Just a quick shot of my Relic Knight cadre, Cerci Speed Circuit, for the upcoming CaptainCon tourney.  Yes, you heard right!  Some peeps are actually running a tourney for this game, and I happen to live close enough to attend!   Gives me an excuse to finish up these models from way back when.  In the last couple months I finished Rin Farah, Pacer, Marie Claude's pokemon, and the two biker chicks.  Even though I only go for tabletop quality, it still takes me forever to paint each one. I will update this post in the future with some more detailed shots, hopefully.

Focused work: Noh Empire Assembled!

Beautiful!

Now that I'm picking up the hobby again, one strategy I've decided to follow is Focus.  Us gamers love to try the latest board game (Star Wars Rebellion or Star Wars Destiny?) or follow the latest Kickstarter (Relic Knights 2.0?), and why not?  It's a hobby!  Just do whatever is interesting!  However, with my collection of unpainted Relic Knights, Super Dungeon Explore, Infinity, Malifaux, not to mention 3d-printed proxies for Star Wars X-wing and Armada I'm working on, I didn't have enough focus to get any one thing done. 

A New Year, A Fresh Start on the hobby, and Relic Knights 2.0

Dynamic models from Relic Knights 1.0

Wow! It's been a while!  Lots has changed since the last time: I graduated, I moved, I got a job, I got married, and more recently I bought a house.  And when you spend all your time remodeling said house, not a whole lot of time is left for hobbies! But all of that is winding down now, and my new goal is to get my mountain of miniatures painted before a kid comes along.  And nothing gets the mojo going like following a Kickstarter: Relic Knights 2nd Edition =D.

Hobby knife refill from Japan... ingenious!

Picked this up from Daiso in SoCal over break.  It's like a $1 store except it's Japanese and everything is $1.50.  And since it's Japanese, everything has a touch of quality or uniqueness or cuteness or utility to it which makes shopping there super addicting.  

Check out this hobby knife re-fill.  It's got a slot for storing your used blades.  MIND BLOWN.  It fills such an obvious and logical need when replacing blades, it just makes sense, you wonder why you don't see that here.  The second item is glue tape, kinda like double sided tape, but in a dispenser like white-out tape.  Neat!  I got it for paper-crafting, since i make a lot of papercraft terrain perhaps this will make it faster.   Can't wait to try it!

Sedition Wars: Upping the Strain

I hate to admit it, but the Strain need all the help they can get. Don't get me wrong, i'm still loving the game, but it needs a bit of tweaking.  With the right mix of Vanguard units, it's pretty tough for the Strain to win, in at least campaign scenario 1 and 2.  Here some modifications i've gathered from the forums which i'm going to try out in the next game:

Sedition Wars: First Impressions

Convinced my roommate to play/try-out Sedition Wars on a weeknight! It was fun! Since then I've played it like 6x (mostly scenario 1) and I am pretty happy with the game.  More after the jump:

Painted Dwarf Fighter hero from SDE

Never toss a dwarf!

Hey folks, here's my first mini from Super Dungeon Explore painted up.  I choose the dwarf since he was my least favorite hero to try a new priming scheme, but now that he's painted, he's my most favorite!  Plus he's plays really well too, a tank immune to knockdown effect, perfect against the dragonlings in the base set!

I'm particularly fond of the beard work and the Non-Metal Metallic i used on the ax/shield.  It's my first time using the NMM technique where you paint the reflection using shades of grey instead of actual metallic paint.    I though it turned out fairly well considering i kept it simple and didn't use a ton of shades (only ~5).  

The priming technique i used this time is gray spray paint primer and then dry-brush white to highlight the details. I think it works better because although i like white primer for bright color, it always seems to take a thicker layer to get an even coat than grey or black.  Grey is a good balance.  The white only picks up on the  edges which gives your color basecoat a natural slight highlight.   Also the extra layers of white builds up where you want the build up (on the edges) so it's better than using a wash which fills in areas and decreases overall detail.  conceptually.  it may not actually make a significant difference.

Anyway, the game is great and we've been playing it a lot so i'll be painting the rest of the heroes up soon!

The Game Design Reader: A Rules of Play Anthology

If you like designing games or even just modding them, take a look at this book. It's got articles about everything, from video games (half-life) to Magic the Gathering. I found it super intriguing to learn what worked or didn't work in making successful games. It's also huge (954 pages) and for $35 at amazon it's a pretty good deal. I came across it at my university arts library when working on a class paper. Recommended!

 In other news, i've been playing a lot of Super Dungeon Explore lately! it's pretty great, i'm loving it, seriously. Almost done painting up my first figure, the dwarf, so i'll be posting that soon hopefully!

Uncharted Seas with Pirates PocketModels

Highpoint in the game: see that chinese ship on fire (cruiser) in the middle?  I maneuvered my 3 frigates (triangle sails-below) close for a killing shot, except it "magazine exploded" spectacularly taking out my entire frigate squadron.  Holy crap!   Used a blue plastic party table cloth under my transparent hex grid for a nice ocean effect.

I saw these Pirates PocketModels being sold as a massive discount of 20 pack for $10 at Target, and I thought to myself, what a great deal - what game could i play with it?   =)   Naturally, Uncharted Seas came to mind as a fleet-level naval combat game which needs lots of ships, and i've been meaning to try out the game mechanics as a proxy for applying Firestorm Armada to my Star Wars Starship Battles figures.  Read on for my conversion and review!

WIP: Painted Castle Ravenloft figures

Instead of the usual friday night foray into the depths of Castle Ravenloft with my gaming friends, we decided to have a miniature painting party instead! and painted up some of the heroes and monsters from the game!

Navia Dratp in progress painting

In Progress: All I need to do is the eye detail, and maybe freehand the orange/red tattoos on his shoulder.

Recently I've been working on some Navia Dratp figures I've had primed up for the longest time.  They're part of a Japanese chess/Shogi variant where these special units can be "summoned" to the chessboard. At approximately 54mm scale, the detail on these guys are pretty nice and they're really easy to paint.  I've been using them as my practice into the world of miniature painting.  Plus the set of them were like dirt cheap since the game's been out of print for years now. The game is pretty good, lots of fun with different win conditions, but it suffered from terrible naming and probably bad marketing. And some of the character designs are just plain weird.  These two are among my favorites.  The pose on the Pterodactyl (below) is pretty dynamic too.  My painting technique here is pretty much all dry-brushing.  I haven't really moved up to blending or advanced techniques like that but it's amazing how good you can get something to look with just a simple darker color basecoat and dry-brushing up the lighter shades.  Also, this size 2 Filbert is my newest favorite brush for detailed, controlled dry-brushing. =)

probably add the red tattoos on his head an call it done!

Homebrew Shurro chess set

Shuuro is this sweet new chess alternative game I wanted to try out but given my poor grad student status I couldn't afford the $80 price tag for the 2-player base + 4-player expansion.  Really, the first thought you get when you see this is why don't people just make it themselves?  So I set out to do just that and saved $40, but that's because i scored a sweet ebay deal for 7 chess sets.  W/ithout Ebay, most likely the cheapest you can possibly build this for is ~$50.  Yeah, that's right, you need 7 chess sets for 4 player set, 5 chess sets for 2 players.  Is it worth saving $30 to spend time making it yourself?  Read on and find out!

started a new cooking blog, TastyMonkeyFood

"What?  a 2nd blog?  Madness! you can't even keep up posting on the first blog!"
That may be true, but it's always bugged me that cooking doesn't really fit with the rest topics on this blog, and people who are interested in cooking may not be interested in reading about miniature painting, and vice versa.  Also, the mix prevents me from advertising this blog on miniature gaming hobby sites.  So now i've decided to split off all cooking posts to TastyMonkeyFood (keeping with the naming trend).   If you liked all my cooking posts, check it out!

Getting started in miniature painting

Don't skip the prep work!  I've tried painting without cleaning or priming and it just makes life harder in the end.

So you just got yourself a shiny (or plastic) miniature, now what? You want to try out this "miniature painting" thing without breaking the bank on something you're not sure you'll enjoy? What's the most cost effective way to start while avoiding common beginner pitfalls? I'm here to answer all that plus what tools do you need, brushes sizes, paints, and priming and more so you'll be off to a good start!

Obligatory 2011 New Year Post: Lessons for living a happy life

My awesome family, some day my nephew will be old enough to play miniature games with me, mwahaha! 

Sometime i look around me and i see people not happy and i try to figure out why? I don't have all the answers but here are some things i learned along the way how to make living better:

1. Have high expectations for yourself, and work hard to make yourself better. This is a given. Self-impovement is the game here, alway reflecting and striving to improve your personality, finances, skills, spirituality, everything. However, the problem with having high expectations for yourself, is that you generally also have high expectations for people around you. This will always be disappointing because no one is going to be the specific way you think they should be. Which leads to the next point...

DIY Paint Rack

Made myself a paint rack out of foam board + hot glue, very easy, probably took about an hour.  Shelves are 3.5cm deep (size of my largest paint pot (Reaper Pros), and craft paint bottles), and 3cm tall per step.  5 support struts over 20inch length.  3 steps for 4 rows (counting the ground row).  Looks great and it was free!

Fully populated.  most of my metallic paint not here since they aren't used often.

First resin kit finished!

100% hand-painted! Yes, it's possible to get good results without an airbrush as long as your paints are thinned so they level evenly. This is Mina from Soul Calibur, on clearance so i thought it suitable for a test article.

Woohoo! Check out my first resin kit project fully painted and assembled! If you don't know resin kits or garage kits are typically japanese models, 1/8 scale, hence they are quite a bit bigger than your typical table-top miniature figure. I got this one on clearance to test if i would be able to paint resin kits reasonably well without an airbrush before spending more money on an expensive Ah! My Goddess resin kit which i really want to paint. I think it turned out pretty good! But i did learn a few tips for resin kits which differ from normal miniatures painting techniques:

Miniature Painting Resolution!

If you are going to practice a skill every day, set up an environment conducive for the activity.  In my case,  I cleaned up my workbench and put ALL my paints on display, ready to be used.  If i'm going to be painting daily for only an hour, i don't want to waste time looking for paints.   Paint pots at the top group by color, brushes and tools on the right for easy access, and drying model pieces on the left on floral foam stands so i can paint a piece in the center and swap out for the next piece.  Maybe i should make a paint rack.

 

I tell people i paint miniatures but the reality is i haven't painted all that much.  7 "real" miniatures of Navia Dratp to be exact.  After i got started with navia dratp, i got all into it, read a bunch of painting blogs, bought loads paints and quality brushes, then got burnt out with painting repetitive Arcane Legions figures.  Since then, i've amassed a bunch of interesting models, but never got back into actually painting them!    I keep reading miniature painting blogs but it all seems kinda hollow since i don't actually paint.  

I've decided that i really DO want to paint all these miniatures and i do want to get really good at it.  The best way to learn how to do something, is to stop reading about it and to do it.  The only real way to get better at something is to do it every day.  The reason why i cook so well is because i cook pretty much every other day.   Thus, i've resolved to paint 1 hr a day, and to paint my existing collection before buying any more figures!   (but maybe i'll ask for that super sweet Winged Nazgul on Fell Beast model for Christmas  ^__^  ).   

Of course,  i have a slew of other skills i want to improve with the 1 hour/day treatment (like martial arts, music, language) but let's try one resolution at a time. 

Pumpkin Curry Recipe!

Here's a dish perfect for those clearance pumpkins after Halloween! Just click on the pic and download the manga-recipe. And yes, it's pulled from a curry-cooking themed manga (the protagonists solves all life's problems with curry!) but i've made it twice already and i can say it's really good! Sorry i don't have a pic of the real dish, i keep forgetting to take one, but it looks like a dark orange-reddish island of curried pumpkin in a pool of lighter orange pumpkin bisque soup. It's not that hard either and the recipe is rather flexible. Here are some tips for us Americans since the original recipe was intended for Japanese people (they're grocery stores are different than ours): click on keep reading for the tips!

DIY Banana Ice Cream

This is the level of stiffness i prefer.  More like ice cream.

So i tried out this recipe recently for DIY banana ice cream. Guess what the ingredients are? that's right! BANANA's! and nothing else! Seriously. It's a pretty sweet dessert you can whip up and enjoy guilt-free. However, the recipe page said they used a food processessor, which i don't have. Thus begun my quest to see if it could be made with something less than a food processor.