My Hobby and Blog in November 2015

Hello! The month of November is almost over so here is another general post to review what I have accomplished and to collect my thoughts about my hobby. Compare to the last two months, the painting have slowed down as expected...and spending money on new miniatures have increased. Once the year ends, I hope that I will be able to make greater progress in painting and spend less money on new products!

Categories to Compare Army Strength in Age of Sigmar

I want to analyze the relative strength differences between competing models, units, battalions, and armies in Age of Sigmar. One of the reasons I wanted to do this is for the idea behind the General's Prestige--to use a ratings/points system to compare the strength of armies after the game rather than use a ratings/points system to organize an army before the game. The second reason is that I just like to compare and contrast things. These analyses will help me decide on a reasonable rating method and, for those interested, see a step-by-step look from initial analyses to a rating method.

[Archives] First Wolf - Space Wolves Wolf Guard

For a long time I have been collecting only fantasy miniatures. Four years ago, I met some people that played 40k. They got me interested in trying out the game and recommended me to try out the Space Wolves. This would be my first metal and 40k miniature that I painted. I have affectionately nicknamed him as "First Wolf."

Notes: Original binder notes for my work on this miniature is on page 33. It is my experience with this metal miniature that I decided to switch from acrylic black paint to gesso as my primary undercoat. I feel that regular acrylic black paint was more difficult to get a good undercoat coverage on metal miniatures compared to plastic miniatures. In addition, the undercoat seems to be more easily rubbed off compared to undercoating plastic miniatures. Another lesson I learned from working on this miniature is to not assemble the model completely. In hindsight, it might have been better to glue the backpack at the very end or had a plan at the beginning on what I wanted the shoulder pads to look like. The glued backpack makes painting the shoulder pads fairly inconvenient.

[Workshop] Decals

Applying decals onto models seems pretty tricky. I worried that after finishing painting the minature, you will be able to still see the transparent outline of the decal. After researching on the topic and successfully applying them to a miniature, I found this method to work well for my purposes. The instructions below is mostly a combination of directions from Citadel Miniatures Painting Guide (1992, Mike McVey) and Microscale Setting Solution for Decals (Micro Set and Micro Sol).

How I enjoy playing Age of Sigmar without using a points system

As I have wrote previously I prefer to have some type of quantitative method to compare and contrast competing armies' relative strength. Models and units relative strength is something I would like to personally analyze in the future. Nevertheless, I have enjoyed playing Age of Sigmar games without the use of points. How I have enjoyed playing Age of Sigmar is based on gaming etiquette that I think most people should know and/or learned as a child. This post list how I enjoyed the game and, based on my experiences with the game, how I planned to introduced Age of Sigmar to my nephew and niece (they wanted to play Age of Sigmar since they saw me unpacking my miniature collection from storage).

[Log] Battle Masters Mighty Cannon - Part 2

October 22, 2015 to November 5, 2015 - Here is an update to what I have done on the Mighty Cannon and Crew. I likely will not finish this unit by the end of this weekend as I was hoping for originally.