Relic Knights on Deck

So the unboxing has passed, and time has been spent assembling, priming, and now painting my Relic Knights.



Those are just of a few of my Shattered Sword pieces.  For those wondering why the big guy in the back is missing an arm it's because I opted to leave it off until I got the full thing painted as it got in the way of some detail.  I'm hoping to play Shattered Swords at Gen Con 2014, so most of my pictures are going to be focusing on them.



Getting the mold lines off the pieces is slightly easier than the Sedition Wars models, and I have to wonder if that has to do with their placement.  Speaking of which the placement does actually seem to be better for these models as well.



The first part of my cadre (as your group is called in Relic Knights) is just a simple squad of Sword Sworn.  I wanted to tinker a bit with the colors using white and blue as my primaries with gold as a backup.



The capes came out very well, and what you see above is all the loose capes for my Shattered Swords.  I decided to just sit and spend an evening getting them painted and get them out of the way rather than coming back and doing a little here and there.  Overall they look nice, but here's how they look when attached to the Sword Sworn:




I think the gold can work really well as a light trim, but I think it'll be a fine line between heroic warrior and minor league baseball team.

I picked up a small commission to strip the paint from some OGRE infantry a friend picked up.  This will eventually lead to another OGRE painting commission I'd wager.

OGRE Designer Edition: The Unboxening

I've talked in the past about OGRE miniatures that I've been painting for a friend of mine who helped kickstart the Designers Edition of OGRE.  In exchange for all the painted miniatures I've done for him, as well as helping him pack up some of the OGRE sheets he received for backing the kickstarter, I was given a little surprise:  My very own copy of the game!



So what does one do with a  brand new box of OGRE DE?  Why, you open it!  There is so much in this that the counters for the game, along with a sweet cutaway of an Ogre Mk V, that they're packaged in the shrink wrap on the box itself.



The insert in the back, titled "Read This First," warns the average person that there are over 1000 counters in the game, and to proceed with caution.  Listen to the sheet, it knows what it's talking about.  There are plenty of counters, and keeping them sorted will help avoid headaches later.  The vehicles on the sheets are separated by white lines to make assembly easier, and it's best to take this one at a slow pace.



That's about three sheets worth.  There were four bundles with the box, and each bundle has about seven or eight sheets.  What this means is that you read the insert and follow the instructions!  Moving on from the punch outs so far lets see what else came with my shiny new toy:



What you see above is referred to as the, "OGRE Garage."  While most of the counters are flat there are plenty of buildings and tanks that are a little more 3D.  The OGRE Garage was a stretch goal, and man oh man am I glad they had it in there!  This will help to keep my pieces both organized and safe, ensuring many hours of play for years to come.  The plastic is very sturdy, and has each of the containers labeled for quick and easy sorting.  This is *NOT* a throwaway container, and would easily set you back $20+ if it was sold separately (according to my personal estimation).

The OGRE box is too huge to be filled by just the garage though.  Here is what was underneath:



MAPS!  Lots and lots of maps!  Not just ordinary maps either.  These maps are folded cardboard just like the old boardgames we used to play.  Nowadays it seems like any map of appreciable size is a folded up poster, and while that isn't bad it's really incredible to know that I'll have a nice flat gaming surface for my OGRE operations.  There are ten maps in all; Two for the original OGRE scenarios, and an additional eight for the GEV Scenarios.  The aforementioned friend laid them all out, and the space came close to 25 square feet!  That's a lot of gaming space.

But wait, there's more!  Remember all those counters I mentioned earlier?  How about a place to store them all:



A thick durable plastic container with labeled areas for all your counter needs!  There's even several slots labeled, "misc," for things that don't quite fit elsewhere, or if you find some custom OGRE sheets (like the Nihon Empire) that you want to add to your collection.  One thing that struck me about this is the numerous slots for dice.  The game came with two high quality (19mm, acrylic) six sided dice, and while that's awesome it makes me wonder how many dice I'll need to play.

Speaking of playing I haven't even glanced at the rules aside from a quick picture:



The game comes with a scenario book, two quick reference sheets, two laminated stat sheets for OGRE pieces, and the rules for the game.  If you think that this game is going to be a small novel I'd like to assure you that the rules manual wasn't intimidating in the slightest.  I feel like I could go through it from cover to cover in about 20 or 30 minutes.  The laminated OGRE sheets are a nice touch since I can just grab some dry erase markers to use them for keeping track of wounds over and over again.

I've gone on about nearly everything in the box except those lovely 3D pieces so I suppose I should get to that portion:



What you see are the pieces from just one sheet.  It had an OGRE Mk V, 3x OGRE Mk III, a Laser Tower, a Gun Turret, and an Admin Building.  The cardboard is high quality, laminated, and the pictures are really neat.  Make sure you take care and punch out and then assemble one vehicle at a time.  From a non-assembled perspective the pieces look very similar, but as you put them together they begin to take on a life of their own.  If you look closely at the pieces I assembled you'll notice that the lines on them are black.  My friend informed me that a lot of people are taking a sharpie to the edge to give their pieces a cleaner look.  I thought to myself as I assembled the Mk. V (the big guy you see above) that I wouldn't waste my time doing that...then promptly grabbed a sharpie and did that for all those on that sheet.  One thing to note is that this is a bit more time consuming, and will slow you down from your quest to be the first to assemble all the pieces.

One of the stretch goals that tantalized backers was the hint of a return to OGRE miniatures.  The pieces you've seen me put up have been of the classic game, and Steve Jackson Games is a far reaching company with their designs:



On the left is a Pan-Euro Command Outpost (PECO?) miniature with a counterpart from the OGRE DE on the right.  While the one on the right stands a little taller the footprint is only slightly larger.  Having glanced at some assembled OGRE pieces side-by-side their 3D-punchout counterparts you can see that SJG is trying to keep things similar in size/scale.  This is kind of nice as it means I can take my painted OGRE miniatures and potentially swap them with the game pieces.

Overall I'd have to say that the quality found in this box is by far and way the best I have ever come across from any kickstarter.  There is so much here that it would've been easy for Steve Jackson Games to cut a few corners, but their dedication to their fans has produced a marvel for gamers everywhere!

Short version of this article:

Weekend Goals

Lately I've been a bit on the quiet side, and part of that is due to a heavy load at work, and the other part of it is due to my entry in Wyrd's Rotten Harvest contest.  My entry in that is a 15-hour piece I painted up, and will showcase here after voting is closed and winners announced.  Until then you can sign up on the forums and vote for your three favorites from each category, as well as best of show and best base!

In spite of that I have a pile of commission work I aim to finish in short order.  Recently an update from the Relic Knights kickstarter came through asking to lock in shipping address by 11-10, which leads me to believe that shipping will start soon.  So faced with a pile of shiny new minis to paint, commissions, and a secret project I've decided to up my production level.  For this weekend I plan to finish up the remainder of the archers from the first wave of commissions I got before a wave of OGRE minis.



Seven down and twelve to go!  I'm feeling fairly confident that I'll get through this goal.  My primer is just about empty, and while I wait for my order to come in I'm going to work on another commission for some Malifaux figs.  With luck I'll get the four miniatures (a Mei Fang, and a trio of Fire Gamin) painted up before the following weekend.  Yes I am feeling ambitious.  Lots to do and less time to do it in.  My laundry list beyond that is an OGRE Mk. IV, six missile tanks, 2 super tanks, six sets of infantry (six bases, three to a base), the aforementioned models, and a Shadow Omega.  I may do a little bit of Earthforce painting to warm up to the Shadow Omega, but I don't know for certain yet.

The Ninja in the Woods

My Patron has been particularly generous lately, and as such I've put a bit of an emphasis on the commissions he desires.  So far it's been a lot of OGRE stuff, with still more to come, and as it's the launch party of the Designer's Edition of OGRE this makes the perfect opportunity to show some off!  First up we have the Ninja OGRE, and the paint scheme for this was quite simple:



Bet no one will see a skyscraper-sized sentient tank painted all in black coming, am I right?  In spite of the simple scheme this one required a touch of finesse.  Pure black, like any single color, is very featureless.  I actually mixed in black with a dark grey, and while it looks black it's actually not a completely flat black.  It does rely on natural lighting to pick out the features a little, and because of that I made the sensor dome (disco ball on the very top) a dark grey, and the missiles a solid night blue.  These will help to give a sense of definition and allow the viewer to pick out the details.

The other treat for today is an OGRE Mk VI painted up in ATACS camo.  What is ATACS you ask?  It's a camo great for blending into the woodland background.



If this looks familiar you might be thinking back to Lictalor the elf and his cloak.  In that write up I tried to do an ATACS style cloak, but the technique I used was primarily drybrushing.  For this commission I decided to use a more thinned/water-color style approach.  As with Lictalor I started with a bone/khaki base:



The fun part of using very thin paints is that they go on QUICKLY.  Easy flow makes for quick work, and while normally it can produce a sloppy piece it actually works in my favor as it gives that splotchy look meant to hide details.  Looking closely at ATACS you can see that there's very little of the basecoat visible, and what looks like the base color is actually a very light grey-green:



I covered a lot of area, but if I tried to cover more I would've ended up just coating the entire thing a second time.  I knew that as I went the thinned out paint would flow and move very easily, and thus help to cover some of the extra areas.  Up next is the drab olive green that people will think of as the "main" color when first glancing at the piece.  I missed a series in the photos which shows this green exclusively, and you'll see the next step as well:



The camo pattern is broken up here and there by patches of darker color.  That's what the dark green is, along with a hint of brown and some leafy green.  Working with thinned watery paints is really fun.  You only need to thin out the paint to a milky consistency, and the result is remarkable.  The water will loosen the paint and carry more pigment into recessed areas, which is a great way to get shadows on your figures, all the while leaving less color on the raised areas.  If you have a brighter undercoat this will leave hints of a highlight.  If you don't have a lot of time to paint and want to get some models painted up quickly that look decent you just have to put down a basecoat and follow it up with a wash.  They won't look perfect, but it'll be a nice little trick if you want to get figs on the table.

Moving on, I needed to hide the dark splotches (actually a very dark brown).  They're meant more to act as tiny shadows rather than to break up the overall color.  So what I did was to take a leafy green and paint over most, but not all, of the brown areas:



Rather than being like leopard spots they're just hints of darker color dancing among the rest.  After letting the paints dry I started to feel like the green was a bit *TOO* stark.  So what I did was to take my main "green" color and really thin it out to a point where it was very transparent.  I then decided to go over the recently painted areas in an attempt to dull them down and blend them in.  The end result worked out quite well in my opinion.



You'll notice that I painted the missiles the dark green, which I did as a means to add definition by adding contrast.  The amount of contrast is just enough to not break up the pattern as one looks at it while still giving the illusion of camouflage.  Overall I'm pleased and feel that my patron will feel equally pleased.  Two OGRE's ready to add to the rest for delivery.

The Brony Mech and some OGRE

I've been doing a lot of work behind the scenes.  I've got some commissions that I'm trying to pump out a little bit here and a little bit there.  I haven't had as much painting time since I've started exercising three times a week for an hour approximately.  This affects my painting since I spend time going to/from the location, and I'm just not as fast when I'm tired after exercising.  Enough of my boring life though, onto the miniatures!



What you are looking at is a custom paint job for a fellow blogger.  It's an amazing chain as my friend who is also a blogger (and my biggest patron) has a friend who is running an auction (feel free to check it out!) to raise funds for an operation for a fellow blogger.  Being short on funds I offered my services, and after working out the details I'm donating two Vindicators from Reaper Miniature's Combat Assault Vehicle line.  Both will be painted in tribute/homage to two characters from the new My Little Pony, one as Celestia (whom you see above), and the other as Luna.  I finished up Celestia (whom I've come to regard as the Celestia Mk. III) earlier today.  Here is what I was drawing from for color inspiration:



I tried to take as much inspiration from the character as I could.  The cockpit and round missile-pod were taken from the jewelry that Celestia is wearing, while the feet were inspired by the markings around her hooves.  The rainbow of colors is obviously inspired by the mane/tail.  This is one of the first times I tried to work with both pastels and tried to do a water color effect.  Thin paints get a nicer flow and pick out details very well, but unfortunately they ended up looking blotchy and I had to do multiple coats which takes away from the effect.  I did do a bit of freehanding though.  Notice the sunburst symbol?  Here's my attempt at it:



There was a request for a couple of symbols on both mechs, and I was a bit hesitant at first.  The detail on these is a bit above where I've been able to hit before, so it's a push for me to try something different.  I could have tried to forgo it, but given that the symbol is a significant part of the character as well as being one thing that makes them distinguished from their fellows I felt I couldn't ignore it.  There is one other symbol I was asked to put somewhere on the Mk. III:



I saw this and my jaw just about hit the keyboard.  Something that intricate on a surface you could fit on a penny would tax my skills!  I felt like this would stop me in my tracks, but I wanted to help out my fellow blogger!



Not bad!  I think that my attempt went over pretty well.  It was actually easier to do the Solar Empire symbol (pictured above) than the flame burst.  It took several layers, but in the end it was more about patience than precision.  To do it I painted dots within dots.  What this means is a large red dot, then a white dot inside the red dot, then another red dot followed by a yellow dot.  By doing this I didn't have to worry about drawing perfect circles on a white background.  All I do now is wait for approval from Erin Palette before I do the seal coat.

Not into bronies?  Does the idea of brony inspired mecha cause you to switch off?  How about some Super Heavy tanks painted in Blumentarn?



These are part of a commission for my friend, and if I find time later this week I'll put up my step by step pics.  According to my patron the paintjob is spot on!  I seem to be doing more and more freehand though, as this was another request:



I liked painting this one.  Reds are a color I do well, and I ended up putting a bit more love into this one.  The request was for me to: "Make it look like the Soviet flag with crossed hammer and sickle."  Thirdpower is a fan of military history.  Simple but complex symbols are becoming easier and easier with practice.  The big thing I'm learning is patience, which sounds like it would be obvious but that symbol is small enough to fit on your fingernail.

Last one for today:



The instructions for this missile crawler were to make it a drab olive with the ordnance looking newer than the crawler itself.  The idea being that the crawler would be faded from use and exposure, but the ordnance would be relatively fresh.  I used the same color for both, but added a bit of a lighter shade drybrushed over the crawler to give it a worn look.

That's it for now, but I have more commissions to work on.  Wyrd miniatures is running their Rotten Harvest contest once more, and I hope to be entering a piece or two.  Unfortunately I won't be able to post pics here until after the contest ends as per their rules.  It should be a good competition though!

Another Commission

Having resumed The Babylon Project once more I find myself idly browsing ebay for more miniatures.  I happened to come across some of the harder to find ones I've been looking for.  A friend of mine made me an offer I couldn't refuse:



What you're looking at (aside from the patches) are 2 Shadow Omega Cruisers and an Earthforce Civilian Transport.  The Shadow Omega Cruisers are ones I see from time to time, and while it would take some digging I know I'd eventually find one.  The real treasure here is the transport.  For the past several years I've been looking at Babylon 5 Wars, and there was a point where they were picked up by Mongoose Publishing.  When I did my original order the Civilian Transport was one I remembered seeing, but when I went looking for it I couldn't find it.  It started to become mythical, and I was feeling kinda down because you see it show up in a lot of episodes.  The point is that my friend came across one, and it is now mine!



There's a LOT of cleaning up that needs to be done.  Flash to be removed, and I've already had one issue with glue.  I'll talk more about that later though.  The other piece I got is the Shadow Omega:



Going to need to do a lot of fiddling with these two cruisers.  At a glance it looks like there's only two points for attaching the fiddly bits that compose the "shadow" portion.  I'll have to do some research into these before I really dig into them, but for now I'm going to put them to the side.

With all good finds there is a price.  My friend is rather fond of doing trades, and this time around is no exception:



27 Bretonian Archers, a Shadow Omega Cruiser of his own, and a handful of WWII German Tanks which will probably find their way onto an OGRE battlefield.  I've been doing some experimenting with my paints and if things go well I may be able to start taking commissions a bit more regularly.  I just have to see if I've improved my painting speed, but I'll talk about that next time.

Victory!

It's been a long journey, but I've finally come to the end of my commissions!  I present for you the OGRE Custom Mk. IIIb!



The Mk. IIIb was one of the OGREs primarily used by the Nihon Empire in the OGRE setting.  Obviously based off of imperialistic Japan, I used the traditional naval flag for inspiration.



The first step was to get the Mk. IIIb painted up in white.




Once that was done it became an issue of painting the flag on.  Easy right?



Turns out that there are sixteen rays emanating from the central sun, and the spacing between them is fairly even.  Now try free-handing that entire thing.



My spacing wasn't perfect, and the proportions are obviously off.  The back end turned out ok in how it looks overall, but it probably could have been a touch more accurate.



Overall though I feel it turned out well.  I went with the aesthetic over reality since it would be easier overall.  What this translates to is the striping going over the cannons and gun pods in order to get an artsy effect, but realistically it's impractical.  As soon as the cannons locked onto another target the art would be lost.  Since this is art though I decided to go for the art instead.  Here is the finished product.



It's worth noting that the Mk. IIIb came with a little token to represent the OGRE underwater.  I painted this as well since it was quite simple, and it was fun to do.



Since I am done with the commission I shall finally be returning to my own pieces.  I have a lot of Malifaux to get painted before Adepticon, and I'd like to do more work on The Babylon Project.  My copy of Sedition Wars: The Battle for Alabaster should be arriving soon as well.

Approaching the Finish Line

The holidays this year have been a busy time, and even though I haven't had much time to paint I've still eeked out a little here and there.  For starters I managed to get the infantry for the last OGRE camo unit painted.



I looked at a bunch of Australian landscapes and found that there was a considerable amount of reddish-orange mixed with white and green.  I mixed up a bunch of ruddy orange to use as a base, and then did some drybrushing with bone to pick out the grains.  Once all of it was painted I used a little bit of grass flocking to add patches of green.  I'm pleased overall with how it turned out.

Moving down the list I was left with six skeleton musicians and an OGRE Mk. IIIb.  I opted to go for the skeletons first since overall they would be easier than the OGRE Mk IIIb.  I spent the afternoon on Saturday getting them all done in one fell swoop.




This completes the skeletons!  Now my only objective left was the Mk. IIIb, but with all the weather changes I had to grab a nap.  My intent was only to lay down for a little bit, but I came to several hours later.  I didn't pick up my brushes until later in the evening, and while I didn't finish it I made significant progress.



You'll notice that the white on the back portion of the IIIb is a much more solid coat than the front.  Some miniatures paints have a thinner consistency than others, and makes it a necessity to use multiple coats.  White is one of those colors, and if there is a darker undercoat it further compounds the issue.  The IIIb was primered with a medium-light grey, given a quick white basecoat of paint (two or three coats), and then I used a VERY thin black ink.  Normally thinning out an ink will reduce how visible it appears on the miniature, but as you can see it still shows up very visibly against white.  The arduous task in this whole process is the repeated number of coats to get a solid white.  Some areas take the white better while others require an unending number of coats.  The whole point of this process is to get nice solid separation between the plates.  Ultimately the white is the first part of a custom paint job for the OGRE, and the rest of it will be revealed in a post coming in the near future.

A Little Here, and A Little There

With Thanksgiving having just passed us by some of you may have noticed that nothing went up last week.  The reason for that is due to a combination of lots of driving for work, and lots of work.  In spite of my heavy work load I managed to get in some tidbits of work here and there.  Time to show off what I accomplished.

First, some business.  Let's start with a round of skeletons.



That's another ten down, and only eleven left to go!  Getting closer now!  I also managed to get a bunch of OGRE vehicles done in the Australian Camo.  This one was a bit trickier since I had to go back and re-match some of the colors from my earlier attempt.  The end result was a big improvement in my opinion.



I sat down and ended up doing all the vehicles from that group, which leaves me the infantry to do and I'll be done with that grouping of camo.  Here's what else I did:

A couple of light tanks



A trio of trucks bearing heavy weapons emplacements



And a little bit of fun.



When I first offered to paint these for my friend he told me that he had a turret that had been damaged.  I offered to repair it for him, but he told me that he had already took a soldering iron to the piece, as well as a touch of solder, to make it look damaged.



I put on a touch of black, some dark brown brushed over with metal, and a some splashes of inks/washes to try and give it a burnt/cooked look.  I think the effect worked out nicely.

Some other things I did were to help another friend get some of his models pinned.  Here's the grouping of the before:



I started it one night and finished it a day or two later.  Just in time for him to pick them up and for me to forget to take an after shot.  Maybe after they're painted.

I had assembled the plastic bits together for my Mei Fang box set, but I finally got them on their bases.



The bases are still a work in progress, but I'm using the same motif I use for my Rail Golem.

The other thing I accomplished was assembling my Ten Thunders crew, The Thunder, Box set.



Definitely Asian themed, and you may have noticed that they don't have bases.  I've got some pre-made inserts which are pretty cool, but don't look as good with them on there.  I may have to make up some custom ones to use.  We'll have to see!