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!

Starship Troopers: Miniatures Resurrected

The other day I bemoaned about missing the excellent Starship Troopers miniatures game that left us far too soon due to licensing disputes. The game was only in production from 2005 to barely into 2007, but had one of the best wargaming rulesets I'd ever played. The initial models were based mostly on the CGI Starship Troopers cartoon from the early 2000s (yeah, unfortunately that CGI has NOT aged well). But the minis held up pretty good!

Come on you Apes, you want to live forever?!

So I decided to dig out any old Starship Troopers minis I still had and see what kind of shape they were in (after being in a box for ten years and three apartment/house moves). Figured I'd show a few pics of the resurrected minis below.

Ravingspire Heroes - painting minis

Things are going gangbusters with the Ravingspire Kickstarter! So much so that I decided to take a quick break from editing rulebook paragraphs and Adobe layouts and paint a few Reaper Bones minis as Ravingspire characters for giggles. In the game the characters are represented by tokens, (its a deck-building game, primarily), but my love of minis doesn't allow me not to. Plus there are still so many Reaper Bones minis to paint still, you gotta find your excuses where you can!

First up we have Aurora the All-Knowing! Chronomaster skilled in the arts of confounding her opponents by manipulating the future! And like any Runelord, she can generate free Charm by equipping Relics.

Used a Reaper Bones sorceress with staff to represent Aurora. Not great lighting for a pic of a mini looking down, but I think she turned out pretty well.

Then we have Garsim Cinderheart! Master Weaponsmith and cleaver of orc-kind! Garsome's mastery of weaponcraft allows him to generate one free Fight or Skill each turn, and all weapon and armor cards cost less Charm for him to obtain (which is good, because he starts with no Charm at all!).

Good old two-weapon barbarian from Reaper. Great mini, though its hard to get those darn weapons to stay straight (yes, I did the hot water trick to straighten out that axe. It only lasted a couple days).

Here comes Quinn Apblanc, Monster Slayer! This handsome fellow is fantastic at hunting down Adversaries and Foes in the game, however his deck starts out full of single power cards so thinning out the weak cards from the strong over the course of the game is a must!

For him I used the Reaper Bones Pathfinder Alchemist mini. Leather armor, lots of potions, dagger, what's not to love? Says vampire slayer to me!

These other two characters I've previously posted pics of on this blog, but for completeness sake...

Marcus the Runelord, Wizard of the White Tower. Marcus's mastery of battle magic is unmatched, and when powered through Relics he is a force with which to be reckoned!

For him the Reaper Bones Wizard with Staff does nicely. Sweet battle pose, cool staff, all good wizardy stuff on this mini.

Finally, the flagship character of the game, The Crimson Reaver! Born into a tribe of magic-hunting mutants, the Crimson Reaver gets to draw an extra card from her battle deck every round, making her a very formidable Hero!

Here I used the Reaper Bones Pathfinder Barbarian mini. Such a great action pose, I couldn't help but want to paint this mini!

So there you have it, some minis that would work well for Ravingspire. And that's only five of the nine Hero characters. I still have four more to paint if I want to build a complete set.

Game on!

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.)

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.

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!