The Tale of Board Game Painters 2011-2012 Month 1 & October WIP

[Solun Decius]

Alright! We're ready for that first onslaught of finished Board Game Minatures!

Welcome to the Tale of Board Game Painters

What's it all about?
A lot of us wargamers have bought or been given some really impressive board games through the years that have had one extra special selling point; cool miniature game pieces. Mine (and my brother's) include Hero Quest, Space Crusade, Blood Bowl, Space Hulk (both editions) and most recently Chaos in the Old World.

When we opened the boxes we all dreamed of how awesome it would look (in just a few weeks, right?) when we'd have painted every single miniature to the best of our abilities. Awesome atmospheric board pieces with super realistic miniatures all over. Then a few weeks go by, sometimes a few months and for way too many of us a few years. The games are still awesome but all that paint seems to have taken the wrong turn at Albuquerque.

Enter the Tale of Board Game Painters. Now we're going to use the collective power of motivation to really get it done! Participants choose a miniature board game from their collection - one's enough for most of us; after all, they've been unpainted this long already, let's not get carried away - and paint it up in 5 to 10 batches over a period of 6 to 12 months.

At the end of each month (or the beginning of the next actually) we take photos of the month's good work, post it on that month's show off thread and give comments and encourage our fellow painters to keep on truckin'!!

More detailed description of the time plan and structure can be found in the OP of the signup thread here!

Here are our painters at the moment:



In this thread we start by posting last month's painting, our first batches of finished miniatures. Include info on what the miniatures are and what portion of the whole game we feel we've finished. Then we comment on each others good work and begin posting WIPs of our next batch.

Don't forget you can still sign up anytime!

Happy Painting!

[steevn]

hi

finished the 5 figures from the utopia boardgame





apologies for the bad picturequality

[Daemonslave]

Nice stuff Steevn. Here's my months quota for Space Hulk;


First up, 5 Doors;






2 Genestealers;

[Daemonslave]

and Sergeant Lorenzo;






a close up of the sword - my first go at doing this light fading type effect

[DAGabriel]

Managed just in time:





Am not really satisfied with the SM, but hadn`t had the time to do more.

[Robert]

Going to have to play a joker... Busted the thumb in my painting hand, and have been really busy, hopefully will get caught up this month!

[Morglum Necksnapper]

Hello here is my update. I'm painting Space Hulk the first edition. I have two boxes of the game and also the expansions. I really hate the Genestealer expansion psychic rules, they're too complex and boring, am no fan of hybrids either.

I am indifferent about librarians, they bore the ... out of me. So I will only be painting the elements I like to see take part in the game.

As I've metioned in the first tread, a few years ago I've painted genestealers with old friends. These I've touched up the last month. I replaced the round bases with square ones. I know this is never done, as everything 40K is on round bases. I can understand that, I don't play 40k myself, but it must have something to do with line of sight.

In Space Hulk however, a model is placed in an angle of 0, 90, 180 or 270 degrees only. I know from playin Space Hulk, you always have to place the models just right or else you'll get questionable situations concerning line of sight wich can influence the game.

So I deceided to give the models square bases. These look great on the square tiles of the game and no more questions about the position of models.

For the metal walkingboard on the bases I used a gauze normally used to keep flies out of the house. Second thing I did was adding all kinds of bits to the bases, to break up the clean style of the first edition. Then I dipped the models. I've never done that before and was very curious to see how it would work. The original coat of paint on the stealers was a bit to bright for my tastes and I hoped the dipping would make the finish smoother.

And I'm very pleased with the result! All I had to do after the dipping was give the models a coat of matt spray varnish, to lessen the gloss from the dipping, paint all the eyes, as I didn't like them red and greenstuff two claws that had broken. I put the pictures in 3 posts as ou can only upload a few pictures per post.
I bought Space Hulk 18 years ago, finally the stealers are painted. :-)

[Morglum Necksnapper]

And the 27 genestealers together.

[Morglum Necksnapper]

And finally some detailshots.

[Daemonslave]

Wow Morglum, thats a lot of Genestealers!

Also, DAGabriel I really like the pastel sort of colour of your Genestealers, gives them a proper sort of organic feel.

Keep up the good work guys!

[ecurtz]

Here's my first squad. I'll post real comments later, but everyone is looking good so far. I hope front loading some of the work will help me keep up, I did see Army Painter is releasing a purple primer this month, which may be useful when I get to the Genestealers.

[Solun Decius]

Wow! Nice work everyone.
@steevn: Good job on the Utopia minis. Really characterful and cool models too.
Apart from that it's the Tale of Space Hulk Painters, but that was to be expected, and it's such an awesome game too.
@Daemonslave: Those minis look really really good! You've stretched the blue/purple scheme into the turquoise/violet range and it's really working. Great details too. Good red on the power armor and the NMM/Power effect on the sword came out great! I really hope you can stick through the whole tale and finish your set in that quality.
@DAGabriel: Great scheme on the stealers and I love the deathwing colors. Even though the Sergeant's details aren't as sharp as Daemonslave's the coloring is nice and it has a strong Deathwing character to it.
@Morglum Necksnapper: That's an immense amount of minis for a month! And all painted up in that bug-like monstrous scheme. It's gonna be an awesome game set man!
@ecurtz: Very clean and sharp painting on that squad. I like the power effect on the thunder hammer. Great eyes on the helmeted ones too.

Sorry about the thumb Robert. Hope you catch up, I've been looking forward to the DKH minis.

OK, so I finished my last month's painting yesterday, but then I couldn't find the memory card for my camera. Took a camera phone shot just to prove I finished but I'll post something better once I find my CF card.

@Chaos in the Old World: Nurgle


I decided to paint the standard icons on the cultists and the rims of the bases just flat and not shaded because these are game pieces and this will help distinguish players' pieces from each other's.

This is one of the five gods' minions (also counting the Horned Rat from the expansion), so close to 1/5 of the complete set. Next up: Khorne!

As it's a much smaller tale that the fantasy and 40K ones I think it's fine to comment in between submissions if we want, but it's also OK to wait until about a week into the month to give people time to post and then comment on everyone's work together. It's still only the 4th so it's not to late to post an update!

[iamjack42]

Well, I'm going to have to Joker this month. I was optimistic I could get a chance to paint and just post late, but wedding planning has sucked up all my time. I haven't even had time to photograph the models I finished.

I'm optimistic I can double post next month and catch up.

[someone2040]

The picture is unfortunately pretty dodgy, haven't found a good place to take pictures in my new house yet .
But anyway. I haven't finished the claws and teeth and tongues on the models yet (More reason why I didn't really bother with a decent picture). I've already started on this months genestealers, so I'll probably end up doing them all at once.

[Solun Decius]

Nice progress someone. The skin and carapace colors look great.

I still haven't found my memory card so here's a horrible phone upload WIP:


I think it's a pretty good day's work and I've still got tonight to continue. Hope I'll at least finish the reds.

Sent from my Desire HD using Tapatalk

[DAGabriel]

Time for comments:


@ steevn: ok, those pics aren`t the best ones, but the paintjob seems to be good and stylish.as always nice work, do they seem a little bit glossy? Where did you get that stone cross?

@ Daemonslave: Very good paintjob, crisp and clean even if (sorry if I say so) I do not really like the colors of those genestealers. You really did a good job on that sword of Lorenzo.

@ Morglum Necksnapper: What a lot! Woul hate to meet them!

@ ecurtz: a style like a comic, not mine but well done. But minis with black bases are missing a lot, do you know these tutorials? They are a gold mine! http://massivevoodoo.blogspot.com/20...ew.html#basing

@ Solun Decius: Nice and nurglish, how big are they? The eyes are cool but don`t know about the decision with the standards.

@ iamjack42: too bad!

@ someone2040: Not too much possibility for comments with tose pics, what I can see looks nice.

@ all: thanks for C&C, will try to paint sharper an make better pics of those DAs. I really are a fan of them and i really hate those Blood Angel (always winning against my glorious first Legion)!

[Solun Decius]

Thanks for the comments dude!

how big are they?

Maybe it's enough to have the base rims on the flat faction-specific color. If so I can always add a shade to the icons or do a cursory gold/bronze NMM on them all together in the end. As game pieces though it's important that they be easily distinguishable and the cultist models are all the same model for all factions.

I made a bit more progress on the Khorne models, nothing worth an update though. Also, I'll be painting up Dreadfleet, participating in the Tale of Dreadfleet painters. I'll also be adding that progress to this tale as it's a board game (sort of) too.

[ecurtz]

@steevn - Nice job. I really like how well balanced they are between "regular" miniatures which would look fine in a crowd and still having their identifiable individual colors.

@Daemonslave - Really impressive. Makes me happy I'm not doing the 3rd Edition minis just so i don't compare them to yours as I go. I hope you have the time to keep it up for the entire set. I personally do like the classic Genestealer color scheme, and will be using a variation myself.

@DAGabriel - When you first showed your 'stealers and said you were doing Deathwing I was worried everything would be too pale but there is plenty of contrast. The marine is a little rough in spots, but since the colors are so spot on perfect I think it will still look great on the board. Also, your comment re. bases on my minis - I do intend to add (simple) bases soon. I bought some Spaceship X plastic corridors and I'm trying to decide whether to cast some matching bases or just use patterned styrene sheet.

@Robert - Bummer about the injury. Take care of yourself and thanks for keeping involved.

@Morglum - Wow. That is just crazy. Dipping is very design specific, but it seems to work well on those Genestealers. I'm excited to see the massive confrontation when you're done.

@Solun Decius - Very nice shading, I love the GUO. The solid color on the icons is a bit jarring, maybe try leaving the central spokes colored and make the outside the brown metallic of the ones on the base?

@iamjack42 - Thanks for sticking with it even if you missed this month.

@someone2040 - Picture is a bit dark to make an impression (but maybe that's how Genestealers like it, easier to sneak up.)

My WIP for this month looks exactly like last months, so I'm hopefully going to find time to get the Chapel terrain piece which I've had partially done for ages up as a more interesting photo.

[Daemonslave]

Thanks for the comments ecurtz, but I think your terminators look very good too. I especially like the bone shading. Are the shoulder pads FW ones? They don't look familiar.

Also any chance you could do a review on the Spaceship X pieces? I'm quite tempted to get a set (though the postage to the UK is a bit steep), and I would like to see some more pics/analysis before I buy.



@Solun, I like the Nurgle stuff, and personally I don't mind the icon being a different colour, it's the base trim I'm not a fan of - I think it would look better as pure black as it detracts the eye from the mini at the moment (IMO)

@someone, sorry it's quite hard to make out a lot of the detail from the pics (its a touch dark) but what I can see looks good.

[Solun Decius]

Thanks for the comments guys.
I hope the base rim decision will be justified when you see the whole set painted up. Also remember that when we play the game the lights aren't as bright and crisp as straight under my painting lamp. However, I'm taking your comments on the icons to heart and I'll be trying to think of a way to do them more interesting. Maybe paint sort of a glow onto the color or something.
@Daemonslave: From a display model viewpoint you're totally right about the base trim. However, when playing the game it's more important to draw the eye towards the faction of the model rather than it's detailed paint job.

I'm playing about once a week now and the different factions get mixed up really quickly if there isn't some part of the model in a completely flat strong bright faction specific color. That base trim really helps. Otherwise I'd have to paint all the cultists ridiculously bright themselves to be able to play the game
I find it rather interesting how, if at all, you should paint board game models differently than tabletop war game models and display cabinet models.

I've made more progress on Khorne:

You can see the flat red color on the icons. I put that same color on the base rims before our last game but that's actually not strong enough and the cultists were still not perfectly distinguishable at a glance (Nurgle/Khorne - the other ones are just the colored plastic still). I think I'll end up with the icons and trims in a more orange/red like the skin of the bloodletters. Then I'll try to make the icons more interesting on both Khorne and Nurgle.