Reverberating Reptiles

Look, I wanted to stick to the alliteration theme I've had going on with my Terrasaurs titles, and "Reverberating Reptiles" was the best I could come up with. You know, 'cos the bellowers attack using sound or something. DON'T JUDGE ME! Again I mainly painted these guys with an airbrush, the Terrasaurs do seem to take quite well to it. The big question here was what colours to use. I wanted them in slightly different shades from all my previous Terrasaurs, and I felt these models would look better in red/browns rather than greens.

I'd recently purchased some new browns that I hadn't tried yet, so I used some of them for the Bellowers. One got a slightly different pose, and the bumps around his head and shoulders touched up in yellow, so he could stand out a bit to serve as the Elite.

Looking up images of pteradactyls online showed they tended to be portrayed in orange-browns, which I thought looked pretty good, so I that's what I tried to go for on the Pteradactix. He's a bit of a funny model because he's so flat and horizontal, which made him hard to photograph well.

I do think the Bellowers turned out too dark; they're just not really all that visually pleasing. The gradient on the Pteradactix's wing didn't quite work as well as I'd hoped, and he would have benefitted from some more hand painting to pick out the details (as would they all to be honest), but overall I think he looks OK. Even though they were quick lazy paintjobs, I think they were still useful as they helped me with my colour sense and airbrush skills. And it's just nice to get something table-worthy out every now and again. Plus with this my Terrasaurs units are done, and I finally get to start on the big guy!


Bellowers:
I started with a basecoat of Green Stuff World 1832 Acrylic Color Redwood Brown. I airbrushed Green Stuff World 1831 Acrylic Color Choco Brown down the large scales on the back, and Formula P3 Rucksack Tan onto the belly. The claws were picked out in Formula P3 Menoth White Highlight in keeping with all the other Terrasaurs I'd painted so far, although this might have been too bright; perhaps Menoth White Base would have made more sense? The insides of the mouths were painted in Formula P3 Ryn Flesh. The eyes were first filled in with Vallejo 70.950 Model Color Black, then a spot of Vallejo 72.005 Game Color Moon Yellow was applied, and finally a tiny dot of black painted on top for the pupils. One Bellower's spots were dabbed with a light touch of Moon Yellow. The models were then dipped in Army Painter Quickshade Strong Tone shade/varnish, and the excess removed with a brush. Once dry they were airbrushed with Vallejo 26.518 Matt Acrylic Varnish. Finally they were glued onto 25mm clear bases.

Pteradactix:
The basecoat this time was Citadel Layer Skrag Brown. I airbrushed Formula P3 Rucksack Tan onto the belly, then Vallejo 72.707 Game Air Gold Yellow onto the wing membranes, trying to maintain a gradient from the edges to the "arms". The eyes, mouth, and claws were painted in the same way as the Bellowers, then he was similarly dipped and varnished. Covering a much larger area than the Bellowers, the Pteradactix received a 30mm clear base.

Tiny Giant Robots

Finally finished painting my third G.U.A.R.D. unit pack. The MR-Tank was fine, I just used the same basic colours as my G-Tanks but with a slightly different brown to help it stand out a little on the tabletop. I didn't really put much effort into deciding which bits would be which colour. I think it turned out OK, but the lighter brown of the G-Tanks was nicer.

I did the same with the Exo-Armours, but this time instead of going too dark with the brown I went too light. One model got a few more areas picked out in brass than the rest, to act as the Elite.

The Exo-Armours actually took me three times to get right good-enough-ish. The first time I painted them I used three shades of metallic paint to get a zenithal-style steel basecoat, then tried to block out some parts with masking fluid before airbrushing the rest with purple (I tried three models with a purple glaze and one with a thin layer of metallic purple; the glaze looked better). However I didn't like working with the masking fluid as it wouldn't go where I wanted it. So I tried multiple layers of watered-down PVA instead, hoping that would allow me to apply it in a controlled way but dissolve in water later. Unfortunately the PVA would not seem to dissolve, so I ended up having to strip the models. Then I tried again, applying the purple glaze by hand, but this time I abandonded the idea because I decided I didn't like how it looked after all. I did briefly paint one in a very simple primary colour scheme as a demonstration:

Finally I decided to stick with my existing military brown scheme, and just airbrushed over them all without bothering to strip them - something I would never do with models that I actually cared about. This time I used Army Painter Quickshade Dip instead of the wash I had used before; I find it works better on more organic shapes, so I thought it might be better for the smooth and curved armour on these guys. Also it saved me a varnish step, and I was so eager to be done with them that skipping a single small step was very appealing. I did use my usual matt varnish, but airbrushed it on in a different way than I usually do, and I actually think that effected the results; it actually looks slightly cloudy to me, especially on the metals. It's not a big deal, especially not on this lot, but I think I'll be sticking with my old method from now on.


MR-Tank:
I airbrushed on a basecoat of Vallejo 71.287 Model Air Ija Kakhi Brown, then picked out areas in brass and steel (Citadel Base Leadbelcher, but I don't remember which brass I used; it might actually have been Vallejo 71.068 Model Air Metallic Copper). After a coat of Army Painter Quickshade Soft Tone Wash, I picked out the lights in Vallejo 72.005 Game Color Moon Yellow with a dot of Formule P3 Morrow White.

Exo-Armours:
This time I airbrushed a basecoat of Vallejo 71.122 Model Air US Desert Armour 686. Again I used Leadbelcher, but this time I used my old Citadel Layer Gehenna's Gold for the brass. I dipped them in Army Painter Quickshade Dip Strong Tone, and finally painted Moon Yellow with a dot of Morrow White in the visors.


Honestly, they all look OK, but not great. I don't really like the whole "mini giant robot" thing in Monsterpocalypse to begin with, so I wasn't all that invested in painting them and was mainly using them as an excercise in speed painting. Which was technically a failure what with the whole "painting them three times" thing, but I guess the final paint job was much faster than I usually paint humanoid minis in this scale, so that's OK I suppose. Whatever, I'm just glad they're done. With this I technically (finally) have a single fully-painted minimum-sized Monpoc faction. Now I just need to paint five more dinos and Terra Khan and I'll finally have enough models ready to play a minimum-sized game...

Orsus The Unhinged

This was my first game of Warmachine in almost exactly a year. I had recently put together a Butcher proxy and have been thinking about Butcher jank, which led me to this list:
Butcher 2
- Kodiak
- Destroyer
- Sylyss
Greylord Forge Seer
- Decimator
Nyss Hunters
Alexia and the Risen

Speedy had not been feeling his Protectorate army, so I suggested trying Vlad1. After all, he's powerful but straight-forwards and just makes his whole army better. So I wrote this list for him:
Vlad 1
- Spriggan
- Juggernaut
- Berserker
- Greylord Adjunct
Kayazy Eliminators (proxied)
Doomreaver Swordsmen
Croe's Cutthroats
- Valachev

Admittedly my list building was constrained by my model selection, but I think both lists did what I had in mind for them. The Butcher's was about efficient jacks and independent infantry who could power his feat, with the Forgeseer and marshaled jack to help reduce the focus burden. Vlad's list was full of melee jacks that would love his feat, and generally just Friendly Faction models that could take advantage of Signs and Portents. I considered the Grolar over the Spriggan, but decided that the Spriggan's 2" melee would be useful to have. The Berserker filled out the points, and is actually a decent jack under V1.


Pre-Game:
I forgot the rulebook so we just put a zone in the center and called it good. I also seemed to have misplaced my forests, so we just said that the water and hills were both forests (since hills aren't in the game anymore and water is annoying). Speedy won the roll and chose to go second.


Deployment:
I set up my two-line "kill the Risen first" infantry formation on my left, with the Butcher in the middle and his jacks on my right. Speedy deployed his infatry on my right and his jacks on my left.

Round 1:
I put Fury on the Kodiak and advanced into the zone.

Speedy walked and Zephyred the Cutthroats up to start shooting at Butcher. With Signs and Portents they managed to get 5 damage onto him. Which I should have prevented using focus since I wasn't doing anything else with it, but I forgot. The big issue though was that Croe himself managed to tag Butcher and Silence him, so I wouldn't be able to cast spells next turn. The rest of his army advanced slowly.

Round 2:
Butcher rolled a 1 for his focus, big surprise. I was originally expecting my jacks to clash with Speedy's, and likewise for the infantry to face off, but his battlegroup were too far away and his infantry were right there, so I adjusted my plan slightly and started softening up his jacks with my Nyss and Destroyer shooting, while putting the Kodiak into his Cutthroats. The Risen continued to form a flimsy wall.

The Eliminators charged into the Kodiak, doing a decent bit of damage then side-stepping towards the rest of my battlegroup. The Cutthroats continued to focus on Butcher, although they didn't silence him this time. The warjacks started thinning out my Risen - although the Berserker wasn't in range and had to run to engage.

Round 3:
Unlike last my last turn, Butcher started by rolling a 1 for focus. Oh, sorry, did I say "unlike"? I meant "just like". I sent him in to kill the Eliminators; it cost him a focus but he took them down and alongside a Cutthroat and a Risen. Because his final kill was a friendly model, he didn't trigger Homicidal Maniac and couldn't try to pac-man his way through the Cutthroats. I'm not sure I would have wanted him to anyway tbh; he was already very exposed. Which I tried to remedy by moving some Nyss Hunters and Risen in front. I would have liked to run the Decimator to shield him but couldn't get him into a really good position. The Nyss Hunters didn't have much to shoot at so they tried to ping the Spriggan - who's shield had just been crippled by the Destroyer - but only really managed to kill a couple of Risen. Alexia created a Thrall next to the Berserker, but he didn't do very much. The Kodiak killed a couple more Cutthroats. Finally the Forgeseer ran to try to keep up.

The Berserker was allocated two focus, and the Juggernaut was allocated one. The Cutthroats shot at Butcher again, silencing him once more. The Adjunct put a bit of damage onto the Kodiak and Decimator, then the Doomreavers charged the Kodiak and killed him (and only one Doomreaver was killed by his fellows in the process!). The Berserker trampled over my units, taking some damage from the Thrall free strike but killing a couple of Risen. He then bought attacks to kill Alexia, Sylyss, and I think a Nyss Hunter. His job done, he considered blowing up but didn't. The Spriggan walked up and used Bulldoze and his grenades to help clear out the Nyss Hunters to create a path for the Juggernaut. He also worked through Butcher's focus and dropped him down to 5 health. Finally the Juggernaut walked up and perfectly dropped Butcher with a single left jab; he didn't even need to use his three Ice Axe attacks.

Post-Mortem:
Man, it was nice to get to play Warmachine again! I was really missing it. I was pretty rusty, but at least I remembered most of the base rules, that's something. My original plan had been to send my jacks into Speedy's, but his deployment and the way the infantry ended up running ahead into the center of the table meant that I never had a clear line. I shoud probably have commit my jacks to go after his infantry, but between the lack of focus my inability to even cast spells most of the time, it didn't feel like that would have done all that much anyway. I wasn't really sure what to do with this Butcher; his rules seems to be designed around him doing infantry killing duty himself (hell, he needs to just to be able to proc his battlegroup buffs), however seeing as he's the least survivable Butcher ever I feel like you don't want to be too agressive with him. Also I momentarily forgot that his Mk3 feat does not let you run and then attack the way his Mk2 feat did. He probably wants a jack with 2" melee to make the most of Ravager, and of course for the threat range... yeah, he wants Ruin. Well, that would help, I still don't know how I would play him. Maybe I'll try him again. Maybe.

Massively Modular Metal Marcher's Mech

I finally painted the Dusk Wolf from the Marcher World's starter. I used the exact same paint scheme and colours that I used for the rest of my Marcher Worlds models, picking out the areas that I felt made sense to apply a glow to. However, I don't think it worked as well for this model. Perhaps part of the issue was that I painted the parts first and then the body, so I didn't have a cohesive idea of how the assembled model would look and exactly where all the glows would be while painting (in fact I had to go back and apply the glow to the conduit on the head, as I didn't realise it was a conduit while I was painting it).

Honetly, I'm not really too happy with how this model turned out. Perhaps my monochromatic base colour scheme doesn't really suit Warcaster: Neo Mechanica warjacks? I only magnetised and painted the options that came with the starter (and mine was missing one of the head options); there's actually three more heads and some weapon options sitting around waiting to be dealt with. But I found that magnetising the W:NM warjacks to be much more difficult than it needed to be, if only PP had just made some very small tweaks to the attachment. So I don't know when I'll get around to magnetising the rest of the options, or even assembling the Strike Raptor. I might not even magnetise the Strike Raptor? I dunno, we'll see.

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.