Battle report - Warhammer 40K - Tau vs Eldar

Played a small game of 750 points.  It was a great learning game.  I've really liked pruning down to low-point games for the escalation league, in order to learn the rules and the army from the ground up.  Here's a link to the photo gallery and blow-by-blow.  Feel free to add commentary!

Squig Hoppers complete

Heading out full-speed to the Regiments of Renown games!




I met most of my goals with this project, but I got burnt out before I could really dress them up and fine-tune them.  That's OK, though.  My buddy, Oko, is going to hook me up with more Squig Hoppers, so that I can try some other ideas down the road.

Goals that I met:
-  Brightly colored squigs, across the violet-to-orange range, using a combination of washes and wet-blending.
-  Distinct facial expressions for both the squigs and the goblins, to showcase their personality.
-  Sufficient contrast to distinguish both the squigs and the goblins.
-  Different patterns on the hoods' trim.

Goals I didn't meet:
-  More colors on the goblins.
-  Skin patterns or mottling on the squigs.
-  One more pass on blends and details.

WIP - Squig Riders

The prospect of playing the new skirmish variant of Warhammer Fantasy, Regiments of Renown, is motivating me to finally paint a unit of Squig Riders.  Here, I've sketched my basic color theme.



I love these models, because of their character, and because they lend themselves to so much creativity in terms of color choices and cloak designs.  Unfortunately, to make the colors work as a coherent unit, I think you have to sacrifice some of the inventiveness you could explore for individual models.  Otherwise, the unit will suffer from the "spilled Easter basket" effect, a lesson I learned from painting goblins a few years ago.  The solution to this problem is simple, though.  Paint these models as a unit, and then acquire some more models to paint individually!  Alas.  I take the miniatures addiction to another level.

I originally planned to paint the goblins' skin tone a desaturated yellowish-green.  The theory was that the goblins would show well against the multi-colored squigs, due to three elements of contrast:  complementary colors, desaturation, and monochrome vs multi-chromatic.  When I test-painted the first one, I immediately didn't like it.  I think it was because the complementary color violated a rule of proportion for the color wheel.  I think if complementary colors are too equal in proportion, then they clash.  I've always approached complementary colors as accents, to avoid clashing.  Here, the proportion of the goblin to the squig is too close together.  Either that, or I just needed to desaturate the goblin tone some more. 

Regardless, after rescinding the original plan, and scratching my head to figure out what to do, I decided I kinda liked the look of the khaki skin tone that I laid down for a base (the squigs started out the same color, actually).  The question is then, what is a good color to use to shade the goblin skin-tone?  I think this is where the Rackham style might work well -- shade with a variety of colors, which visually cancel each other out, while adding a lot of depth and interest.  I'm going to try purples and dark olives and see how that works.  Maybe the olives will give the impression of a "greenskin", without having to make it blatant.  If not, that's OK, since I've always liked "Froudian" goblins with human skin-tones, too.

Vermin Lord (BaneLegions/Darklands Scar-Scath)

I was going to wait until the Darklands contest ended before posting my finished vermin lord here, but it's hard to tell what the status of the contest is, so I'm going to share the pics now.  This figure was fun to paint, and it's the largest figure I've painted to date.  What made it so enjoyable was the quality of the sculpt and cast, able to offer such rich detail and variety of texture.

Happy Medium

I've been pondering about what the best medium might be for posting hobby updates.

1. Blog.  The blog format offers a clean presentation for a mix of text and images.  It provides some interesting statistics, but it doesn't lend itself well to feedback, I suspect because it may require a "captcha" in order to post a comment.
2. Forums.  I've been a long-time and active member on the WAMP forum.  I recently joined the DragonPainting forum as well.  Forums offer a nice structure for organizing discussions.  They offer tools for following discussions of interest while ignoring others.  However, it seems there are only about a dozen really active participants on a forum at any given time.  Comments are hit-or-miss, but there are generally enough to keep me going.
3. Social media.  I just joined some Communities on Google+, and I'm experimenting with posting stuff there.  I chose Google+ over Facebook, because I can more easily post photos from my Picasa albums onto Google+.  Plus, I've always preferred Google+ over Facebook, in terms of presentation, intuitive ease-of-use, and privacy control.  The feedback for posts is excellent.  Participants can leave a quick +1, or they can engage in dialogue.  The format is real-time sequential, though, which doesn't lend itself to organizing lengthier topics for discussion.

My goal is to have a good dialogue.  After posting to the blog for over a year, it hasn't lent itself well towards dialogue.  However, I just realized today that there's a setting that might turn off the captcha.  If that works, that might encourage more comments.  On the other hand, it opens a door to potential spam.  I tweaked the setting to see what might happen.

So give it a try!   Let me know what your preferred posting medium is.  Or remark on something about the blog that you haven't had a good chance to say before -- about painting, gaming, specific projects, events, whatever.  Hope to hear from you!