2020 End Of Year Report

OK, yeah, this was just a dumb year, so at least it's not all my fault this time.

Old Resolutions
I mean, I think I did OK in a couple of areas, but overall this year did not really feel like progress.

1. Plan my time more accurately and rigidly
I was writing up plans for the day most days for most of the year, but I was never able to get the hang of estimating how long things would take or, you know, actually sticking to the plan. And then towards the last three or four months I've really been struggling just to get out of bed. Metaphorically, not physically: I get out of bed just fine, but then I sit around not doing anything because I lack energy and motivation. After the first few weeks of, well, doing the bare minimum every morning, the habit of trying to write a proper plan for the day just... disappeared.


New Resolutions
I really just feel like I haven't been taking care of myself for a while; job stress and other stuff has left me... I dunno, it's like I've put my life on hold. So this year I want to prioritise basic living.

1. Plan my time
I've bought a new day planner and starting tomorrow I'm going to use it!

2. Stick to a good routine
I really feel like the lack of a proper routine is really hurting me. So I really need to get back to sleeping and waking at the same time every morning, and having a set time for a bit of stretching and exercising in the morning. But hey, a while back I bought an actual alarm clock and I've just set alarm, so starting from tomorrow I'm going to wake up at a more consistent time again.

2. Eat better
More veggies, more cooking, or just buying better take-out. For a while now I've been eating quite carb-heavy too; that needs to end.

3. Take better care of my home
What with the plague meaning that no-one has been coming over, I've not been doing enough housekeeping and the place is a right mess. I can't let this happen anymore. I need to figure out a way to make sure I don't slide. I'm thinking of making it at least a monthly thing to give the whole place a proper cleaning.

4. Stop chasing mental stimulation
I think I have always had some form of ADD. But lately it's been really bad; I'm constantly craving youtube videos, constantly switching to them from whatever I'm doing (much easier to do when you're at home all day) and I think it's really wearing me down. My attention span feels like it's seriously degraded. I need to "let myself be bored" throughout the day, as I think that's the only way to actually recharge so that I stay productive. I want to watch less youtube and read less manga, and instead take power naps or read actual dead tree books in my down time. Preferably ones that are actually useful.


You know, I think I'm feeling more optimistic this end-of-year than I was in the last one. Perhaps because I feel like I've fallen so far that there's no-where to go but up? Or maybe I'm just having a good day today. I just hope I can use the new year as a new start, and actual climb my way out of the hole I feel I've fallen into.

Eons After Warmachine Ended, The Marcher Worlds Finally Got Painted*

*Mostly; it'll be a while yet before I get around to finishing the jacks. But hey, at least the infantry from the starter set are finally done.

I wanted to get these guys done quickly so I could play painted. I also wasn't in the mood the try to pick out all the details in different colours as I usually prefer to; these models are very busy. So I came up with the idea to lazily use a low-effort monochromatic colour scheme with the addition of a coloured glow for visual interest. I figured it should be extremely fast to do; I was hoping to get them knocked out in a weekend or two. Instead it took me about three months.

That wasn't three months of painting of course. These days I find painting requires time, energy and motivation, and it's just rare that I have all three at the same time. To paraphrase: life, uh, uh, gets in the way. It was really only the impending end of the year that got me to power through them in the end.

Anyway. I didn't like the heads that most of them shipped with, so I set about finding replacements. Eventually I settled on some helmets from Destiny. I modfied them slightly before 3D printing them on my dying Photon. It took a few iterations to get the sizes right, and a couple of models needed to have their old heads removed, but it was very worth it.

I tried to pick a glow colour that was close to the official colour of the Marcher Worlds logo. In the fluff and gameplay, units are powered up by "Arcanessence" that is transmitted down from orbit. So I wanted to apply glows to the dishes on their backs and the attached conduits to show that energy being received and channeled down to their weapons. Of course helmets received glows to help draw the eye. The Hunters also had glows on the cloaks to make them a bit more visually distinct from the Rangers; this felt appropriate because in the rules they gain Stealth when charged. The Weaver just got glows all over the place since he does the most "Arc stuff".

I wanted to tie the Void Gates to my Marcher Worlds, but not use the same colour scheme. My idea was that I would use the same colours for Void Gates for any factions, but use the bases and outer glow details to tie them to the faction in question. To that end these two gates got a purple main glow, but the same copper bases and teal outer glows as I was using for the Marcher Worlds.

Recipe
To start with all the infantry were airbrushed with a layer of Vallejo 73.660 Surface Primer Gloss Black. I wanted to apply a zenithal highlight, so I airbrushed on Vallejo 70.862 Model Color Black Grey from the sides. I followed this with Vallejo 70.992 Model Color Neutral Grey from about a 45 degree angle, then Vallejo 70.990 Model Color Light Grey from directly above. Actually, iirc initially I only went up to Neutral Grey (or maybe a mix of Neutral and Light Grey), because these greys look darker after they dry. So I ended up needed to apply the zenithal highlights twice after the models dried and I realised they were too dark.

I then applied simple edge highlights everywhere with the same Light Grey so the forms would be readable. I considered going lighter for the highlights so that they would stand out even on the lightest areas of the model, but decided not to; I figured have the brightest zenithal highlights be the same as the brightest edge highlights made more sense. A wash of Citadel Shade Nuln Oil then darkened everything down and shaded the recesses. I feel like most of the zenithal highlighting was lost in this step, but I guess that's OK; some of the gradient is still there, and tbh think the models might still be a little too bright overall.

For my first attempt at the infantry glows I applied a basecoat of Citadel Layer Sotek Green, then drybrushing over the surrounding grey areas. Next I painted on narrow layers of Citadel Layer Temple Guard Blue, and also highlighted some of the surrounding edges. This was followed by another drybrush of Sotek Green and then a drybrush of Temple Guard Blue, both targetting the boundry between the two shades (the Temple Guard blue was also drybrushed over the immediate surroundings to brighten the "cast light"). After this I did the same thing with Citadel Edge Baharroth Blue, again drybrushing the Temple Guard and Baharroth Blue over the transition. The final layer was done with Formula P3 Morrow White, blended in with two drybrush passes of course. Finally I went back with the Sotek Green over the outer edges of the light sources (such as the outer edges of the helmet visors), to create a dark line that separated the light sources from the cast glows.

While this worked quite well for the Rangers, when I came to the second batch of infantry I decided to try to streamline the process; this time I painted Sotek Green, then the Temple Guard Blue (including edge highlights), and only now applied a single drybrush of Sotek Green. Next a layer of Baharroth Blue, then a drybrush of the darker Temple Guard Blue to start smoothing the transitions (and brighten the cast light); the Baharroth Blue drybrush that was the second part of the smoothing process only came after the layer of Morrow White. Basically I cut the number of drybrushes in half (or at least tried to; I may have messed up a couple of steps and had to repeat them). When I was done I noticed that the conduits on the Weaver needed a bit more definition, so I painted some Green Stuff World 1712 Wash Ink Aether Blue directly into the recesses.

The bases were made using Green Stuff World's 1224 Factory texture rolling pin. They were basecoated in Citadel Colour Tin Bitz, edge highlighted and drybrushed with Vallejo 71.068 Model Air Metallic Copper, then washed in Citadel Shade Agrax Earthshade.

The Void Gates were also primed with Gloss Black, then the centers were airbrushed with Vallejo 72.715 Game Air Hexed Lichen. This really didn't seem to look much like purple no matter how much I put down; it actually looked a bit like a very dark brown, at least at the time. Perhaps I needed to apply it over white for it to actually look purple? Anyway, I continued by airbrushing a large spot of Vallejo 72.776 Game Air Alien Purple on each side of the sphere, followed by progressively smaller spots of Citadel Edge Dechala Lilic and Vallejo 72.701 Game Air Dead White. I was originally planning to apply a glaze of Green Stuff World 1714 Wash Ink Vicious Purple, but as soon as I started I decided it wasn't working and I quickly washed it off.

I painted the ring in Vallejo 71.073 Model Air Metallic Black and edge highlighted it with Citadel Base Leadbeltcher. I painted watered down Vallejo 70.950 Model Color Black directly into the recesses for shading. I then carefully edge highlighted the inside of ring and the edges of the tendrils with a mix of Vallejo 71.063 Model Air Metallic Silver and Green Stuff World 1875 Metal Color Persian Violet. I believe I then applied a thin line of shading around the tendrils with the Vicious Purple.

To try to get a bit of a lazy OSL effec, I drybrushed the inside of the ring with the Metal Color Persian Viol. Similarly I drybrushed the areas around the outer glowing recesses with Green Stuff World 1876 Metal Color Aqua Turquoise, which I did before actually painting the glowing areas with the same Sotek Green, Temple Guard Blue, Baharroth Blue as the infantry glows. I did not try to go up to white this time, or try to soften the transitions with drybrushing, but I did edge highlight the edges of the glowing areas with the Metal Color Aqua Turquise. Finally I painted the base in the same copper.


I ended up spending far longer on the Void Gates than I had intended to, and while the purple colour is far less saturated than I had intended, overall I really like how they turned out. The subtle edge highlights around the tendrils have a surprisingly large impact. I did wonder if it would have looked better to paint the purple glow as eminating from underneath the tendrils rather than from the center of the sphere; perhaps I'll try that if I ever paint another pair of gates. As for the infantry, I'm happier with them than I expected to be considering the lazy and simplistic paint scheme. I mean, they're not great, but they look fun in the right light; kind of Tron-like. Some day I would like to do something similar but with a flat black rather than a shaded and highlighted grey, to try to really make a glow pop as much as possible - the inspiration being the aliens from Attack The Block of course. I don't think these were the models for it though. Anyway, I'll try to find time to get the jacks done, but, you know, life.

A bit of light CNC

While I quite like the cards that come with many miniature games these days, you do need somewhere to put them. So with every new game you pick up, you need a new card box. Why spend a few seconds ordering one online, when you can spend weeks making one yourself on a noisy and dirty CNC mill?

I downloaded the Marcher Worlds and ISA logos, cleaned them up in Gimp, then imported them in Invetables' free Easel software to generate the gcode. There's a couple of small issues with the Marcher Worlds logo, but I figured it was good enough. The ISA logo still needs some work though.

After milling out, gluing up, and sanding it down, the box was looking pretty good. Like with my MTG box I decided to airbrush on a stain/varnish. I didn't really like the colour of the varnish I had used last time though, so this time I decided to try using Army Painter's Strong Tone instead - I'm pretty sure it's basically the same stuff as normal wood stain and varnish.

I wanted to go a bit farther with this one, so I ordered some glow in the dark powders from GreenStuffWorld and, along with their UV resin, tried to fill in the logo. Their Glow Pigments 2432 - Space Blue looked very close to the colour of the logo on the Marcher Worlds box, although it looked darker when mixed with the resin. After some dithering I decided to try for a steel/silver look for the outer logo details and, after some experimentation, settled on mixing a bit of Vallejo 1.063 Model Air Metallic Silver into resin for those parts.

I modified a pair of eyedropper bottles with thin metal tubes to give me a syringe-like ability to pour the resin, and used them to try to cleanly fill in the milled out logo. After pouring and curing the resin, I tried to sand the logo flat; I was hoping I could do this without taking the stain off the wood, but alas. So at that point I decided to just sand all the varnish off again - or almost all - and leave it at that.

Even though the final result is not too bad, I do feel that a lot of things went wrong. I broke like four 1mm mill bits while working on the logos. The main mill bit used to cut the box was probably a tiny bit oversized, so the pieces ended up fitting together a bit loosely. The wood wasn't very high quality and I need to apply filler in some gaps in the inner layers that were revealed by the milling. I didn't do a good job with the wood glue, leaving gaps in some places while excess glue sunk into the wood in others and interfered with the stain. I used a rotary tool during the cleanup, and took off too much material in a few places, leaving blemishes that I couldn't sand out. Applying the stain/varnish before the resin was a mistake, as I ended up needing to sand after that anyway. Some small bit of wood were dislodged when cutting the logo, which I didn't register until the resin flowed into them, ruining the logo slightly (you can see the mistakes around the nose area). Also when pouring the resin, I felt as though it was getting absorbed into the wood, as I kept pouring it level and yet the level kept going down when I looked again a moment later. So I ended up deliberately pouring too much, leading to a lot of overspill, and quickly applying UV light to cure the resin before it could be absorbed. The results were messing and required a lot of sanding work, which ended up sanding off the stained wood around the logo. Also in my tests the resin didn't cure if I added too much silver paint, so I added as little as possible when applying to the logo, and I don't know if I just didn't add enough or something else went wrong because the final results don't look very metallic. I probably could have added more glow powder too; that might have made the glow effect stronger? Finally the sanding left the resin with a rough scratchy looking surface despite my efforts to clean it up with a finer grit sandpaper at the end.

In the future I will use a separate stain and varnish, which I will apply after the resin; this will allow me to wipe the stain off the resin areas then apply a varnish to the whole box. Or more likely I won't use a varnish at all. And I'll probably treat any areas I want to pour resin into with a brushed on varnish or something first to seal them so that the resin can't be absorbed. Also I don't think I'll use glow in the dark pigments in the resin; I like the idea in general but I don't think it really does very much on a card box. Naturally I will also try to be more careful when gluing and sanding. I expect to be needing another card box soon, hopefully I'll do a better job on that one.

Warmachine In Spaaaaaaaaaaaaaaace!

This was our first game of Warcaster: Neo-Mechanica. I was originally hoping to finish assembling and painting all my starter box models before playing ("starting on the right foot" sort of thing), but it just didn't happen. Also I forgot to bring the "wave2" cards so I didn't even run the heavy warjack or hero solo. But one of the good things about WNM is that the game is still pretty balanced even if you have less units in total. So I proxied some Warmachine models for Marcher Worlds:
Coalition Weaver (Koldun Lord)
Ranger Fire Team squad (Cutthroats)
Hunter solo x2 (Widowmaker & Kell)
Duskwolf light warjack x2 (railgun, battle rifle, chainsword)(Khador jacks)

Speedy meanwhile had most of his ISA basecoated, but the jacks were being magnetised:
Paladin Weaver
Paladin Enforcer squad
Paladin Commander solo x2
Firebrand light warjack (Vanquisher)
Morning Star heavy warjack (Crusader)
Justicar Voss hero

Summary
I'm not going to try to give a blow-by-blow here; the game is still too unfamilar to me. So I'll just post a quick summary and a bunch of photos. To start we rolled for a skirmish mission and got the first one: "boiling point". I was under the vague impression that Warcaster worked best with a fair bit of terrain, so without too much thought I tried to put a lot of terrain on the table in such a way that it was not exactly symetrical but wouldn't give one side an advantage over the other. Speedy won the roll and chose to go first. He drew first blood, and from then I spent most of the game trying to keep my forces on the table; anything I brought in generally didn't last long (the blast rule was a big contributer to that...), and of course I was still trying to figure out the activation and arc management aspects. In the end he was able to hold the objectives more consistently, taking the win.

Even though I felt on the back foot most of the game, it didn't feel nearly as disadvantageous as it does in other games I've played, since the limited activation system coupled with the constant deployment system meant that I never felt like the game was un-winnable; I always felt like a couple of good turns could even things out. It was... relaxing I guess, compared to other games I've played.

I also felt like distance measurement was less important; moving squads for example is much more relaxed than in other games I've played. Overall the game feels more casual and new-player friendly, while still having more depth than I had expected. The game is still developing so we'll see where it goes, but I'm liking it so far.

Mercenary Leprechaun Warcaster Attachment

I've been experimenting with airbrushing lately. One of my first experiments was to put down a green basecoat on this little gobber. And for a long time that's as far as I got. Finally I decided on a whim to finish him, at which point the first thing I did was to establish new basecoat colours by hand. The original green colour was completely covered in different shades that I ended up preferring, so nothing of the original airbrush layer survived. Oh well.

Early on I was struck by this model's resemblance to the Leprechaun of horror movie fame. To be clear I've never actually seen any of the Leprechaun movies, but that's OK, I'll get around to them someday. Probably...

Anyway, a little bit of sculpting and whole lot of circle-punched plasticard and I had myself a Leprechaun standing on his precious pile of gold.

A simple but effective little conversion. I actually enjoyed the process of painting this guy more than I have with any other model in recent memory. I'm not sure why; perhaps it was a balance of experimentation (I don't have much experience with shades of green) and familiar techniques that I have grown comfortable and confident with, so it was somewhat interesting but fairly easy. It didn't hurt that the model, while varied and detailed, was quite easy to paint. Also I have a new lighting setup that's making it easier to see the fine details, so that helps.

There's a couple of mistakes and questionable colour choices, but overall I'm happy with how he turned out. I think I managed to give him a dark look, without him actually being so dark as to be hard to read from a distance under normal lighting. He's not my best work, but he's a very acceptable tabletop-level mini in my opinion.

BTW I named him Warrick. After Warrick Davis of course. Obviously.


Colours:
It felt like I used more paints than usual for this guy; or at least more than I expected to use, seeing as I had planned to give him a limited colour palette. Well, in this case at least figuring out the right colours was part of the fun.

The skin was basecoated in Vallejo 72.730 Game Air Goblin Green, washed with Citadel Shade Athonian Camoshade, then highlighted with Citadel Layer Moot Green. The teeth were just Formula P3 Menoth White Highlight. The eyes were first painted Formula P3 Morrow White, then washed in Athonian Camoshade with the rest of the skin. After this I touched up the Morrow White then painted in the tiniest dot of Vallejo 72.106 Game Color Scarlett Blood that I could. I had intended to dot the centers, but I screwed up a bit and ended up with both eyes looking off to the viewer's left (probably something to do with the angle that I hold the brush?). Luckily I screwed up by about the same amount on both eyes so they do seem to be looking in the same direction, so that's fine.

For the coat I started with the lovely but very dark Citadel Dark Angels Green, then carefully shaded the recesses only with Citadel Shade Coelia Greenshade. Unfortunately my next brightest green of the right hue was Vallejo 72.729 Game Air Sick Green, which I felt was too bright, so I reluctantly mixed it with Dark Angels Green to get a colour somewhere in the middle for the highlights.

I wanted the four-leaf clover to stand out a bit. I experimented with mixing yellow into greens to try to get a plant green, but the results felt a bit too close to the skin colour, so I settled for the beautiful but not very organic Vallejo 72.026 Game Color Jade Green. Perhaps it's not an actual four-leaf clover, but rather a jade Lucky Charm? Or is that the wrong leprechaun? I highlighted with Citadel Edge Gauss Blaster Green, but it ended up looking almost like pure white so I gave it a couple of glazes with Citadel Glaze Waywatcher Green to try to up the saturation.

The leather bits were basecoated in Vallejo 70.862 Model Color Black Grey. I applied some heavily watered down Vallejo Model Color 70.950 Black directly into a the recesses for shading, then highlighted with Vallejo 70.992 Model Color Neutral Grey.

Figuring out what colours to use for the rest of the clothes was a bit difficult; in the end I settled on a dark brown for everything as a compromise between what I saw in screenshots from the films and what would be easy to paint and fit the dark earthy colour scheme. The basecoat was Citadel Layer Doombull Brown, which was washed with Citadel Shade Agrax Earthshade before being highlighted with Citadel Layer Skrag Brown.

I made a mistake with the brass and gold, accidentally shading with Agrax Earthshade instead of the much lighter and redder Ogryn Flesh. As a result both colours came out darker than I had intended, which is especially unfortunate for the pot of gold. Well, perhaps it's better this way: I did say I wanted a dark colour scheme after all. Anyway, the gold was Citadel Layer Auric Armor Gold, washed with Agrax Earthshade, then drybrushed with Scalecolor SC-74 Elven Gold (which I think is actually less nice than Auric Armor Gold), then lightly drybrushed with Vallejo 72.052 Game Color Silver before being given a glaze of Citadel Glaze Lamenters Yellow. The brass was Citadel Layer Gehenna's Gold, Agrax Earthshade, and an edge-highlight of the Auric Armor Gold.

I basecoated the steel/silver areas in Citadel Layer Ironbreaker, applied a couple of spots of Citadel Shade Nuln Oil for shading, and then tried to highlight with Vallejo 72.052 Game Color Silver. For some reason I thought the Ironbreaker was the newer name for the old Gun Metal, but it seems to be much brighter than that; there's really no visible difference between it and the silver, meaning that the buckles are a little brighter and flatter than I had intended. Which is not a big problem, they are very small and I think it's fine for them to be a shiny silver.

I settled for blue for the telescope lenses. On the larger lens I started with The Army Painter Warpaints Electric Blue and worked my way inwards with Vallejo 72.021 Game Color Magic Blue then Vallejo 79.925 Model Color Blue. On the smaller "lens" I found any bright colours looked terrible, so I just put a dot of the dark Vallejo Model Color Blue and called it a day.


A quick note: I experimented a bit with camera settings and lighting setups to try to get good photos of this somewhat dark model. I managed to get something that, on my screen at least, looks quite close to the model itself under normal lighting, but I'm finding it really hard to get consistent results. Ah well, what can you do.

Tiny Terrasaurs

When I painted the Raptix, I used P3 paints because I only had the colours I wanted to use in P3. For the rest of the Terrasaur units that I had, I was lucky in that I already had pretty much all the colours I wanted to use in Vallejo Model Air paints, so I didn't need to worry about thinning. I guess that's why the airbrushed coats, are smoother - although there was still some degree of spotting, which is especially visible on the Spikodon.

I did like the splatter effect that I inadvertently achieved on the Raptix, so for the Elite Carnidon I tried to replicate it manually by flicking paint off a paintbrush. The resulting spots looked good, but were smaller than what I got on the Raptix. I'm not sure how to control the spot size. I also experimented with a more neutral shade for the Elite, which I think worked better with greens I was using.

 

I put more effort into the eyes this time, painting the area black first. I tried several eye colours across the models; I think the yellow worked the best simply due to being the brightest. The eyes are still hit-and-miss though; they mostly look OK on the Carnidons, but don't really work on the Brontox and are just too small to see on the Spikodon (I probably should have skipped the black outline on the Spikodon since the surrounding area is so very dark anyway).

Colours:
The Carnidons were basecoated in Vallejo 72.705 Game Air Moon Yellow, then had Vallejo 72.732 Game Air Escorpina Green airbrushed down at about 45 degrees, followed by Vallejo 72.729 Game Air Sick Green airbrushed almost straight down.

The Spikodon was also basecoated in Vallejo 72.705 Game Air Moon Yellow, with Vallejo 72.729 Game Air Sick Green airbrushed at 45 degrees and Vallejo 72.728 Game Air Dark Green airbrushed straight down.

Finally the Brontox also started with Vallejo 72.705 Game Air Moon Yellow, then had Vallejo 72.706 Game Air Sun Yellow airbrushed down from 45 degrees, then Vallejo 72.708 Game Air Orange Fire was airbrushed straight down.

The Elite Carnidon then had Vallejo 72.728 Game Air Dark Green flicked down from above with a brush, to try to get a spotted pattern.

All the models then had their teeth and claws picked out in Formula P3 Menoth White Highlight, eye outlines and pupils painted in Vallejo 70.950 Model Color Black, and Formula P3 Ryn Flesh applied inside the mouth.

For the eyes I used Vallejo 72.005 Game Color Moon Yellow, The Army Painter Warpaints Electric Blue, Citadel Edge Blue Horror, Citadel Edge Guass Blaster Green, and Citadel Layer Moot Green on different models - though I can't remember which model got which colour.

Finally all the models were dipped in Army Painter Quickshade Strong Tone shade/varnish, except the Elite Carnidon and the Spikodon, which instead got the much colder Army Painter Quickshade Dark Tone shade/varnish. Once this was dry a coat of Vallejo 26.518 Matt Acrylic Varnish was airbrushed on.

The Carnidons felt a little too big for 25mm bases, so I put them on 30mm round acrylic bases. The other two were small enough that the 25mm clear acrylic round bases felt appropriate.