Kickstarter: The Reaper BONES minis are in!

I just got my huge shipment of minis in! It took 2 full evenings to sort them out for Rucht and Scott. The amount of minis was pretty overwhelming. Even after my third, I think I may have too much!

My wife didn't realize what she signed onto until she saw the full shipment laid out.

My nifty sorting trays. It was just easier to separate them by color on the master Reaper Draft image.

For those of you who missed out on this once-in-a-lifetime minis deal, I'm sorry, but for those of you who didn't, I feel you bros.

Minis Showcase: Misc Warhammer

Just a few experiments I did with painting and color schemes.

I had just watched a video on creating a rust look, and this was the result of that. I went out and bought a single Necron metal blister to try it out. I figured they should look a little rusty after being buried for so long. Highlighting the face white was another experiment. The head should be the center of the miniature, to show the emotion (or lack thereof). Still the gun pulls the attention away, but I like the head being slightly different from the rest of the body.

The experiment here was the basing, which this would be one of my best base jobs ever. I saw a video mention using baking soda for snow instead of expensive hobby snow flock, and it blew me away. Sometimes the best solutions are the cheaper ones. Also I have always thought Grey Knights were some of the greatest looking space marine variations, so it was an absolute pleasure to paint this guy.

This miniature came in the special collectors edition box set of Warhammer Online: Age of reckoning. The set included an awesome artbook and comic book, and this mini. My college roommate had bought the set, and gave the mini to me because he didn't ever want to get into painting miniatures. It would take me many years before I worked up the courage to paint it, and then I gave it back to him. He graciously received it.

Minis Showcase: Warhammer 40k T'au

Before I started building my Dwarf army for Warhammer Fantasy, back in college I started building a T'au army for Warhammer 40,000. I have a lot of it built and painted, but only played it once. I played them against a Chaos Space Marines army and was steamrolled with little hope of survival. It was my very first game, and the opposing player was more concerned about stomping me than teaching me how to play. That was my first and last game of 40k. But I hold no ill will, these were fun to build. Since it was my first army, a lot of the painting is pretty shameful, and several of the pieces are broken over years of storage, but here are a few of my better turn-outs. I may have to dig through and find more to show.

I already showcased some of this army, in the form of the Lizardmen Kroot.

It is no lie that Games Workshop is expensive. And about this time I had already started to feel the effects of it on my student wallet. So I saw somewhere on the internet how a guy made his own stealth-suits, and tried to emulate it. A box of Fire Warriors converted to Stealth Suits was cheaper than buying an equal amount of Stealth Suits.

I really love the look of the crisis suits, but I wasn't opposed to spicing them up a bit. The cables on the sides are piano wire. In college there was no shortage of that lying around.

Minis Showcase: Reaper Dwarves

Just a small showing today. I love dwarves, and once in a while I get a strange hankering to paint one. So I would stop in my FLGS and ask the owner "Got any dwarves?" Naturally I would be pointed at his Reaper board and I would sift through all of them until I found something to work on. These 3 hombres I got and painted over a couple years. One I actually used in a few games of DnD. It was the far left guy, and I altered him somewhat by filing down his hair to make him bald. I was trying to emulate my Dwarf Paladin from WoW as much as I could. I admit it, I used to play.

Minis Showcase: Qur'haddan Tempest Conversion

This is another one of my minis conversion that I'm proud of. Konomancer, the project of Jarom and I, has in it a lot of cool stuff (well, we think so anyway). The invading advanced alien race, the Qur'haddan, have a monk-like class. Instead of inner-peace and meditation, though, they use their martial discipline, high agility, and speed to pull corrosive and necrotic substance, called Void, from the dead parts from the Realm (Konomancer's version of the Feywild). These are the Qur'haddan Tempests. I really liked the idea of making a miniature of one, so I stumbled on a half-orc monk by Reaper. It took a little filing to get its claws and tusks to go away, and minimal conversion. I had to add something on its wrists for the black gems which act as the Tempest's implements, and some creative painting produced this:

For art on a Tempest in action, by Jarom, click here.

Minis Showcase: Engineer's Guild Army

I love dwarves. During the Reaper BONES Draft you will notice I took all the dwarves. There is just something about them that's so awesome. It could be their stalwartness, their precision with crafting and engineering, their manly beards, their xenophobia; Dwarves are just really cool. So way back in the day (pre-marriage) I decided to collect and build a dwarf army for Warhammer Fantasy. Never got to play the game, and I really didn't care. But I loved building, modding, and painting the little guys. So naturally when I make something I like to customize and mod it. Having read up a lot on dwarf lore through a VERY good book, I was fascinated with the Engineer's guild, and wanted to make an army based on that theme. Here they are:

These are my unit of warriors. A few things on their mods: I wanted there to be a hammer theme (forges, crafting, etc.) So all of the warriors have hammers instead of the normal axes, and I modded the leader to dual wield hammers. What's more macho than dual wielding hammers like a boss? And true to dwarf ingenuity a few of them have axe blades atop their hammers. It doesn't have to make sense, it just has to be awesome.

Also you will notice on most of my dwarves they have shoulderpads (normally they don't) and the shields on their backs have notches cut in them to make them look like giant gears. Fits in with the Engineer's guild quasi-steampunk theme.

Here are the thunderers. All their guns have axe-blades attached (again dwarf engineering), and the leader is dual-wielding pistols, with axe-blades. Again I thought the shoulder-pads and gear-shields look very nice on them.

The lord of the army: the master engineer. Again mods include a shoulder-pad, a gear-shield, and an axe-blade attached to the gun. Little additions like these helped keep the whole force together in look and style.

I really liked the idea of the organ gun, but didn't like how it looked. So true to dwarf engineers bodging things up, I redesigned it.

Now, the great thing about Games Workshop sprues is the loads of extra bits you get. And I like to use those extra bits. All the rest of these creations are made with mostly extra bits:

The dwarf Steamsuit. I had no idea how I was going to stat it up, but I knew I wanted some mechanical power-suit. Inside is an engineer metal, and the legs and arms are made from a Mage-Knight metal brass golem. The rest are just bits and lots and lots of glue.

A little backstory about these guys: Around this time I was following the development of the MMO Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning very excitedly. This was before it was released. There was a forum that followed its development in which I was an active part of. I remember that when they released the information of what the dwarf racial mount would be, everyone was infuriated. I liked it a lot because I love dwarf engineering stuff, but everyone else hated it. So I built the above gyro-pack unit as both my tribute to the idea, and also to troll the major fanbase of the game. Needless to say, I love these guys to death and how they turned out. No idea how they would be statted in game, but fits perfectly for a dwarf engineering army, don't you think?

Sadly I never got around to finishing the centerpiece. This would be my counts-as Anvil of Doom. I never finished it partly because I got a little burnt out on the project, and it also intimidated me a little. I knew it was to be the centerpiece and it had to look the best. I am not the best painter. The idea of these guys was their thunderous rock would cast the powers of runes across the battlefield. Imagine the kinds of songs you would hear in the great halls of the dwarves, combined with some electric guitar and wicked drums. I can't think of anything greater (outside of High King Thorgrim Grudgebearer himself) to get the army pumped for battle.

I never did decide on what to name the band. Any ideas?

I just saw it in the window and had to have it!

A Kickstarter project that took a little self convincing to get on board. Loud Ninja Games aimed to make probably what would be the first space dinosaur minis I have ever seen. At first I really didn't have enough incentive to back, because they were designed to be 15mm scale. I have no other minis in that scale, or any games in that scale to play around with them. Luckily a stretch goal was reached to offer a squad of these dudes in 28mm scale at the $25 backing level. I was sold.

Now I just need to figure out what to do with these little bastards...

Facility: WIP Hezak Minis

I thought I'd do a quick post showing some WIPs of my Hezak minis for the Facility boardgame. The concept art was featured here. They are mostly done, I will just need to test print them when I get the printer and modify them accordingly. Designing things for 3D printing can be challenging. You can't have too much of an overhang is a big thing. Which is why on the lower mini I have his smaller right arm connecting to form a bridge to his larger right arm.

The BONES Reaper Miniatures Draft Complete

I'm a little late bringing this out, but this is exciting news. I finalized our order with Reaper for the great BONES Kickstarter deal, and Rucht Lilalivat, Scott Szczypiorski, and I just finished our great Reaper Draft. After quite a grueling process and filling our email in-boxes we had successfully split up the pot between the 3 of us. So sometime next year I will be getting a huge box of beautiful miniatures and I will need to divvy out according to this image and send them off.

 The ones circled in Red are mine, the ones in Yellow are Rucht's, and Blue are Scott's.

Minis Showcase: Decker Lugstampf

One of the genres I love is Steampunk. Many may know it by the weird fashion statement and people who dress in Victorian clothing with gears glued over everything. No matter what way you take it, I have a certain fondness for impossible tech from a bygone era. So when I stumbled on Reaper Miniature's steampunk minis, like Decker Lugstampf here, I bought him up immediately, took some extra time painting him, and imagined the awesomeness that is steampunk.

Jarom thinks so too, so for a while we have been working on a game setting of our own called Cognitive Flux. It's still in initial 'idea' phase, and I previewed a piece of his art here.

Minis Showcase: The Zoidbergs

While it's not a deal like the minis from this post, it's not a bad deal for a box of german-themed scifi troops.

Wargames Factory is known for making some decently priced box sets. They do a lot of zombies (i did a sprue of zombies up for my wife, who loves anything zombie) and historical figures. I bought these shock troops because I liked the look of them, and it was only $20 for 18 of them.

Because I actually pre-ordered mine, each sprue in the box came with a special alien head that you could use on them. That fascinated me more than making them how they were on the box, so here they are:

A couple comments: Yes I have seen Futurama, and am familiar with the idiotic Dr. Zoidberg. But never once did that occur to me as I painted these guys with red skin. It was not until later when someone pointed it out to me and well... cannot be unseen.

It's ok. I mostly did it for the fun of it and to experiment with painting styles. I wanted them to look completely alien with very minor conversion and painting alone. The pointing-captain (as every unit of minis needs) has some sort of halo piece around his head with gives him that extra sense of authority, and the crystals on the ground adds to the alien environment they may hail from.

The plastic sprues themselves are not of the highest quality. The arms are really big and may fit together clunky, but they're still a good deal for miniatures.

Facility: Room Tiles

In one of my last Wednesday posts I talked of making games with 3D printers, and I announced my project; Facility - A Wartech boardgame. That was also when I talked of a great in-browser 3D program called Tinkercad. I've been working on it a lot, and have made some pretty cool stuff. These are all things planned for Facility. The sad thing is I can't see how they will turn out until I get the actual printer. But at least I'm getting some practice in.

These are the hallway tiles. 2 of this file is to be printed off. All pieces follow the same basic dimensions, which will be true for all other tiles. This is so any configuration will follow a grid-like pattern, to prevent awkward meetups and connections.

Rooma A. I had fun coming up with the different style of rooms you would find in a spaceship or an undergound facility. Even though all the rooms are treated the same, I still wanted all players to feel as though they are exploring an actual functioning facility, and not just exploring featureless rooms for objectives.

Rooms B. So this and the image above comprises the rooms you build with. See if you can guess what some of the rooms actually are.

Door pieces. I definitely had fun designing all sorts of different scifi doors for this game. When setting up the board, you also place door, and they are designed to slide in between the walls of 2 interconnecting tiles. Doors can halt or impede the progress of your opponent, and just add another piece to the visual feel of the game.

Another AMAZING minis deal on the Internet

With all the excitement of Reaper's BONES Kickstarter, people have been raving about the excellent deal they had going on for miniatures. And rightly so. 240 minis for $100 is nothing to be quiet about.

Well let me point you to another great deal on the internet for miniatures.

Found here, this is a deal for 80 individually sprue'd plastic soldiers for about $25 USD + shipping and handling, which totals to just a little over $30 USD. That amounts to about 38 cents a figure.

Go to the website to find out exactly what miniatures come in it, but this is a very good deal for getting a ton of plastic scifi soldiers to play around with. The details are really not that great (signs of old molds and sculpts) and a lot of their poses are semi-rigid, but they are great for conversions. I know a lot who have used them to fill the ranks of Imperial Guard for their Warhammer 40k army, and I have plans on using them in scifi rpgs. Need a bunch of corporate security dudes represented for when your PCs heist goes terribly wrong? Done.

So I bought the bag. It took a couple weeks to get to me (overseas shipping and all), and I did up a couple of them just to see what I'm getting. The picture above is quite literally what you get. A clear bag crammed with 80 sprues.

First Painting

Jarom's creative use of 2 sprues. Dead counters.

So next time you want to fill your tub with even more minis and have some spare cash again, get this deal.

PS: I know they originally went to a game called Warzone, which I hear still has a following despite the original game company being out of business, and the original books are out of print. And I know that Warzone is also the Mutant Chronicles setting...sort of.

The Beauty of 3D Printing

Every once in a while I begin to forget why I'm saving up my precious moneys for a 3D printer, and not spending it all on awesome gaming stuff. Then whenever that happens, I stumble into something that reminds me why I'm doing it. I found this on Thingiverse. It's no secret that home 3D printer resolution can leave you wanting, but this guy's minis look great. Even with the limited resolution, you definitely recognize what is what. The idea is to keep the minis very simple and detail free. Rely on bigger things to show it off, like capes, poses, and big weapons.

Check out other stuff by him. Like Pocket Tactics. Being able to print off these alone and how many you want, makes the Makerbot worth the wait.

One of my biggest obstacles with 3D printing though would be the CAD part. I have little experience with 3D design programs and any I experiment with can be a huge headache. Like using photoshop for the first time with no instructions. So many tools and can be confusing.

And then I found Tinkercad. An amazing website which uses a light but effective browser based design program. All your files are stored online, and no download necessary to run. It's all handled within the browser. Within minutes of doing some of their simple tutorials, I became really good at it, and have already began making things. It is awesome.

So with a new found excitement in 3D printing, and a great design program to cut my teeth on, I am planning my next project. A board game where everything is printed.

Over the weekend I went on a long 4 day trip to attend my wife's graduation from her masters program (Gratz again, Hunny!) and the whole time I thought about this and wrote up several pages on it. So part of the official announcement, here is a scan directly from my notebook.

Facility will be a scifi board game set in our Wartech universe. It will give you a small primer to the setting and utilize a variation of my tested rules from my other rules-lite miniatures game, Angry Miniatures.

This will give me plenty of practice in CAD so when I finally get my Makerbot (I am now at $700!) I will be able to utilize it right away.

Minis Showcase: The Lizard Kroot

I have a dodgy history with Warhammer 40,000. I tried getting into the game a while back, but couldn't get past the overcomplicated rules systems and the 30 minute long player turns. Maybe I didn't have good teachers or was among the right crowd, but I never got into playing the game.

However I did really like painting and especially customizing miniatures. I found I enjoyed it more than playing the game. So that is about as far as I got with it.

I haven't painted much recently, so these Kroot are maybe 6 years old, but I am pretty proud of their conversion nonetheless.

I liked the Kroot and their story. They are a mutagenic race that evolve based on what they eat. In this case I got to thinking about that and wanted to go for some sort of more extreme evolution. I picked up a box of Warhammer Fantasy Lizardmen and a Kroot troop and pretty much smashed them together. You get a force of green scaly Kroot built for speed that ate a bunch of Lizardmen.

The extra fin on top of their heads, the long slender bodies, and long reptilian tales should show the Lizardmen half. The heads, quills, arms and legs remain the same. As a whole they definitely stand out from the standard GW model squad, and that's what I love about them.

Wartech Races: The Hezak

In our Wartech setting there are 4 main races. These 4 races dominate known space and are each about equal standing with population and power. Within the races are many factions, many often comprised of several of the major and minor races. The 4 main races are:

• Fairin
• Cha'el
• Quiv
• and Hezak

Hezak Male

The Hezak come from a metal rich planet named Droug. It is a very harsh and unforgiving world. The surface has low moisture content and an average temperature of 13° Celsius. Heavy metal storms rip across the surface carving wild and erratic formations. Within these crags evolved the primitive Hezak. A people that rapidly evolved from a lizard-like species. They have a thick hardy skin from the harsh environment, a second inferior set of arms that emanate from their midsection, a unique skin tone depending on where they are born, and a strong honor code and tradition.

Before the Visitors, they had a very tribal and family oriented social structure. Then came these Visitors. Strange machines descended from they sky and dwelled on the surface. The Visitors traded with the Hezak, technical marvels known as the mag-repulsor harnesses for ore common on the world. The mag-repulsor harness creates a magnetic field that protects an individual Hezak from the deadly storms of the world, and became prized possessions. From the moment a child is weaned from the mother, it is given a harness. This brought open conflict and expansion on their world. No longer were they limited to their progress based on weather.

Then suddenly one day, the Visitors disappeared. The Hezak had come to rely on them, but they were nowhere to be found. A slow panic broke out. As generations passed, and the harnesses began to breakdown or get destroyed from conflict, they became more and more valuable. Wars were often fought over them, and warlords rose to power merely for possessing a working harness.

However, the Visitors had already taught the Hezak some things, like home building an metallurgy. These were the first steps in their technical evolution. Eventually the Hezak progressed far enough to reverse engineer some of the ancient harnesses, and build there own, as well as several variations. This lead to the Hezak's current mastery of mag-tech, as seen in their starships and weapons.

The Hezak had already established bases on 3 worlds in their home system when they were discovered by Saunos. A Fairin nation.

A Hezak on trial for breaking an honor code.

Today the Hezak are valued mercenaries across the galaxy. The dominant organization being The Hezakian Combine. Taking contracts from various nations, even warring ones. Their chief technology company is InoCo, where most of the galaxy can find their personal firearms being made.

Kitbashed Hezak minis.

Additional Hezak art can be seen on Jarom's first art post.

Rogue Space - MECHS: Paper Miniatures

I was asked about what I used for miniatures in my Rogue Space MECHS campaign. I used paper standees. I didn't want Jarom to have to draw everything out on the game because A) that's a lot of work, and B) he is one of the players, revealing possible spoilers.

When making custom simple paper minis, there is one key website that proves to be the greatest resource: Google Image Search

My campaign I did was a near future earth where mechs dominate the battlefield and have changed warfare. The players are part of a United Nations task force (this allows for a mixture of different nationalities for the players, so they don't feel restricted to one country). One of the major influences for this setting is the video game Front Mission. I like their mech designs so i used them as base. This campaign isn't a Front Mission campaign, but it worked for the look and feel.

So a simple search of "front mission wanzer" revealed a host of white-background mechs. Perfect for making minis. When you are thinking of a theme of mechs you wish to use, try not searching the game or title, but searching the actual names of the mechs. In Front Mission they are called wanzers (pronounced 'vanzer' - german for wanderpanzer, or walking tank).

Other great search examples:

• gundam mobile suit
• heavy gear
• armored core
• battlemech
• mech (this one has a ton of random useables)

All of those provide many excellent workable pictures to slap on standees.

Next I used a couple simple steps in Microsoft Publisher to make the standees. These steps can be duplicated in other programs, like photoshop or even powerpoint. Although they may be called something different, and there may be easier ways to do it, but this is how I did mine.

I made little 1 inch square templates. It consisted of 2 squares stacked on top of each other. 1 inch wide, and 1.5 inch tall. Then 2 smaller squares on the top and bottom. These get glued together to make the bottoms.

Then I imported one of the pictures I got off Google, cropped it, and shrunk it down to fit inside.

Next I copied the shrunken image flipped it horizontally and placed it in the box above. This would make a mirror of the mech when the standee is folded together.

I didn't want both sides to be the exact same, I wanted to be able to easily tell the back from front. So I made the backs of the standees a solid black silhouette.

I did this by setting the transparent color on the 'back image' to be its background (in this case white).

That way when I darkened it to complete black (using the less brightness button), the whole box wouldn't black out, just the mech.

Make as many as you want or copy them as many times you want and print on a card stock. Cut them out, fold them, glue the bottoms together, and you have simple mech standees with silhouetted backsides.