Current Work #3 (Rhino)

After a productive day of painting I can comfortably say that the interior of my Rhino is done!

Of course, after I say this, I can UN-comfortably clarify that it is done to the point where I can glue it together so as to start the exterior. I still have the 2 top hatches to finish up, which is not more than a bit of shading and highlighting the boltgun metal. Also, I will likely add a few decorations from my blitz kit to make the interior a bit more Grey Knights-y. (More pics after the jump)

AR Coliseum Project - Preliminary Sketches #1

Not much to say here... just some sketches I hastily put together using the Paper app on my iPad. Enjoy!

AR Coliseum Project - A study in shape and scale

With any successful project there is a lot of boring pre-planning prior to any physical work being done. This post hopes to accomplish just that - set some basic parameters on which the work will be based.

Through Red Republic Games' comments, they stated that any arena size would do for games of Arena rex, but offered a 30" diameter circle as a good starting point. This seems like a reasonable size for a skirmish type game, and I originally started my planning based on this. However, the Antiquity nerd in me quickly realized that the actual Coliseum isn't circular, but elliptical instead.

The Coliseum: in all it's HDR Glory!

Current Work #2

Base painting can get pretty repetitive after a while, so I decided to take a break from that and get working on my actual Grey Knight army. I had my Strike Squad, Dreadknight and Rhino interior primed and so I decided to do a test run on my old metal Grey Knight Marines that I purchased prior to my last hiatus. I managed to finish one (except for the Nemesis Force Weapon) and, although I am pretty happy with the result, there is a lot of improvement that can be done on future models. I also decided on a darker metallic for the armour going forward, as I found the Mithril Silver a bit too shiny for my liking (Pics after the break).

Current Work #1 (All Your Base Are Belong to Us)

This post should hopefully bring us up to where I am at present in the hobby.

Having finally picked up my Grey Knights (an army list and more info can be found on this page), I go to work assembling the models. I read a lot of stuff on how to assemble, how to paint, how to base, and still find the breadth of the hobby world quite overwhelming. I wanted to have a "showcase" army, which meant jazzing up my bases. After deciding that 3rd party resin bases were not in the cards (though I still drool over the bases at Secret Weapon Miniatures and The Dragon Forge), I got inspiration on the boards at Grey Knights Forum, a collection of nice people and immense talent). In this particular case, inspiration came from a member of the board named Valten, on page 24 of his aptly titled thread, Valten's Pics! Specifically, his simple, yet impressive use of plasticard (a new word in my hobby vocabulary) inspired me to seek out some of this product and go from there.

After a lot of slow going, I managed to get my bases together (More pics after the break):

Please mind the poor quality - lost original & linked from old forum post

Introduction (Part 3: Finally. Enough already!)

(continued from previous...)

10 years or so have passed since my last hobby-related activity:

After moving into this last house, we determined that we needed to "scale down" and get rid of any unneeded clutter - our next move would be back to the big city, where prices are high and square footage is low. When I got to the box with my miniatures, my wife and I had a conversation that went something along the lines of this:

"I think I'm going to get rid of my miniatures, I haven't touched them in forever."

"No hun, don't do that!" (Prior to making this statement, she had only seen my miniatures once before, many years ago, and had no particular interest in them aside from the fact that the painting skill was impressive to her untrained eyes)

"Really? Why do you want me to keep them?"

"I don't know, you worked so hard on them..."

Introduction (Part 2: The Boring Middle Part)

(continued from previous...)

3 years later:

Tyranids: geek love at first sight. Invited to one of the aforementioned friend's house one weekend, I was introduced to the world of WH40K. I saw everything: Eldar, Leman Russ Tanks, the Carnifex! (back when it was the crown jewel of the Tyranid army). All of them were fairly poorly painted by anyone's standards, but were still so unequivocally beautiful to my virgin eyes (except some Dark Angels, which were literally dipped in dark green house paint, pulled out and left to dry. The figures lost so much detail that the only way anyone would know they were GW figures was if their owner told them, and only then if they actually chose to believe him).

Introduction (Part 1: Introduction to the Introduction)

Hey everyone!

Welcome to the inaugural post of my first experiment in blogging. I have created this blog as a point of focus for my various hobby gaming interests. I don't actually expect many people to end up following my blog (at least not until I have something tangible to show for my grandiose ideas), but will nonetheless try to keep it interesting for the poor souls that wander in unexpectedly.

First, a bit about me, in the context of the hobby at least. I am relatively new to the hobby, although my interest spans back quite a few years. About 18 years ago, I got my first real look at the hobby when I picked up a unit of WHFB Empire Pikemen (or something similar) to use as pieces for a board game project in 6th grade.

I was fascinated with the detail in the models and the potential to make them look even cooler with an awesome paint job. Although I considered myself fairly artistically inclined in those days, try as I may I simply could not understand my complete inability to replicate anything remotely resembling the paint quality depicted on the box (Hint: I was using bottom-of-the-barrel brushes and old Testors paint applied without a primer).

This setback, combined with my predilection for getting easily distracted by other shiny things, brought a fairly hasty end to this superficial initial foray into hobby gaming - a toe dip, if you can even call it that. This absence would last about 3 years, when I found myself in a new school with new friends...

(to be continued...)