Posted: Fri Nov 20, 2020 12:33 pm
And now for a stupid story that wanders off track.
How I started painting some models, took some pictures and got distracted
I though, hey. I might get back to finishing painting my Infinity model collection. I only have like, 40 models or something to go. At my old rate I could knock that off in like... 3 weeks?
Anyway. Why not take a picture or two and talk about them.
So here is me putting a base coat on some out of print biker miniatures.
Several things.
1) Yes that's just a wash. Yes the paint sticks fine. Yes everyone has been fucking lying to you for years about base coats. Yes especially about infinity minis. Yes actually the water and thinner I use would probably be enough on its own. I use a bit of something dark as much to highlight details so I can see what I am painting and to fill those deeper gaps the final coat often misses in my paint jobs.
2) These bikers are out of print. I went out of my way to get them. Because they were surprisingly cheap (they are unpopular? Really?) and because the new ones are over beefed bikies on even more wildly impractical low slung over sized easy riders. Also maybe they went out of print because this asshole drew too much attention within the community. They may still be talking about it right now.
3) They are called Kum riders. Yep. Thanks Spain.
4) Yes that guy at the back isn't based because like every time anyone ever touches infinity models something broke off. It was his arm and now he is in glue time out.
Then I decided you wouldn't believe me about needing the wash to see the details. I mean those are 1st gen models from like 10+ years ago and far away. So here is a relatively new model from their range. Who also brings up...
5) You'll never guess how I've been painting the steely metallic bits on these guys lately. I might add a light dry brush highlight to those hexagons. Otherwise. Done. What's was wrong with us all those years, why were we painting metal with metal paint.
And then I had to wait for paint to dry. And I thought. Hey you know it might be worth mentioning my goals with these paint jobs.
I've always wanted models that look good at tables. I can't paint excessively fine detail all that well, and frankly I won't appreciate it if I do because I don't sit there looking at my minis 3 inches from my nose. And a good table paint... isn't always the same as a "display" paint and definitely isn't the same as a paint job intended for a high res digital photo (not that I can manage to even get my depth of field and lighting right on these for some reason...).
And then suddenly I instead went off and decided to create a brief pictorial history of my miniatures collection.
For an interval here is a frog staring intently at a modified carnivorous leaf that it lives on. For no god damn reason it has no issues with lighting, focus or basic composition.
And then instead a brief history of my miniatures collection
1990ish? The Ral Partha Era
I first started collecting and painting miniatures a very long time ago. I'm going to guess maybe the early 1990s, but possibly as early as the late 1980s. I was probably 12, but I might have been younger.
I started with Ral Partha miniatures of fantasy adventurers for D&D games.
You would obtain these buy getting the fine print text only Military Simulations catalog from Victoria Melbourne, (Just one state, several days, and 1005km away). Divining which words might represent interesting miniatures. Sending them a list of stock numbers and some money, which somehow always involved a phone call. Then receiving the wrong miniatures in the post a month later.
Here are a selection of surviving miniatures from that period painted by myself and my sister.
There is a badly painted space marine in the background for scale.
The plastic dinosaurs on each side were the primary stand ins for every entry in the monstrous manual and the occasional terrified shop keeper.
1995ish? Warhammer Fantasy the shitest ever edition
After a few years, at some point in high school friends of mine started collecting Warhammer Fantasy. An expensive and wildly unrewarding hobby for tweens with no money and no transport with the nearest game shop over an hour away with no relevant stock.
I collected Undead because they seemed like useful universal monsters to beef up the ranks of those two plastic dinosaurs, and because raising skeletons on the battlefield seemed cool.
In the era of "winds of magic", crazy high elf supremacy and a local GW culture that felt rules were largely not cool. They performed terribly.
But the skeletons of that era were awesome crazy little stick figure men.
Here are some of them. Yes, banner bearers came without banners back then, you could like buy them via some elaborate magazine/rule book vandalizing method, but that is my original hand made piece of hessian from when I was what, at best 14. The musician and the banner guy have been repainted but the regular skelletons are mostly original appart from constantly being reassembled right down to the horrific green bases I used to make.
These are some other models from that era. The vampire lord is a little repainted, but mostly just because no amount of layering or lacquer in the world will save that god damn cape (look its chipped AGAIN). And yes the vampire lord is a stupid model (possibly Vlad Von Karstien or something? Who cares). But I love his fashion sense and general confidence and continued useing him hears later.
I sold my original Nagash years ago to someone who was very excited about it about five minutes before the first resculpt in decades came out and was much better. Good riddance to him he was ugly as hell and no amount of glue, blue tack or hammering would keep his several deformed bricks of metal assembled.
Since allied unit rules were fast and lose in the era here are some painted plastic chaos warriors from the era. Yes they ALL looked like that back then. Yes I was over fond of metallic paints. No, getting a less blurry shot won't make any difference. No they didn't help much against the high elves pressing their I win the magic round buttons and what not.
GW and it's local community was a hellhole at the time. (I mean it's not like it wasn't full of suspected and known sex criminals a decade or so later, but I was more confident in dealing with dangerous assholes by then).
Anyway. About a year or two after that a pair of brothers who were and still are close personal friends of mine got into GW games as well. They also got into space marines and eldar.
Not that I didn't also have space marines. Everyone who bought paint sets back then had really bad free plastic space marines. I also have a set of that one awesome space marine board game from the era, no not the famous one the fucking much better one GW burried and won't acknowledge anymore.
Anyway. Point is, those guys collected goblins, high elves, a few skaven, eldar and space wolfs. Then years later they would give me a bunch of those. Then later on I gave back some of the eldar and several hundred Tyranids as interest.
2003ish? An actual local war gaming community
So years later I got back into the gameing community... probably in the early 2000s and my mid to late 20s?.
Now there was a slightly local game store, an independent one with a broader range of brands, products, and games at tables.
I played and collected a bunch of stuff.
I think I first got into Warmachine, either that or I was just playing RPGs and board games. So things might be slightly out of order here.
Anyway. I collected a bunch of the blue guys. But I really liked blue metallic. At least the bases were good. I got good local creek sand and realised it didn't need painting.
Then I got a bunch of the green guys. Then a bunch of other guys, alternatively not pictured or to this day in an unpainted box.
Anyway. Then that guy gave me a bunch of Eldar. And hey. Eldar were pretty cool for the rules era. I never lost a game with them and was the only guy in the community fielding fully painted armies. Hell I was the only guy with even one fully painted vehicle.
But then vehicles were pretty damn shit in that era, I only used mine to drive up to stuff, unload maximum fire warriors and melted everything with them while its tank weapons pew pewed like the useless pea shooters that they were.
Anyway, so I inherited paint jobs/colour motifs. Some of my favourite ones went back to the other owner. But I still have fire warriors that I painted based on his colour scheme and this named elderly guy that I only finished up and then restored several times after rough use.
And here are three different generations of Wraithlord Model that my unusual collection sources ended up landing me with.
Around about then I got back into warhammer fantasy with Vampire Counts.
I did so basically on the back of bad old minis, one box of new plastic skeletons, and since it was an indi store and community cool with cross brand substitutions a bunch of Reaper Fantasy miniatures as necromancers and vampires. Which I could just use for D&D and stuff too.
I also got some (Reaper) ghouls and wraiths. Here is me trying again to get a picture of this god damn ghoul because I am overly proud of his shiny slimy well toned monster skin and damnit maybe next time.
I had a lot of fun with those and pretty much never lost a warhammer fantasy game because no one else understood the morale rules and necromancers/vampires with like a handful of ghouls and some solid skeleton units could break basically any army and even fair surprisingly well against the fearless.
Other players eventually noticed ghouls were good when they suddenly "became" good in the next edition with literally not one digit of profile change.
Anyway I had a problem. I was winning to much like, 100% too much. Even I didn't want to play me.
So I did the smart thing and invested in Tyranids, painted up a few hundred to look like Alien and I don't think I ever won a game with them.
Now lets not say my victory streak was anything impressive. To give you an idea of the local competition, they did not notice that I was making a single decision (Eldar or Tyranids) and basically deciding to win or lose the 40k game there each time.
Smarter gamers played war machine and stuff, and I had a much more reasonable loss rate there.
Then along came the Spanish wave of miniature games.
Infinity (experimental Beta translation) turned up and the minis were cheap as chips. I bought the entire Haq Islam range at the time and fielded 3 out 6 of them on the table top painted within pretty much a day.
Back then it was like 3 badly modeled infantry dudes, 2 of those bikers including the one with the ass. And some impossible to assemble robot drones, here is one without paint just for reference.
Then I got annoyed with the final rules releases reaction rules and traded the lot for... I don't know something or other.
But importantly I really liked the paint job on I did on the Infinity models. Though not as good as the new ones they were still fun to paint and I went with a non-glossy ceramic looking colour scheme and an attempt at comic/anime looking flat areas and contrasting lines that really looked great at a distance.
OK. So then the game store and community dispersed. As did the next nearest one. And then the next nearest one. And then the next nearest one. And the guys an hour down the coast at Gosford were like a weird anti-social cult that refused to know or use the rules of any given wargame.
Years later I would give up on making the rest of this post in one go and talk about my newer collection of Infinity models later on...
I would even not bother checking if the links go to the right pictures.
How I started painting some models, took some pictures and got distracted
I though, hey. I might get back to finishing painting my Infinity model collection. I only have like, 40 models or something to go. At my old rate I could knock that off in like... 3 weeks?
Anyway. Why not take a picture or two and talk about them.
So here is me putting a base coat on some out of print biker miniatures.
Several things.
1) Yes that's just a wash. Yes the paint sticks fine. Yes everyone has been fucking lying to you for years about base coats. Yes especially about infinity minis. Yes actually the water and thinner I use would probably be enough on its own. I use a bit of something dark as much to highlight details so I can see what I am painting and to fill those deeper gaps the final coat often misses in my paint jobs.
2) These bikers are out of print. I went out of my way to get them. Because they were surprisingly cheap (they are unpopular? Really?) and because the new ones are over beefed bikies on even more wildly impractical low slung over sized easy riders. Also maybe they went out of print because this asshole drew too much attention within the community. They may still be talking about it right now.
3) They are called Kum riders. Yep. Thanks Spain.
4) Yes that guy at the back isn't based because like every time anyone ever touches infinity models something broke off. It was his arm and now he is in glue time out.
Then I decided you wouldn't believe me about needing the wash to see the details. I mean those are 1st gen models from like 10+ years ago and far away. So here is a relatively new model from their range. Who also brings up...
5) You'll never guess how I've been painting the steely metallic bits on these guys lately. I might add a light dry brush highlight to those hexagons. Otherwise. Done. What's was wrong with us all those years, why were we painting metal with metal paint.
And then I had to wait for paint to dry. And I thought. Hey you know it might be worth mentioning my goals with these paint jobs.
I've always wanted models that look good at tables. I can't paint excessively fine detail all that well, and frankly I won't appreciate it if I do because I don't sit there looking at my minis 3 inches from my nose. And a good table paint... isn't always the same as a "display" paint and definitely isn't the same as a paint job intended for a high res digital photo (not that I can manage to even get my depth of field and lighting right on these for some reason...).
And then suddenly I instead went off and decided to create a brief pictorial history of my miniatures collection.
For an interval here is a frog staring intently at a modified carnivorous leaf that it lives on. For no god damn reason it has no issues with lighting, focus or basic composition.
And then instead a brief history of my miniatures collection
1990ish? The Ral Partha Era
I first started collecting and painting miniatures a very long time ago. I'm going to guess maybe the early 1990s, but possibly as early as the late 1980s. I was probably 12, but I might have been younger.
I started with Ral Partha miniatures of fantasy adventurers for D&D games.
You would obtain these buy getting the fine print text only Military Simulations catalog from Victoria Melbourne, (Just one state, several days, and 1005km away). Divining which words might represent interesting miniatures. Sending them a list of stock numbers and some money, which somehow always involved a phone call. Then receiving the wrong miniatures in the post a month later.
Here are a selection of surviving miniatures from that period painted by myself and my sister.
There is a badly painted space marine in the background for scale.
The plastic dinosaurs on each side were the primary stand ins for every entry in the monstrous manual and the occasional terrified shop keeper.
1995ish? Warhammer Fantasy the shitest ever edition
After a few years, at some point in high school friends of mine started collecting Warhammer Fantasy. An expensive and wildly unrewarding hobby for tweens with no money and no transport with the nearest game shop over an hour away with no relevant stock.
I collected Undead because they seemed like useful universal monsters to beef up the ranks of those two plastic dinosaurs, and because raising skeletons on the battlefield seemed cool.
In the era of "winds of magic", crazy high elf supremacy and a local GW culture that felt rules were largely not cool. They performed terribly.
But the skeletons of that era were awesome crazy little stick figure men.
Here are some of them. Yes, banner bearers came without banners back then, you could like buy them via some elaborate magazine/rule book vandalizing method, but that is my original hand made piece of hessian from when I was what, at best 14. The musician and the banner guy have been repainted but the regular skelletons are mostly original appart from constantly being reassembled right down to the horrific green bases I used to make.
These are some other models from that era. The vampire lord is a little repainted, but mostly just because no amount of layering or lacquer in the world will save that god damn cape (look its chipped AGAIN). And yes the vampire lord is a stupid model (possibly Vlad Von Karstien or something? Who cares). But I love his fashion sense and general confidence and continued useing him hears later.
I sold my original Nagash years ago to someone who was very excited about it about five minutes before the first resculpt in decades came out and was much better. Good riddance to him he was ugly as hell and no amount of glue, blue tack or hammering would keep his several deformed bricks of metal assembled.
Since allied unit rules were fast and lose in the era here are some painted plastic chaos warriors from the era. Yes they ALL looked like that back then. Yes I was over fond of metallic paints. No, getting a less blurry shot won't make any difference. No they didn't help much against the high elves pressing their I win the magic round buttons and what not.
GW and it's local community was a hellhole at the time. (I mean it's not like it wasn't full of suspected and known sex criminals a decade or so later, but I was more confident in dealing with dangerous assholes by then).
Anyway. About a year or two after that a pair of brothers who were and still are close personal friends of mine got into GW games as well. They also got into space marines and eldar.
Not that I didn't also have space marines. Everyone who bought paint sets back then had really bad free plastic space marines. I also have a set of that one awesome space marine board game from the era, no not the famous one the fucking much better one GW burried and won't acknowledge anymore.
Anyway. Point is, those guys collected goblins, high elves, a few skaven, eldar and space wolfs. Then years later they would give me a bunch of those. Then later on I gave back some of the eldar and several hundred Tyranids as interest.
2003ish? An actual local war gaming community
So years later I got back into the gameing community... probably in the early 2000s and my mid to late 20s?.
Now there was a slightly local game store, an independent one with a broader range of brands, products, and games at tables.
I played and collected a bunch of stuff.
I think I first got into Warmachine, either that or I was just playing RPGs and board games. So things might be slightly out of order here.
Anyway. I collected a bunch of the blue guys. But I really liked blue metallic. At least the bases were good. I got good local creek sand and realised it didn't need painting.
Then I got a bunch of the green guys. Then a bunch of other guys, alternatively not pictured or to this day in an unpainted box.
Anyway. Then that guy gave me a bunch of Eldar. And hey. Eldar were pretty cool for the rules era. I never lost a game with them and was the only guy in the community fielding fully painted armies. Hell I was the only guy with even one fully painted vehicle.
But then vehicles were pretty damn shit in that era, I only used mine to drive up to stuff, unload maximum fire warriors and melted everything with them while its tank weapons pew pewed like the useless pea shooters that they were.
Anyway, so I inherited paint jobs/colour motifs. Some of my favourite ones went back to the other owner. But I still have fire warriors that I painted based on his colour scheme and this named elderly guy that I only finished up and then restored several times after rough use.
And here are three different generations of Wraithlord Model that my unusual collection sources ended up landing me with.
Around about then I got back into warhammer fantasy with Vampire Counts.
I did so basically on the back of bad old minis, one box of new plastic skeletons, and since it was an indi store and community cool with cross brand substitutions a bunch of Reaper Fantasy miniatures as necromancers and vampires. Which I could just use for D&D and stuff too.
I also got some (Reaper) ghouls and wraiths. Here is me trying again to get a picture of this god damn ghoul because I am overly proud of his shiny slimy well toned monster skin and damnit maybe next time.
I had a lot of fun with those and pretty much never lost a warhammer fantasy game because no one else understood the morale rules and necromancers/vampires with like a handful of ghouls and some solid skeleton units could break basically any army and even fair surprisingly well against the fearless.
Other players eventually noticed ghouls were good when they suddenly "became" good in the next edition with literally not one digit of profile change.
Anyway I had a problem. I was winning to much like, 100% too much. Even I didn't want to play me.
So I did the smart thing and invested in Tyranids, painted up a few hundred to look like Alien and I don't think I ever won a game with them.
Now lets not say my victory streak was anything impressive. To give you an idea of the local competition, they did not notice that I was making a single decision (Eldar or Tyranids) and basically deciding to win or lose the 40k game there each time.
Smarter gamers played war machine and stuff, and I had a much more reasonable loss rate there.
Then along came the Spanish wave of miniature games.
Infinity (experimental Beta translation) turned up and the minis were cheap as chips. I bought the entire Haq Islam range at the time and fielded 3 out 6 of them on the table top painted within pretty much a day.
Back then it was like 3 badly modeled infantry dudes, 2 of those bikers including the one with the ass. And some impossible to assemble robot drones, here is one without paint just for reference.
Then I got annoyed with the final rules releases reaction rules and traded the lot for... I don't know something or other.
But importantly I really liked the paint job on I did on the Infinity models. Though not as good as the new ones they were still fun to paint and I went with a non-glossy ceramic looking colour scheme and an attempt at comic/anime looking flat areas and contrasting lines that really looked great at a distance.
OK. So then the game store and community dispersed. As did the next nearest one. And then the next nearest one. And then the next nearest one. And the guys an hour down the coast at Gosford were like a weird anti-social cult that refused to know or use the rules of any given wargame.
Years later I would give up on making the rest of this post in one go and talk about my newer collection of Infinity models later on...
I would even not bother checking if the links go to the right pictures.