To Dip or Not To Dip

I've been toying with the idea of picking up a can or two of the Army Painter Quickshade product for a while now and after seeing the results that Gus achieved with his Wargods miniatures I was sold on the idea.  As it turned out everyone I spoke too could get it in or have had it in but noone actually had any in stock.  After doing a bit of research with my good buddy Google it seems that a lot of people are using this approach but the majority of them are using something like this:

I don't know how close this stuff is to the Army Painter product but price wise there's no comparison.  Army Painter Quick Shade seems to run around $40 plus postage whereas the Wattyl is a cool $16 and a trip to Bunnings.

I know the two product aren't the same but I figure I'll give it a go.  I've been pretty happy with the results of my Tamiya Smoke/Thinners mix but the stuff is pretty rough to put on and if you brush it on you have to be really-really-gentle or it tears the paint off.  I'll go for the brush applied approach to help control the flow.  Besides I'm not too keen on cleaning up required after the dip and flick approach.

I'll try to get some miniatures painted tonight and I'll give this a go tomorrow.

Roman Seas

This is my latest distraction.

A great set of naval rules that can be played either as a boardgame using 1" hexes or as a miniatures game using 5" hexes.  Eric even produces a range of 6mm scale cardstock ships for use with the game.  Don't let the scale fool you, these boats are big, I'm talking around 12cm long for the smaller ships such as the Hemoila and 22cm long for the bigger ships such as the Hexeres.  And I havent even seen any of the flagships let alone anything from Marc Anthony's fleet.  The rules look pretty good, nothing complex and the hex based system makes for a fast game with none of those "discussions" over ranges or movement.

The suggested build time for a ship is around the hour mark although the first one took me around two hours as I took my time trying to work out the best way to cut all the fiddly curves without bending the card too much.  The ships come together quite easily and look great for a cardstock ship.  The price is around $10 for a navy set and most of the ships come with multiple colour variations and optional parts.  I don't even want to try and guess how much a resin ship would cost in this scale, let alone a metal one.  So the great thing here is that your navy is only limited by the number your print and build.  And they come pre painted!

I'll need to purchase another game mat for this one, probably get a double sided one with 5" hexes one side and 1.5" hexes on the other (Bag the Hun).  Won't get too many 5" hexes on a 6x4 mat so I may end up ordering two and I'll leave the other side of the second one blank in case I uhhh... *checks to make sure his wife isn't in the room* buy any other games that doesn't need hexes.

Everything Old Is New Again

I was hunting through the back shed the other day looking for something non wargaming related when I stumbled across a couple boxes hiding under an old ratty looking bean bag.  One of those said boxes was a collection of trees, foam hills and flock covered rocks.  Yes... rocks covered with flock.  I don't know why I did it, they look really really crap.  Anyway the great find in the box was the trees.  Pretty standard fare and a lot of them had flattened out in storage, but they were trees none the less.

So I turned to dynamic duo of wargamer terrain: MDF and white glue. 

My first thought was to base the trees the same as I did these ones.  I went for the cluster/group option seen below for two reasons.  Firstly I wouldn't have had enough of the mdf discs and I didn't feel like getting all handyman and making some more.  Secondly I thought that by putting a few on a base I could use them as 'dense' terrain.  I'll still use the terrain boards or felt to mark the area of a woods but I can now differentiate between light and heavy woods.

I'll put some more photos up once I've got the bases painted and flocked.

Hotz Game Mats - It's Here!

I came home to find my Western Town Hotz Mat had arrived.  Wow that was quick!  As expected it came folded but from laying it out on the table I can tell that it will only take a light iron to get it nice and smooth.  The mat feels nice and light so it's not going to be a pain to carry around or roll up but it feels heavy enough to stay on the table when you lat it down.  It looks a bit rough in the photos below because I didn't take the place mats and a few magazines off the table before I laid the mat down.

This photo shows the side with just the rock scatter pattern. 

Here's a shot of the western town side.  The flash makes the streets look a lots less defined than they are in person.

The rock scatter pattern is a little bigger than I thought it would be and at first glance I thought it wouldn't look very nice but the effect looks nice over the whole table.

I can't wait to get this onto a table this weekend.  I think this is just the kind of inducement I need to pull my finger out and get the Wargods stuff painted, oh yeah and the western stuff too.

Seeing how good this mat is I think I'll look at getting one of the european hex mats for Bag the Hun, possibly a plain blue one for Bag the Hun or any naval games I may... um buy, in the not... um too... distant in the future :)

Wargods of Aegyptus - The Rest of the Order

First up I want to say sorry for the lack up updates recently.  It's not entirely my fault.  You see a little while a go my Xbox broke and I had to send it off to get fixed.  Microsoft ended up replacing the console for me (yay) but in the meantime we bought a new 50" plasma TV.  The roll on effect of this meant we could move the old 42" into the family room.  So now I have a nive big plasma TV in a room where I can play Xbox any time I want.  Even now I can hear it calling: play me... plaaaaaaay meeeee.  Needless to say the painting has taken a hit.  So now back to the wargaming.

I picked up the rest of my Wargods order las night, a unit of Heru Spearmen and a Heru Harbinger with a great sword, a unit each of Anubi swordsmen and archers with an Anubi Hero.

This guy has one of those ball-and-socket type joints.  I hate them, glue is never enough and so will require pinning.

Metal shields, man that really takes me back to the 80's.  What I really like about these miniatures is the variation in poses you get.  There seems to be about 4-5 different poses all up so even in a unit of 10 men you don't see a lot of repetition.

The Anubi hero.  The detail in this guy's expression is just fantastic, the angry snarl and the way the ears lean forward really gives the impression of an angry dog just about to pounce.

More archers, from what I've been hearing and seeing archers play a pretty important role in Wargods.  Like in most games you have to protect them but if handled well the shooty stuff can win games.

Anubi swordsmen, these miniatures look awesome!  I'm very tempted to start painting these guys today but I should get the Heru I've already started finished first.  Besides it would be so unlike me to leave something half done and start something else... right :)

I picked these minis up from Badga last night and it was great to see half a dozen guys huddled around the Wargods table rolling dice and pushing metal.  Most were playing with Gus's various armies but we've all got a good mix of races between us and some talk of a campaign was going on so all looks good on the Wargods front.

With a bit of luck I'll have my Hotz Mats western mat in a few weeks and if I can refrain from picking up a controller I'll have most (if not all) of my army painted.