Frostwyrm

Just painted up a quick Giant Wyrm for Frostgrave from the never-ending Reaper Bones Kickstarter collection.

Can't wait to play Frostgrave again!

Game on! 

Quick bases for rocky terrain

As promised, here's another quick-n-dirty tutorial for the busy painter. When you've got a horde of monsters/soldiers/whatever you just want to get through in short order, then look no further!

So as outlined in the last post about painting hordes of minis by the dipping technique, we've now got a horde of goblins painted. Problem is, their bases look bare and boring. 

Its time to base 'em!

Dippin' Minis - How to paint a horde of gobs

Sometimes you've just got to get through a backlog of minis. Get them painted, get them done. Well, I finally opened up my Games Workshop Hobbit Strategy Battle game starter set box.

(Americans can probably find this guy in the "50% off bargain bin" of your FLGS like I did, since no one actually plays the Hobbit in the U.S.)

I opened it up and found myself faced with thirty-six little goblins to paint. 

Oh for the love of... GANDALF!

The hobbit and wizard minis were cool, but I didn't really want to paint a bunch of goblins, I don't really have an idea for where to use them for any upcoming games, or any reason to have them done, but it always behooves a dungeon master to be ready for anything. Especially ready to field a horde of monsters at a moment's notice. But how do you get them done in a short amount of time?

Why, you DIP 'EM, of course!

Dipping minis is perfect for giving a horde of models a decent tabletop-ready look without using up a lot of your precious painting time.

I took pictures at each step of my painting process I did for these guys this morning and am posting up a quick-n-dirty tutorial, to help others get their hordes of goblins or skeletons or whatever done and off the painting table.

If you've never heard of the "dipping" technique to speed up your mini painting, then this post is for you!

Monsters from the depths below

Had my buddy Shadowgolem over the other day to help me out with some product shots of our upcoming Ravingspire game, and while he was here he was kind enough to do some glamour shots of some of my painted miniatures as well. The guy's skills with mixing different flash colors using variable exposure times is out of this world.

Thought I'd post up a couple of my heavy hitters that he took shots of, freshly arisen from the depths below!

Cthulhu Ftaghn! He-Man and Skeletor are in trouble now!

I didn't think there was any way to make the Dracolich more frightening, but clearly there was!

Mini Wizards and Warriors

No, this post isn't about the incredibly difficult but fantastic NES game Wizards and Warriors, though in retrospect it probably should be. I loved that game.

Really I just wanted to post up some pics of a couple Reaper Bones minis I've been painting up to use with Frostgrave and RAVINGSPIRE! In this case it's a Wizard ("Marcus the Runelord") and a Warrior ("The Crimson Reaver").

Now just 147 more Reaper Bones minis to go.

Paint on!

Wookies and Droids

Ended GameLong Con with a great Star Wars RPG game! Inspired me to finally paint those darn Imperial Assault minis. (Wookies and Droids first, of course.)

Frostgrave 2: The Frostening

I recently picked up a new miniature skirmish game, Frostgrave, last week and thought it looked interesting upon first glance. Well, thanks to Darth Cibeous over at 20ontheDie, I got an opportunity to give the game a quick playtest last Saturday. Didn't take any pictures or anything as it was just a quick playthrough to see if we liked it, but I can say that it was a lot of fun. Even though Darth Cibeous's Necromancer pretty much ground my Wizard and Apprentice into fine dust, we learned a lot about how the game plays and had a great time. One of the best parts of the game is actually the post-battle wrap-up, as that's when you get to roll on the treasure tables and determine if you found any cool magic items or spellbooks in the treasure chests you collected. I think Frostgrave is going to breathe new life into my desire to paint all these Reaper Bones Kickstarter minis (that I keep on collecting for no reason).

Though I'll have to learn to actually base minis in something other than "standard temperate forest theme," I suppose.

But the real question is, would YOU be interested in Frostgrave? Well, there are a number of videos out of people playing it, so the best way to determine that is to give one of them a watch and see if it holds your interest. One of my favorite Youtube channels for miniature gaming is Guerrilla Miniature Games, and the host (Ash) always has excellent terrain and painted minis to ooh and ahh over while they play and explain the rules.

Check out their first playthrough of Frostgrave (and they have a lot more episodes if that catches your interest):

Game on!

Frostgrave

So I've been thinking about miniature skirmish wargaming a lot, and realized that there's no real reason to get into The Hobbit (or LotR) Strategy Battle Game. Because for that game you're supposed to only use Games Workshop miniatures, and my hearts just not in getting another person addicted to that drug along with me. Plus the game really doesn't play all that smoothly for beginners. Finally everyone's already got a bunch of the Reaper Bones minis (Kickstarters), and they're unlikely to want to start getting into overpriced minis from GW (even if they look rad as hell).

Then I realized while I really do want to start playing a miniature skirmish game like Hobbit or Mordheim (again, GW), I want to play one where people can paint, convert, and use their own Reaper Bones minis from the various Kickstarters we've all been into the last few years. So I went in search of something fantasy, skirmishy, but not GW nor miniature-specific.

Then I found the answer at my Friendly Local Game Store:

FROSTGRAVE

Back to the Future RPG - Teaser pics for GameholeCon2015

After three straight weeks of painting, here's the album of most of the miniatures and time-period sets for my upcoming 5e convention game Back to the Future RPG: Outatime that I'll be running at GameholeCon2015 in a few weeks.

This isn't quite all time periods/minis to prevent plot spoilers for the players, but it is a few of the possible time-periods they could end up. My goal is to not railroad this convention game entirely, so I made extra time-periods to have ready in case the players get a little off-track. Also I have some NPCs they can meet (Deckard, Time Cop, etc.) that could become PCs if a character dies.

You can check them out below, or  check 'em out in imgur if you prefer.

WIP Painting Time (-Travelers)!

So its that Season again. No, I'm not talking about Football season, I'm talking about Mini painting Season. Though you can totally combine them and paint minis while watching Football if you want. I know I do.

But more specifically its painting season because Gamehole Con 2015 is coming up, and this year I'm running a Back the Future RPG with a lot of special guest cameos. And while I've playtested this game without minis and it went fine, I believe every game is always more fun with representative minis. Especially when it means you get to paint up a Marty McFly.

So I just wanted to stop in to show off a quick work-in-progress of some favorite Time-Travelers I started on last night:

But there's still plenty more Chrono-warriors to go. So better get back to it.

Paint on!

Painting Miniatures the Vorpal Chainsword Way part 1: Gathering Supplies

Sometimes I've gotten asked: "How do you paint your miniatures so quickly? I really need a lesson on painting miniatures, I don't even know where to start..." Well this series of posts aims to answer that question. I am going to lay out for all of you new to miniature painting (and to those who are still nervous about it) how to paint minis like a boss. A boss who gets things done, that is. They may not end up pageant-ready, they may not win contests, but they will be painted. And that's really the goal you should be shooting for. Simply get them done. If you find a passion beyond that then you will automatically search out guides on how to paint non-metallic metals (NMM) or other fancy painting techniques, but this guide is purely for getting all those minis sitting in your closet painted. So get out your notebooks, because here's everything you need to know to get started painting miniatures the Vorpal Chainsword way.

The Vorpal Chainsword Way = You ain't enterin' no contests, so stop procrastinatin'. Just get them done already!

Basing Miniatures - Shadows of Brimstone

One thing that I think really pulls a miniature together that is often overlooked is a good but simple base. If a miniature is beautifully painted but has a bare black base, it will remind the viewer that its just a simple plastic miniature and pull them out of the game. Similarly, I think that if a miniature base is full of little knick-knacks and skulls and broken swords and bodies and what-have-you and is overly complex, then it takes away from the miniature itself. Also I'm a pretty lazy hobbyist, so I like to base my minis simply.

 

Here's how I base my miniatures for the Flying Frog Cowboys vs. Cthulhu game Shadows of Brimstone. Since 90%+ of the games occur in an Old West Mine, I decided make just a simple rocky base for all the minis.

Drunk Painting Tips: Fixing modeling gaps at the last minute

I know its been a while since I've talked Shadows of Brimstone, but that's just because I was trying to finish painting all the minis (using only the official Shadows of Brimstone paint sets) before playing again. However it was a LOT more work than I realized when I started, so it has been slower going than I originally anticipated. Especially since I only paint on the weekends. With that in mind I decided to just shift it into overdrive and speed-paint all the remaining guys.

Almost there...

But that's not what this post is about, this is about fixing glaring past mistakes, or, as I like to call it, "What the hell did Past Cory screw me over with this time?"