Armada - More Painting!

Look, I know I said just last week that I was all done painting my Imperial Fleet.  But...

But...

Ok...

I might have a problem.  There is no such thing as done in this hobby.  There is always another ship, or another Marine.

Anyways, I realized that my Raider had gone unnoticed in my case.  This is probably because I've never actually played with it.  Without a paint job, it's definitely not going to be seeing any action.

So, here goes.  Same scheme as the previous ships.  Nothing fancy.

I still want to do a couple of small details on the entire fleet, just to make them pop a little.  My goal is to somehow give them numbers so that I don't have to use the little cardboard base numbers.  I'm not quite sure how I'm going to do that yet, but probably with a series of small stripes.  TBD...

Organization is Important

Today was a slow day.  I went through and organized a bunch of my favorite board games.  This is all of the token goodness that comes with the core Arcadia Quest game.  Now that the Masmorra: Dungeons of Arcadia game is live on Kickstarter, Arcadia Quest has become more front of mind.

I got these cases at Home Depot and am very happy with them.  Here's the link in case you want some.  The orange dividers all come out and they cases can lock together.  I'm using three locked together to carry all my Star Wars Armada stuff.

http://www.homedepot.com/p/HDX-15-Compartment-Interlocking-Organizer-Black-2-Pack-320034/204515485

Star Wars Armada - Imperial Fleet Painting Complete!

I decided to go crazy and get the rest of my Star Wars Armada Imperial Fleet painted up.  I know the models come pre-painted, but where's the fun in that?  I tend to be pretty bad at these sorts of games.  Positioning is my downfall 100% of the time.  If I'm going to lose, I'm going to do it in style.

First, I used my trusty IKEA Lazy Susan to get a nice primer coat.  I'm still using the 99 cent stuff from Walmart.  It works fine.  The pic looks a little weird because the primer is still mostly wet.

Next up was a drybrush/almost overbrush of Skavenblight Dinge followed by a very light drybrush of Dawnstone.  GW paints, as per normal.  The pic below shows the primed model on the left and the painted model on the right.  It's no a massive difference, but it's an important one.

Next I used some Tamiya brand masking tape to mask off certain areas.  This stuff is amazing.  It's 6mm wide and comes in handy on all sorts of painting projects.  They sell it on Amazon for about $10, including two refills.

Tamiya Masking Tape on Amazon.com

Once properly masked, I did the exact same drybrush routine over top of the black armored areas except with Mephiston Red and Squig Orange.

Pull off the masking tape and voila, completed model!  The entire process took maybe 10 minutes for this first ship.

Here it is next to the Imperial Class I had previously painted.

And because it took so little time, I did the exact same thing two more times and then again for the Gladiator class.  I'm really happy with the results.  I think the fleet is super menacing.  Next I'll have to figure out how to paint the squadrons.  They're so tiny.  I've never painted anything so small before that wasn't part of a larger model.

Aramada Tournament Results

The results are in!  I finished in the top 5!  ...which would be far more impressive if there had been more than 6 people playing.  Ha!

The tournament was 3 rounds and I lost all three, but I'm totally happy with the results.  Because there were so few players participating, I was able to get both the acrylic range finders and four copies of the alternate artwork card for the Imperial Raider.  Also, I didn't make any huge mistakes.

My list was as such...

• Imperial II-class Star Destroyer w/Admiral Motti, Wing Commander, Boosted Comms, Electronic Countermeasures, Heavy Turbolaser Turrets
• 2x Victory I-class Star Destroyer w/XI7 Turbolasers
• 3x Tie Intercepters
• Howlrunner
• Dengar

Everybody liked my painted Star Destroyer.  The plan is to also paint the other ships, but I have gotten around to it yet.

Masmorra: Dungeons of Arcadia

The good folks at Cool Mini or Not are putting out a game called Masmorra: Dungeons of Arcadia.  I'm pretty psyched about this because Arcadia Quest is one of my favorite board games right now.  This new game will use the same scale and aesthetic heroes, but with a new mechanic wherein you explorer a randomly generated dungeon by flipping cards and fight monsters generated with different dice.  It looks pretty cool.  You can see a couple of the dice below.

The Kickstarter goes live Monday, February 22nd.  I'm almost certainly going to be buying into this one.  They've started previewing the core models on their Facebook page.  My expectation is that we'll see a preview every day from now until the Kickstarter goes live.  Here's the first.  He fits in perfectly with the Arcadia Quest minis.

More to come!

Armada Tournament

I have a Star Wars Armada tournament coming up this weekend.  I'm not really a solid player yet, but I think I have the rules down.  I've only played three games so far, so I'm not really concerned about winning.  My main goal is to come in the top half.  It looks like even last place comes away with some sort of prize...  and alternate artwork card, I think.

Hopefully, this next bit will post correctly.

This will be my tentative army.  I still might make some changes between now and then.

FLEET

SHIP: Imperial II120

UPGRADESPTS

Admiral Motti24

Wing Commander6

Gunnery Team7

Boosted Comms4

Overload Pulse8

Relentless3

TOTAL POINTS:172

SHIP: Victory I73

UPGRADESPTS

TOTAL POINTS:73

SHIP: Raider I44

UPGRADESPTS

TOTAL POINTS:44

SQUADRONSPTS

Dengar20

Major Rhymer16

Tie Bomber Squadron9

Tie Bomber Squadron9

Tie Bomber Squadron9

Howlrunner16

Tie Fighter Squadron8

Tie Fighter Squadron8

Tie Fighter Squadron8

TOTAL POINTS:103

OBJECTIVES

NAVIGATION:

Superior Positions

ASSAULT:

Precision Strike

DEFENSE:

Contested Outpost

Writing Now!

I'm writing up several blog posts and scheduling them.  Starting next on Monday you guys should see much more consistent posts.

Aramada Woes

I have to build a Star Wars Armada army list for a tournament I'll be attending on February 20th.  There are a couple of minor issues with this statement.  The first is that I don't really know how to play the game.  I've played precisely one game and it was more of a demo type thing.  Pretty sure we left out some of the rules.  The second is that there's no way I have 400 points worth of models.  The only way I can get to 400 is by loading up on expensive and useless upgrades.

Sigh.

I need to get a couple more games under my belt before I attend this tournament.

I did pick these guys up today, because I was told they'd be useful in combat.  I literally have no idea.  I'm not used to being the guy who doesn't know how things work.  It's unpleasant.

You'll note that I added a little red to the Victory Class Star Destroyer.  I'll probably do the same to the Gladiator Class.

I've made a huge mistake...

So, yeah.  This happened.

The baggies contain a 10 man power armoured Space Wolves unit and a 5 man terminator armoured Space Wolves unit.

Warhammer 30k, here I come.

Something Different - Casting!

The mood struck me today to do some hobbying that is a little different from what I normally work on.  Once upon a time, many moons ago, I sculpted a life sized purity seal to give away as a prize in a local 40k event.  I was a solid hobby newbie back then and cast them using this horrible putty and plaster for the dupe.  Here is one of the finished items used as a prize.  I'm super happy with how it turned out.

I decided to revisit that idea and make a proper mold and some proper resin dupes.  Without further ado, here's a pictorial of what I did.  All of the mold and resin material came from Michael's here in the US.

Now I just need to make more and start painting them!

Arcadia Quest Masmorra

SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

Kickstarter to drop in February.  I'm in.  It's an Arcadia Quest dungeon crawl game.  'Nuff said.