Hellakin Goregutter, halfling rogue

Here is a quick halfling rogue, Hellakin Goregutter, from Reaper. He is, of course, a Bones miniature. Someone from one of the campaigns needed a halfling rogue. If at all possible ginger. I obliged. I always like playing in parties with fully painted PC miniatures at least.

This particular campaign I play in myself as well. 'Unfortunately' two more players need new miniatures painted for them. My life is so 'hard'. Ha!

Hellakin Goregutter

Fully painted Mansions of Madness

It is done! Here is the picture that shows all the models in Mansions of Madness, as painted by yours truly. Woohoo! Now I need to find some people to play a few games. Anyone!?

Regardless I am already slowly starting to paint Call of the Wild, Amanda Sharpe first. Bones painting is also starting up. Good times!

Bones boiling

I recently took time to boil all my new bones. Well the smaller ones that is, the huge dragons will get boiled in bigger pots at a later date. So what is this boiling? Its easy really.

Bones tend to come wrangled and warped. To warp things like bent spears back you boil it. Take some water, make sure it is boiling, then put it in a cup/pot. Then take some normal, cold, water and add a few ice cubes.

Now dunk a few of your Bones models (as many as can fit without being a hinder to each other) in the near boiling temperature water. I use some chemist tongs to put them in and out of it. Leave them for at least 2 minutes and watch the Bones material bend back to its original shape. You can't reliably reshape Bones this way, only unbend them to their original shape.

After the two minutes, take them out and dunk them in the ice water. This will set the Bones in the proper position permanently. Leave them in the ice water for another 2 minutes. And voila!

It took me an hour or two to do all the bend stuff from the Vampire box, and I have been pretty picky.

Dunking Bones!

Scrutiny: Secretweapon washes (part 1)

Its been a while since I've done a scrutiny so here is one I had been eagerly anticipating. The Secret Weapon Miniatures washes. I have had my eye on these for quite a while. It is a set of 30 washes (or less if you don't want them all) that should really help with the washing and tinting of miniatures.

The online experience was adequate, nothing bad at all. The usual Paypal option applies and shipping to Europe was not excessive, but not cheap either. It should be said that companies like these cannot compete with shipping costs like Amazon. Amazon loses money on everything they send, and they have a much better deal with the postal services due to their sheer size.

That's where things hit a snag. I waited for over a month, and no washes. I contacted them and was surprised by quick and really good customer service. They informed me that it should have arrived, that they 'have had a few packages dissapear recently to europe' and that they would re-ship it. They even provided tracking numbers for the first and second package. Good stuff.

I waited another bunch of weeks and had just hit another email at them (to which was responded really quickly and sincerely) when the second package arrived. Sweet! I got to unpacking, and look at these beauties.

Yes my precious washies!

This prompted me to quickly build another paintrack to dedicate solely to washes.

Starting to look like something

The colours themselves have colourful titles like 'concrete' and 'baby poop', but are actually quite descriptive. The set comes with all the strong base colors like very red, very green, etc. but it also has a great selection of things like dried blood, concrete, flesh wash, etc. Some of them are glossier then others. Nothing a good matte medium or matte sealer won't fix though.

Then came the actual testing. I shook every bottle thoroughly before beginning (some thickening was to be expected after such a long travel afterall). Unfortunately I ran into another snag. Pretty much all of the bottles seemed hopelessly clogged (27/30). I had big splotches of wash over my painting area twice. I started popping off the tops of the bottles to see what was up. This is what greeted me.

Not what I was hoping for

This was a problem. I tried mixing some of it back in, but I believe the actual intent of the washes was ruined. What I have gotten to use has been fine so far, but most of these were unusable. So I went back to mailing the Secret Weapon people. Once again I got extremely good customer service. They have since send out another package, with another 30 washes. They have personally inspected this shipment and apologized quite a bit. I almost felt guilty for having to knock on their customer service door again.

So the actual verdict will have to wait until the replacement batch comes in. In the meanwhile I can give these guys a rating on customer service. Also USPS? Please sell the company to some people that actually know how to deal with postal services. Idiots.

Customer service: 10/10

Last few Mansions of Madness models

I have finished my Mansions of Madness painting! Woohoo! Indeed. I have a few pictures of the models I finished last and I will also post a full set picture later on. I have been trying to get the hang of my new camera and your mileage may vary on these pictures.

Ashcan Pete

Shoggoth

Mi-go

Ashcan was a joy to paint, the shoggoth is much better then the first one I did, but the Mi-go are annoying to paint to the extreme!

Stone Golem

Its been a while. I have been quite busy though. I have been finishing up Mansions of Madness (expect a post later on), boiling Bones, getting a new camera, getting new washes, etc. Its been busy.

My players recently encountered a stone golem. After the fight I kind of wanted to paint the miniature. Stone golems have this tendency to look very boring in their 'dungeon grey' look. So I came up with him standing on a piece of obsidian, surrounded by lava. This gave me the perfect excuse to practice some actual OSL (Object Source Lighting, its when you paint actual 'light' on a miniature).

I am quite satisfied with how he turned out. I would have been a little happier if I could have had the belt stand out more, but still quite happy with him. Pictures courtesy of the new camera.

That's one Bones kickstarter mini down. 250+ to go!

Extreme zoom in and MoM: Cultists

I have been playing around with some seriously professional cameras with Ork de Rooij from Ork Photography. The guy knows how to take pictures, but normally tackles actual models, not miniatures. We went over a lot of techniques on taking the best pictures while our girlfriends were doing their hair (females!).

We got quite far with zooming in (extra macro rings, etc. etc.!) so I figured I'd show just how close we got.

I am eyeing a new camera to be able to do things like that. :)

Hit the zoom!

Afraid I promised myself to finish the base Mansions of Madness set before I do much of anything with the Bones. This does mean I got a serious want to finish the Mansions set! So here I finally took the time to finish the six cultists that come with the base game. These guys were quite boring to paint, but will liven up the board so much. Cultists are used in a lot of scenarios.