Super Dungeon Explore: Ember Mage

Just a few fast pics of a fast paintjob on Ember Mage. I finished her (for now) awhile ago, just never posted until now. Since my son and I share a birthday on June 21st and we both love SDE, I have some big buys in store for presents and so, more SDE up on these pages some point soon.

What a Year for a New Year or FREEZING DEATH VORTEX of... DEATH? Yeah, DEATH!!!

 Tomorrow the Polar Vortex arrives in Pennsylvania and I think scientists have emphatically stated that there will be no survivors. Or it will be really cold, inconvenient and Tuesday for everybody, not sure which yet. I bet it is somewhere in the middle of both.

In any event, now is a good time to assess what the hell I am doing with the time-sucking vortex that is our beloved hobby, since tomorrow will definitely be about hunkering in, trying to get some more painting done, some more started and maybe, just maybe... finally learning to love myself at the end of it all... (or the beginning?)

OGRE Designer's Edition, now with 100% more colorful edges and Mod Podge.

Speaking of loving myself: I picked up OGRE over the holiday and so, colored all cardboard edges of the punch-out models with colored Sharpies and then glued the pieces all together with matte finish Mod Podge, which is EXACTLY what the doctor ordered there. They came out great, look great. Great! That's a Pro Tip folks, no charge.

I have a ton of Khurasan 15mm on the way, alarmingly ordered before Christmas and yet I have not heard a peep from the company about it at all... but their website was intentionally down over the holiday for them to process orders, so I am not worried, so much as I just want that stuff so I can do 15mm Strange Aeons, where the Lurkers just became 100% bigger!

I also have some forlorn Khador on my desk that I am hell-bent on tackling, with a new sage green and red color scheme. Yes, this means I have been playing Warmachine again and why shouldn't I? It's a damn good game. Still, Star Wars X Wing is a damn good game too and there is no painting required.

Ember Mage WIP will fight the Polar Vortex with her cutsie-cheeks. When I try to do the same thing people yell at me to put my slacks back on.

Finally I have more Super Dungeon Explore to knock out, I dare say I am in the home stretch there on a completed box set.

What else? I have some IG to tend to soon and probably a miniature yard sale in my future in the Spring... too much stuff to tolerate.

Stay warm, stay safe and I'll see you on the other side!

Super Dungeon Explore: Starfire plus Kids

Still working on the spawn, treasure chests and Boo Booty but the Dragon stuff is done to tabletop standard (for now.) Also working on the Ember Mage.

Super Dungeon Explore: 2 Hero Game's Worth of Painting Finished

I finished what was needed for the basic version of Super Dungeon Explore, a 2 hero game.

1. 2 Heros, Royal Paladin and Riftling Rogue
2. 1 Kobold Shaman
3. 2 Iron Scales
4. 3 Knuckle Heads
5. 2 Flingers
6. 2 Treasure Chests
7. 2 Kobold Warrens 
8. Rex the Ogre

Up next for paint (and black primed just today) is the Dragon's Clutch stuff, comprised of the dragon Starfire and all his chillen, plus Egg Clutch Spawn, as well as treasure chests, Boo Booties and another hero, Ember Mage.

THUNK!

Riftling Rogue

 

Rex the Ogre

So This Happened...

 Strange Aeons

Been busy traveling for work lately so I’ve tended to come home, kiss everyone in the house, cuddle and when they all sleep, attempt to glue things onto things or smear paint onto other things.

First, my buddy Finn got me the BONES Cthulhu… wicked fierce, that. I reposed it slightly, or really, just tidied up the pose so it wasn’t canted so forward. I’ll be using him as a Godling in Strange Aeons so I mounted his base onto a CD, which is the fashion for many things in Strange Aeons.

It gets bad from here.

Knowing that my BONES Werewolf took GW black primer but it remained the slightest bit tacky (remedied by normal layers of paint) I went to use a plastic-friendly black spray. I bought the wrong thing, used it and ended up with a permanently tacky, wet dust collector.

It gets better from here. Reading up in these here interwebnets I come find the consensus that Simple Green will do the trick. It totally did. The only paint it didn’t remove was what had properly dried and had stained into the plastic. Did not attack the BONES plastic and cleaned up really well.

A few coats of GW Black and we were back on schedule. I’ll post up a How-To for old squiddy when he’s painted.

 

Star Wars X Wing Miniatures

I’ve spent weeks to months on individual miniatures and terrain and never once did those posts come close to the tally-crushing popularity of a post about me chopping and regluing a pre-painted plastic space ship for 20 minutes. So I did it again. Now there are 2 B Wings in the stable. Also, picked up the Imperial Shuttle and yes, painted the engine glow. And straightened the top wing, factory glued wrong. And painted the guns. Cough.

Super Dungeon Explore

Concocted another water based stain to help speed paint the Dark Counsel for Super Dungeon Explore. Here is WIP, just need some highlights on the kobold skirt and to finish the basing.

Khador

Totally stuck with my Khador. A lot to paint and I’m not doing it. Built a ton of models recently, including 3 warjacks, two of which are Kodiak conversions and the last, a modified Devastator. More soon.

Hiatus-schmiatus.

"He's no use to me fed."

Hope everybody is well. I figured I’d offer an update. I am in the last 3 classes of my degree on top of a busy work schedule that has me on the road a lot over the next 3 months so don’t expect much until this homestretch is fully covered, somewhere about June. Gotta be dad over that time too, the most important thing.

I may stab paint at things here and there but I’m not what I would call productive. I’ll probably play Super Dungeon Explore and Star Wars X Wing a bit since I don’t have to produce anything for that.

On the bench for post-graduation work:

1. Tombstones/graveyard for Strange Aeons
2. Lurkers for Strange Aeons
3. New Strange Aeons team
4. Super Dungeon Explore figs
5. Khador. Did I mention I play Khador? I play Khador. Need to get my wargroup finished so I can start playing that again (Grey Lords, Fenris and something else, forget what).

Over the Summer/Fall

1. A crap-ton of Valhallan IG.
2. My lit Imperial Bastion
3. IG Armor & Vulture/Valkyries
4. More BFG: Eldar and Necron
5. Himalayan Threshold Team/Lurkers for Strange Aeons

Super Dungeon Explore: Riftling Rogue

Riftling Rogue: Still can't photograph her hair detail, which is missing here.

 It's so funny, these SDE figs. I underestimated them. Go too big on paint style and they start to look weird. Not enough and they look unfinished. The trick is you have to paint exactly to the sculpt which is new to me. I can hear people argue with me now that it's true of all figs but I disagree. So many minis I've painted, you had to paint past the sculpt to get it to sing. Or you just let the sculpt do the work with local light and you use the paint to accentuate the form. There really is a balance to observe with these damn chibis...one that is hard for me to recognize. So I painted the Rogue in a sorta cel-shade style. She is done for now since the goal is all-painted and table-top standard. I did not give her the signature eye flare reflection becuase I wanted her eyes to be sorta glowing-looking.

Given that this game was  bought "for the kids" and yet we are all playing it, part of the balance is the kids will be manhandling the figs like crazy so I'm not going nuts with paint either.

Super Dungeon Explore: Primed

Just a fast update on SDE efforts... since the kids have taken a shine to it I guess it's time to paint these guys up, so first batch is primed.

Gotta say, 100% loving the sculpts but hating the vinyl material they're cast in for clean up. I missed so many mold lines first time around that when I primed them I kicked myself in the face when I saw the flash. So, out came the razor again and... just damn.

I decided I'll paint this box with little variation from the cards, while my cousin-in-law John paints his own box up in different schemes. That will work out well, if and when we combine sets.

More as I go.

Super Dungeon Explore WIP: Assembly and WTF

Good Lord. Okay, got my kids Super Dungeon Explore for Christmas (shhhhhhhh), nonchalant about getting the minis together and painted before December 25^th.

What the hell was I thinking.

So, two nights of assembly down… all-in-all, not bad on that front but damn that’s a lot of figs. I needed 2 tubes of super glue and a thumb-sized cake of greenstuff to get it all together, which isn't bad... a testimony to how well engineered this figs are, which is REALLY awesome. Total assembly time: 4 hours. 

I had to dip some models in boiling water to bend them into position: Ember Mage, some Kobold spears, Barbarian axe, Palidan sword and parts of the dragon. Total correction time: less than 15 minutes.

I’ll be using my own modified dip method for this, it’s the only shot at getting it all done.

Over the next few nights, cleaning, some gap filling, soap and water then  prep for priming.