Back from the Dead; trying to dust off this old blog

Well hey there, LOOOOOONG time no see.

It's been just over a year since my last blog post, how time flies.

Not that I expect a whole lot of people to read this or care, but essentially around this time last year a whole lot of big changes took place in my life, mostly for the better, that put a dampener on my hobby time. Getting two jobs, which eventually led to stable work at one place, moving out of home and making a whole bunch of good friends down here in 'Bool, and the necessity of keeping most of my hobby gear at my folks' place on the other side of town all limited my ability to paint. Also, my commitments to commission work meant that I never had much opportunity to paint for myself - and that proved pretty lethal to my motivation. I've ended up wrapping up all my commissions except for the large chaos army which is still getting finished for my very patient client. I'll try and get around to sharing some pictures of the completed stuff soon.

In the meantime, I've spent the last weekend working on some personal pieces as a breather.

The first in one of the Stormcast Eternals from Age of Sigmar. I'm pretty stoked for this game, and hope its a gateway for me to get back into warhammer. Models are pretty.

The colours are much darker than the official scheme, and I think it looks good. The hammer is a lot of work, does it pay off? I've been playing around lately with glowing metal, and it's very hard to make it work. Even when the colours are right, the paint just doesn't 'glow'.

Next up we have some Reaper Bones painted up for Frostgrave, the upcoming Osprey fantasy skirmish game that looks amazing. I am very keen to try and get this going locally. Looks easy and fun, a modern Mordheim hopefully.
I still hate Bones plastic. Godawful stuff. But some models are alright, these will do. Pair of storm mages and a ranger henchwoman. Oh, and some loot.

Finally, everyone's favourite blue biotic bitch, the one and only Liara from Mass Effect. Gonna hopefully wind up as part of a larger display. 54mm, so much bigger than most of what I paint. Very early days.

Best in Show, Worst on Field; Massivebowl, the wrap-up

I'm back! Wow, sorry about that extended interlude, three weeks without a post is way longer than I intended.

So, what have I been up to in all that time? Well, um, a busy week at work, then watched a lot of Counterstrike during Dreamhack... then a bit over a week ago I realised I had committed to attending Massivebowl in Melbourne on Sunday. Hmm, didn't leave that until the last second, did I?
So last week I finally returned to the hobby and set about finishing my team. The first few days were spent assembling/converting the remaining seven or eight figures I needed for the team. The most effort went into my deathroller conversion - I've never liked to steamroller style of the official models, to me, they just look ugly. The concept I came up with was somewhat inspired by the Trollkin caber thrower from Hordes - basically a dwarf carrying a massive stone column onto the pitch. I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out, given my limited sculpting ability.
WIP pic:

 I lost a day on Tuesday when I went to Canberra for the day (got to see the cartography exhibition at the National Library, was pretty awesome). On Wednesday and Thursday I got stuck into painting the ten models I had left to do, then on Friday I finished the team, packed, booked tickets, tried to make last minute arrangements to meet up with people on Saturday, and got next to no sleep before getting up at 1am to catch my train.
Phew, by that stage I was feeling pretty exhausted.
Anyway, the weekend was a whole bunch of fun. I got to meet up with a bunch of people I'd previously only known online and everyone was friendly and accommodating. Particular thanks to Penny, for keeping me company while I tried to stay awake on Saturday, and Chris and Roy for giving me a place to sleep on Sat/Sun respectively. While wandering the CBD on Sat I also found this beauty in a store full of geeky collectibles. While I might not devote as much time to my Mass Effect project as I'd like, I'm still a huge ME fan, so couldn't resist...

Anyway, Sunday was the big day, and it was as much fun as I'd hoped. In reality, the weekend was more about coming down to Melbourne and hanging out than actually playing seriously. On that account, it was a total success.
The actual games... well... I might have finished my team in time, but the problem with leaving that until the last minute was that I ran out of time to actually, you know, learn to play. So the tournament represented my first four games of Bloodbowl. Suffice to say, it was a steep learning curve, but all my opponents were great and very helpful, and by the end I was starting to get a grip on at least the basics.
In the end, I lost all four matches. To give a brief rundown -
Game 1: I played Chris' pro elf team, featuring Morg'n'thorg. I very quickly went down a point, before getting a bunch of KO's that left his team badly outnumbered in the first half (I had some pretty good luck). Unfortunately, come the second half, with my two heavy hitters sent off and most of Chris' players recovering, I found myself outnumbered and overrun. Result - loss, 0-3
Game 2: I played James' halfling list, featuring three treemen and Morg. It's fair to say not much went my way this game, and James actually felt a bit guilty for how badly he beat me. It was all good fun though, and produced some moments of hilarity. Basically, I couldn't break the halfling's armour. Seriously. By the end of the match I had just 5(!) players left, while he had four reserves remaining. The only player James lost was a halfling sent off for fouling (and killing!) my deathroller on turn two. Clearly halflings are an overpowered bash team and need nerfing! I did manage to cause a casualty on one of his treemen with Flint's chainsaw (so apropos), but he had an apothecary, so not even that made a difference. The other highlight of the match was Grim failing a dodge roll, tripping and killing himself. Yeah. Result - loss, 0-5
Game 3: I played Brett's humans. Brett was fairly new to the game himself, and this was the closest game for me, as I almost scored on two occasions, only to fall just short, running out of turns in both halves thanks to some great, desperate defence. The most noteworthy moment of the game came when I used Grim's multiple block rule for the first and only time (such a terribad rule...). It nearly worked... except I failed my dauntless roll on the ogre and Grim proceeded to get killed on his own turn. Again. Grim really didn't have a great tournament actually... Also amusing was rolling on the kick-off table, and having one of my fans throw a stone, killing one of Brett's blitzers. I like to imagine it was my deathroller after being sent off... Result - loss, 0-2
Game 4: I played Liam's wood elves, led by Jordell. This was a great game, Liam was a super friendly guy and made a real effort to show me how to play better (since by that stage he'd basically won...). His ultra fast team more or less toyed with me for the first half, during which my deathroller blitzed four times rolling nothing by pushes and skulls *sigh* In the second half, I landed some hits and KO'd a bunch of his team. He wound up with just three players left, while I had the ball, and showed me how to form the infamous 'cage' dwarf teams are known for using to grind out games. Result - loss, 1-2

So there we go, my tournament in a nutshell. If you're interested in reading more, check the thread on WAU which has the winners and such. I came, surprisingly, not last. Apparently there was someone else who also lost every game. I did, however, manage to win best painted. The TO Scott described it as something of a landslide, and throughout the day almost everyone complimented me on the team, which was pretty gratifying since it's been four years since I had a chance to play games with other people. It also made me feel kind of bad for describing the team as a rush job... which they really were to be honest. Anyway, I was very happy to win best painted, and thanks to everyone who voted, there were plenty of other great looking teams there.

So, that more or less wraps up this mammoth post, which hopefully somewhat makes up for my recent silence. I'll finish things with some photos of my finished (mostly) team:

Stars

Slayers and blitzers

Runners

Blockers

Thanks for reading,
~Alex/Magos

'Geth' What Arrived in the Mail!; time for more Mass Effect!

It's been a quiet few days on the hobby front, though a few bits and pieces for different projects are on their way, as well as some major personal news I can't quite share yet.

Today's post, however, is devoted to one of the more exciting bits of news I have to share - Geth! Yes, those pesky AI enemies of organic life have left the Perseus Veil that is international shipping and finally arrived in Temora.
As the primary opponent of the first Mass Effect game, and major foes of the second and third games, the Geth are one of the more iconic images from Mass Effect universe. They're also remarkably interesting opponents. While at first they come across as little more than generic grunt-bots Saren can throw in your path for Shepard and co to slaughter, the second game introduces Legion as a squadmate, and with him the realisation that not all Geth 'worship' the Reapers, and in the third game you get a glimpse into the origins of the war between the Geth and their Quarian creators. Far from being a case of AIs spontaneously running rampant and attacking their creators, the Geth are shown to be naive and victimised, only taking up arms when their entire existence was being threatened. Gotta say, much as I love Tali, the Quarians were basically assholes in ME3.

So anyway, obviously any serious attempt at a Mass Effect tabletop game needs some kind of model to serve as the Geth. This is a pretty major challenge, since they can't be proxied with any old sci fi armoured trooper with a headswap. Luckily I was saved the perils of trying to convert whole models by Mantic, and their Dreadball Kickstarter last year. One of the early stretch goals for the game was for an MVP special character called 'Wyn Greth'ski', the accompanying concept art was basically a Geth, minus a gun. Thanks Mantic!
Well, I wasn't too interested in the game Dreadball, but I did back the Kickstarter - and ordered 21 Geth'skis! Ouch, quite a costly investment, but at the end of the day, money well spent. This should give me enough for my purposes. I certainly hope so, since the models were exclusive to the KSer, and it would be difficult to get hold of many more I suspect.
So with my 21 I plan to create the following:
- 8 Troopers
- 3 Rocket troopers (spammin' rockets for days)
- 3 Hunters
- 3 Pyros
- 3 Snipers (remember those?)
And Legion.
Depending on things, I may forgo one of the snipers in favour of converting a model to represent my Geth Trooper character from ME3 multiplayer. One of my favourite classes, his flamer ability is insanely overpowered. Just nuts.

So, that's a lot of words, time for some pics. The Wyn models are almost perfect right from the start. I'm happy to overlook minor deviation from the Geth, such as the different feet and slightly larger shoulder plates, but I am going to do some conversion work to their backs to create the 'spine' of wires they have, and to cover over the large blank 'numberplate' all Dreadball models have on their back.
Weapons are slightly more of a challenge. My sculpting skills are pretty crap. But Geth weapons aren't too complex, and I'm hoping I can create things that looks right even if they're not super detailed/polished.
With that in mind, let me present the first geth trooper I've cleaned, assembled and modified, as well as a horrible looking pulse rifle.

More news soon, thanks for reading.

~Alex/Magos

Cerberus Cannon Fodd... Assault Troops; finished Cerberus squad

I managed to finish off the Cerberus troopers today, though looking at the photos I can see plenty of bits that could use touching up. They look pretty great on the tabletop though, if I do say so myself.

The Cerberus symbol on the base on one of them was something of an experiment. I plan on leaving the bases black, since ideally I'll end up using them in a variety of different terrain types. 

Anyway, here's pics:

Let me know what you think of them.

~Alex/Magos

The Cake is Birthday Flavoured; ramblings, finished Sohei and WIP Cerberus

Well, it's been a while, but this will probably be a lengthy post, to somewhat make up for it.

I have to say, I was a bit disappointed with my start on the Sohei for Ronin. I worked on them a little bit more, but spent almost a week without picking up a brush, in a bit of a funk because of it. I think I was just a bit burned out, and needed a short break from hobbying hard.
Thankfully, after putting them aside for a week, I've now finished off the Sohei and am satisfied with them. They're far from my best work, but I have scores of models from a dozen different games all begging for attention - my inner perfectionist is almost never satisfied, and if I always insist of trying to perfect each model, I'll end up getting nothing finished - like the last three or four years! I'd rather play with fully painted, if only tabletop quality, forces, than half finished ones.

Anyway, here are some pics of the finished Sohei. Provisionally finished, at least, as I may still tweak things or tidy up flaws. The faces are particularly poor I feel. Oh well, here they are:

Senior monk with tetsubo -

Sohei monks with naginata -

Initiates with teppos and yumi -

So, in other news of the last week...

On Saturday I downloaded and dived into the Battlefield 4 beta test, pretty excited. I've only started playing FPS games in recent times, and most of that has been Counter Strike. I'm keen to move on to a bigger game with more options, and the two franchises of note are of course Battlefield and Call of Duty. I've never played either, though I enjoy watching Xcalizorz play Call of Duty. Anyway, Battlefield would certainly be my preferred game, and the beta certainly offers what looks like, to me, a pretty awesome game.
Unfortunately... it's a glimpse viewed in slow, jerky fashion. The lag is horrifically bad, and most of the eight hours I've spent in game over the last few days have involved me dying, over and over, to enemies who shoot me around corners or materialise from nowhere in front of me, several seconds after my health drops to zero. Frustrating, to say the least. Hopefully things will improve before the games launch, or else I may end up going for the far cheaper Call of Duty, which is also promising me marksman rifles, my favourite style of weapon...

TL:DR - I wasted most of my weekend playing video games. No one cares.

On Monday I enjoyed a rather low key birthday. Happy birthday to me. 22 years old. I feel ancient. Like I said, low key. Pretty much the only gifts I asked for were a couple of books, mostly Mass Effect related, including the recently published collected volume of the four graphic novel series by Dark Horse. It's an absolutely gorgeous tome, and while I've never really enjoyed comics, naturally I make an exception for anything Mass Effect related. The stories, while short, are great, and really provide glimpses of events that occur outside the games.
The upshot of reading more Mass Effect stuff is that it's served to reinspire me to chip away a little more at that eternal project of mine.
I already had a five man Cerberus squad, made of the rather nice Mantic Enforcers, assembled and undercoated. While not perfect matches for the Cerberus assault troopers, they are pretty close, and certainly the closest I can get for both an affordable price and not requiring major conversion. I currently have 30 of these, although I have another 30 odd coming as part of my Deadzone pledge. I plan on using them as Blue Suns as well as Cerberus troopers, so having lots won't hurt.

These guys are still wip, though there isn't a whole lot more once I finished the black and white. All the intricate plates are painfully slow to paint. I managed to cover around twenty years of Russian History this evening while painting. Now that I'm almost up to date with the highly recommended Russian Rulers history podcast, I need to start looking for a new one to listen to while I paint. I'm thinking Japanese history, given my woeful ignorance of the fascinating history of the Orient.

Anyway, here's the WIP Cerberus troopers, I think they're looking good so far:

Well, thanks for reading this lengthy and verbose post, sorry for rambling a little. I'll try and make my next update a little sooner. I think I'm back in the painting groove now, and I'm rattling towards 200 models painted for the year!

~Alex/Magos

Saving the Galaxy with the Power of Mediocrity; Jacob joins the team

Sorry for the radio silence, been in the hobby doldrums a bit for the last week, struggled to find much motivation. So instead, I mostly played Counter Strike and Mass Effect 2. Oops.

I decided to break the drought tonight by painting another of my small collection of Mass Effect models, this time choosing Jacob, the perfect victim for a quick and dirty hour of work, simply because, well... he's kind of bland.

My main Mass Effect playthrough, with John 'revenant to the face' Shepard, didn't find much use for Jacob (or anyone who bothered with tricksy powers, really...), but I've gotten to appreciate him a little more in subsequent playthroughs. Still, he ranks near the top of my least favourite of the team (Samara, Thane, Kaidan...). That being said, he's still a pretty good character, can't fault BioWare for that, no sir. He just isn't a Miranda or Garrus. I will say this for him though, he has one of the best scores from the soundtrack as his loyalty mission's theme: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l99D2BJBW_M

His uniform is, unfortunately, a subtle blend of greys, black and white, which is basically a pain to translate into 28mm. I've done my best, and I think he's come out recognisable at least.
The miniature is one of the Kev models from Hasslefree, pretty close I think, but rather short compared to other 28mm minis. He's armed with a Harrier, not a weapon he can use, but as a Cerberus agent, it still seems appropriate. Also it's one of the most deadly weapons in the game, who wouldn't use one eh?

And while this isn't new work, I painted this model before I started the blog, so I figured I'd put some pics of it up here. If I have more periods of unproductivity, I might upload some more pics of older models. So far this year I've painted 140 minis, only about half of which are on this blog.
Moving on, this model represents Shepard in his Edmonton Blood Dragon armour, which I've used on and off in game. I don't mind the armour, and this Yu Jing Hac Tao is a pretty close match. I'm happy with how it turned out, I even managed to recreate the blood dragon splatter on the chest, and the 'metallic camo' colours of the weapon, which is meant to be an M99 Sabre, a weapon I absolutely adore.

So that's it for this overdue, rambly post. I'll hopefully have more to show soon, possibly a couple of lovely Red Box minis if I get off my ass and finish basing them so I can prime them. I've also pre-ordered one of the new GW carnosaurs... I may hate the evil empire and their ways, but I can't resist a giant dinosaur. Got big plans for that model, we'll see what I can do.

~ Alex/Magos

Blueskinned Biotic Babe; Liara T'soni joins the Normandy crew

I figured while I'm on a Mass Effect kick I'd keep working on some of the other models I have for the project so far.

Liara T'soni was probably my least favourite ally in ME1, I just didn't really warm to her. In ME3, on the other hand, she's a kickass biotic, my default squadmate when taking on Cerberus, since singularity messes them up pretty good. 

For her model, I knew I was going to use one of the Infinity females. When I found Gotthammer's blog, Collegia Titanica, I shamelessly ripped off was inspired by his choice of the Aleph Sophotect, so I feel it's only fair to give credit. You can see his conversion here: http://collegiatitanica.blogspot.com.au/2012/03/mass-effect-madness-movies-miniatures.html

The model is a pretty decent match to Liara's costume from ME2. For her head, I used a hairless female head and sculpted on the tentacles. This was pretty nervewracking, since sculpting is definitely not one of my natural talents. In the end they're a little on the bulky side, less tentacles and more dreadlocks. But there's the correct number and shape, so I'm satisfied. 

Her colour scheme is two-tone white/grey, with blue trim. Not the best colours to work with, but I think she looks alright. The part I'm least happy with is her skin - blue skin is hard. My natural inclination would be to start with blue and mix in flesh tones to highlight, I've done this on my WM trollkin before. However asari skin is fairly flat blue. Hopefully she looks ok, let me know what you think.

I finished her and thought she looked a little plain, so I took a deep breath and attempted some biotic OSL. OSL is a technique I'm not very good at, and given the nature of it, it's pretty easy to ruin an entire paintjob if it messes up. In the end, it's not very noticeable, which might be good or bad.

Oh, and her weapon is an M23 Katana, both terrible, and a shotgun, which she can't technically wield... but it's the closest match to the Infinity weapon she's wielding.

Here she is next to Shepard. As you can see, Shepard is about the same height, but slimmer, than the Infinity sculpt.

Let me know what you think :)

~ Alex/Magos

Putting some N7 back in this blog; a painted saviour of the galaxy

Been playing more Mass Effect after a couple months cheating with other video games. Feels so good to be delivering ass-kicking with my trusty Talon once again. Shotgun pistols FTW.
Anyway, way back when I started this blog I promised ME miniature goodness, and so far I've failed to deliver. I've not been idle on this front, however, having sunk way too much money into the Mantic Deadzone kickstarter, since the terrain from that looks perfect for building some ME inspired boards. I've also got some Mantic Enforcers on order to use as Cerberus troops. So things are happening slowly, I just don't have much to show for it yet.
But, determined to rectify this, tonight I knocked out my Northstar male Shepard. These models are REALLY nicely detailed, almost every panel line is present. The downside is that the detail is super shallow, which makes it hard to paint. Scale wise, the models are slightly on the tall side for heroic 28mm, but also much slimmer, with smaller heads and hands. They shouldn't look too out of place though. Hopefully Northstar will produce some more crew from the Normandy.

Overall I'm happy with how Shepard has turned out. He only took about two hours to paint, and there's not much more I feel I could do, though I did realise after taking photos that I hadn't finished his skin. Black/grey flat armour is pretty hard to make look good, it just ends up looking flat and plain. I've added what details there are, he has his N7 stripes and insignia, and I'm very pleased with how the glow effects turned out. His weapon is an M7 Lancer, slightly anachronistic considering it's supposed to be an archaic First Contact War weapon, but it's far superior to the bog standard M8 Avenger.

Macro photography is not kind to black :/

For reference, here's what the armour should look like:

Anyway, let me know what you think, I always appreciate feedback.

~ Alex/Magos

The Beginning of the Beginning; some Shepards arrive and a Miranda WIP

Well, time to turn this thing on I guess.

Quick intro - welcome to my blog, where I will attempt to waste your time with posts about me painting various 28mm miniatures. I collect a huge variety of models, some for wargames, others just to paint. That painting tends to be pretty sporadic, but hopefully having a blog will give me some reason to keep a more consistent schedule.
A fair portion of this blog will probably be devoted to one project that is near to my heart - creating a 28mm skirmish game set in the Mass Effect universe. As a huge fan of the video games, about a year ago I first started tossing ideas around for a way to bring it into my favourite hobby medium. Those plans were initially very modest, but have slowly developed into a pretty massive undertaking.
Along the way I discovered I was not alone in having this idea, and two other bloggers (Collegia Titanica and All things Fett) provided plenty of inspiration with their efforts.Some of my ideas coincided with theirs regarding suitable models, others were directly inspired by their efforts (I will make note of any ideas I steal :P). Fortunately, while I've been working out what models to use, a heap of new options have appeared over the last year, which has greatly broadened the potential scope of this project. Currently as it stands, my ambition is to source, convert and paint models to represent every race and faction in Mass Effect, as well as plenty of the characters from the series.
And since there is not much point having so many models if you can't use them, I've also been developing a ruleset for Mass Effect. It's been heavily revised and expanded in detail several times, but I think I'm beginning to find a balance between complexity and playability. More on this when I start playtesting in earnest.

This first post has been brought about because finally, after a year of planning, my most ambitious hobby project has really begun in earnest with the arrival of the Shepards!. I figured this deserved more than just a thread on WAU, so I stopped procrastinating and signed up to this newfangled blogging thing (bear with me as I figure it out).

Here's what arrived in the mail today, all the way from Ukraine no less:

Produced by North Star Models, these absolutely-definitely-not Mass Effect/Skyrim miniatures are innocently titled 'Dragon slayer', 'Saviour of the Galaxy' and 'Alien girl'. I ordered them a few weeks ago and am super thrilled with them now that they have arrived.

The top row consists of Liara, femShep and Shep all in 54mm scale. You'll have to excuse my horrible lack of photography skills, but here are some pics of the contents:
Liara:

FemShep:

Shepard:

All three are fantastic figures, very nicely cast from my initial inspection and perfect representations of the characters. Liara is armed with an M4 Shuriken, while the Shepards both come with the option of either an M8 Avenger or an M96 Mattock. Given that they're the same base weapon, it would be pretty easy to convert the Mattocks into either Harriers or Argus. Both Shepards also come with helmeted and bare heads, in the case of FemShep there are two  bare heads, one 'default' and one oriental.
Here's a blurry closeup of Liara, which hopefully gives some sense of the detail and accuracy:

Next up are the two 28mm versions of Shepard and FemShep - these are simply downsized versions of the above, but despite the small scale they've kept their detail and quality. They come with same weapon an head options, though they also come with an extra holstered weapon, which is nice.
FemShep:

Shepard:

Closeup of FemShep in 28mm:

As you can see from that last photo, 28mm FemShep's foot broke off at the ankle while in transit between the Ukraine and Australia. Luckily the break is a clean one, and once pinned back together should barely be noticeable.

I'm incredibly pleased with these minis, and in the absence of any genuine BioWare licensed ME miniatures, hopefully North Star will expand the range with a few more space-faring heroes...

Also, in anticipation of this parcel's arrival, a couple days ago I picked up the brush for the first time since finding work two months ago (yay for money, boo for no longer being a lazy arts student), and started painting this lady:

This is Emilia Foxwell from Statuesque Miniatures, and she makes a rather splendid Miranda. She's not perfect, her hair is a little short and she's wearing a small backpack, but all things considered I'm very happy with how she's turning out. I didn't even have to modify her gun, since it makes a very passable Hurricane.

Anyway, that's enough for now. I'll try to post regularly with updates, either more WIP pictures or just general thoughts on wargames and miniatures in general. Feel free to leave a comment, since my ego feeds off attention I appreciate feedback.

-Alex/Magos Kasen