A Good Trade

I met a fellow at GenCon this year, a fellow hobbyist from Cleveland who paints with distinction under the handle "Minidragon". Anyways, when he happened upon an offer of mine respecting issues 1-19 of No Quarter magazine, we quickly worked out a deal where I would send those to him for a 28mm miniature of my choice painted by him. I chose a GW mounted Bretonnian Lord I had quite liked the look of from the first time I saw it, and asked that it be painted as if it was a Teutonic Knight. The miniature is now finished and I can only say that I count myself a fortunate man. So thanks, Joe. A lot.

The Golden Hills of Eriador

The newest army at my house-The Patrician Ellie-Dumptruck Confederacy

Words are besides the point! Well, except to point out that the bowls are fortifications for the commander in chief.

Another Glorious Painting Update

Well, I've more or less finished the Winterguard. I didn't realize until after I'd finished that I have an extra Sergeant and an extra Rocketeer. Well, that's how it goes, I guess. I'm fairly happy with these, but I must say that unless you have painted Warmachine miniatures, it's difficult to imagine how tedious some of them can be to get through. These Winterguard are a case in point, whereas the MOW Kovnik below is a joy to paint. Anyways, I started highlighting miniatures when I began painting my Late Romans in 2001, but with these Winterguard I just don't have the patience to highlight them given the work involved in just blocking everything out. I like these miniatures, don't get me wrong, but it's not like lovemaking to paint them...not at all. There's little joy in it.















My newest project, the High Elves. These are from the WHFB 4th edition box. I've had them since late June, 1996. 12 years later and I'm painting them. Oi vey! But I'm really enjoying it, I like the 4th edition High Elf range, exceedingly. Actually, GW haven't made a decent spearelf or archer figure since. It's been all poncey dancing fools with bad hair, and I just don't get the joke. But that's because I read the 4th edition High Elf Army Book I suppose.

These were primed black. Tin Bitz was then overbrushed on the armor, followed by a drybrush of boltgun metal. Then a coat of Tri Art Yellow Oxide on the cloth, and a coat of GW Foundation Mechrite Red on the spear and leather hauberk. Then PP Skorne Red over the Mechrite Red, and Reaper's Linen White on the cloth.

That's how far I've got to the present.

There are a couple of metal spearelfs in the ones I have worked on shown in the picture below. I painted them in 1997, and IIRC I used mithril silver on a white base coat. So I'm going to be trying a few washes on them.

Painting and Daydreaming Update

First, the painting update. As you can see below, the Winterguard are just about done. I'm going to give the faces and hands a bit of PP Flesh wash, and then one more highlight of Midlund Flesh, and I've got to figure out what, if anything, I'm going to do with their hair. And of course, the bases need a drybrush of bone before flocking them. Paints are GW Foundations, PP flesh tones, and the old Citadel metallics.



Secondly, my next project...yes, it's back to painting GW Terminators. I kind of miss the little buggers, and I can't bear to look at them in their current form any longer. I painted up 10 of them a couple of years ago and then traded them away...pictures of those miniatures are to be found in an earlier entry.



And, to explain a bit about where I'm coming from, what got me thinking about these terminators was the free Black Reach terminator with a recent White Dwarf. Here it is, built, primed black with some gesso and then just roughly overbrushed with a coat of old Citadel Vermin fur or something.



Which brings me to my daydreaming...I left off the GW hobby, as they call it, at the end of 2006. However, since I've moved to the outharbours of my fair province, GW has got me back a bit, mainly because of the fact that the only thing I can buy here that has any connection with my hobby interests is White Dwarf. And you know, that magazine has improved enormously. I'm not going to wax on about it ad nauseum. The bottom line is that they have changed the balance of the White Dwarf from advertising rag to hobby magazine. And GW's prices are going down for Canadians at the same time as they have almost revolutionized the quality of their models, and apparently made some relatively positive improvements in their rules. Anyways, the long and short of it is that I am so inspired by the new Vampire Counts, Chaos demons and the Chaos Warriors armies that I am going to get my OOP High Elves out and try to do something fine with them. It means coming full circle in a sense as the High Elves were the first army I acquired when I got into wargaming again in 1996.

Red October

Fall is here, and for some strange reason, strange because I cannot understand it, I find myself with time to paint again. I am painting the last of my Khador. Why? I do not know. But I am.

The Bloodletting continues, and other musings

I'm selling off stuff at a fairly convincing rate over on my Alderass blog, so much so that I'm now toying with the idea of selling painted armies. The experience is starting to remind me of a short story my father wrote, where a man gets hooked on selling his possessions whilst his wife is on holidays, and she returns to find that he has sold everything they owned, lock, stock and barrel.

Maybe it's in the blood? ;-)

I had originally planned on selling off various Rackham metals I collected back in the day of second edition Confrontation and the original Rag'Narok. Rackham is trying to rebrand these metals now as "Legends" and to sell them at an even higher price point then it used to before it lost its way, but this will probably only work if it has a monopoly on the North Korean toy market. I saw virtually the full range of Rackham metals on sale at 50% off at GenCon, and you can find them on the internet at 75% off. What a sad disaster it has all been.

Now back to the idea of selling my painted armies. As so many others have done before me, I went a bit overboard with the Privateer Press miniatures, and even after ridding myself of almost $600 worth (MSRP) of NIB stuff over the past few days, I still have an awful lot of NIB and painted stuff on hand. The thing is that I actually have no one to play a game with where I reside these days, and even if I did, I have come to realize that I really don't need everything I have. I'm a short step, therefore, from realizing I don't want anything that I have.

I've purchased a lot of choices that I don't really want...is it our daydreaming that bankrupts us? I always thought that daydreams were harmless.

What I might do then, is just to sit down and figure out a few core army lists, and then sell the rest. That's a choice, isn't it?

News - The Bloodletting begins

They say George Washington died from an overvigorous bloodletting. I hope I survive mine, but it is beginning now. My lead collection will be halved over the next couple of months. The prices will be 50% off MSRP plus shipping with insurance and PayPal fees. Everything shall be shown with pictures on my blog for this operation which is titled, appropriately enough, "Alderass". The link is on this page.

In other news I am painting away at the EIR. I am doing the mass painting thing, all 200 plus foot at the same time. At a certain point I will divide everything up into units and then finish them as such. There will come a time then that I shall be posting completed units fairly quickly, but that time is a ways away yet. What to do about the shields doth perplex me. I'd like to hand-paint them, but it's not realistic to do that, so I'll probably get Little Big Man transfers I expect.

Most excellent Privateer Press gaming tables

Tour of Duty tables from GenCon 2007. Lots of great ideas here. The centerpieces are related to the scenario, so they do not have to be included on every table, but they are great...erm...centerpieces? One was used for the Nationals final that year, the one with the raised decking with a wooden crane assembly.

GenCon 2008 Highlights

Well, just got back, so to speak, from GenCon 2008. There's a lot of independent material on the web about this convention, and about every part of it for that matter. All I did was war game, and I had very few opportunities to take pictures. These are the pictures that I thought worthwhile to share:

This is a game of Warmachine/Hordes using the Tour of Duty format. It's very similar to the old GW Carnage scenario, and in some ways is more fun than Carnage just due to the rich variety of rules associated with Warmachine and the smaller number of models, which gives space to move about and try a few things. I am playing Vlad, Joe W. ("Minidragon" on the PP forums) is playing Sorscha, Joe's friend is playing Mortenebra and my buddy Ken is playing a Trollblood army provided by Joe. Great fun, and a nice table provided by PP. Many thanks to the umpire, "Polar Bear" on the PP forums.

This is another view of Minidragon's army. I actually thought his Khador army was the nicest one I saw at GenCon.

This are three of Minidragon's infantry. The bareheaded Sergeant is an excellent conversion.

This is Minidragon's army on view before the HardCore tournament. I think the Manhunter's head is a superior conversion.

This is Minidragon's Kovnik Joe. Brilliant job. And note the converted Mechanik in the background. Small details like this make all the difference.

This Skorne Titan is excellent. The guy who owned him played with a Skorne sashimono faithfully attached to his back throughout his games.


The Skorne player also showed me his Carvivean for his forthcoming Legion army. Sweet.

Another view of the Carvivean.

Is Wargaming Immature?

I often wonder about this. It's probably a learned horror latent within me from a few of the agonistes of the female persuasion that I've walked the walk with. But, you know, I don't think war gaming is all that bad. Why would it be any different for us than it was in the 19th century when it was considered a leisure activity a grown man could be proud of? Maybe a little like this:



And I did recently observe this person driving down the road near my house:



So I don't think war gaming is that bad at all.

The Painting Den

This is where I spend a few hours every week. As can be seen, at present I am painting just over 200 GB and Foundry EIR foot figures. I prime by hand in black gesso. I am using Privateer Press Fleshtones. They are the best I've seen. I'm impressed with the GW Foundation paints and have been using them to paint almost everything (though particularly Khador) over the past year. I also picked up the new washes from the WarStore stand at GenCon this year and they are on the table because they are about to be applied on some white-primed Landsknect pluderhosen. I still have yet to find better metallics than the old Citadel paints from the 90's. You might also see a bottle of Reaper Master Series Clear Red on the table. That's a trick to make reds pop. I learned it at a seminar with Marike Reimer at GenCon 2007. I generally use a wide variety of paints but I have very little time and so I have to wholly focus on techniques that save time.

Mirliton Adventures

During my honeymoon in 2004 I ended up in the little storefront of Mirliton in the little town of Tavarnuzze, just outside of Firenze. These are some of the things I saw there.

William Wallace and friends

More of William Wallace's friends. He had lot's of friends. Just ask Mel.

Kniggetts
More kniggetts
Northern wars...beautiful vignette
Another view of the Rus
Caroccio at 15mm scale
Teutonics at 15mm - I purchased these. I could not help myself.
Caroccio at 25mm scale.- I picked this up too. I was helpless.
Another view of the Caroccio vignette
Another view of the Caroccio vignette. The box comes with only 4 of the oxen so you should pick up another pair from Mirliton.
Scotland Forever - The Scots Greys at Waterloo. Wow!