I guess we have to post some 40K...

And I guess it's time to change the name of the blog... With Boomo posting a lot (way more than Lifter does... do you hear me Lifter?) it's not PX & 40K anymore. And to be honest, it's not "all 40K all the time" anymore either... Perhaps I should do some naming-contest thingie since I'm not at all good with coming up with names?

Anyhow... the iPad (no worries, this will be kinda 40K-connected soon) is awesome for watching movies while painting. I had to re-arrange my workspace a little with all the Reaper paints I got. So now I cannot see the telly while painting. iPad to the rescue!

It's not like I watch it a lot though. I mean... I'm actually trying to paint stuff! But it's nice. And I can stream stuff from the computer. Which means that I don't have to watch the home shopping channel.

Emperors champion, WIP.

And now for the 40K stuff... It's the Emperors Mushroom! The GW-store in Stockholm has this Finecast painting comp and I thought I could paint it up for that one. Dunno how well it's going to turn out though. I'm trying to use directional lightning coming from the sword / left. Which means that the sword in itself later on will be -really-bright-. Hopefully it all will come together later on. If not, it's been a mini full with new experiences.

In closing, I'd like to point you to this article on Dakka about photographing stuff, and getting good results from using a crappy camera like the iPhone 3GS. Now I use a Nikon D700 with specialized macro lense and gak. Spent $6000 and I still take photos like I was blind or something. It's not the equipment, it's what you do with it! :)

Quick Impressions: Dwarf Kings Hold: Dead Rising

I got me my first Mantic product from Wayland today (yay free shipping week!). I liked the thought of something casual and very different from my usual stuff. I usually loathe the classic fantasy setting, but eh, for £31 I might as well give it a try.

The rather flimsy box comes with Dwarves in regular grey plastic, and skeletons appropriately comes in white plastic. The figures seem to be from the regular Kings of War kit, just white instead. I must say that the sprues look very nice, lots of small extra bitz (yes, the dog is awesome), though I would hesitate to get an entire army of these, they are "quick fit" and thusly quite monopose.

The tiles and markers is made of quite thin cardboard, though the backside is slightly reinforced with a plastic coating. Nice color print, but I already see a tendency for the cardboard to fray. I had hoped for the cardboard parts to be embossed, but again, for the price, very high value.

I haven't tried to play yet, but I can say that the rulebook is black and white print on stapled shiny paper, nothing fancy, but it does the job. I wish they would release the rules as a PDF like they did for Kings of War, having it on a smartphone or similar is nice, and if they are somehow destroyed you could just print a new copy.

Rawr

No fancy unboxing pictures to show, there's quite a few of them around the web if you are interested. I will do a Part 2 of this when Pixel and I have played a few games, our upcoming Board Game series will feature this and other games from the more casual side of things.

Jagdluther finished!

Click for flickr...

So I finally finished it! Didn't really think I would. I kinda started to build the kit because I didn't want to paint some orks. In the middle of painting the basecoats I kinda realized I had no plan at all of how I wanted it painted. Usually when painting 40K stuff you've already seen a bunch of different paintjobs, or at least the 'Eavy Metal paintjob of it. With this one... I've just seen the box art and the premium edition figure.

So when the real painting started I was kinda without a plan or set goal. Which is fun in a way, but also kinda frustrating. What colour should I use for the lenses? (I went for a very 40K-ish style) Should the viewing slit be more like a prism or is it a viewing slit? Etc etc... A day ago I was ready to give up and put it in the cupboard together with the warhound and some other projects I've never really finished.

After a cup of coffee I pulled through though. I let the model rest for a while and went crazy with oil colours on the base instead. Oil colours is one of those weird kind of colours, so forgiving and yet so unforgiving. And you can do some pretty crazy blends with it. Nothing that shows in the pictures, and I really didn't do anything really amazing. The metal I-beams go from "steel black" to rusty in a very pleasing way.

Click the picture to go to flickr and see it in higher resolution. See if you can spot all the "meh I just dont want to blend that oil-wash" mistakes I did. :) Oil washes are nice, but they sure ain't wash-and-forget...

Continuing the Not-40K-posts JagdLuther & DML Pz.Kpfw IV

I've started to add the chipping to the Dust Tactics JagdLuther. At first I was going to do the plain old sponging technique, but in a stroke of genious I decided to skip that and do it the Mig Jemenez way!

For those who haven't seen his DVDs. It's basically painting lighter dots of the base coat in a stokastic/random pattern and then adding the primer colour inside them. German WWII primer was some reddish-brown. And unfortunately for me I just gave away all my Vallejo paints to Boomo, so I had to concoct a mix from Reapers Bloodstain Red and Brown Liner.

Not nearly half done with the left side, or the cannons. But I really have to do some chores, like cleaning my studio...

JagdLuther chipping. Or at least 15% of the planned chipping.

And here's a blast from the past I haven't posted.

Achtung! Panzer! Lazer! 

I've always wanted to get into the military scale modelling. Or at least understand it. Can't say I really do. Colours are so limited, and the debates on what shade of Feldgrau is the correct one makes my head hurt.

The 1:72 scale models are pretty nice starters though. This kit took about 2hrs to build, and 2-3 hours to paint. (Not counting the time to wait for oil washes to dry). And the best thing, it's cheap. It's not like you don't dare mess it up with inexpensive kits like these.


Ah well, now I'm off to the bathroom to make sure the tiles on the wall are shiny enough for me to invite my parents here... wish me luck! Hopefully you have something more intersting to do. :)

McVey two brush blending.

I hadn't actually seen these ones before. But they sure do explain the process of two-brush blending (one with paint, one damp for the blending).

Check out the ongoing thread on the Studio McVey forums for further explanations as well as some pretty cool paintjobs.

In the booth: Dust Models 1:48 Jagdluther

Das Schwer Panzer KampfLaüfer IV-A "Jagd Luther". Ja! Alles gut!

Quick WIP-post. I was (of course) supposed to paint up even more ork boyz now that I managed to have all my Ultramarines tactical squads painted. But I also had this box from Hong Kong with a Jagd-Luther and a Günther waiting to be opened… So paint the same old same old or build a new kit? Kinda obvious what I choose?!

The 1:48 kit is a mixed media kit with some plastic parts (on a sprue) and a bunch of resin parts (in a ziploc). Something I didn't notice until I started wondering why some parts never fused. Use superglue! :D

Apart from some of the resin parts not completely being flush everything fit well together. No Finecast-bubbles anywhere to be seen. Definitely no Forgeworld-ish mould parts either. Barrels were a bit crooked, but since they're resin a quick session under hot tap water solved that.

The legs are fully articulated with the pistons able to move up and down. Which is nice since even though I wont have it posed as it is in the picture I can move the legs and knees to get paint everywhere I want. The downside is that until you've fixed the legs with glue, it has a tendency to fall over due to the resin making it a bit front heavy.

The idea is to keep the paintjob very much like it is. Fresh out of the factory WWII German Gray. No fancy camouflage or anything. Just a ton of mud and stuff the further down you get on the model. Mostly I just use this to get a feeling for how to model/paint the much larger 1:35 Gunther. Which came with a really cheesy comic book, more on that in a later post.

Right now I've just finished the first layer of oil-wash together with some chipping you hardly can see. The barrels will be painted in a more steel like gray once the oil washes have dried properly. Perhaps I'll paint one of the knee pads in primer-red to show some hasty field repair.

I'll try to keep the rust stains to a minimum this time. Even though it's so easy (and satisfying) to go craaazy when you use pigments. :)

Quick Review MaxMini Plague Beast

I recently visited the excellent gaming store Fantasia while on a family trip to Umeå. They had a wide selection of games and miniatures, mostly GW products as would be expected but also quite a few of the independent makers of resin and white metal figures, Maxmini, MAS and the like. thumbs up for that! I bought a MAS resin tracked servitor thingy which I gave away and a MaxMini Plague Beast for myself.

"Taken my arms, taken my legs, taken my soul, left me with life in hell!"

I am kinda dissappointed with it actually. It is quite odd to see such quality of sculpting combined with such terrible posing, something that is quite difficult to see when just looking at the blister.
The legs are posed in a way that makes it look like it's floating or balancing on it's tippy toes. The built in bases under the feet are not parallel to the ground, but bent inwards, forcing you to either convert the miniature, "hot bend" the feet or make som kind of custom base to fit the crooked miniature. This is not really obvious while looking at their websites pictures, but it is evident in the preview pictures that was released. I don't know if their master looks like this or if their mold is warped, but I see people around the forums having the same problem.

"WHAT'S IN THE BOOOX?"

On the upside, the parts fit together really well, with almost invisible seams, and the only miscasting was on the strap on the beast's chest, which I could ignore or easily fix with 401 or greenstuff. The details on the skin and face are very crisp, and if you are the converting sort you could easily just buy it for the torso, making your own Varghulf, Chaos Spawn or Daemon, Karanak or similar if you will.

Bubble on the center strap, wouldn't really show when assembled

I will try to bend the legs somewhat to repose and make the feet even before I assemble it, if not, I will probably cut it up for some future project.

Hopefully there will be more frequent updates from now on, me, and Pixel as well to some degree, have had some hobby burnout lately, with this whole GW Leadership fuckup-deal adding to that. Part of me want to boycott them, but I love the IP too much to really quit. I will not be doing the Nid-army that I had planned though, instead I'll save that money for when CSM get their new release in a few years. Fuck it, I have enough unpainted and unbuilt stuff for my army to tide me over.

The open letter to Games Workshop.

I guess I've tried to write about ten different posts regarding the recent news from Games Workshop. Miniwargaming kinda nailed it, much better than I could ever do.

Trying to get together some sort of Finecast-review though. I got myself a Emperors Champion and Ghazkull on the day of release. (I was even queuing at the store... ) Everything was OK apart from one of the Ghazzie-sprues. Unfortunately I haven't had the time to go by the GW-store to replace it, and that's why it's taking some time. I want to test their replacement policy.

Tomorrow it's time for some 40K in Orkebro with Boomo, a battle report will be made. Hopefully... :)

Mainstream is the new "nerd"

Being a nerd nowadays is surely the new mainstream. Is there anyone that's a "regular jock" nowadays? If it's not that they play pretend-LOTR during weekends they obsess over fixed gear bikes or analyze the football scores. In a real nerdy way.

So I saw this over at Total Fan Girl and kinda fell in love. Mostly because it was -ages- since I played a proper hack-n-slash dungeon crawl. Or any roleplaying game at all tbh.

Vampire kinda stole the crown of my gaming group when I was into RPGs. With it's more theatrical way of roleplaying (some might say it was finally roleplaying and not rolling dice and looking at tables). After that came the (european style) LARP-ing and one thing led to another and suddenly re-enacting was what I did. And all I wanted to be was in that forgotten land, hacking stuff in the head with my broadsword (1D8+1) and getting the loot and a bunch of XP in the end.

Will it go full circle? Just after I stopped playing RPGs for real I went into table top games. Will I, in a few years be a neckbearded dungeonmaster again? (Not that I had any sort of resemblance to bear when I was fifteen-ish)

So, to recap to the "everyone's a nerd" thing I started with.

I studied advertising school during 2008-2010. Some might say "The leading advertising school in Sweden". Hard to get in, hard to finish. There was a ton of A-type personalities there. And sometimes pretty hostile in a very intellectual way. Pretty high percentage of hipster/jocks there.

So one day, I walked into the school studio (where we did all our projects) with a newly bought AOBR-set, a battleboard and god knows what else I bought that day. The GW store was then just a couple of blocks from school.

And not -one- -single- -person- said something disparaging about the "toy soldiers" I bought. Some asked, and I told them the basic premises and they lightened up and said "My brother did that when he was young. How cool that it's still alive." or "Yeah, I had a Tau-army back in the days!".

Some dudes, with a little less points on their geek-card, asked if it was kinda like World of Warcraft, but in space, and with plastic dudes. And I told them the differences, the history et al. While realizing that these people are ALSO nerds since they immediately jumped to the WoW-connection. Some of them were level 80 wizards already. With robes.

So tell me, do you know anyone, in your age span. Say from 20-40 who has not played some sort of "adventure game" (I clump every dungeoncrawl -> D&D game into that phrase).  Do not play "computer games" and talk about it not-hushed tones? Or hasn't gotten any form of nerd-cred? It might be just a simple thing as knowing/nurturing an interest that's work related. One girl I know, she collects viruses. (She's a virologist, so she's excused from the label "Weirdo!")

I think you will find it hard to find anyone around you that's not a nerd in some way. Hell, even a fashionista-girl I knew collected hard to find Chanel-handbags. She knew everything about those goddang bags. Just like a military modeller would know everything about the colors DAK used during the desert wars...

Food for thought...?


In other news. Those of you over the pond that's interested in the paint storage racks I got, can now order them from Warpath. The offial post over at TTG is:

ESLO Terrain products will now be available in North American from WarPath Games.

From their announcement:

We are happy to write that we have an exclusive distributor for the U.S.A. and Canada.
Now all resellers can contact WarPath Games. They have a large stock (become in next time a restock) and will be attending several shows. We think this is the perfect solution, and will provide better communications for all resellers.

ReviewAnother paint storage alternative

So I've tried the Paintier carousel-thingie. After the rave-reviews it's gotten on some places on the internetz. I guess people do more drugs than I thought they do, because that thing sucks a bag of weiners (Not Safe For Work). Spin it around and paint bottles fly everywhere. The 80-paints (holds about 120-ish dropper bottles) is also so high that it wobbles a fair amount. So if the bottles don't fall off by spinning, they will fall off if you happen to nudge the table it stands on.

So I sent mine to the garbage can and stored my paints in the Vallejo suitcases you get when you buy complete sets. Still not an optimal solution. It's hard to see the colour of your paints. Since Vallejo also tends to separate fairly quick that sand brown looks like lime green if you look at it from the top.

While looking around for terrain, don't ask me why, I seldom play at home. I stumbled upon Eslo Terrain and their accessories section. And lo and behold, they have a tiered paint storage thingie! Much like the ones you can buy from that laz0r-cutting company I've forgotten the name of. But actually (and to me, this is a good thing) made for dropper bottles and dropper-bottles only!

Now, they clearly state on the site that the kit version (you can buy them pre-assembled too) is not the easiest thing to build. I kinda scoffed at that. I mean... I build 500-part german tanks. I should be able to put together a shelf-system?

It was most likely the most frustrating build -ever-! If you work with wood-working or have tools made for stuff like this. Sure, it might be super easy. For me, not so much.

The shelves slot in to the sides, and in order to get the next level of shelves in their slots, you have to move the sides a little. Making the ones you just put in fall down. So you have to align them to their slots, caaaaarefully put the next level in their slots. And then you have two more sections to do... rinse & repeat.

I ended up using two boxes of cat litter to make sure the sides would't fall off / away and took my time. And still there was a couple of moments when everything fell like a house made of cards and I wanted to burn it all in a fire while laughing like a mad man.

Anyhow, as you can see from the above picture. I got them assembled finally. And my workspace is suddenly less cluttered and I can see the colours of my paints! (Assembly-line painting some Ultrasmurfs as well...)

Now, I would advice against buying them in kit form, if it wasn't for the fact that you can actually buy sections for Citadel style bottles and mix-n-match as much as you like. There is of course pre-assembled ones to buy too... but if you're like me with just a handful of Citadel bottles you might want to go with the kit.

Overall, I'm really pleased. Once the glue had set they're really sturdy, and I can move them away from the table without having stuff fall off (forget doing that with the carousel) if I would need to.

The verdict is... Five angry squigs out of five! Do buy! Great stuff!