I made my annual pilgrimage out to Indianapolis earlier this August. Gencon the last few years has been very tournament heavy for me. I enjoy the games, but the fully booked schedule can be a little exhausting. This year I decided to take a little rest from the tournament scene in an attempt to experience more of Gencon. That was only partially successful.
Thursday was my one tournament I had planned. A 500pt mid-war Flames of War tournament that I only even looked up the rules two nights ahead of time. Turns out it was a little different. You had to take an infantry or mechanized force. You could only take combat or weapons platoons. Any unit with vehicles or horse would start dismounted and transport sent to the rear. It looked like an assault fest. Elite forces just didn’t fit well in 500 points, so I ended up with my trusty assault heroes, the Brit Rifles. They have bulldog, veteran status, and even were able to be Guards for additional morale rolls. I added some machine guns in with the fun bombardment ability. This really took some opponents back. Bombarding machine guns?
First two battles were 6/1 in my favor. The first against a newer player, and the next against someone who just didn’t make a roll at a critical time. That’s the way it happens sometimes. Third battle I was facing the only other guy to get 6/1 twice and got down to the end where it would be a horrible nobody wins “fair fight” end. I hate those. I kinda threw the game and played stupid so one of us would win. I lost 2/5. Oh well, I figured that would happen. Last game was vs a player I’ve met a few times. He was just too aggressive and I took a 6/1. Thanks in large part to my bombarding machine guns. I’m wandering around and I see the top table ending in a fair fight. Maybe I’m still in the game after all? Come prize time, I get awarded first place! I find out later that I was down one point in generalship, but I made up the points in sportsmanship and painting scores. Read more…
I designed a gaming table in Google Sketchup. The well is 10″ deep, enough to leave a game in progress and put a second top on the built in rim to act as a normal table. Around the edge are dice and measuring tape storage, plus a book rack lower. The ends lift out so terrain tiles may be slid in and out on the playing surface. The rim height is 42″- correct for bar stools and comfortable for standing. I realized I needed a lower storage rack after I rendered that, so that’ll be v4. The one thing I haven’t worked out yet is how to design this lift out end so that it can smoothly butt up against other tables so you can extend the surface- on of the reasons I wanted lift out ends. Most likely Ill have to extend the playing surface a few inches and then drop the ends on top of it. Read more…
I know I’m not the most amazing painter you’ll ever see, but I manage okay for tabletop models. I thought it would be useful to share my process with you so you can duplicate the models if you like the paintjobs.
Cleanup
The first thing you need to do when you get a new model is clean it up. This means carefully removing mold lines, and fixing small issues with the model. Remove your model from the blister and use a small pair of clippers to remove any parts from the sprue. If you don’t have clippers, nail clippers can work well. I then use a modeling knife to remove flash and vents. Flash is the flat thin bits of metal caused by metal seeping between the mold halves. Venting is the small vents cut to allow air to escape the mold during the casting process. Sometimes these can be difficult to see, but try and get it all now as its much more visible later. After cleaning the venting and flash, I remove and additional mold lines with files on assecible surfaces. Be careful not to go too far and grind off details. For more complex areas I use a hobby knife and scrape it along the line. After the model is cleaned of lines, you want to make sure it doesn’t have any mold release agent on it. Use soapy water and a good stiff brush. Rinse well and let dry. A hairdryer can speed the process, but make sure they are completely dry before proceeding.
Assembly
After cleanup, I assemble the models. How much I assemble depends on the complexity of reaching certain parts. Gears I normally assemble the legs torso, and head. I leave the arms, engine and weapon off to ease access to those areas. I use CA glue for most models. Larger models you should pin. You should mount the model in such a way that you can handle it without touching the model itself at this point. Gluing to the base and then using blue tack to hold it to an old paint bottle is a pretty common trick. You can also drill a small hole and the bottom of a foot and glue in a short rod. Then you can use a pin vice to hold the model for painting. Depending on the model, you may also need to use an epoxy putty like green stuff to fill larger gaps. Read more…
I recently downloaded the Miniature Mentor painting tutorials. After watching the speed painting tutorial, I knew I had to try it for the huge bunch of battlemechs that I had recently stripped of their 1980′s paint job. Zenithal highlighting is a technique in which you attempt to apply a global lighting scheme, generally as if the light were directly overhead. Some people do this by hand, but the tutorial recommended doing it with an airbrush. I primed my mechs black, then based gray with an airbrush. I then used orange in successively lighter tones and smaller circles, sprayed from above. This created a miniature that looks bright orange from above and dark gray from below. The big advantage here is you already have where your highlights and shadows should be worked out. all you need to do is reinforce them. The original intent was to do blue with orange highlights. You’re really supposed to paint with translucent glazes and the blue was just overwhelmed by the orange. Not to worry as orange is generally a highlight for red. I just swapped over to an red wash and tried again. In the shadows I added some blue for purplish shadows. The first try, a Phoenix Hawk, came out a little sloppy, but the shading is pretty amazing looking. The Warhammer was a second try and is a little more controlled. I still need to refine what I’m doing, but the mechs are looking far better than my previous efforts. Note the pics showing the mechs from the top and bottom. Gallery after the break.
I love the models Dream Pod 9 puts out for Heavy Gear Blitz. I really liked the demo game of Blitz that I had at Gencon last summer and decided to buy into the game. I envisioned being able to play huge sprawling games with awesome gears. Unfortunately, once I got the full rulebook and started poking through the system in more depth, I discovered that it was far more complicated that it looked at face value. The speed of play just wasn’t there to run huge groups. Some of the rules are also a little fiddly and its apparent they were simplified from a much more complex hex based game rather than written for larger armies from the ground up. Plus there is the somewhat common criticism that the combined to hit and damage roll is really limits the usefulness of certain weapons.
I decided I wanted rewrite the rule to retain the flavor and universe of Heavy Gear, but I wanted it to play a little bit more like flames of war. I set out to do that by writing my own rules from scratch. Its a pretty mammoth undertaking to write your own book, especially something technically dense as a rulebook. However forty odd pages and a couple months later I have a framework that is ready to alpha test. I’m still fuzzy on exactly how I’m going to simplify most of the special attributes for the game. I figure that most of them I’ll just have to bake into the stats one way or another.
Anyhow the PDF is available to download below. I welcome your comments on how to improve it. Use the published Stats for gears, the weapons are in the book, but multiply the armor by 2/3 and the detect by 2. I’m working on a table with recalculated stats, but its not quite ready for prime time.
I recently bought a lot of battlemechs off ebay. The guy never listed every mech, but said there were 22. Looking through the auction pics I could tell there were many unseen mechs in there. One of the unidentified mechs happened to be a Marauder II assault mech. It came to me glued into a lump that looked like wreckage- literally glued into a big ball on a base. I pried it apart and verified all the parts were there, but the both legs were broken in half, and another arm had been snapped off as well. My buddy Rick told me this is a pretty rare mech, so I was motivated to fix it from the sad condition its in.
The Marauder is a difficult mech to assemble even when all the parts are pristine. There are many parts that all have to be glued at the same time to make it stand. First I tried super glue. No Dice. It just doesn’t have the strength to hold up the Marauder with such small joints to glue. and extra connection in the leg, and there was no way it was holding up the heavy body. The arm I didn’t even try. Eventually I gave up and broke out the dremel.
First up was to drill into the lower arm. Drill does into the older lead based pewter like butter. One hole. No problems. I then glued in a bit of thin wire I’ve had lying around. They must have made this out of mythril or something. My shears wouldn’t cut it. Luckily I had a paper clip lying around and it barely squeaked into the hole. A few minutes later I had a matching hole on the upper arm and it joined beautifully. Read more…
I’ve been lazy with my photography. Recently I got a light cube to change all of that. No more dimly lit photos with too many shadows. Armed with my new purchase and two day-light lamps, I set out to reshoot most of my more recent painting. Since my Heavy Gear Blitz minis had the most sins, I reshot all of them. Hopefully all my photography in the future will live up to this mark at least. Enjoy the very very large gallery after the break. Read more…
I’m struggling with the scale change from 15mm to 1/300. All the wash techniques I’ve developed for 15mm that look gritty and real at that scale just look muddy and blah on battlemechs. I need something cleaner and brighter. I’ve gone to panel painting and black lining to get some anime flat painted cartoon look going on. Its okay, but not the end of my evolution on battlemechs. The whole N7 thing comes from Mass Effect 2. I used this color scheme on my armor in the game, and N7 was the brand. These guys are way more work than they really should be. I’m hoping to find the magic shortcut to figure it all out. Gallery after the break.
I’ve been playing Battletech for a really long time. I started way back in middle school, probably when I was around 12-13. Back then the cost of a miniature was insane to me. I still bought one planning on using it for all of the mechs that I played. I didn’t choose it based on stats, just what I thought was cool at the time. Meet the Griffin, the first mini I ever bought and painted. He’s done with Testors enamels that I had laying around from painting model planes. The long bow I bought a few years later. I had no idea of the stats when I assembled it, and thought the missile packs were large laser cannons. Thinking this, I assembled him backward. At some point years later I realized my mistake and turned him around the right way, but never changed the paint job. The Uziel is much more recent. Maybe 2002-2003 vintage. I hadn’t painted very many minis when I did him. None of these were properly based before this. Not even mounted on a hex base. I did that tonight and tried to preserve the rest as-is. Gallery after the break. Read more…
