The Warforge Miniature Modelling and Conversion

Buy, Sell, or Trade!

Okay! I've got some stuff I need, and some stuff I don't, so let's do this.

First off, the Things I Have:

Tyranid Bitz - Click for bigger pictures

Most of these are arms, heads, and other assorted limbs. I have very few bodies. All of them are plastic, but some have been sprayed with an old can of GW's Bonewhite spray. I am not a nid player, so I simply tried to sort the bitz into general piles based on size.

Figure someone might be interested in these, what with the new nids coming out and a lot of them being big gribblies that could benefit from extra limbs. I'm sure whatever doesn't go will end up on some looted tyranid monstrosity shortly ( ), but it's just more than I could possibly need for an army I don't play.

Secondly, we have Salamander Bitz which I no longer need as I'm switching them over to Legion of the Damned.

I inherited some of the loose bitz from a friend of mine, and when I tried to strip paint off of them, I discovered that some of them were a white resin instead of Forgeworld's regular. I can only assume he did some of his own casting and made copies of things. For what it's worth, they're pretty good casts, though the rhino doors don't have much detail on the 'interior', i.e. the side of the door that faces inwards that nobody ever sees. If anyone finds these objectionable, feel free not to be interested in them.

There's a few custom-sculpted bitz in the piles, as you'll see above.

The Vulkan He'Stan conversion (pictured at the top of the series) does have a head that has been hollowed out and accepts LEDs. The head is currently removed; I can conceivably put the LED head back on without too much difficulty. I can also change the LED color to green, red, or yellow. I'm able to wire the whole thing up to a battery mounted in a base, but that'll require a bit more work.

The razorback is lit, as the pictures show, and the battery is easily changed in a hatch at the bottom of the vehicle. The side doors currently on the thing are white resin, but they are magnetized on and can be easily removed (I intended to set it up so it could receive sponsons). The front hatch is also white resin, and is securely mounted there.

Now, for Bitz I am Looking For:

I'd prefer to trade for these if possible, but if not I'm willing to buy as long as you're being reasonable about valuation.

Think that's all for now! Anyone who is interested in any of the above can feel free to contact me.

EDIT: An additional find for my Salamanders For Sale - A converted Chaplain Xavier.

This guy's been converted up to work under Chaplain Cassius's rules in the current Space Marine codex.

Edit again! Some Space Wolves that I'd like to trade or sell.

More if I find it!

Armor(mis)cast

So, I'm dissapointed.

I recently purchased one of Armorcast's "Fuel Air Missiles" in the hopes that I could use it as the basis for an Ork Pulsa Rokkit for Apocalypse. It seemed pretty well suited for it from the picture - it's got a mean face that is, according to their web site, "scribed on the missile body for your painting pleasure", and it's just generally a big, chunky, ramshackle looking piece of hardware that is perfectly suited to be an Orky weapon.

Unfortunately, the reality of the product is vastly, vastly different than their advertisement. Here's some pictures of the model taken pretty much immediately out of the package, without any tinkering.

At first blush, it looks okay. The launching stand seems decent enough, and the detail on those parts is at least clean, although there's some pretty obvious flashing that needs to be removed. However, close examination very quickly reveals that the rocket itself is in absolutely miserable shape.

 

I strongly recommend clicking on the images to view them at full size, so you can get an idea of my issues with the product.

The 'scribed on' detail is nonexistent, outside of one poorly cast eye-lump on one side of the rocket. The wiring and mechanical bits on the back are extremely dissapointing, as it's one of the bits Armorcast did not really display in their preview pictures at all - for reasons which are now becoming apparent.

I like to consider myself a reasonably competent modeller. I can patch holes, I can fix mold lines, I can clean resin up. But the state this rocket is in is simply unreasonable - what wires aren't miscast are covered in flashing 2-3 millimeters thick and pitted with air bubble holes. I bought this product to use as the base for a conversion - basically, to save myself the effort of making the underlying structure - but looking at it now, it'd take more time and effort for me to clean, fix, and repair what they sold me, rather than making my own from scratch. The quality of the cast is what I would consider barely passable for use as terrain, and that's only if you're burying it under ballast and giving it a quick drybrush; there's certainly no "painting pleasure" to be had here.

I had, in past, bought some Armorcast terrain features that shared a number of the flaws I see present on this piece. In those instances, I was willing to give Armorcast the benefit of the doubt, simply because it was a terrain feature (specifically, a barricade) and I figured I probably just got a fluke. However, I'm sure now that this isn't the case - I'm positive that the general quality control at Armorcast is asleep at the wheel.

I can't, in good conscience, recommend anyone else buy these things because I know for a fact that the casts they're going to be putting out aren't going to get any better. How? Well, simply put, there's pieces of the mold stuck in the tight crevasses of the model I got, meaning they're tearing the mold apart as they're using it. This will manifest on models that are cast later as weird, misshapen resin blobs on the models they make. This isn't even a chance thing - there's a whole thread on the Armorcast forums discussing how to remove bits of their molds that are stuck to the model!

Shame on you, Armorcast. The guys at D6 Hobbies put out superior casts with a garage set-up, and you run a whole business around the production of these shoddy copies.

We are Legion

Okay! Finals are over, so now for a tiny bit of news.

I'm going to be converting my Salamanders over to Legion of the Damned.

There's a couple reasons for this. Chief among them is the fact that GW's just released some absolutely incredible models for Legion of the Damned, and I'm quite taken with them:

You can't argue that those aren't some pretty impressive models, yeah?

My plan is basically this: I'm going to make an entire LotD themed army. I realize they're an elites choice in the current codex. I don't care. Basically, all my 'standard' marines will be Legion troopers. I also realize that, as far as their background indicates, they're pretty limited in manpower and don't have much of an organized force. I don't care.

My end goal for this is to make a 'counts-as' Vulkan He'stan out of a Power Armor Chaplain with a Legion theme, and run the whole army as a sort of proxy Salamanders. Since the Legion is just as fire-themed as Salamanders, it does make a certain degree of thematic sense. The things I currently already have for Salamanders will be kept, since they're basically interchangeable - they already have flame motifs on them, so all I need to do is add skulls instead of scales and paint black. This has the added bonus of preventing me from having two green armies, and as far as I'm concerned I think the Legion scheme looks a lot sharper on a table. Plus, let's be honest - black is substantially easier to paint and touch up than lime green.

Chances are good that, like most projects, I'll get a couple of these done before something else shiny catches my eye, but you never know.

Right now, I'm in the process of ordering some of the stuff I'll need for this idea; skeleton warriors from fantasy, some chaplains, obviously advance ordering the new LotD, and a Forgeworld Chaplain Dreadnought will hopefully provide me with a base to convert a Legion one from.

In the mean time (while I wait for these supplies) I will probably be working on some of my Orks - I'm thinking a squad of proper Nobz would not be amiss!

WTB Chaplain Dreadnought

Just taking a brief break from studying for my finals to throw this out there:

I'm currently looking to get my hands on a Forgeworld Chaplain Dreadnought. I'd order from Forgeworld if I wasn't entirely sure it'd take 2-3 months to get to me. I'd vastly prefer something that's new and unpainted.

I'm happy to buy it for cash, or trade for marine or ork bits! Anyone with one they'd like to unload, please contact me.

Electro-spinners!

Hey guys. Not back from my hiatus yet, since I've got exams 'till the 15th, but I wanted to mention this for those that have asked.

The front prong bits I made during my Mega-SAG project are now available from d6hobbies.com - I wasn't really planning on having them cast up, but enough people asked that it seemed worthwhile. It comes as unpainted resin, with  3 separate prongs and a central turbine hub.

I'm looking forward to some hobby work over winter break!

Intermission

A quick note.

If it hasn't become completely apparent due to the lack of updates, I'm inundated in work right now as finals come up. This semester, in particular, has been a huge demand on my time due to the subjects I'm taking. I will likely not be updating until after finals in December.

Sorry!

I’m not dead yet!

Rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated.

As I'm sure many of you may have noticed, this site has been without updates for a significant time. I can do nothing but apologize for the downtime. Law school being what it is, I find myself with very little free time this semester, and ontop of that my fiance and I have been working out the essential nuts and bolts of our wedding plans.

With that said, not everything has been crickets and tumbleweeds. I've been doing a very small bit of painting as I've had the time, and I haven't gotten around to photographing and posting anything yet. When I'm done with my classes today, I'll have a go at getting some of my projects up-to-date.

On a related note, I should mention that I did pick between Mercenaries and Khador for my dabbling in Warmachine. The glorious motherland shall have my axe, for I am pitching in with the mighty Khadoran nation. The decision was primarily motivated by Privateer Press's final MK II rules, as I felt that pirate mercs really hadn't gained a tremendous amount; the themed warjacks were still really sub-par and required a lot of finesse to play to any sort of effectiveness - finesse which I, as a very novice Warmachine gamer, sorely lacked. Khador is delightfully straightforward with it's 'advance-and-smash' playstyle, and as an ork player I can sympathize with such sentiments.

I recently had the chance to order a couple Khadoran jacks from my buddy Andrew over at D6 Hobbies, and I'm waiting with bated breath for the models to make their way to me from Texas. I'm a bit sticker shocked at the retail prices of some of the Khadoran jacks, but I guess I should be used to it now after playing 40k for so long.

One last tidbit to mention for now: I'm working on a new product for sale, which will hopefully be a delightfully modular custom tread assembly, for those of you looking to add beefy, spiked tank treads to your vehicles. It's coming along nicely so far, and I expect to be done with it by November.

More updates later today.

Giving Warmachine a go?

Avoiding the long story that has led me up to this point for now, I have about $240 in credit to spend on just Warmachine models, and I've been giving some very serious thought to what I might want to play, if anything. The game itself seems pretty good, and I've played a very tiny bit via VASSAL to get a feel for things. I like it because it seems like you can play a decent-length game (hour and a half) with very few models - a warcaster and a handful of warjacks is sufficient. This'd let me go wild on the models, since I'd only have a few to work on before I have a decently-sized force.

I've narrowed my choices down to two general interests, but I can't decide between them because I don't yet know enough about the game. I figured I'd post 'em up here and get some feedback.

Option A is Privateer Mercenaries, a.k.a. pirates.

These guys have some of the coolest looking warjacks.

My initial thematic plan for these guys was to do undead pirates, just to be cool, but I've discovered that Cryx actually has undead pirates already, so doing that would cause a good deal of confusion. Instead, I'd probably opt for Bioshock-esque conversions similar to what one might find here, only with substantially more lights. I'd probably base 'em on wood planking and paint them up to be close to the stock scheme because I do like the colors very much.

Option B is Khador, a.k.a. the armored Russians

These guys appeal to my orky side. They are heavily armored, slow-moving, hard-hitting bastards who excel in beating your face in once they get close enough. I'd probably light as much of these guys as I could, too, and base them on snow. I don't have much of an explicit theme in mind for these guys, since they already have a pretty strong iconographic background of being red or olive-colored and somewhat soviet in theme.

Menoth, Cryx, Cygnar and the Retribution don't particularly interest me as far as their units and theme go, so I'm down to these two. I like the pirate merc models slightly more than Khador, but from the little I've played, it seems like pirate Mercs can be incredibly hard to use appropriately. Khador, on the other hand, is 'run at X, hit X until X is dead, then run at Y', which I can sympathize with after playing orks.

What do you guys think? Anyone familiar with the game that could give me some advice on choosing? I know MK II is coming out soon, which is basically like Warmachine 2nd ed, and that changes a few things about the game, so I'm trying to plan ahead.

Upgrade complete!

1,800 pictures. 423 posts. Hours upon hours of work later, our upgrade is finished!

It took quite a while, as I had to basically copy and paste and reformat all the old posts from the previous site design by hand; there was no compatibility with wordpress. Unfortunately all the old comments were lost in migration, but that was unavoidable.

I've designed the new site to navigate largely similar to the old one via a Projects link at the top. Additionally, there is a Quick Navigation in the new sidebar that will hopefully serve as a shortcut when necessary.

One of the biggest problems I had with the old site was that the front page and the projects pages were separate and divided, meaning that the only time the front page changed was when I had a general update to add. The new design, however, will provide everything up-front; anything that gets updated or posted will show here, making it less of a task to see what's being worked on currently. At the bottom of each post will be a link to the project's category that will allow quick access to all of the posts in that project.

A new commenting system is in place now which should allow you to subscribe to any comments on a particular post or project. It is no longer necessary to register to leave a comment - I tried to make it as easily accessible as possible.

The gallery on the site has improved a significant amount, and any images that are thumbnailed in sequence can be flipped between like a slideshow. I'm also going to make it my goal from here on out to provide larger images, as well - my previous gallery images were 600 x 400, but I'll be increasing my standard image resolution up to 800 x 532 henceforth.

I've added in a new Articles section, but I have not had a chance to put the content up yet. There will be additional content in the sidebar to the right shortly, as well.

All told, the new site's been a ton of work to put together. I want to thank my friends Zach and Brian for their assistance while I slogged my way through making php work. As a last little note, if you spot anything missing, incomplete, or broken, please do not hesitate to let me know or leave a comment.

Edit: August 29, 2009 - I am aware that the site doesn't work that well for IE6 and 7. There's a simple reason for that - I couldn't be bothered to try and slog through all the crap needed to make it work the same. However, I've tested the site in Firefox, Safari, Chrome, and Opera and it works fine in all of the 'newer' browsers. If you're running IE6 or 7 and the site looks strange, I would suggest you switch to one of the browsers listed above for a massive improvement in your general browsing experience.

In the mean time, I've noticed the time and date do some strange moving around in IE, so I'm going to look into fixing that. Be aware that it's current behavior is not intended.

Back from the Alaskan Wilderness

It's update-o-clock!

I imagine it's probably apparent that I was not, in fact, consumed by ravenous moose or other wild animals during my brief stay in Alaska, but I feel as though I should dispel any doubts as to that point.

I've been roped into attending a 40K Doubles Tournament at The Gamer's Realm in West Windsor, NJ on August 15, so I have been very occupied in the past few days with getting enough stuff painted and in playable shape to run. To that end, I'll be adding a new project to the Orks section of the site very shortly, and my lootas can expect an update soon because they are being assembly-line painted right now.

Speaking of painted orks, I have to also give a hearty thank-you to Dakkabu at The-Waaagh.com for his ridiculously generous assistance in painting some of the rank and file infantry and I have lying around. He took a mob of boyz off my hands, painted them up wonderfully for me, and returned them to me to be based and indoctrinated in the proppa way ta bash 'eadz in.

Thanks, Dakkabu!

As a last note for now, I just wanted to mention that I have received my first set of casts from D6 Hobbies yesterday, and I'm quite pleased with the results. As a reader, I would certainly not take my word on this as unbiased, because I've made it clear that I have an obvious stake in the sales of my product that go through D6 Hobbies. However, in the interest of disclosure, I thought I'd share a few pictures of their product, right out of the bag, in the same shape and condition you'd be receiving them.

My heavy automatic cannons are cast very well, without any warps or distortions in the barrel or ammo cartridges. The vents where the resin pours in are evident along the top of the gun, but cleanup on those flat surfaces should prove to be completely negligible. I'm comfortable stating that these guns require vastly less cleanup and work than any of the half-dozen pieces I have ever obtained from Forgeworld.

I also received a set of D6 Hobbies-brand lava bases, pictured below.

There's a little bit of darker particulate matter that seems to be mixed in with the resin, creating a 'flecked' sort of appearance, but this is obviously a non-issue on base terrain that gets primed over anyway. I am seriously excited to put some of my Salamanders on this terrain, as I have been looking long and hard for lava-themed bases that looked right. I know a couple other manufacturers make their own lava base brands, but I've really never been a fan of what I've seen, because usually it's a very tiny rock sticking up out of a sea of lava; if you base your whole army like that, they look like they're just about to sink into a firey abyss below. This is a more conservative 'cracked earth' appearance that lets me include some lava around the edges but make it look as though my Marines aren't on the verge of being cooked in their armor.

Before tomorrow evening, I'll have those promised ork updates on the site! For now, I sleep.