Minis Monday
Been awhile, champs. Minis Monday is one of those things I don’t have much to write about on a weekly basis. I could talk about what I’m doing, post some progress pics and whatnot, but that would require so many more steps than I really feel like taking that I just…don’t. I get most of my Minis discussion out of my system with Fearless Games and Touching Base, so you guys here at Coming Up Cypress do get a bit shafted.
ON TO TODAYS TOPIC: Painting fatigue.
I don’t know if there’s a legitimate name for it, but what I call painting fatigue is that feeling you get when you’ve painted a whole bunch of minis in the same color scheme and you just don’t want to do it anymore but your army isn’t done yet and just looking at your unpainted minis makes you tired. That’s painting fatigue. I’m currently experiencing painting fatigue with my Blood Angels for Fearless Games’ Legends of War. Twenty of the twenty eight minis in the army are supposed to be alabaster white, and painting white isn’t exactly a party. After painting fifteen of them, I literally wanted to just throw the army in the trash and call it a day because I don’t want to paint anymore white minis. Then I actually FORCIBLY FORGOT about the last five minis I need to paint in white. When I remembered, I felt sad.
When this happens, you have two choices. One is to give up and not finish the project and probably regret it later. The other is to stop whatever it is you’re currently doing and paint whatever is most different from what’s got you fatigued. Sick of painting troops? Paint a tank or a dreadnought or some other vehicle. Sick of painting vehicles? Paint troops. Sick of painting one color? Paint whatever in your army can be a different color. Can’t do any of these because your army list is too restrictive? Start that other army you’ve wanted to do, but make it radically different from what you’re doing now.
Monotony is like poison for the human brain. It makes us unhappy, and makes us sloppy. If you keep painting the same thing over and over to the point where you don’t like doing it, your paint job is going to suffer. My last Death Company looks MUCH different from my first Sanguinary Guard, because by the time I was painting that mini I was just SO done with white. So, I let myself take a break instead of trying to muscle through the last 5 white minis. I painted my Vanguard Veterans, which are very much red. I loved painting them, and they came out beautifully. Next I’m going to paint my Furioso Dreadnought. This way, not only am I separated from painting white, I’m separated from painting troops. Then, when I go back to my last five Sanguinary Guard, I’ll be rested and ready to tackle the white. After that I’ll reward myself by painting my Sanguinor.
With any luck, this approach will get me through the last stretch of this army and I’ll finally have one finished.
Writing Wednesday
Missed Toku Tuesday this week. Oops.
BUT I WILL MAKE WRITING WEDNESDAY AWWWW YEAH
Lately I’ve been having trouble writing some of the fluff for a tabletop game I’m developing with the other guys over at Fearless Games. The story of the setting is my department, and I want to make this bad boy shine as brightly as I can. I’ve gotten a timeline down, I’ve got some great ideas, hell I’ve even started developing ANOTHER game set in a different part of the timeline in this same setting – that’s how excited I am for this world.
I’ve posted about world building before here on Coming Up Cypress. It can be a very rewarding process, and often the world will build itself after a certain point. The problem I’m having? I’ve hung myself up on a minute detail: the name of the damn place.
Tolkien had Middle Earth, Gygax had Greyhawke, Guild Wars 2 has Tyria. In real life we have Earth. That’s where I’m hung up. How do I name an entire setting – a planet or dimension or plane – without it sounding…generic or clumsy? This is my ultimate dilemma. I could use real-world languages, build from there, but one of the things I’ve stressed about the games we’re developing is to avoid specific real-world cultural references as often as possible. We have warriors based on samurai, but I don’t want to CALL them samurai. It just feels convoluted.
What I’m doing is project suicide. I’m letting one minor problem halt all progress. This is something every writer will do at some point, and it’s something we must all learn to overcome because it’s impossible to avoid. At some point in all of your projects, you’re going to look at the page and go, “Well, shit. How can I progress without knowing what Dudebro Meatsack had for lunch last week? THE WORLD HANGS IN THE DAMN BALANCE.”
I need to push myself to move forward on this project. I need to hang up the world naming and keep going with the world building. I need to name countries and people and events. I need to work on other things. Hell, maybe I’ll find the name of this world somewhere in that process. Just like you’ll figure out what Dudebro likes to eat for lunch by writing about him more. You and I…we can even just come up with something for now and then go back…and change it. That’s the great thing about the writing process – if you aren’t pleased with your world, you are its god. You can literally go back in time and change what Dudebro ate. You can change Dudebro’s NAME. You can even make Dudebro into Babesis.
It’s sort of like when you’re in a heated argument that just isn’t going anywhere. You’re getting needlessly upset, but you just can’t seem to walk away. You need to walk away from it, though, or it’ll never get resolved because you’ll never think about it clearly. The more you hammer your face into that wall, the more clouded your judgement will become until eventually you don’t even know what a wall is and you’ll need to check your license to even remember your name. Learning to let go is important in life, and it’s important in writing.
So for now…I’m going to call the setting Jangha. I don’t love it, and it’s not going to be the final name…but it works for now. And that’s the best I can ask for.
Minis Monday
So it’s time for another Minis Monday. This segment is the one I post the least often, mostly because I get a lot of my miniatures discussion out over at the Fearless Games channel. However, now and again I decide that I wanna write it down, so that’s a-what I’m doing.
Remember, if you came here from the Fearless Games Facebook page, THIS BLOG IS MY PERSONAL BLOG. ANYTHING I SAY HERE IS SOLELY ME, AND DOES NOT REFLECT THE OPINIONS OR BEHAVIOR OF THE FEARLESS GAMES GROUP. I OFTEN CENSOR MY LANGUAGE FOR FEARLESS GAMES, BUT HERE I DON’T. IF YOU DON’T LIKE THAT, THEN PLEASE DON’T READ ON.
Now that we have that shit out of the way, I wanted to discuss the importance of basing you damn models. Now I’m not gonna lie – up until recently, I never saw the point and frankly didn’t give a shit about basing. It felt like a lot of extra work just for the sake of cosmetics, and that didn’t mesh with me at the time.
It didn’t mesh because I was lazy and my ADD wasn’t being treated and I thought I’d do a bad job because I thought I was bad at everything. SEE SOME OF THIS BLOG’S EARLY POSTS FOR SOME OF THAT INSECURE BULLSHIT.
I recently based my first squad of minis, specifically my Sanguinary Guard for the Blood Angels army I’m making for the Legends of War thing we’re doing at Fearless Games. I used some Fine Basing Grit by a company called Hobby Round, I think. It’s basically fat sand. Anyway, I’m not going to get into the how-to, because that’s something you can find EASILY. Might do a video on it for Fearless Games, dunno yet. AAAANYWAY, the point is that when I was done, the minis went from being cool-looking miniatures, to a finished fucking product. It hadn’t been NECESSARY, but it brought that extra bit of flair to the models that hadn’t been there.
And I didn’t do anything fancy. I’m serious. They’re dirt based. My miniatures look like they’re standing on dirt. No water, no grass, no rocks, just some fuckin DIRT. And it looks REALLY DAMN GOOD. And it was then that I realized that while basing isn’t NECESSARY, it’s very damn important. Would you hang a really nice painting on your wall without a frame? Sure, you could, but it just wouldn’t look as nice. It’d look like you half-assed it, or like you’re in a thrown-together apartment. Throw even a cheap, simple frame around that shit and suddenly you’re in the fuckin GUGGENHEIM, man.
Seriously. Sometimes that extra mile is really important to making your minis shine. And it doesn’t take long. Hell, you can make it look like you based your minis by PAINTING FUCKING STREET LINES ON THE ALREADY BLACK BASES. Literally just paint some lines. Yeah, that doesn’t work in ALL terrains, but that doesn’t matter. The basing is more about having a finished product than a versatile all-terrain look. It’s the same for my dirt bases. They’ll look silly in ice terrain or urban terrain, but my opponent will appreciate that I’ve gone that extra mile to add a LITTLE immersion, even if that immersion isn’t constant.
Just some food for thought.
Minis Monday
I’m changing Model Monday to Minis Monday because I didn’t like Model Monday at all which was part of why I never ever did it. Minis Monday is more accurate and doesn’t sound like I’m discussing fashion or something.
So to kick off the new name, I want to discuss something that everyone in a miniature wargames hobby needs to eventually think about – army storage and transportation. We did an episode of Touching Base about this a couple months ago, but it’s on my mind recently. Why is it on my mind? Because the Fearless bought me a Battlefoam Custom 216 case for my birthday this past weekend.Before, the only case I owned was a Sabol Designs Army Transport case.
Both of these bags are solid decisions for anyone who needs to transport a smaller force – 1800 or so points of space marines should fit just fine in either of these bad boys. They’re fairly comparable in price, too. The problem is choosing between the two. So I’m gonna break down the differences here for you.
Pluck foam versus a custom-cut tray: In the Sabol Designs bag, you have a few trays of pluck foam. If you don’t know what pluck foam is, just google it, it’s a simple concept. You pull bits off foam off the tray to make the shape of the model you’re storing. It takes a little time and planning on your part, but it’s no Herculean task. The Battlefoam bag has a custom-cut tray – the foam is literally cut into the shapes of the model (or the right sized rectangle for more generic units) that you’ll be storing. Now, this requires that you know what you’re going to be storing in the bag when you order it, but if you have your army complete, or have a coherent army list, then this isn’t even really an effort you’d need to make. Now, personally, I think both methods are just fine. If I had to choose between the two, though, I’d choose the custom-cut tray. Why? Less mess. When preparing a pluck foam tray, you end up with a lot of foam bits that you just need to either throw away or put in a box for use in whatever craft project you might need it for. If you don’t have use for it, then it’s just a pile of garbage foam you need to throw away. Custom cut trays avoid that problem, and so in this case I give the win to the Battlefoam Case.
Carrying around the Sabol Designs bag versus carrying around the Battlefoam bag: the Sabol Army Transport has a shoulderstrap attached to it. It’s your standard bag strap, probably a vinyl job (I don’t know my fabrics). The problem? It’s too short. I keep it as long as it goes, and for a guy my size (5 foot 7 and the high-end of 200 pounds) it doesn’t fit around me nicely. You could argue that it would be better if I lost some weight, but it’s not JUST the length, but the spot it attaches to on the bag that makes it a bit cumbersome. Is it a dealbreaker? No. However, the Battlefoam case has a shoulderstrap, a briefcase-style handle, and a third handle on the face of it to carry it flat instead of sideways. I haven’t even tried the shoulderstrap because I don’t need to. The briefcase handle has been my go-to method, but I’ll likely use the other handle too. If I ever DO need to use the shoulderstrap, it will probably be better than the Army Transport because the Battlefoam case is shaped like a basic laptop or messenger bag. Another win for Battlefoam.
Army Transport’s many pouches versus Battlefoam’s two small side pouches: the battlefoam case has two little pouches on the side for things like dice or a small rangefinder. They’re not bad, they do the job they’re intended for, but what if you need to carry your codex, or a small rulebook, or blast/flamer/foot of gork and mork templates? You’re kinda boned, you’ll need another bag. This is where the Army Transport by Sabol Designs shines. It’s got more than enough storage space for your non-army necessities. I currently have three codices, a mini rulebook, templates, and dice in my Army Transport along with most of my Black Templars. This win absolutely goes to Army Transport.
Durability: the Army Transport bag is soft vinyl (again, not sure, don’t know my fabrics), relying mostly on the foam for protection in order to keep the bag affordable and lightweight. This isn’t a BAD call, but it requires you to be careful where you put the thing and what you put on top of it. The Battlefoam case has a hard shell. Now, I’m not saying this bad boy can take a bullet or anything even though Battlefoam makes a product that can do that, but it can take more of a beating before your models have to start worrying. The foam becomes a SECOND line of defense, rather than the only line of defense. However, the Battlefoam case remains lightweight, and the price is only about ten bucks higher than the Army Transport. I think this is another win for the Battlefoam product.
Aside from these four differences, the two products are functionally the same. They take up similar amounts of space (in different shapes), they both do the job they’re intend for, etc etc. Some people may disagree with my assessments, or might not care about certain functions (a hard shell versus no hard shell, or the presence or lack of extra pouches), and that’s cool for you. Even having broken down the differences, I don’t know if I’d recommend one case over the other, or if I’ll have loyalty to one brand over the other because I like them both. I’ll be using the Battlefoam case for the army it was intended for – my Blood Angels – but I’ll likely keep using my Army Transport for my Black Templars.
I’ll likely be doing a side-by-side video comparison of the two bags for the Fearless Games channel sometime soon, so if you’re interested in that I’ll post it here.
Model Monday
So it’s been a few weeks since I’ve done a Model Monday post, and that’s mostly because my camera isn’t so hot (or I don’t know what I’m doing) and I don’t have a proper lightbox, so getting pictures of my work up makes it difficult to make these posts with an real relevance. I could tell you all about my technique or my progress, but it wouldn’t really matter because ultimately, painting is a visual medium.
So instead of talking about my progress or my technique, I guess I’ll talk about something that doesn’t require visual aids.
Right now I got nothin. I dunno…make sure you thin your paints, homie. Keep your brushes in good condition. Scrape off them mold lines.
As an update, painting alabaster is a real bitch but it looks soooo goooooooood on my Sanguinary Guard. I’m happier with them than I am with Dante, who you can see some less than flattering photos of over at the Fearless Games Facebook.
Model Monday
Since today is Monday, I’m going to start with a series I’m calling Model Monday. What I’ll be doing with Model Monday is discussing tabletop wargaming in one way or another – sometimes I’ll discuss Warhammer 40,000, sometimes I’ll discuss other games, we’ll see where it all goes.
Today I want to discuss the joy of painting. Right now I’m working on the Blood Angels Commander Dante figure (in Finecast, oh la la) for a series with Fearless Games (and on Facebook) called Legends of War. If you’re curious what exactly Legends of War is, you can take a look at the video explaining it because that’s not what I’m talking about here today (and we can use the views, likes, comments, etc – GIVE US LOVE). The reason I’m specifically talking about Dante is because what I wanted to do for this model has caused me to completely forget reevaluate the way I was painting my models.
Before coming up with the grand plan to paint Dante in Non Metallic Metal gold (what was I thinking), I didn’t put a lot of thought or effort into painting my models. I didn’t thin my paints much if at all, I didn’t clean the models up, I didn’t shade or wash or highlight – closest I got to highlighting was the occasional drybrush – and ultimately, while my models looked fine for tabletop play, they didn’t look all that great. About a year ago I stripped the paint off of all of my Black Templars HQ choices with intentions of repainting them, and until very recently they remained unpainted. Redoing it felt daunting when I didn’t have a plan.
But then came Legends of War, and a deadline, and Dante. I knew I needed to start clean, and part of that was going back and trying out a few new techniques. Thinning paints, washing, color blending, all of that good stuff needed to be tested and tried before I tackled the hard part. So, I finally repainted one of my BT models – specifically, a Chaplain on a Bike. Easily one of my favorites. I wish I had before photos, because posting AFTER photos is kinda pointless without them, but needless to say Ambrose looks great now and I’m super happy with it. I liked it so much (and was still sort of wary about starting the real project) that I decided to tackle a new model. I converted a space marine biker (and a piece of a Fantasy knight) into a secondary model to count as a Bike Chaplain for fluff reasons in my BT army that I’ll probably do another post on at a later date. This model came out incredibly. It was time to move on to Dante.
The NMM Gold process has been somewhat touch-and-go, but it’s doing well. But something I’ve noticed now is that painting feels completely different to me now. Before, it was kind of a chore. I mean I enjoyed it, but ultimately it was something that I needed to do before I could play the game and half the time I just wanted to get it over with. Now while I’m painting, I put a minecraft video (Yogscast usually) or an ASMR video (THATS a topic I’ll talk about another time) and just get completely hypnotic about it. It’s not necessarily RELAXING, mostly because my back cramps up sometimes, but it feels sort of like how writing does. It’s exciting. I love to watch as the model comes to life in my hands now, as little ‘happy accidents’ reveal things that I didn’t even expect would look great.
I think this is the sort of thing that can be applied to anything, hobby or not, painting or not. If you have the wrong attitude about something, don’t take the time to learn to do it PROPERLY, and don’t think about what you’re doing, you won’t love doing it and you won’t like the results. Once you take a step back, consider the idea that you were wrong at first and this ‘optional’ thing is less optional than you thought, and revise your approach, you might end up finding value in it that wasn’t there before. I can’t wait to paint now, and thank god because I need to finish Dante by the 23rd and there’s still SO MUCH TO DO.
I’ll try and take some photos of the models I mentioned at some point today so I can upload them, but if not I’ll be making another post next week, likely with photos of Dante complete so I’ll upload the bikers then too. After Dante is finished, the next step of Legends of War is a squad of Sanguinary Guard. I have one SG painted up, but I’m gonna strip him and start over I think. Make sure the whole army is on the same level.
Coming up Cypress 