Nightwing Scenic Base - Forest Pond

Having spent a fair amount of time and effort on my Nightwing, I decided I had better make a decent fist of its base. As mentioned in recent posts on my Cryx army, I have been playing with water effects recently. A pond in a clearing of some sort seemed the perfect way to resolve the problem of building an attractive, interesting base - that has a massive transparent pylon sticking up out of it.

That said, here's, my guide to building a forest pond themed flying base.

To start with, you will need some inspiration. Unless you're one of those incredible artistic, creative types who can just like, you know, 'imagine' stuff and then create it, its a good idea to do a bit of photo research.

A lot of us like to just wing it. Whether its because we think that is how genuine creative geniuses work (its not) and that we too are so gifted (we're probably not), or we just don't think we have the capacity to or patience to plan out something great, there's really no excuse, what with Google image search being so easy and available, to not at least type in 'forest pond'. Doing so will give you images like this:

Alright - there we go. The idea of layered rocks forming a sort of bracket for the water on at least one side is one I probably would not have had otherwise. The sloping effect is also something cool I can try.

Using some GW textured paint and some pieces of slate I found on the road, we can get something like this:

I'm trying to build up a sort of beachy slope in the foreground. I have also made sure to seal all the gaps between the rocks at their bases so as not to let any of the water effects through when I add them later on.

The textured paint is pretty versatile stuff. As well as giving you a pre-textured and pre-basecoated base, it will dry to form a fairly strong grip on the slates I pushed into it when wet. It is not super-easy to sculpt or shape, but with a little perseverance you can get some good slopes, pits, ridges, and so on.

It takes maybe an hour to dry though, so I will leave it for a while before adding some more layers and rocks.

Review: Forge World's 'Imperial Armour Model Masterclass Volume Two'

I have been waiting a long time in eager anticipation for the second in Forge World's painting and modeling books -  the expansively titled 'Imperial Armour Model Masterclass Volume Two'. I even got to Salute a couple of weeks ago, expressly to have a chance of picking up a copy at the FW stand. Sadly I was still too late on the day but FW were happy to let me order a copy for home delivery :) Cue another week and a half of waiting - and it has arrived!

I loved the first volume and have used or adapted several of the techniques described therein on my models (I even got the wife to help build and paint a Baneblade with me, using the techniques FW described). I'm a big fan of learning new stuff and expanding my repertoire and the book certainly had lots of new challenges and things to try. But would the second volume in the series be as eye-opening? Would I be as inspired to hook up the airbrush and dig out the oil paints and varnishes? Most importantly, how expensive would the new toys I would feel obliged to buy be?

The answers to those questions are, it turns out, 'kind of', 'a little', and 'probably not much'.

Its not that Vol.2 is bad by any means. It contains lots of well shot photo's of gorgeously painted miniatures. There are quite a few different models shown as well. The problem really is that it doesn't feel like this book really develops the hobby. It doesn't add as much to the world of painting 40k miniatures as Vol.1 did. Many of the techniques described in Vol.2's guides have already been described in Vol.1. If you already know how to use layers of varnishes, apply decal, sponge on weathering,  you may not learn much more here.

You may think that the chance to learn the colours used in painting some of the gorgeous FW models you've seen at shows or on the web is good enough reason to buy this book. Which brings me to second, and probably biggest, problem with Masterclass 2: it uses the old Citadel paint range. You would have to be either very lucky or strangely prescient to still have a stock of Bleached Bone, Scorched Brown, Khemri Brown, or Mechrite Red, but these and many others are used in the painting guides.

This leaves painters hoping to replicate the schemes presented therein with a dilemma - do you attempt to map those mentioned colours over to the new ones GW describes as their replacements, bearing in mind the new colours are not identical to the old ones and are in some cases, I am told, quite different? Or do you just go with Vallejo's Game Colour range, in which case you can get more or less identical shades with purposefully similar names, albeit possibly of a slightly lesser quality than the original? Given that if I were to follow FW's guides to the letter I would already be buying several Vallejo paints (as FW don't seem too squeamish about mentioning they use colours and products GW don't do), add the fact I hate and fear change and, well, the choice is clear for me.

That said, the guides are nicely laid out and photographed, if a little casual in their descriptions. At times this can be a little silly. In the guide to painting a Reaver Titan there are some lovely pictures of the upper surface of the carapace. This is a gorgeously marbled piece and FW suggests you achieve this effect by airbrushing paint 'in subtle marbled patterns'. But this is a 'Masterclass' book - you are supposed to have some experience/ability/brains before buying it and more often than not the pictures and descriptions are detailed and good enough to enable you to do something quite cool with your next big project.

The question then is, 'if I already have Masterclass Vol.1, do I need Vol.2?'. My suggestion would be this: if you are alread au fait with the techiques described in Vol.1, you probably don't need this book. That is, unless the list of models shown contains some you really like the sound of.

 If you don't have Vol.1 but are interested in discovering and trying some new painting and modeling techniques, I would suggest checking the list of contents of each book, then buying the one with the most interesting models to you in it. That is to say, if you just buy Vol.2 but not Vol.1, you won't be missing out on any secrets of the Universe guaranteed to win you power, money, and Golden Demons.

Be aware though, not all painting guides are created the same. The guide to the Brass Scorpion in Vol.2 is quite detailed and has lots of cool stuff to try out. The Phantom titan bust 'gallery' by contrast, is only a couple of pages long, the largest part of which is big big pictures. If you buy this book hoping to revolutionise your Eldar painting, you may be disappointed.

I was also a little disappointed by the choice of what models went into this book too. The weakness of Vol.1, I felt, was it was fairly traditional tank-heavy. Lots of muddy and rusty Imperial and Chaos cans that is, not so much Xenos stuff. I hoped Vol.2 would therefore switch the focus from the lumbering human technology and show us some tips and tricks for painting Eldar, Tau, and even 'nid models. But, apart from the aforementioned Phantom gallery and a few shots of the Mymeara models, there are next to no xenos in the book.

Essentially the, Vol.2 is 'more of the same'. None of the content is bad, much of it very very good and well presented. But it is also very very similar to Vol.1, uses paints that aren't being made any more, and may not feature models or races you are interested in buying or playing. Not a horrible product at all, but a missed opportunity to develop a brand and a series into new directions.

Flagpole

Just a few minutes to spare while some paint dries to put out a couple of
thoughts on the recent Salute show at the Excel.

I went with an open mind. I went with an open wallet. I went, increasingly
disillusioned and frankly bored with GW games and products, with an eye to
discovering some new games to play and models to buy. Wayland Games
will be opening their new warehouse and gaming centre near me quite soon
so I thought I might get a headstart on collecting a new system.

Over an afternoon of trailing around the Excel, talking to players and reps,
and reading rules and demoing games, a couple of big differences became
apparent between Games Workshop and the competition.

When it comes to low barriers to entry, pretty much every major alternative to
GW games are streets ahead. Warmachines and Hordes, Infinity and
Mantic's offerings all offer free rule sets and cheap miniatures. It can't have
escaped anyone's notice Mantic are practically trying to give their mini's
away - barely a week passes without some mega-bundle deal arriving in my
Inbox, imploring me to buy a thousand Warpath mini's for £10.50 (or a
figuratively similar price). These boxes all come with free rules and there
were indeed several bundle deals at Salute giving free leader blisters, bags,
and the like with purchases of new armies. Warmahordes also come with the
stat cards you need to field the models and free rules are readily available to
download. Infinity has slightly more complex rules, meaning a rulebook
seems a must, but, like Privateer's games, you need very few miniatures to
start playing the game. Compare these startup costs with 40k or WFB,
where you are likely to have to spend around £100 just to get started, then
another £100 to get competitive, on models that aren't cheap to begin with
and increase in price with chilling regularity.

But, and this is important, GW is in turn streets ahead of all its competitors in
a key area - sales training.

Take my experience at the Privateer Press stand for starters.

I turned up, nice and early in the day, big smile on my face and asked a member of the
'street team' for a demo of Warmachine. 'Ah,' he said, 'can I show you
Hordes instead - its pretty much the same as Warmachine?'. Not a great
start, not showing the customer the product he has asked for, but I was in a
cooperative mood so I said 'OK' and off we went. Twenty or so minutes later we wrapped things up and I told my guide and another member of the team that had wandered over to help explain some
rules that I would really like to play the Retribution of Scyrah but didn't know
what models I should buy as there was no starter set for that faction.
'Hmmm,' they said, 'there is a recommended starter list though.'. When it
became apparent they weren't going to tell me what it was, I asked them for
some names and they rattled off half a dozen. I figured I could memorize
the list as it seemed to be largely the names of significant monsters from
Greek mythology. Then there was another awkward silence which I broke by
walking away to look for some of these beasties on the display racks along
the back wall of the stand. It turned out they didn't have most of the names I
was looking for in stock (perhaps explaining the crew's reluctance to help me
find them). They didn't have them at Wayland's stand either, although at least
the store staff there were friendly and helpfully suggested popping in to the
warehouse after the show wrapped up.

Turns out PP were actually the best customer experience I had that day. At
the Infinity table I got a game with a very friendly guy who unfortunately was
new to the system and didn't know all the rules. At the Mantic area I watched
a game of Warpath for a bit before asking one of the company reps if I
could look at the rules on the table in front of her. She said 'yes', then walked
away. Well, if you're not that interested in potential customers, I'm not that
interested in playing your game.

Its a shame really. I get why it happens - noone in the industry does retail
except GW so there's not an abundance of sales staff working for anyone
else. But seriously, why go to the trouble and expense of setting up stands
at the biggest sales opportunity in the UK and man them with people who
don't know the games, don't have an interest in bringing in new players, and
can't be bothered to even deal with people who come and ask them
questions? The marketing managers who come set these things up should
be just a little bit ashamed that the people they put in place were so
unprepared or unable to do the job they needed too. The creatives who work so hard and do such a good job at making entertaining games with gorgeous miniatures should be quite angry they are not being marketed in any way close to effectively.

So, I came away empty handed. The games I wanted to play didn't want me.
The mini's I wanted to buy weren't for sale. And so I shall probably end up
just pumping more money into GW - a company that scorns me, but still
works hard to pull me ever closer (yeah, I'm aware thats pretty close to
definitions of abusive relationships or, perhaps more aptly, those between
crack addicts and their dealers). They want to rip me off, but at least they
want me.

Sprayaway!

Got a new spray gun from GW in the post this morning and, hold your breath, the parts all fit together! This meant I was able to spend some time spraying up the remainder of my Wolf Guard army and a few normal marines as well. A quick write-up on the spray gun then.

I wish I had known how quickly this thing applies paint before I did three drop-pods, a LRC and a rhino by hand! Honestly - between five and ten minutes to coat 8 terminators in a nice even colour that dries to a smooth finish, ready for shading and highlighting. The finished coat looks like the plastic itself is coloured, its that smooth.

Its not quite as simple as lining up the figures and spraying them in smooth side-to-side motions though. The intricate nature of the sculpts and the model's poses meant I could not get away without picking each one up to angle them so as to let the paint jet get into some of the nooks and crannies. As a result I now have Space Wolves grey fingers and thumb so everyone I meet at the club tonight will instantly know what I've been doing. Caught blue-handed.

The setup of the gun is a little finicky too. The adapter that attaches to the propellant can is a little looser than I would like - I could hear a little hiss of escaping gas when I changed cans halfway through the session, even though the adapter was tightly screwed on. The hiss did stop though so I guess this could just be a consequence of all the pars taking a second to expand or contract into place.

Judging the quantity of paint going into the jar could be more an art than a science too. The marks the jar has on it are designed for foundation paints only so one has to use slightly less water for normal colours. When you're using a homemade mixture like I do for Wolves base coat that already has had a little water added to dilute there's no way of knowing in advance what consistency you want the spray mix to be. I'm a little surprised GW haven't included a guide for non-foundation paint mixtures, but hey-ho. I seemed to have got the right thickness in the end and I guess there's always going to be an element of experimentation involved anyway.

Its hard to say how efficient the spray gun is. As I considered the amount of wastage involved in transfering my paint mix into the gun's canister and then returning the excess back to the original jar I began to wonder if this wasn't just another way for GW to make me buy more of their paints! Naturally a lot of paint in the spray you fire is going to miss the model completely and I can life with that. But I hate the thought of leaving paint in the gun's jar just to be washed away duing the rinse! Surely GW could have come up with an adapter that fitted directly onto the plastic pots the paints come in? Maybe not, maybe I'm asking too much. I guess its really not that much wastage in the grand scheme of things and, after all, the spray gun's greatest economy is in time spent, not paint.

All in all I'm positive about Citadel's little melta-themed effort. I'm looking forward to the next time I need to paint vehicles or buildings and wondering what magic I can perform with stencils and camo patterns. No doubt this pray gun is not the greatest of its kind - I'm sure you can find more high tech tools with more bells and whitles on out there. But for a beginner hobbyist like myself without too much spare time or cash to spend, this one is more than adequate.