Mini Progress!

More WiPs.  Unfortunately, nothing finished.

I finally got the nerve to add the handlebar on the autocannon.  What a pain!  Worried about the painted areas, it took me forever to get it on.  It's not even on quite right.  Compared to the tankhunter pictures on the Infinity website my handlebar is a little twisted where the hand is.  I guess my way looks more ergonomic. :) That's my story and I'm sticking to it!

In hindsight, I really should have fully assembled him before painting. It's a special case, the piece was too fiddly to attach in the end.  Anyway, still a great looking model and an awesome unit in the game.  It's almost done.  It needs some touch ups and a few details.

 

I did a little more work on the highlander.  Still not confident on tackling the plaid pattern on the tartan so I worked on the face a bit.  Lots more to do on him.

Started working on 2 more figs: the chasseur and another SAS.  These 2 guys round out my current force at the moment.  I just love the detail on these dudes.  No Finecast shenanigans here- that's all metal baby!  Now if they can make their multi-part minis easy to assemble... 

Ariadna Game Plan For 2012

Keeping to my New Year's resolution to paint all my Ariadna minis before getting anymore I need to document what I have.  First pic is what I've considered tabletop ready- not completely finished but presentable.

Man I really need to get better lighting.  I see many details not painted!

The following pics are my batch-o-WiPs at various stages of completion.  I kind of went all over the place with each one.  Some have washes done, some have highlights and details, but most have a general basecoat.

Generally, I'm cool with the direction I've taken.  I tried priming them white for the first time.  I never primed my minis white before.  So far so good.  I'm happy with the color schemes I've chosen.  Some details like holsters and pouches still need color choices.    I'm quite surprised how well the Highlander's shoulder detail came out.  I was expecting to do several passes on it but luckily only did one.  Now I got to do the tartan... 

Next are the rest of my collection.

Minis next in line

The whole lot.  I guess I have more than I originally said. :)

Up until now I really thought I could do this but then Corvus Belli comes out with this...

me wants

This guy will be coming out next month.  I wonder how many minis I'll get done before then, if any.  Wonder how long it will take for me to break.  Ugh.

2011 Recap

Hope everyone had a nice holiday!  Well another year has gone by and before the new year begins I thought I'd take a look back on my hobby progress.

(crickets chirping)

Hmm, I thought I did more than this.

Yeah, there were a few setbacks.  The first was work.  This year work really took a big dent in my free time.  Just way too many deadlines and way too little time off.  In fact, I don't remember the last time I took a vacation. :(   Second, was starting up a new game.  I got to tell you moving to Infinity is the best thing I ever did gaming-wise.  Great sci-fi theme + fun innovative and deep game mechanics + ridiculous minis (mostly anyway) = my favorite mini game.  Yes, that meant more minis to paint.  But, I am talking about 10-12 figures which is pretty much your army compared to one unit of 40 clanrats which is clearly not.  The last excuse, er I mean reason are the freaking video games.  Curse you Nathan Drake and your awesome hi-def game!!!  Weeknights are usually a time to paint but when you put in 11+ hours at work you just want to plop in front of the tv... and squeeze in some video games.  All those nights when I should have been painting but was too lazy were instead spent climbing walls, grabbing treasure, and shooting bad guys.  Arrgh!!!  So much stuff to do and so little time.  It's a good thing that 2012 is just around the corner.

So what's the plan for next year? 

More Ariadna!  My New Year's hobby resolution will be to paint all the Ariadna I currently have (which is around 12 I think) before I grab anymore.  There's a good chance I'll break it but I gotta at least try, right?  Stay focused!

I've been lucky to find players to game with so I can learn the rules and figure out a good list.  It seems like quite a number of gamers are 'gaming small' these days.  I've notice a lot of gamers particularly GW gamers are either supplementing their fantasy and/or 40k with smaller skirmish based games or just switching completely.  Games like Cutlass, MERCS, Malifaux, Hell Dorado, Dystopian Wars/Uncharted Seas/Firestorm Armada, and Heavy Gear all got some loving this year.  Curious to see how this trend will turn out in 2012.

My Skaven are still on the table.  Closer to the back burners but I haven't completely shelved them just yet.  The rat ogres are still in my mini queue.  I'll get around to them eventually.

I've slowly been collecting a small Koborlas/Lupine warband for Reaper's Warlord game.  I recently I picked up a couple boxes of Wolfen from Rackham's Confrontation game really, really cheap that's perfect for this.  I hope to at least get them to paint ready before 2012 ends.

Whadya think?  Can I do this?  Time will tell.  Have a Happy New Year!

Thanksgiving Weekend

Hope everyone had a nice holiday! I should've had something posted by now but I've been off to videogame land! Let me explain- I'm really late on the next gen console bandwagon and last week I finally picked myself up a PS3. I was so positive I would eventually get one that I even started a small stash of blu-rays and games way before I picked the console up. That very night I opened it and played the heck out of it. The following day I went to celebrate Thanksgiving with the family and then went back home watched a blu-ray and played some more. On Black Friday I bought a few more blu-rays that were on sale. Needless to say there was a whole lotta hi-def activity going on but the holiday wasn't all videogames though. I did take advantage of the sales and shopped for more Infinity minis from my LGS and bought some odds and ends at my fav online gamine store.

Yay hobby shopping!

Anyway, more news...

I had my first full game of Infinity a few weekends ago. It was 200pts., Ariadna vs. Combined Army( y'know, the alien alliance). I got pwned big time. My opponent (Combined Army) had a linked team and just stormed down my flank killing everything in its path. By turn 4 my Lt. died and I had to concede. It wasn't a total massacre but it was close to being one. My opponent was actually cool and patient with me and answered all of my noob questions and even gave me advise. We had a bit of a peanut gallery so the game took longer than it should have but it was still fun. There were key mistakes I made in the game and the big one was deployment. I had a couple units deployed way too close to his linked team which enabled him to run his team up to my guys and shoot them down on the first turn. I also had several guys in the wrong place. Another big noob mistake was not knowing my list very well. During the course of the game I overlooked very important skills and weapons that would've helped the previous turn. Hard lessons learned.

Fortunately, this weekend I'm suppose to meet up with a dude from the forums that's fairly new to the game and we're going play a small game that'll help cover the game basics. Baby steps.

ADEPTICON!!! Man, I shouldn't have waited to pre-register for Adepticon 2012. D'OH!!! All the seminars are practically sold out and now I'm going to have to settle on a Partial swag bag. I'm not sure what that exactly means but it won't be as good as a Full swag bag :( . The Infinity tournament was also sold out. It's really awesome to see people sign up for it. Hopefully my experience will be up to par and my army fully painted for the following year. :) Hmm, I wonder if they're letting open gaming for Infinity during the con? 

And speaking of my army here's my progress thus far... My Line Kazaks are done, for now. Until I get better lighting I won't be able to do any of the details I'd like to do on them.  Looking at the pictures I realize it's not my best work but I got to move on.

Next up are 3 skirt wearing, gun toting, scots and a vet. Until next time!

Where Did September Go?!

Wow, I can't believe it's already October! Work has been crazy trying to meet all kinds of deadlines, mostly all unrealistic. These past few weeks has been quite a blur that I hadn't realized I completely neglected my minis. It was only last week that I had the chance to go back to painting again. Funny enough, it was when I was sick. Anyway, onto the minis!

So I started painting the Ariadna Line Kazaks or 'Grunts' as what I'll be calling them in the future. Also, I was missing my rats already so I continued painting my rat ogres.

I'm about half way in and they are starting to shape up I think. I'm basing my color scheme on the G.I. Joe Grunt so they will all have basic green fatigues. I picked up GW's Camo Green specifically for them and it seems to work nice as a highlight for the Catachan Green basecoat. I think after some washes and more highlights they should be good and done. Oh, and yes, there is the Tankhunter but he's taken a backseat at the moment, sorry!

The rat ogres need a bit more TLC. They need another go of highlights and a definite rework of their bases so that may take some time to do.

This weekend a LGS will host their biannual auction and may take a peek. They tend to attract big spenders so I don't expect to be picking anything up. But, if I do luck out and sneak a buy (praying that it not hurt the wallet) I'll let you know. Later!

Air Wagons and More

A couple nights ago I downloaded the Ariadna air wagon from the Infinity Downloads section. I thought it looked fun and simple enough to do in one night.

My first pass didn't turn out great because I used cardboard which was way too thick and folding the tabs became difficult. Second time around I printed on cardstock.

Voila!
Not too shabby but I did have some trouble in the end. Like a lot of papercrafts, for me it's quite hard to get these folds even and correct- especially when they are tiny. I ended up using both types of paper. I used the cardboard for piece #1 as a sturdy base. For the rest of the pieces I used cardstock which is thicker than paper but easier to fold than cardboard.

I made 2 versions. The one on the right is the intended papercraft. The one on the left is just an alternate flat version which is basically just piece #1.

After perusing through the forums I found out the air wagons were done by this guy. What a find! I guess there will be more papercraft projects in the future!

Catch Up

Man, working late has really put a damper on my hobby! Haven't been able to write anything until now. Well, I can pretty much summarize what has happened in the past few weeks on this single post.


So I went to Gamesday. It kinda sucked. Mainly because I got there late. I missed the Golden Demon entry time as a result. Also missed out on a couple activities like the the conversion contests. I did meet up with an old friend and his kids which was nice.


I got to do the 40k make and take scenery which was fun. Everyone got a rectangular piece of clear acrylic that was used as a base for your building. Sprues were randomly given out. One wall sprue, one floor sprue, and one miscellaneous sprue. Mine wasn't quite well thought out but just getting a chance to build something new and different was a nice experience.

droooool
The minis showcased were awesome as always. The large dioramas were incredible and loved the Forgeworld Skaven Exalted Verminlord and Brood Horror monster- probably something that I'll never get to pick up. :( Check out the pictures I took here.

In other news, I got to play my first game ever of Infinity finally. I was able to meet up with one of the guys on the forums and played a game. It was more of a demo really, just learning the fundamentals and the skills my unit had. Overall it went really well. In four(or maybe five) turns we were done. By the end of turn 2 both of our lieutenants(army leader) were eliminated. Mine walked in front of his remote mech with a machine gun. What was I thinking?! Anyway, it was fast and brutal. I hope there will be many more games like this.

There were 2 guys playing a game of Warhammer Fantasy next to us at the store. Seeing all the stuff they had to bring and seeing my army in a box about the size of hard drive just confirmed how much I'm not going to miss it. :)


Lastly, I got to work on my Ariadna. Started painting my tankhunter and got my first group of line kazaks ready for priming.