The Final Push – Lawnor approaches 100% painted

Models remaining:
Batch: 23, Normal: 12, Luxury: 7, Modular: 0, Bits Box: 3, Terrain sets: 9, To Ship: 80+

My only active project this week was this Beholder.  I was having all kinds of troubles with him.  For whatever reason, washes on his underbelly refused to behave the way I would expect.  Paint on his spittle took 5 times as long took dry as anywhere else on his body.  I really should have worked on him in sub assemblies.  Gluing him on the flight stand and base was right.  Gluing anything else on was very much the wrong decision.  There were major access issues on this guy.  Look at him.  He’s made of knots.  Learn from my mistakes if you get a copy.

You probably can’t see it at these angles, but I tried Gerry’s Fogou (Fogou!) walls technique on the base and I like it.  I swapped the AP tone for GW Nuln Oil and forgot to thin it and it did the job fine.  I skipped the toothbrush step as I didn’t want to ruin my paint job too.  I’ll be doing this on stone bases from now on.

I slipped up elsewhere too.  I keep an eye on ebay for getting a bargain on a few things.  I have a selection of searches I check most days.  I put in some offers on some stuff this week and actually got some good stuff at a good price.  I picked up 6 models for KDM (Leather Armour Sprue, Twilight Knight, and a White Speaker for £17.45 all in).  I also picked up a board game.

Every few months a group of friends and I get together and play Gloomhaven for a weekend. On the Sunday, one of us has to vanish for a few hours for a karate class and I get to spend quality time with my friends kids, aged 3 & 5, turning 4 and 6 very soon.  I’ve been curious about Stuffed Fables for a long while and I think the eldest is probably ready for it to become our Gloomhaven Junior on those weekends.  I was able to pick up a cheap, opened but as new, unpainted copy this week.

It looks like there’s only 7 1-2 hour missions in the book so I don’t wan to spend weeks painting up the models.  I’m pretty sure I can knock out the trash fairly quickly, and to speedy basic jobs in the rest, but if anyone has any links to sped paint tutorials for these guys that’d be great.  I followed Jerry Hawthorn’s speed paint guide for Mice and Mystics and it helped me get through that box in a weekend, if not a day.

I’m hoping something turns up ASAP as my painting is on hold until it does.  No sign of a shipping confirmation on either KS yet so hopefully I can get Stuffed Fables done just as something new gets in the house at the least.  our next game day isn’t until January and I’d like it table ready by then, without getting in the way of ATO or KDM painting.

I could use some advice on a few other things.  I’ve some bugs to paint soon and I’d love to see a guide on using colour shift paint to achieve that beetle shell reflective pattern in a way that doesn’t make the bug look metallic.  I would also love any advice people have on printing game cards out in a way that guarantees they come out the correct size.  I’m pretty sure Gerry mentioned a program he was using when printing banners, but I can’t remember what it was or what video I should be looking for to find it again.  I’ve been producing extra cards for kingdom Death, and none of them match the game cards size, no matter what I do.

Once again, for the TLDR crowd:

Questions: 

1. Got any guides for speed painting Stuffed Fables
2. Got any guides or advice for using colour shifts to paint beetle shells?
3. How do you print game cards at home guaranteeing they’re the same size as the ones in the box?
4. Are there any cards or tokens I might want to make and print for the Expansions of Death that don’t come in the boxes or I might want more of?

Update: Stuffed Fables just arrived.  I guess priming begins tonight!

Update 2: I found the Gerry banner video (16 mins 14 secs in).  The software is irfanview.  Gonna watch the video again and then experiment. I’m still curious to see if anyone has any other suggestions.  Irfanview does seem to only print / rescale one image at a time and doing multiple cards per page would be better.

Models remaining:
Batch: 0, Normal: 7, Luxury: 7, Modular: 0, Bits Box: 3, Terrain sets: 9, To Ship: 80+

While working on the previous project I was also able to prime and base coat the main stone on these walls.  Across the last week I found time to paint the wood to completion, then base colour the ground and the slate pointy bits on the top so everything was thoroughly dry before Friday night.  The goal was to try out the method Gerry uses on his Fogou (Fogou!) buildings, as shown in this Gerry Can.  I don’t have all the same paints and pigments he does, so I improvised with that I had and what I could get cheaply and easily.  If it didn’t work out, I could always rebase, drybrush, and wash with Nuln Oil and all would be well.

Here’s what paints I used:

Main Basecoat – VMC London Grey
Slate Basecoat – VMC Bassalt Grey

Load large drybrush with following pigments one at a time and tap it when over stone to drop off lots of powder.  Can dab/rub it in patches to make it heavier.  Don’t do much this way.

Vallejo pigment Brown iron oxide
Wilder Gunpowder Line Old Grease
Tescos Go! Create green chalk scraped in to a powder

Mix up AP Strong Tone Wash with enough water to make it flow better.  Apply everywhere with large brush by dabbing.  “Blob it on”.

Mix up:
White Chalk + Isopropanol
Vallejo Green Earth + Isopropanol (Verde )
Yellow Chalk + Broken Toad Grimy Dirt + Isopropanol + white

and flick on with toothbrush while Strong Tone is still very wet, applied top down from above as moss favours the sun.

There are some definite changes from the video here, and not everything worked.  Firstly, I used a makeup brush to apply the Strong Tone, and it didn’t behave the same.  I often thought there wasn’t enough paint, or it wasn’t going where I needed it and applied more, but ended up with the piece flooded.  The Toothbrush stage didn’t seem to work for me.  My solutions seemed to have more colour to them than Gerry’s did (It’s hard to tell, given Gerry’s pots were coloured, but they looked largely clear), but I’m not noticing anything on my m models.  Perhaps my IPA isn’t right?  It is 2nd hand reclaimed lab IPA “Borrowed” to make car screen wash, so why knows if it is up to snuff?  I sprayed bits of each colour on the the side of the cardboard box i was using to contain the mess, and the white did leave marks, but none of the other colours did.  This means using chalk wasn’t the issue.

No matter how messy Gerry made out this stage is, it was worse.  By the time I thought about putting on a glove it was too late and I just carried on.  My fingers had brown marks on for days.  It also looked UGLY, and nothing like it should.  Strong Tone is very brown, unlike the Dark Tone’s blackness, and it really didn’t look right over the grey stone.  I went to bed convinced I was going to have to start again with primer.

The next morning, everything was dry enough to work with and actually looked a lot better.  The wash had pooled in a crevice along the bottom of each wall, and was still wet enough to stain my fingers, but I cold carry on painting with minimal care.  I did no drybrushing, picked out the green plants, and applied a pigment mix over the muddy parts.  By evening it was dry enough to varnish (Lets call it 22ish hours for the heavy handed but diluted Strong Tone to dry fully).

Considering how fugly these looked when the wash was wet, I’m really quite happy with how they turned out.  It’s not what I was heading for, but I wasn’t going to get that with these colours anyway.  I don’t know why the toothbrush stage didn’t work, even on the side of a box.  Next time, I’d use a paint brush to apply the wash so I can apply less in a more controlled and targeted manner.  perhaps that’ll help the spray to settle?  I might also experiment with the toothbrush mix in advance and see if I can get some splatter on to some card before committing to the model.

I’d definitely do this again.  Maybe Gerry wants to chip in with some advice or corrections to what I did?  I’m curious if anyone has tried this on MDF terrain.  I’m assuming it doesn’t work the same.

I have 3 of their horse and carts to paint up too.  They are really bent and deformed and I hear they don’t straighten up too well.  I’m hoping that pinning them to a base will help keep the wheels round.  I’d be curious to hear what materials people have found around the house to make such bases before.  I have the back panel from an old wardrobe saved, but I fear it’s not the best material.  The edges seem likely to wear down over time.

Hmm.  Those pics really are not showing the full range of colours on these walls.  I guess the angle isn’t the best?  I’ll have to take a new picture tonight and update this post later so you can see the rust tones etc.  Check back tomorrow, folks.

Still no sign of an email saying my Kickstarters are being dispatched to me, although I’m mostly sure at least one of them is in the country right now.  No more excuses to avoid starting a bigger, intimidating project: Artisan Guild’s Xantaras The Eye Tyrant.  He’s been primed and staring (hah!) at me from my desk for months.  Eye’ve been excited to get to him, but also a little scared.  Eye’ve definitely been putting him off.  Eye know eye want to go purple on this guy, but eye’ve never really been sure which purple.  Eye wanted to avoid going with my usual strong purples as that feels too cartoony.  Eye (that’s the last, I swear) pulled out all 25 purples I own and stared at them for a while, and eventually decided to use the Vallejo Nocturna Malefic Flesh box‘s Purple Flesh scheme as my starting point, but use their shadow colour as my mid tone.

I had the airbrush out already so I got to work.  I built up a good base colour, and then used the airbrush to shade down, spraying from below.  The next morning I built up some highlights with careful, gentle, targeted spraying from above.

Here’s the paint I’ve used so far.  This is not the extent of my shading and highlighting.  There will be brushwork to come later.

Base: VMC 74.011 Purple Shadow
Shade 1: Purple Shadow mixed with Reaper 09023 Imperial Purple 1:5
Shade 2: Almost pure Imperial Purple
High 1: Purple Shadow mixed 50/50 with VMC 74.012 Malefic Flesh
High 2: As High 1, but with more Malefic Flesh

I have since started reclaiming the underbelly with VMC Deck Tan.  This is a delicate and time consuming job.  I really should not have glued the eye stalks on.

I also got a couple of games of Gloomhaven JoTl in while waiting for things to dry over the weekend.  I’m now 10 games in, and have 2 level 4 character.  Maybe next weekend I can hit level 5 and unlock those new minis I just painted?

Models remaining:
Batch: 0, Normal: 7, Luxury: 7, Modular: 0, Bits Box: 3, Terrain sets: 11, To Ship: 80+

I’ve not been buying new models, and yet I’ve gained 10 new models over the past week.  Sort of.  Turns out there are 8 models in the Jaws of the Lion box, not 4.  Monkey With Fire is having another Community Challenge and I’m taking part, so I’ve gained a Steamforged Crabman.  I also signed on for a Warmachine tournament a few months back, which got cancelled due to a medical emergency on the day.  A few weeks after the fact they contacted us to say Cerberus, the people who used to handle PPs missing parts in the UK, were willing to give us our ticket price in old stock.  Super generous and totally not needed.

I picked up a box of 5 Druid Mist Riders.  I already have a unit of 5.  under Mk3 you could have 2 units of 5.  under Mk4, who knows?  It’s probably units of 3, and it may still be capped at 2 units, but perhaps not?  There are not many options available for the Blackclad theme list, after all.  I was hoping for confirmation when the app went live at the weekend, but they’ve only given us one list per faction, and Circle got Tharn, not Blackclad so I’ve got to wait and see.  As such, these guys are going to remain untouched as I suspect I’ll end up selling on 1-4 of them.

On to the painting.  I got my new models on the Monday, cleaned them up, washed them, and left them overnight to dry.  I then base coated those walls from last week with London Grey.  I’m following Gerry’s Fogou old stone video guide, which I’ll link later when I focus on these walls.  It’s all prep work for now.  I have no free time for hobby on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, but Thursday evening I was able to prime the Gloomhaven models and Crabman.  The Crabman is my focus for the weekend.  The challenge has a deadline and I’m a week behind on my work.

Friday night I put down a base coat of VMC Deck Tan on the crab, and also pulled out my Beholder and put this in as his underbelly colour.  He’s a project for another day, but may as well save time and do this while I’m at it.  I’d just be waiting for paint to dry anyway.  With the airbrush already out I put down base colours on the Dust Devil and Power Armour from Gloomhaven.  Everyone then got overnight to thoroughly dry.  I sometimes find that airbrushed paints can activate with washes a lot longer after application than brushed on paints.  It’s not always the case, but I do like to give them as long a drying time as I can, when sensible.

I then went to bed with Season 3 of Harley Quinn.  I watched all 10 episodes this weekend.  I was a little concerned to begin with that it was focusing less on character growth and their emotions this year, but I was proved wrong, thankfully.  Harley Quinn remains far far better than it has any right to be.  At first glance its just sweary and violent and funny and all about shock value, and will probably wear thin quickly.  Watch a few episodes and you’re in it for the heart as much as the great humour.  While somehow being OTT and dumb, this is possibly the best DC I’ve ever seen and every character gets explored and gets to grow eventually, while also still being the butt of a joke.  Give it a fair shot, if you’ve not already.  I spent a lot of time laughing uncontrollably, and they still managed to put a knot in my stomach towards the end of the season.  Plus, any show that gives Alan Tudyk full permission to go over the top in multiple rules is always worth a watch.

(I don’t have sound right now so I’ve no idea how good that trailer is)

Saturday morning I got the airbrush out again and and put down the reds and oranges on the Crabman, who I was able to finish over the weekend.  He presented many periods of waiting for paint to dry for me to work on the Gloomhaven minis too and I was somehow able to get all 5 guys done, and play two solo games of Gloomhaven, and have time to spare before D&D on Sunday evening.

The Crabman was full of experiments so I’m going to document my colour schemes here, in case I want to revisit them later.

Undercoat: VMC Deck Tan

Carapace: 
Base: AP Mars Red
High 1: 50/50 Mars Red & AK Burt Orange
High 2: Burnt Orange
Pin wash: GW Carrouburg Crimson
Drybrush 1: Burnt Orange
Drybrush 2: Burnt Orange with a little VMC Ivory

Claws: 
Base: VMA Dark Grey
High 1: Dark Grey with some Black
High 2: Dark Grey with more Black

Flesh: 
Base: Deck Tan
Pin Wash: Thinned AK Sepia Ink (Not GW Seraphim Sepia.  This is darker)

Eyes: 
Base: P3 Sickly Skin
Iris: P3 Greatcoat Grey
Pupil: P3 Thamar Black

Ground: 
Sand & Barnacles: VMC Iraqi Sand
Rock: VMS Stone Grey
Drybrush Rock & Barnacles 1: P3 Bastion grey
Drybrush Rock & Barnacles 2:  P3 Sickly Skin gently!
Wash: water, GW Lahmium Medium, & Broken Toad Grimy Dirt pigment

Seaweed skirt:

Base: Mig Deep Green
Drybrush 1: P3 Orid Olive
Drybrush 2: Bog Moss
Wash: VMW 76.519 Olive Green
Selective Drybrush 3: Bog Moss

Starfish: 
Base: MP 17 Aquamarine
Drybrush P3 Arcane Blue
Wash: 50/50 P3 Meridious Blue and VMC Turquoise
Drybrush 2: Ammo Dio Drybrush Medium Blue 0614

Choral thing on head:
Base: P3 Hammerfal Khaki
Wash 1: GW Seraphim Sepia
Wash 2: Handcraft Tabletop Terrain Wash Dunkelschatten 267.01
Drybrush 1: Hammerfal Khaki
Drybrush 2L P3 Menoth White Base

I’m running low on models right now and I’m aware that 2 big Kickstarters are landing in the UK about now (One ship which might contain a box for me docked midday Sunday).  I don’t want to embrace any large projects as I want to be ready to embrace them when they arrive, hopefully any day now.  I think it’s time to get those Mantic walls off my painting desk next, and then maybe embrace that beholder?

I also want to finish playing Jaws of the Lion by 2023.  25 missions in the box, 4 of which will get locked of my choices, and 6 of them need unlocking by random events.  I’m 8 missions in, of the possible 21 I could get, leaving 13 to go.  Nine weeks left in the year, so 1-2 games a week and I’ll be done.  Two a week, if I also want to do the locked off missions once the story is complete.  That’s plenty of time, especially with a week off for Christmas.

Hobby Bingo came up on the Weekender, so I though there’s no harm in seeing how I’m doing.  I’ve not been working towards this.  I’d dismissed it when it was first mentioned as being something that didn’t line up at all with my Pile of Shame.  Looking at it now, I’ve certainly checked more boxes than I’d have expected, but it still definitely leans towards a GW army painter mentality.  I’ll have some terrain done soon so I can cross off one of those boxes, but I have no medium or large based units to do so I’ll never get them done, unless there’s some real surprises in a Kickstarter and it arrives real soon.

Models remaining:
Batch: 0, Normal: 2, Luxury: 7, Modular: 0, Bits Box: 3, Terrain sets: 11, To Ship: 80+

So where were we?

• Finish off my Kingdom Death campaign.  I only had 9 fights to go
• Start playing Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion
• Paint the high parts of the walls on the stairs I couldn’t reach before, but now I have a roller on a stick
• If there’s time, repaint the hand rail and skirtings too
• Put the final touches on the The Walking Dead minis I almost had done
• Start and finish any other mini painting project
• If there’s time, paint up my Mantic walls
• Visit my friends for a weekend of regular Gloomhaven
• Make my first Vegan Pasta bake – Stuff didn’t arrive
• Rearrange my room to install monitor shelf

Ah yes….

Friday 21st October

I spent at least an hour backing up my campaign and tidying up.  When the board was packed away there was a definite silhouette around it made out of rubber dust from all the changes to the character sheets.  I packed up and put Gloomhaven JotL in its place, but opted not to start today.  Back to working on the orks for the rest of the day.

At least that was the plan.  It turns out I hadn’t successfully smoothed out the sharp edges of those puddle bases with PVA glue and I couldn’t tell until I’d painted over it.  This needed to be fixed otherwise the crackle paint would crackle in the shape of that puddle and be obvious.  I applied a wash over whatever I’d just painted and then put some liquid putty on the bases, and then needed to leave it alone for a while to dry enough to be safe to handle.  i thought I’d give it 10 minutes by tidying my room enough to install the monitor shelf later.  However, once I got started I didn’t stop.

The shelf is great.  It has no legs holding it up.  It clips to the back of the desk with some vice grips, meaning there’s no legs stopping me sliding a tray of minis under it.  however, the desk already in place has an extra support beam in the way of the grips so I had to move around everything in my room to swap the place of 2 boxed in desks before I could fit the shelf.  It took a few hours and forced me to do some cleaning, tidying, and reorganising, but it’s done.  I then got back to work on the Orks.  I was sure to apply the crackle paint to them before bed.  It can have a very long drying time, sometimes days when put on thick and the pot is fresh.

• Rearrange my room to install monitor shelf

Saturday 22nd October

Time to start Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Wild.  First I applied a wash over the orks bases.  it’s juts bases and varnish at this stage.  The tutorial is 5 missions long, which grow in length and gain rules as they go.  I’ve been playing the main game for a few years now so I knew what to expect.  It says to play with 2 characters when playing solo, but where’s the fun in that?  I’m using all 4.  I got 4 games in before retiring to my painting for the evening, where I drybrushed the Orks, and then glues on some flock.  With that done, I cleaned up the mold lines on my Mantic walls, and glued on the corner pieces.

• Start playing Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion

Sunday 23rd October

I started the day by varnishing the orks, and then moved on to priming the walls.  I was using an airbrush, but it still had some long drying times.  Once I hit those, I went back to playing a few rounds of Gloomhaven, before applying another coat.  Across the day I got the Orks finished, and the walls primed and two more games of Gloomhaven done, taking me out of the tutorial section and in to the main game.  There are only 25 missions in the box and I don’t think you can do all of them.  I expect to have this finished before Christmas.

• Start and finish any other mini painting project

As of Sunday evening what had I achieved of my goals?

• Finish off my Kingdom Death campaign.  I only had 9 fights to go
• Start playing Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion
• Paint the high parts of the walls on the stairs I couldn’t reach before, but now I have a roller on a stick
• Put the final touches on the The Walking Dead minis I almost had done
• Start and finish any other mini painting project
• Visit my friends for a weekend of regular Gloomhaven
• Make my first Vegan Pasta bake – Stuff didn’t arrive
• Rearrange my room to install monitor shelf
• If there’s time, repaint the hand rail and skirtings too
• If there’s time, paint up my Mantic walls

I failed on the pasta bake because of stock shortages.  I didn’t get to the skirtings because of bad weather and laziness.  I’ve started work on the Mantic walls.  I’ve had a good week off, which, as always, was too short.  I’ve achieved everything I seriously thought I might, except the pasta.  Most importantly of all, I’ve resisted buying new models and continue to whittle down my backlog.  The Kingdom Death expansions and my Aeon Trespass kickstarter are both apparently already in ships, both due for arrival early to mid November, so should both be in my hands very soon.  They’ll rule my paint queue for the next year so I should show some restraint and not buy more plastic I don’t need before they arrive.

Models remaining:
Batch: 0, Normal: 6, Luxury: 7, Modular: 0, Bits Box: 3, Terrain sets: 11, To Ship: 80+

I’ve had the last week off work.  I had adulting things to do, but I also had fun hobby things I wanted to achieve.  I had a list in my head of set goals and extras if there was time.  Here’s what I was thinking:

• Finish off my Kingdom Death campaign.  I only had 9 fights to go
• Start playing Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion
• Paint the high parts of the walls on the stairs I couldn’t reach before, but now I have a roller on a stick
• If there’s time, repaint the hand rail and skirtings too
• Put the final touches on the The Walking Dead minis I almost had done
• Start and finish any other mini painting project
• If there’s time, paint up my Mantic walls
• Visit my friends for a weekend of regular Gloomhaven
• Make my first Vegan Pasta bake
• Rearrange my room to install monitor shelf

I suspect this is going to be a double entry this week.  I think I’m going to work through this in the order I think it played out.

Weekend starting 14th October

I had this day off too.  I have to travel and arrive during the day to visit my friends for a weekend of Gloomhaven so I usually book the day off.  This means the morning is free.  Recently I have used this to play some Kingdom Death, but I was feeling lazy and used it to put the final touches on the TWD minis I’d been working on all week, and I was able to get them all but varnished before I had to do sensible stuff, like shower and pack my bags and head to the station.

We got in 5 games over the weekend, and played a little of Haba’s Mountains with the kids too.  We are right at the end now.  One of the three main plotlines appears to be blocked off to us.  Another just requires a choice to be made, but we can’t really tell what the “good” choice is supposed to be and we’re trying to be good guys.  The main plot line requires us to kill 3 bosses before we can face the final boss.  We killed our second sub boss, leaving just The Horseman for next session.  He’s a major pain in the ass.  We’ve tried him a couple of times before and he seems broken.  Googling for advice and tactics, everyone seems to forget he’s immune to every status effect.  No one talks about having beaten him following all the rules, short of perhaps a lucky all-in strike with the Lightning Bolt character who can pretty much one hit kill most bosses if he gives it his all.  Last time we faced him I had the 2 mini character, who was a major liability in a fight like that so hopefully now I have a new character we can do better.

I got home mid afternoon on Sunday and was able to varnish the TWD minis before our D&D session was due to start.

• Put the final touches on the The Walking Dead minis I almost had done
• Visit my friends for a weekend of regular Gloomhaven

Monday 17th October

This felt like my first day off and I wanted a day to myself.  Those walls were staring at me but I chose to ignore them for now.  I had Tescos delivering food today.  They arrived an hour early, which was nice.  He rang the doorbell mid pee though which was not as nice.  Do I finish off, or do I try and cut off the stream and rush to see who’s at the door?  or do I panic and try both at the same time?  Ahhrgh!  I managed not to wet myself and food arrived.  They did deliver everything I needed for my Pasta Bake, except the sauce.  Did you know most pasta bake sauce is not vegan?  I can’t just pop to the corner shop and buy what they have.  I finally have my first pack of vegan cheese though which should melt well enough.  We will see, once I pick up a jar of sauce.  I hope its not a huge inedible mess.  I miss pasta bake.

• Make my first Vegan Pasta bake  – Failed
• New goal – Don’t piss myself or the floor – Success!

I got to spend the rest of the morning working on my Orcs though.  They’d already had their flesh painted on.  I’d base coated them last time the airbrush came out, and the rest of the work was mostly washes so I’d been doing that across the last week or so as it’s a quick job with long drying times.  Ideal for setting up before doing something else, like sleeping or painting another project.

In the afternoon I played two games of Kingdom Death.  the watcher was dead so I was on the push towards the Gold Smoke Knight, doing whatever I could to power up my 4 ageless super survivors I’ve been working on buffing since I time looped to avoid the GSK last time.  Ever since then, any time I could give someone a stat buff, I’ve given it to them.  I’ve been chasing vermin for cooking every chance I can.  I figured with Toughness 27 as my target number, with a Dragon Slayer sword Strength 9 + 2d10 averaging at a result of 20, I needed strength 8 to hit with an average roll (Weapon strength + survivor Strength + dice roll must equal or beat toughness).  I had  beaten this with 4 survivors, but every extra point helped, and I also wanted their evasion to increase so they could avoid being hit where possible.  On my last pass through the timeline my highest strength was a 4.  Each of my survivors is born with a Strength of 1.  Gaining stat points is rare.

Tuesday 18th October

I got off my fat lazy ass and painted the walls on the stairs today.  I’d painted them on my last week off, but the ceilings are high and there are limited places I can safely stand a ladder so there were parts I couldn’t reach.  I’d now got a roller-on-a-stick and was able to finish the job.  I applied a coat, played a game of KDM while it dried, and applied another coat and went back to KDM.  I painted the orcs around this too, aiming to get a wash on before going off to do something time consuming.

Wednesday 19th October

I thought I’d get a day with the orks and with KDM, but early afternoon the sunlight hit the walls just right to reveal an area of paintwork to be quite patchy when it looked fine under all other conditions.  Damnit!  Time to get the roller out again.  More progress was made on the orcs and I did get two more games of KDM in.

Thursday 20th October

I should have got on the bike and gone to buy some gloss for the skirting, but I told myself I should wait for the light to be right to see if I’d fixed the patchiness, so I talked myself out of all adulting today and got 2 more KDM fight done, leaving just the Gold Smoke Knight.  I figured I would probably need a few attempts to learn that fight so I created a save state of the game (Pics of everything so I can undo things if it goes horrible and try again.  I don’t mind losing, but I don’t want to lose because I don’t yet understand the rules or mechanics.  I want a fair fight, and I want a chance to learn those mechanics for next time).  I’d come back tomorrow and spend the day dealing with him.  The rest of Thursday was spent painting the Orks.  The sunlight revealed that my walls looked better, at least.

• Paint the high parts of the walls on the stairs I couldn’t reach before, but now I have a roller on a stick

Friday 21st October

Where has the week gone?  I should go buy that Gloss now, but its raining bad and I really want to finish off KDM.  I ordered it almost 2 years ago.  It arrived last December and I spent 3 months painting all the core minis and most of the year since working on the modular survivors.  I started playing at the start of June.  I’m 3.5 months and 69 games in.  I’m damn well going to finish it today!

I spent so me time staring at everything, making sure I had the best team with the best setup I could.  My evasion was high, but not perfect and the GSK has attacks that avoid evasion.  Some of my guys would only not would on a roll of 3 or less on 2d10.  I had an archer who couldn’t beat his toughness, but had an 8+ modifer to his luck rolls, meaning he crit on a 2+ on a d10, doing auto critical wounds to any hit locations with crits on them, which was about 55% of the cards.  He could also swap out one of those cards if he didn’t like them.  3 of my team could do that.  Turns out it’s a huge help in this fight.

I drew the Dead Monster terrain card, which normally lets the Survivors go first, but the GSK go first no matter what.  It did let me start anywhere on the board wanted, though which was interesting.  He does a guaranteed huge AoE at the end of every attack, and sometimes also during his attack.  I was able to spread out to control who it could hit and be in a position to react straight after.

His toughness 27 had terrified me.  It’s a huge step up from everything else.  However, I had prepared for it, perhaps a little too well.  I was able to kill him in 3-4 rounds on my first attempt, and I don’t think he’d successfully done a serious injury on any of my survivors.  If I’d faced him on my first time through the time loop I’d definitely have lost everything.

I have backed up everything from this campaign and I’m saving it.  There’s more content coming I believe I’ll be able to bolt on to the end of this later.  I’m really looking forward to trying this again, even without the expansion, which I’ve ordered.

I spent £273 on this new, thanks to Poots not being clear on the VAT situation and soaking up his mistake.  Very generous.  I have played 70 games, which is about 175 hours of play I’d guess.  That’s £1.56 per hour, or £3.90 per game and that’s ignoring all the time spent painting, and spent planning and thinking between games.  That makes this a very cheap game.  Especially as I plan on going back in.  Even at £400, that’s £2.29 per hour, or £5.71 per game.  KDM does cost a lot, but if you enjoy it you’ll definitely get your money’s worth.  Throw in that it keeps it’s value on the second hand market and I’d say its definitely worth buying if you’re curious.  BTW the core campaign is supposed to be 31 fights at minimum, if you don’t time loop or unlock any extras which doesn’t happen often.

• Finish off my Kingdom Death campaign.  I only had 9 fights to go

I’ve ran out of space here so I guess I’ll have to start a new entry.  See you over there in a minute.

Models remaining:
Batch: 0, Normal: 9, Luxury: 7, Modular: 0, Bits Box: 3, Terrain sets: 11, To Ship: 80+

By trying for one colour an evening when I was free, and buckling down at the weekend I was able to get my Masons finished off this week.  That leaves 4 Orks and 3 Walking Dead minis and it’s only interesting or luxury pieces left in the house.  Nothing I should want to fall in to batch a painting mind set for.

I’m not sure what’s happened with the pics, but the white looks more smooth in person.  The cameras reveal every flaw, apparently.

I kept one eye on the studio schemes for these Walking Dead minis, and if I was painting a matching colour on the Masons I also painted it on these guys.  I don’t feel like I’ve started on them yet, but they’re already half done.  It’s Orktober and I have Orks to paint, but it feels stupid not to finish these guys off next.

I’ve been giving away some of my bits box models and a terrain kit over the discord so those numbers have dropped.

I was also able to play 3 more games of Kingdom Death.  It’s the Butcher 3 next and the Gold Smoke Knight is in sight.

Does anyone know where I could possibly buy some KDM compatible hit location dice?  Dice sets from KDM cost $18+ dollars, which after tax and postage probably works out at £25 for 4 location dice and 5 standard issue d10s.  I have way more D10 than I’ll ever need.  I just would like a few more of the location dice and £6.25 per dice (£2.77 each if I value the d10s) is extortionate.  I know I can get blank dice, but surely someone makes something, or will print anything on the dice they sell?

I know this is technically piracy, but its dice.  It doesn’t feel it counts.  It’s not exactly IP.  Its a dice with hands, feet waste, head, and chest x2 on it.  Pretty sure you can’t trademark body parts.

Models remaining:
Batch: 0, Normal: 16, Luxury: 7, Modular: 0, Bits Box: 6, Terrain sets: 12, To Ship: 80+

Time for my weekly update.

Across the week I applied the washes needed to the ork flesh, once a night.  5 minutes work followed by long drying times so this is the best way.  Once the wash was applied I got to work painting the whites on my Masons and my Elementalist.  The Elementalist is the only mini likely to see the table this year, so he was my focus.  I finished him off on Saturday.  My plan after that was to go play Kingdom Death, but I was just so comfy painting and watching the weekender after getting my chores done so I didn’t get back up out of my chair.

With the elementalist done, I decided to batch paint the flesh on everyone else, including drybrushing the highlights on the already wash-shaded orks.  I’d never painted an armadillo before, so I went looking for pics and I think my guessed colours have come out ok.  Drybrushing texture for the win here.

I finished this all off and did the eyes while watching the XLBS on Sunday and then went to work on battling The Watcher (second time in my first ever campaign, thanks to time travel) in Kingdom Death.

I knew I was going to want a lot of Endeavours so I could farm under the lantern hoard and upgrade my gear immediately so I used the watcher to deliberately kill off a load of my population, turning each of them in to 2 endeavours.  When the game begins, you get 1 per fight for every survivor that returns, so 4.  I’d upgraded everything so on a good year I could bring back 9 from a fight.  I came back from the watcher with 38 endeavours, and I could have farmed more.  Turns out I was able to farm everything I needed after spending only 4 because the dice went in my favour, but I wasn’t to know.

I ran in to a narrative glitch after this fight.  After you beat the watcher all the lights go out for a moment and then the settlement gets a special light that you can’t leave town without anymore as it’s too dark.  However, despite the watcher fight happening in town, my survivors got lost in Clinging Mists before returning to the settlement and had to go out on a new hunt, even though technically they couldn’t as they didn’t have the light.

How do you not find your way back to town when you’re already in town?  How do you hunt when the rules say you can’t, but also say you must?  We don’t ask such questions!  I jobbed an Antelope, went back to town, and did what farming and upgrading I wanted to, and then spent over an hour spending the other endeavours.  I’m still not done.  I ran out of time.  I did spot a way to upgrade my stats though, which I really should have seen a long time ago, so I’ve ben able to bump up my super survivors a tiny bit, in preparation for the Gold Smoke Knight who has ridiculous stats.  I’m pretty sure my guys can now wound him 50% of the time, which is waaay better than I ever could have done on my first pass through the timeline.

I now have 10 Lantern Years / Hunt cycles left until the Gold Smoke Knight turns up.  I think that’s 12 more games, unless anything unexpected happens again.  I’ve got 3 survivors with Strength 10, and one archer who can have a luck stat of 8 (Crit wounding on anything but a natural 1, and half his cards have crit locations on them).  I can summon The Hand one more time and get at least +1 str on everyone, hopefully more evasion too.  I’m hoping to farm more bugs for cooking up stat increases.  I already have all the gear I could want (Except the Perfect Slayer, and I need a 1% chance to happen, followed by a 1% chance in order to get that.  I get around 6 shots per LY.  I’m 50 LY in and the first part has not happened yet.  It’s not expected, but it would be nice)

I’ve a week off coming up soon.  I’ve walls to paint, and minis to make progress on, but I expect to have this campaign finished this month, one way or another.  Then it gets packed up so I can solo play through Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion once.  Then maybe try Stargrave.  By that time I hope to have some KDM expansions ready to play and I can start a new campaign.

Models remaining:
Batch: 0, Normal: 17, Luxury: 7, Modular: 0, Bits Box: 6, Terrain sets: 12, To Ship: 80+

As I said, I got some building done before finishing off the varnishing.  I promoted a few pieces from the bits box, and some stuff arrived.  A while back a friend went to SteamCon and they had a sale on.  He picked me up a box of Masons to round out my team.  The plan was for him to hand it to me next time we saw each other.  We’ve met up a couple of times since then, but it was either straight from work, or he forgot to bring them.  Somehow 4 years has passed since SteamCon and I’ve just got my models!  They have been built, primed, and I’ve done the first three layers of the white with my airbrush.

I had two copies of the old Mantic Orx Marauders Command sprue.  I have a few old 40k Orks already.  Maybe a starter force, but perhaps something to add to a Start Collecting box one day?  One of the models clearly makes for a good painboy proxy, but the other I couldn’t find a direct analogue.  I do have a bunch of spare parts from 90s Orks, and from Deadzone Orx, so I got to work and I think I’ve made a couple of suitable Ork Warbosses.  Here’s a naked and a base coated pics so you can see the different materials to see what’s from what kit.

The Chainsaw is an alt weapon from Kulkva’s Hell Crusader II.  The forked sword is a part of the kit.  The other weapons are from Mantic.  The banners are old 40k parts.

That’s 4 models out of the bits box.

I also promoted 3 Walking Dead minis out of the bits box.  I don’t have the rules or cards for them and I’m not quite sure who they are, but I’ll work that out later.  I do have the core set and I do plan on trying it solo at some point.  It’s in my queue.  As less painting needs doing I do play more solo games.

We also unlocked another Gloomhaven character last weekend and he needs painting before next session.  This leaves just two unseen minis in the box.

I sold some of my bits box models on ebay recently.  The Goblin Wolf Chariot sold for more than expected, despite being missing the sword goblin (£27), and the Dreadball Convicts sold at the last moment for the minimum value (£1.50 plus postage).  I wasn’t convinced they’d sell at all, to be honest.  That’s 13 more models I can remove from my totals, which might be getting a bit squiffy right now.  I’m not 100% sure when I counted a ball as a model when adding everything up.

I also managed to get 7 games of Kingdom Death in this weekend.  I just unlocked The Watcher, and I plan on facing him this weekend. I have an unexpected twist though: Due to a sexy Stranger In The Dark all the men in town are too lovesick to go out and fight so I can only send women on the next hunt. Thankfully, my Twilight Knight is a woman, as are two of my four uber survivors.  I’ve had a bit of a population explosion recently and I’m thinking I can deliberately get a lot of them killed during the Watcher fight as each of them will become two endeavours.  Then once the fight is over I can send my Legendary Lungs survivor down that mine 50 times and instantly oxidise and upgrade all my gear before I leave town.

Mean?  Yes.  Practical and efficient?  Definitely.  Am I a psychopath in real life?  You be the judge.

I’ve got 11 Lantern years to go and, after abusing the time loop once,  I think I finally have a party that can take down the Gold Smoke Knight, although I imagine the RNG factor will have something to say about that.