Wednesday 28 March 2018

May you have a very Happy Easter



1 Corinthians 15:3-8 (NIV)
For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance[a]: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas,[b] and then to the Twelve. After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born.

1 Corinthians 15:20 (NIV)

But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.
Footnotes:
  1. 1 Corinthians 15:3 - Or you at the first
  2. 1 Corinthians 15:5 - That is, Peter

May you have a safe, restful and wonderful Easter. Hope you get some good gaming time in and try not to eat too much chocolate 😋

Tuesday 27 March 2018

A Precautionary Tale

Second post of the day. Lucky you!

This one is a precautionary tale of a lad who had some PDF documents that he wanted to print out for his hobby.

A tale of two books

One document was for Chaos Wars and came as eight separate files, all free, from Ral Partha and Iron Wind Metals. The other document was for the Doctor Who Miniatures Game (DWMG) and was also a free set of PDF's. Side note, given that the Doctor Who Miniatures Game site is now not available, I used the Google Wayback Machine to go back to about August 2012 and get a bunch of these PDF's.

So for the Chaos Wars document, it was 490 pages of goodness, all in black and white. Don't let the size freak you out, the actual rules for playing the game are only about 12 pages. Everything else permits you massive customisation for your armies, gives you loads of scenarios / campaigns and also gives you guidance about converting your beloved Role Playing Character into the Chaos Wars universe so they can cross over to the table-top to battle it out as miniatures. Sweeeeeeeeet!

The Doctor Who Miniatures Game has basically three key PDFs. But I also wanted to have a bunch of the separate scenario PDF's at the end of the print job. So all up, that was around 200 pages. All in colour.

Lots of options!

Both documents were bounded the same way and printed at the same OfficerWorks store.

So here is the precautionary bit. Which document do you think cost more?

  • Option 1 - 490 page Chaos Wars black and white document, or
  • Option 2 - 200 page Doctor Who Miniatures Game colour document.

Answer below and NO PEEKING...

Both are great games

The answer is the Doctor Who Miniatures Game. To print and bound the Chaos Wars 490 page document (double sided so its actually 245 pages) was about $53 AUD. To print and bound the 200'ish colour pages of the Doctor Who Miniatures Game it cost.... wait for it... $182 AUD at OfficeWorks. Ouch!

The reason that this is a precautionary tale is because I'm often temped to purchase PDF documents. However I am also old school and love my hard copy books. If you are in to PDF's and then want to print a copy, expect that it is going to be very expensive. Often more expensive than if you purchase the original hard copy.

By the way. Both are great games and Office Works did a great job with both prints. My wallet is hurting however.

Pathfinder Battles Wyvern

Since its been a while between posts, you get two today. Yay for me!

The first is my repaint of the Pathfinder Battles Wyvern.

Incoming!

This little chap I purchased from eBay. He will be finding a place of pride for my Orcs / Goblin Chaos Wars army. Scale wise he works well as a Hero's pet for the Goblin Army. Standing at 10cm's tall at the tip of the wings, he makes a nice Creature addition to my growing Gobo forces.

Throwing some light on the subject

The Chaos Wars rules give some guidelines as to how big a "Dragon-like" creature should be in order to be of a certain level. Dragons (as with Heroes, Creatures and Titans) can be from 1 to 5 levels in the game. This guy is roughly 3 inches from nose to base of its tail (you don't measure to the tip of the tail, but to its bum, basically). So he can be anything from a level 1 to a level 3 Dragon if you have the points to spend on creating it as such.

This is a very nice plastic miniature. I have kept it on its original base. I just based it as I would any other miniature I have. With the help of some Devlin Mud brown wash and some dry brushing and highlighting, I really like the way it has turned out.


Saturday 17 March 2018

Old Blue-eye's gets backup!

Ages back I posted showing the Iron Wind Metals Skeleton with a Spear miniature. I painted ice blue irises in the eye sockets to show off his undead nature. Well, 'Ol Blue eyes just got some backup.






'Ol Blue-eyes

Throw in a necromancer and you've got a party!

On to the next group of warriors!

Wednesday 7 March 2018

Drain the swamp! Mewlips and Necromancer for Chaos Wars

The latest addition to my growing Chaos Wars forces is a unit of Mewlips and a Necromancer.

The Mewlips

The Necromancer

A Mewlip is a mythical creature from a Hobbit poem. You can find more out about them here.

Magical light illuminates the Necromancer


The Mewlips are from Mithril Miniatures and the Necromancer is from Iron Wind Metals range.


Being a creature that inhabits the fetid swamps of Middle-earth, I wanted to base the Mewlips as emerging from swampy or marshy soil. So I used a craft glue to produce the water features on the base and larger vegetation and organic colour to show a marshy soil.

The Mewlips emerge



On swampy ground

I have still to paint the Mewlip eyes a red colour. But now that I have painted them as they are now, I am in two minds as to whether or not to just leave them as they are now and not paint the eyes red. Painting these guys was simple:

  • Base coat the model in Chaos Black spray
  • Wet brush in dark grey colour over the entire model but leave the black base coat in the recesses
  • Heavy dry brush in Administratum Grey over the entire model
  • Ink the weeds/hair/cloths in a green ink

Now all I need to do is make their movement tray also look swampy.