Miniature Tabletop Gaming Thread

I've been practicing off and on lately, and I have another miniature I worked on last night that I will post pics of tonight when I finish up the details.

I have a few more newbish questions I was hoping I could get help with.

I threw out my Armory primer and Armory clear matte because a) the cans were corroding on the sides and I didn't want them to burst in my house and b) they were shitty anyway. I decided to buy the expensive stuff instead. I bought Mr Super Clear for a sealant and Games Workshop Chaos Black for a primer.

The Chaos Black went on silky smooth and had great coverage with very little spray, but I found the paint didn't stick to it as well (probably because it was so smooth) so I had to build up several layers of color. Is that normal? I think the end result looks good but it took a lot of time.

I'm of course Googled Mr Super Clear after I bought it and some guy on a forum said it's for big models not metal miniatures. What do you all recommend for a sealer? Like I said, Armory sucks, it made my minis look like frosted donuts. I can probably return the Mr Super Clear since I didn't remove the shrink wrap yet.

I'm working with the Vallejo paints still and I've found they actually work great right out of the bottle with no water on the Chaos Black. Is that normal? I remember reading upthread someone said you always dilute the paints before applying.

Necromunda and Mordheim were always my favorite GW games - I love the scale and the lore, but I can't handle 40k or FB. I do enjoy Warmahordes quite a bit, which I think is a function of the smaller scale at which my group mostly plays it - we seldom go above 35 points. Are there other skirmish-level games out there that aren't terrible? I'd love to play something with a warband-sized group of minis.

Chaos Black isn't a primer, it's just a basecoat. The two are not the same. A primer gives a slightly rough and porous surface (called a key) which helps paint adhere to it better. Chaos Black spray provides a uniform base colour to work from but it is not a primer. I would recommend priming with the Skull White spray instead (which is a primer) or with an acrylic automotive primer such as Krylon.

Depends on the formulation of the paints you are using. The reason that you normally want to dilute paints is to keep them slightly translucent, to go on more smoothly and to not fill-in shallow detailing on the figure. If the paints are sold thin enough (which is generally not the case with Vallejo paints) then they can be used without further thinning. Multiple thin coats are always better than a single thicker one.

GW's website says that the Chaos Black spray "acts as a primer," but I would agree that it is a bad option. I've had great luck with Krylon in both white and black, and it's so cheap compared to GW spray.

That seems to be the focus for Malifaux and Infinity.

Why use this spray then and also a black primer?

I would say that you should not - you'll obscure much of the detail on the model. If you're going to use it as a basecoat (if your models are predominantly black, for instance), just use it as both. You'll save a ton of time but you'll have trouble getting the paint to adhere, as you've noted.

So, here's the one I just finished. Queen Ileosa of Korvosa, the main villain of the Pathfinder campaign we'll be wrapping up next week. I finished this mini just in time for the final boss battle against her.

Nice! She looks appropriately haughty

That looks great! I love the colour scheme, particularly the hair colour, and you've got nice clean painting which is the most important thing in making a mini work. The face looks great too, very good fine detail work. Maybe a carefully applied sepia wash on the gold areas might make them pop a little more hard to tell without looking really close.

The only obvious area for improvement on the mini I can see is in layering up the folds of cloth in progressively lighter colours so that they pop more. As an exaggerated example:



Even though the overall cloth is black on this mini's cowl the highlight on the folds brings it all the way up through blue grey to a near white. Though with a light green cloth like that you'd want to do it less dramatically and less spooky (probably).

Then of course you need to base that lovely paintjob! Appropriate basing can add loads of character & interest to a mini and really help the colour scheme pop out. So I guess figure out what kind of environment this sassy broad would be shaking that fan in and get to it!

I'm still learning a lot of these processes. For example, the wash I used worked really well in some areas and not so good in others. I think it just made her dress look stained because it wasn't applied well, but on the ruffles under her corset and in the hand areas it looks really good.

The technique you described Dan, that's being used on the skeleton ghost dude up there, is really neat looking and I have no idea how to begin creating something like that. I'm going to have to watch some you tube demonstrations to see how it's done. My wife recommended the same thing when I showed her the mini, but I was generally happy with it and I didn't want to keep piling on paint to try new things.

My goal is just to get progressively better with each mini. I'm happy with the evil queen here, she already looks 10x better than the pre-painted D&D minis that cover most of the table, so she's a suitable end boss. For the next one I decide to paint, I already have one on deck that's very simple but has a lot of flowing cloth so I can try to practice that shading technique.

Thanks for all the positive feedback and likes and such!

The general way to go about it is to just pick a top highlight colour say 25% base green 75% white, or something that is roughly like that already in your paint collection, and then you build towards that colour in progressively narrower layers. So your first layer over the base might be 75% base colour 25% white and cover the whole area of the fold from where it starts to rise up on either side. Then you mix up a 50/50 one and make it about half the width of the whole fold and then you put you final highlight on top of that in a thin line on the very top edge of the fold. How many layers you do depends on the size of the mini and how obsessive you are. I'd say most of the time I only do two layers on top of the washed base for my rank and file, and I get by.

You can probably fancy up that process or try something more awkward like wet blending but layering highlights over washes is the easiest 'next step' to get a handle on I think.

I went at it the exact same way. If you have a pile of minis to paint often its best to just move on to the next one and just get better as you go. You can very easily go crazy obsessing over one mini and never get anything finished.

I haven't checked this thread in months, but as someone gearing up to paint his first mini I appreciate all the advice in here. You guys are doing some great work!

I've been gearing up to paint the rest of my Warmahordes stuff for months.

Any day now.

I have this half-painted unit of MoW shock troopers TAUNTING me. I keep meaning to finish them, but then I buy something new and get distracted.

Even now when I'm thinking about finishing them, I realize I'm probably going to start in on the Mice and Mystics figures before I even touch the MoW models with a brush again.

It's a sickness.

For a while, I was really tempted to just pay someone else to paint my minis =)

Hah. My Shocktroopers are one of the few painted units I have.

'course, by "painted" I mean "sprayed red, painted a bit, then dipped" - but they came out pretty well.

I should just give in and dip mine. They're base-coated and really just need highlighting and shading and detail work.

Just remember that none of us are showing the first mini we painted. And when you have a few dozen under your belt, resist the temptation to bring out that first one and compare.

I think I still have my first model somewhere. I should try to find it. It was some human warhammer archer that someone let me try painting on when I was trying to decide if I wanted to get into the hobby or not.

The Army Painter stuff works well. For things like the MOW, who are predominantly a single colour with a lot of recesses and shading areas, it works really well. For those with a lot more colour and in smaller areas it might not be quick so useful.

Yeah, back when i was playing regularly, i almost went for the dipping stuff, as the quality didn't look too bad on the figures that I had seen with it, but it was for mostly monochromatic armies at the 15mm level.

So it looks like DreamPod9 is releasing their new southern army book and some new toys:
http://www.dp9.com/index.php?option...er-bundle-pre-orders&catid=42:news&Itemid=157

Friggin' price by itself, at $65CAD, but I'm more of an e-book guy these days anyway.

Not sure it's really neccesary to put the CAD up there, since last I checked, the US dollar was all of 1.0002 of a CAD.

Hahah...

I love to see this kind of customizability to really let the modeler's creativity shine through.

A few more painted minis to show. This time a bit of a scenery focus, though not scratch built stuff, that's still in the works. Instead there is a bit of GW and some Tabletop world pieces that I've painted up. First up:



This is the first Tabletop World house that came into an achievable price range for me. They generally make very high end terrain pieces with full interiors all cast in a nice resin but they've recently started to aim toward a wider market with a new range and this cottage with a bare-bones interior (you can lift the roof off) was the first off the presses. I somewhat regret painting the roof blue as it looks a little too cutesy and makes it so the windows don't stand out as much as I'd like but in general I'm happy with it.

Next:



That's one of a whole set of walls and fences from a GW set that are (mostly) now painted up ready for cowards to hide behind on the battlefield. Not much to say about them really they are all pretty simple pieces consisting of a section of wall or fence and a little bit of base to flock. The set does come with a little signpost as well which might be handy if I ever get around to making some roads.

And finally:



This little well, also from Tabletop World. Its bit oversized really (almost as tall as the cottage) but it just about works.

Painting and building scenery is a nice change of pace from wading through hundreds of nearly identical rank and file minis, you can crack out the bigger brushes and work your wonky dybrushing technique for all it's worth. In the world of scratch building, my polystyrene and mdf sheet materials are gradually forming into some more recognisably terrain-y shapes but I'm still awaiting a few more supplies before I can really get going in earnest.

This looks really tempting: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/554355176/gaming-boards-great-quality-great-price-and-great

I pledged for the basic 48"x48" modular table, but I'm really hoping they hit the stretch goals for the one-terrain-to-another hybrid tiles.

I've never particularly wanted to keep a full 4'x4' table lying around, but something about having independent tiles seems more pleasing and flexible to me.

Yeah, I think it is a pretty standard approach for tabletop gamers who can't afford the space for a giant war gaming sized table. Currently I use six 2" x 2" MDF boards as base and then stick a gaming mat on the top for Warhammer. When not in use they stack and fit fairly inconspicuously behind a door. I've contemplated adding more detail to the boards with foam, sand and flocking but it doesn't seem like I could do much better than the gaming mat without spending a lot of time cash and effort and still retain that same careless ease of stacking.

Games Workshop sells that super expensive set of moulded plastic tiles as well.

Found it.





Humble beginnings.... you have to start somewhere!

A very clean paint-by-numbers. Perfect beginning, as far as I'm concerned. Throw some sand on the base and you can put it on the table without question.

Hehe. I never played that army - only played lizardmen and dark elves in fantasy, and really never played a ton of fantasy.

Did the X-Wing game catch on with anyone here? I finally got a chance to play last night, and I have to say I was very impressed. I had read the rules beforehand, my friend was coming in blind, and I was able to bring him up to speed on how things work while we were setting up the table. There were only a few points where we needed to look up the rules, for the most part everything went really smoothly. Things went in fits and starts, like every other naval game I've played - jockeying for position for a few turns, a desperate battle when we closed in, one more round of maneuvering, then a final turn to finish things off. We didn't use many extras (I had an R2 upgrade, but that's it), so I can't comment on how the game will change when you start adding in more toys, but overall we had a very good time. Nothing seemed significantly over or under powered, and everything was perfectly tense throughout. Like I said, very impressed.

The base game was quite okay for our first game, but I can see how this could be a money sink given the prices of the ships. I picked up a few additions when I got the base, so I'm pretty excited to try a bigger game and see how things go. More importantly, I've been trying to get my friend into mini gaming for years now, but painting an army was a complete non-starter. This avoids that entirely, so I may be okay with the price if it has staying power.

I posted a session report over in the Board Games thread that echoes most of your impressions. I honestly wasn't expecting much out of it and thought it would just be a fun diversion to play with the kids, but came away from my first 60-point game being very impressed by the system. The ships are represented well, and, most importantly, everything seemed to be point-costed appropriately. Looking at the seemingly slim margins between various named pilots versus their generic counterparts I wondered why you'd ever bother with the scrubs, but every single point counts in this game, and even the inexpensive upgrades are worthwhile.

If I would change anything I would make the basic TIE Fighters a bit easier to hit but point-cost them lower. This would allow for easily-smeared swarms instead of turning them into the equivalent of nigh-unhittable Japanese Zeros. From a customer perspective I'm glad they didn't, though, because buying swarms adds up quickly.

I also don't like that they skimped on dice in the core set. I have two cores, which should be standard because each player gets their own set of templates, cards, tokens, and dice. I also bought an extra TIE and X-Wing, two Y-Wings, and two TIE Advanced. (Amazon was selling them for $8 the other day). If I get anything else out of Wave 1 it'll likely be another core and an extra TIE so I can run a big swarm of the things.

Can't wait to try out the ships in Wave 2, although that TIE Interceptor is looking fairly overpowered.

I've been tempted, but wound up being turned off by the collectible aspect. I'm just not interested in that these days.

At least it's not a blind buy, and the prices are reasonable for what you get (assuming you don't pay full retail). Plus, no need to paint.

True! Definitely not as bad as CCGs, etc. I'm still burnt out on the whole idea, and miss the days when ships were just a list of stats in a book.

If I want miniatures these days, I just print them off.

The game can be easily proxied. Someone at BGG even uploaded a file to scale with ships and movement templates.

I still have a few D&D figurines I keep on my desk that I painted decades ago. One for my Halfling fighter and a few giants I painted in preparation for running the G-series of TSR modules.

Anyone playing FFG's X-wing miniatures game? Looks fun, just watched the videos on the company's site, seems like decent mechanics and the pre-painted miniatures look decent.

HEY GUYS HAS ANYONE PLAYED XWING?

My FLGS is doing a Kessel Run event this Saturday for the X-Wing game. Bring a 100 pt squad and compete in a tournament. The championship round will be using the wave 2 miniatures instead of your squad and the top 4 people get one of the wave 2 minis. I'm trying to figure out if I can get 100 pts together with the models I have now (base set and one of each of the wave 1 minis) so that I can use my experience of 1 game with the quick start rules to win something.

Also I saw the new minis in the store yesterday and the Millennium Falcon is HUGE! The base looked to be about 2-3x larger than the current ones and the mini itself had to be about 5 inches long.

The quick start rules lose a lot of the flavor of the full rules. Try to get a game in where you're at least using focus/evade correctly before throwing 100pts on the table.

How did the Falcon look? Did you see Slave I?