Tabletop Geeks

After moving I’ve not had the space to play tabletop games too often lately. The table that we built previously is located over an hour away from me now so I don’t get to use it. We managed to find the space to fit a folding table recently so I decided to set to work building another table. This one is a lot smaller than the other table and is of a slightly improved design. You can also keep up to date with this over in the full table gallery.

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I finally finished up my next model, Madam Sybelle. If you have not played Malifaux, she would be the head of the Resurrectionist’s Rotten Belles essentially. While not my best model, she came out well enough I think.

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Undead Ladies of the Night!

It’s been a while since I’ve posted my miniatures here. I’m a bit slow with the painting. However, I have finished up all 3 of my Rotten Belles for my Malifaux Resurrectionist crew. I’ve got the Red Chapel box set along with a few additional models (Bete Noir, Copycat Killer, and Miss Pack). I’m trying to get at least a 25-35ss crew completed so I can field a fully painted army for simple games, and so I can possibly participate in some tournaments. I’m in the process of painting up Sybelle now as well, so I’ll try and get some pics up of her soon. For now, here are some pics of the finished Rotten Belles. Read more »

Group Photo!

The Marauder Mutant is fully finished, based and coated with a Matte finish spray. I also based and finished my Magister and Possessed. I used Ben’s basing method for the bases to give a rough ruins look instead of doing cobblestone. You’ll also notice that the pictures look much better. I used Hyun’s guide to taking photos of your miniatures to learn how to take some better pictures, and I am now using Picasa to touch them up before posting. Oddly enough I switched to a lower quality camera for these pictures, as my usual camera was not available. Read more »

I took some new pictures of the flagstone in the natural light today. These pics show off the colors much better, and as a bonus they’re not blurry! I got a couple pictures outside in the shade and a picture in direct sunlight for comparison. You can really see the texture and the variety of colors in these images. Enjoy!

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Flagstone

Yeah, I decided to use the actual name for this instead of calling it cobblestone again, mostly because it actually looks like Flagstone now instead of funny shaped cobblestone. I did some work last night with texturing and painting the stones and it looks even better than before. We finally have something the looks random and rough, and not so uniform.

While working on a house last week with Tewfik we put together a small block to use as the base for the house (this post is coming soon!). After painting the flagstone it just looked too bland and uniform (and not so much like rocks) when put together with the house and miniatures. I got yet another idea from my girlfriend for painting though. This new method is quite a bit of work (it took me several hours for a 6″ block), but I think it looks excellent. I’m sure with some practice I can get the painting time down to something more reasonable.

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Since I struggled to get a good picture of the final cobblestone with the lighting I had before, I rushed home today to take pictures while it was still light outside. Here are a few more pics of the final cobblestone in natural light and without a flash. They look a lot better this way, and a lot darker, but for some reason it looks more blue than it really is. Anyway, check out these new pics. Read more »

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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Tyrion

I finally got around to taking pictures of my Warhammer Fantasy High Elf Army. When I first got into Games Workshop games 15 or so years ago it was the High Elves out of the old Warhammer Fantasy Battles box set that I started with. I’ve got a full unit of 20 Spearmen, 8 Archers, Prince Tyrion, and a bolt thrower (along with 1 of the 2 units accompanying it) painted up. Keep in mind that these were all painted probably 8 or more years ago, and were my first attempts at painting. I’ve never been a very strong painter, but this just shows how bad I was when I first started. If you compare this to the Possessed Warband I posted up before you will see that I’ve made quite an improvement. The bases on the elves are done, but the light green I did underneath of the flock doesn’t look so great. I’m not incredibly happy with the colors I used either. I think I also used cheap paints, which is noticeable in a few spots (especially in a side view of Prince Tyrion’s horse where there are dark and light patches of blue). You’ll have to excuse the dust around, these things have been sitting on a shelf for years untouched. Eventually I’d like to get back and paint some more Elves, though they may end up being more suited towards some sort of Mordheim Elven Warband. Feel free to leave any comments about how bad I was when I first started. Enjoy!

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Up close and personal.

We set up the table this weekend to test out how the blocks all fit together and to see how it looked. We should probably be a little more careful with the measurements of the blocks, but it seems like it works pretty well. I think once the pieces are finished the gaps between the blocks will be less noticeable. It’s pretty exciting to see the whole thing finally coming together.

The pics below are with only half of the table open. I hadn’t thought about it before but since we have an 8’x4′ table then we can actually leave one side of the table down and still have a 4’x4′ area to play a small game which can save some room from opening the full board out. If we get enough people over to play we can pull up the other side and do either a 6’x4′ board or 2 4’x4′ boards.

So, here you go… pics of the table with terrain blocks (and a few of my Possessed figures and Tewfik’s Bretonnian figures) set up for 4’x4′. You can click on the images for the full size versions.

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