Big painting and spending update

Let us start with painting I have painted a total of 49 stands. Mostly devastators and command stands for my epic force. I have almost completed a whole company for my goal of a chapters worth of guys. Just need to paint up the rhinos. Here are some pics.

So that is 49 x 5= 245 models. Which is 245 x .25= 61.25 points. So that brings our grand total up to.

May: 74.25 points
Ytd: 241.75 points

As for spending I have spent a decent chunk trying to fill out my titans.
epic: $74.25
May:$182.54
Ytd: $351.83

That is it for now. I am still testing paint strippers and am also working on the dindrenzi more.

Aruki

A pleasant surprise and heads up for you GW fans

Today, I  checked out the only war gaming store in the countries webpage and found a pleasent surprise.

안녕하세요, 워보스입니다.

GW 에서 2013 년 6 월 1 일부로 일부 제품의 가격을 약 21% 인상합니다. 

오크타운은 관련 내용을 검토 후에 가격 인상을 적용하지 않기로 결정하였습니다. 

앞으로도 오크타운과 함께 즐거운 미니어쳐 게이밍 되시기 바랍니다.

감사합니다. 

For those of you who can't read it. Gw is doing their annual price hike again, up to 21% on some products according to the post, on june 1st. The good news is that my store isn't going to charge more. They will be keeping the stuff at the same current costs. Now given, this is probably because compared to the USA prices are already about $10 higher but still. It is great to see a shop owner who is willing to take a bit of a hit on his profits, especially when he has a monopoly on the whole countries miniature war gaming needs. So in short, Thank you Orc Town for not implementing yet another price hike. Anyway, painting update in next day or two.




Till the
Aruki

Current and upcoming project list

I have a lot of projects going on at the moment and ones I have models for but need to get moving on. So here is a list in no particular order of importance.

1. 28mm warlord games Romans : this army is almost half done after my current project I am thinking I should finish this one off.

2. 40K tau: these I have been experimenting with for stripping. They really need a new paint job. But until I find a cost effective way to do this they are on the back burner.

3. 40k Space marines: this project I am about half done. I need to finalize my general list so I can get ride of my extra models (such as my 3 extra rhinos). But should be able to finish in the next few months.

4. Mantic Dwarf army: honestly I am going to just sell or trade these all away. I don't really want anymore 28mm armies and have never been huge into fantasy. Scifi and historical are my things.

5. DW Prussian force: is finished for now. I may add more models in the future but haven't thought about it at the moment.

5. DW Britannia force: Almost finished this one and its in the same boat as the Prussian force.

6.FSA Aqua prime fleet: this one I haven't started yet but would like to at least do up a test model in the next few months.

7. FSA dindrenzi fleet:  This is currently on the bench and almost halfway done. May add more in the future but it is fine for now.

8. FSA terran fleet: this one needs another omni stand order and a fleet box before I really get started on it.

9. EA/Netepic space marines: this project I have a large amount of models ready to go, some painted, some need stripping and still need to acquire a few more things. Have I think around 8k-10k easily.

10. FOW british force: this I think I am going to just scrap. The more I read the rulebooks the more I feel that building a standard size list is just too expensive for me at the moment and that off shore artillery is just to broken.

11.BP 6mm Baccus Prussian 1808- This one I should have everything I need to complete. It will just be a mammoth undertaking due to the sheer number of little guys I need to paint. I also need to finish researching the uniform colours.

12.DZC Shaltari forces: this project is on the back burner till I can think of the proper paint scheme.

13. DZC PHR forces: Same as the shaltari, on the back burner till I can figure out the right paint scheme.


After all of this I have no idea what else may come up. Once I minus two of the projects from this list it still leaves me with 11 projects to complete. With most of them just needing me to paint them. This should also be more than enough to keep me busy this year into next year.

Anyway, till next time
Aruki

Omni stand review and some helpful info

So far I have used omni stands for my FSA dindrenzi and for my DW bombers. I plan on using them on my dropzone commander stuff in the future. Here are a few useful pieces of information I have picked up.

1. The small mounts are great for just about all your needs.

2. You really do need the regular mounting pegs for larger models and they need a larger hole than you would think from the picture ( my dindrenzi battleships for example)

3. DW bombers should use the small mounts even though they don't sit quite flush. This is because the amount of drilling necessary to make the regular mounting peg fit deforms the model quite a bit.
4. Measure your bases for each ship you get is the easiest way to find what size base you need.
4a. The etched bases make life so much easier in so many games.

5. Corsec doesn't answer emails that have questions.



As a whole I love the product and it makes life much easier, especially across multiple games. The only down side to dealing with the company that I found is there was little communication received when buying the product and their shipping method takes forever (my package spent over a week sitting in florida). I also found that when I was trying to decide the correct products to buy, corsec provided no help what so ever. Even though I sent them multiple emails over a 6 month period. If it wasn't for some friendly people on multiple different games forums I wouldn't have known exactly what to buy. So in conclusion, great product bad communication.

Till next time,
Aruki


images used without consent and are property of corsec engineering, producers of omni stand.

Painting update

I have finished about 80% of the black details on my Dindrenzi  The remaining black parts (around the guns and around the engines) will be done after I do the engines and guns on each ship. Hopefully, this will mean that they will be complete sometime within the next week. The final thing I need to figure out at some point is names. I would like to have all of my ships named and have their names written on them. For this I need to find a way to do it for the frigates just because they are so small. I am thinking of just numbering the frigates and naming everything else.

Till then,

Aruki 

My airbrush setup and review of the items I use

Let us get started with the airbrush itself. I use a badger 360 universal. Overall, it works ok but I have a few issues. 1 of them is most likely just because I am not very good with it yet. The main problem I have is airflow. When I depress the trigger even a little bit with a low psi it always seems to be to strong for detailed work. This is believe is at least partly my fault. The only other comment I have on this airbrush is in my opinion the siphon feature is useless. I tried it once and it made a mess when I finished using the color and didn't allow for me to make a quick change of colour. The straws also need a rather large amount of paint in the pot in order to actually syphon. At the moment you can pick these up rather cheap online from amazon or ebay.

Next up is my airbrush booth.  I use a Stylex SSB-2. Overall it works great and provides great lighting when painting. It also folds up rather small for storage. It is also very quiet. The only down side is you have to take the light off in order to fold it up. If you are in South Korea it is a great option. Outside of South Korea though it is rather expensive to get, mainly due to shipping costs. However, I have seen many similar items sold overseas. If your interested you can find them on ebay.

Last up is my air compressor also by Style X, the Gfrog01. This thing is great. It is very quiet, I often use it at 1 or 2am and have never received a noise complaint from my neighbors. It has a moisture trap and a psi regulator included along with two airbrush holders. However, I have found it dances a rather lot. So be careful where you put it. Once again, the major downside is getting it outside of South Korea is expensive due to shipping costs. This I have never seen for sale outside of South Korea but I am sure there are local equivalents that you can get for a reasonable price.

That being said  Painting updates over next few days and maybe another review.

Aruki 

What are you looking for from your game?

Today on Intl' House of Paincakes there was a very interesting article about the search for the perfect game. It got me thinking about my choices in games recently. I myself have noticed that I am tending away from any 28mm game. Partly because of space but also partly because of the rules. I have a FOW Brit force that I have been thinking of doing up that I have about half the models for. About 10k worth of EA/netepic marines that need to be done up. Along with all my DW and FSA armada. Nevermind my upcoming 6mm BP Napoleonic prussian force.

I know for myself I am looking at a few key factors.
1. The ease in which I can learn the rules
2. scale of the models
3. Scale of the games I can play (ie how long and how big)
4. Cost of entry into the game

This has driven a lot of my choices in purchases over the last year. It is also why I have been slowly getting rid of a lot of 28mm stuff. Such as my massive IG foot army I sold a couple months ago. Which leads me to my perfect game.

1. an active community/ support from the company.
2. able to be played in any size/time so from half an hour to 3hours
3. Small scale 15mm or less.
4. ???

This is one of the reasons I love BP and Hail ceaser. I can play it in just about any scale. The community and warlord games itself has done a great job in finding ways to help eachother out. You also get this to a lesser extent in other games. The big one for me is also cost and space. A lot of the games I go for these days can be played on 4'x4' or less. Which is great when you live in Seoul Korea. Space is a premium here and even the only game store is tiny compared to the ones in the USA or Australia I have been to. In fact the gaming areas alone in those countries have often been bigger than the whole store here. Cost is always a big consideration. Most of my smaller scaled games I can have a two decent size forces for less than the cost of 1 normal size force of 28mm. One of the best examples of this is my prussians for BP which I will break down in a future post, either this week or next week.

So what is your perfect game?
Until then
Aruki

Back in the saddle

First sorry, last week starting on thursday everyone including myself in my family got rather sick. So I wasn't able to update or do anything. I will be fixing that this week with at least two painting/modeling updates and at least 1 review. Most likely of my airbrushing set up.

More later this week.

Aruki 

Lack of updates

There has been a lack of updates for the last couple days just due to life/work. Any free time I have had I have been experimenting  Trying to find something that will strip well. So far no luck. I will be do some painting later this week and then post about them.



See you soon,
Aruki

Spending update

With the preview of my next project it is time to show you the cost. For those that couldn't or didn't want to guess the project I have been planning  researching and buying since last October is going to be a 6mm Prussian 1808 army.

So here is the breakdown.

Baccus 6mm models: -$90.37
Paint: -$17.92

May:- $108.29
YTD Total: -$277.58

Suffice to say I need to sell some more stuff off because I have gone over my end limit for the year. On the bright side I should be able to build the complete army with leftover calvary and do officers as well. I plan on using BP rules though with the basing I am doing I should be able to use it for other systems as well. I am not sure yet how they will translate points wise into BP but am very interested to see. I will be posting a review of the Baccus minis and some personal opinion on things that happen throughout my dealings with the company.



More on this next week,
Aruki

An interesting article

Today on one of my favorite blogs http://www.houseofpaincakes.com/ . They were talking about how with systems differentiate in the mentality of owning armies/factions. It is a great read and for myself very true. Living in South Korea you tend to see very few games. The most commonly played are usually 40k and fantasy, then either infinity or FOW. The honestly I have seen more FOW than infinity played. I know part of the reason is that here in South Korea miniature wargaming is still rather rare and the one store in South Korea carries a limited range of games, partly because of the size of the store I think. This is in no way a slam on this great store but it does limit the range of games people buy into. For example I only know of two epic players within an hour or so of me. Don't know of any FSA, DZC, DW and only one ACTASF player. So it can be a challenge to find opponents. But I have found that many people will try a new game if you have all the required models to play it. So next time you see a game you really want to play, I recommend taking the dive and getting two armies going or 1 larger one you can split equally.


That is all

Aruki

DW painting update, FSA progress and preview of upcoming project.

Today is a good day. Managed to finish off most of my DW brits. I still need to finish 1 bomber and need to completely repaint the other.

The Frigates

cruisers and battleship

guns and generators(just need their magnets on bottom)

 So that leads to me getting closer to my 200 point objective.
May: 13 points
YTD Total: 180.5 points

Next up my FSA. I have started painting all the details on the models starting with the sides and such of the engines.

Above is a preview of my next project. The best part is with most of the models I have gotten in the past couple months I am almost ready to start building it. Can anyone guess what it is? Also apologies for the pics. I am trying to get my hands on a new camera.

Till then,

Aruki

The joys of striping paint in south korea

I have mainly spent the last few days experimenting with striping my tau models. A couple of the cleaning products I had no luck with. The one that I did have luck with is called bam. I tested using the green and white type. (white one is pictured)

 The old paint scheme to be honest was hideous and I believe I can paint them much better now than I could in the past. The major problem for me has been the fact that I live in South Korea. So the standard items used for striping are unavailable. Below is a product I have found that works. and some examples of it. I tested using FW resin, Normal gw models and of course gw metal models. The striping is by no means perfect but part of it has been the testing I have been doing.

fw railgun

Lets start with FW resin. Above you can see some FW broadside pieces. I had these in the solution for a total of  2 hours. After 1 hour I took them out and gave them a scrub in warm water using a brush and then did the same at the 2 hour mark. They did go a little soft at this point so I took them out and set them aside.

metal railgun

At the same time I also did this metal broadside cannon. I decided to put it back in overnight because there was some stubborn paint on it. At about 14 total hours it cleaned off completely fine.

before

Theses gw stealth suits spent a total of 14 1/2 hours in the mixture. I tried cleaning them at 30 min did not have any real luck. Though they did come apart. At 2 1/2 hours most of the paint came off. I then left it in for another 12 and took out most of the rest. There was no melting or major deforming. In fact most of the damage was caused by me going a little crazy with my wire brush. I then decided to toss them in again.

after

after

Overall this product works fine and hasn't seemed to damage them. The cleaner smells a bit but its a normal surface cleaner and not to much of a problem. I have not tested it on bases because I removed them before putting the models in. Just for reference the models were all painted with old gw paints.  I will also be testing it on some FOW tanks I have to see how it responds. Painting update tomorrow and probably Thursday or Friday as well.

Update: I decided to put the models in again for a 24 stint to really get all the stuff off. I found that large parts of paint were still not coming off in the solution. It may be the solution is good for only 1 use. Currently am testing the process again. This was specifically for plastic models or it may be that they just really need longer in the solution. I also tossed in some FW resin in to see how it handles a 24 hour stint. Metal and resin technically have no problems with 12-15 hours. The metal cleans without a problem, the resin it turns out had more layers on it than I knew so they are taking a bit longer (3 or 4 different paint schemes it seems).

Update 2: few things I ran into. The white one does great in small batches it seems but can only be used once. So you have to be carefull how many models you try and strip. The green one sucks. It took the paint off of the metal models and thats it. These two batches were left for 24hrs. In conclusion, it's great if you need to do only a few models but if you  need to do more than that don't waste your money. And if you do buy it buy the white one. Anyone time to find more cleaners to test.


until then
Aruki

My space marine chapter painting tutorial

Here is a quick guide for my space marine chapters paint job. I will get into their background and there name in another post.
As with my other painting tutorial, most of the paints used are the old gw ones. As I run out I replace them with colors from the vallejo game color range.

Space marines/characters, terminators, etc.

They are all assembled without arms and weapons in most cases. In some cases without their backpacks as well.

Step 1: Base coated with Vallejo grey primer
Step 2: Base color of GW's scab red
Step 3: Wash the model in Gw's Leviathan Purple
Step 4: Paint details (staps, belts, etc) in gw's Chaos black
Step 5: Shoulder edges, eyes and some random detailing/armor done in Gw's Burnished gold
Step 6: Guns are done in the same order as miniatures
Step 7: Power weapons are painted as follows
Step 7-1: On grey primer Gw's tentacle pink is used
Step 7-2: then gw's Leviathan purple is used to taste
Step 7-3:  Handles are painted using Gw's chaos black and burnished gold
Step 8: Base the model

Tanks:
the rhino were assembled with all but the pieces that close up the top (the doors and whatever the turret things are called). They were painted separately.


Step 1: Base coated with Vallejo grey primer
Step 2: Base color of GW's scab red


Step 3: Wash the model in Gw's Leviathan Purple

Side view

Step 4: Paint details and panels on the tank in gw's Chaos black
Step 5: Other random details done in Gw's Burnished gold
Step 6: tracks are not painted after step 2 instead do the following

Completed models

tracks

Step 6-1: Do a wash of Gw's devilan mud and then badab black

Basing of models and iconography for shoulders and tanks will be done once I figure out how to make the decals.
More later on
Aruki

How I paint Romans

This is a step by step tutorial on how I painted my romans. An important note I assemble the models without their shields. And in the case of banners and musicians without their arms. Small note most of the paints I used were the old Gw ones. Recently as I run out I have substituted Vallejo Game colour paints.

Step 1+2

Step 1: Base coated with Black. I used Gw's Chaos Black

Step 2: Did the armor and weapons with Gw's chainmail.

Step 3: Clothing with Gw's Scab red

Step 4: Belt, scabbard, Javelin handle, Boots and base  with Gw's Graveyard Earth.

Step 5: Skin Gw's elf flesh.

Step 6: wash skin, Javelin, base and boots with Gw's Gryphonne sepia

Steps 3-6

Step 7-1 : basecoat shields with Gw's Chaos Black

Step 7-2: Paint back of shield and front exposed wood with Gw's Graveyard earth

Step 7-3: do 2 coats of Gw's Blood red on shields

Step 7-4 Wash shields with Gw's Baal Red

Step 7-5: Shield edges and punch are done in Gw's Leadbelcher

Step 7-6: Musical Instruments are based with Gw's Chaos Black and then painted with Gw's Leadbelcher

Step 7-7:Banner shafts are done with Gw's Graveyard earth and the metal parts are done with Gw's Leadbelcher

Everything except basing


Hope this helps.
Aruki

Step 7-8: Paint skin and clothing on arms same as for models.

Step 8: assemble models

Step 9 Base

Success

Well I managed to get the airbrush working right and in less than an hour had all the basecoat and post shading done on my dindrenzi.I actually used 3 different shades of red. Next on them will be engines and guns followed by trying to do all the panel lines. Think I will get a fine tipped paint pen for that part. Unfortunately the paint I picked as a base is just too dark for the preshading of those detail lines I tried to do. Or I still need more practice with the airbrush.

I followed this up by detailing the 3 cruisers from my DW brits and some of the frigates. After that I need to touch up the paint in various places and give them a wash/ink. Magnetize them and bam done. Then I just need to finish off the bombers.

.A review on my airbrush, airbrush station and compressor will soon come. Along with a review of omni stands.


Till then
Aruki

Update fail

I planned on updating today with pictures of my mostly done dindrenzi ships. However, last night was one screw up after another. The priming with the airbrush went fine. But well doing the preshading and then when doing the basecoat everything fell apart. I was using vallejo game color extra opaque heavy red, and my brushed completely clogged up three times and I was barely able to get the two battleships mostly coated. I had thinned it to the point of 50/50 and was still having issues. So I took the brush completely apart again for a final thorough cleaning. At this point between it all the clogging cleaning etc I had spent an hour and a half on it and decided to call it a night since I was so annoyed. So tonight I will take another shot at it and hopefully have better results to show tomorrow or friday.



Until then,
aruki