepiest miniatures in the business.
I haven't played Malifaux, so I can't really recommend the game, but if put even half the work into their rules set as they do into their miniatures, it's got to be terrific.
It was pointed out to me recently that I've never made a post talking about how I paint battle damage. Damage is a multi-stepped process, but there are a lot of places for you to make choices.
First off, you have to choose where to put damage on your mini, and what kind of pattern to follow. You are looking for that zen combination of realistic looking effects, and what will support your mini's composition. For realism, the areas that are most susceptible to damage are the hard edges of the mini. Any edge of metal plates are more likely to get scuffed. Also, there is more likely going to be some damage on the lower parts of the mini (near tank treads or feet) as these areas are likely to get worn and scuffed on rocks and terrain.
Beyond that, however, it is usually good to have some damage in other areas too. This can help your composition quite a bit, and is easily justified on war machines and trooper armor.
I almost always start out by painting up the areas I want damaged in black. This allows for two things- first off, it suggests that the damaged armor was painted using a primer, and that it is showing through a little in the damaged areas. It also gives you some strong black-lining for the damaged areas themselves- and the black lining helps the battle damage to "pop."
I sometimes use a small sponge of a piece of foam to apply the black. This allows for a very scattered and random pattern for the damage to follow, which helps the damage look more realistic.
The second step I usually take is to put on a background metal for the damage itself. I find that using a little bit of a darker bronze-ish color is best for this. Good examples include Citadel Tin Bits, P3 Brazen Brass or almost any bronze color mixed with P3 Brown Ink. This will give you a good background for your silver damage- it helps to make the areas look more worn, slightly rusty without going too far.
By the next step, you are ready to apply some silver to your areas. You'll want to thin your paint down a little, so that the bronze color underneath can show through. If you have large enough areas, you might want to consider layering up from darker silvers up to lighter ones. Another option is to mix some of your base bronze with your silver as you layer up.
I often go all the way up to Citadel Mithril Silver for the damage. The bright silver gives the area a more scratched up look while at the same time pushing the silver forward for composition reasons.
Now you could be finished here, but you don't have to be. I often apply thin brown or blue washes over minis that are battle damaged- making them look either worn or dirty. If you are applying any washes like this, then make sure to get the damaged areas. A wash can add a nice touch to your damaged armor.
One last note on metal rivets. If I want rivets to stand out as metallic pieces, I usually paint them up using the same methods mentioned above- often I leave out the black. Painting rivets like this makes them look like worn raw metal- and they should match your battle damage well.
Privateer Press is hiring a new coordinator for events and competitions. It seems that they need someone to be the tournament organizer throughout the convention circuit (and possibly to design some tournament scenarios).
For those of you less in the loop, Privateer Press is a Seattle based company and their headline game, Warmachine, is a rather competitive table top minis game.
Anyway, for anyone insterested in working in the industry, you could do quite a bit worse than Privateer Press.
There is something ironic about using pink on miniatures altogether. I've seen quite a few pink minis in my time, the first ones were a force of pink space marines (the Posy chapter).
Most of the time, the pink is meant as a joke, or possibly a way to trash talk your opponents further (for example, "you just lost to a bunch of pink Posies").
At the same time, there is something else that calls to painters. Maybe it is the fact that we've all had a paint pot of tentacle pink sitting unused among the other paints for the past decade or two, but there is a call to use pink- and to make it appropriate. It might just be the way we're all ready to be the one to say, "Hey, I can even make this look good."
The commissar here is something more like that. She wears a light magenta rather than the red that her fellows wear, and overall, I think it works as pink (without shouting "I'm pink")
The Noise Marines above are an interesting case. The Games Workshop studio color scheme for these guys is bright pink with some black. I'm almost certain it was because someone wanted to pull out their pot of Tentacle Pink and figured he'd never have a better chance than with Slaaneshi chaos marines. Of course, at that point, the objective is to make the color schemes shout out "I'm so pink!"
The last example I'd like to show is something at once more subtle and more brazen than the other two. This is an Iron Kingdoms Infernal Curator. Essentially that means that they're the kind of demons that make deals for souls.
The pink light sourcing made him use almost the exact color pallet as the noise marines, but the light source touching everything makes for a lot of darker pinks, which in turn make the whole mini look lit in pink light, and not necessarily all dressed in bright hues.
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