Oldhammer USA - The Battle of Rusty's Farm

Hi All,

This was the first Warhammer 3rd Ed. battle that I had fought in about 24 years. I tried to make an army list, but all I had was infantry and no real clue what I was doing. A big thank you to my co-general Richard "Orc Lord" for putting up with my wonky deployment and organizational choices, and our opponents Andrew, Dustin and PA Chris for helping me muddle through a game.

For the following Comic I used Comic Life 3 (as per usual) but without a template. I learned how to texture the page in the program and played round with the formatting of the panels. Lettering (the sound effects things) are still a challenge, let me know if I went too heavy handed.

I chose not to do filters on the images, except for the first one. I find that most filters make the images impossible to make out.

Enjoy.

Next up, my orcs scrap with VT Chris's Bretonnian's

Paint Table Saturday - Week 33 - Aug. 15th 2015

Hi All,

Nothing on the paint desk for the last two weeks as I went to Oldhammer USA Weekend last week. I am taking a break from the painting desk to work on various household/ home improvement projects.

In the meantime, here is a picture of the figures that placed in the retro figure category. The idea was a figure that you either painted during the "Oldhammer Era", was from that era but perhaps painted more recently, or captured "the spirit of Oldhammer". (My memory may be faulty. Read Airbornegrove26's coverage of the event here.)

1st: Citadel Gnome Jester (Lissanne Lake); 2nd: Grenadier Dwarf (Fredrick Kober); 3rd: Citadel Orc (yours truly)

I remember being quite pleased with myself when I finished painting the unit this guy was in. Part of the problem I had then, and still have, is that I paint every figure to the utmost of my ability and level of detail. I don't seem to have a speed painting or rank and file approach. I'm not saying that my level is great, I'm just saying I spend way too much time per model. I think that the more I paint, the better results I can achieve in less time.

Not sure where I'm going with that? I guess just to say that I'm still trying to evolve as a painter. I feel like I've finally painted enough that I've gotten the basics back and have started to develop my painting style 2.0.

Thanks for looking and happy painting.

Oldhammer USA Weekend - Frog Hunt

Continuing on with the games from Oldhammer USA Weekend, here is Brian's Frog Hunt scenario.

Lisanne (Lisanne Du Lac) came in from the Northwest, PA Chris (Christophe De La Foret) from the Southwest, Tom - then Jeff & Hannah - (Thomas Geoffroy D'Hannah) from the Northeast, and myself (Hugues Du Gros Baton) from the Southeast.

We used cards from the Triumph and Treachery set, but I forgot to play mine and it cost me the game. Oh well.

I used Comic Life 3, Super Retro template. It has only one style for the image filters so I set the filter level to it's lowest to keep the images from blowing out. Let me know what you think.

All French terms in this report have been created using an internet translator and should be read aloud with an "outrageous accente!"

There you have it. It was a great introduction to the weekends gaming and Brian really helped those of us (ok, me) who hadn't played in a very long time.

Next up, my O&G army gets a game in for the first time since 1991.

And welcome to Whiskey Priest of The Leadpile. It's been awhile since I've checked in with his blog, but if memory serves he has some truly awesome Rogue Trader scenery and game write ups.

Oldhammer USA Weekend - Overview

Hi All,

Sorry for the delay in posting. I have been having bad shoulder problems since I got back from the event. I saw my chiropractor, who also does soft tissue work, yesterday and feel a lot better today.

Here is my comic report overview of the weekend.

I'd like to thank the organizers and all the other attendees for a really great weekend of game playing and shooting the shit about the hobby. Although the airfare is daunting, and my emergency flight reroute through Philly and Atlanta, notwithstanding, I'm really looking forward to next year.

I think this song by GWAR really sums it up:



Well maybe not really, but it was nice to know that there were some other GWAR fans in attendance.

I'd also like to welcome two new followers to the blog:

Robert Locklan who has many linked blogs but I can't figure out if he writes for all of them. My Followers widget is acting very wonky and I can't read everything or follow the link to his blogger profile. I'll try and sort that out.

Bulldoglopez of He of Three Names, an excellent painter and terrain builder among many other talents. And he has at least two more names ;).

More to follow  as I write up my WFB 3rd Battle reports.

Cheers

Arrgh! - I'm running out of time.

I leave for Oldhammer USA weekend tomorrow night and I'm still not done with what I was trying to finish, let alone know if I can even safely transport it.

Let's take a look at where I'm at.

These gobbos are mostly done. The flesh is really the last thing, apart from a few metal studs and random highlights.

The Army Standard Bearer is coming along. I did the checks and eye icon yesterday. Good for the most part. It would have been better to have the eye be larger and partly behind the skull, but my brain couldn't seem to figure out how to draw the image partially obscured ie I could figure out what not to draw.

These gobbos are in the same boat as the other five, although it looks like four of these haven't had the dry brushing on the ground work.

The Orc Shamen may not make it, they've had weird things like teeth and eyes done, but not much else.

After repairing their banner poles, and finishing the ground work on the one on the left, these two banner men have been hidden behind the dropper bottles. It blocks their accusatory glances. You can see evidence of the old banner paper and places where I chipped the paint trying to remove it.

I gave up on finishing these guys awhile ago. I was going to try and make molds of the two on the right to bring the unit up to 20 instead of using my dodgy conversions. But I've revised down and may only take the 16 or so that are finished.

Speaking of finished. I have those two banners to do for units that were "finished" 20+ years ago. This show the evolution of the banners. The one in the top middle is the one I did c.1991 and I hated it almost immediately. Flanking it, on the yellowed paper, are the designs I came up with at the time to replace it and make the one for the converted spear banner. Beneath it are the attempts I made in GIMP to cut and paste elements I found on the web into my banner designs. The one on the right I somehow made too big and both of them have the tabs too short to wrap around the banner poles. I printed them on regular paper and tissue paper taped to regular paper. For these I've decided to stick with regular paper, as I'm concerned that the tissue would be destroyed in transport.

A lot to do in the next day and a half. Wish me luck.

Paint Table Saturday

Hi All,

While I'm not really an official member of this Paint Table Saturday thing, I like the idea. I may start doing it more just to keep posting regularly and keep you up with what's going on.

You may have noticed, I'm sort of a stream of consciousness guy, and I can find connections in pretty random stuff.

Here's a couple of quick pics.

A quick look at what's on the table. I need to get it in gear to have everything finished and packed up by Thursday.

I still need to flock the command group, but they've got their shields and varnish on.

The Army Standard Bearer is coming along. Not Oldhammer but I think he stands out from the army, and that's the point I think. Only color blocking and the first highlight of Horn/tooth/bone. That's about four coats of red, and it's still pretty blotchy.

The second row of gobbos. These guys are awaiting the final skin highlight and some work on teeth and eyes. I'm having a little trouble with the shields as some of the attachment points were not meant to poke through. I may need to come up with a way to make shield bosses to stick on.

Thanks for looking.

Conclusion of Flying with Paints

Hi All,

I just wanted to report back to you all how my experiment in travelling with my paints worked out. Long time readers may be familiar with my previous travelling paint kits.

To Recap:

A fine line between clever and stupid
Have Paint, Will Travel
My 2nd Regular Entry - The Mother Crushers

And I'm sure a few others that I didn't put in the right keywords or tags for. In these posts I traveled with all the figures and paints in checked luggage.

For this trip I wanted to try  bringing everything in carry on luggage. As you may, or may not have found yourself , there is a dearth of useful information on the subject on the old interwebs.

I thought I had posted expressly about the trip I just made, but there is only a brief paragraph mentioning it here.

So let me tell you the steps I took to successfully put paints in my carry on luggage.

Small Sterlite container with foam and Quart size (0.94L) Ziploc bag

As many of you know, traveling in the US, you are allowed liquids in your carry on luggage as long as they are individually 3oz or less and can fit in a 1qt size plastic bag. Ziploc is preferable in case of leakage. This is known as TSA's (Transportation Security Administration) 3-1-1 rule. This rule can be read and copies downloaded here.

My interpretation of this rule is apparent in the photo above. I decanted craft paints into dropper bottles, approximately 5mL of a 15mL bottle, and crammed a bag full with the paints and washes I thought I would need. Remember that 1oz is roughly 28mL and that some of the bottles may look full as the paint spreads around to coat the insides during travel.

I sought advice on TMP and the Oldhammer FB Group, with almost all of the info and advice being don't do it. On TMP the Paints on a Plane thread is from 2012 and the last comment was from 2013. In that thread there are, in my opinion, some erroneous interpretations of the liquids rule as well as some complaint about the TSA that is not helpful. People need to get over the state of airport security post 9/11.

The key ideas that were mentioned though is to have some documentation. So I contacted TSA via their blog (here) contact link (here) and got a response in less than 48 hours confirming my interpretation of the 3-1-1 rule. The key caveats were that individual airlines and TSA officers have final say on what can go on the plane, period.

With that in mind I printed out my email response, and Material Safety Data Sheets (MSDS) for two brands of Craft Paint and carried those with me. I also got to the airport with enough time to do something about it should I have problems making it through security. I was prepared to have to explain myself but never was questioned. This was at Phoenix Sky Harbor and Sacramento Metro Airports. In the past I have found Sacramento to be slightly stricter in enforcement, perhaps because they are generally not as busy an airport as Phoenix.

So the upshot is it can be done, just prepare for the worst (ie having to toss your paint). I feel that if you have all your documentation, are cordial and non combative, the worst that should happen is you are forced to get out of the security checkpoint and check in your bag. That's when you need to do the math and see whether the $25 fee is worth thee lost paint $ and lost painting time.

I didn't actually paint that much, but it was nice to be able to get something done instead of absolutely nothing. I hope this post helped inform your decision as to whether or not to pack your paints in your carry on luggage.

Welcome to Kat Weazeal of Kat's Painting and Conversions. Kat has been posting on facebook and helped snapped everybody out of bickering about what the cut off date for "Oldhammer" was and just enjoy pictures of painted figures. So check Kat's blog out and hopefully there will be some more updates soon.

Off to paint so I''ll have something resembling an army for Oldhammer USA weekend.