Monday, October 26, 2015

[Archives] The Elf

This is the Elf from the HeroQuest game. He is one of the four heroes that make up the blog's name. He and his companions--the Barbarian, the Dwarf, and the Wizard--were some of the miniatures in the 1990's that got me into the miniature gaming hobby. The last of the four heroes. I think he turned out the best out of the four. Was originally planning him to be a hero in a wood elf army; however, the hero has a bow requirement and I am not bold enough to try to add a bow to the character. The elf will be a hero for a high elf army.

Notes: While the Barbarian and Dwarf were undercoated black, the Wizard and Elf were undercoated white. No eyes on this miniature were painted and it is very noticeable on a brightly colored miniature. Tried a lot of different paint schemes on him. The stone slab was actually the original base that got cut in a way that it looks like a stone slab. Original binder notes for this miniature is on page 10.

[Archives] The Wizard

This is the Wizard from the HeroQuest game. He is one of the four heroes that make up the blog's name. He and his companions--the Barbarian, the Dwarf, and the Elf--were some of the miniatures in the 1990's that got me into the miniature gaming hobby. My niece uses this miniature in the D&D Castle Ravenloft board game.

Notes: While the Barbarian and Dwarf were undercoated black, the Wizard and Elf were undercoated white. I think I had the most trouble with the Wizard and tried a lot of different color schemes for him. The cape look a tad bit too shiny, but the pants turned out better than I thought. I can see my layering of colors on the shirt to be fairly rough. No eyes on this miniature were painted and it is very noticeable on a brightly colored miniature. The stone slab was actually the original base that got cut in a way that it looks like a stone slab. Original binder notes for this miniature is on page 10.

Thursday, October 22, 2015

[Log] Battle Masters Mighty Cannon - Part 1

September 19, 2015 to October 21, 2015 - All I need to complete the Battle Master's Imperial Army is to finish painting the mighty cannon and crew.
Undercoated five years ago...
This will be used as an Empire Cannon for Age of Sigmar. The Empire Cannon unit consists of 3 crew members, so I decided to kit bash to make the third crew member.

[Archives] The Dwarf

Updated on October 26, 2015. This is the Dwarf from the HeroQuest game. He is one of the four heroes that make up the blog's name. He and his companions--the Barbarian, the Elf, and the Wizard--were some of the miniatures in the 1990's that got me into the miniature gaming hobby. This model seems to be one of the many versions of the White Dwarf (Grombindel and Snorri Whitebeard are other names). I have been using the Dwarf in most of my games with my nephews and nieces.

Notes: Unlike the Barbarian where I just stuck to a two color scheme for each part (base and shade), I experimented with more colors on the Dwarf (base shade, and highlight). The most obvious is the shirt underneath the mail. Looking at the photo, it appears I had too much paint on my brush when working on the chainmail. I try painting eyes, but it did not looked good. Instead I just darkened the area around the eyes. The sides of the beard had very little detail, so I tried freehand painting on those areas. The stone slab was actually the original base that got cut in a way that it looks like a stone slab. Original binder notes for this miniature is on page 9.

Tuesday, October 20, 2015

My Hobby and Blog in October 2015

hi photo 409434711_7c32198636_o.gifIt has been almost two months since I started this blog. Since then, I painted miniatures that I had started work on 5 years ago and also on new miniatures. In total, I have finished 17 models and I am quite happy with my progress. I am currently working on the Imperial Mighty Cannon from the 1990's Battle Masters board game.  Completing that would finish all the Imperial Army miniatures. I am going to slow down a bit on the hobby side in the upcoming months. So I think this is a good time to reflect on the hobby and my immediate plans.

Sunday, October 18, 2015

[Archives] The Barbarian

Updated on October 26, 2015. This is the Barbarian from the HeroQuest game. He is one of the four heroes that make up the blog's name. He and his companions--the Dwarf, the Elf, and the Wizard--were some of the miniatures in the 1990's that got me into the miniature gaming hobby, Thus, it was fitting that the Barbarian was my first completed miniature!

Notes: Being the first miniature that I painted, I went with a very simple paint scheme. Most parts of the miniature were painted with just two colors-a base color and a shade. In addition, using the same base color but with a different wash color, one can achieve a diverse range of subtle colors. For example, compare the hair with the fur and boots. I remember trying to paint eyes on him, but failed miserably; thus, I left it unpainted. The stone slab was actually the original base that got cut in a way that it looks like a stone slab. Original binder notes for this miniature is on page 9. Overall, I think it looks pretty good for such a simple paint scheme and proves that you don't need to do too much to have a presentable miniature.

Tuesday, October 13, 2015

[Log] Dungeons & Dragons Castle Ravenloft Heroes - Part 3

October 6, 2015 to October 12. 2015 - This past week I worked on the remaining three heroes from Castle Ravenloft. I did not expected to finish them by the beginning of this week, but I did! So now I am slightly ahead of schedule. My Hilvin Guild for Adventurers now have 9 heroes!
Heroes of Ravenloft completed!
As with Allisa and Arjhan (background), I tried to paint the last three heroes in a similar theme as represented by their illustration in their Hero Tiles. I also put more effort into painting eyes on miniatures.

Monday, October 12, 2015

[Archives] Imperial Men-at-Arms

Updated on October 15. 2015. These are the 15 Imperial Men-at-Arms from the Battle Masters game. These will be used as Empire State Troops in Age of Sigmar. Including the Imperial Crossbowmen and Imperial Archers, they were my first units of troops that I painted. This is the first unit of troops that I tried to make subtle variations among themselves. I think from now on, I will always tried to paint each model within a unit to have some differences.

Wednesday, October 7, 2015

[Archives] Imperial Crossbowmen

Updated on October 15, 2015. These are the 5 Imperial Crossbowmen from the Battle Masters game. These will be used as Empire Crossbowmen in Age of Sigmar. Including the Imperial Men-at-Arms and Imperial Archers, they were my first units of troops to be painted. For the paintings I did 5 years ago, I always painted with Citadel Foundation Paints after the undercoat. Having more experience, it seems to be a waste of paint if it will be completely covered up. For example, the metallic parts of a miniature does not require a Foundation Paint coat beneath it.

Tuesday, October 6, 2015

[Log] Dungeons & Dragons Castle Ravenloft Heroes - Part 2

September 22, 2015 to October 5, 2015 - Continuing on with the heroes from Ravenloft, I decided to paint half of the remaining heroes with the usual black gesso; and the other half with the newly purchased white gesso. Overall, I found the black gesso covers better than the white one. I am not sure if this is due to different brand or that black medium tends to have better coverage than white. It is definitely a lot easier to see the model details with a white undercoat. In the past two weeks, I finished painting Allisa, Human Ranger, and started painting the other three heroes.

Sunday, October 4, 2015

[Archives] Imperial Archers

Updated on October 15, 2015. These are the 10 Imperial Archers from the Battle Masters game. These will be used as Empire Archers in Age of Sigmar. Including the Imperial Men-at-Arms and Imperial Crossbowmen, they were my first units of troops to be painted. I found painting 5 of the same miniatures at one time is a good compromise between painting efficiently and reducing the tediousness of painting the same type of miniatures.

Thursday, October 1, 2015

The General's Prestige - Initial Thoughts on an Age of Sigmar Army Rating System

One of Age of Sigmar's defining features is that you can deploy any models you want into your game with very little restrictions. This allows for some very creative, fun gaming experience; however, it can also lead to some very lopsided not-so-fun matches. Many communities have adopted some form of army composition rules and point values for the models. This makes people play against each other with relatively equal balance armies. A consequence of this is reduced creativity. For better or worse, I am trying to play Age of Sigmar as is, because I found the freedom of army building to be quite liberating. Nevertheless, I do feel there is a need to have some type of quantitative system to compare, but not restrict, the strength of competing armies. This led me to come up with the idea of a rating system, tentatively called the General's Prestige--this system reward the winning player that choose to field a fairly equal army against opponents or try to win with a lower points army. Below are my initial thoughts on making this system.