Tantalum 5th - Mechanical

Everything Must Go!

2011-06-16T18:01:00.000-07:00

So I've decided that I'm selling off all of my Praetorians.

I hate to do it, but I really just don't have the time to continue with them anymore.

But my loss is your gain! I'm selling everything on ebay, so if anyone still reads this blog and is interested in giving my troops a good home you can check out the first auction up now!

Praetorian Auction #1

This is the first of a few auctions I'll be doing - this one is for all of the painted troops I'm selling off. There will be more auctions coming soon with more troops, tanks, and some stuff rarely seen.

Also, for this auction I'm only shipping within the US, but in subsequent auctions I'll be shipping worldwide, so check back if you can't take part in this auction.

Thanks, and happy bidding!

Back in the trenches...but for how long?

2011-05-18T15:29:00.000-07:00

So...that was quite a hiatus...

A lot has happened since the last post, which was...yikes, two years ago!

First off, I got married - never been happier.

Secondly, I changed careers - or maybe I should say, someone changed my career for me. The stock photo company I was working for got bought by a competitor who subsequently fired our entire staff worldwide.

While that certainly sucked at the time, it did light a fire under me to strike out on my own, and have since created a lucrative working lifestyle for myself consisting of writing, video editing, and a company I started that makes iPhone apps (Twisted Mindgames).

Needless to say, my free time over the past two years has been sparse. The only gaming I've been able to get in is the odd game of Blood Bowl.

So where does that leave me and gaming?

Well...I'm wondering that myself.

Every time I've popped into the local game shop to watch a game or simply keep abreast of things, I feel like like I'm so far behind the curve (at least on big army games) that it may be too late to pick up where I left off.

I'm still interested, but I think I'll have to do some real soul searching to find where I stand.

New IG Thoughts

2009-05-06T23:58:00.000-07:00

So I just picked up the new IG Codex this afternoon.

I'm not going into a point-by-point overview of the thing because others have already done it (and have done it better than I probably could have), but I have some thoughts and a blog, so I might as well use them.

For the most part, I like the new codex. It has some cool new stuff, and it actually does seem...fresh? Do I dare to actually use a cliche marketing term like "fresh" for the first time in my life? Hmm...at the very least it has that New Codex Smell.

I was never a huge fan of doctrines, so I don't really care about their omission, but I do like that a select few can be bought as upgrades for Veteran Squads without them affecting the composition of the entire army.

The characters and advisers are interesting (boy are there a lot of them!), and their respective special rules and limitations on what units they can be attached or upgraded to is an interesting touch. There might be one or two that I might consider using, but it seems like a delicate balance to not let an army list become a "Who's Who" in Imperial Guard special characters.

That being said, I kind of like the idea of Sergeant Bastonne and a Grenadier Vet Squad insertion force being Valkyrie-dropped to harry the enemy's backfield or contest an objective. A tough little nut of a self-contained, carapace armored, Ld 10 order-machine that could be hard to crack. Eh, maybe...

They really chopped the Leadership legs out from under Vox-Casters. With cheaper troops (therefore more troops), I can see why they made IG a little easier to break, but not being able to count on senior leadership from across the battlefield kind of hurts. The Commissar changes don't help this either - Stubborn is fine and dandy, but a Commissar won't take over a unit and lend his Ld value after he executes the officer? Ouch. Although I do like the idea of Commissars as upgrades for units rather than the hierarchy of unit assignment in the previous list.

(Edit: I think I'm wrong about the Commissar not taking over a unit - confirmation, anyone?)

New IG Codex

2009-03-29T12:52:00.000-07:00

*cough*sputter*choke*

Hadn't seen all of this in one place before - looks like I'll have to do a major overhaul to my list.

IG Codex Rumors

Is it just me, or is anyone else worried that people will start bringing some way too powerful vehicles to smaller games?

Objective Received

2009-03-16T22:38:00.000-07:00

There have recently been a flurry of objective markers being shown around the blogosphere, so with the afternoon off and this piece sitting unpainted on my shelf, I decided to gussy it up and take it out on the town.

Made from a variety of bits including a resin piece from the basing kit, various Cadian plastic bits, and the Praetorian wounded figures (glad I finally found a use for those!).

I personally like objective markers that tell a story, and there's something about the plight of this lone and injured Guardsman that makes me want to go grab that objective!

New Blog

2009-03-05T17:47:00.000-08:00

Hi, all.

First a quick update on the Tantalum 5th.

Progress continues on scratch building and sculpting. What I thought would be an easy week finishing up a longtime dream project has stretched out considerably - not because it was more work than I thought, but because I got the scratch building bug, and am now working on three big projects simultaneously (with one more in the planning stages - yikes!). If I can remeber to do it, I'll post some WIP pictures in the coming week.

The big news is that I've started a second blog for a new army - Exorcists Space Marines.

Yeah, I know...a second army when the first isn't done...whatever. Go to the new blog - Rites of Defiance - and I'll explain why there.

Be a Conductor

2009-02-02T20:08:00.000-08:00

Lost a couple of weeks of sculpting to some very unfortunate things happening with the day job (thanks economic crunch!), so I'm only about halfway done with the new project. I did get a couple of hours work in yesterday, and overcame a major stumbling block in the build design. Which got me to thinking...

I've done some pretty extensive conversions and semi-scratchbuilds over the years, but as one of the first real models I've taken from nothing to something I'm intending to cast, well, it's been an eye-opener. At the very least it's given me a greater appreciation of what the GW design teams do, and how they do it. Sure, from what I've heard, there's a lot of CAD designing that goes on in the GW workshops, but the majority of their products are hand-designed. And seriously, it's a lot of work.

So what have I learned? One rule: Be a Conductor. Not an Engineer.

Consider the operation of a train. There are two main positions- the Conductor, and the Engineer. In simple terms, the Conductor oversees the general operations of the train, and ensures that everything runs smoothly. The Engineer drives and maintains the specific mechanical operations of the train (since Engineer also refers to a technical/mechanical designer of machinery, I give myself bonus points for making a clever analogy). Anyway...

The point I'm trying to make here is that it's very easy to be an Engineer and lose yourself in the technical design of scratchbuilding something like a vehicle - get too bogged down in the mechanical viability of the design and you run the risk of not only over-designing the thing (adding a lot of tedious, tension-filled time to your build), but also of losing the "flavor" of the initial idea. Most of the vehicles/equipment/weapons in the game would never work in real life anyway, so there's room for you to breathe.

Of course, you can swing too far in the Conductor side of things and create some ridiculous stuff in the name of style, but I think 40K is pretty forgiving of the majority of wacky ideas. Remember the original dreadnoughts? How about the first sentinels? Yeah - if the initial designs of those can be based off of a peanut and and egg (respectively), I think you can relax on whether there's enough horsepower in your engine size to drive a 30-ton war machine.

So be a Conductor, not an Engineer - the train will get there on time.

Quick Update

2009-01-18T22:18:00.000-08:00

Just got some fresh plasticard/styrene sheets/whatever today, and will finally start on a new..."something"...I've been wanting to scratch-build for a long time. I won't say what it is, but I'm hoping that I'll have a master built by the end of the week and ready for casting.

Photos will follow...

Inform Me!

2009-01-05T16:44:00.000-08:00

This is just a general shout-out to see if there are any good Inquisition blogs out there. If you have, or know of, any links to some decent Witchhunter or Daemonhunter blogs, let me know. Thanks!

There Will Be Blood

2009-01-02T16:40:00.000-08:00

For lack of anything new on the Guard army, here's a few shots of my main Blood Bowl team I've been busying myself with.

These were done with a mix of washes and inks. I'm going to eat a little crow here for a second: despite my earlier gripes about the washes, they actually worked perfectly here. I still contend that they take just as much practice as the old inks, but they did a really nice job on these figures.

Anyway...I have a couple of cheerleaders and an apothecary still to finish, but this is the core of the team including ogre, head coach, chainsaw-wielding loony, and The Mighty Zug.

Fun stuff to play around with.

I still can't take a picture to save my life.

Thank god that's over...

2009-01-01T16:18:00.000-08:00

A new year is upon us, and we say goodbye to 2008 - and I say good riddance.

Worst. Year. Ever.

If I thought the events leading up to "Six Weeks of Hell" was bad, the last part of 2008 decided to kick me in the balls and make me thank it for the privilege.

So I took the blog offline for a bit so I could change a few of the settings and do a general reevaluation. I didn't change much that will be apparent to anyone, but there were a few things I had to do to increase privacy and so forth for professional reasons.

So what have I been doing in all this time? Hobbywise, not much. I took a brief foray into Blood Bowl, and did some brainstorming into how to get the Tantalum army back into line with my original intent. I've got some pretty fun ideas, but I'm taking it slow- I really want to get everything in tip-top shape, and don't want to get burned out again.

Six Weeks of Hell

2008-08-04T21:34:00.000-07:00

Hello, and wow - I can't believe it's been this long since my last post.

First off, thanks to all who've checked in to see if anything new has been put up on the blog. It's nice to see that people are still interested in this thing, despite any progress notices.

Basically, the past six weeks have been absolute shit.

There have been a lot of ups and downs lately that have kept me away. Constant travel, social obligations, issues with the day job, issues with working towards the career that I actually want, finding out that pretty much my entire friend group are all moving away to distant locations, and a death in the family have eaten up the entirety of my time and attention since mid-June, and has allowed me to chalk up July 2008 as easily the worst month I've ever had.

So what's the progress prognosis? Well, I've gotten nothing new done on the army. Absolutely nothing. But the funny thing is, even though I would have liked to get some headway on finishing the thing up, I'm actually pretty happy for the break.

Probably the greatest pleasure I take from the hobby is painting and modeling, and I found that
I was putting too much emphasis on getting that part of the army over with so I could field the damned thing. And it kind of made me resent it.

My painting had become sloppy, I found myself taking shortcuts in the modeling of the things I was once excited about, and the whole process became a daily slog to get one more unit done even though I wasn't having fun with it. And once you stop having fun, and your army becomes a trial to simply "get through", it moves into the category of a weight around your neck instead of an enjoyable pastime.

So where does that leave me? Well, I'm taking a step back and reevaluating what I need to do to make the army into what I had originally envisioned - that may mean that things go slower, but I'll be happier with it. I'm also trying to get some real-life things in order and recover from the past month and a half, so I'll probably be working less on the army, but the time I do spend will be more quality time.

That's about it. Thanks for sticking around.

The post in which I prove my point

2008-06-28T00:19:00.000-07:00

I just picked up the latest issue of White Dwarf today, and what should I find? A section explaining the various benefits of the new washes including the promotion of Devlan Mud as a general use wash, the staining/tinting abilities of the new washes (something that should have been heavily promoted/demonstrated both in-store and in-print long before their release, or pre-order), the discussion of glazes and how to make your washes behave more like the old ink set, and the use of Citadel Matte Varnish: a product that 1) appears to be the same as matte medium, 2) something that I've never heard of being made through Citadel/GW before now, and 3) a product that according to GW's website is no longer available? Strange.

Anyway, I know it sounds over the past few posts like I'm coming down hard on the new washes, and I admit that I have my own personal gripes with them, but I must say that I actually do like them and feel that they have their place - I just think that the inks need to stay around as well.

All Washed Up - 2

2008-06-24T23:18:00.000-07:00

I'm in the middle of an insomnia jag, so the last post was kind of rambling without making much of a point.

Here are some final notes that might actually be useful:

Ogryn Flesh is crap as a flesh wash- it's way too chestnut/orange. Use Devlan Mud instead. Or black ink/matte medium mix.

Devlan Mud will easily be the "go to" wash of the group - if you're not sure what wash to use for a base color, thinned Devlan Mud should take care of just about any situation. "When in doubt, Mud it out". There. There's your catchphrase. I coined it.

The washes have a great ability to tie together the color palette of your figures. A thinned wash of the predominant color on your figure brings the whole thing together. Note: use common sense with this - if your dominant color is purple, and you don't want your skin tones to be purple, don't wash the skin tones with purple.

You will still need to do the blacklining on your figures. Unlike the ink/matte mix, the washes won't do this for you (and the ink/matte mix will only do this for you with experimentation - you have to find the "sweet spot" to mix it right).

The washes are great for basing. GW should really make larger bottles of the washes if for nothing else than for shading bases which they excel at.

All Washed Up - Inks vs. Washes

2008-06-24T21:12:00.000-07:00

If there's one thing that can be said for the Games Workshop hobbies, it's that they pretty much built the painting side of the miniature wargaming industry.

Were other games encouraging their players to paint their miniatures? Sure.

Were people painting their gaming miniatures before GW came around? Of course.

Were any of those other companies as successful at promoting painting as a sister act to gaming life? Not a chance.

In the world of gaming there may be better paints, and there may be better brushes (and hey, over the past ten years we've even seen the advent of pre-painted miniatures), but when you consider the marketing machine that is Games Workshop, there is no one who has done more to further the technique and standards of miniature painting.

I remember sitting in 8th grade study hall, my friends and I mesmerized by the 'Eavy Metal spreads in that month's White Dwarf. It was the ultimate nerd-porn, and we all wanted to paint like Mike McVey and (holy crap!) Ivan Bartleet. And why shouldn't we? White Dwarf trotted out the best of the best in painting every month, gave tips in the 'Eavy Metal editorial page, and made it look so easy. And that was kind of the point.

The genius of it all was that they presented these exquisite paint jobs in such a way as to make it seem like anyone could do it- a little drybrushing, a little highlighting, an ink wash here and there, and you could paint like the big boys. Simple, right? Well...not really, but that doesn't stop GW from pushing the dream - and not only pushing the dream, but making it appear easier to attain...

Which brings us to the new washes - the latest quickstep to painting greatness.

I like inks, I grew up learning to paint with them and never had any of the problems using them that I've heard people complain about. So how do the new washes stack up? Better than I expected, but...

My first impression just looking at them was that they were surprisingly thin mixtures- they do pack a decent amount of pigment into such a watery solution, but how they have a binder with such a low viscosity is beyond me. This was both a good and a bad thing. Good because it flowed nicely, and bad because in small areas it flowed too nicely and went into places I didn't want it to. There's a bit of a catch 22 there because in order for it to pool nicely you have to lay down enough for it to collect, but the same amount made it spill into unwanted areas if the target zone was too small. Don't fool yourselves into thinking that this is something that won't take practice using - just like the inks, it takes moderation.

The other thing I realized before even touching brush to wash? The colors.
Okay, eight pots, eight colors- not bad. However, when you stop to think about it you'll soon realize that four of those colors are basically variations on brown or black. The ink set had nine colors, three of those being a very specific brown variation or black - with the wash browns/blacks there is little color difference in the actual applications between them.

Here's the wash breakdown on those four colors: Sepia = yellow, Devlan Mud= brown, Ogryn Flesh = chestnut/orange (the ink set had a separate orange and chestnut), and Badab Black = black.

Fine, I get it - the colors are all there, but did they all have to be so drab?

The ink sets were vibrant. They "popped". These not so much. When I finally used them they did do shading pretty well, but the drabness really made them sink into the background of the paint job. With inks you could add a depth to colors and make them richer with each glaze, but with these they just added more...shading I guess. I don't really know how to describe it.

Like I said, the shading was pretty good. Definitely best used on wide, deep folds like on cloth, or on pronounced ridges like Space Marine armor. Anywhere that a lot of the wash can collect is going to look good. Small details were horrible though - I'll definitely be sticking to my ink/matte medium mix on faces, although Orc players are going to love these for orc faces/skin where it worked fantastically. They will probably be great for Tyranid players as well.

One thing that I didn't expect to find was that these are great for tinting other colors. Where inks would 9 times out of 10 just saturate a base color unless you diluted them enough, the washes are really good at laying down just the right amount of pigment to slightly change the original base colors with out destroying them.

This is something that they should have been teaching in GW store demos, and had up on the website. Just seeing how the washes collect on white undercoated models (which is how they demoed the washes to me) tells me nothing about how they will react on actual painted figures. The tinting properties are pretty sweet, and definitely warrant some experimentation (a thin Sepia wash over the final highlight on a human skin tone is fantastic for bringing some warmth back to the chalkiness that can sometimes happen there).

There is way more to discuss than I've written here, but overall I'd say that between inks and washes (for me) it's a tie. Are the washes easier to use than inks? Definitely. Are they the saving grace for painting that GW promotes them as? No. They still take practice. They still take experimentation. In a perfect world we'd have the inks and washes to complement each other, because they actually do complement each other really well.

But, no - the new washes will not make you a better painter. Just a painter with a new tool.

I was going to put some pictures up, but my camera's focus is way off for some reason. As soon as I can get it sorted, I'll post some photos.

Links 'n' Stuff 2

2008-06-15T19:28:00.000-07:00

A quick update on a couple of things.

First up, a new link has been added to the Roll Call: Admiral Drax's Imperial Guard blog- a nice little progress blog, with lots of photos, a couple of nice army lists, and something that I think is totally genius: a glossary of 40K terms for the blog (brilliant info for the uninitiated who wander into the site). So go over and check him out!

Secondly, my washes came in this past week, so over the next couple of days I'll be playing with those, and hopefully will have an article about them sometime within the week- will they defeat my much beloved inks in a no-holds barred, painting battle-royale? Stay tuned!

Lastly, a few minor setbacks on the progress front. Still not happy with the heavy weapon chassis sculpts, so I might just proxy in the heavy weapon tripods from the Cadian sprues so I can get some games going while I get the sculpts in order. And that's probably a good idea anyway because since money is growing increasingly tight under current economic situations, I've decided to hold off on springing for casting materials for the time being.

This pushes a lot of really cool projects to the back burner, and once I do get the supplies means I'll have to retrofit a few pieces, but overall it's not so bad- this is a hobby after all, and it wouldn't be much of one if you didn't have something to constantly strive for. Plus I'll get the army on the table faster than waiting for a 100% completion point. I'm just glad I don't need to buy any more figures.

Links 'n' Stuff

2008-06-02T21:14:00.000-07:00

Hello, all.

Just stepping in to update everyone on a couple of blog-related tidbits.

First up, the blog here has been given a PR boost as this month's "Latest Link" over on Kenton Kilgore's, The Jungle - a very fun 40K site, where you'll find batreps, tactics, fiction, and a treasure trove of very smart articles on game analysis and aspects both various and sundry of the 40K hobby as a whole.

Secondly, I've added Andy's Blog into the Roll Call section - a fun little WIP blog that covers both 40K, and Battlefleet Gothic.

Head over and show them both "the love".

Yeesh...

2008-05-27T20:55:00.000-07:00

Wow, it's been a rough two weeks since I last posted.

Illness, obligations, the day job, and writing have all prevailed over my attempts at getting stuff done on the army. Mostly. I have managed to sneak a few moments here and there to get some painting in...

Finished off another unit of troops (with the missile launcher), as well as an Armored Fist squad (their transport is still in mid-conversion).

I also got some fun stuff in the mail recently.

In addition to some random Praetorian units, I got my new Leman Russ FW turrets- hooray! This is the Conqueror turret- much beefier than the standard Russ turret, wider and just more substantial looking. I cut away the very end segment of the barrel and attached a cut down Empire Cannon from the WFB range. It fit perfectly, and in addition to extending the barrel, it adds a touch of distinction that a Victorian-style army in space would probably give their weapons.

The only problem with this turret that I can see, is that it's probably going to change some modeling I was going to do to an exposed engine through the engine hatch. Might have to rethink parts of that, and move some pistons and gears to the extreme rear of the tank.

I also got a Gaunt's Ghosts package through ebay- a full 10-man squad and Gaunt himself. What will I do with them? Don't know, but I'm a huge fan of the books, so if for nothing else they are for fanboy's sake. I could run Gaunt as a special character, and just attach him to a regular stats squad (using the Ghost troopers to keep it in theme), OR...I could make up a special squad of Ghosts using the special character rules for Mkoll, Rawne, and Try Again Bragg that were once on the Games Workshop website. Luckily for me, I had them downloaded before GW changed their website and took them off- which is odd, becuase they took off the special character rules, but then started selling the 6-man GG boxed set again. Bizarre.

In other ebay goodness, I picked up this little beauty just for giggles:

For those that can remember, waaay back in the day, White Dwarf used to run a comic in its pages called Thrud the Barbarian (iss. 45-105). It was a great feature while it lasted, and after WD, he went to his own comic book (either one or two miniseries, I can't remember).

Anyway, he was beloved enough by fans that he got his own WFB figure and rules for play, which I'd love to look back and see what those were compared to the more streamlined rules of today's GW games.

And he is massive! That's a terminator base he's standing on. He's half again as tall as a standard terminator, and easily twice as wide. This picture does no justice to how big this figure is.

So that's about it. Got a little more sculpting done on the heavy weapon chassis- had to totally redesign those about halfway through, and am swapping out some weapons on the Chimeras but that's about it. I'll have to make a big push to get a lot done in June, seeing as I'll not be home for a single weekend in July, and I'd like to have the essentials of the army done by the release of 5th ed.

Quick update

2008-05-14T21:29:00.000-07:00

Just popping in for a bit to post a few pictures. I was wanting to have these up days ago, but between painting, sculpting, and outside life...well, you know...things slip by.

So, for your viewing pleasure:

I still need to clean up the bases and seal them, but I wanted to get these up while I had a free moment. The shiny glistening on these is the dried matte medium- a coat of matte varnish should even this out.

...don't you mean Mechanised?

2008-05-11T12:22:00.000-07:00

No. I don't.

Some have asked about this, so I feel I need to clarify.

Mechanised lists have the entire regiment mounted in some form of transports, whether they are normally able to or not.

While I use my list as a fairly mobile one, they don't take advantage of the Mechanised doctrine.

The term Mechanical is purely a fluff reference to the steampunk theme of the army, where they will use overly elaborate machinery and robotics to accomplish the same function as other armies that do without - e.g., robotic chassis for heavy weapons, rod and gear engines for tanks, etc.

Purely fluff. No need to get hot and bothered with it until you see the castings. Then you can get as hot, and as bothered as you like.

Praetorian Vox-Caster

2008-05-08T21:41:00.000-07:00

In putting together my first Imperial Guard list (and my first 40K list in a very long time), I did my research and looked at the lists of what other players were including in their armies.

Aside from the usual merit discussions over doctrines, type and unit placement of heavy weapons, and the rest of the laundry list of army composition variables, one thing that stood out to me was the distinctive lack of talk about Vox-Casters.

Sure, a few people weighed in here and there on the subject, but I never really found analysis on their use aside from either, "I always bring them", or, "they're a points sink". Their presence on army lists were fairly split down the middle as well.

So what to do?

For my money, I like them.

Anybody who has looked at the Imperial Guard knows that they essentially trade off massed troops and guns, for a relatively fragile leadership (and equally fragile bodies). Who needs leadership and toughness when you can field double the amount of troops as your opponent, right?

Sure. I can respect that.

Personally, I would rather have the security that I did my best to keep those troops around rather than falling back on the idea that I had more to expend. Plus, I play fairly aggressively with a hybrid army that has a solid firebase, but also moves around a lot, so I can't keep everyone close to an officer. Throw a master-vox in there, and I have leadership covered in every one of my units instead of one per turn. I like that option.

Regardless, if the internet rumors are all true, I think that vox-casters are going to enjoy a real renaissance with the onset of 5th Ed.

Consider this:

Only troop units can be scoring units - I'm making sure that nobody runs off of an objective or table-quarter from lack of leadership.

If only troops can be scoring, the IG will have to become more mobile to stay competitive, and need to have access to good leadership out in the field - there's no more relying on vehicles to take objectives or contest quarters.

All of that means that, damn the points cost! - I'm taking my vox-casters.

On that note, here's a quick tutorial for my fellow Praetorians on converting your own vox-casters!

I'm using the Praetorian lascannon loader, because Praetorians don't have vox figures. Why? At the time of their release, Imperial Guard had comm-links, which were considered the equivalent of discrete, un-modeled ear-pieces. It would take the talented author, Dan Abnett to turn them into the bulkier transmitter units we now know, in his Gaunt's Ghosts series. Wait, no...I think there was a comm-link backpack floating around somewhere in that collection.

Anyway...here's what you do -

Clean your model of flashing and mold lines as usual:

Drill two holes in the top of the remote, and one through the length of the remote. This will make carving the remote out completely much easier. Then, being careful of the fingers (his, and yours) carve the rest of the remote out with your hobby knife/exacto blade leaving the empty hand:

Turn your attention to the power pack at his side:

Remove the coupling and the side handle:

Mix up some green stuff, and sculpt your handset to put into his empty hand. I did mine as a pretty standard telephone handset - I like the way it looks, and it gives off that lo-tech/high-tech/steampunk kind of vibe. Use a paper clip to make a cord running from the handset to a hole drilled into the base of the transmitter and you're pretty much done:

Painted up, it should look something like this:

Big-Matte Attack!

2008-05-06T20:58:00.000-07:00

Thanks to an excellent tutorial on the equally excellent Bell of Lost Souls site, I've discovered the joys of painting with Matte Medium.

I've been a huge fan of using inks for shading ever since they first made their appearance way back in the day. In fact, I still have my Citadel ink set from 20 years ago, and they are still all in perfect working condition.

As anyone who has used inks will know, the main problem with them is that they are unpredictable, and take quite a bit of experimentation in terms of mixing and watering down to get the right concentration/consistency.

Right out of the pot and they'll saturate any paint you put them on. Use too much water to thin them out, and you'll end up with a ringed-tide effect (and the recessed area that you wanted to shade will be nearly void of color).

Mixing matte medium into your inks or paints pretty much solves these problems.

I won't go into too much detail as GentleBen's tutorial pretty much says it all much better than I can repeat, but I will attest to the benefits of its use as I have seen so far.

I'm taking a slightly different approach than the tutorial, and using a "Magic Mix" that I make out of a 4:1 mix of water to matte medium (you might be able to get away with a 5:1 mix). When I use this with something like a black ink wash to provide general shading on a troop, I use a 4:1 mix of Magic Mix to ink. Sometimes this is thinned further with a drop or two of water, but it's not necessary.

So what does this do? Well, over a base coat it pretty much provides all of the basic shading and in some cases I've found, all of your blacklining as well. That's pretty impressive. For my masses of troops, I'm basically laying down the base colors, applying a wash using the Magic Mix formula, applying one or two highlights depending on the figure, and that's it. Like I said: Impressive.

Games Workshop will soon release a line of washes that will replace the old inks, I'm assuming in aim to solve the problems that the ink line presents. I tried them this past weekend, and...they're not bad. I'm not about to drop my pants for them, but they're not bad.

It looked to me like they are pretty much just thinned-down paints with extra binder added to help pooling and collecting in recesses (the exact same thing as what adding matte medium to inks or paints will do for you). The colors seemed a little dulled to me, which could simply be the liquid opacity of the binder. It dried nicely (although drying time is extended), except for a few places on the figure where a strange dappled-effect showed up. With some experimentation this effect could actually be used as technique, I guess, but overall it wasn't a huge problem.

There are other tricks you can pull off with matte medium, but again, I refer you to GentleBen's tutorial - I'd tell you myself, but retyping something that's a click away seems pointless considering people are reading this on the internet where information is only...a click away.

The story thus far...

2008-05-05T19:54:00.000-07:00

So here's where I stand.

1st photo - these are my core units which 250 pt blocks of troops and gear will be built around:

HQ with Commissar and Chimera up top.

2 Infantry Platoons with two Troops squads, and an Armored Fist squad each.

A full squad of Ratling Snipers along the left side of the pic.

1 Leman Russ Battle Tank (one more still to be built).

Also, on the right hand side of the picture is a 5-man Hardened Vet. squad (this unit isn't part of the main core of troops, and most likely will be broken up and absorbed into various units further down the line).

Aside from the missile launchers in this shot, there will be two lascannons buried in the infantry units. I still need to model them, so they aren't pictured.

This is the odds and ends of the rest of the army. I haven't dedicated these figures into units yet, so right now they are the "troop pool" that I can dip into when I fill out the various troop blocks, and for when I expand. Here is how they break down:

43 troops
8 sergeants
1 lieutenant
1 standard
1 commissar
15 of various special weapons
6 missile launchers
17 kneeling heavy weapon crew members
9 standing heavy weapon crew members
30 gunner torsos
25 gunner legs

I have some fun conversions and modelling projects that I will be doing with this block of figures.

A tentative work-in-progress for my Commander. The carapace torso is from the Solar Macharius figure. He obviously still needs an arm, and either a storm coat or cloak. I'm not entirely happy with this, so he may get ripped apart and remodeled.

Der Commissar. The powerfist was sculpted from the shoulder forward, entirely from greenstuff. Need to use a better camera to get in close. I'm quite proud of both the sculpting and paint job on this one.

So that's basically where I'm at.

As you can see, a lot of painting to do, a lot (A LOT!!!) of conversions, some sculpting and casting, basing, sealing, etc...

Our pasts, like lighthouses...

2008-05-04T22:51:00.000-07:00

The other day I was talking to an employee at my local Games Workshop. We were discussing the merits of the soon-to-be-released set of washes vs. the old line of inks (personally, I'm an ink man, but I tried the washes and they're not bad). The conversation lead from one thing to another, and then he said something that caught me by surprise.

He stated that he had been playing some form of GW game since he was seven. That was 14 years ago. Now he works for Games Workshop.

A little bell went off in the back of my head, and I was instantly reminded of an article I read concerning the comic book industry and the phenomenon of children who grow up as fans, becoming the new creative superstars of comicdom.

In comics this isn't hard to believe - there's an old editorial joke that every fan has a story to tell, but each of those stories will only have one fan. Essentially, if you read comics, you will at some point probably want to make comics, but fandom doesn't mean that you can, or should. But still, it holds true that the helm of the comic book industry has overwhelmingly been directed by generations of creators who grew up as fanboys. I'd say that this has probably been the case for the past 60+ years.

Okay, so that's fine for comics - they've had a relatively long run of things going way back to 1837 with "The Adventures of Obadiah Oldbuck" (widely recognized as the earliest known comic book - of course, Superman and the superhero genre wouldn't truly create the comic industry as we know it until 1938), so it's not really surprising that that happens.

But take a step back and think about those entertainment industries that have developed within the past...oh, 30 years or so.

Video games, roleplay/tabletop games, the toy industry (specifically toys that have benefited from mass-media marketing exposure - I'm thinking G.I. Joe, Transformers, LEGO, etc.). All either being created whole cloth, or being refined into recognizable brands by mass-media commercials and ancillary marketing since the mid-seventies. And all of them having childhood fans that are now job-seeking, career-building adults.

The scenario becomes a big business version of the "circle-of-life", where a company basically generates their future employees through childhood fandom, who in turn generate the next generation of future employees. Employees who could essentially be installed into the company workflow, already uploaded and hardwired with the history, marketing concepts, and backstory of the creative product, with little to no catch-up time of "learning the biz" that more traditional industries might have for new hires - because they've grown up with it as an integral part of their lives!

Take the GW employee I was talking to. He started playing at seven. Now at 21, he wears the traditional red Games Workshop shirt, and sells blister packs and paint pots to the seven year old kids of today. He knows all of the background. All of the rules of all of the past editions. He knows all of the changes made to games, and is a living repository of the games that have since been discontinued.

What better target demographic than impressionable children to inundate to the point where adulthood nostalgia for their past interests becomes a life-path.

Forget about branding your product - that's old news. The new branding will be that of the young buyers themselves.

I predict that within five years it won't be uncommon for a company's quarterly reports to not only include the standard changes in sales and marketing growth, but also the rise and fall of what could be called "incorporated users" - consumers that are so dedicated within a product or company, that they themselves may be considered either a commodity or usable resource of the company.

Take it a step further and these "incorporated users" could become more valuable than shares of stock; businesses trading customers as payment by enacting a slight shift in product that sends the customer from one company to the other as they follow the comfort of the familiar in the form of consumable product.

I wouldn't be surprised if a basic form of this is already in play somewhere.

Wow. I have to cut this article off - I just got a little bit "Big Brother" there, and it creeped me out.

Full of Pith and Vinegar

2008-04-30T20:13:00.000-07:00

Hello, and welcome!

Let's get down to it: So what is this, really?

Well, you could call this a production blog, or a gaming journal, but when it comes down to it, I think this is more of an experiment of tracking my progress in creating my first Warhammer 40K army in nearly 20 years. A record of where I've been, and where I might go in the 40K world.

So then - in the beginning...

It still boggles my mind when I think of how long I've been involved in the games of Games Workshop - now especially, since as of this writing the 25th anniversary of Warhammer Fantasy Battle is roughly one week past. Granted, I wasn't exposed to Games Workshop until 1987 with the release of the WFB 3rd Edition rules (1st Edition was released in 1983), but still...that's a long time! Twenty-one years! Mind boggling.

Now, I'm going to do a bit of wool-gathering here, so bear with me.

I was in fifth grade (1986), and a new student with a funny accent had joined my class after moving to the U.S. from England. I still remember the day when he brought some of his strange, painted metal fantasy figures to show-and-tell (if my recollection is correct, they were from a Hobbit boxed set that GW had produced at the time - not to be confused with their current LOTR game). As he stood in front of the class talking about wizards, and knights, and some strange creatures called "orcs", mesmerizing my friends for some reason I couldn't understand, I couldn't help but think to myself, "What an asshole! This is a new kid! Who the hell does he think he is bringing this kind of crap to show-and-tell?!"

I won't even try to explain my reaction there, as this is just my memory trickling down from the distant mind of a 10-year old me, but the end result was that by the same time next year the boy and I were fast friends, and our entire group was playing WFB (3rd Ed.) and the newly released Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader.

Aside from the occasional foray into games like Dark Future, Epic, Adeptus Titanicus, and Blood Bowl, 40K soon took over as our game of choice, and most of every waking moment over the next three years were devoted to strategy, army lists, paint schemes, and most of all seeing who could glue the most weapons to their Land Raiders and Dreadnoughts to have the edge in blowing the crap out of each other's armies.

The strange part about it all was that we did more talking and planning (and buying miniatures), than we ever did actually playing the game. We were unorganized, our armies were a mess, and our attention spans made us spastic in what force we fielded from one week to the next, but it was the social aspect of the hobby that bound us together. It didn't matter if someone was playing Thousands Sons one week, and planning a Genestealer Cult army the next - we were having fun.

And the games we DID play were monumental! Weekend-long monstrosities, that rival the Apocalypse-sized games of today. By the end we'd be dehydrated and malnourished, able to stand only from the adrenalin and Jolt Cola running through our veins.

Of course, things have a way of moving on, and at that age once girls became a tangible reality, we drifted.

Now, the friends that I played with back in my youth have all long since given up the game, and although some of us are still in contact, we're scattered from one end of the country to the other. Some of them I have no idea what happened to.

Maybe that's the real reason for this experiment. Maybe this is a way for me to plan, and strategize, and organize my thoughts in the absence of those old gaming compatriots.

Or, maybe it's just a way to kill time while I paint my new army. I don't know.

Anyway...enough nostalgia. Back to the narrative.

In high school I fell out of gaming - I kept informed of Games Workshop in a loose way, but I never played. Sometime in college I got back into gaming. The local game store cronies played WFB almost exclusively, so I started a WFB Dwarf army - all original old-school figures that you could still get through GW's immense mail order catalogue, taken from a time when the Dwarves looked like knights instead of tiny vikings. I also ran a human team in a Blood Bowl tournament (this was 1998, with the re-release of 3rd Edition BB), which I probably could have taken first place in if I hadn't started seeing a new girlfriend, and dropped out*.

* The promise of sex will always trump my desire to play a game. Sorry GW, but until you can combine the two, you run the risk of me becoming bored with you. Besides, the tournament was won by the tourney organizer, who for some "strange reason" (quotations indicate sarcasm) never played a game all season except for the final, so the whole thing was probably rigged anyway.

At graduation, I sold the Dwarf army and all of my Blood Bowl stuff to raise money to move to California. Now eight years later, I've rediscovered my one true gaming love: WH40K.

Bottom line: Imperial Guard

I've always played fluff-heavy so I'm creating my own regiment. At the bottom of the blog you can find a history/explanation/overwritten-summary of my army's background.

I decided that if I'm really going to get back into this game, I'm going to go hard or go home, so I'm using only the OOP Praetorian figures released during what I call GW's "Candyland" period (more on this later).

Massed ranks of soldiers in 19th century British colonial uniforms carrying lasguns? That just screams Steampunk to me, so the army will be heavily-themed with Victorian era super-science.

A lot of conversions. I plan to alter as much as I can into clanking, steam-driven, clockwork tools of death with a flair for design, and a preposterous working anatomy of engineering.

I hope you'll be pleased. Hell, I hope I'LL be pleased.

Either way, I hope you'll stick around. I have some exciting things planned for this blog - progress updates, pictures, articles, tutorials, random musings...it should be fun, so pull up a seat and enjoy the disaster!