Wizkids Paint Night Models Review

 Hello hobbie fans!

Sorry for the hiatus. It's 2020 (a lame excuse but one that cannot be argued against). Also, part of the reason for the delay is that I promised that the next post would be a review on the Wizkid's Paint Night Manticore model. Wow...so it was months ago that I picked it up and was at the time, really impressed with the kit. A nice model, 12 paints...all for $20. Well, since that time I also picked up the Ogre Zombie paint night model. So lets review.

Let us talk about the contents. One decent plastic manticore model appropriately sized and based for D&D. It also comes with a round plastic base to put it on. Then there are 12 small paint pots with themed colors of vallejo paints, two brushes, a water pot (with lid!) and even mixing areas in the plastic holder. 

Wow...very impressed with this. Honestly, the two brushes are decent, the closable water pot is nice, and they even put mixing areas on the plastic frame. All of this for $20? wow..color me impressed. Since I now owned two kits, my wife and I sat down for a date night paint night.

The above photo was taken probably around 30min to an hour in to the painting. My wife was actually watching a video on how to do the manticore, while I just dove in on the zombie. We both stuck with the paints in the kit, although she did grab some extra brushes.

Lets talk paints. For the most part, they work well. Good coverage. If anything, you need to water them down a little. Besides the paints, they also come with washes as well. The zombie kit comes with three washes and nine paints. I think the maticore had two washes and ten paints. Not 100% sure on that...

If there is a complaint to fit in here, I'd say it was the limited pallet. Some of the colors were very close to each other which I think they could have just had the darker ones and then let us lighten then up as needed with the white. However, the pallet was good enough to paint the whole model and keep mixing to a minimum if desired, which is not a bad way to go with a paint kit.

In the end though, really happy with how they turned out and my wife was really thrilled to spend time together that did not involve a TV screen.

My wife was not a fan of the wings. She let me play around with it a bit and I did some light shading with a water downed dark wash to add just a bit more depth. But again, I think had they included a different color for the wings, that might have helped. The manticore really did seem to be all neutral tones.

I liked the way the zombie came out. Same kind of thing, I had to go back with a few extra dark washes to really bring some depth to the model, but all in all, very pleased. Total paint time was probably about three hours with dry time added in at various stages. I would have loved a nice grey color to use for the bandages and such, as the light tones really blend together. I suppose I could have used the same fur brown color again, but wanted to try to use as many of the colors as I could.

I would actually suggest grabbing some other models to paint at the same time as these. Most of the time, I was able to close the lid on the paints and get a good seal, but a few times the paints got on the edge of the lid or pot and I know will cause them to dry out sooner. There was lots of paint left over. So really, no reason not to bang out several models to get the most out of these colors.

All I know is that I'll be picking up the next paint night model when it is released. These are fun, don't require a whole lot of planning, and produce some nice results.

These are also perfect for teaching someone about model painting too. One kit has everything they need. Good job Wizkids.

Hopefully this has inspired my wife and I to do more painting during this crappy pandemic and you might see more work done on my chaos marines. Until next time...

Welcome to the battlefield

 Hail and well met! (sniff...miss EQ)

Well howdy gentle readers. How are you? I'm not doing too badly. I know this update was supposed to showcase the new Paint Night Manticore model from Wizkids. That will be coming up, but instead today I wanted to show you what happens when a grown man gets obsessed with an idea.

So last update, I shared a review of the new command terrain expansion from GW. I was pretty impressed with it. So much so, I went a little crazy. I immediately went out and got myself another one. Also, as I recall, I talked about how the new bigger terrain set looked like a good deal too. Well, so I went and got one of those as well. Upon further reflection, I realized that was a lot of the same type of terrain. So to mix it up a bit, I went to old ebay and found myself a nice mechanicus set from Kill Zone. The results speak for themselves.

You'll have to excuse the poor photography, I'm still trying to figure some of this stuff out. With the flash, this is what the table looked like. Lets talk terrain. All of the terrain from the new box sets are snap together. None of that terrain is glued at all. The mechanicus stuff did require some glue, but more on that later.

Oh, and pardon the mess of my basement. The last few years we really haven't been using it much and it sort of became a storage area. I cleared space off my table to be able to set this up. Back to the table. 

As you can see, pretty darn good coverage. The lighter grey terrain seems to be the mechanicus stuff. The aesthetics with the newer stuff fit right in. The mechanicus stuff, while not snap together, does have some modularity to it. The platforms use a peg system and thus you can really go to town with how you decide to lay them out. I thought that was pretty cool. So in terms of space, you can break down 90% of this terrain for easy storage.

Ugh, that flash was not helping. So I turned that puppy off.

Oh, I should point out that from the new Vertigus set, one piece is not push to fit. See that structure in the top corner...that had to be glued. Seemed a bit odd to me that they would include a piece like that. But not complaining...more terrain is more terrain.

All told, with online discounts and the like, this setup came to about $400 which is the most I have spent on GW in quite some time. That being said, I'm really pleased with the purchase. I own a few battlefield mats already, so I wasn't sure about the cardboard mats, but honestly, I like them. Two sided, so I can either go Mars red or a dark grey. The dimensions are GW's minimum specs so it is really easy for me to lay out a field for any size game. 

Another thing to mention is that the mats in Vertigus are different from the command expansion. The command expansion basically fit down to 8x11 or close to it. The Vertigus are more like 8x22, or 16x11...basically, due to the larger box size, they made less folds. So while they won't fit in your backpack as nicely, less folds looks nicer on the table.

Okay, so now I gotta paint this crap. Thankfully I own an airbrush, so fingers crossed, it won't take too long. Not that its high on my priority right now, not like I'll have anyone over for a game anytime soon.

Okay, so nice time, manticore. Promise.

GW's 40K Command Edition Terrain Review

 

Morning everyone,

So this weekend I was feeling a little down and decided I needed some retail therapy. So I headed down to GG and just started browsing. Now normally I am not a browser. I figure out what I want to buy after hours of research and consideration. So just heading into a store with no idea of what I want to get is not something I normally do. I found myself in the 40K section looking around and my eyes descended onto the Command Edition terrain expansion. A good amount of terrain and a battle board for $90.  Considering some of the terrain prices I see from GW..this looked fairly decent. Plus, I'd be supporting my local game store. So what the heck, I picked it up and bought it.

Now I get home and immediately stuff it in my Terrain area (don't judge me). That said, my curiosity was nagging away at me so a few hours later I pulled it out and opened that puppy up (it went to the terrain area because I'm not planning on playing 40K any time soon with Covid roaming about). First off, the terrain is all snap to fit! Sweet. Any time I can avoid glue, the better. So clippers in hand and an exacto knife for clean up, I began building. Took maybe 20min of time and the whole set was assembled. There is maybe one piece that I will go back and use glue on, but the rest...no reason. It is all stable as is. I then popped out the battle board. Time will tell how durable it is. The cardboard itself is fairly thick, I'm a bit worried about the joints lasting. But at least so far, looks okay. The two sides are a nice urban dark grey, or a mars red. Both useful for 40K. The terrain pretty much covers the board too. All in all, pretty sweet.

Then it hit me, wait a minute...I need two of these boards. Some quick research and I figured out why GW put out this box...it is for people who bought one of the new starters. Those all come with a battle board. Add in the contents of this box, and you have a minimum size play area and a good deal of terrain to go on it. But I didn't buy one of those. I got the indomitus set...which didn't come with a battle board. No worries, I can just buy battleboards...in a two pack...which still leaves me with an odd board. Dang it.

So I immediately went to ebay...surely I could find a battle board there. And I did..for the tune of $27. Screw that nonsense...GW asks 2 for $50. Hmmmm, a few more google searches later and I come up empty. I mull over it for a while and eventually come back to the computer to research some more. I start looking at the terrain again and the boards and look at GW's pricing. What I discover is that this is a really sweet set.  For the money, it is definitely one of the best buys from GW. Assuming $25 for the board, that leaves all that terrain for $65...which is more terrain than you get for GW's $60 set. So now I go back to ebay to see what kind of pricing I can get for this set there. $76 with free shipping was the best I found so far. Again...really good. However, my search also brought up GW's Command Set starter. Same terrain, plus necrons and marines. Ebay you can find it for $133. I nearly jumped on that. The one thing that stopped me...the terrain board. Apparently one side of the terrain board has markers in it, A thru E. I'm sure its for some scenarios in the starter...but for me..I didn't want a board with markers on it..plus, I didn't need the models. That said, if those don't bother you..that is an excellent set for the money.

So instead I grabbed another terrain expansion. This way I'll have more terrain and another battleboard. And that is about the best thing I can say about it...so good I bought it twice. The terrain is excellent. Each piece seems to be pretty durable, and still look really good. Easy to put together too. And the battle board means this is pretty much a must-buy if you already own one of the new starter sets.

By the way, GW has another terrain set on pre-order called Vertigus. It is $150. It comes with two battle boards and a bit more terrain. I would also put this as a good buy and might pick it up myself. That would give me a full sized board with four mats and a few different pieces to add. I would recommend this to anyone who got indomitus. Had I done my research, I probably would have skipped the Command edition and just waited for that. That being said, I don't regret my purchase at all. It was still a good buy. It is nice that GW is tossing out good options for people no matter how you got into 9th edition.

Up next, a review of Wizkids Manitcore set. Until then....

Quick Update

Hey All,

Been a crazy few weeks. Myself and my family are staying healthy <knock on wood> and just trying to navigate this twisty curvy race that is life right now. I could probably be doing more with my hobby stuff, but what can I say? I doing some stuff though. 

So first off, did a little more painting. So before I did that black orc test model...now it really wasn't for black orcs, it was to test out a technique for my wife to use with her Sisters of Battle army. Well then GW went and released some new paints and wanted to give them a try. So I painted up another one.

So here is Mr. Black Orc from last time. Used leadbelcher primer and then wildwood contrast over the armor to dirty it up. Well then I tried out the new brass color from GW.

Oh, I also got a new camera and am trying to work it out on how best to use it, so if these photos aren't great, hopefully they will get better in time. Hmmm, maybe a back shot would work better....

And then here is a back shot of the leadbelcher for comparison...

So you can see, not so dark. Now originally, after using the same technique basically on both, just applying a different base coat, the new brass was pretty bright. I then had to go an extra step of doing nuln oil over the armor. That helped to darken it and really bring out the depth. In the end, my wife chose the new brass base with the extra step. And currently three sisters are primed and ready for some paint. However, she needs to figure out the other colors she wants to use first. So if you have any suggestions, feel free to post them in the comments. 

The overall look she is going for are sisters that have been through the wringer but are still fighting strong, So nothing too bright or clean. Oh, I should also mention that blogger just went through an update and changed the way you make posts...so the images might be a little different from before. Please compare to previous posts and see if there is a major difference.

So other than helping my wife, I've been getting ready for a college reunion trip. Can't wait. A whole week of gaming with friends of over twenty years. Nerdvana. 

Hope everyone out there stays safe, please wear a mask in public, and wash your hands frequently. Until next time...

 

Captain, there be paint off the starboard bow!

Welcome back sports fans! Two posts on a month!?! Well maybe..I didn't actually check when I last posted. But really, who cares? I put paint on model! That's right beyotch (apologies to whoever still says that).

So lets get to it. If this model seems out from left field...well that is because it is. You see my wife and I sat down to figure out what color scheme she wanted for her sisters. That led to a few paint purchases and then doing a test model. Since I didn't want to test on one of her very limited sister models, I choose and old metal black orc. I felt the detail would be similar.

Even I have to admit, after seeing these photos...damn..that looks cool. She wanted to go with a very dirty metallic/bronze coloring and damn if this didn't nail it. That guy looks like he just crawled out of the blood and mud.

Best part, this was super easy to do. We primed with leadbelcher, then went over with wyldwood contrast. I think did a little bit of gunmetal drybrushing over the chainmail and some plate edges. Skin was done with goblin green and then ork flesh contrast over the top. Then I picked out a few details here and there.

Lets see...oh yeah, I've expanded my Gloomspite army, and I think I may have gone a little overboard...

Meh. Like you can have too many gobbos...said no one ever. I'm actually working on putting together the big spider thing too...and I want another one! If you have a sickness and you know it, clap your hands! CLAP CLAP.

Oh, and then to finish the day, I have this silly picture:

Worst kit-bashed lascannon ever!

Okay, so that's it for this post. Looking forward to some of those new paints from GW next week and will get my Indomitus set. So yay! gotta go pick up some more gel glue. Until next time.

Okay...now I'm done.

Hail and Well Met! #EQLife

Okay, so trying to get better at doing more updates. This one is pretty small. Now I'm finally done with my CSM. I hope. I finally finished putting together all of my chaos models (except for a few from the blackstone fortress game, but those were maybes in the first place). However, I did end up buying a few impulsive models. I snagged a forgefiend from my crack dealers at Mindtaker Minis. And then they also sold me a Chaos Knight. How could I not? Have you seen those things? The other assemblage I got done was a unit of CSM and Havocs. I now have more than enough to field the style of CSM army I want to. Yay! Just gotta get back to painting. Well...priming first, then painting.

I also supported my local brick and mortar with picking up a few GW paints (holy crap! 4 bottles, $24!) and a nice fall woods terrain piece from Galeforce 9. Yay for retail therapy.

Now the bigger news, is the fact that my lovely wife has started to assemble her Sisters army. And yes, she is doing it all. I'm there for moral support and the occasional fiddly bit help...but that's it.

First off, the models are just beautiful. There is simply no doubt that GW has really hit their stride with producing amazing plastic models. Who cares if they are mono-pose? For sets like these...they are just lovely.

The hope is, she'll get these models all built in time for the new 40K edition and then we can both learn to play (which is supposed to be smaller army friendly).

Also been messing around with the contrast paints a little more. Just a little experiments here and there. Gotta say, they aren't great for everything...but damn, I wish they had been out when I was playing Warhammer Fantasy Battle. They would have made some of my armies so much easier to paint.

This lovely old model got to be one of my experiments. Not bad actually. There lots of details to have to pick up and stand out for him to be done, but this literally took <5min to paint? There are issues if you are sloppy with the contrast. Not quite sure how to clean that up without simply painting white over any mistakes and then reapplying. But that stone color looks amazing and has me thinking about drybrushing white over the top to get some great looking black-lining done.

Hmmmm, you know, looking at that model up on the blog really helps me see so much more detail. I might have to do this with other projects as a nice reference to make sure I don't miss them. Maybe I should finish this guy....

Anyways. That's about it. Just hanging in there for the most part, and thankfully I have hobbies that don't require me to go out much. Stay safe, wear a freaking mask in public, and see you next time.

The Rising Tide of Chaos

Hello Sports fans!

First up....I have pictures! Yeah I know, who knew? So they aren't great pictures...but there are at least pictures. So lets bang those out to get them out of the way.

Here is my chaos army as it stands. I've been assembling of late during Covid-19 hence the new grey stuff. Starting with the top left and going across...
5 shiny new Havocs

5 shiny new Warp Talons

Then right below the Havocs are 5 new Terminators

Then a new Chaos Lord and a couple of chaos marines from the Blackstone Fortress set.

After the stuff you have already seen...I have a bunch of chaos cultists (also Blackstone)

The Lord Discordant

and lastly, a Chaos Rhino

The army is pretty close to being done. I have sitting in the wings, 10 more chaos marines and 5 more havocs. Not only that, but I have a nice small Slaanesh deamon force as well to compliment them. But damn..those are seriously sexy models...for plastic models that is....you know what I mean.

I think this is how the distribution currently sits:

HQ: Chaos Lord, Lord Discordant, Master of Possession, Warpsmith, Chaos Terminator Lord (or sorc lord in term armor..not sure yet..he's unbuilt).

Troops: 22 chaos marines, 23-26 chaos cultists

Transport: chaos rhino

Elite: 2 greater possessed, 5 terminators

Fast: 5 warp talons

Heavy Support: 2 venom crawlers, 10 havocs, 2 obliterators

Of course this whole plan has probably gotten shot to hell with the new 9th edition of 40K about to drop. But that is okay. From reports, the units are getting more expensive, so in theory, I'll actually need less guys to play the same amount of points. Not a bad thing in my mind. There is already so much to keep track of...no problem at all shrinking the armies down.

Of course that great feeling I used to have of "hey look, almost done painting my chaos models..." has just completely been blown to shit. But I knew the growth was going to happen..so not horrid really. Oh, and speaking of that, I actually did put down a little paint recently. I picked up a few more contrast colors and tried them out on the Slaanesh deamons to see how it would turn out. No picture yet...but maybe I'll toss one up later. They were just test runs, but wasn't too horrified by the results...especially for the amount of time and effort put in.

The best part is that I'm enjoying playing with my stuff again and getting excited about making progress. Expect to see more white primer on those plastic models soon and hopefully a few other colors tossed in.

Oh, as to that, I also stripped the Master of Possession. That was just not turning out well. He looked like a model that the Joker would paint. So back to the drawing board for him. Luckily Krudd Kutter did the job and no harm came to the model. Just need to reprime and start over.

And as to the impending 9th edition. Looking forward to it. Seems they brought it in a direction that makes it easier for me to play and I'm all for that. I don't need overly complicated or trying to juggle 12 balls in the air at once. Let me push models, roll dice, and I'll be happy.

That's it for now. Check in later as I'm sure I'll add another update in the future. Most likely. Maybe. You can't pin me down on stuff like this.

It's not a tumor...

Wow, you'd think with Covid-19 staying #1 on the charts, I'd have lots of time to blog. And you would not be wrong. You'd also think I would have done some painting or gaming during all this time. Again, not wrong. So what the hell?

Well, I guess the simple answer is that so much has been going on, I keep forgetting to blog. I also tend to waste lots of blogging talking about the reasons why I'm not blogging much. I'm going to blame that one on Catholic guilt. :)

Minis:
Well, I have continued to work on my Chaos Space Marines. If I'm lucky, I will take some photos of the recent work and post them up. I did two oblits, the other greater possessed, and a bunch of CSM. It was over one of those hobby weekend getaways that I am fortunate to do every once in a while.

I sold all my Warmachine off. That was painful. Not painful because of losing the minis (well maybe just a little), but mostly because no one wanted the darn things and I they went for pennies on the dollar.

I really need to figure out what goes next. The Warmachine stuff was sort of easy. I suppose I have some easy candidates, but most of those are going to be in the same realm as warmachine... not playing it, but no real market for it either. The really sad thing is, my warhammer fantasy battle armies come very close to being in that category as well. A bit more of a market for them, but I'm not using them.

RPGs:
Corona has been great for my gaming life. Don't get me wrong, it sucks and I wish it wasn't here. My heart goes out to all that are suffering or have died from this horrible illness. But my friends and I have been gaming a lot because there isn't much else to do. And yes, we are doing it virtually over the internet. Roll20 has been great for the most part. Also, lots of nice companies have made their games free or opened content like Dungeon and Dragons Online making it worth while to play them again. Kind of surprised Sea of Thieves isn't more popular...but once they go live on steam, I bet you'll see a flood of new players.

PC Gaming:
You know, probably not as much as you'd think. The old favorites are still there... DDO, Company of Heroes...even got City of Heroes again and that was great. Bounced back to some Sea of Thieves ... they have these really cool quests to do and its just a fun game. And just played some Vermintide 2 last night. But as I work on a computer..and now am sitting at my desk for 9 hours already...it is tougher than you'd think to want to sit at it some more to play games.

Okay, well that's about it for an update. Again, I'll try to get off my butt later today and take photos of the chaos marines in progress. Until next time...

Happy New Year! This is 2020...

Holy munchkin butt....its a new year...and I am still doing "its" wrong. I'll let me old English teacher worry about that...in fact..she's probably dead...so there you go.

So wow...way back in September of old 2019 was my last post. Is it really that much of a surprise? I think not. Lots have been going on though. My contract job ended and I had to do that horrible horror of job hunting. Blech. Skip to the end, I actually landed in a great new job. Just took up until now to get it. So while that was going on..hobby stuff took a backseat.

Well, mostly. I still picked up the odd model here and there...especially with the holiday sales going on. I mean..who wouldn't? Got some new vehicles for bolt action...especially for my DAK Germans. I'm actually going to be assembling some very soon as a new escalation league is about to start. I almost went with my Italians...which I picked up some Folgore for...those still need painting...but in the end I didn't feel like I had enough to offer me the options I would want. Sad to think. Also regretting a bit of making them all Bersagilieri...as I don't have any models for just regular troops. And then after my new Marder I tank hunter came in....oh yeah..DAK all the way.

My super amazing lovely wife got me the new Chaos Marine battleforce. It was perfect..it gave me more havocs which are sweet...new chaos marines...and terminators and a rhino just for good measure. I ended up selling off my Apoc box set I got because it was just not right for my army. So now I'm done with Chaos Marines. I have everything I need, and a little bit more for the army I wanted to build. Hopefully I can finish building and painting them and get them ready for this year's OFCC. Just google it and I'm sure you'll find something about it.

But for the next few days..its all about putting together Bolt Action kits for my DAK Germans. I bought the army box a while back and it has been waiting for me to bust it out. I did flirt with playing the US and even put together a bunch of US airborne and even some infantry together (with a couple of vehicles), but in the end, the collection had the same limitation as the Italians...just not enough variety just yet. It will get there.

Oh, I did end up upgrading my vid card in my PC and added a new SSD drive. Holy cow...the SSD drive was cheap...$109 for a 1T drive?? Yes please. Oh, and Mechwarrior 5 came out..so been playing that with all the newness. Pretty decent. Not playing enough with my friends though and that is a pain.

So...2020...goals? Well as stated before...I'd really like to get the Chaos Space Marine army all painted and ready for the OFCC this year. I think its doable. Also, get a DAK army up and running for the Bolt Action league starting on the 5th, and actually get a finished army by the end of it. Oooooo that is going to be tough. Also, for my D&D group, I need to get my butt in gear and get the new Eberron campaign going. Sheesh...seems like a lot..but I think I can do it. Also...I need to get rid of stuff. My office looks like a game store exploded. I think there will be another gamer swap in Feb...so here's hoping.

So next update should be in just a few days...and hopefully with pics of the new DAK models. Until then....hope your 2019 was good and wishing you a great 2020.