I just posted my look back at my work from 2016, but what's ahead for 2017? I wrote up some resolutions and goals for 2016 and thought it'd probably be a good thing to do the same for the upcoming year.

But first, let me do a quick tally of last year's resolutions and how I did:

2016's Resolutions

Last year, I set the following goals for myself:

• Finish more of the site
• Post more in this blog
• Try to join more of the online community
• Paint a bust
• Paint more
• Play more Infinity
• ...and Batman

So how'd I do?

Well, starting with the website, I haven't really done much I'm afraid so I'll have to recycle that resolution again for 2017. I also didn't come close to my 2 posts per month blogging goal! So, the first couple of resolutions weren't quite reached. Drat.

Up next, while I didn't join CMON, I did start an Instagram account and tried to post a bit more to Twitter. I still want to try and actually "participate" more, but I've really enjoyed both Instagram and Twitter this year.

On to the actual painting. I already gave myself credit in my last blog post for starting work on Amaryn this year, so that's my bust! Beyond that specific goal, however, I'm pretty pleased with the variety of minis I was able to paint in 2016, both display pieces and gaming minis.

The last couple of goals were gaming related. I did play a bit more Infinity with my Maghariba Guard breathing new life into my Haqqislam force. Batman, on the other hand kind of fizzled. This year I didn't play quite as much as I have in years past, with my non-hobby/gaming time sometimes conflicting with tournaments scheduled, etc. That's not to say I didn't have a lot of fun on the gaming table. I mentioned Infinity, but I also played more Bushido with Oda and Tautola giving me the extra minis I needed to try out the Iron Fist Gumi. I even played a little Ninja All-Stars, a lighter-weight chibi-style game.

Goals for 2017

This upcoming year, I really want to continue the nice breakdown of gaming and display pieces. I enjoy the deep-dive into a display piece, but then breaking it up with a quicker gaming model can be refreshing. For me, there's not really a huge difference in the level of painting I try to bring to a display or a gaming mini, it's more in the amount of work that goes into the base and the rest of the display. So, trying to keep that variety, my painting goals for the year are:

• Paint up my Guild Ball Brewers - yup, I haven't mentioned Guild Ball at all here yet, but I just recently split the new Guild Ball Kick-Off boxed set and took the Brewers Guild. I've been admiring the Guild Ball minis online for a while and finally got to play my first game. It's a lot of fun, but those drunken little bastards look a bit naked without their paint, so getting them painted will be an early goal for 2017.
• Paint a display piece featuring multiple minis - This is probably something that I'll shoot for a bit later in the year. So far, all of my display pieces focus on a single miniature standing or posing in a location. However, many of my favorite pieces by other painters tell more of a story with the interplay (conflict or cooperation) between two or more models. This is something I'd love to attempt in 2017.
• Paint a Chibi miniature - After playing a few games of Ninja All-Stars, I developed an appreciation for this style of miniature. This was aided by a number of fantastic paint jobs I've seen online. A short while back I picked up Arcadia Quest to play with my daughters and so now have a set of great looking chibi miniatures just calling out for painting!

Last year I posted some gaming goals so, keeping with that tradition, this year I'd like to try to:

• Play more Guild Ball - I think this should be fairly easy to achieve given that I've only played one game! That one game was a lot of fun, though, so more games are definitely in order.
• Attend more tournaments - 2016 was an tricky year for tournaments for me based purely on timing. Our local Bushido and Infinity groups are very active and there's usually a tournament for one or the other every 6 weeks or so. Unfortunately for me in 2016 these always seemed to occur when I was out of town, had houseguests or was otherwise booked. I'm hoping the cards will fall differently this upcoming year and I'll have the opportunity to attend a few more.

I already said above that I'd need to recycle my 2016 goals for blogging more and working a bit on this website, so that leaves me with just one more goal for 2017:

• Sculpt a miniature - A couple of years ago, after taking my daughter to see Epic, I was inspired by the little leaf samurai and tried my hand at sculpting a mini (or... given the size of the characters in the movie, technically it was a life-sized sculpture, not a miniature!). It was a totally different process to painting (obviously) and got a different set of creative neurons firing. I think my little Ronin came out pretty well for a first attempt, but I think this is something I'd love to try my hand at again this year.

Ok, I lied, here's one more goal that I'm going to give myself bonus points if I achieve (note to self: must try and find a gaming retailer that accepts bonus points as currency.)

• Make a gaming board - I've got a few ideas for a Bushido board and have lots of lofty goals and intentions for this one. Somehow, however, other projects always bubble up to the forefront. So, I'm going to stick this in here in the attempts to guilt myself into actually giving it a shot in 2017… but there's a reason it's last on this list so, like I said: bonus points…

Well, just like with 2016, that's a pretty packed list! Let's see how I do, eh? However it is, I'll be sure to post here, on Twitter and on Instagram!

With the year coming to a close, it's fun to look both look back and take stock of the year's work and also to look ahead to the upcoming year and make some plans and some goals. I'll take care of the latter in another post, but will start here by casting my eye back over my work from 2016.

Works Completed

I began the year in the middle of Sumothay, a larger mini for me (54mm... I haven't yet tried an even larger 75mm piece!). This was a really fun piece to work on and, looking back at my display shelves, I think he's one of my favorite pieces that I've painted.

The end of 2015 saw me picking up my second Bushido army, the Tengu. So early 2016 also had me working on finishing out my warband with Nuniq, Buzenbo and Sanjakubo. Buzenbo is majestic as hell, but the little details on Sanjakubo are fantastic and I love Nuniq's pose up on her rocky ledge, spear slung casually, yet threateningly, over her shoulder. Painting these three was fun, but so was taking them to the table. 2016 also saw my first Bushido tournament and my feathered friends here led me to take second place.

After working on the Tengu, it was time to swing the pendulum back and work on another display piece, Tinker Belle. Tink had been sitting in my "to paint" drawer for far too long and it felt great to finally get her up on a cork and start putting paint to model. I'd painted a few other Guild of Harmony models, and they're all resplendent with fabulous little details. They really are the most intricate models I've painted and Tink was no exception.

My next piece was a model that I'd been anxious to paint ever since I saw the first digital renders: the Maghariba Guard for my Infinity Haqqislam force. As soon as I was able to put it on pre-order, I did. It arrived in time to hit my painting station just after Tink. If it had arrived a little bit later in the year, it would have been a great candidate for my new airbrush. As it was, however, Maggie was a lot of brushwork! Another gaming model, Maggie also saw a lot of good gaming time. I hadn't picked up a new piece for my Haqq army in a while, so the Maghariba Guard breathed a bit of new life into Infinity for me.

After painting all of that armor plating on the Maghariba Guard, it was time to paint some cloth. In this case, some madras cloth. Ever since I received Florence Nightingale, I'd been thinking of doing something a bit different with her. Taking her to a (steampunk) caribbean setting was in order. This meant doing a bit of construction work, so my big takeaway from this model was learning how to put together a bigger backdrop using plasticard, spackle, wood and other items. Ultimately, this piece came out just as I'd been picturing it.

So, the pendulum kept swinging from display piece to gaming model and so it was time for another gaming model... or 2. Oda and Tautola were the next to be painted, to join my Bushido Silvermoon Syndicate. As with many of the Bushido models, these two again are full of character. Oda joined my other "old men" and Tautola provided another opportunity to practice my freehands with his extensive tattoos.

Around this time, my birthday hit, bringing with it a fun new toy: an airbrush. The first model to receive the airbrush treatment was the Green Arrow. At one point, I'd looked at starting the Batman Miniatures Game, so the Green Arrow was my first purchase. However, soon after Knight Models started not one, but two new superhero games (Spiderman and Marvel) and I began to wonder if their priorities and attention were truly going to stick with Batman... So, while I never wound up getting any more than the Green Arrow, I was still happy to paint him up.

Sticking with named characters, my next piece was something I'd been eyeing since I saw the sculpt in-progress on Facebook. It took a little bit of conversion, but I thoroughly enjoyed putting together Rey and BB-8. I'm not a Star Wars fanatic, but like any self-respecting geek, I enjoy spending a little time in a galaxy far, far away and had fun watching the Force Awakens. And, as a father to two girls, I loved seeing Rey in the lead  knew I had to translate that to miniature form.

While she doesn't quite make the list for 2016, my final piece is Amaryn. One of my resolutions from last year was to paint a bust and, despite not completing her, I'm going to call this resolution fulfilled as I did start her in 2016... real life and the craziness of November and December conspiring to slow down my progress. Oh well, she'll have the honor of being the first up on my 2017 year in review!

Beyond the models themselves, one of my goals was to blog more this year. I can't exactly say that I was successful in that and didn't blog as much as I wanted to... not quite hitting a post per month. I did, however, join Instagram and tried to post a few more in-progress images up there and on Twitter. The immediacy of social media is great and I'll keep on trying to engage even further in 2017.

My two most recent pieces are a bit different than what I usually paint for a couple of reasons. The first is the subject matter: both the Green Arrow by Knight Models and Rey & BB-8 are pretty well recognized characters. The minis I usually paint would only really be recognizable to others who play that particular game or who paint miniatures and may have seen certain sculpts before. The other big difference for me is that these are the first miniatures I've begun painting with the use of an airbrush. Both of these differences presented some unique challenges for me.

Characterful Characters

Painting the established characters presented a certain challenge as, for the first time for me, the paint jobs would have to meet specific pre-existing expectations about what they should look like. I'm not a 40k player and haven't painted a Space Marine in more than 20 years, but I imagine this is something that 40k players and certainly commission painters have to deal with on a regular basis. While my Infinity minis more or less conform to the standard Corvus Belli look, I think there's a bit more leeway there. However, everyone and their mother knows full well what Rey and BB-8 look like now, so there's no getting away with mucking that up!

For Rey in particular this meant getting the sculpt and the colors just right. The first thing I had to do was a little conversion work. The Hasslefree model, Kami Riko, is pretty close to the Force Awakens heroine, but is not a precise match. This meant that I needed to make two specific alterations to get her looking like Rey.

The first change was to her staff. The original miniature's staff is more of a halberd with the one side ending in a large blade. Rey however prefers her blades (sabres if you will) made of glowing light. So step one was to snip that and sculpt a new end to her staff out of greenstuff. With each new project that requires some greenstuff work I'm getting more and more confident. However it's a steep learning curve. The biggest challenge for me is waiting just long enough before trying to actually work the putty into shape. All too frequently I'm jumping the gun and trying to sculpt too early, resulting in a sticky mess that won't hold its shape. That said, I think I was able to draw on a reservoir of patience working with her staff and am very pleased with the result. Even more so when, after priming, my wife couldn't tell which end was the one I'd sculpted!

I'm not sure I can say the same for the longer bits of fabric hanging from her belt. They work just fine painted but I know that I tried to attach them a bit too soon and lost a lot of the texture details that I'd put into the fabric before attaching. C'est la vie... it's all a learning process and I do still like the way it looks in the end. The more I work with it, though, the more respect I have for the amazing results that some painters and sculptors can achieve with greenstuff.

It's Like a Brush... Made of Air!

OK, so airbrushes aren't exactly unknown to the hobby, but I'd avoided taking the plunge for a long while, preferring to rely solely on my brush made of bristles. However, for my birthday this year, I figured maybe instead of asking for more miniatures I'd put in a request for this intimidating new setup (okay, full disclosure, I still asked for more miniatures too!). The airbrush setup reall was intimidating… Fortunately there are no shortage of articles and recommendations on what airbrush and compressor to buy and how to clean it and thin your paints, etc (I relied heavily on Michał "ARBAL" Walczak's advice) so I wasn't exactly flying blind and was thankful to receive a Master Series airbrush and compressor.

My initial outings with the new airbrush were simple, starting with priming my miniatures. I've had mixed success with the rattle can primers in the past and more than once have finished priming only to immediately drop the mini into a bath of Simple Green cleaning fluid to strip it clean so I could try again. Moving to an airbrush was a revelation. Priming with the airbrush is a significant improvement over the rattle cans with thin, precise coverage and no fear of the dreaded "fuzzy" finish that has plagued me in the past!

Once I'd gained some confidence with the priming, the Green Arrow seemed like a great first mini to try airbrushing on some actual color. As he's almost totally green, I thought I would try working through my shades of green from dark to light seeing if I could lay in some good highlights with the airbrush before moving on to painting in the details with my trusty Winsor & Newton.

Results initially were mixed... but not discouraging. I found it all too easy to obliterate the first few colors I put down with my highlights and so after finishing, things felt too washed out to me. But, while I did need to go back in and re-do a lot of the green shading, glazing in some more mid-tones and then working my way back up to some more precise highlights, I was still really happy with how quickly that first layer of paint went down with the airbrush.

After finishing the model, I returned again to the airbrush for his base. I backed off the highlights a bit this time and tried to use the airbrush to get some really good coverage with a mix of rusty reds and browns. In this case, working with the airbrush saved me a significant amount of time. Painting in all those browns wouldn't have been much fun, but getting all of the base tones down with the airbrush was fast and enjoyable. That then let me go back in with the brush to do all the little detail and edge highlights and to lay in some dry pigments.

Moving on to Rey, she's another mini whose clothing is predominantly one color and so, again, perfect for starting with the airbrush. In her case, however, rather than trying to specifically highlight certain areas like I had with Green Arrow, I instead tried using the airbrush to really push the zenithal lighting approach, focusing on getting really dark tones from underneath and then progressing to white/ivory sprayed down from above.

Moving back to my regular brush, I worked to flesh out the color in places, add more distinction to certain parts of her robes and do some black/brown lining to really separate certain areas. However I found that the airbrushed zenithal lighting paid off tremendously. Given how monochrome she really is, it felt like much of the "volumes" had been given weight by the airbrush before I even picked up my brush. In places where I might usually lay down more of a base color, I saw that the airbrush work had put in more of a shadow. The same was true of the highlights. The initial airbrush work pushed the contrast on Rey much further than I think I would have if I'd not started with that step.

I finished Rey off by painting her skin, hair, boots and staff, then had a lot of fun with all the little freehand work on BB-8. Both my daughters are fans of the roly-poly little droid and so I was gratified to see the smiles on their faces when I showed them the finished little fella!

As with almost all other aspects of this hobby, there's so much more to learn, but I'm very excited to add a new weapon to my painting arsenal!

If you want to see any more of my airbrushing antics as they unfold, be sure to follow me on Twitter or Instagram!

There were a lot of things that first attracted me to the game Bushido, and a lot of things that keep me playing. However, if I had to say the one thing that really jumped out at me, it was the minis in the Silvermoon Syndicate. Unlike a lot of other games where every combatant is a muscle clad superman or warrior woman, the Silvermoon starter included the big "buto", Manu and haughty Harukichi clutching not a weapon of any sort, but a bowl of rice! These were not the comic book physiques that were at the core of every other game I'd looked at. These miniatures had real character and it made me instantly want to learn more.

Not surprisingly then, Silvermoon was the first faction that I invested in. The Silvermoon Syndicate are the mafia/yakuza equivalent in the Bushido universe. At the top of the heap are the crime bosses and and then below that their various underlings: advisors, warriors and enforcers, animal trainers, big buto "heavies", street urchins, manipulative "roses" and more. As with most Bushido factions, you can easily focus on one side of the faction or another. As a painter, tattooing the big buto had an instant appeal, so I gravitated towards those models and have had a lot of fun with them. However, the other set of Silvermoon miniatures that caught my eye were the non-combative "old men" of the faction, so that's what this post is about.

Before getting into the individuals themselves, what is it that so appeals about this side of the Silvermoon? Well, speaking to my painting side again, one of the big appeals for me was a chance to get away from the in-your-face muscle-bound, axe-wielding, machine-gun-toting, subtlety-avoiding, much-hyphenated stylings of most miniatures that I mentioned above. But in addition to having the chance to paint something different was what the inclusion of these minis said about the game of Bushido itself. Seeing Harukichi in Silvermoon's starter set really communicated that Bushido is not all about fighting and beating down your opponent. Before even delving into the rules, it got me excited for a game that was promising (and indeed delivers) great tactical depth where large fists and broadswords are not always the path to victory.

Harukichi

The starter set contains the first of the old men that I've painted for my Silvermoon warband, Harukichi. Arrogance and haughtiness are just oozing out of this miniature. In-game, he's the tactical genius behind Silvermoon, able to get away with such arrogance because he is able to control the flow of the game, enabling the Silvermoon player to re-roll poor dice in order to gain a better result... all while hiding within the large protective shadow of big Manu, his bodyguard.

Harukichi was actually the second Bushido miniature I painted after Manu. With Manu, I challenged myself to try out some freehand work (something I'd never really done before) by painting his tattoos. I was pleased with the success of those and so wanted to do something similar with Harukichi. Rather than tattoos, however, I thought I'd paint a pattern trim on his robe. So after some planning on paper, I worked out the rectangular twisting pattern and plotted it out all around his robe.

One thing I found particularly helpful with this pattern, and a technique I've repeated on other repeating patterns on my Silvermoon minis, is to start by placing a series of dots at the key intersections of the pattern. Unfortunately I don't have any pictures to demonstrate this, but by starting with simple repeating dots, it made it easier to keep the pattern regular as it was easy to see that each dot was the same distance from the other dots. Then, once that was done I went around connecting the dots and filling in the gaps in the pattern.

Actually playing with Harukichi on the table is a lot of fun. His first advantage becomes clear with one of the first rolls of the game: the tactical roll to decide who goes first. With his Tactician(1) skill, Harukichi allows you to roll an extra die, doubling your chances of being able to go first (if that's what you need) each turn. It's not usually an issue on the first turn, but with each new turn, there's almost always something that feels crucial to execute before your opponent can stop you so having an advantage here is very helpful.

Once you're past the the tactical roll on turn one, my strategy is usually to have Harukichi Focus. This is a complex action, but allows him to generate ki again, giving him a nice reserve come turn two. On turn two, he can then usually run to catch up with the rest of the warband... or at least within good range for him to trigger his "Fortune's Favour" ki feat.

"Fortune's Favour" is at the heart of what makes Harukichi so great and as long as he is standing on the table (after turn one), he should have this ki feat active. This provides an 8" aura around Harukichi within which you can then opt to spend ki to re-roll any crucial dice rolls. You do have to spend a ki token for each die you want to re-roll, gambling on whether you'll need the re-roll or not. However, while it may hurt to spend a ki or two only to roll all fives and sixes in a melee... it's far better than being stingy then rolling all ones! As you're going to want to be using Harukichi's ki for all these re-rolls, it's helpful to keep him back out of combat (preferably within 2" of Manu who can jump to his aid as his bodyguard) and either Focusing each turn to keep his stash of ki high, or able to dart out and maybe capture an unattended objective if necessary. An 8" aura is also pretty wide, but be careful not to get him pinned in on one side of the table, out of range and unable to share his good fortune with someone who might need it on the other side of the table.

Old Zo

After the starter set, the next miniature I picked up was Old Zo, wizened old advisor to the syndicate. Unlike hefty Harukichi who won't even put down his rice bowl to join the battle, Zo is a gaunt beanpole of a mini. However, it will probably come as no surprise that this simple miniature requires absolutely no assembly! But, simple as it is, it is a lovely little sculpt. While Harukichi's face has a perfect sneer, Old Zo clutches at his beads and peers over his spectacles with a measurable distaste for whatever his is witnessing.

I'd already determined that I wanted a golden orange/yellow color to be a subtle through-line throughout my Silvermoon warband. Manu, Senpu and Wasupu all had yellow trim on their gi or robes, Tsubaki's fans were a sunset orange/yellow and Harukichi's trim was all decorated with the same hues. For Zo, though, I felt I could go all out and painted his main robe with a full fade from yellow down to orange. His lower robes I then painted in the same dark purples as Harukichi's. I quite liked the brightness and simplicity of this, so opted to forego any freehand work on Zo - a simpler (but hopefully still characterful) paint job for a simpler mini.

Now, in a pinch, Harukichi can still defend himself. He's no natural born warrior with just 2 melee skill, rolling two dice in defense will still keep ol' rice-chops alive until one of the more able Silvermoon enforcers can arrive to bail him out of danger. With his more advanced years, however, Old Zo arrives on the table with only 1 melee skill. So, you're not going to want to throw him into the fray. However, like Harukichi, Zo has a certain aura about him... in his case, he doesn't manipulate luck, but ki.

Like Harukichi, you're probably going to want to Focus Zo on turn one, then run him up behind the battle-line so he can raise his "Tax" aura. I try to kick it off with 2 ki so that it has an 8" range like Harukichi's aura. Once in place, any enemy model that attempts to use his ki, either for a ki feat or to boost their melee dice, will discover that their feats are suddenly 1 ki more expensive! Now, that's pretty nice in and of itself... but it gets better: that extra ki then goes to Old Zo, added to his ki pool.

Often, your opponent will be frustrated by this, but still continue to spend ki as before, allowing you to accumulate a nice stack of ki tokens on Old Zo. However, the other possibility is that your opponent decides that boosting is just a little too expensive, or it's not worth Zo getting the extra ki just to pull off that ki feat they were planning. However, that's not so bad either -- Zo acts as a dampening force on your opponent, causing them to think twice before they use their ki to their advantage.

Once Zo is sitting on a nice little stockpile of ki, you will probably then want to invoke his other feat: "Trade". This allows him to then channel that ki over to someone else on the battlefield (maybe Harukichi?) who can make good use of it. His Trade skill also gives him Leech, so even if Zo himself hasn't been able to accumulate a hoard of ki, he can take it from one of your models who has more than they need and then channel it to another who can make better use. As each of these skills has an 8" range, you can conceivably move ki tokens up to 16" across the battlefield, surprising your opponent. Maybe they thought they had the upper hand on Fitiaumua, but then suddenly Zo delivers him a nice chunk of ki, enabling him to boost his melee skill and deliver a killing blow.... and Zo gets the assist.

Oda

This diminutive "oyabun" is the most recent old man to join my Silvermoon warband. After having experimented with several different lists, I wanted to try out one of the special "themes", the Iron Fist Gumi. In Bushido, a theme is a special grouping of models within a given faction. Building a list based on a theme restricts you to only certain models, but also grants you several bonuses. In the Silvermoon Syndicate, the Iron Fist Gumi theme focuses on the big buto. I already owned Manu and Fitiaumua, so with the addition of Oda and his big pal Tautola, it seemed like a fun way to throw a lot of big heavies on the table.

Oda fits in perfectly with this theme. His role is that of "jumo sensei"... or big-fella-trainer. He comes in a pack with Tautola, another big buto, and can be played independently or riding on Tautola's back. While I built the two models so that Tautola's backpack could be easily detached, and Oda has a concealed magnet embedded at his feet so he can either be magnetized to the backpack or to his own cobblestone base, I prefer the two models standing on their own: both how they play in game and how they look.

While my reasons for picking up Oda were a bit different than Harukichi and Old Zo as I bought him for his utility in game rather than specifically because I like the miniature, that doesn't mean that I don't like his model. Quite the opposite: he easily has as much character, if not more, than Harukichi! Likely suffering from a Napoleon-complex, he's a short little fella, but he clearly makes up for it in attitude! He's gesticulating madly with a closed fan and has his mouth wide open, yelling at some underperforming buto while keeping his monocle firmly in place.

As I'd painted Harukichi red and Old Zo yellow/orange, I wanted to keep up the colorful array of robes and decided to paint Oda in blue, with a yellow sash to carry on the yellow theme mentioned above. One of the things that I love about the Bushido miniatures, Silvermoon in particular, is that there is a lovely balance of detail and simplicity. Oda's face is wonderfully complex, with the moustache, yelling mouth and monocle. But his robes are clean and simple and just calling out for another bit of freehand work to detail them. For this, I added another repeating pattern around the base of his robes in white. As before, I started with a series of dots, then joined them up with curves to make the full pattern.

In game, Oda's another miniature (not surprisingly) that you want to keep out of combat. This is partly due to his lack of melee skill, 1 just like Old Zo, but also because of his Order(2/Buto/6) ability. What that means is that, for a complex action (spending both of his activations), Oda can give 2 Buto within 6 inches another activation. If they're tired, they become rested; if exhausted they become tired again. This is a tremendously useful ability and can be used in a number of ways. The most obvious is to simply give the buto another round of melee against an opponent - likely their opponent is now exhausted if they've already fought two rounds of combat, giving the buto a dice advantage. However, it can be a terrible surprise to survive someone like Tautolo charging into combat, exhausting him, thinking you're safe as he's out of activations, only to have Oda Order him back to a tired state and watch him pound on you with that big club of his one more time! But I've also used it to gain that one crucial extra activation required to allow a buto to pray at an idol to eek out a victory point. If Oda is stuck in combat, he can't use Order (as he must instead melee) and so you lose this tremendous ability of his. (Incidentally, this is one of the reasons I prefer to keep Oda independent, rather than riding on Tautola's back: I want Tautola in combat, and Oda out of it!).

The other of Oda's abilities that's worth using as frequently as possible is his Jumo Sensei ki feat. With this ki feat he is able to spur on another model with a "Jumo instruction token". This can provide one of a variety of extra combat abilities to that model, or allow them to use one of their existing abilities at a reduced cost (almost always making it free). With models like Tautola around who has Powerful Attack or maybe Dakufaia and his Slam Attack nearby, giving them that extra combat boost at no cost can conceivably turn the combat in your favor, or result in a devastating attack to end a melee quickly. This is amplified further with the Iron Fist Gumi theme as that theme also allows you to give out an additional one of those tokens every turn, even without Oda.

In most miniatures games, support characters don't always get the glory. They're not the biggest, like Tautola, the toughest, like Manu, nor are they flaming (literally) melee monsters like Dakufaia. However, in a game like Bushido where so often just stomping on your opponent can be a waste of activations and having a warband made up purely of fighters is not at all a guaranteed winning approach, the support characters like this trio of models really come into their own. As they're all also a thorough pleasure to paint with personality in spades, I can highly recommend the "old men" of the Silvermoon Syndicate.

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So, I'm always forgetting to append this to my blog posts, but if you enjoy this, perhaps you'd consider following me on Twitter or Instagram. I post there far more frequently than I do here, both finished miniatures but also work in progress shots. Thanks!

One of my favorite things about this hobby is the constant ability to learn something new. As a child, that's taken for granted as you're always encountering new facts, figures and concepts both in school and in the world in general. Sometimes, as a "grown-up" (if that's a term that can apply to someone who still plays with "toy soldiers"!) there's not always the opportunity to learn something new. In this hobby, however, there are myriad avenues to teach yourself something new and feel like you're able to constantly learn.

With this miniature, a steampunk version of Florence Nightingale, I set myself a few challenges. The first of my challenges was to try and paint a dark skin tone. Something about the sculpt immediately made me want to paint her in a more Caribbean setting. From my (admittedly minimal knowledge), if something is to be considered "steampunk" it seems like it must exist in a fog shrouded, oil and grime smeared version of Victorian London. Did they never export any of that brass and copper technology to the colonies?! Well, I sought to correct that with Florence and place her looking out on a porch in a traditional(-ish) madras dress somewhere sunny and tropical.

The Porch Base

The second challenge was that porch itself. Before beginning, I started with some research. The advantage of a fantastical mini is that historical research doesn't have to be quite as rigorous as what I imagine a lot of historical figure painters do. So, my primary source for Caribbean architecture? Concept art from Assassin's Creed: Black Flag! Rigorously accurate? Maybe not... Evocative and full of character? Definitely.

I decided to build the porch from scratch out of plasticard, something I'd never used before. I picked up some plasticard sheets of mixed weights and set about it with my exacto blade and some superglue. I slowly built up the facade with thick and thin pieces, then cut out the doorway, created a back and then filled in the gaps between the front and back pieces to get something nice and thick so the archway had some heft to it. Once that was done, I covered the front in spackle to give it a nice texture.

For the floor of the porch, I rolled out a thin sheet of milliput on some cling film. I deliberately wrinkled up the cling film so that it gave me a good terracotta-tile texture. Once dry, I then cut the milliput sheet into individual tiles and glued those down.

The balustrade was nice and easy: I used the tops from decorative toothpicks! I've been dying to use these for something for ages and this was finally the right fit. While I had the balsa out, I also put together a shuttered window.

Finally, I sculpted a small urn out of green stuff and used some etched brass leaves to complete the setting.

Painting Florence

I already mentioned that my first challenge was painting a darker skin tone. I'm pleased with the results, but still have more to learn here. The Reaper triads are very helpful for getting a nice base. I started with the Dark Skin/Shadow/Highlight triad. However, that left things without quite enough contrast and also feeling very flat. I don't recall the exact paint colors, but I tried to bring in some rosiness to the cheeks and to bring the contrast up a little bit further going lighter than the Dark Highlight from the triad.

The next part of the challenge was the madras dress. I think a lot of miniature painters first encounter this kind of painting when painting tartan on a highland warrior. I think the technique for madras is very similar, but the colors obviously very different! My honeymoon 14 years ago was in St. Lucia and our resort was fully decked out in madras so it's a style of fabric that brings back great memories. While it was painstaking to pain the thin lines of various colors, it was fun to sort through old photos looking for inspiration and reference.

If you're keeping score, that's three things I tried to challenge myself with in this piece. Not content to stop there, the fourth new thing I wanted to attempt in this mini was NMM, or "non metallic metals." Essentially, that means avoiding paints with metallic pigment and using standard flat colors to mimic the highlights and shadows of a metallic surface. I primarily tried this with the gold on Florence's lamp and the metallic "feathers" of her wings. While this didn't require the steady hand that the madras did, I think this was the hardest of the challenges so far. I think the results are decent, but I've a lot more practice to go with this technique. I'm also really undecided about whether I prefer "true" metallic paints, or this NMM technique. I'll have to practice it some more before I make my mind up on that one.

Painting the Base

My last challenge was the most fun, and that was painting the base. For my birthday recently, I received an airbrush and all the fixins required to get it running and painting. This proved to be the perfect project to try it out on and, after a number of practice sessions making some truly inspired fuzzy dots on a sheet of cardboard, I dove in and used it to paint the yellow/orange fade on the back wall and to give a base tone to the terracotta tiles on the floor.

As it turns out, I also a lot to learn about using an airbrush too! But it feels exciting to have a new tool at my disposal. I'm still figuring out just how much to thin paints out, how to avoid paint drying on the tip of the needle, how to fully clean the airbrush both between paints and after a full session, but these are fantastic challenges to sink my teeth into. Being able to call up video after video of tips on YouTube doesn't hurt either.

Once all's painted and done, I'm very pleased with the results. Take a look at all the finished photos of Florence in the gallery.

The Maghariba Guard is one of those "miniatures" (quotes required due to the size of the thing!) that I'd lusted after as soon as I saw the first concept art back in August of 2014. Not only would it be a T.A.G. I'd be able to pick up for my Haqqislam army, but it was vicious and very unique looking. Fast forward to this year and as soon as I saw it available to pre-order I jumped at the chance.

Assembling and Getting Started

The first big challenge was figuring out how all the myriad parts and pieces fit together into a coherent model. After getting that sorted, though, it quickly became apparent that I'd need to paint Maggie in several pieces, assembling her as I went. While frequently necessary, I'm really not a fan of having to do this. I find I can get very impatient and will often wind up gluing on an arm or a leg just before I really should, discovering flaws or areas that require improvements within minutes of the glue setting. So, I assembled what parts I could, gave everything a good spray primer and off to painting.

Painting a big lass like Maggie was engaging at first, but after the third leg, I have to admit it got a bit tiring. Without an airbrush handy, there was a lot of brushwork. I also discovered that, until I could glue her to her base, I was having to hold and manipulate the miniature itself quite a bit and grew very concerned about touching and rubbing against already-painted parts. This probably exacerbated my impatience about gluing and assembling her!

Still, with all of the big flat surfaces, I had plenty of opportunity to practice my blending once the base painting was done. I stuck to a relatively simple scheme with two main shades of green with some blue highlights. As I've painted these blends many times on my other Haqq models, I had the paint recipe all set so it was good to just work on getting the blends as smooth as I could.

Battle Damage

In addition to being the biggest mini I've painted yet, Maggie was also the first one where I wanted to try out adding some battle damage. I've seen some phenomenal paint jobs done with serious battle damage, but I thought I'd start off small, no rust or paint chipping, but a few nicks and scratches around the piece. It's remarkably hard to look at a nice smooth blend and then commit to painting a dark blue/green line right across the middle! I think that now that I've taken that leap of faith, and been pleased with the results, it's something I'll be more comfortable doing on more models in the future.

Freehands

Since working on the tattoos for my Bushido Silvermoon, Manu and Fitiaumua, I've grown fond of doing little freehands. Frequently the Infinity models themselves are so detailed that there's not a huge amount of space to add too much freehand work, certainly not to the degree that is possible on my Silvermoon. However, with Maggie's increased size and abundant flat surfaces I decided to add the occasional embellishment. In some cases it was just the double white stripe that appears on her legs and down the center of her tail, but in others I've added an insignia, some identification codes and other little diagonal lines and visual highlights.

On the Table

After all that painting, you can bet I was eager to deploy her with the rest of my Haqq troops and get her into the action on the table. I've had the chance to use her in two games now and have been more than pleased with her performance. The simple fact that I've faced off against many T.A.G.s in Infinity, but have never had one of my own has made this a very satisfying experience! Watching my opponent need to devote a considerable amount of orders and/or troops trying to make a dent in Maggie's thick hull is a nice payoff after the weeks of painting.

I've been fielding the 360-degree visor variant, so she's a few more points cost than the standard model. So far, that hasn't come into play much, but in my first game it did make my opponent think twice about where to deploy his drop troops knowing that there was no way to sneak up on the big T.A.G.

Even with the 360 visor's increased cost however, Maggie is still relatively cheap for a T.A.G. so that leaves me with plenty of room for some of my other favorites in a 300 point list.The list I've played her in includes both Saladin and a Hassassin Fiday as well. Saladin's Strategos L3 ability allows me to hold two models in reserve which means I can hold back the large scorpion tank as well as my impersonating assassin until after my opponent has completely deployed - two rather nasty models to have to deal with!

…yes, Maggie was great to paint and I'm very pleased with the result, but I do believe she'll also see plenty of time on the table!

Sanjakubo

Let's start with a Tengu mini that I finished about 6 weeks ago. Unlike my other bright birds of prey, Sanjakubo is a darker looking miniature that reminds me a bit of the Skeksis from The Dark Crystal. As he is the Tengu's dark sorcerer, that fits quite nicely. I wanted to paint him a bit like a crow... but I'd already decided dark black robes and thought black wings would be a bit too monochrome for my tastes, so instead he received some dark purple-black plumage.

My favorite part of painting Sanjakubo was probably the spell scroll he's carrying:

I tried a few different phrases, but as one of his spells in the game is "Curse Fate", I ended up plugging "I curse your fate foolish samurai" into Google translate to see what the kanji would look like. That seemed about the right length so I set about painting some tiny Japanese calligraphy. The beauty of this is that if it's wrong or poorly written, gaijin that I am, I'll never know!

The Minstrel

The minstrel in the gallery
Looked down upon the smiling faces.
He met the gazes observed the spaces
Between the old men's cackle.

~ Jethro Tull

I had to post that lyric as it has been bouncing around my head since I added the Minstrel to the gallery!

This is an older piece that I completed last year. It's currently one of the only 2 minis I've painted at the larger 54mm scale (the other being Sumothay) but I really enjoyed this one. I've said before that it does get a little old painting swords and guns on everything, so a lute and glass of wine was a welcome change.

For ambience, I also sculpted the barrel, cloth and wine jug out of milliput and green stuff. I don't do a lot of custom sculpting like this, but it's always a lot of fun and I think it nicely completes the scene: the traveling minstrel taking a break from playing with his wine jug just outside the tavern.

Tinker Belle

Last, but very far from least is Tinker Belle from Guild of Harmony. She's the fourth Guild of Harmony sculpt that I've painted (Ariel is currently on the site, but the other two have yet to be photographed). After painting a lot of Bushido minis that, while beautiful sculpts, don't quite have the insane level of detail that the Guild of Harmony miniatures do, I was a little trepidatious about this one. However, after jumping in I really grew to love painting little Tink.

There are several other nice versions of Tink on various sites that have used some different color schemes, but for my version I wanted to stick with the classic greens that Tink is famous for. Plus, with two little girls at home, I don't think they would have let me get away with too much creative license - the mechanical arm is quite enough!. I did try to give her a jolt of color with a pink wrench, but it didn't quite work out, drawing way too much visual attention away from Ms. Belle herself.

Up Next...

Currently sitting on my painting table and taking up a rather large number of corks, is my next piece: the Maghariba Guard for my Haqqislam army for Infinity. I've been eagerly waiting for this beast to be released ever since I saw the early digital renders and I'm very happy to now have the opportunity to get some paint on her. Aside from being a rather large (and heavy!) piece, it's fun to change things up and work on something purely mechanical.

After Maggie, I just picked up my first Guild Ball mini (Bill the Butcher.... erm, I mean... "Rage"), Oda and Tautola for my Silvermoon Syndicate in Bushido and I have another steampunk lass, Florence Nightingale by Patrick Masson, for the Twisted range that I'm eager to begin. So much lovely little resin and metal!

The magpie has a reputation as being a thieving bird, collecting shiny objects to adorn his nest. He is also reputed to be rather nasty, attacking the nests of other defenseless birds. As it turns out, while the Magpie is indeed a savage predator and will eat the eggs and young of songbirds, his reputation as a thief is less deserved and apparently springs from a 19th century French play. Nevertheless, while painting Sumothay, it seemed a particularly apt nickname for this grizzled mercenary, decked out in a variety of bits of armor plucked from remains of numerous battles.

(...and to be honest, he's either a savage magpie, or the inspiration for the tv show "Hoarders"...)

Sumothay never met a piece of armor that he wasn't willing to somehow strap to himself. His getup is a mix of plate metal pieces, hardened leather, cloth, leather, fur... you name it, he's affixed it to his person in some way. This is part of what really attracted me to the mini in the first place, but it also proved to be something of a challenge to paint. I'm not the fastest painter and after a while I got a bit exhausted with the process. I did something I don't often do and took a bit of a break in the middle of painting the big fella to work on some of my Bushido minis, but having returned to finish him off, I'm very pleased with the result.

The Base

I've written before that basing a miniature is one of my biggest challenges. It's something I'm working on, but it doesn't feel like it comes naturally. With that said, I'm learning and I'm very happy with my base for Sumothay.

Sumothay comes with two options for his back, either the crossed sword scabbards or a big cloak with the banner pole rising above it. I really wanted to use the banners, but the cloak required a lot of manipulation to look decent. It felt a bit tacked on and not terribly connected to the miniature. After some musing, I realized that I could still use the banners without the cloak and have them stuck in the ground instead. I started building a little narrative in my head of Sumothay preparing to take on a series of enemies, planting his banner in defiance and dropping his scabbards anticipating the fight.

I built up the base using mostly cork for all of the larger rock formations and some small rocks for the pebbles. After painting (and getting a good chance to use some dry pigments, which I don't break out nearly often enough) I added some moss and grass tufts to complete the scene.

The Banner

Having finished Sumothay himself and the base, I just needed to paint the banner to finish the piece. I'd already decided on the "magpie" nickname during painting so wanted to try and paint a rough barbaric-looking bird theme. Perhaps Sumothay originally acquired the nickname as a slur people muttered about him under their breath while crossing to the other side of the road, but then he decided to embrace it and adopt it as his personal motif, roughly painting it on his banner.  A superstitious man, Sumothay then added a few runes to fill in some of the extra space around the birds… magical wards or good luck charms. (This particular birds image was inspired by a Norse design I found online.)

Hashtag WIP

Having posted some of the finished shots above (with more now in the gallery), below are some of the work-in-progress photos. For other works in progress, check out my WIPs page, or follow me on twitter!

My Warband

I currently own both Silvermoon and Tengu minis, but as I've been painting my Tengu lately, I decided to field them... even though that sadly meant not quite having every mini on the table painted (Sanjakubo will be painted next, my other Tengu will be photographed and added to the gallery here shortly!).

My approach to building a warband was fairly simple: start with my favorites: the majestic Buzenbo, the slippery Tarobo and the "stunning" Sanjakubo, then fill in the blanks. Here's the crew that I took to the tournament:

• Buzenbo
• Tarobo
• Sanjakubo
• Kotenbo
• Taliriktug
• Nuniq

Game 1: Keii vs. Karl-Christian

I've played Karl's Ito and his Ryu before, but for the tournament Karl was going with something brand new: the Kage Kaze Zoku ninjas. Due to some late shipping on the models, our game wound up being the first time Karl had a chance to play the KKZ. Despite Karl's newness to the faction, I think their nuances were quickly grasped and we had a great game.

The scenario was Keii - where 6 objectives of varying value (2 friendly, 2 neutral, 2 enemy) have to be prayed at. Each warband has a total of 5 prayer tokens, so you have to choose wisely where and when to use those.

I've been burned on Keii in the past by spending too many prayer tokens on the neutral idols, so my plan for this was to use Nuniq to Flank, allowing her to deploy anywhere on a table edge (ie. closest to an enemy objective) and try and pray at that idol while using the rest of my force to draw the ninjas into the center of the battlefield, tying them up in combat (hoping to survive - the KKZ are vicious fighters!) and preventing them from getting to pray at my idols. Grabbing the first victory point was also a high priority as, with the timed matches, there was no assurance that we'd go the full 6 rounds.

Fortunately, the battle generally played out according to this plan. Kotenbo and Taliriktug held out on the left side of the table, Buzenbo took the center, and Sanjakubo and Tarobo marched up the right side (supported heavily by Buzenbo). Karl's Kappa fell early to ranged attacks, leading him to throw both Kerasi and Katsumi at Buzenbo seeking revenge. On the left, Kotenbo and Taliriktug trusted to their armor and toughness to hold out against Kouhei and Shizuka. Meanwhile, Nuniq, using Flank, deployed on turn 2 and hunkered down to pray at an enemy idol. While Buzenbo eventually fell, I was able to hold out and tie up the ninja long enough to take the first 2 victory points before time ran out, winning 2-0.

As my first game against the ninja clan, I had a great time. They were a challenging opponent despite Karl having never played them before; now with a few games played, I think they'll be truly fearsome. Playing against them as Tengu, Tarobo is very useful being able to use his special ability to give Sixth Sense to a friendly model (in my case often Buzenbo) allowing you to see through the ninja camouflage. Tarobo's special ability also grants Aware: this saved my skin from a potential ninja assassination at one point too!

Game 2: The Messenger vs. Matt

For my second game, I faced off against Matt and his Ito clan. For this round, we played on the "Ito's Summer Camp" board: a bamboo forest with a swampy pond and a larger house in the center. With corner deployment, this meant that we were going to have 2 main fields of battle as we parted our forces to go around the house.

In The Messenger, each force selects a hidden VIM (very important model). The goal is to discover and kill your opponent's VIM while trying to get your own VIM across the board into the enemy's deployment zone, a 6" square in the opposite corner of the board from your starting zone.

Deciding my VIM was easy: Tarobo - with his Dash Ki feat (giving him Auto Disengage, Elusive and an extra 2" at the end of his movement) and his Scout ability (starting him 4" further up the table), he is both fast and slippery, able to get up the table quickly to nab the "first in opponent's deployment zone" point, and then hopefully able to use auto-disengage to wriggle out of combat and stay alive until the end of the game.

As before, I sent Kotenbo and Taliriktug (this time also supported by Nuniq who I did not choose to flank in this game) to the left and big Buzenbo with Sanjakubo and Tarobo to the right. Early on, Buzenbo and Matt's Kaihime Ito exchanged arrow fire. Buzenbo's massive bow packs a punch, but with Kaihime's arrows tipped with the deadly Blood of Orochi poison, Ito had an advantage there. Supported quickly by Itsunagi in melee, Buzenbo again provided a large juicy target. On the other side of the building, the hill tribe warriors wore down Yuui Ito and a well-placed Snare by Nuniq kept Masunagi Ito out of the battle.

With all the warriors tied up, at the end of turn 2, both Matt and I unabashedly made a break for it with our VIMs. On Matt's side, Chiyo slipped past Itsunagi (who, with Kaihime's arrows had already taken Buzenbo down) with a clear path towards my deployment zone. However, it was here that Tarobo had the advantage. Already 4" further up the table from his Scout deployment, he spent his Ki to trigger a Dash and then a run, flying over the exhausted Kaihime and Sakura to land, camouflaged, behind a row of bamboo, winning me the first VP.

At the start of the next turn, fortune swung my way and I won the tactical roll, allowing me to go first. After the previous turn, Kotenbo had been able to re-deploy close enough to put him within charging range of Matt's VIM, Chiyo. Having previously made a break for my DZ, Chiyo's back was to Kotenbo allowing the feathered samurai to surprise the smaller Ito bushi. The dice were again in my favor and Kotenbo's blade made swift work of Chiyo.

At this point, provided I could keep my VIM, Tarobo, alive I had a shot at winning the two remaining victory points. While Sakura and Masunagi were closest to Tarobo and bore down on him, I was ultimately able to slip away with more Dashing and Flying to finish with a 3-0 win.

Game 3: Shingon vs. Kevin

In the final game of the day, I faced off against Kevin and his Silvermoon Syndicate in Karl's custom scenario, Shingon. In this scenario, each side has 4 shingon prayer markers, each the size of a US penny. The goal is to drop a shingon marker on your opponent's half of the table. However, as each shingon marker represents a prayer on a piece of paper, they can be destroyed, forcing you to either drop them in a safe area or hang around and protect them (hence the marker's size - it is smaller than a zone of control so as long as you're in base-to-base contact with it, your opponent is forced to melee and defeat your model before being able to destroy the marker). Each marker has one wound and is Tiny for purposes of ranged attacks. Scoring occurs on rounds 2,4 and 6 with the VP going to whomever has the most shingon markers in play at the end of that round (or if tied, no VP is awarded).

After playing my first game against the KKZ ninjas earlier today, this was another first: my first game against the Silvermoon Syndicate (prior to the tournament, I'd been the only Silvermoon player locally). Interestingly, Kevin played a very different list to what I typically field. As with his Cult and Ito lists, Kevin took to the table with the goal of outnumbering his opponent. So, rather than focusing on the more expensive Buto and Oyabun (whom I prefer), his list included more lower-priced models such as Sukuratchi and his ferret and, crucially, the street urchins Kani and Nomi.

With this game, I began flummoxed by how to deal with the outnumbering (9 to 6 models) and where to place my shingon markers. My plan, such as it was, was to try and carve out a little pocket just past the center-line, deploy my markers behind several models (Taliriktug and Nuniq) and then use the Tengu's mobility to then re-deploy over to support them, having hopefully drawn some of the Silvermoon away early on.

However, after losing the deployment roll, I immediately knew I was in trouble when Kevin announced that Kani and Nomi were deploying via Flank on alternate sides of the table. I knew this meant that they would arrive later in the game as far back on my side as possible to drop their markers. Still, short of ceding the center to his other models, I forged ahead with my initial plan, hoping that his flanking rolls would be such that they entered on to the table in the later, rather than earlier, rounds.

After a first round of advancing forwards and some small exchange of crossbow bolts and longbow arrows, the next big blow against my strategy came in turn 2 when Kevin successfully used his Dark Secrets special card to place 2 control markers on Nuniq and then sent her into melee with Kotenbo. This is the first time I've been on the receiving end of control markers and boy do they hurt! Added to the fact that I was already outnumbered, losing 4 activations (2 of Nuniq's and 2 of Kotenbo's as he unsuccessfully tried to disengage) gave Silvermoon a big advantage. When Kani and Nomi showed up to drop their markers deep in my territory, I knew there was no way to prevent Kevin taking the first VP at the end of turn 2.

It turned out that we'd not been playing as swiftly as it seemed and, looking at the clock, it became clear that we wouldn't make it to the next scoring round, so I ceded to Kevin's flawless strategy, giving him a 1-0 victory.

Final Results

All told, Kevin and I tied for first place in tournament points, but Kevin's victory over me at the end of the day served as the tie breaker and I finished the day in second.

I had a great time at our first Bushido tournament and hope that we'll be able to do more in the future, hopefully enabling some more of our players to attend. At this point, we have a really diverse set of warbands represented. Yesterday alone, we had one each of Tengu, Kage Kaze Zoku, Ito, Silvermoon, Savage Wave and the Cult. Given how each faction and mission plays so differently, a full day of Bushido tournament gaming really keeps you on your (mental) feet, having to change up strategies and approaches every couple of hours. All in all, thanks again to Karl for organizing everything and to my opponents for a great day day of gaming.

Making Miniature Barrels

While I can't claim to be an expert in this, I've now made two barrels for miniatures, one on my Steampunk Ariel and another for my Minstrel (not yet, but soon to be added to the gallery). So if you've made more than 2, you may skip this post without need of a doctor's note. However, if you've never made a barrel before, perhaps there's something of interest below...

Building the Barrel

As you might expect with a rough, largely "blobby" item, construction is pretty simple. The images below are from the barrel I built for my Steampunk Ariel base at 28mm scale.

1. I started here with a a blob of Milliput and formed it into a rough barrel shape.
2. At the end of step one I had a rather nice blob, but I couldn't say that it looked exactly like a barrel yet. So, after drying overnight I attacked it with some sandpaper to refine it into something that more closely resembled what I was going for.
3. With this done, I put away the sandpaper and used a pin to scratch in the seams of where the wooden planks would be. I wasn't too concerned about it being very crisp and clean as for this barrel as I wanted a slightly rougher look.
4. Finally, to help ensure that the fake wooden planks stayed in place, I used greenstuff to form the metal bands that would wrap around the top, bottom, and middle of the barrel.

Steps 1-3 are very easy. Step 4 should also be if you have good experience using greenstuff. In my case, I don't have a lot of experience with it so it took several tries for me to get this right. Figuring out just how much to let the green stuff cure before slicing it is key and something that only comes with practice (of which I can always use more). Congratulations, you've now built your first barrel!

Painting the Barrel, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Painting Wood Grain

(or, How I Learned to Be Lazy and Over-Use Clichéd Title Gimmicks)

If you don't love painting wood grain, this next step will either make you a wood grain painting convert, or solidify your resolve to only ever paint scifi minis in ceramite armor standing in metal corridors evermore. In my case, I've found this step strangely enjoyable. Painting wood grain is repetitive, but fairly hard to screw up. No one's going to notice if you're whorl looks too much like a swirl, or your burl looks too much like a wave (although mistaking your crotch for a knot could be potentially embarrassing).Unfortunately, I don't have any real work in progress shots of my barrel painting, but I paint wood grain with the following rough steps:

1. Paint the base brown (or grey, or blue or pink... I'm not one to judge what crazy fantasy location you source your planks from... or more likely what kind of lighting situation you're going for). I start with a mid-brown so that I can go both lighter and darker.
2. Using a lighter brown color, start painting in your grain lines. Be sure to vary it up once in a while and add a whorl or a knot. As you paint the grain lines, try to follow keep them close to one another.
3. Now, go back in with a darker brown and trace next to each grain line. A careful hand here is key to try and follow next to all the lines form step 2, but it's not worth worrying about messing up, you should have plenty more grain lines to practice on!
4. You can then repeat step 3 as many times as you need with various colors, but at 28mm, if you got your lines close enough together in step 2, there's probably not much room left to fit another round.
5. At this point, you should have some fairly even grain lines. So the next step is to go back in to add shading with an dark brown ink or wash. Try to get the wood planks nice and dark where they butt up to the metal bands to enhance contrast.
6. Oh, don't forget to also paint in very dark brown/black in the seams between each plank.

There you go! You should either be halfway towards achieving a blissful, nirvana-like state of wood-grain-painting-enlightenment, or you've torn out half of your hair and decided that this piece doesn't require a barrel after all, maybe a large rock would fit that space nicely, or perhaps a larger grass tuft? (I personally hope it's the enlightenment option... but if not, you've still made steps on the road to self discovery as a painter, right?).

The final step is to paint up the metal bands using your favorite metal-painting treatment: NMM, TMM, SENMM, CNN or ESPN. I've yet to venture into trying non-metallic metals, so sticking with the "true metallic metals" my barrel bands are painted with a black undercoat followed by some Citadel Chainmail (most of my Citadel paints are a bit older, so this is the previous naming scheme), healthy coats of Badab Black wash to dull it down and then highlights in more Chainmail and Mithril Silver on the edges.

And there you have it: you are now officially a mini cooper.

We met up in South Carolina, which meant packing up my little metal men for the long car trip. This was the perfect opportunity to put my new Tablewar Mini Case to the test. Spoilers: it performed the task most admirably.

The first thing I'll say about the case is that it is tough. I had absolutely no fears about the safety of my minis once they were ensconced within this thing. That's not to say I want it bashed about, but after using a Battlefoam case for my Infinity minis for the past couple of years, the shear weight and ruggedness of the Tablewar case instilled in me a new, resounding confidence.

The next thing to say is that it's very attractive. Ok... it might resemble a makeup case just a little bit, but the confidence that I mentioned above is enough to give me a certain, hard-edged look in my eyes. Anyone mistaking this for a makeup case need only take one glance at my visage to know “no... that's no makeup case. This man is protecting toy soldiers!”. Well... that's the theory at least! Joking aside, I really like the look and the little peek in through the glass front to see your minis nicely arrayed is a fun touch.

Inside the case, I have two trays (although only one is currently in use) and a drawer. One thing to note is that the case, out of the box, doesn't include the metal unit trays - just the display board/drawers. Thankfully, my wife, who picked this up for me for xmas, caught that little detail and added the metal trays to her order.

As Tablewar sells two larger cases than this one, I was hoping that this, their "mini" size, would be large enough. Fortunately, the case is plenty big enough for my needs. On the one tray I'm currently using, I can completely fit both my Silvermoon and Tengu warbands for Bushido with plenty of free space to expand and add more minis over time. Tablewar carries plastic unit trays with holes cut out to fit various sized bases, but I find the magnets strong enough that I can barely remove the minis from the tray sometimes - I have no worries of them slipping around on the metal base. Using just the plain metal base, I can then move the minis as close together as I'm comfortable with to fit more or give the odd mini some extra room.

My one and only challenge right now is Buzenbo, my big Tengu miniature whose large wings make him easily twice as tall as most of the other miniatures in the case. At the moment, it's not an issue as I can set the tray down low in the case. However, this does preclude me from using both trays. However, this is less the fault of the case and more the challenges of having a really nice, big miniature. 

In addition to the two trays, the bottom of the case includes a simple drawer that has enough room for me to fit all of my various dice, markers, templates, cards, pens, etc. While you're not going to fit any rule books in here, I have both the Bushido rules PDF and the Infinity wiki easily accessible on my phone, so I'm not much of one for carting around heavy rule books anyway.

After the travel time, the other place where this case is really fantastic is when setting down to play. I pulled out my drawer o'stuff and my tray o'minis, set them down next to our game board and was ready. When the game was over, it was quick and easy to pick my minis off the table, then place them back on the tray and slide it into the case again. Contrast this with the careful plucking of minis out of the foam case and then placing them back in again, careful which mini fits in which slot and to get them placed so they won't jostle around too much and rub up against the paint jobs in transit. Having the minis sat safely on their metal tray with no fear of them touching other minis or the foam siding (soft as it may be) is a huge improvement.

So, after my first outing, I'm a big fan of my new case. I've ordered a bunch more magnets and am eager to affix them to all of my Infinity miniatures so they can join the Bushido minis, riding in comfort in the Tablewar case. A solid two thumbs up.

Painting

I'm not a particularly fast painter and so am not the overly prolific. However, I'm also rather forgetful, so trying to remember what I've finished (if I haven't posted it here on my blog) this past year is a bit tricky. So, let's begin in April when I began this site in earnest. That was when I finished up my first Kum biker for my Infinity Haqqislam army. He was a fun one to paint and I was all ready to get started on my next Kum biker when my wandering eye caught sight of some friends at the LGS playing something new: Bushido... and soon after that the theme for this year's painting was set.

I picked up my Silvermoon boxed set along with Old Zo and steadily spent much of the year working through all of them. After the minuscule detail that is often the hallmark of the Infinity miniatures, the Bushido minis provided a welcome change of pace and I indulged in freehand tattoos, trim and fabric patterns across my Silvermoon warband.

After finishing the miniature crime family, my birthday this summer brought the arrival of a new Tengu warband. I've been eagerly laying some paint down on the little birdmen since then, although they'll not see completion until early in 2016.

When not working on gaming minis, I also tried to pick a few display pieces to work on. Early in the year, I was finishing my first 54mm piece, the Juglar from Nocturna. In addition to being the largest mini I'd yet painted, I also tried working a bit more with green stuff and milliput and sculpted a barrel, cloth and wine jug to complete the little scene.

My Steampunk Ariel probably represents the longest that I've taken to finish a piece as I worked on her and her watery base on and off for most of the latter half of the year! I'm still pleased to finally have her up on my display shelf!

My last non-gaming mini is Enigma's Sumothay. He's still on the painting table and so will also have to wait until 2016 to join the gallery. He's proving to be one of the most detailed sculpts I've painted yet. Part fearsome mercenary, part compulsive hoarder, Sumothay never met a piece of armor, belt or buckle that he couldn't find a place for strapped somewhere on his person.

Gaming

The theme with my gaming this year has been much the same as my painting. While the year began with Infinity being my one and only tabletop game, Bushido quickly made a strong showing and has dominated the number of games played this year. This is partly due to the fun of learning a new game, but a map-based campaign that we ran in our local store for a couple of months in the middle of the year also meant that all my game time was taken up winning and defending my little hexes in the j'war isles.

I do regret Infinity falling off a little and after playing again a couple of weeks ago, I realized how fuzzy my gameplay has gotten. While I got a good start with N3 at the beginning of the year, I still have a great deal to learn when it comes to some of the newer rules (like hacking, coordinated orders and suppressing fire) and my instincts surrounding general play have gotten rather dull.

Beyond the painting and gaming tables

When not painting or playing, the other big achievement of 2015 was finally launching this site. While still very much a work in progress, it's been great to spend some time actually thinking and writing about my painting as well as beginning to put together a photo catalog of my work to share.

I also created a twitter account, @misterpminis, to both share works in progress, notify about blog posts and tweet the occasional gaming photo. (won't you follow me?).

So what's next?

So what does this all mean for 2016? Well, I have a number of painting, gaming and "other" goals, so perhaps it's easiest to just list:

• Finish more of the site. I have a lot that I want to do with the site, but if nothing else, in addition to new posts, 2016 will see more of my older miniatures photographed and added to the gallery.
• Post more! I think I've averaged about a post a month. That's not bad for me, but I can do better and want to try and double that for 2016. In that same vein, I could stand to tweet a bit more too.
• Try more to join the community online. This site and twitter are nice, but I've as yet been trepidatious about joining some of the community sites like CMON. I hope to get some better quality photos in 2016 and will try and both share a bit more, but also engage with the online community more. I'm very social in person, but much less so online... time to try and change that.
• Paint a bust. Beyond the 28mm and 54mm minis, my next real painting challenge will be to work on a bust. I've admired some of the incredible busts (sculpts and paint jobs) out there for a long time, but it was really the Shield Maiden series of videos by Ben Komets and Painting Buddha that made me think I might be able to tackle such a challenge. Fortunately, that challenge is very much present in the xmas gift from my lovely wife: Amaryne by Galapagos Miniatures (golly she's a beauty!).
• Paint more! So many goals here: finish my Tengu, finish off some more Haqqislam (that poor other Kum biker!), delve into my backlog (in particular, I've been sitting on steampunk Tinkerbell from Guild of Harmony for too long)... oh, and I don't own any yet, but I love the look of some of the Hasslefree minis and would love to add some to my collection in 2016
• Play more Infinity. Infinity is a simply brilliant game and despite my new love of Bushido, I don't want to forget the game that got me back into miniature gaming and play more in 2016. Of course, now I have Haqqislam, Silvermoon and Tengu all fighting for my attentions on the gaming table!
• Oh yes, and Batman. Yeah... so a few friends at the local store have also started up the occasional game of Batman and I have to admit that I'm curious. Despite never being much of a comic reader, I very much enjoy the current crop of DC shows on TV (Arrow, Flash and Gotham) and so this game has me interested. With the Green Arrow showing up in my stocking this year, I shall have to take the plunge!

Well, that all seems doable, right? Right?! Oh boy, time to put down the PS4 controller and get going!

There are some paint jobs that whip by in just a few days. And then, there are some like my Steampunk Ariel by Guild of Harmony (more pics in the gallery) that can take months! In Ariel's case, it wasn't so much the painting that took me so long, but the creation of her base.

I really love the idea of big scenic bases, but have to confess that building them is something really out of my comfort zone. Of course, practice makes perfect, so I shall keep trying... and hopefully get a bit quicker in the process! In Ariel's case, as I mentioned in my last catching up post, I wanted to try including resin water. I might have jumped in at the deep end (pun... intended) with this one! Perhaps I should have started with a little puddle...

Dock Base

As Ariel stands looking wistful while clutching her requisite steampunk speargun (just try not to think too hard about who she's going to be aiming it at... the newt who plays the flute? The carp who plays the harp? The plaice who plays bass?) and I immediately pictured her standing on a dock looking out to sea. With that initial inspiration, I did a quick sketch and then proceeded to start massacring a wooden cube.

I then put together a simple dock out of bits of wood. After covering the carved-out cube with milliput, I drilled holes for the pilings and set them in place. The next step was to glue on some sand and rocks to finish the sea bed.

I didn't get any pictures of the next few steps, but I sculpted a few little shells and a starfish out of green stuff to populate the scene. I also put together some wavy seaweed using little bits of metal I clipped off of some document fasteners. I painted all this up in preparation of adding the resin water.

Before pouring the resin, I whipped up some plastic walls out of bits of some plastic stolen from a food package (Trader Joe's Meringues if you really want to get specific... and a sugar rush) and tried to seal off the edges as best I could with poster tack (more on this in a minute). Some rubber bands for tension and then it was time to pour in the Liquitex.

Pouring actually went pretty smoothly. I let it sit for a day and it felt a bit squishy, so I let it sit another day. After another day it was still a bit squishy, so one more day seemed like a good idea. Day 3: still squishy. Ok, so let's just give it a week, huh? One full week and... you guessed it, still a bit squishy. Now, when I say squishy, I don't mean majorly so, but I was expecting it to get rock hard like Milliput. After the week, I was fairly confident it was all dry and that this was as hard as it was going to get, so I pulled off the plastic outside. My guess was correct and it was completely dry. Fortunately, the smooth plastic walls made for a pretty darn smooth side - I was very pleased with the result!

Now from my reading, I was expecting to have to now do multiple passes of sanding to get a smooth glossy finish to the water. However, I'd begun to suspect that the 2-part Liquitex I used may not quite be the same as some other water effects which (I assume) dry rock hard. I was afraid that sanding the rubbery texture would ruin things, so decided to leave well enough alone. As I said, I was happy with the result, so no need to court disaster.

For the sides of the base, however, my attempts to seal the edges with poster tack weren't exactly perfect. It did keep the liquitex from spilling everywhere... but perhaps if you're building a submarine, you might want to hire someone else to seal it up all airtight? As a result the sides of the base were a raggedy, resin-y mess. My first approach was to try gluing some more plastic as a cover-up over the mess. This wound up looking terrible once the glue dried so I fell back on my trusty Milliput and used that to fill in everything and create a nice smooth surface. wound up needing my multiple passes with the sandpaper after all... just not on the water as originally expected.

Once this was dry, I painted the sides black, added the top of the dock, sat back and had a beer (I don't remember if this is precisely true, but there's a high degree of likelihood that multiple beers were consumed during this whole process, so I hope you'll forgive the artistic license).

Hardwood Floors and Furniture

I should take a minute to discuss painting wood as the dock is made exclusively of the stuff. I don't so much mean painting on wood but rather painting something to look like wood. The dock is wood painted to look like wood as is the crate. The barrel is milliput and greenstuff painted to look like wood. Painting wood grain is a rather time consuming process... but one I've perversely grown to love. It's like painting nice detailed freehands, but with almost zero accountability if you slip or get a line wrong. I could (and probably did) spend hours painting little brown and grey wood grain lines all over the dock crate and barrels. Better than meditation!

Oh, right, Ariel

With all my going on about the base, I almost forgot the star herself. I won't go into too much detail other than to say that, as with the other Guild of Harmony sculpts I have (painted and to-be-painted) Ariel is simply a stunningly beautiful, detailed and perfectly cast mini that I tried to do justice to with my painting. Below are a series of work-in-progress photos:

Two to Tengu

For my birthday in late August, I received a handful of new Bushido minis from the new Tengu faction. Thus far I've 95% finished Kotenbo, the winged commander, and Taliriktug, a fierce hill tribe warrior. I say 95% done as I have a small tub of powdered glass waiting to become snow on their bases. Once that's done I'll give them a proper place in the gallery, but for now a couple of photos:

I'm eager to get some paint on the rest of the new warband, but in the meantime they've already bloodied their talons on the 28mm battlefield in a few skirmishes. Their play style is very different to the Silvermoon Syndicate that I'm used to, but I'm enjoying the change of pace. The extra mobility that their flight provides means looking at the table in a very different way - terrain and other miniatures no longer block the way. Add to that Kotenbo's "Command" trait and Tarobo's ability to Dash out of combat while dropping stun markers in his wake and I've had some fun battles.

That's not to say that the Syndicate have been forgotten. They've also seen a few battles lately. Actually, it's only recently that I've had the opportunity to field a full 50 rice warband. For me, that's the starter set plus Fitiaumua and Old Zo. Having both Harukichi and Old Zo has been a bit risky as that's a fair number of points sunk into purely support characters (if either of them wind up in melee, things aren't going well for me!). However, I've learned that nobody like being on the receiving end of Old Zo's "Tax" aura!

Under (and over) the Sea

I finished painting my steampunk Ariel (by Guild of Harmony) way back in July. The big plan for her was to create a water base with her standing on a wooden dock jutting out over the water. While I'm really comfortable picking up a brush and jumping in to painting, my modeling chops are a bit further behind. It can take me forever to create a small base that I'm happy with... well, maybe not "forever", but in Ariel's case: 4 months.

After carving out a wooden cube for her base, building a dock, adding sand, seaweed, etc. and painting it all, I poured in the "water" with Liquitex. Unfortunately, I didn't quite get it sealed in exactly as I wanted and this left me with the wooden part of the base very uneven with "rivers" of water all over. I had expected the Liquitex to set hard, but even after days (weeks by now) that's not quite the case and it's all a bit rubbery. This lead to some problem solving and after a couple of false starts, I was eventually able to fill in the gaps and create a new surface to the wooden cube with Milliput. Not wanting to accidentally ruin anything, I abandoned my idea for creating waves and splashes on the water surface as I was unsure how to handle the rubbery Liquitex.

On top of the dock, I created a barrel, crate and anchor to provide some additional "set dressing". I'll try to post a quick "how to" post on creating a barrel. I'd previously created one for my 54mm minstrel (another mini from a year ago that I'll have to post here) but this was the first 28mm one I'd built. They're actually dead simple, they just take a little time to get right.

I need to glue all the pieces down and would like to add a bit of rope to finish things off, but I'm quite pleased to see this piece almost finished. Even without the waves on the water's surface, I'm still pretty pleased with my first try at a water base.

What's Next?

After wrestling with Ariel's base for so long, I really want to just jump back into painting a few minis without needing to worry about basing or constructing anything. However, along with the Tengu, I also received the Enigma Miniatures Sumothay Warrior for my birthday. He's a great looking mini, but will naturally need something to stand upon so I may need to do just a little more before I can get back to simple painting. Then (or possible at the same time) I've got some more Tengu that need some paint so they don't feel quite so plain on the table next to Kotenbo and Taliriktug. Finally, I hope to not leave this blog quite as unattended as it has been the past few weeks!

With the Tengu, I decided to try out some pre-made resin bases by Secret Weapon Miniatures. Since I wanted to get on the gaming table quickly with these, and also because some of the Tengu are pretty big and heavy, I decided to try gluing and pinning the minis to their new bases immediately to see how painting them on their bases would work. For transport, I also wanted to try magnetizing their bases and heading to and from my local game store using a metal baking tray (given their size and winged shape, they don't easily fit in my Infinity Battlefoam bag).

Of course, pinned and glued to their bases meant that I couldn't easily then affix them to my painting corks. While stewing on this problem, the solution came from my lovely wife: glue an additional washer on the other side!

As I'd already inset the rare earth magnets (2 for a 30mm base, 3 for a 40mm as shown above) this was a perfect solution! The rare earth magnets are ridiculously strong so there's no chance of the mini slipping off the cork. With the extra stability already provided by the washer on the other end of the cork I was back in business!

As for painting minis pre-attached to their bases, I'm not quite a convert, but fortunately these particular resin bases raise the mini up just enough that I can still get my brush into most of the hard-to-reach places even with the base in the way.

Fitiaumua

First up is Fiti. I've already written a bit about him and the steps I went through painting his tattoos. I continued on after the photos in that blog post and painted some more tattoos, including a koi fish on his arm and more flowers on his side and chest. I tried to fill them in with blue waves, similar to a what you see on a lot of traditional irezumi tattoos.

For his base, I wanted to give him a bit more height than the rest of the Silvermoon who are standing directly on the cobblestones. Despite being an imposing fellow, he looks a bit small when standing next to Manu. So to give him a bit more elevation I built a small wood platform. I hoped to use the wood texture when painting, but after everything was base coated it was clear that I'd need to paint on the wood grain texture by hand. I'd already done a bit of this on his tonfa/batons, but the floor was a bit bigger. Fortunately, I discovered that painting fake wood grain can be tremendously relaxing!

Old Zo

Next up, completing the set is Old Zo. My original decision to go with the Silvermoon Syndicate as my Bushido faction was driven entirely by my desire to paint some unique models. I was looking for something other than muscular warriors or armored samurai and the Silvermoon Buto fit that goal. Old Zo (like Harukichi) is also another non-warrior mini that provided something unique to dig into.

After recently finishing Fitiaumua, I decided to go a bit simpler with Zo and avoided going crazy with freehands. While the warriors in my band feature a lot of grey with a yellow highlight, I wanted to try inverting that with Zo and so painted his robe in the orange-yellow, using the grey for the trim instead. Another old Oyabun, he's earned the right to a little luxury in his color palette!

Painting Den lille Havfrue by Arbal

There's a lot to love about this mermaid figure, but in reading through this step-by-step what jumped out at me was the quality of the leather (which I have a hard time with, so am always impressed by!) and the gorgeous rusted effect on the base.

Crocman by Angel Giraldez

I suppose I could link to any of Angel's Infinity pieces -- his recent ones especially -- and compliment his faces. With this Crocman, not only is the face a beautiful and detailed paint job with a warm Pacific Islander skin tone, but it takes such an amazing amount of confidence to paint a beautiful face like that and then commit to tattooing it! The end result is clearly even better than it would be without the tattoo, but how tempting must it be just to stop with a gorgeously painted face...

KAHAR by Allan Carrasco and Figone

Walrus. Warrior. Please allow me to repeat: Walrus Warrior. Walrus Warrior!! How could this not be on this list - it's a WALRUS WARRIOR!!! Also, I love the paint job on the ice floe he's standing on in the box art. walrus warrior.

Something Wicked comes for a Hobbit by Whirler

The OSL (object source lighting) on this piece is fantastic and really makes the scene. I'd love to see a photo with a different, lighter backdrop just to better see how the light is painted, but the dark moodiness of the location is really nice.

Last Mercenary by Alfonso Girales "Banshee"

This is a great sculpt. The slightly menacing slouch belies a confident killer-for-hire. Rather than lean on bravado, all of the power in this character is present in the relaxed tension of his pose (that's an oxymoron, but I think it fits).

Longbeards by Sergey -We7- Chasnyk

The paint job on these is a bit different than what usually appeals to me. However, the solid use of blacklining and the clean smooth blending and slightly soft weather make for an very slightly cartoony look that works very well with these particular dwarves. Put together in a full 10-man unit, I'm sure that these would look fantastic even from a slight distance (ie. across the tabletop battlefield from them).

Lenore by Charlie Kirkpatrick

There's something very simple and elegant about this mini. Sticking with just greens, golds and browns for the color scheme is a wonderful choice and shows a great control over the different green hues for her dress vs. her cloak. The small freehand trim detail on her cloak is similarly restrained - demonstrating great skill, but without beating you over the head with it. The base then completes the picture with neutral greys, more greens and just a hint of purple in the flowers. Overall, just a lovely piece.

Pirate Madagascar by Philip Prinz

I mentioned above that a good leather always catches my eye and this pirate does precisely that. In fact, it does it in two ways with the weathered leather hat and the cracked leather strap across his chest. Of course, before you notice the leather, it's the face that captures you. It's a wonderful bust but the light situation is captured so nicely here. It's clear that the left side of his face is painted extremely dark compared to the almost white highlights on the other side, but the contrast is managed so well that it never looks forced and works to enhance the realism.

WWI British Commando by Yellow One

I really don't think there's anything to say here other than "Wow". Kirill Kanaev is an absolute master of the craft (I've not linked to his Crystal Brush winning space marine, but... yeah... masterful is an understatement) and more or less everything he touches is worth studying. This commando demonstrates the sheer patience of the man as he stipples in the varying fabric textures on the different parts of the uniform, straps, pouches and more. Then the face itself is brilliant, smeared with grease. Every part of this bust takes a way you might approach painting it and just goes above and beyond.

Turtle Power! by Jonathan Hart

Yes! This is like a saturday morning cartoon come to life! They're the world's most fearsome fighting team (yeah, they're really hip). They're heros in a half-shell and they're green (hey! get a grip!). When the evil Shredder attacks, these turtle boys don't cut him no slack. (...if you don't know what I'm on about I'm afraid I really can't help you without access to a Delorean and roughly 1.21 gigawatts of power to send you back to my childhood).

Fitiaumua ("Fiti" because I can't pronounce his full name) is another big Buto for my Bushido warband. Unlike his pal Manu who is a fairly defensive bodyguard, Fiti is all offense. His special abilities are all about stunning and intimidating his opponent in order to gain an advantage and deal heavy damage.

When thinking about tattooing him, however, I thought a bit about what he'd be like off the battlefield (probably a bit more than is technically healthy). I picture Fiti as a brutal fighter on the field, but more of a mellow ladies man while relaxing in a tea house between errands for his Oyabun. To that end I decided to avoid the tigers, oni and demon tattoos that might be more expected and go for a picture of a geisha, Mt Fuji and some cherry blossoms.

The overall goal is to give him a bit more of a traditional-looking irezumi bodysuit, but I'm starting with the large canvas that is his back and will move around to his arms and chest next.

Apologies for some of the blurrier shots here... anyway, here's the progress:

1. The first photo just shows Fiti's back with some basic shading. I'm using the Reaper tanned skin triad here to give me the basic shading, but then worked in some reds to the shadows and Vallejo's Sunny Skin Tone into the highlights to give me a better range of tones... to ultimately paint over!
2. Now, starting with the tattoo, rather than dive straight into brush and paint I've used a pencil to rough in the outlines. As mentioned above, for the major back imagery, I'm going for a geisha holding a fan with Mt. Fuji, some clouds and a little bridge behind her.
3. Moving on to the brush, I've painted over the pencil sketch using a mixture of Vallejo Dark Sea Blue and the base Tanned Skin. The Dark Sea Blue is a great color to get that black appearance without being quite as heavy as a full black would be. I've then mixed it with the fleshtone to reduce the contrast even more.
4. After the line work is done, I've colored in the various elements of the tattoo. My three year old daughter has a ton of coloring books lying around our house and so I have a fair amount of practice with this sort of thing! But seriously, this is really just a coloring book with a brush instead of a crayon.
5. At this stage, I've tried to highlight and deepen some of the colors. This is most evident in the geisha's robe where I tried to bring in more lights on the blue/green layers and then give a bit more pink and a bit more purple to her kimono. I also took a bit of time to darken the outlines that became a bit faded in the previous step.
6. With the back mostly done, I've begun moving on to Fiti's left arm and have sketched in a twig with some cherry blossoms... much more to do, but his tattoos are on the way!

It took too long, but I finally got the whole gang to sit together for a group shot. I've had a lot of fun painting the Silvermoon Trade Syndicate starter set and am looking forward to getting some paint on Fitiaumua and Old Zo so they can join the crew.

Going West by Marc Masclans

Wow, the sheer amount of character and atmosphere present in this miniature/diorama is fantastic! I also love to see miniatures that aren’t so focused on combat. I don’t know if it’s the roots in D&D, wargaming or “toy soldiers” but most of the miniatures out there are warriors, wizards, soldiers or are wielding a weapon of some sort. That can be very limiting and there are so many more scenes to depict regardless of whether the theme is high fantasy, far flung future sci-fi, or wild-west steampunk. These minis demonstrate that admirably! (also, +1 for a steampunk setup that doesn’t feature meaningless, function-less cogs and gears everywhere).

Bananalicious

Massive Voodoo have been posting a series of blog posts showing entries into their second Bananalicious Contest. There are many many great looking minis in here, so please check out all of the minis on these pages, but I’ve included just a few favorites below (you'll have to scroll down in the pages to see the ones I'm referring to):

Army Entry #14 by Johann

While I want to try and be a bit more diverse in what I paint, I still paint mostly for wargaming - Infinity and Bushido - so the army entries were right up my alley (all comments above about war-focused miniatures aside!). There are some great entries here, but the stand-out for me is #14. I have no idea how or where those lion-warriors hit the gaming table, but they are a brilliant looking unit with a great color scheme. If anyone knows what game they’re from, please let me know in the comments!

Base Entry #6 by Sergei

There is just so much to look at in this base. The tone is perfect, from the carefully maintained asian doorway with the beautifully painted wall art to the slowly decaying upper level where the wall art is marred by graffiti. Part of me wants to see a figure creeping about this base… but there’s so much story present without one that I think that could be a mistake. Either way, a beautiful piece.

Diorama Entry #23 by Markus

Orks are funny. Ok, so maybe that undercuts their Tolkein-esque archetype somewhat… but since GW got a hold of them and imbued them with the “Waaaaaagh!” spirit, their humor has risen to the surface and that’s just what this diorama shows. Where else would Orks setup a seafood restaurant? In the mouth of a bloody great fish, that’s where!

World of Stone by Nakatan

I don’t think there’s much I can say here to sum up this stunning piece, you have to see it for yourself. The details, the details, the details – referring to both the immense level of detail put into painting the fabric, the textures, the armor, the banner… but also the level of detail in the composition of the piece which is clearly meant to be seen from all sides.

Perhaps my absolute favorite part of this piece, however, is how the composition works to undercut the mood. The “glorious warrior gesturing proudly atop the spoils of a righteous victory” is a very common theme in fantasy miniature painting, even if the “spoils of a righteous victory” part of that is implied by the pose and the theme. So, when first looking at this piece, I assumed I was looking at that same old trope. However, with closer inspection it quickly became clear that the warrior in gleaming plate and golden cloak was standing on dead and dying soldiers with little glory to be found. Add in the scared little girl cowering behind the wall and all of a sudden the “hero” of this piece doesn’t look quite so heroic any more. So while this may be a “10” based on execution alone, I think the composition equally (if not more) makes it deserving of highest marks.

Savior by Maartje “MaGie” Giesbers

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a badly painted Kingdom Death mini… I don’t know why that is, but this is another beauty. This is a great piece all around, from the color choice, to the beautiful skin tones and hair to the lovely base that complements the mini perfectly.

New York Storefronts by Randy Hage

And now for something completely different! Be sure to start with the first photo here… if you don’t, you’ll be quick to dismiss these as just photographs of New York. These storefronts are absolutely amazing in their realism.

Gutrot by David Soper (Sproket)

This is an as yet unfinished piece, but it still deserves to be ogled as it progresses. I’m usually not a fan of Nurgle miniatures (ditto for undead and anything else rotting, squirming, dripping, oozing… you get the picture). But that’s just me and my squeamishness… they’re just not something I want to paint. However, that doesn’t stop me from appreciating when a mini of that ilk is painted well and this is a good example - I just can’t stop looking at those slick, dripping tentacles - so great!

Nightingale by Patrick “The Small” Masson

A bit more steampunk now: this take on Florence Nightingale is lovely. Delicate and detailed if a bit thematically on the nose. My only complaint is that gun dangling behind her. Sure, it’s a nice enough gun, but does she really need it? I wish she could be left as a healer and not need to carry some implement of death on her person. Still, that aside, this is one for my wishlist.

The End of the World As We Know It by Whirler

I began on a diorama, so let’s end on one too. As with the first, this one is completely devoid of weapons and warriors, but instead populated with the hapless miniature painters unsure of what to do after the resin well dries up and the pewter mine is exhausted! I love this idea - it’s so much fun with the theme, the tie dye and Wyrd t-shirts and then the actions of all the miniature painters (literally and figuratively!) unsure of what to do with themselves.

The Kum Biker from my Haqqislam Infinity army and Senpu from my Bushido Silvermoon Trade Syndicate warband make for a very interesting contrast. Both are great miniatures to paint but I think they're very representative of their individual lines and each provides a unique challenge.

The Kum Biker is probably one of the nicest sculpts I've ever painted. The detail is amazing and the tension in the biker's face and neck as he turns around to aim his rifle are really nicely done. As with almost all other Infinity minis I've painted, he is rife with surface detail. His pants have debossed lines, his jacket is marked off with squares and edging, his greaves are chunky with many different surfaces to paint. What's really nice about this is that, to a certain extent, it's easy to see where all the detail should be. The downside is that it requires a lot of self-control to keep the choice of colors simple and not to bring in different tones and hues for all the different surfaces.

By way of contrast, Senpu, like many of his Silvermoon pals, is a model of simplicity: pants, jacket, skin-tones and no debossed or sculpted embellishments to clue you in on where the extra details should be. That's not to say that the sculpt isn't wonderful - his robe billowing out behind him as he leaps dramatically forwards make him fun to look at, paint and play on the table. However, where it's possible to get lost in the detail of the Kum Biker, I felt that I wanted to bring a little bit more detail to Senpu and so added a little scalloped repeating pattern to his robe.

I definitely don't think one approach to sculpting is in any way better than the other. Each has their distinct advantages. After having painted so many Infinity models last year, however, it did give me a new appreciation for the simpler sculpts in the Silvermoon line. Manu's big belly is practically a blank canvas, calling out for those tattoos. And with Fitiaumua newly arriving through the mail just the other day, I'm looking forward to doing some more (if Senpu was simple with pants, jacket and skin-tones, "Fiti" isn't even wearing a jacket!).

Sculpting

Overall, the process is really quite simple. To begin, you'll need your base (crazy, right?) some milliput (although green stuff or other putty would likely work just as well), some flat-ish stones (these are some small chunks of slate) and a tool to press into the putty with.

Step 1: glob that mixed milliput onto your base... I don't really have much else to say about this step:

Step 2: Using the sculpting tool or whatever tool you have handy, press into the putty to create your cobblestones. At this stage of the game, you're going to end up with very puffy, marshmallow like cobblestones. For certain applications, you may be able to end there if you're going for a smoother look. However, for a rougher stone, continue on to...

Step 3: Now to get rid of that marshmallow look, using a rock (or several) start pressing in to get a more realistic texture. As you do this, the tops of the rocks will flatten and the gaps you sculpted will get pretty thin. You may find it necessary to go back and forth to open up wider gaps, then press down to get your texture again. You can press down to get a very flat look across all the stones or, as in the case below, leave a little more variation in height for a rougher look.

At this point you may also want to think about how you're mounting your mini. If you're pinning, you can get away with drilling after everything's dry. In my case, I didn't risk pinning Senpu's thin ankles and so just clipped off all but a chunk of metal on the slot he was mounted on. I pressed this into the base so I had an easy hole to mount him in when I was finished.

I usually leave the milliput to dry overnight. In the morning (while the coffee is brewing) I then sit down with a hobby knife and clean things up. This can mean fixing some indentations, cleaning off millput that dried around the edge of the base, or exaggerating gaps between the edges of some stones.

After that, you're ready for...

Painting

As with the sculpting, this is going to be pretty quick and easy. Let's go.

Step 1: Priming. Just... you know... prime it:

Step 2: Base coat. I used VMC London Grey, but any middle grey tone will do.

Step 3: Wash it with a black wash, ink or very thinned down paint. I'm still making use of the old GW Badab Black wash (now Nuln Oil I think) which I pretty generously slathered all over the base. Don't worry about how dark it gets -- we're gonna fix that soon.

Step 4: After washing the base, I then drybrush it with the base coat to start defining the stones again:

Step 5: For a little color variation, I try to wash the stones with some very watered down colors: green, purple, orange... basically just picking up some various tones from whatever's on my wet palette at the time. It's tough to see in the pictures, but it helps keep the stones from being all monochrome (apologies for the blurry photo):

Step 6: More Drybrushing! We're going to progressively work the base up to the tone we want. I start with the same VMC London Grey base coat color mixed with some white and keep going lighter until I'm drybrushing pure white to really highlight the edges.

Step 7: Speaking of edges, once the drybrushing is done, I like to them paint in highlights on the edges of some of the stones to better emphasize the edges as sometimes the interior edges don't pickup as much of the drybrushing:

Step 8: No photo for this one, but after all that drybrushing, now is a good time to cleanup the edge of the base with black. This is always an immensely satisfying step for me!

Step 9: Optionally, you put your weeds on there... well, static grass to be more accurate. You can do this before or after mounting the mini on the base, but in this case I wanted to put some grass around where Senpu's foot connected with the base to hide the connection a bit so I glued him in first. I try to be sparing with my grass, aiming to glue it in a couple of the cracks

...and there you have it: one cobblestone base.

I tried to take a lot of pictures and break it down step by step, so it may appear like there's a lot to it, but really each step is very quick. There are some really nice cobblestone resin bases out there you could buy, but when this is so easy to create, why not go custom?

Since this is my first "favorites" entry, many of these are links I gathered over a slightly longer period of time, not just the last month.

G Tell by Arnaud "stranger" Bellier

This is just a brilliant and very dynamic sculpt. I love the contrast of the free-flowing jacket and hair as the archer leaps forward compared to the perfect controlled horizontal line created by the arm drawing back the arrow through the arrow itself. I suppose it doesn't hurt that I've been really enjoying The Arrow on TV lately, so I'm a sucker for a bad-ass archer.

Knight of the Holy Sepulchre by David Powell

This piece won gold in the Crystal Brush competition so has been popped up on a lot of sites recently but there's no harm having it show up on one more. I love the life and depth to the simple "black" and "white" horse and rider (because nothing's ever really just black or just white), the muddy weathering on the cloak and shield, the repeating patterns on the cloak and banner, the restraint used in color choice for the horse's straps and saddle, the little details like the arrows and axe in the base. All around, just a wonderful piece to look at and one I'd have loved to have seen in person.

If you click through to David Powell's site, also be sure to check out another medieval piece, The Once and Future King. Less serious than most historical pieces, there's so much character and story in this - even more if you've seen Disney's The Sword in the Stone!

Kingdom Death Pinups by Scott Hockly

There are a lot of great photos on this page, but what especially caught my eye was the group shot of all the Kingdom Death Pinups about 70% down the page under the "Friday I went overboard..." heading. Pretty much every miniature Kingdom Death puts out is striking on its own, even moreso with a masterful paintjob. What is really wonderful about this group-shot however, is the variety of skin-tones used. Whatever your thoughts on barely-clothed buxom lasses, these showcase a master painter in complete control of the mood and colors put down on the model. When it comes to skin tones, I've not experimented much at all with different hues, so this is extremely impressive and inspiring.

Zeta by Roman Lappat

Speaking of both master painters and skillful execution of skin tones, I bookmarked Roman Lappat's Zeta for much the same reason. The dark tanned barbarian is matched brilliantly with the sun-bleached blond hair and parched yellow base. The overwhelming use of just a couple of colors to bring this miniature to life make it really stand out.

Sorceress by Roman Lappat

While not part of the same group, Roman's Zeta looks like she could easily have sat in the with the crew of Ilyad miniatures on display towards the bottom of this page. The main photo is of the Sorceress which is a beautiful miniature on its own with an emphasis on cold blues and pinky-purples. However, once put on display next to the other Ilyad minis that Roman has painted the power of his use of color from one mini to the next is made amazingly clear. It's so easy to fall into the trap of painting each part of a miniature a different color with minimal regard for the overall effect. However, there is a clear benefit to using a reduced palette and providing the miniature with an overall color scheme as demonstrated here.

Rujo, il Maestro by Ivan Hortal and Alex Varela

Not content to leave a theme alone, let me beat this into the ground with the two more examples. First, Rujo is another fantastic sculpt: dynamic, characterful and unique. I first saw Alex Varela's paintjob on Putty & Paint and loved it immediately. The cold blue skin tones and blue-black armor and hair look great with the snow-covered rocky base. I was taken aback later on seeing Ivan Hortal's version which couldn't be more different in color choice. Golden yellows and browns make a very different (but no less beautiful) impression. Reduced color palette, unique skin tones, gorgeous results...

Ronin Bust by Olga Zernina

While painting Harukichi for my small Bushido warband I spent some quality time with Google looking around at examples for a good repeating pattern to paint on his robes. I made up my mind on a simple geometric repeating spiral. With her Ronin busts, however, Olga Zernina clearly refused to settle on just one fabric pattern and set about painting several different identical busts all with different themes and fabrics. I picked what might be my favorite, but they are all wonderful.

Making Trees Tutorial by C'tan

Ok, so I mentioned stealing from Volomir's Blog at the beginning of this post and this link I found on his April list, but it was too cool not to repost here. I'm not sure when (probably once I get back to painting something other than gaming minis), but I'd love to try out this technique for making trees.

Before I get into the tournament itself, I do first want to thank Karl-Christian (FatherKnowsBest on the forums) for organizing and running the tournament (while also playing the role of walking rule book... despite the occasional attempt to take a minute to hide). I was unfortunately unable to attend the Sunday event, but that took place thanks to Charlotte warcor, Derek (dlfleetw). Also worth thanking are all the sponsors of the event. Of note amongst the sponsors was another local warcor, Brian Ramey (Doremicom - on YouTube) - several nice models and boxed sets offered at the random draw at the end of the night seemed to be a Doremicom donation. Finally to everyone who brought and set up the absolutely amazing tables (see below for photos) and to Atomic Empire for hosting. (If I've missed anyone, my apologies and thanks to you also).

On to the actual event. After a little WORLD ORDER in the car and a lot of coffee I was ready for (28mm scale) battle. I've previously only played Hassassin lists in tournaments, but having picked up Tarik Mansuri and the Kum Bikers relatively recently I was reluctant to leave them behind and so set aside my Muyib link team and came prepared with two vanilla Haqqislam lists.

Round 1: Annihilation vs. Russ

My first game of the day was an Annihilation battle against Russ and his Caledonians. I'd not played Caledonians before, so wasn't quite sure what to expect other than to keep my eyes peeled for the werewolves. As it turned out these didn't wind up being as much of a problem as the profusion of cheap HMGs and a well deployed link team. While there's no doubt that knowing the other factions will help you fight them, there's still so much variety in what you can bring within any faction that you really never know who you'll go up against.

This game was the first time I've used my Fiday in close combat with the new martial arts rules in N3. In my past N3 games my primary goal has always been to find a good target for his Boarding Shotgun so that he has a chance to take down as many minis as possible before his inevitable demise. In this game, however, there weren't a lot of opportunities for that and Russ's Highlander Grey with HMG was looking particularly nasty so he became my prey. I still think the surprise shot shotgun blast is a great use of the Fiday, but holy cow is surprise attack with martial arts level 2 effective! The Highlander held on for one more order with his dogged state, but ultimately didn't survive and I found my Fiday in a great protected spot in Russ's deployment zone holding a boarding-shotgun ARO over the heads of several models.

This was ultimately a very close battle and ended in a tie (slight advantage going to Russ who had 134 points alive by the end to my 129). I lost a lot of individual minis, but keeping a couple of expensive troops (like Tarik) alive in Annihilation, while prioritizing higher value targets made a big difference... that and using Doctor Plus and my Djanbazan's regeneration to keep as many points up as possible by the end of the game! In fact, my HMG wielding Djanbazan regenerated so many times throughout the day I need to officially rechristen him "Djanba-zombie" (Yes, that's a bad joke. No, I don't regret it).

Round 2: Transmission Matrix vs. Da

In keeping with fighting sectorials I've not faced before, round 2 had Da give me a lesson in the effectiveness of the MRRF. The scenario this time was Transmission Matrix. This was actually the one N3 scenario I had played once before and so I was looking forward to this game. The scenario is interesting in that you have to be within 4" of the antenna with more points than your opponent to control it. However, each antenna acts as a repeater so in controlling an antenna you also open yourself up to be hacked. In my previous playthrough of Transmission Matrix this enabled me to repeatedly hack a Sogarat, turning him into an expensive Morat statue. In this game... did I mention I was playing MRRF? Not exactly known for fielding a ton of juicy heavy infantry to hack! (yes, I know you can hack other targets now in N3, but it's just not the same as locking up 60 points of heavily armored mobile gun platform).

So one of my first lessons of this game was to beware of Mirage Team 5! During my deployment I was slightly nervous about putting my Shihab total reaction HMG bot and my Lasiq close to each other, but they had an amazing field of fire and so it seemed worth it. This...was wrong...and bad...and oh so disappointing when both of them (along with the Nasmat doctor bot close by to heal the Lasiq) fell in the first order of the game when Da dropped Margo and Duroc within 16" and speculatively shot her LGL at them. Margot proceeded to try the same with Tarik who took a wound but managed to stay alive and then fought off Duroc in CC. Beware Mirage Team 5: Lesson learned.

When it got around to my turn, however, I had my own little lesson in deployment: when facing Haqq, don't deploy your link team in a line. If you read what I wrote about my preferred use of the Fiday up above, you're probably already seeing what's coming here: surprise shot with a boarding shotgun, hitting an entire link team. In my defense, I feel this is a hugely painful tactic so I did ask Da during deployment "Are you sure you want them all lined up like that?"... perhaps too a subtle hint, but enough to assuage my guilty conscience! It did take more than a single order to bring down the full 5 man link as dodge has become very effective in N3 (one of my favorite changes), but take them down (dead or prone and out of the battle) the Fiday did. I'm amazed whenever I see a Haqq list that doesn't include a Fiday - they are an absolute essential for me. Although I did start Infinity with the Hassassins so I suppose that reveals something.

Blood-spillage aside, the way to win scenarios is objective points. Throughout the game Da and I both (mostly) held the antennas on our own sides of the table. The central antenna was in its own room and was a fight of camo markers as camo markers are allowed to control antennas in the scenario (although it leads to the weird case of revealing how many point are under a given marker). Fortunately for me, my Farzan ain't cheap and so he held the central antenna giving me the lead after the first round. Da brought up reinforcements the second round but they couldn't quite make it close enough. However with Tarik eventually succumbing to Margot's LGL I lost one antenna on my side ending round 2 in a tie. The third round saw some fierce fighting with my dead-and-back-again Djanba-zombie (it's growing on me) preventing Da from taking my open antenna and grabbing the HVT, but he had enough points in the room to now overwhelm my Farzan. The central antenna went to Da and the game ended in a tie.

As with the first round, this was a close fought and tremendously fun game.

Round 3: Antenna Field vs. Austin

This is where my day's mediocre record of 0/0/2 begins to go a bit south! Round 3 saw me facing Austin's Morat forces in Antenna Field and... well, those monkeys came out swinging! I think I might have won a point or so early in the game, but ultimately Austin came very close to tabling me.

Looking back on this game I think possibly my troops were spread too thinly and that I lacked a bit of firepower in this list. I built around specialists, but whereas in my Hassassin list I would have embedded those in a Muyib link team or brought along a durable Asawira doctor, my light infantry specialists in this list (Ghulam, Farzan, Barid, etc.) were a bit on the squishy side. Nothing to sneeze at... unless you're a Sogarat who's caught the scent of Haqq blood (he sneezes via HMG. It's... not pretty)!

By turn three I had been reduced to a single miniature. Fortunately, that miniature took the heroic form of Tarik Mansuri. The Morats at this point controlled... well, just about everything. Not content to let them get away with this, however, Tarik used his final order of the battle to super-jump up in the air and unleash his spitfire at the two Morats who controlled the central antenna. He drew the fire of just about everyone on the board as, in order to pull off this feat, he needed to jump higher than all the buildings on the table with no hope of cover. And yet. And yet that spitfire blast killed unto death the Morats holding the central antenna. Inexplicably, the return fire bounced harmlessly of the super-soldier's armor, he landed safe and sound... and out of orders. The game went to Austin, but that last order was probably the most satisfying one I played all day.

Naturally, I realized after doing this that it may have been a somewhat selfish move - denying Austin a couple of extra objective points for the sake of cinematically soothing my wounded pride. Still, Austin bought the first round of post-battle beers, so I don't think he was too upset by it! Cheers, Austin.

Round 4: Nimbus Zone vs. Stephen

The final game of the night: Haqq v. Haqq. There are surprisingly not a lot of Haqq forces hitting the tables locally (surprising as they are clearly the coolest of the Infinity factions, amirite?), so opportunities to play another Haqq player are rare. Not having played Nimbus Zone, I was a bit intimidated by all the rules and how to deal with the titular nimbus zone spanning the center of the table and so I was very curious to see how another Haqq player would build a list for it.

As it turned out, the VIP of the game proved to be Stephen's Shihab total reaction HMG remote, a bot that I was deploying too. In this case, however, Stephen's superior deployment with the Shihab and a heavy rocket launcher-wielding Muyib completely shut me down, keeping a vital corridor riddled with bullets and taking out any of my troops who dared set foot there. My best bet was my Djanbazan who could see through the nimbus zone's low visibility effects. With his high-burst HMG I felt sure that he would be the key, but it was not to be so. After coming back to life twice (Djanba-zombie!!! Yup, it's totally a thing now), it was simply not to be in the cards... or more accurately the dice.

While the Shihab and Muyib steadily cleared away my left flank, Stephen's sneaky Al Hawwa hacker successfully protected by a lone sniper gathered objective points on the right. Low on orders and with troops deployed in the "wrong" place, I desperately tried spending what remaining orders I had at the end of round 2 to jump Tarik into a position where he could take out the Al Hawwa, but after his heroic last-ditch feats against the Morats, he was clearly too tired to push through again and he finally fell to a bullet (or 3) in the back from the deadly Shihab remote.

I thus ended the tournament with a final record of 0/2/2... and just enough points to avoid last place! We ended the day with prizes, literally everyone taking home something thanks to the amazing prize support from all the sponsors.

Conclusion

Yeah... it's a long post to recap a long (but fantastic) day, so a conclusion feels like it's in order. Some final thoughts:

• It was a great day - the tables were brilliant, each with it's own distinct theme (I've posted some more photos below).
• The competition was top-notch - the Infinity community is simply a lovely set of fellas ("fellas" as it was a bit of a unisex showing... but I suppose that's not unusual).
• I've not yet figured out the best way to deploy my Kum bikers to avoid them impetuosly riding out into a hail of bullets. I cross my fingers and hope the smokescreen lands. This will come with more practice, I'm sure.
• I learned a lesson in the effectiveness of the Fiday in N3 CC the first round of the day which I promptly forgot. He was sadly ineffective in the final two games of the day. It's always easier to see where he should have been deployed after the game begins!
• Tarik sadly didn't really get into the action. There were always (seemingly) better places to spend an order and so he spent much of the day commanding from the rear rather than super-jumping into certain glory (and death... but that's why I bring along a Chain of Command backup)
• I miss my Muyib link team, but am still really enjoying the bikers and Tarik -- when they're great they're grrrr-eat! And who doesn't love Frosted Flakes?

Initially, I just grabbed any old cork and pinned a miniature to one end. However, this can get a bit wobbly and unstable. The technique needed improving so I thought I'd write a post about my new and improved "corking" technique.

The first step in this process is to choose the right wine. I like a good cotes de Rhone for fantasy, chianti or possibly montepulciano for sci fi and Rioja for steampunk but your tastes may vary. Actually, it's handy to throw a champagne or prosecco in there every once in a while to get a bigger cork for those minis with wider stances.

Mounting the mini on the cork should be very easy if you've already pinned the legs. Usually I don't find I need any glue, but if things get wobbly I use either a bit of sticky tack (blu tack or a similar brand) or possibly a bit of superglue. It might mean getting out the hobby knife when removing the painted mini from the cork, but that's usually not such a big deal.

All of the above is pretty standard stuff, though. My real quick tip is this: superglue a washer to the base of the cork. Not only does this add weight to the bottom, making it less top-heavy once you've mounted your mini on top, but it also makes it significantly more stable and less likely to wobble or fall over. To bring wobble down to zero, I also push a tiny bit of sticky tack in the hole in the washer. That way it can stick to my paint station and still sit flat. Since I move my paint station around all the time, this has proved invaluable!

While a daylight bulb is a great source of light for painting (and something I use even on those occasions I am able to paint before sundown), it still can't quite compare with real daylight. So, each morning after a night of painting I come downstairs, head over to my previous night's work and have a quick "sunlight crit". I take my work over to a window, get a good dose of sunlight on the mini and then get mildly depressed at all the flaws that jump out at me in the bright daylight! Or, on a good day, I can smile listening to the water boil for my coffee seeing that the details and color choices made the night before hold up well in the morning.

Certain things I've noticed are that whites can look chalkier in the morning, blends might not be quite as smooth. Both of these can be helped by a bit more glazing to unify a gradient or bring more warmth into a chalky white. Sometimes certain colors don't work well - in my case faces and skin tones are a frequent offender, looking too pasty, too flushed, or too sickly in the unforgiving light of morning. However, the more I work, the better my sunlight crits get as I get a better feel for what something will look like out of the artificial light and adjust colors accordingly while painting. Still, it's a valuable step in my daily painting, giving me a "to fix" list for the next evening's painting before I move on to other parts of the mini.

For me, the next step after the sunlight crit is the camera crit. Just when you were happy with how sunlight treats your painting, now it's back to artificial light with an artificial "eye"! But that's a whole other story...