Random Game photos from Canadian Open weekend

As is usual the weekend of the Canadian Open, a lot of buddies crash at my place and Friday/Saturday night are given over to playing other board and card games.  In addition to the below we also played some Dominion and lots of the Resistance.

Castles of Mad King Ludwig

Was happy to get a run out for my Space Hulk set.  Playing with fully painted figs really makes it a gorgeous game. We had a player each for the terminator squads and two guys play genestealers.

Space Hulk board

fancy edited photo

less fancy but still edited photo

Finally got a game of deadzone in against Dan who pledged into the kickstarter but hasn't had a game yet. He played enforcers with some proxy marines of mine and I played with my painted marauders.

He caught onto the rules pretty quick (those short/long action flowcharts really help) and due to some epic poor rolling from my goblin sniper (3 successes on 9 dice! TWICE) and a mistake I made with my mawbeast (not enraged before attacking) I lost the chance to really hurt his team, and once he figured out the differences between shoot and blaze he was much more effective in his decisions - he smoked me 11VP or something to 0.

bit fuzzy

much clearer

Hope you enjoy the photos.  This is one of my favourite parts about the tournament as I get to play a bunch of games as well :)

Deadzone Marauders - 4 more figures complete

Most of the base coating for these figures was done last year, but finally towards February of this year I began having an itch to paint again so I got them finished up. This represents 5 painting points (2 for the captain, 1 for each of the others) the captain has some significant highlights compared to the commandos, and the sniper has some extra detailing to make his cloak look like it was selected to match my deadzone terrain (unlike their generic strike team camouflage)

Commando Captain

I had to add a piece of terrain snipped off a door underneath his right foot to keep him balanced on the clear base.  The dullcote didn't seem to do as good a job on these guys I may try to protect the clear base and give them another spritz.

Commando with 2 guns

Love this guys head with the skull plate, the two guns do nothing in game terms he just looks bad ass. He's got long sleeves so not much skin, but I stuck with doing highlights using yellow directly on the goblin green skin and it works great IMO.

Commando

Gave this guy a simple head swap so he doesn't quite match the last one done using this body.

Goblin Sniper

Do like these guys, they are potentially powerful in the game but very unreliable due to their poor shooting skill.  Was pretty happy with how the cloak came out so it looks like he equipped himself for my terrain.

Between the last four and these four I have enough for a legit strike team while adding a few things like extra ammo, etc.  I will probably continue to try and paint up more of these guys in batches of four until they are all finished rather than switching gears to other factions.  I have another commando, another mawbeast, some more snipers and the pyro still to go.  Was planning to try and pick up an old AoBR ork warboss from the old GW 40K box since I like it better than the marauder warlord figure.

deadzone "rainmaker" ripper suit

Finally got back into the groove on this guy. Missing the shoulder gun during assembly really annoyed me about the whole thing. There is lots of fiddly details but I kept it pretty tabletop so left a lot of that detail to "come out in the wash" (hahaha).

view from right

I used the nihilakh oxide technical paint to give the tin weapons a verdigris look,which I particularly like on these hulking monstrosities. I combined that with the same coal black + drybrush silver for his weapons. I stole the red/yellow/green power bar for his laser weapon from someone I saw online.

view from left

I also decided to spread around the resin scenery that comes with the plague stage 2As. Why are they the only one's to get some? It definitely will tie in with my scenery.

deadzone mawbeast

Sorry for the crappy pics - I just can't be arsed to spend any time getting nicer photos when I know how easy it will be once my FOLDIO shows up. I've finished up the first mawbeast, taking the advice of my man Axtlinge from Merry Mayhem News & NABBO league fame - and mimicking a "paroedura bastardi" gecko pattern on his fur using the same camouflage colours as the other marauders. I tried building a little "stamping tool" using some pluck foam bits. Unfortunately it was just too big to use on the mawbeasts fur as you can see below.

What I ended up doing instead is making a couple much smaller individual stamps and just doing the pattern manually. I used a dark grey instead of black but the red I kept the same. I used the same coal black I painted the commandos rifles for his nose and used iyanden darksun for his mane & tail. Any metallics are the same as well. A couple watered down coats of devlan mud followed and I am pretty happy with the result.

Did a quick "gem" job on his cybernetic eye and the usual clear acrylic base. When trying to glue him on the first time I accidentally spread the two part epoxy all over and was quite annoyed as I thought I'd ruined the base. However I found out that if you are quick enough and it hasn't set - it is quite easy to wipe the base completely clean with nothing but a paper towel. So a second try later and I had him glued to the same base. Score!

Next up is the first ripper suit. I have been delayed painting this guy because without any assembly instructions I ended up missing a gun piece that is supposed to mount on his backpack. In doing so I put a little accessory right in the way so I've had to do some cutting and chopping to get it to fit and that part isn't primed. Still I intend to get started on him - what are peoples thoughts for his scheme? Should I follow the same simple camo scheme on the marauders or maybe use the bigger stamping tool I couldn't use on the mawbeast? This is what the suit looks like - he is plenty big and will be the first to go on a 40mm clear acrylic base.

second marauder commando

Just a quick one today to show off the second marauder I've finished. That's half of the first four figures I've put together. I hope this camo scheme works well on the ripper suit. Tried to keep the palette very limited.

I would also love some suggestions for paint scheme for the mawbeast I've assembled in this post. I decided instead of using some green stuff to cover up the miscast bomb, I cut the bomb part off anyways since they haven't made a bomb-less mawbeast yet.

first deadzone figure finished - marauder commando

This guy is from the "Marauder Extra 1" bag and is the only piece it contains. I think somehow I ended up with an extra of these guys, though it's hard to tell. I have another commando pose with most of the basecoats done and that should be my next completed deadzone fig. I chose a very "GW 40K Blood Axe Ork" scheme using grey's and a bit of camo. The battle gear these guys have along with all the packs and pouches reminded me very much of the blood axes.

base? what base?

Tested out a couple "tricks" on this figure. One is the manner in which I highlighted his flesh. Everyone knows yellow is a hard colour to get good coverage with, so for a test I tried highlighting his flesh with yellow straight from the pot (it was a P3 yellow, but quite bright) meaning a thin coat did a great job of lightening the goblin green colour and it was much quicker than having to mix a highlight tone. It may be hard to tell from these photos but I was very happy with the result. If anyone cares I can try to take some in progress pics.

on table

on scenery

Trick number two was attempting to use a dip/stain to handle shading.  I mixed up a tiny bit of wood stain with a bunch of water in a paint pot and tried applying it with a piece of foam. It ended up being way to dark and I'm not sure why.  I used the same stain as on my Pit Slaves and just dabbed it on. Perhaps the base colours just don't work as well or maybe I just did not use enough water in the mix. I will have to check out the army painter dips at some point but I managed to clean most of it off with water and a toothbrush. There are bits left which actually just look like dirt & grime so I will probably use a touch of it on every fig in opportune places.

on table

on scenery

The final trick is obviously the clear acrylic base from litko bases (picked up on boxing day sale from the FLGS meeplemart's online shop) It's an interesting concept to avoid the need to paint any bases and pretty much just match whatever scenery you are playing on. At first I was very "gung-ho" to put all the deadzone figures on these bases - but I think I may backtrack from that a bit. While cool when on the scenery it does detract a bit from the figure when just on the table. The plague faction will definitely get them since they have scenery bits as part of the figures and I intend to paint them the same as my terrain. Having second thoughts for the enforcer and rebs factions though. Might use them for a necromunda gang in the future and definitely will be using them for a blood bowl team. Hope everyone likes the "edited & effects" photo at the top of the post - I used some control points in google+ image editor to fade out the base as much as possible, then used some visual effects similar to the space hulk photos I posted earlier this year. It's a bit obvious from the fading but I thought it was fun.

mantic deadzone figures - quick review of assembly, quality, mold lines & flash

After getting started on the deadzone terrain, I put the plague faction on the shelf since my plans for painting them involve staining methods and will benefit greatly from a batch approach. Don't quite have the cycles for that at the moment - so I've decided to have a quick go at the marauders since I will probably use a more standard paint method for them and therefore doing a few pieces at at time should not cause a great variation in their appearance.

Lots of rumblings online about the quality of the figures and the difficulty of working with the restic material. Here are my thoughts and a bunch of pics. There is a good degree of detail on the figures - they look really good painted up and that after all is the end goal. Getting there is the issue.  A quick caveat that it seems some factions/figures are better/worse than others - so expect some variation.

First up lets have a look at a couple commandos.  I think there are 3 poses (only 2 in these pics), and I don't really see much capability for converting these particular figures amongst themselves for variation. Perhaps if you include the flame thrower guy you could do a bit of mixing with the model that has both arms attached to the weapon. The running commando is 4 pieces and had a fair amount of mold lines all over - including right through his face?!?!  Definitely a strange one.  The commando at attention was probably the best of these four figures for mold lines.  Easiest to clean areas and some cunningly concealed (practically the opposite of the running figure)

running commando - see where his arm was glued I felt needed some filler

running commando - strange that they have a mold line running through his face

commando at attention - some filler required for his right arm socket

Next up is the mawbeast - or chainsaw dog as some people are calling it. It's funny I dislike GWs cartoony orcs in their fantasy game, but always found it suited the rogue trader universe (aka pre grim-dark) quite well. The above orcs are very reminiscent and this guy fits right in.  The detail is not as nice as on the orcs - his chainsaw tongue's "teeth" aren't very crisp and neither are his feet/toes. I found he required a lot of filling between where the two pieces go together. This may just be me, but I found the gap between the bomb belt and his hindquarters to be very obvious and didn't like it, so I've used a couple rounds of liquid green stuff to fill it. He also has a LOT of mold lines and some like around the tail are easy to clean and some on his legs and feet are very difficult and will probably require further cleaning after a coat of primer. Also you'll notice his bomb is actually miscast I am going to have to sculpt some extra fur over it to cover the blemish (third pic) which is probably not that much difficult from finecast (which when it sucks - it SUCKS)

mawbeast - look at all the mold lines I've had trouble cleaning on his legs

mawbeast - this shows more mold lines and the huge gap between pieces

mawbeast - a huge chunk of the bomb is missing behind his fur

Finally we come to one of the rippers. I would have included a goblin sniper in this review, but both of mine's rifles bent quite badly due to a lack of packaging/protection in my shipment. I would put the ripper between the commandos and the mawbeast. His legs had quite a bit of mold lines and were difficult to remove without damaging the details. Both arms required some minor filler to look good, but this was due to the ability to choose which arms to use with which ripper, giving you the ability for some variety which is nice. His fingers also had tons of flash which was difficult to remove and the mold lines on his head ran all the way around his jaw. I think they tried to conceal it via his mouth line but in my eyes it failed.

ripper - filler was required between both arms & body, see mold lines too

ripper - filler was required between both arms & body

ripper - flashing on legs was minute, but difficult to remove without damage

I fully understand why folks are annoyed.  It is a lot of work to do a GOOD job of cleaning up the figures - if you are someone who doesn't usually bother removing mold lines or only cares to remove one's that will be obvious once painted then these figures are extremely good value. For anyone like me who prefers to do a really good job the amount of effort does add up and reduces the value somewhat since I would still rate it much tougher to clean than plastic, or even metal depending on the metal sculpt.  Still for the price they are good value and I'm looking forward to painting these guys up.