Has it really been 4 months?

Dang...well consider me a bad blogger then :) I am pretty busy with other writing projects and have been putting a lot of my free time into helping the boys out at Picoarmor.com updating their website, making it mobile friendly, creating a discussion board forum and just a whole bunch of crunchy back-end stuff that makes social media marketing one of the most boring things you'll ever do.

But both of the John's who own Pico are gaming buddies of mine and distinguished gentlemen who I like a lot and wanted to help out. I'm also a huge nerd in general, so I read up about the wargaming community, social marketing, and brought to bear some experience with communications strategy and online campaigns, and thus we started flying the plane and building it at the same time with the new Pico armor website and community.

Alrighty, let's get to what we pulled together and painted for Nina's Army of (Social and Economic) Justice yesterday! We did this rather quickly because we're trying to beta- test a Roll20 platform complete with terrain tomorrow - so those of you who will cry "foul!" - please note a few things: 1) I did actually paint a whole bunch of crap with the Johns last fall - it was my "trial by boredom" intro to wargaming; 2) We did do a lot of basing yesterday, and in the interests of posting this in a timely fashion, the Johns' were gracious enough to finish a final stand of infantry and my 5 stands of heavy artillery.

Some of you might find my walkthrough painstakingly basic, others might sigh in relief that I asked all the random questions I did. Anyways, this is my blog so I'll be as obvious as I want :)

So here is what we landed on for my $21 - which equals 30 stands of which you usually put three minis per stand (kinda):

• 5 stands of tanks -  t34-76s - I guess I'm building a kind of Soviet set
• 5 stands of infantry
• 5 anti tank guns
• 5 heavy weapons - mortars and machine guns - I asked John why I needed this versus more tanks which I wanted and he said this provided more punch for the infantry.
• 5 ba20s - or bt7s - I forget - anyways, light tanks keep away bad guys and are more maneuverable
• 5 artillery - shoots high explosive indirect fire - which in other words keeps bad guys away, kinda.

So, the really really crunchy bits? Mr. Siewenie showed me this high tech tool he uses to keep a thin strip of black paint on the back of his bases like this:

Seriously, see the fine hand-crafting of wood bits and sticks to make this machine that allows one to precisely lay a piece of painters tape across the black strip of each base to ensure clean lines and even spacing? zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

Next, fine pumice gel (otherwise known as non-edible Nutella) is the medium to smear on the base and then sprinkle flocking on top - I told Mssrs John and John that this is very high start up costs for just one individual to start on their own! I do wonder if there aren't "kits" that could be sold that have smaller amounts of this stuff to offer as a starter pack for people like me - if I didn't have friends who had stuff like this already, I'd NEVER get this done.



Let the schmearing begin!! As this was a really important step, I had to listen to John S. describe in PAINstaking detail how to cover the 1.5mm bases very carefully with the Nutella, to make sure it isn't too thick, something about watching out for "berming" and zzzzzzzzzzzzz.

So after I removed the Nutella from my forehead after it hit the table, he stepped away and allowed me to get to work, and it was actually quite fun and gratifying to see the little minis start to take shape on the bases and how the flocking (largely) covered up my haste in slapping on the nutella stuff.

My first ever base!! Yeaaaaaa!!! Wait, what? I have 29 more to go?? Boooooooooo.

After breaking out some port and Jamesons to celebrate getting me through my first ever basing project, this is what we finished up with, noting that I am still missing 5 stands of heavy weapons, and 1 stand of infantry.

Nina's (almost complete) Army of Justice

Of course, if I can't get those troops ready to roll by tomorrow's beta test, I do have a secret weapon that is super fabulous and has many powers that will crush the enemies of justice and freedom:

Icarus, the Super Fabulous!!

I promise I'll try to post more regularly, but I'm often wasting spending my time on Pico's discussion boards and trying to use my time wisely, which I guess could be on this blog as well. I'd really like to do a post on reviewing some of the other bloggers that are out there and seeing where all the girl bloggers are on wargaming stuff (the other 2 that might be out there).

We'll post our after action report (AAR for those of you who just know these things already) on the boards. See you there!

How to paint 3mm war minis part 3...

Admittedly, painting minis has taken a back seat to some pressing issues in my world, not the least of which is going to come to either a happy conclusion or world shattering end tomorrow when the polls close at 7pm tomorrow. 

It's taken me close to two weeks to finally upload photos from our last painting session and during that time, it looks like my friends over at Pico are starting to post some cool stuff on their blog (finally..and again, welcome to the 21st century). It has something to do with 18th century warfare and how you'd start the set and army and something and zzzzzzzzzz and I'm definitely NOT inclined to getting into the weeds on this one. But if you are, go and check them out here.

So last we left, we had primed and done all this boring...I mean...important...stuff to the minis. We reconvened, and this time, there were a lot more colors involved, which made things a lot more interesting. 

Of course, as I was doing my online wasting o'time/research, I came across this post in boardgamegeek.com that was actually pretty fantastic...he's doing larger figures from a game called Heroquest...which is not to be confused with an actual board game called DrunkQuest (I kid you not). Why the hell would you need a game to TELL you when to drink? Isn't that what you are doing before, during and after? How about a game called BreatheQuest? There must be a market out there. I'm on it! I've found my new concept for my board game :)

ok...so last we left off, we had primed tanks...super boring...

So we turned it up to 11 and busted out all the fancy colors...

...color wheel...everything...

Right? Here I am thinking I'm going to be painting rainbow-colored tanks and stuff. Which, btw - I TOTALLY forgot to take a pic of my super gay unicorn after I got done with him, but this is his BEFORE photo:

But instead, the Pico nerds introduce me to the color "Army green". Boooo.

The good thing is that it is easy to mix, and slap on the color. After we let them dry for awhile, we used the OTHER exciting color of black to paint in the treads.

I did manage to snap one pic of JacJac's awesome orc, which The R noted was actually OLDER than him by quite a number of years :) Nicely done JJ. You just wait until I finish my UniBuddy!

I promise I'll take better pictures next session...which we're still trying to figure out given our cray t-giving travel schedules. 

Hope you enjoy!

What kind of gamer am I? Well I guess this shouldn't be a surprise....

So in my wanderings looking for some good bloggers and sites to start my other other project; aside from painting minis with my friends, I'd like to create a tabletop board game. I know, right? What the hell does that mean? I don't know exactly, but I'm going to give it the old college try.

So me being me, there's a lot of research I've been doing, and clearly a lot of opinions abound on the interwebs. I'm working through Reddit, and some blogs, but one site that I was immediately impressed with is Quantic Foundry (probably because they are social science data nerds like me). 

So I started with their original 5 minute survey on online gaming style. This is a pretty brilliant survey approach since they can collect some demographic data and then get me to answer a bunch of questions because I am motivated to see where I land and potentially learn about new games that would fit my gaming style. So here's the first set of results:

Consider me flattered :)

In another 3.5 D&D campaign (and hoping we get back to one day), I think the sense of community with my gaming group, the fact that we're a mixed age group, and that we're all pretty nice, smart people really matters. So in terms of tabletop gaming, here is how I fared...again, quite accurate, imho: 

What is really interesting is that in r/l, I'm definitely one of the least conflict averse people I know. I don't enjoy conflict for conflict's sake, but if I have to do some ass kicking, I will. And, in turn, I have had my ass kicked plenty of times, so I've learned that if you engage in conflict as a tactic or strategy, the more real world consequences it has on you and your world. I wonder if people who have to deal with conflict (physical, political, social, emotional) everyday would choose games that mimic those situations/contexts in their gaming life? 

As the chart above chart reflects, in my gaming life, I avoid conflict almost completely. For example, I never thought that PvP was fun, and backstabbing or trying to get your party members killed isn't fun either. Now I do like games where there is some social manipulation involved. Diplomacy, The Resistance and Sheriff of Nottingham are all time favorites of mine. Diplomacy is super old school - I wonder if I could talk the guys into playing it with me again one of these days? Here's a tutorial on Diplo - this is more of a reminder to me to read back up on the rulez:



Now Resistance and SoN are much newer games, and quite fun. Aside from the fact that I have finally forgiven Wil Wheaton for his TNG character AND the fact that he has turned out to be one cool-ass, very cute, middle-aged dude, I'd love to play a game of Resistance one day with my buddies, but you need a minimum of 5 players for this to work. Wesley, I mean, Wil, has a channel called TableTop on YT and he is totally "Crushing" it with 1.4 million subscribers. Ok, I'll stop with the TNG puns now. 



Ok, hope everyone has a great Monday!

How to paint 3mm war minis and mini-turtles, part 2 (of many, I suspect)

Hey all - well after a very long and busy week, I'm settling down and working on an overdue part deux of our little painting project. Now, I've been slowly checking out the amazing work of seasoned super-nerds like Tim and Curt on their blogs. Also, exciting news that my friends over at PicoArmor are starting to (finally) port their website onto a mobile friendly platform (welcome to 2013, John and Jack!!). Additionally, both of the Pico guys are going to be more media savvy and start posting some cool pics and randomness that they have been collecting over the years. I will continue to help as best I can. One of them literally just signed up for FB this past Friday. I kid you not :)

Anyways, clearly the stuff that you can see on other sites is way more advanced than what I am posting now, but I am hoping that this "how to" will provide more of the step-by-steps for novices (like me).

So where were we? Oh right...beer...waiting for our minis to dry....more beer....and now onto...

I think this turtle is overcompensating for something.

So as you can see, our little friend is NOT a tank, but like I said, we were interested in painting some other minis as well. See how he is sitting on top of a little blob of clay? Well the reason why you need the wood with all the holes and the nails with a nice flat head is because you get to take each and every mini and stick them onto the top of the nails using something called "rope caulk".

This is something you can find at any hardware store. You take little blobs and stick them on top of the nails, and then it is pretty much what you think will happen until you have a block that looks like this:

At this point, we needed to take another beer break. Everything was stuck and ready to go, so we broke out the Gesso. Nope, that isn't a new brew by Revolution or Bells, but it could be, one day. It is a type of primer that, as it dries, actually shrinks right onto the mini, giving it better definition which, at this scale, is pretty limited real estate.

The instructions I was told was, put some in a bowl, and thin with sterile water until it is the consistency of milk. Dunzo! We first did our non-3mm tanks with the pure white primer. After that, then we added a couple of drops of army green before we attacked the tanks. This is the brand of modeling paint, not the colors we used :)

So then, you take some brushes, grab yet ANOTHER beer, and start to lovingly coat all of your minis with a nice sheen of tinted Gesso! I found that dabbing my brush in once was enough for at least two tanks. That is pretty much it for this stage. They key to this stage is having some great music on (which I think we're going to have to come to some agreement on what qualifies as "great music" among the nerds) and plenty of beer and stuff. It was nice because we had just started a new Call of Cthulhu campaign and both of my teammates ended up jumping out of a second story window because they were seeing blood pools and a bed was trying to attack them. I, of course, just quietly snuck back down the stairs and ran away :)

I'm really enjoying the painting project, even though at the rate we're going, it might be another two weeks before we're back together. But it is truly fun, relaxing and, with the right nerds, highly entertaining! Cheers!

Lead Doesn't Bleed!

When I first heard about what some of my gaming buddies did as a side business/hobby - 3mm minis for wargaming - I thought to myself: wow, these guys are Ur-Nerds, and wow, this is too cool!! While I'm definitely more of a 3.5 kinda gal (and rapidly loving Cthulhu as well), I've never been so much into boardgames that require a lot of using of rulers and sticks and such. I know, that sounds stupid since others would be like, "And dice are more real? Come on." But whatevs, I like my magic casters and spells! 

For the record, I have been known to get into a game or two of Star Wars Armada so I kinda get the idea of formations and rulers and such. But I'm just not so much about the historical battles. There, confession made! Let's move on :)

Lead Doesn't Bleed - Politically incorrect, Family-Unfriendly War Gaming Blog has introduced me to the fact that there are actually 2mms as well in this gaming universe?!?!? Really?? And he's got some amazing posts of these 3mms for some Ogre game that I'm still trying to figure out. The painting is fantastic, and I'm realizing we need a better camera for our painting project because there is no way any of our phones, no matter how S7 they are, will get this level of detail. Check out the blog post here. But my fave pic from that post is definitely this one, called "Mama Spank" :)




I'm highlighting them also because they link to PicoArmor! Whoohoo!! My Pico-Nerds are super thrilled that I'm finding all of these references and connections for them through my little blogging time I can put in. I think it is great that this hobby is totally blowing up and that younger people and (maybe??!?) more people from diverse ethnic and racial backgrounds will make this community even more fun and vibrant over time. Insofar as nice clean fun, this is totally it - and encouraging more young people to think about rules and strategy and good gamesmanship can't be all that much of a waste of time, no?

Analogue Hobbies does PicoArmor's 3mm Napoleonics! Wow....

So as I'm figuring out this world of 3mm and painting, check out these beautiful sets that were created by Analogue Hobbies blogger Curt - he's got a great walkthrough of how he created these sets, and others. Checkout his website - and check out the shout out he gives to PicoArmor!

http://analogue-hobbies.blogspot.com/2015/07/wee-men-in-belgium-blucher-napoleonic.html

How to paint 3mm war minis and other random minis, part 1

So here we go...no real intros, or forethought, actually, to how this is going to look...let alone be comprehensible...but whatever...better a trial run than never doing anything, right?

So below, we see the ultimate Box of Nerdery - everything that is needed to paint minis. 

OK, I lied, I'll set some context and then we'll start on our merry way on how to paint minis and super super minis. 

On a Friday afternoon, our gaming group decided to launch a new Cthulhu game and do some mini painting at the same time, just doubling down on the nerd! 

The Box of Nerdery (BoN) was brought by the Head Engineer Nerd, hosted by the Reverend Nerd, and then me and another member would be considered Peon Nerds (that really doesn't sound right).

The idea for this walkthrough of how to paint 3mm war minis came up at a previous session where much beer and wine had been drunk - clearly, we didn't drink enough to forget that we thought doing a walkthrough of this process would be a "fun" idea. 

Once we go through this whole process, I'll type up a list of supplies and stuff you'll need. Given this is my first time as well, I'm asking a lot of questions and may overshare, but if you're pretty new to this like I am, I hope you'll appreciate the details.

Let's get started. 

As with any mini painting, you're going to need something to stick your tiny little minis onto so you can prime and paint in peace.

Foam vs. Wood. Who knew?

Many people use foam blocks, especially for these 3mm figures, but as you can see, they get pretty beaten up after awhile, so wooden blocks work just fine too. And to note, less weird green "dust" sticking to your figures with the wood blocks!

But I'm getting way ahead of the process here...you won't have the pleasure of working with this drudgery until you've filed, removed "sprues" and washed the whole darn lot of minis which, btw, check out how TINY they are!

I know their supposed to be tanks, but they're SO CUTE! There are 30 in this shot, and I guess that makes up a battalion...of CUTENESS!!

So remember, in this phase, you really need some kind of file (that's the thing in Jack's right hand), and a keen eye to distinguish between the things that should actually be hanging off your tanks and figures, versus the "sprue" which is this tiny little dangly thing that could be mistaken for a tank gun if you aren't careful. 

You want to file everything down, and throw it in a cup that you'll be able to fill with vinegar and hot water. Make sure you have an old toothbrush. Experts (who weren't drunk) say that for 3mm, you just need to use the brush to swish the pieces around. Larger pieces need a better scrubbing. 

Again, if you're just working with 3mm, you really don't need a lot of space, but we ended up adding in some D&D figures that were 28mm, I think?

We added a dracolisk, unicorn and other randomness - washing larger minis requires a bigger tray, but same 1/2 vinegar, 1/2 hot water. Put on a towel and wait for 2 hours, minimum. 

And don't forget, when you are engaged in such delicate work, always ensure there is enough beer, wine and snacks for you and your friends! I should have taken some photos of the great chili that the R made, as well as the cheese board we had going on (because we're closet hipsters like that). 

Anyways, this is the end of part 1. Next part will be on the tedious attaching of each piece onto the nails and the priming.