The everything miniatures wargaming thread

[The Brain]

Jupiter's cock! Since I like movies about gladiators I bought some 1:32 gladiators from Pegasus. Very nice figures. I was actually looking for their 1:72 gladiators but if anything is perfect for large scale action surely it's gladiatorial combat in the arena. I also ordered some Italeri 1:32 gladiators (and 1:72 Italeri and Pegasus while I was at it, this scale shit is basically free when you're used to metal 28mm figures). I feel like doing some painting, it's been a while... and I've never painted 1:32 figures before.

Ruleswise I have Gladiator from Warhammer Historical and Red Sand, Blue Sky from Two Hour Wargames. If I could only trick some friend or similar to play a campaign, that would be sweeeet.

[Jacob]

How do you rate the rules you have?

[The Brain]

How do you rate the rules you have?

I haven't played any of them so I couldn't really. But if I do it anyway... The Two Hour Wargames rules use their normal concepts which seem to be pretty cool and a bit different from many other rules, and also seem pretty good for solo play if it comes to that (like AFAIK pretty much all their rules they are explicitly made to work both solo and "normal"). Their focus is combat between (smallish groups or single) gladiators with some beasts to spice things up. Gladiator OTOH use Warhammer Historical concepts which I suppose are fine but my guess is more suited to fights between several models and possibly make for less interesting one-on-one fights. Gladiator is very comprehensive, there's rules for pretty much anything that could be going on in an arena, even chariot races and naval engagements, and huge numbers of types of gladiators and beasts. Inspiring stuff. Both rulesets have campaign rules, which in a gladiator game is a must IMHO.

My impression is that Red Sand, Blue Sky is great for 1:32 figures since focus is on detailed personal fights (which of course also works great with 28mm), and Gladiator is better for 28mm figures since you want access to "all the toys" and probably want bigger group fights.

Yesterday I also ordered Victus, by Iron Ivan Games, but I haven't received it yet.

[Jacob]

Nice. I'm mostly on a maybe-I'll-get-my-40k-Imperial-Guard-stood-up kick, though I'm trying to maybe get some Dragon Rampant games going at lunch at work too.

[The Brain]

How good is Dragon Rampant?

[The Brain]

Apparently something called Spartacus: Gladiators is coming from Gale Force 9 soonish, maybe related to their boardgame based on the TV series. Miniatures of named characters from the show appear with it. I own the boardgame but haven't played it yet (it got great reviews). I will be watching this, even if I'm more interested in non-TV series related miniatures I will probably pick them up if they're nicely done.

[Jacob]

How good is Dragon Rampant?

Haven't played it yet, but from reading...

Looks like a nice little rule-set for casual games and I'm pretty keen on trying them out.

The key features are:

• Rolling for activation, with different orders being easier or harder depending on unit type. So, f. ex. heavy cavalry is very easy to convince to charge, but a little more challenging to get to manoeuvre. Archers, on the other hand, are much harder to get to charge into melee.
• If you fail an activation, the turn passes to the other player
• There's a decent enough system for construction units, including heroes and monsters. It strikes a decent balance between being intuitive enough to get going without descending into blandness IMO
• The magic system is passable, and definitely seems more of a "for flavour" than "the clear way to win the game" thing.
• Terrain rules are fairly standard, adding enough tactical substance while avoiding the disassociated mechanics you see in Age of Sigmar.
• It's got a handful of scenarios and boasts (where a player says he'll do X during the game for extra victory points) which seems a great vehicle for adding a bit of narrative substance.

Overall, it seems like a great pick-up game.

[The Brain]

Sounds nice. Hmm, I don't remember if I have Lion Rampant (the non-fantasy version) lying around the house somewhere or if I never bought it.

[Jacob]

Sounds nice. Hmm, I don't remember if I have Lion Rampant (the non-fantasy version) lying around the house somewhere or if I never bought it.

Yeah, it's basically the same game. The only differences is that Dragon Rampant has a few more unit types, more options on how to customize the units (with stuff like magic, flying, venom attacks etc) as well as a system for making representing big tough models (basically using count-as - your dragon counts as a unit of elite cavalry, but with the fly ability and something to represent the fire-breathing).

The two systems have slightly different rules for handling leaders, and slightly different lists of "boasts". Other than those differences I think they're basically the same.

[Pedrito]

I've bought Star Wars Imperial Assault, a very nice board game with lots and lots of minis, and I want to paint them with my son; I've never used a brush, except for some art project in middle school, so I've started watching the paint tutorials made by Sorastro, a guy who painted the whole game and expansions.
Coming from a state of total noobness, though, I have tons of questions:

- is priming a necessity, or not?
- as a middle aged guy with declining eyesight, every time I watch a tutorial it seems the guy does nothing really difficult; when I grab one of the minis, though, I have difficulties seeing all the minute details, get discouraged and never really start; do you use magnifying lenses to get the details done?
- if you happen to watch the first tutorial about painting stormtroopers, in the end the minis have a rather coarse finish, and the paint does not seem very smooth: is this an effect of the large magnification used for filming purposes, and in real size the coarseness is invisible, or not?
- bases, layers, washes: I assume the most famous paint brands (Citadel, Vallejo, Army Painter) make the whole lot of different paints, but: is it "right" to get a color from one brand and another one from a different one? Will they mix well? What's your experience?
- not far from home there's a GW shop whose owner every now and then organizes painting courses: do you advise for or against?

L.

[The Brain]

Cool!

- I think the short answer is yes. I always prime my minis, but exactly how vital it is depends on the material of the figure. I started out using a black undercoat (which gave me automatic shading in recesses), but a few years later I switched to a white undercoat. There is no right or wrong color undercoat (for some minis a brown undercoat is good etc), among other things it depends on which colors you plan to use on the mini.
- I haven't used magnifying lenses so far, but I may pick one up eventually (I'm not getting any younger).
- I haven't watched the tutorial, but one thing that strikes me about painting stormtroopers is that getting a nice good even white color is not the simplest thing in painting minis. Another thing is that for a mini to look really good in extreme closeups the painting has to be top class. There are also different schools of painting with different focus, some styles are designed to look their best up close, others for looking their best 2-3ft away (which is the normal viewing distance for gaming minis).
- I don't think I've ever tried mixing paints from different manufacturers (and I am unsure how common it is among good painters), but simply using paints from different manufacturers on the same mini works fine of course (and is commonly done by me and others).
- I've never attended any sort of painting course, my guess is that it's a good idea in principle. I personally would check if there's some non-GW painting courses available somewhere, since my guess is GW's total focus is moving GW products and pushing the GW paint system (the system isn't bad mind), but I have no reason to doubt that their course is good for beginners.

[Pedrito]

TY!

- the minis are made of a rather soft plastic material, some of them came with small deformations (mainly the lightsabers) and one came separated from the base, because it's a probe droid with very filmsy "legs", but I think it will need only a bit of superglue to go back to shape; I asked about the primer because I think that the more layers of paint I put on the minis, the less the details will be visible;
- the white color of the stormtroopers is achieved by: a white primer, white base, dark grey details (the mask, armor joints and weapons), a layer of shading (Sorastro uses Nuln Oil by Citadel), and then more white to paint the highlights over the helmet, shoulder pads and thighs. How much do you thin a paint, to get a good covering color? The guy even uses a slight darker shade of skin color to give the effect of the stubble on the faces 

L.

[The Brain]

- Yeah you're totally right to think about the risk of losing detail. You should avoid laying on the paint thick, but as long as you avoid that the extra layer a primer means shouldn't affect detail. Also, the primer doesn't necessarily have to be a nice even coat, when I prime my minis I just make sure that there's primer on all surfaces (a very thin layer is enough, when I'm done priming they look more like statues that have been hastily whitewashed than they look like snowmen).
- Interesting about the method to get white. As for thinning paints I am not the one to give advice. My dirty secret is that I normally don't thin my paints (I only do it if the paint is really thick), but if I were serious about becoming a better painter I think I should. It's worth remembering that I am not in any way an accomplished painter of minis. I have reached a level where I'm confident I can put out decent work of tabletop quality as long as I use KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid).

One other thing about starting out: when I painted my first mini as an adult (after a 15-20 year break) it looked like crap. My second mini looked a lot better. My third was totally decent. Don't be discouraged or intimidated if everything isn't instantly perfect.

If you want to be inspired (or give up painting in despair...) check out Cool mini or not. I regularly check their top weekly minis: http://www.coolminiornot.com/topweek

[Jacob]

Lot of 250,000 "painted toy soldiers" to be auctioned off:



More pictures in link: http://metro.co.uk/2018/04/20/huge-array-250000-toy-soldiers-found-former-owner-died-7482670/

[The Brain]

Cool stuff.

55 is too young.