Only Two Months Left!

Good afternoon folks and fellow wargamers!  Welcome back to another bi-monthly post from here at Wargamer Ramblings.  As usual, I hope things have been doing well for you all and I hope it just keeps getting better and better!  We are almost done with the 2019 year and the resolution started to paint more minis and so I want to bring you along with my journey and where I am.  Cozy on up with a warm drink and here we go!

So the past two months have been pretty brutal on my painting progress if I am being honest here.  After NoVA Open I came back absolutely drained.  I not only had the post-con drain of hobbying and gaming too much but it was just tiring on me physically.  One of those 'getting older' kind of experiences I suppose, but that's why I didn't do a post-con blog about it.  If you're curious about pictures you can go right HERE.

It was a better experience this year compared with the one in 2018, primarily because I actually signed up for stuff this go around!  I ended up attending roughly half of my events, though I wish I had gone to all of them.  Regardless of the events I missed, the ones I attended were a blast.  I have to say I think I hung around the Warhammer 30k Richmond group crowd the most.  A lot of great people from that group but also some of the best looking armies.  Something about their passion for the Horus Heresy and the stories they wove with the scenarios just really drew me in.  I only participated in one event with them, the Zone Mortalis, but I had a blast and would do it again!

After a week like that, I came back and I frankly didn't start painting again until nearly a month later!  Part of that was a dedicated time of respite from painting and trying to get as much done before the NoVA Open but real life has a nice way of making sure to exhaust you to where video games seemed to have been an easier choice.  This is true, it's a lot easier to go play video games than to do this hobby and sometimes that wins out.  I did spend a good amount of time assembling new models as I snagged some Dark Elves from Greebo games for Blood Bowl.

So when I did decide to pick the brush back up I started off with Warcry's Iron Golem warband.  I had the color scheme in mind: frost exposed skin and metallic green armor!  After looking up some tutorials I decided to give the skin a try aaaaaand...ended up with the Grimace.  Yikes.  I was disheartened but I didn't quite give up (took me a couple days to get over my own frustration) and I somehow salvaged the paint scheme to be less frost and more desert themed.  I think it kind of worked but I'll be honest I'm not in love with the scheme and given the chance to do it again I will try to avoid it.

I think that's ok though which is weird to me. It goes against how I've operated for a long where I treated all models as something more than they really have to be, which is something along the lines of "they have to be perfect because I spent all this money on them!"  I suppose for some that are true but as I've been painting more I've also come to appreciate the process of discovery.  Sometimes it works out in my favor, like those pink Yu-Jing from infinity, but sometimes it doesn't and that's fine with me.  By exploring and opening myself up to failure I ended up with some new skills (e.g. recovering from a bad scheme), experience with new techniques, and an appreciation for other color combinations I would have never explored otherwise.

So after the Iron Golems, I went and started working on the Untamed Beasts and I felt the results were more pleasing to my eye.  Not to say the Iron Golems are not contrast paint friendly, but I felt that you could pretty much do the entire Warband with nothing but contrast paints had some great results with this band.  I also appreciated the models more as I painted them, as earlier I was not a fan of the whole tribal theme.  After getting my hands on them I appreciated the sculpts and that helped the painting process go more smoothly.  I experimented with some other paints, specifically Scale 75 colors, and found that the ultra-matte effect their paints have had an undesired effect on things like cloaks but worked really well on the bone weaponry.

I started working on some Blood Angel Primaris marines but didn't finish them in time before October ended, but here are some progress pictures anyways.

Slow couple of months but I think I am picking back up.  How is your hobby progress coming along?  Let me know what you're working on regardless of the smoothness or struggle it might be and I hope you end up doing well.  We're almost done with this year and the bi-monthly progress report so it should be interesting to see how I did over the whole year.  Well until then folks take care of yourselves out there and happy gaming!

NoVA Open 2019 here I come!

Greetings and well wishes folks!  What a wonderful end to the summer and I hope that your time in the hobby has been well spent.  I will be brief tonight because I am off tomorrow to head on out to NoVA Open 2019!  So I've got some pictures for you all and just a couple of quick talking points, so let's begin!

Right to the point: I met all of my hobby goals for this convention.  That's right, all of those models painted up...and then some!  I hit a slump earlier in the month of July and I think it was because I ran into some problems with the A Song of Ice and Fire models.  Everything I tried just didn't go right.  Priming went bad so then I had to strip the models, which ended up not working as well.  Then the color scheme went funky and so on.  It was discouraging at first but after a small break from painting I went right back and picked up Infinity.

Two Yu-Jing starter boxes later I started on my Aristeia team, managed to paint up some figures for some folks I know, painted up a Battletech started box birthday gift, and here we are: the night before NoVA.  It's a good feeling when you get everything you wanted to painted up and done.  Might just need to get another event to motivate me for certain projects...but we'll see.

Without further ado here are some pics of the stuff I've painted up in no particular order:

It's been a blast painting up some of these models.  My only complaint with the Aristeia models is that the plastic they use makes it annoying to clean off properly.  Still, I feel my progress in knocking out the horde of grey/white/black unpainted models is going well, and I look forward to continuing the trend and seeing where I go from here/

That's all tonight folks.  I must continue to prepare for tonight and hopefully, if I can remember to take some pictures I will share them with you!  Until next time folks game well and happy hobbying!

Mid-Year Painting Progress Report

Good tidings my fellow wargamers and welcome back!  For my American friends happy recent 4th of July, and for everyone else, I hope you have had equally fun times with friends, family, and hobby time.  These past 2 months have been pretty productive in terms of the hobby and I am very excited to show you some pics of my completed projects.  Hopefully, things have been equally productive for you all in whatever fashion it has been, but let's go ahead and get to business!

In my previous post, I already went over the new fad that is Contrast paints from GW, but I still attest to their usefulness.  They've become a quickly added tool in my overall repertoire and have helped me save a lot of time and energy on getting started with the basecoats.  One thing I have noticed, especially for skin/flesh, is that they've helped me figure out which areas to highlight and have helped take the guesswork I've been mostly operating on in the past.  I'm still figuring out how to best use them to not only get some pretty decent effects but also to just keep shaving time off my paint.  Speaking of time...

The progress over 6-months board

So it's the halfway point to the year and I have to see that I've been pleased with being able to stick with my goals of painting more models.  Comparatively, I would rarely paint anything but would always tell myself "I don't have time" or "I just wish I could."  Going along the idea that any progress is better than no progress at all I've now reached the 6-month mark and I've been recording models/units that I've finished painting.  Looking back it's been pretty amazing to see what I've been able to knock out, but also how long it took to finish each one.  As you can see around 6/15th when Contrast paints dropped I think my paint time went by considerably faster (please note I recorded when I felt like I was 'done' with that group so even if I painted a unit for let's say Infinity, I wouldn't feel like it was done until ALL that faction was painted up).

Sons of the XVth Legion

Not only did I spend a lot of time painting, but I also ended up getting some gaming done as well!  That's right sometimes I do actually play these games.  I've been making an effort to try and get into the communities more in my area.  I live where there are a lot of groups who play a lot of different games and yet I often have said the same thing I said to myself when I wanted to paint, "I'm too busy, I don't have time, blah blah blah."  Well, I'm trying to change that and before June was out I ended up playing in two events: a local Steamroller event and my first Blood Bowl tournament!  Both were great events, and great chances for me to get to meet new people, play with some familiar faces, and lose a lot of games!  Regardless of my ability to win, I am just happy to get out and engage in the community more.

So I've finished several projects these past 2 months.  As far as my goal for being ready for NoVA I am almost there.  I think I've got a couple of Aristeia! models to finish up (after I select my 4 fighter group that is) and I've got the Infinity event to also work on as well.  I finished my Horus Heresy Zone Mortalis event force and shortly after Contrast was released and I completed both starting warbands for Warhammer Underworlds shortly after my Malifaux crew was finished.  Suffice to say I've been pretty busy with painting to have reached these milestones!

Well, that's it for today and it's been a pleasure sharing with you my progress.  It's been a little surreal to look back over the past half-year and to think about how far I've progressed when before I painted like...never.  I hope to encourage you if you were in the same boat as I was with wanting to paint and not actually doing it, just do a little each day if you can.  Some progress is waaaaay better than none at all and if you just try daily then eventually you'll get that model done.  Or that unit, or army, or whatever it is.  Eventually, it'll get painted up with your efforts because even if it feels like it takes forever you're still doing something. 

I hope you're all making progress in your efforts whatever they may be and until next time happy gaming!

It's popular! Yet another Contrast paint post!

Hello, fellow wargamers and tabletop enthusiasts and I hope you are reading this under good fortunes.  It’s a little early for my bimonthly post, but as the title suggests there have been some big changes to our hobbying world with the introduction of the new Contrast paints from GW.  I managed to grab some for myself and like many others, I’ll give my opinion on them and show some stuff that I managed to get painted in a pretty rapid pace (compared to my usual that is).  So without further ado, here’s yet ANOTHER Contrast paint opinion piece!

I won’t lie, I have been hyped with these paints since I heard about them from the beginning.  I like I imagine some other collector’s out there, have a stupid amount of unpainted models.  Like an embarrassing number of them.  The kind of number where you might say I have an addiction problem.  So an advertised method was with less effort I can get tabletop quality standard pretty quick, and that certainly has my attention.  Then I started seeing what pro painters had been able to do, then the pictures of random folks online and their results, and so on and so on.  I had not only bought a hype train ticket but I upgraded to first class and have been counting the days, but despite the hype, I also have some aged wisdom and wanted to secure some of them so I can see what I can work with.

After I painted the first model here is my emotional reaction:

With the test model completed, I then started on a Malifaux crew I had that was lightly primed.  I usually prime my models black and leave it at that, but for a brief period, I did some models in grey with a zenithal white.  I have to admit, I did not like how the priming turned out because I felt that the grey had a gloss kind of texture to it while being flat in color, and the white was a satin finish.  So bear that in mind with these pictures, but I have to say that the paints did wonderfully!  In the time it would have taken me to finish the set of Witchling Stalkers I was able to knock them out, some Freikorp Specialists, the Purifying Flame, and a model from Heroforge for Pathfinder!  They did their job well and I was able to apply a single coat down and get a pretty good overall effect.  I did some minor blending with the paints on the Purifying Flame to get the flame effect and while yes it’s not a perfect transition it did get the job done in a matter of minutes.

Now I am not naïve enough to think that these paints will do everything and anything I want them to do, but damn if they didn’t perform up to par with what I had hoped they would do.  Most of the models shown, except for the Heroforge model, had some extra work done to them to finalize the appearance.  A couple of edge highlights here, some weathering pigment here, and some additional shade washes there made the models go from basic TTQ to maybe a slightly better TTQ (I’m not sure, you be the judge).  I think these paints will shine with the more organic textures than they might with armor plating, which appears to be the general consensus amongst the community, however, I’ve seen some seriously good with on armored models like Space Marines and Stormcast.  Cloth, fur, leather, skin, and so on will probably be the textures that don’t require any special attention, whereas armor might require some attention to things like excessive pooling.  Another thing of note is that they didn’t seem to be forgiving in that if you paint over where you intended to then you’ll need to either slap on some covering paint similar to your primer or touch it up with a layer paint similar to the Contrast.

I’m sure veterans and new painters alike will be able to take advantage of these paints, but I can’t help but to also think about the people in our community who don’t have the time to paint or just aren’t able to paint well.  I’ve got some friends who are colorblind or struggle with hands that shake to a degree that the prospect of basecoating>shading>highlighting>blending>etc with traditional acrylics can be somewhat daunting or challenging and in some cases off-putting.  What about the veteran with arthritis in their hands so that they can only paint for so long before it becomes excruciating?  So a paint that can help some people overcome those challenges and help those who struggle with the mechanics of fine detail painting achieve some level of TTQ that they can be proud of to bring to the table is definitely a good thing in my book.  I also think some tournament players who want to use the new or updated armies and want to use them solely for the game purpose but have to paint for the tournament will enjoy these paints as well and ideally will cut down the time to be ready for the next event.  Folks like me with a ton of models who just want them painted will probably also like these paints if it presents with an opportunity to clear the paint queue some.

Now in the span of 2 days, I am almost done with my Malifaux crew and I have to say it's been great to paint with.  Now one thing is for certain in that the undercoat does have a HUGE impact on the quality of the paint.  Like I said before these models had zenithal priming with some areas obviously not primed.  In those areas, I had to go back with acrylic layer paint and do some touch-ups and/or paint over the Contrast.  Regardless I think the overall effect has been positive and in 2 hours I knocked out 4 models that I might have taken a couple days to work on (a day is about 3 hours on average during the workweek).  So I stand by my original statement that these paints, for me, are a big time saver and will help me go through that model queue real quick.

On this last one, you can see near the bottom of the lab coat the primer spatter not covering the entirety of the coat.  Will it matter from 3 feet away? Nah.  However, it's something to take note.

That’s all today folks, I hope you are making progress in your projects and enjoying yourselves.  If you also picked up some of these paints feel free to share a link down below and share what you’ve been able to get done with them.  If you didn’t pick up any of the paints, feel free to share a link down below and share what you’ve been working on.  My next trial with these paints will be to see how many Crucible Guard models I can knock out before a Steamroller event on Saturday.  I’ll be back at the end of the month with my overall update on what I’ve been painting and how it ties in with NoVA.  Until then happy wargaming and happy hobbying!