Paint rack from Warbases

My latest hobby-room (or rather hobby-corner) project is done and at last my paints are relatively well organized.

It started with a post in the rather excellent blog Loki’s Great Hall, where he showed how he had organized his Vallejo paint bottles. He had Warbases cut him storage racks in MDF, and they thought it such a good idea that they now sell them (or rather a smaller variant).

Two racks. £7 each.

Glued together

Such a good idea! I quickly bought four racks and the last couple of days I have been assembling them, hanging them on the walls and re-organized the other shelves.

Four racks glued together and with labels on.

The labels are based on the Excel-file from Loki’s page, but I modified it to suit these racks (I can email you a copy of mine if you’re interested). They specify rack position number, paint-name and serial number for each of the Vallejo Model Color bottles. The paints are placed in the same order as the paint racks you can see in shops.

Prepared to hang on the wall

And check that you place the nut between bottles.

In place

Filled with the Vallejo Model Color bottles I have. In the bottom row I have also placed some metal colors from the Vallejo Game Color range. 

Assorted other bottles and pots placed so I can identify them easily.

And more paints and pigments

I should have bought one more rack to hold my other drop bottles, but that will be another time.

All in all, I’m very satisfied with how this turned out, as I now have a much clearer view on what paints I have.

The painting table, fit for fight.

A great buy. Highly recommended.

Welcome follower Fred Jackson with a blog called Lead Reckoning - an RPG, wargames and painting blog (with added stream of consciousness). It’s a really nice blog, well worth a look.

Mercs: Recon – CCC and a bit of gaming.

At last! The final pieces from the Mercs: Recon – Counter Threat box are done. These are inspired by the art from the Player Boards, where the soldiers wear predominantly yellow armour. I seems that camo is not high on any soldier’s wish-list, but instead everyone proudly shows his or hers affiliation when they make their hit-and-run attacks.

Not my proudest painting-moment, but they are finished at last and I can have a game.

So, yellow they are. I went for something as easy as possible to paint and I can’t say I’m super-exited by the result. I should have gone for more contrast, but I won’t redo them. I guess they are good enough for a game.

Now I only have to read the rules and have a go at the game. Should be interesting.

This weekend saw Smashcon, a local board game con where we usually stage a To Fat Lardies game. We had to cancel this year’s game, though, as other things came in the way, but I took the two younger kids there on Saturday and we had a blast gaming all day. Me and the daughter went on Sunday too, and had as good a day then.

We managed ten different games in all - Treatment: A Psychiatry Card Game, Evolution, Deep Sea Adventure, King of Tokyo, Splendor, Via Nebula, Patchwork, Kanagawa, Wasabi! and Dream Home. Some good and some excellent. A great weekend (but no painting)

Yesterday saw a game of Zombicide: Black Plague at the club. A really good and tense game where the zombie hordes were following us closely. We won, but it was a rather close shave. An excellent game!

Notice the painted minis!

Last week we had another game of Pulp Alley at the club, and I’m writing that AAR. Coming soon.

We also had a game of Conan. Great fun! That is a game that will be played a lot.

Also making a change in the hobby corner, more on that in a future post.

Finally, welcome new follower Generalissimo Forde with blog Continental Drift Painting, self-described as “An old geezer who paints a bit, and then writes about it.” It’s all about painting, AARs and stuff. Nice! Check it out!

Hellmites from Heresy

Another pack of uglies from the Return of the Monsters! kickstarter by Heresy Miniatures. These hellmites will come in very handy in our Pulp Alley club-campaign, as they will pop out of the gate that will be central to one of the scenarios.

Magical Portal from Zealot (and a ghost)

More stuff from the Zealot Kickstarter, this time a magic portal. It’s a four-piece kit, with two halves of the stone frame, the base and the translucent blue portal. It needs some green-stuffing, but nothing major.

I will use it as a portal between the planes in our Cthulhu-inspired Pulp Alley campaign at the club. I'm writing a scenario around it.

Stay tuned for some monstrous beings that might just be summoned through it during that game.

Finally a ghost, also from Zealot.

Mercs: Recon - Security Forces

Type 3 and 2 Security Forces (Secfor)

These security personnel come from the Mercs: Recon - Counter Threat box. I previously finished the EU, Inc soldiers from that box and they got a very basic paint-job. These are even more basic as they are the cannon fodder.

I started with one of each and tried out some different colors and did a repaint before I had something that looked at least okay. When I painted the rest of them I skipped some detailing and did some minor changes here and there to speed up painting.

These were the first two. Far to complicated :-) so I simplified the scheme even more.

Paints used

Armour – Vallejo 867 Dark Blue Grey

Boots – 862 Black Grey

Weapons – 863 Gunmetal Grey

All above washed with Army Painter Dark Tone. The weapons got two layers to get them darker.

Shirt and trousers – 819 Iraqui Sand

Cap and jacket – 988 Khaki

Cloth washed with AP Strong Tone

They will do, and now I just have to finish the last five soldiers from the CCC faction, and we’re ready for a first game.

Spiders from Otherworld and a small dragon from Reaper

These spiders come from Otherworld Miniatures and are a rather failed experiment.

My idea was to paint them black and then let the abdomen have a hazy red shimmer on it. So I gave the black abdomen a coat of gloss varnish and then a red glaze and repeated that several times and topped with a satin varnish. The result was… somewhat disappointing.

I think the idea of varnishes sandwiching translucent layers of paint could give really interesting effects, but this was not it. I’ll have to do more experimenting and probably with an undercoat of something not so dark.

I let my daughter rummage through the case of unpainted monsters the other day to pick something she would like to have finished and she dived in, full of enthusiasm. She had a hard time deciding as the case is rather large... 

What she finally picked was this young dragon from the Reaper Bones range. We checked the D&D Monster Manual and decided it was a black dragon. I just did a very fast job on it, mainly because I think black is such a difficult color (I know it is technically not a color) to work with. Well, I have to practice more, I guess.

Anyway, we both thought it was great fun for her to find a figure and me to paint it up and we will continue doing this regularly, one monster and one character. For me it is an opportunity to paint stuff that wouldn’t be in the front of the painting queue. Next monster will be a Cthulhu-thingie that is really weird and the character will be a female druid that will be Johanna’s next D&D character.

Stay tuned for that.

Even more dungeon scenery from Zealot

I’m still working on scenery from Zealot on and off. Here we have what I’ve painted up during the last few weeks.

A really nice little well. I've added Woodland Scenics 'water' in it.

A spiral stairs

Doorways, open portcullises, a pit, bucket and a cross.

Still lots of Zealot stuff to finish and I try to always have some pieces on the painting table so I can splash on some paint in between the other projects.