Good Enough Hobbies

Dacians & Germanians

Hello and welcome back!

Today I have painted some more troops, Coming from the Warlord SPQR line!

And let me tell you, I have my gripes! These are made of resin, making the super fiddly to deal with.

First off the Germanian warriors:

These come with metal spears, and I find that super gluing metal to resin is frigging hard. The adhesion was sub par, and every time the spear snagged something on my table, they popped off. The spear tip also wasn’t too convincing, as its just flattened metal with a tip. Doesn’t really look historically accurate.

The the resin..

I’m a clumsy guy, so dropping the models happens to me all the time. This meant that the resin shields that I had to glue on the models popped off, all the time! I really think that resin and I don’t go together at all. Not to mention the bendy swords (Dacians). These also came with a lot of defects and bubbles. and generally being a headache to fix.

Then the Dacians.

These I liked far better, great sculpt with a lot of details, befitting their status as nobles. Also made of resin, these came with next to no defects, and the only critique I have are the swords being a bit on the bendy side.

This box came with a shield transfer sheet from little big men, and I have got to say these where excellent!

There we have it!

My recommendation is to steer clear of the Germanians, and recommend the Dacians.

And if you don’t like resin, steer clear of both!

Until next time.

-Marc

Auxilia solari… wait wrong game

Back again with more troops for the Greeks, this time some auxilia.

I managed to snag a box of Victrix Peltast and slingers.

Contains 56 (!) miniatures, 8 which are earmarked for the role of slingers, and the rest earmarked to make lighter javelin men or heavier Peltasts.

Being Victrix sculpts, they are a little bit bigger than the Hoplites from Warlord, but they can be quite easily subbed in to be made into unarmored Hoplites, should the need arise. It’s also always good with a little variety in the sculpts.

This is my first bout with a Victrix product, and I can gladly say that the sculpts are excellent. The details are a bit sparse, but I think this is more to do with the models they represent than the ability of the sculptor. I can’t really see a low born slinger carrying trinkets and jewelry in abundance.

The biggest plus in this box is the many heads it contains. 8 helmet-less, 1 Cretan style wide brimmed hat and 8 helmeted in different styles per sprue. These helmet heads are interchangeable with the ancient Hoplites, and thus makes it possible to change up the sculpts a bit. To summarize (forgive me if I’m wrong Greek history buffs!) :

8 phrygian
16 pilos
8 Boetian ( a bit unsure on this)
8 Chalcidian
24 attican

That’s a lot of helmets!

Combine this with the hoplite box and you get a lot of variation, making you able to build 2 different war-bands, one from central greece and one from the more northern parts.

This gives you if split 98 models to work with, 49 models per warband. not too shabby! If you split it a bit more, 20 hoplites, 28 javelins/peltasts/slinger and 1 general. Not bad.

Anyway, here’s some painted models!

I forgot one thing. These can be used in saga, and thus should have a minimum of 12 miniatures per block. So I have to convert and paint at least 4 more slingers to be able to field them..

Thanks again and see you!

Cheers!

-Marc

Democracy bois!

Hello and welcome back!

As I said in my last update, making Gaul infantry wasn’t really in my interest, so instead I sidetracked!

This is the box I got, a solid wall of spears to make any Gaul quiver! In this box you will find 42 multi-pose (kinda) soldiers, ready to battle. Why I say kinda is this; having a shield and spear arm really looks kinda same-y after a while, regardless what body you use. In my opinion, the poses boil down to three kinds of poses:

Spear over shield
Spear beside shield
Spear at ~45´

Not really much to work with.

On another note, the miniatures are really good! Little flash, great details, but one glaring problem. The shield arm is comically bigger than the spear arms. You won’t see it much, as its hidden by the shield and body, but really, who didn’t catch this during sculpting?

Anyway,

This box comes with 42 figures, 25 in linothorax, 10 unarmored and 5 in bronze curiass. Additionally it comes with one “command” sprue, so you are able to make 1 commander/general and a piper. You would think that a piper would be a welcome addition, but no. The sculpt is not good looking at all, much smaller, with a head molded in place that looks a lot like a certain restrained murderer from a movie. No.. not using this one as a piper… or at all.

The last thing this box comes with is a whole sheet of tranfers. Boyo, this was awsome! Don’t look at the little one on the box, mine was double the amount vs the one on the box!

I was going for an Athenian war-band, so many blues and maritime imagery on the shields.

Love the kraken shield, such a nice transfer! ( but a pain to get there!)

This time I vent for a more Mediterranean skin color, starting with a base coat of light brown instead of the normal brown-red.

As you can see. a lot of same-y poses. Not good but I guess in a spear wall, you can’t have a multitude of poses.

Thanks again for tuning in, and see you on the flip side!

Cheers!

-Marc

Keeping up with the Gauls

Hello and happy new year!

It’s been a bit slow over here on the hobbying side, but time for an update.

Keeping on with the SPQR theme, I have now managed to paint half of the Clash of heroes box, finishing the Gaul hero and their archers.

I really liked the sculpts, unfortunately with resin you cant really vary the poses so they are a bit repetitive. A head swap might already done wonders for the sculpts, but it’s a bit late now eh? And if you really think, the poses almost looks like they are developed cycling through the full motion of a archer, starting from a crouching position and ending in looking if the shot hit.

The “come at me bro” pose of the box, The Gaul commander is a bit funny sculpt. The detail on the sculpt is top notch, but I really can’t get over the fact that he has a bendy sword. Not to talk about how long it took me to get the sword straightened out…

I can’t say that the pose is good. I really don’t like the “CAMB” pose. A more dynamic pose in a battle style would have been preferred. Thank god that they included the transfer sheets in the box, I really don’t like painting shield. Takes forever and never looks okay for me. Instead these small transfers do wonders in elevating the minis feel, and looks even better when massed on the tabletop.

Still need to get the Gaul infantry done to complete the box, but not looking forward to them as I have once already put that kit together.. So I think i going to switch it up with some goodies that just dropped in the mail.

Stay tuned!

Cheers!

-Marc

AVE!

Well well well, there I go again with finding cheap miniatures in bundles for new games.

There comes a time for all wargamers when you find a nice historical game and go.. now that looks interesting! Historical war gaming usually is grey beard territory, so I guess I’m getting older!

Sooo.. Painted Miniatures GO!

I really don’t understand the centurion heads, with the helmet half off. I mean, should it not have at least one with the helmet correctly on? But I digress. The other models are nice, but a bit lacking in the detail department. This of course is not a big issue, as they are made for bigger style games, and if you have 20+ troops on the table, pouches, trinkets and details won’t really stand out a lot until you pick up the models and observe the close up.

The big difference here is the nice water transfers that came with the box, such thin lines would be impossible for me to paint, and really makes the miniatures pop! These will probably look really nice on the tabletop!

Now I need to find some STLs to get some terrain printed, any help with that is greatly appriciated.

Cheers!

-Marc

Painting Commanders

Hello and welcome back!

Finally got the last of the miniatures painted from the Star wars legion haul! (except maul and probes, still going to try and get greenstuff ordered but I’m itching to paint him..)

First up the Count himself, Dooku.

Quite a lot of black and browns, making a quite regal paint job. Fast and easy, a real treat to paint!

Next up the Generic Super Tac.

Also quite a easy paint job, some metallics, some green, some drybrushing and done. Still thinking about painting the gold details but we’ll see.

Next I painted Mr Panakin.

I love painting blues for some reason, really love the color. It’s a real stand out color in my opinion.

Well, this was all for this time. I really need to get this to the table soon! But then again, I should probably get some more core units for the separatists and GAR to make it more fair..

Cheers!

-Marc

Can’t stop ‘bellin

Welcome back!

2 weeks really fly by, and one never seem to get enough done in the time available.

Nevertheless I got my Rebel portion of my haul done!

For my rebel veterans I went with a woodland scheme, as I find painting a unit with a snow camo would have broken immersion too much, as all my other units are based in woodland themes.

One missed opportunity I had was making some heat damage on the barrel on the emplacement trooper. This would really have popped in my opinion.

On another note, I really wish I had an opponent to play with, as I would love to field these newcomers.

Until next time!

Cheers!

-Marc

Empire reinforcements!

Hello and welcome back!

I have been slugging along with the painting, and made some progress in getting my big pile of grey legion plastic done!

Starting with everyone favorite nemesis the empire!

old Jazz hands himself, slinging zaps all over your core!

I’m finally getting somewhere with my core for the empire, and I’m probably now going to phase into buying some vehicles for the factions!

Pretty small update, I know, but what can you do.

Cheers!

-Marc

Sprue utilization

back with a quick update on using all the sprue parts.

Next up the Super tactical droid. The box comes with 3 different cards, Kalani, Kracken and a generic Super tac. The sprues only enables you to build one of them, as it only comes with one torso.

I tried using the blue Stuff from my last post, but no dice. I think that the putty I use isn’t really working too good, as it seems to expand a bit. This makes me unable to continue my experimentation until I get hold of Green stuff putty.

Instead I turned to 3D printing. I found a nice split up model that enabled me to print out the parts I needed.

In this case I was able to find a 3D model that perfectly worked with the legion parts, Will return when I have them painted so I can compare them better.

Until then, Cheers!

-Foba

Financial (irr)responsibility

Hey guys, back with another blog post!

As you know, we sold one of our family businesses a while ago, giving me some spare change to put towards my hobby. And I might have gone a bit overboard with it I guess.

Whelp! That’s a lot of plastic. As always, the Swedish store Alphaspel delivers!

Now to the responsible part, I recently went to the only game con in Finland; Ropecon. I managed to snag a few goodies, including 2 boxes of blue stuff.

For those that don’t know what blue stuff is, it is a thermo plastic used to make reusable molds. This means you can make a 2 part mold and copy stuff that the manufacturers of minis only might include one of in the sprue etc.

And this is one of my criticism towards the legion sprues. for example:

here you can see, that they have two poses possible, but only one pair of legs. Now that is unfortunate. Unless you have some blue stuff.

What you need:

Hot water & bowl

Blue Stuff

A pencil

2-part putty

Start with the hot water and put it into a bowl, then throw the Blue stuff sticks into the water. Fish it up after a few minutes and the blue stuff should be soft and malleable.

The legs put into the Blue stuff, notice the small indents to make the other Blue stuff mold align. Use the pencil for this.

Knead the putty, and apply. Then press the two halves together and let set.

Result, just trim the excess a bit and done. Notice though that the legs are a bit bigger!

There, now we have two Anakins from the same sprue. Effectively doubling the models we got from the sprue. This comes with a few downsides unfortunately.

The edges are real! I think I would have had better results with Green stuff putty. Instead I used loctite 2 part epoxy putty, and I think it actually expands when drying, instead of retracting. This turns the leg a bit bigger than the original, and also made the lines really big and hard to trim without it obscuring detail, also it made the mold shift slightly, resulting in misaligned legs.

I’ll have to try to perfect the process a bit, but it shows a lot of promise to make use of all the components that come in a sprue. A good example would be Darth Maul and General Grievous that can be built in a lot of ways.

Until next time!

Cheers!

-Marc