[unofficial weekender] Art!

[blinky465 17208xp 1]

if it looks alright, then where is the issue?

My thoughts exactly! When only my minis are out on the tabletop, you don’t even notice the “scale creep”.
I guess if I were to take them and try to play a game against someone else, my minis would appear overly “chunky” or out-of-scale. But compared to themselves, they look just fine to me (and since I’m not one for going out to clubs or play in tournaments, my mini painting is basically for me anyway).

After 15+ years of denying 3d printing (at least filament printing) I bought myself a FlashForge 5M last Xmas and have been loving it. Not just for tabletop terrain but 1:1 modding (adding an electric kit to my bike)

@Lazagram you look like you’ve got some half decent results there! I find for really fiddly details, a mix of fdm printed terrain with a few resin-printed greebles glued on top can look really nice (after a few coats of primer). But even on its own, that’s looking pretty good so far!

@sundancer – I hear you. I couldn’t even attempt to paint faces without my jewellers magnifiers. The ones with the interchangeable lenses and big stupid LED lamp on the front. It’s amazing what difference shining a light directly onto the minis makes to aid with painting. When I was younger I could paint almost by candlelight – not any more!

@danlee – any decent solo rules you can recommend ?

[danlee 22859xp 0]

@blinky465 I tend to play massive games from Kickstarters. Tainted Grail is a great solo-player grim fantasy RPG. A campaign is about 30 hours of gameplay split into two hour sessions.

 

I really like the game play of Kingdom Death Monster, although playing one campaign took me a year, playing one session per week, four to five hours per session…

 

Aeon Trespass Odyssey is a more refined version of Kingdom Death Monster in many ways. It has five cycles, with each cycle taking about twelve or so sessions, three to four hours per session. It also needs the equivalent space of three dining tables to play.

 

 

[zoidpinhead 12884xp 1]

how may of you are printing your own minis now?

I currently use an Elegoo Mars 2 and have had a go at a range of things but mostly printed 2mm ancients.  I also have a smaller resin printer which the Mars 2 is an upgrade from as I needed a bigger bed size to speed up the 2mm production.  I started with FDM printers which are fine for terrain but weren’t good enough for minis.  With the Mars I can do both and to a high quality, when I can afford the resin 😀

I still buy and assemble plastic minis but partly that is because I like doing it and I like the challenge of converting minis when there isn’t something commercially available.  So far the 3D prints I’ve done in 28mm have a particular sculpting style that doesn’t sit well with my historical miniatures.  I haven’t really looked at historical 3D sculptors and I’m sure I could find someone who is a good fit with Copplestone, the Perrys or Hicks.  So far the ones I’ve ended up with aren’t.

[blinky465 17208xp 0]

@danlee wow, that sounds awesome. Yet also the exact opposite to what I was looking for! I love the idea of a solo game, but something small and quick and snappy. Ideally with some RPG elements to it (some NPC interaction would also be nice) but ultimately something small (2ft square would be my ideal size) where I could spend an hour or two at most.
I love the idea of a larger “campaign” split over multiple chapters though.

@zoidpinhead I thought you’d made a typo! 2mm ? Two?!
I never really understood the whole “historical accuracy” in gaming – those guys who spend days hunting down just the right colour olive-drab-green for their tunics or whatever. Until I started really reading about Wild West characters (I always had a fascination with “cowboys” but actually learning about the history of these famous outlaws and heroes was great fun). Now when I paint wild west (especially named) characters, I want them to be as authentic as possible. I think I get it now!

I’m not a historicals guy, but Battlecat miniatures (https://www.myminifactory.com/users/BattleCatHistoricals) always had a nice consistent style. I don’t know how they fit in with the creators you mentioned, but they have a very “old school” vibe to their models (not the super-detailed, ultra realistic look that a lot of historical digital artists seem to go for these days).

[limburger 22468xp 1]

I kind of have to laugh at the concept of ‘historical accurate colour’.
It’s only been relatively recent that we’ve been able to maintain consistent colour in clothing … and even then shops will argue that colours fading is just a thing that happens.

As such I doubt the Romans in 25 BC ever had an exact shade of red …

That’s not even mentioning the effect of the environmental lighting and/or distance.

Or the effect of a war on availability of materials. Didn’t the Germans kind of run out of paint for their vehicles by the end of the war ?

I think I’m ordering my pc-parts. I can keep postponing until my pc crashes for real, or I can take the hit and update. It won’t be the first pc I’d assemble, but I’ve already noticed that there’s fewer steps to get the system up and running as there’s fewer cables to worry about.

Free League and Monolith have sent address confirmations, so that’s two kickstarters arriving “soon”.
I do wonder how many will arrive before Epic Warpath 😀

[danlee 22859xp 2]

The last batch of Aeon Trespass Odyssey Primordials are finished. https://www.beastsofwar.com/project/1912086/

 

[grantinvanman 10166xp 0]

@danlee those look amaze balls

 

@limburger indeed, colour consistency is something that changes even based on UV today – guitars, for example, will change over time – and that’s a recent thing.

[limburger 22468xp 1]

I think I ordered my parts just in time as my pc had another near death experience.

@grantinvanman we don’t talk politics here. And turds like that don’t deserve any mention.

I say we sing this :

or if you prefer the English version:

[blinky465 17208xp 0]

@limburger – at the risk of sounding like one of those new-to-this-platform-fanboys that bangs on about how great something is that everyone has known for a long time, just because it’s new to me, I was amazed at how easy it was to recover from a failing hard disk the other day.

I still don’t know why (other than I cheaped out and didn’t buy a branded one) but the ssd I had put in my machine was showing loads of bad writes in the SMART table and the hdd light was almost constantly on. I plugged in a new ssd (via a sata-to-usb cable) ran a simple one-liner from the Linux terminal and four hours later (I had lots of bad sectors) my entire machine, settings, apps, files etc. were painlessly transferred over onto the new drive, in a way that I’ve never managed with Windows.

Sometimes it’s nice to do a full fresh reinstall of an o/s and sometimes you just want to get back to your known working configuration as quickly as possible (I’d installed lots of weird VMs for running Windows XP for my shonky old laser cutter that had been painful at the time).

I’m not 100% sure. But I think I’m done with Windows now…

Hope all goes well with your upgrade, all the same.
It’s a nervous time if your machine is failing and you’re having to keep fingers crossed that your fixes actually work!

[limburger 22468xp 0]

SSD’s have a limited lifespan. Even branded official ones. I honestly don’t know if that is part of the reason why my system is failing. However I did want a new pc anyway as my current one is +/- 10 years old. The GPU is the only ‘new’ thing and that’s a few years old too.

I do have one Linux machine in my house … and that’s the server running Proxmox + Home-assistant + Pi-Hole.
Doing upgrades on that thing is suspiciously easy at times.

The challenges for desktop start when companies only ever release Windows-apps to do various things with their hardware.
My Reolink security cameras work perfectly fine in HA, but if I need to do firmware upgrades I have to use their Windows app.
Although I did recently notice that a recent firmware upgrade could be done from HA. There’s still a few things their app does that HA doesn’t do (yet).

My Govee lights are in a similar situation, but unlike Reolink they are not “works with Home Assistant”-certified (and they won’t be as they need external servers. ).

Anyways … I’d be tempted to run a dual boot Linux/Windows system for a while just to see where we’re at, but modern hardware tends to be Linux-hostile and Windows hates not being primary OS so I’m not sure if I can do it at all. I might try it when I’ve got time to experiment, but first I need to be sure I’ve got a pc I can trust.

oh … and silly me ‘forgot’ to order thermal paste. Apparently it isn’t something that is included in either cooler or cpu, so I may have to do buy some today once my parts arrive.

[Lazagram 119xp 1]

Don’t forget a healthy dose of incense wafting and binaric chanting to invoke the Omnissiah’s blessing 

[limburger]

I got preem parts.
Ain’t no way it’s gonna derez or crash and burn.

//

Assembly has been pretty easy so far. CPU, SSD and memory sticks have been installed without tools.
Only downside is the lack of proper instructions and manuals. The motherboard only had a ‘quick install’ guide that’s just a few pictograms. The case was the only thing that had a proper manual.
The SSD came with a tiny booklet full of legalese in what must have been the smallest font possible …

Tomorrow I will install the cooler as that requires installing a radiator and attaching the cooler to the CPU.
As much as I like the black case and black motherboard … that’s the sort of thing that needs more light (and less alcohol ;)) to do properly.

• This reply was modified 6 months, 3 weeks ago by limburger.

[sundancer 44427xp 0]

I’m late.

For reasons.

New thread:

[unofficial weekender] Fart!

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