Happy New Year to all

I wish all of you a Happy New Year or "Guten Rutsch" as we say here ;)
I wanted to write down a small resume of this year but due to our snow chaos and the longer time it took me to get to work, I had not so much time as I had hoped. Maybe I will write that post next year. But for now this will be the last post in 2014.

Hope you all have a nice party today and have a good start into 2015 .


So long,
Paradox0n

First Warmachine/Hordes game

So Saturday I had my first game of Warmachine/Hordes. A friend of mine plays both games and invited me to a introduction game of the gaming system. So we met for a standard game and he gave me a brief crash course in the rules and stuff. But theory isn't the only thing, so we started a 25 points game where he gave me his Khador Winterguard troops and he used his Blindwater Congregation crocodiles (which he never played before). I tried to make some pictures while we played but please don't expect a fully fledged battle report because most likely I can't tell you what exactly we did, because it was really lots of stuff to think to learn and to do (and to drink!).

But it was enough to get me very interested in the game and I ordered the Hordes 2-player starter box yesterday. And already found some people in my area who play Warmachine/Hordes instead of WHFB/40K. Pretty interesting. Don't want to spend too much money on the game so I will try to boost the both starter troops with the least money effort possible.

Shadows of Brimstone: Tentacles done!

Finally I finished the first batch of Tentacles from Shadows of Brimstone. If you haven't any idea what Shadows of Brimstone is about, you can check my unboxing of the two core sets where I give a first impression of the content and style of the game.
I decided to go with a two color scheme since the game has normal and brutal monsters and by giving the tentacles different colors I can differ later in the game between the two.
After forcing myself through those miniatures (more of that later) I can give you also a first and short review of the miniatures.

Beautiful St Nicholas Day

Maybe this is a bit for my German readers, but I wish you a beautiful Saint Nicholas Day (Einen schönen Nikolaus). I was very surprised in the morning when I came home from my early shopping trip when I found a small bag in front of my door, containing two gunnysacks with a chocolate Nicholas walnuts and mandarins (the typical contents of those bags here). And surprisingly it was from my mom (and yes I am not living at home anymore and another yes I am over thirty now, nonetheless this is one of the very few traditions we keep). Pretty cool start into the day.

The picture shown is the nougat filled "bismarck" or "doughnut" (in German its Berliner in my region) I got for my wife in the morning. Went up at 8 and went shopping to let her sleep a bit longer today :)

So enjoy your day, especially if you spend it together with your family.


So long,
Paradox0n

It is this time of the year again...

Fitting to all the Nurgle stuff in the End Times I jumped forward and "volunteered" for a cold this week... Therefore no Monday Morning Music/Musings and no progress in painting at all. At the moment I am happy that I can sit at my tablet and read all your blogs and take some time in between to write this blogpost now. A friend of mine already calls me "Papa Nurgle" which is... somewhat fitting at the moment ;)

But enough chatter about my illness, this week was full of stuff so I think I should stop ranting and start posting more interesting stuff for you :)

First off all the Mantic Games kickstarter for the 2nd edition rulebook (and 2 new armies, Abyssals and Armies of Nature) was funded. Pretty successfully for that, I think the overachieved by over 10 times. OK we all know now the guys from Mantic plan these kickstarters to work like that but still this gives me personally a good feeling if Warhammer Fantasy really goes down the tubes. For me this was the new rulebooks, all the freebies and some new dice and especially the new abyssal dwarf hero on winged beast and the obsidian golem. So in the end they got me as usual.

Second there was my decision last week to go for a PBA membership at Panting Buddha. In the end I was mistaken and a bit confused (too much alcohol that evening)  and only opted for a Big Bruddah but mixed it with the Golden Brick Brick itself which would be the next "grade". So sorry for the "wrong" title of the post. I already wrote about the why and the arguments are the same no matter if Big Bruddah or Golden Brick.
Since I now also have access to the Vimeo group (sorry Michael for the confusion) I am eagerly watching the videos and the exclusive content. So far I am not disappointed. And if the continue their DVD series I will be even more happy :) Love the stuff standing in my shelf.

And last but not least I am playing around with my Nikon and slowly getting a grip on it. First I thought I will need a special macro lens for making nice miniature shots. But as far as I tried around it could also work with the normal kit lens. Better to edit it in Photoshop and cutting out all the unnecessary parts than moving too close to the miniature. That perfectly fits to the experiences the Apes from Massive Voodoo write about in their tutorial. Maybe I will dig a bit more into it and write my own experiences down, for example everyone tells you not to use a flash, but my last tests where pretty nice (for a short WIP at least).


So long,
Paradox0n

Throwing the golden brick!

So they got me at last. Yesterday I decided to go for a "Golden Brick" and join the Painting Buddha Academy, switching from the Community College to a "subscription".

From my earlier posts you know that I am quite a "fanboy" of Painting Buddha, because I really appreciate the work they do for the painting community. And with the promo the had running last week which reduced the 42€ to 35€ I couldn't resist anymore. As they explain in their nice promotion trailer that's something around 70ct a week (for me even only something of 60ct a week). And yes I spent more on the last kickstarters than that. Everything seems so logic when they explain it!

As soon as I have my Vimeo access I will most likely talk a bit more about the difference between PBCC and PBA.
Nonetheless I will continue to share the Youtube videos as soon as one chapter is complete thus promoting the free content the Bruddhas produce.


So long,
Paradox0n


P.S.: Welcome Solo Wargaming. Just added your blog to my blogroll. Take a seat and take some cookies until Tea is served.

Kings of War - Kickstarter madness

The Kings of War 2nd edition kickstarter is hitting the home stretch. After breaking through a huge amount of strech goals, Mantic Games presented us now the second and final addons Wednesday with not only even more miniatures but some nice terrain pieces from 4Ground and a modular gaming table from Secret Weapon. So this kickstarter runs as we are used from Mantic, low target but insane success in the end.

Am I completely happy with the kickstarter so far? Hm.. depends. I think for guys like me who only pledged for the rulebook itself it still is not so good as the previous ones. But for those backers who pledge for armies and stuff out there it is pretty interesting. Those really get a big saving and stuff. Even more if Mantic decides to go for bulk army pledges.

But as usual it is very difficult to find nothing to pledge on. Lots of interesting stuff to find and I most likely cannot resist to pledge for some of those new special miniatures although it means that I have to pay the bigger shipping price :)

So if you are interested in Kings of War, you still have 4 days to hop on the hype train :)


So long,
Paradox0n

MMM - Pump it up!

So I am back from my trip to Romania and had the muddiest hiking trip I ever had yesterday. Sometimes I nearly lost my hiking sticks/shoes in the mud... Nonetheless: I am back again!
And I will start this week with some Monday Morning Music: Danzel with Pump it up! I think this song is somehow fitting to the stuff I am writing about today.
So start the music and continue reading... :)

Off Off to Romania and a short WIP

In a few hours I will fetch my flight to Romania. So don't expect any comments or big posts for the next week since I have neither my painting stuff with me nor do I expect to have much time. Sadly the trip is not for vacation but for work ;)

But to deliver at least something hobby related a short glance of another model on my working table: A Jotunn Hailstorm Cannon. Most likely this will be a proxy for a Death Shrieker or something.


See you in a week!
Paradox0n

Kings of War Second Edition

Mantic Games just announced the details to their new kickstarter for the Kings of War Second Edition rulebook.

Kings of War Kickstarter is launching on Friday 14th November at 1:30pm GMT!

Since I already backed the first one (and got a lots of stuff out of it, especially my Abyssal Dwarfs) I will most likely join this one too. Don't know how deep I will jump into but at least I will help to support the rulebook and hopefully the main translations. For me a translated version doesn't matter, but I know that for many people the entry to a system is much easier if the rules are written in their mothertongue.

More details about it you will find in the official announcement and on the Mantic Blog.

So let's see how it is rolling out on Friday :)


So long,
Paradox0n

Playing around on Sunday morning

Just a short update on early Sunday morning. I am just testing (fooling?) around with my new camera a bit. And I wanted to quickly show you some of the pictures I shot (and had an IMO nice effect by chance). After posting that I will return to priming the first miniatures from Shadows of Brimstone but I had to take a break because it really stressed me out that my airbrush was totally clogged  although I gave it a thorough cleaning after the latest usage. Nearly killed my motivation to continue at all....

Unboxing: Shadows of Brimstone

As promised I will do an unboxing of the Shadows of Brimstone core sets from Flying Frog Productions which I backed on Kickstarter. As stated in an earlier post, the two core sets arrived to my surprise last week. Since I hoped that the results of this project wouldn't be as disappointing as the Sedition Wars rules, I was very exited for the package to arrive. Another big reason was, that I mainly backed this game because it is played cooperatively and therefore Mrs. Para was also in this game. She doesn't like Descent too much (at least in playing it with only 2 players) because you play against each other.

Shadows of Brimstone is a Old West Horror board game. Meaning that you will play heroes placed in a wild west setting  and encountering some horror creatures in different locations.

Warning: I will not show the miniatures in this post, I completely leave them out because some of them are huge(!) and I don't know how they will fit in the boxes after I assembled them. Most likely I will have to do some magnetizing. Therefore I will cover them in a later article.

For this unboxing I will try to show the contents of both boxes in parallel because at some points they are pretty similar to each other. So let's see what is in the boxes (big wall of text incoming)!

Nikon D3300 arrived

A new technical gadget in my arsenal arrived yesterday: The Nikon D3300 with lens kit (18-55mm). After some problems with the software (the software bundle delivers an older version which claims to be the newest version, but there is a newer one available on the website) and some driver problems (Win7 PnP drivers are not compatible with the camera it seems) I finally got the camera connected to my PC (thanks to the support forums).

And I began to do some test shooting with the standard setting and the first tests with the lens kit. For me the difference between our old Powershot (10 years old now) and my mobile camera is insane. With some easy positioning and using the lenses I get the blurry backgrounds and with that the depths of better pictures.

MMM: Frank Sinatra - Mack the Knife

After my weekends experience with knives I thought this song is somehow fitting :)

Hope the Doc tells me in 2 hours that everything is OK and I can return back to normal. Although tipping with one missing (because bandaged) finger is somewhat difficult. Normally I type blindly but now I miss more keys than hitting stuff.

Nevertheless, please enjoy the master Frank Sinatra with Mack the Knife:

To get this post some hobby relation: I just tested some stuff yesterday and I think I understood for the first time what glazing really is...
And I have a question to you: Skin for Chaos Dwarves skin tones with purple shadows or completely gray? Or maybe characters gray and units flesh... My problem is, that with my red/gold scheme the fleshy skin tones pop out too much I think.
If I get my camera today I will make some WIP photos and show you my problem.


So long,
Paradox0n

Painting Buddha Academy: Aanchuth series

This time Matt and Mati paint Aanchuth the Cursed from Mierce Miniatures. The series shows you among other things how to paint fur, skin, horns and wood.

As usual I just bundled the free videos together in one playlist. The videos are produced and owned by the Bruddahs from Painting Buddha. All kudos go to them.

If you like the videos, please subscribe to their Youtube-Channel and have a look at their shlog/website.

Hope you enjoy it.


So long,
Paradox0n

Some unrelated Post Scriptum after the jump:

Alan Wolfson exhibits in Lyon

© Alan Wolfson

If you happen to be near Lyon between the 16th of October and 15th of February you should think of visiting the Musée Cinéma et Miniature in Lyon (France) because Alan Wolfson exhibits some of his urban sculptures there.

You may ask now: Who the heck is Alan Wolfson? And the same I asked me when I saw the information in one of the forums I read... But after looking at his website and looking at some of his sculptures I just was flabbergasted by his work.

Maybe I can convince Mrs. Para to pay a visit to Lyon and this museum ;)

So long,

Paradox0n

FFotW - Insane Projects

Shame on me, this series received not too much love recently! Therefore today's Friday Finding of the Week will not contain only one project as usual but the multiple projects I came across on the last weeks.

But first I want to thank you all for the recent activity on my blog. All those comments keep me going and my mind is running with ideas how I can achieve things and what to paint next (most likely it will be a Mantic Forge Father Hailstorm cannon). And I am preparing some throw away pieces where I can practice weathering before I completely ruin my Ramshackle Drill :) But enough chit-chat for know, lets come to the model madness!

Ramshackle Drill finished

My Ramshackle Drill is finally finished (or as finished as I will go at the moment). I think it still needs some weathering, but I will most likely do that when the rest of the war machines are finished. The color scheme came out pretty nicely and I think I will do the rest of my Chaos Dwarfs in the same scheme.

The picture kills some of the highlights but I am too lazy to setup the bucket or even my photo tent for this one shot :) The cam of my mobile will not capture the details anyway. But for Christmas I want to gift me with a DSLR, most likely the Nikon D3300. Or does anyone have another good option in this price range?

And after my very successful post to my 200th "anniversary" it seems that my blog now jumps back to normal, few page views and comments :)

I hope I can get to some unboxing of the Shadows of Brimstone boxes. I already risked a look and so far they look fantastic.


So long,
Paradox0n

Shadows of Brimstone - First wave arrived

What a nice surprise that awaited me when I came home from work: The two "Shadows of Brimstone" core sets arrived today! Heavy, big and totally unexpected. I thought they would arrive sometime around Christmas. Couldn't wait to open it, therefore I teared open the package and was pretty happy with the stuff I got so far.
This evening I will start to break out all the markers and stuff, and maybe even glue together all the miniatures. Some of them seem to be reeeaaaally big! My wife already said: Let's grasp a bottle of whine and study the rules. Very cool, seems she likes the idea behind the game and that you can play it in coop unlike Descent where you always have the Dungeonmaster who plays against the other players.

Thoughts on blogging - 200th post!

As my 200th post I want to share my thoughts on blogging and how to behave in the blogosphere. After analyzing my statistics and reading many different blogs, blogging styles and checking what other blogs do (and don't do) my mind started working and after giving it a second and a third thought I feel now the urge to write some more personal view on this whole blogging stuff. The article is already some weeks in the pipe and I never felt it ready. But as my 200th post I think it is allowed to be seen :)

As you perhaps know, this blog started roughly 2 years ago as a test balloon because I just wanted to write more in English and thus practice the language. I had the choice between a tech-blog about my work or a more fun thing about the war-gaming hobby (which at this time started anew for me). I decided to combine both experiments and write about the hobby since work stuff I don't want to do in my spare time. Meanwhile I had lots of ups and downs and I even think about opening a bi-lingual hiking blog together with my wife and writing some tech based articles about my work on the blog of a good friend of mine. So blogging taught me to gather my thoughts and put them into words and practiced my English (even though it is not as good as it should be). And the most important fact: It helped me to keep at the hobby, even with longer brakes and stuff.

Blood Red & Sunburst Yellow: My two arch enemies

Motivation is somehow back and I am starting to paint again. And having to face my two arch enemies: The (very) old paints from Games Workshop, Blood Red and Sunburst Yellow. Those two paints just will not create some reasonable layers, the pigments in them just flow around and give a uneven, semi-transparent, blotchy layer. Even doing multiple coats will not work with them. And painting them on anything else than a white (or light gray) primer gives you headaches. With the airbrush the colors work OK but I can't use my airbrush on all those small parts of the miniatures.
Either I am too stupid do use those correctly or these colors are really a pain.

The problem is, that I still have to use them, because my Chaos Dwarves will use the red, and my Skaven Slaves have yellow clothing...

So if anyone of you has a good tip how I can get those two colors to work I would be happy... Or is there a nice basecoat red and yellow color from other manufacturers like Vallejo? So that I can only use the GW ones for highlighting. I know that there are some basecoat colors from GW but I switched all new colors I own to the Vallejo ones and I am more than happy with them.

And to complete this post, a bad shot WIP picture of the thingy I am working atm: The Ramshackle Drill I got a looooong time ago as present from Labschi. The brown parts will later be covered with a brass/gold paint and the metal parts will be weathered and be more metal (its just the first drybrushed coat). The red parts will stay, I like the dirty look of that, the first time that its OK that the red didn't cover so good :)

This thingy will either be a proxy for a Skaven Doomwheel (if I ever need a third on in a game) or most likely be used as a Chaos Dwarf war machine. I am thinking of the Iron Daemon since I don't want to buy the Forgeworld one and all my Chaos Dwarf models so far are the Mantic Abyssal Breeds or proxy models from other companies.


So long,
Paradox0n

FFotW - Scale Model Challenge Collection

As most of you know, last Sunday was the Scale Model Challenge near Eindhoven. I thought about going there rather spontaneously, but after all the ~1200km drive (back and forth) which I would have to do alone (since Mrs. Para wasn't interested in the show) and the fact that I had to work on Monday kept me from doing something crazy.
Nonetheless I had a look at some of the emerging posts in the blogosphere and want to show you the reports I have found interesting so far.

The first was Tuffskull who also did a nice video of his trip:

Corvus' Miniatures also posted a video about the SMC 2014:

And in my Youtube recommendations I found another channel who did a multi-part coverage of the SMC (I just put them together in one play list, all kudos go to the creator of the videos):

Mot likely there are many more articles available, it seems that the guys from Painting Buddha also try to keep track of them. Their report about the SMC already has some nice image galleries linked.

Seems like it was a great event. Hope everyone who was there had a good time. Maybe I will join the party next year with some more time to plan and maybe get a hotel room for one night to ease the pain of driving :)


So long,
Paradox0n

Painting Buddha Academy: Horus series is finished

The next video series form the PBCC is finished. This time not only Ben works at the Miniature but also Matt jumps in with painting the base. If you don't know what the PBCC is, please check out Painting Buddha.

As the last time I bundled all the videos from the Horus series together in one playlist. Part 5 (painting the wolf) and Part 7 (painting green marble) are missing because they are only accessible for subscribers, so if you are interested in those or a 1080 version you must opt for a subscription :)

If you like the videos, please subscribe to their Youtube-Channel and have a look at their shlog/website.

But this week there is even more insanity from the guys. Up until now, you got some step-by-step introductions in a PDF if you opted in for one of their subscritpion models. But since Michael is absolutely nuts and hast lost his mind in the plans to conquer the galaxy (just kidding) they know make the PDF availably for everybody and even give out a voucher for those who already bought it.

Hope you enjoy it.


So long,
Paradox0n

FFotW - The Order of the Stick

My FFotW this time  is a comic series called "The Order of the Stick" by Rich Burlew. This series is really hilarious and so funny (at least if you are somewhat in P&P role-playing games like AD&D (on which this one is based).

I am not through the whole story but as far as I could read (somewhere around 300th strip) its pretty good.

Aaaand the best: There also exist some miniatures to the story and even a board game.
The miniatures are from Morland Miniatures a company I never heard before. They fit the look of the characters pretty good :)

I just had a quick look at the other miniatures there. There is some stuff which looks really cool. If anyone knows the company already, please drop a line in the comments.


So long,
Paradox0n

More impressions from Norway: Models in Flam museum

So I will continue to show some of my pictures from Norway. This time I only have four pictures which I have shot in the Fram museum in Oslo. When my wife first told me that she wanted to visit the museum I thought "Nah not interesting" but oh how I was wrong...
The Fram is a pretty famous ship, which was used in Arctic AND Antarctic expeditions and has quite a history to tell. The museum contains the Fram herself (yes the whole ship!) and the Gjøa.
The main hall which contains the Fram is four floors high and you can wind up your way up to the deck hop on it and discover the complete ship. On the different floors you can see lots of items from the expeditions and at some places also some small dioramas which I will now present to you.

If you are interested in more information about the museum or the ships, just visit the linked sites :)

Hope you enjoyed it.


So long,
Paradox0n

MMM: Heaven Shall Burn - Combat

Time for the music wakeup on Monday! This kind of music will either wake you up or make you run away from the noise :)
 I think this is a pretty depressing topic with matching video. Child soldiers are something this world should have never seen. I can't even imagine how the psych of these children is destroyed. I only know from dialogs with my grandpa (who was roughly 16 and more a teenager than a child when he had to fight in WWII) how bad stuff can be.

So why do I post the video? Because I think stuff like this needs some attention from time to time.

Heaven Shall Burn - Combat:

So long,
Paradox0n

P.S.: The cartoon characters remember me somehow of the Lulus of the Toughest Girls from Raging Heroes without judging that. That is why I though it somehow fitting for a tabletop blog.

FFotW - Seans Photoguide

First camera

My finding of the week is this time a series oft posts of Sean a fellow blogger. In his blog he shares some of his experiences with photographing miniatures. So if you are interested in stuff like this, please have a look at his series and maybe you find his blog to your liking.

Since I found it rather difficult to find all the parts, I just put the current five posts into this list:

1. Photographing miniatures - Part 1
2. Photographing miniatures - Part 2
3. Photographing miniatures - Part 3
4. Photographing miniatures - Part 4
5. Photographing miniatures - Part 5

Hope he continues with the series (he suggested stuff like processing pictures etc. pp.). Although I know lots of processing pictures in Photoshop due to my work, hearing what others experienced and use as tools is always nice.

And as always: Sharing is caring!


So long,
Paradox0n

P.S.: Something went wrong with the publishing therefore you get my Friday Finding of the Week on Saturday morning ;)

Hitting the 40k visits mark

So wow! I just checked my statistics and saw an unbelievable number oft hits there. Over 40.000 visits on my blog! Although I know that most oft the traffic comes from Google and other crawlers I am pretty happy. Even more since I know that most oft the spambots are now blocked out (can see that pagehits did break down after I changed the comments to registered only).

So a big: Thank you! to everyone who is reading this blog.

And I take this oportunity to make the small anouncement that I will post again more (hobby) stuff. Had to take some time off doing other things like working and hiking (especially in Norway and the Black Forrest) until I found the motivation again to interest me for my plastic mountains ;-)

So stay tuned.
Paradox0n

Impressions from Norway

As promised I will post some of my Norway pictures. Today I want to start with some more hobby related pictures which gave me some nice ideas for bases/weathering and an idea how stuff "grows" in reality.
So without anymore babble I let the pictures speak. "A picture tells more than 1000 words", right?

Earth, Stones and Trees

Some impressions from our first hiking trip. Liked how the area looked, a bit "highland" feeling.

Ice | Nigardsbreen

Some impressions from Nigardsbreen. After we did a small hiking trip to one of the arms in the neighborhood, we decided to go to the big one which is one of the biggest attractions in Jostedal. We booked a short guided tour and therefore I could take some nice pictures from the glaciertongue itself. We didn't climb up too far, but it was very impressive. Next time a bigger blue ice tour ;)

Weathered truck in swampland

One nice thing I stumbled upon when we did our last hiking trip was this rusted truck. It was nearly reoccupied by nature and was really cool.

That's it for today. If you liked it please say so in the comments, I can post some more pictures of Norway if you like. For example on our canoe trip one part looked a bit like the place where the hobbits paddled through ;)


So long,
Paradox0n