So I have being playing around a lot with UV resin of late.
Doing the water effect of my Slaanesh stuff for example and ice pillars for Malifaux.
So I wondered if I could do some stuff around a blue stuff mold of something I sculpted and here is the first test.
Now it isnt a prefect copy, this is less of an issue with this being potentially an ice gamin some variation I can get away with.
But lessons have been learnt the heat from the resin as it cures can be pretty intense more so if you have a lot of resin about and are adding ot quickly on a big surface.
This means the blue stuff mold actually becomes malleable again. Well more than is helpful..
Hence why I think we have the wavy leg and also you can see some of the blue stuff embedded in the chest.
So the next experiment is a little more extreme for me but not for anybody who casts. I am going to cut up the model to make smaller sections to mold and hopefully this means the process is less heat intensive and so I can reuse the same mold. As at the moment the whole mold needs redoing to go again.
So with the new shiny 40K I have started again looking at GW products again and being a good little adopted Yorkshire man I have been trawling the internet for the best deals.
Past the usual suspects I stumbled across the gaming ether, I came across…
Now imagine me with a square chin and a hat and a leather jacket and strong dislike of Nazis and for some reason a Scottish father and maybe a whip?! Sod it, imagine I am the wargaming equivalent of Lara Croft!!
Anyway I came across Triple Helix Wargames, on first viewing the site it is certainly pleasant to the eye nothing to distracting as far as colours go. Navigation is simple but also clean, menus are handily in words not logos/pictures which for me just feels better. While the menu expansion at the side of the site is well laid out but also continues the simplicity of moving round the site.
Perhaps what is most important is the fact the website works just as well on your mobile as it does on a desktop. I can say this is very important as buying on your phone means the other half doesn’t know, right?! Although they always know….ALWAYS!!
The range of products is both narrow and vast at the same time; they cover all things GW which is of course vast (and at a very healthy discount). They also have a strong historical leaning as well, with Bolt Action and Saga etc. being carried. They also carry both GW and Army Painter paints which is a huge plus as I have always used GW paints but Army Painter is finding its way into my collection. They don’t carry some of the popular skirmish level games, which is a shame as you all know on here I love me some skirmishing 🙂
What I would say to stay clear of is the advertised app, it isn’t the greatest and offers nothing over the website and is harder to navigate. Which is a shame as I don’t think any other store offers an app and there is some potential there.
Go give the site a look and enjoy some of the better discounts around (especially for GW).
Well there are not many hashtags that last this long, so it is a credit to all the people still using it (even me when I remember)! Thank you all on Twitter who take part
#miniaturemonday is five years old today :0
Starting with a random idea many moons ago that was born of the #FriskyFriday idea but more paint and geek involved.
I am truly humbled that this is still going strong and covering many many different types of systems and models 😀
We truly have a fantastic thing for the community now and long may it continue!
In other words it is a chance for bloggers to showcase posts that they have done over past year (or longer), that you would like to bring attention to again!
Big thank you for James (AKA@belverker) for stepping up to help me cover some of the systems that I don’t have time to on here. So here I hand over to my new WWX expert.
G’day everyone,
Here I am, another poor sap suckered into writing content for the Bear :), so here I am writing about Wild West Exodus (WWX).
If you haven’t heard of WWX yet, it is a science fiction/alternate history setting, set in the late 1800’s mostly centred around famous people from the American western frontier of that time (hence the name). So you’ll have forces containing characters such as General Grant, Abe Lincoln, Jessie James, Sitting Bull amongst others.
First things first, I haven’t had a game yet so the main focus of this post will the quality of the Rulebook (I have the big one), the resin models, the plastic models, and my initial thoughts of the rules.
The Rulebook
This feels like a good premium product, a good solid hardcover, I was quite impressed with the overall look and layout of this book (I think I have the Kickstarter version as it has a different cover to the one on the online store).
After being impressed with the overall presentation I had a flick though and was a little disappointed in some of the art as a lot of it came across as very concept sketch like, this may have been a design choice though so as to fit the old style book they seem to be going for.
The first 200 pages of the 350 page count contain the fluff for the setting, this is done as a bunch of short stories and take you from the dawn of time to the period where the game is set.
(They cover this stretch of time to show you how this world is different to ours and what the motivations of the more hidden characters in the story are)
Overall the fluff was pretty good, not the best I have ever read but far from the worst. I like the short story style to set it up but feel it could have benefited with some different styles as well.
Next up we have the rules, these follow a pretty standard order and cover everything you need to know and I felt I understood how the game worked just by reading them through and not needing to flick between sections to understand terms and such. There are some nice reminder boxes and I didn’t notice any obvious mistakes with spelling or formatting.
After/as part of the rules section there is a section detailing the scenarios.
These are split into two different types, competitive and narrative. The competitive ones are similar in style to 6th edition 40K, what I liked though is the map showing deployment also gives a sample terrain layout so you get a good idea about how much terrain you need for the game. The narrative scenarios are based around some narrative from the stories and looked like they would be good fun to play but would be considered not exactly balanced.
Then comes the Hobby section, this contains some helpful advice as well as a pretty good painting guide. I personally am not a big fan of the painting style but it did give some good hints for NMM and some other techniques. At the end of this section were a couple of pages of fully painted models from all the factions.
At the end of the book there was no index…this is poor form in my opinion…Though I have noticed a few games doing this and leaving the index for their mini rulebook.
The Resin Models
I currently have 6 resin models for WWX, two I got from their Gencon 2013 sale, two are part of their $5 model deal (they have a new one every month and for the whole month it is $5) and 2 are from the Warrior Nation starter box from Kickstarter.
First up I was very disappointed in the two models I got from Gencon (Kyle the Black and Marshall McCain). They had very soft detail and some pretty major gaps in the joins (and no bases but that was a packaging issue) this made me hold off getting some models for quite a while.
When they started their $5 model promotion I bought the first one (Alt pose General Grant) and when he arrived I was much more impressed with the quality of the detail in the model (haven’t built him yet so not sure on the gaps yet), The second $5 model I got was an alternate Dark Counsel model and again very happy with the detail (this is a single piece model so no gaps) and finally the two models from the starter box, Sitting Bull and Sky Spirit.
Both of these models look like they are good as well. Also the resin feels quite strong and not brittle so that is a big thumbs up here.
Sitting Bull Front
Sitting Bull Back
The Plastic Models
Look at how packed that sprue is, yes there are 10 complete models there, however there are no customizing options. The detail on these is great, on par with the plastic Malifaux models (although WWX seem to have chosen to do less cuts).
The only issue I have had so far is that there doesn’t seem to have been much effort put in to hide the joins, granted this is hard to do on Warrior Nation models as they have a lot of bare skin. But it is something I hope they look into going forward. As a bonus I will also mention the bases and the base inserts:
I personally love the base style as they add an extra style element to the models, the base inserts are really nice too, and being plastic the plastic models love being glued to them 🙂
This is a game that I am looking forward to playing and hopefully convincing some club members to get some models for as well 😉 After I have managed to get a game I will give an overview of that but from my initial reading it seems to have grabbed the best bits from 40K, Malifaux, Infinity, and Warmachine (are there good bits in this game…(now now play nice – doc)) and added a little bit on top as well (there seems to be a great mechanic to speed up large games, which I am looking forward to).
Cheers for James for doing this, hopefully we can convince him to do this more regular (not the Warmachine bashing)..
The Wargaming Bear 