Tabletop Geeks

Since I moved a couple of years ago I have not been able to play as many tabletop games as I would like. This is in part due to being too far from the people I used to play with. After picking up Warhammer: Invasion (check out my review), Tewfik and I decided to try something a bit different, playing over the internet. There are various programs out there for playing tabletop games over the internet, and specifically a couple for card games (OCTGN and LackeyCCG), but we had just purchased these new cards and I personally feel like it’s a better experience when you can physically shuffle a deck and hold a hand of cards rather than see it on a computer screen.

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Sicarius

If you’ve been to the Tabletop Geeks member galleries then you have probably seen some of Sigur’s work. He has definitely done some very great miniatures. However, he’s done more than just paint some miniatures, he’s been putting up painting guides to go along with some of them as well! These guides are excellent and a great way to pick up some new painting techniques for yourself. I highly recommend checking out both Sigur’s site and the painting guide

This latest painting guide shows off techniques used by Sigur to paint up Ultramarines Captain Sicarius. The guide takes you from start to finish with plenty of pictures along the way! While this guide is showing off one specific miniature a lot of the techniques used, especially the shading, can be applied just about anywhere. It ends with a beautifully painted miniature. Don’t take my word for here, check out these pictures of the finished model. Read more »

I have gotten on a pretty big kick with the photography part of miniatures lately. I’ve been shopping around for a camera and looking for ways to make sure my pictures come out great. I’ve come across a few things that have really improved my pictures so I figured I’d share them here.

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Yet another view of the final cobblestone

Well, after some more messing around with the cobblestone I think we pretty much have the method figured out. While I really liked the last piece from the last post I felt like there was something missing. At the suggestion of my girlfriend I decided to try mixing in some blue and that seemed to do the trick. A little bit of blue mixed in with the gray gave it that extra nudge away from simple grayscale and made it look really nice.

I’ve been testing out various methods with the blue to see which one works best. I’ve found that washes on the cobblestone don’t seem to work all that well, probably because the imprint isn’t all that deep. The trick seems to be drybrushing, lots and lots of drybrushing. It also helps to rough up the surface a little bit first to give it more texture and make the drybrushing work better. I’ll do a short “how-to” on the methods I used for the final cobblestone if you want to try this on your own.

UPDATE: I should probably note that the colors are done, but we’ll probably be adding bits of grass/weeds in the grout and other small details later as well.

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Building!

I finally got around to working on foamcore buildings! In a few hours last night I was able to get the first story of a simple building put together using foamcore, matchsticks, and popsicle sticks. I still need to add some stuff to it, including some framing, and it will need to be painted of course. I was going to use some of the new cardstock printouts as base templates for my building, but after fiddling with getting them printed out I decided I would just try it by making my own pattern. I’m pleased with the progress I made so far, though the popsicle sticks didn’t want to cooperate last night.

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Cobblestone!

After the failed attempt at cobblestone on the well piece, we decided we needed a new idea. We needed something that would look like cobblestone and not just gravel.  We also decided that buying tons of Talus was not cost effective (and finding enough rocks of the right sizes and shapes was not very efficient). I found an idea posted by DarkWingDuck on Tom’s Boring Mordheim Forums for making a cobblestone stamp. This was exactly what we were looking for… it’s simple, it’s consistent, and it’s cheap. Our requirements were slightly different so we decided to come up with our own method. Rather than creating a uniform, patterned cobblestone we wanted something rough and random for our city. We decided on using actual stones to create the pattern to give it a more natural look.

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