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Old Schooler New to Lizzies

T`hinker`er said:
As part of the campaign system, units gain advantages or have penalties applied based on whether they are (from worst to best): proxies, unpainted, painted to minimum standard (3 colors) or conversions, and finally, "finished". The rest of the group reaches a consensus if there is any doubt about what level a miniature or unit has achieved. It is a great motivator to actually get those old miniatures dusted off and done, let me tell you, especially when the 50 points +/- can mean the difference between a win and a loss :jawdrop:
Click to expand...

Wow, that's actually a decent way to motivate, in game penalties for incomplete models. What sorts of penalties out of curiosity? Do they cost more to field if your painting is incomplete?
 
The painting penalty from your army is added to your opponent’s victory points total.

The categories are:

Assembled, Primed, Unpainted
50 Point Penalty, -1 Leadership to First Ld Test

Minimum Standard
To achieve Minimum Standard, every model in a unit must have at least three colors painted on it and no unpainted or primered areas must be showing (unless the primer is part of the unit’s base colors). Also every base must be at least painted in its base color. The unit’s equipment should represent its actual equipment and if it has a champion, standard bearer and/or musician they should have representative models. Each unit is rated based on the model in the unit with the lowest painting standard.
25 Point Penalty

Finished
Somewhat subjective. Must be finished in all regards based on the player’s desired goals for the unit. Usually means washes, highlights, flock or grass on the base, etc.
No Penalty

Conversions or Original Models
Always count as "Minimum Standard" if they are below it, to encourage players who decide to attempt such projects. An individual model is considered a conversion if at least 25% of it is kitbashed from other models or greenstuff. For a whole unit to count as a conversion, at least 50% of the models in the unit need to be modified or made/cast from modified figures. For units with sculpted/custom basing, they count as "conversions" for one game session only.

Proxy Models
Always count as one level lower than they would otherwise be, so a Finished unit that is acting as a proxcy for a different unit would count as Minimum Standard instead of Finished.

We probably need to come up with a rule for Unpainted Proxies (100 point penalty?), but but that hasn't come up yet...
 
That is a VERY detailed campaign. How many people are participating? Is there a prize involved for the winner?

Just curious.
 
@Thinker: man that sounds pretty rough. It also sounds like some of the dice should be publicly humiliated/sacrificed to the dice gods. It will show the rest you mean business. I would do this in front of your next opponent with a small metal container placed over a flame, then place your horrid single/plural dice into the container, chant louder and louder until they melt completely. You either scare the dice or the person you are about to play. Either way it's a win-win for you.

I saw the good work on your saurus with an airbrush. I was completed destroyed on Sunday by mine. It turned out that there was small buildup in the nozzle that the needle fits in to. Such a horrrid display of splatter then commenced, until I tore the piece apart was it clear to me that the needle couldn't even seat properly because of the grit. So an entire afternoon was wasted. At least you got something done!!!!
 
Yeah Arli, it is, but it definitely makes for an interesting and immersive experience. The campaign games can get pretty tense and competitive, given the overall strategic context that they fit into. It helps to have one person in the group act as the referee for the whole thing too. Most of the gamers in our campaign have known each other and played together for 10 or more years, and we span 3 states (NY, VT and NJ), so our monthly sessions are a nice chance to catch up with old gaming buddies too. As a kicker, two of us (myself included) have kids who are also just getting into the hobby, and this is really turning them into die hard miniatures gaming fans.

The last campaign went on for something like 18 months and I won convincingly with my Skaven. The best part was building siege towers and the Orc player building an entire Orcy fortress in a last attempt to hold my rats back: http://s6.zetaboards.com/The_UnderEmpire/topic/1173244/1/. But I've been playing Skaven since 1994 and know their tactics inside and out. Now I have to see if I can do as well with an entirely new army...

Dictator, I can sympathize with your splatter experience. :( I don't do a lot of airbrushing and when I got everything set to go last Saturday I found that one of my old nozzles (naturally my favorite one) was hopelessly clogged (I moved a couple years ago and just got to unpacking the airbrush... :oops:). Then the second one I tried got packed with gunk and started to sputter. I couldn't figure out why at first, which lead to some headaches and some clean-up time :rolleyes: In the end it's just a matter of gaining experience. Hopefully nothing was ruined beyond repair?

Remember to use enough water in your paint so it has the viscosity of milk. That's hard with GW/Citadel/Reaper/Ral Partha paints...especially when more than half of your paint pots must be about 10-15 years old (I'm hopelessly frugal and even sentimental about certain now hard to find colors and never throw anything away...). Also, always try to mix 50% more paint than you think you're going to need, especially if you are doing a custom color. The last thing you want is to have to go back and re-invent a color.

I still had a quarter inch or so of that "Saurus belly tan" color that I mixed, so last night I went at those minis with a regular brush and did some additional blending and cleaning things up. They actually look a whole lot better now than they did in that photo I posted yesterday. And the broken feathers were glued back on (and pinned with wire now so they STAY PUT!) I still need hours and hours to do all those stripes, but little by little, it will be done :)
 
Do you mix your paints with droppers? I am a little OCD and always do this to ensure I get the results time and again. Nothing, thankfully, was broken just needed to be cleaned. I'm going to make sure I do the smaller details more often than once a month.
 
I use the droppers for adding the water, but I found when I used droppers for the actual color mixing I never made enough paint and had to keep repeating the process over and over and it was getting me OCD....I just mix by eye and try to use the creative part of my brain when painting. Thinking about it too much robs it of some of its joy. YMMV...
 
I haven't gone too overboard either on the droppers. Owning about 100 lessons the effects of buying one for a dollar or 100 for 15$. Either way, I like the sureness I can get by using them. The only issue that I think I got in with was sucking up the muck on the bottom of the GW pots. Dang those old paint pots I just can't get rid of!

So where are you at with the new Saurus? Have you finished them yet, complete with bases?
 
No, sadly I haven't touched them since Monday...all my Tuesday gaming time was taken up with an 'emergency gaming club" session to deal with the sportsmanship issues that arose with my opponent in the last game. Happily, I think those are worked out and I have at least part of my mojo back now.

I'm going out of town this weekend for my birthday, so I won't be working on them again until next Monday night.

But I am sculpting a kroxigor from scratch (and teaching my 11 yr old son to make one too), so we'll have 2 new greenstuff Kroxi to show off here soon! We worked on them a bit last night. This project was actually started late last Saturday so that we could have 2 units of Skrox without using any proxies in our campaign game, and we got pretty far with it:

LizardsvHE002.jpg

Apologies for the backlighting on this photo, but you can't take much time to mess with the camera in the middle of a game, now can you?

Also, if you look closely you can see that most of the white resin skinks are still missing 1 or both arms...I've still got lots more casting to do! :bored:
 
I believe it's great you are getting your son to do some work! Heck if they can walk they can start working... at least that's what I think my dad thought. :D

I see in the background you have some skirmishers on a movement tray. Did you just cup plasticard/sheet styrene and glue it to a metal base? Either way I like the idea and will have to see how it goes for me.
 
Heck yeah, and he's totally into it too. We've got a sculpting class/session scheduled for tonight, so hopefully some more progress will be made on those Krox and I'll post some photos of that soon. Meanwhile, here's the scene on my painting table:

PaintingTable41111.jpg

Note the skaven in the background, hiding behind a water jar that is very much overdue to be refreshed.


The skirmisher movement tray is actually just made of cardboard cut with a scissors for now. Testing this out, but I reform them so often it doesn't really work once they get anywhere near terrain or other units. Frankly I am hugely disappointed by the changes to skirmishers in 8th edition. I was sculpting the eyes on my chameleons recently (which can look in two directions at once) and feel that they are the perfect unit to retain the old 360 degree line of sight from 7th edition...if we ever get a new book.
 
Those are very true words. I'm not for sure if they just did a knee jerk because they thought skirmishers were too overpowered? I like you progress; I did want to ask you about your Saurus. Which paint did you spray first? I am guessing you did the bellies then the rest of the model? Good to hear that I'm not the only one with skirmisher movement issues.
 
I actually sprayed the red first, then the tan on the bellies. Then I went back with the tan and a brush and refined the blending and expanded the tan areas because I felt it wasn't noticeable enough when the minis were viewed from above (standing over a typical gaming table). I am now hand painting the black tiger stripes (and it's taking FOREVER...but well worth the time, IMNSHO). I'll post close up pics when I can get to it!
 
it would be sweet with a close up or two of those sauri (yes, im trying out the greek plural ending, lol) to see what they really look like :D
 
Yeah, I'm all about changing the lexicon from the tongue twisting "Sauruses" to "Sauri" - I hope this will be my lasting contribution to Lustria. For the record, the plural of "Kroxigor" is also "Kroxigor" (as per "Deer"), while two "skinks" are never "Skinki" :P
 
Hey everyone, I'm sorta coming out of an insane work schedule and hoping to get back into semi-regular updates here. Working on my Lizards has been one of my only respites over these last few months and while I haven't had nearly the time I would like, I have been making some progress and would love to get your feedback on it.

So, enough jabbering, you want photos right? Well, here's are some shots of two Kroxigors that I am working on from scratch. These will likely be cast, if castable, as I would like some day to try some units of 6 without any skink cohorts:

KroxOriginalSculpts002.jpg

And from the front:

KroxOriginalSculpts001.jpg

The difference in sculpting style between the two is because I am teaching my 11 yr. old son to sculpt and he is working on one while I am working on the other. I'm doing a few touch-ups to his work as we go, but trying to keep my tools off his work as much as possible :)
 
Those are looking really good. I have a few questions for you.

What are you sculpting with (media)? Looks like green stuff.

Did you use an armature, if so, what was the process that you used to make it and are there pictures of the armature?



Nice work. Keep it up.
 
Thanks, no photos of the armatures, sorry, but they weren't much to see - just a twist of wire in the basic pose from the feet to the top of the spine. The bases were drilled into and the wire was glued into the base because I needed to use these guys in a game and will continue to use them as I sculpt them. The material is green magic-sculpt http://www.magic-sculpt.com/ - which I am using for the first time.
 
One more...What is your comparison of magic sculpt with green stuff? Likes/dislikes too.

Thanks
 
I generally mix the two together. Magic sculpt is a lot more sticky in the beginning, which I find great for adding more putty to a piece and for getting the stuff onto a wire armature, but I've grown so accustomed to kneadatite's elasticity that I can hardly go without it, especially when making organic shapes.
 
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