Islands in the Stream

After the last game of Armada, I began making some better looking islands for my sea-themed games. A trip to Michaels craft store also provided a bit of inspiration.

 Step 1... some DAS modeling clay on cheap wooden oval plates. 

BRAAAIIINNNNNNSSSS

Step 2.... Liquidex modeling compound waves. By far the worst part.

Step 3.... some ultra fine sand carpenter's glued to parts of the islands. The best sand I've found is at the pet store and is intended for sand-loving lizards.

Step 4... slop and go el cheapo paints after a black primer coat.

Step 5...two layers of highlights on the waves, light blue then white. Some drybrushing on the islands as well.

Step 6... finished drybrushing. Added some OD flock here and there for a bit more visual interest.

Step 7... Gloss up the waves and try to ease up the gloss level on the islands proper. Job's done!

With a couple of DW ships and an Armada ship.

They're not massive but they're a very pretty upgrade from my other islands. I might do at least one more much larger one. It can't be any more difficult than these four. Be well!

Another Outing for the Boats

 Plans shifted on Saturday and whereas I thought I wouldn't be playing any games this weekend, I was able to get in a battle with Ziggy. We pulled the Armada fleets out of drydock and gave it another go. We used nearly all the ships we had and played the "Capture the Kraken" scenario which is a shoot-em-up with the added entertainment of a Kraken roaming the waters. The Kraken will absolutely wreck any ships he gets very close to but one can score victory points by damaging it with gunfire. Victory points could also be scored by sinking enemy ships.

My Goblins sail out.I've spread out a bit since ships need a wide berth to turn. The Dwarves are grouped up in the center.

Glamour shot.

The Dwarves veer west. My faster ships have gotten to the center but the monster has slipped past my ships northward "Nevermind that Kraken, dems is stunties over there!"

Maneuvering is going to be a problem soon I think.

One of my Hammerfist battleships pulled abreast the nearest ironclad, grappled it and in no time hordes of crazed goblins were swarming over the Dwarf vessel. As it turns out, the was The Orcsbane, the Dwarf flagship and overflowing with boarding specialists! This would turn into an unmitigated disaster for me, but it was a great gaming moment as I was completely taken by surprise.

 

Not to be outdone, the other Hammerfist and one of my massive Smasher battleships also got stuck in with the stunties. The Smasher was able to ram its target, causing terrific damage with its reinforced prow. The Goblins performed much better in these combats.

 

 

The Orcsbane finished off my Hammerfist in short order. My Smasher battleship towards the upper center of the image is obscuring an ironclad that it would force to surrender pretty quickly. In the lower right another Dwarf ship is crippled and slinks off to repair.

The Kraken finally catches up with a victim and wallops a small Dwarf ship. The vessel is sunk in short order.

The larger part of my fleet has a long turn-around ahead of it. The Dwarves close in on the Kraken and my poor little Bomboat which is the only ship I have in the neighborhood.

The Bomboat wouldn't last for long though as the accursed Orcsbane set upon it and sank it with very little trouble.

We'd played eight turns and had a heck of a battle. In the end, Ziggy won, 4-2. We each only scored one point each off fighting one another (small ships do not grant victory points when they die). Ziggy managed to bleed the Kraken for 3 bonus VPs and that was the difference. Things worked out well for him since the Kraken wandered off the direction his ships were going so once they were past my fleet, the Dwarves were able to get a few cheap volleys at the monster. Well played!

Recent Painting & Projects

 Happy weekend everyone! Just a quick post about some recent minis painting and other projects I've been working on recently.

First up is this Kraken for Armada. It's from Monsterpocalypse collection but was the right size, price and look so... INTO THE BANDSAW YOU GO!

 Yeah, he was chopped in twain at the waist and has the Viginia-class in his tentacle gently removed.

The resulting model...

He's on an 80mm square base and ready to wallop some boats. Speaking of which, Ziggy's Dwarves are mostly table-ready and we played a small learning game of Armada last weekend. Good fun. Go Goblins!

I also assembled and painted some TT Combat MDF buildings for Infinity. Pretty happy with the result there.

And in the category of non-gaming projects, I've been mucking around with guitars. It started with this kit last summer that I added a handful of "Kustom Gadjits" to and really enjoyed the process.

Surprisingly, it turned out really well, plays very nicely and spawned an urge. So in January I purchased another kit, this time a Jazz bass clone. I've never had a bass and because I know what I like guitar-wise, wasn't really after another six-string.

The process was equally enjoyable and this is how she turned out.

You can tell I had a bit of fun with that paint job. I'm no bassist, but it's a fine learner's instrument.

So then I went right off the deep end. My main guitar for 20+ years, my Tele, got some attention. My first Tele that I bought in 1991 was stolen in the late nineties. It had been modded a bit with a pickup replacement. This is a standard Telecaster:

My son's parakeet had caused a little damage to the bridge pickup, pecking at the winding. So then I'm torn - if I'm going to go through the effort replacing one pickup, why not go bananas and replace both? A couple weeks of shopping later, I ended up on replacing both pickups.

I bought a Wilkinson Hot Rail humbucker for the neck and a Wilkinson Vintage Alnico dual-coil for the bridge. This would involve chopping up the pickguard, replacing the bridge itself and routing out the bridge pickup cavity in the body. The of course there would be soldering - a skill I am very familiar with but never expert at. A tall order for a greenhorn like myself, especially considering the going rate to replace an American Standard is about $1100. 

I went at it patiently, and over a handful of weeks brought it to life.

DEEP KIMCHI. Routing the body cavity out was scary as hell and the biggest opportunity for complete disaster.

Slow and steady wins the race though, and in the end, this beauty was re-born.

In keeping with recent politics, I've made it "less white." It's a burner too, holy shit does it growl.

Mods

1) Neck pickup swap. Also involved cutting the pickguard hole larger.

2) New bridge that would accommodate a full-size humbucker.

3) New bridge humbucker pickup.

4) More pickguard cuts to fit the new bridge.

5) New control plate to make it blacker.

Damn that was fun. I'm ready to chop up another guitar.

More Through the Queue

 Gaming has been down for the last couple weeks, but I managed to get a few models through the painting process. 

The first lot is a group of 20 Daleks that Mark gave me. They're just the right size for 15mm and mounted on pennies. I tried out some of the new Vallejo color shift paint on them, giving them a shifty gold/green/purple coat. The color shift paint is lot better looking live compared to photos, but you can see that some parts of the minis do take on a different hue.

The models themselves are that soft-ish plastic that gets sticky and weird when you hit it with primer. Thus, the finished product isn't as delightful as I'd like. But for free, they're great.

Next up is the last of the Goblin fleet. Part of the model wasn't in the box so I had to wait 3-4 weeks for Mantic to send a replacement bit.

And lastly, some Batman minis. Two Kobra Hazard troopers, Old Bitter Green Arrow from Dark Knight and Spartan.

Nothing too groundbreaking but nice additions to the collection. 

Tonight we're supposed to play D&D. I've been putting an adventure together and this evening will be chapter 1. 

More Boats, Sir!

 Ziggy thought it would be frightfully funny to pile on with more Orc/Goblin ships for Armada as a Christmas present. Of course, I got him back by giving him a copy of the rules myself, forcing his hand. He's waiting for the Dwarf fleet to be released...

I finished up the Orc Support Ships for the Gatorade Goblins yesterday and bummed my bride's photography lightbox to take some pictures.

This ship's called a "Bloodrunner." Would you believe me if I said it was a long-ranged weapons specialist? Curious about the last of "axe motif" on the sail, but no worries!

Here's a squadron of small Rabble cutters. Typically these would be the goblin ships in an orc fleet. In my case they'll just be "da small wunz."

This last one, the Hammerfist, had some "challenges" with the primer or something on the sails. The green seemed to take OK from my airbrush, but the wash on the sails just pooled up instead of covering smoothly. It was certainly disappointing, especially as that was was one of the last things I did in the painting process. No matter, I'm leaving it as is. I do have a second one of these ships in drydock, waiting for Mantic and the postal service to get a new front arm assembly to me.

As for the lightbox, my wife found this little guy on Amazon for around $16. Since it's pretty damn cold out this morning, I though it might be a perfect opportunity to give it a go.

It's about 12" x 12" x 12". Has a strip of LEDs along the front upper lip. You plug it into a USB power source to light it up. I used one of my portable chargers.

Not a bad little gizmo that goes a long way towards making excellent pictures. Of course, it just makes it easier to find painting flaws!

How Big Is That Boat?

 So yesterday, Gonsalvo replied to the post and asked "how big are they?" I replied on my phone while watching TV with a guess of "4 inches or so."

I'd say that was a pretty good guess. I've put a GW Ghoul and random 15mm dude there to compare with.