Thursday, June 30, 2011

Terminus Est: Greenstuff Done


BOOYAKASHA! greenstuff is curing. Black primer tomorrow. Bet.



BFG WIP: Terminus Est WIP



A’ight, The Est is coming along. I pinned the old raptor jump packs to the hull which was a fussy pain in the arse.


Today I’ll add some green stuff/bitz details to the gap aft of the stem, cover up the pins with some green stuff Nurgle sacs on the "wings" and then it’s off to primer land this weekend.

And…


I tell you, the stuff a guy gets into waiting for a Valkyrie kit he ordered to show up....


Saturday, June 25, 2011

Opinions Wanted

Ok, my Terminus Est is built and ready for priming but I feel it needs something. I do like the sleek look. Still, I'm thinking of adding old raptor jump packs to the port and starboard sides.

Here are the pics as-is:


Looking at other battleships of the same displacement, you see a lot of finials and such on the sides of the ship: shield projectors, sensor clusters and warp arrays. The Terminus has none of that.


Looking at the aft bridge stacks I noticed that the old raptor jumpacks (which I disliked) look similar to the stacks both with the pipes and cables of the bridge. I think they fit the description of the port and starboard Hives of Nurgle in the ship description here on page 4.


So I blue tacked 2 on to see...





Does this look good? Bad? Close but not quite? Suggestions?

Friday, June 24, 2011

Losing Loser

YOU COCKY COCK!!!
So I lost my Battlefleet Gothic game Wednesday night (12 vp’s to 7) and I lost my Memoir ’44 game Thursday night (5 medals to 3), the former being my first BFG game in about a year and the latter the start of the Normandy Campaign from the Memoir Campaign book.
The trend here is obviously about losing, not actually playing games two nights in a row, a different trend that is easily explained for the rarity it is: my whole family is on vacation without me. BFG is what it is but the Memoir loss is actually something like my 12th straight loss in a game that I’ve played regularly over the past few months.
It is easy to laugh off a Battlefleet victory that detonated like the reactor of my Carnage class cruiser, leaving only super-heated sadness and frozen chunks of hope burning up in the high atmosphere of my dreams.
But the Memoir’ loss cuts deep.
I’m so mad at the losing streak that I’ve started to ding the mechanics of the game I love, to growl about card distribution, random chance or even, God help me, the pathetic cry of the heartless gamer: I’m too stupid to play this game. Worst of all I thought, I now own every item of the game line except the breakthough map expansion. That’s a lot of loss on many levels, which equals a lot of regret, almost like realizing I didn't marry the girl of my dreams but I actually married a drag queen who carries a fast-wielding folding tanto and has both night terrors and narcolepsy. As ugly as that all is, I have to admit that it isn't working out and it isn't you baby, it's me.
So after the emotion has ebbed and the Maker’s Mark has been put away I sat and started looking at win/loss ratios, random chance and tactics to improve my game. Also, I reflected and realized that yes, my record is dismal. But many of those games I count have been teaching games and in effect I played myself through the majority of them (since many victories come down to who breaks a stalemate by making just one mistake.)
So this isn’t about making excuses about your play, your record or what the game owes me. This is about finding reasons for why my game went the way it did and what lessons the game taught me.
I’m still figuring that all out but the process is cathartic.

How do you handle losing streaks?
My Nurgle Daemonship noticed my Facebook status was changed to "single." Awkward!

Wednesday, June 15, 2011

WIP: Terminus Est Gap Filling


Ok, I got an email about using caulk for gap filling so I figured I’d post this up real fast.

By caulking I mean using white acrylic painter’s or white household caulk to gap fill. I don't use greenstuf for gap filling unless there is a need for a structural reinforcement or sculpted detail.

Below you see the port side is caulked and the starboard side is not.

Which side looks better?

I’ve been using caulk on minis as a gap filler for about 10 years. I say that because I don’t want to imply that it is easy to use or best for all tasks, it can be tricky and take time to use well. Since I come from a construction background, I have had literally hundreds of hours working with painter’s caulk and the knowledge to make it work. That said, I don’t think it would take anybody as long as that to try it out and make it work for some projects.

Appropriate: So looking at the Terminus Est here, you see that it is a wonky-looking ship to begin with. As far as BFG goes, gaps on smaller models don’t matter so much to me but bigger ships... the partitioned look really stands out. The three plug in batteries really don’t look seamless unless you kill the gaps and since that is something you want, let’s fill them.

A little goes a long way. Here, a dry brush is used to apply some caulk to gap. A damp brush will be used after this to smooth out the caulk since caulk doesn't stick to damp brushes.

A few suggested guidelines:
  1. Use a dry brush to dab on the caulk you need. A little goes a long way.
  2. Use a damp brush to move the caulk around, pushing caulk into joints.
  3. When you have the gaps filled, use a wet brush to either thin out/remove the extra caulk or use a damp brush to blend in the extra caulk since water thins or reduces caulk. Watch you don't ruin the parts you got right with the clean up.
  4. You can use a pick or razor to remove over flow or extra caulk.
  5. Half dry caulk shreds when you try to push it around so remove it while wet or let it dry and take it off with razor or pick.
  6. Squeeze out a little ball of caulk and put that on the end of the tip of the caulk tube when you are done and that will keep the rest of it wet inside and usable for up to a few months.

Tuesday, June 14, 2011

WIP: Ministorum Priest and Terminus Est

The priest received some base layers of browns and I blocked in foundation colors on metals and flesh. Obviously I'm trying to make him parson-like. I also blocked in the scars which will get some pink adjustment later.


Fast update: Terminus Est is assembled and ready for some gap filling. It was a fiddly kit, needing much off-center placement and bending with pliers to get alignment right. Fortunately, Chaos has little tolerance for precision, literally, and this Nurgle warship is no exception. If it was a Tzeentch vessel it’d be different story. I’ll hit it with some painters caulk for gap filling and some greenstuff to reclaim some details.

Monday, June 6, 2011

Master of Ordnance Complete

Added some details, some lenses, etc. Now working on the Ministorum Priest in between doubled work load at the job and finals at class. Whee.

"Holy shit that was danger close... my bad."

Remember Vectrex?

Thursday, June 2, 2011

WIP: Master of Ordnance



Just a fast update in the MoO. I put base coats down and then some layers here and there to spice up some flat surfaces. I suspected that a brown gas mask with red lenses probably looks better than my Hardened vets with their grey gasmask/green lenses so I tried the different scheme on the MoO and liked it better. I'll repaint the Vet masks soon in the same way.

I just have to add some details here and there, clean up a few things, finish his base with snow after Dull Cote and he should be nailing my own front line with a S9 AP3 barrage in no time!