I’m looking to try and keep the positive vibes that I started the year with rolling, at least until the end of the month and I’ve a few things to cover this week. First up was game night on Tuesday where we didn’t actually have a game but we are all now hooked on the idea of a new game without actually having played it yet. What is this new game I can hear you asking and more to the point how can we get involved, because you will want too. The game in Question is called ‘Gas Lands’ by Mike Hutchinson and it’s published by Osprey Games. It costs £11.99 and £10.99 for an electronic copy, although if you buy the physical book and an electronic version at the same time you save twenty five percent of each, saving you £5.75. The best thing about it though is that it uses Matchbox cars and you can’t go wrong with toy cars. To me it feels like a table top version of Death Race, the aim is to win the race but to win race first you have to finish the race. Which when you throw in all the armour and weapon options you can add to your cars is easier said than done. Movement is controlled by a templates, a bit like X-Wing which keeps things nice and simple. On the hobby side there are lots of cheap cars available and the conversion and painting options are endless. Or if you’re feeling rich and don’t want to do any conversion work you could always track down a 1965 Aston Martin DB5 Saloon, pre-equipped with machine guns, oil slick, bullet proof armour plate and an ejector seat. Although I think I will stick with the conversion option.
No role play update for you this week. We are having a get together on Saturday so I’ll have a bit more for you then. Will the Halfling monk survive his next encounter or will I be rolling a new character. Only time will tell but I’m beginning to get a feel for the character now with a much clearer idea of how to play him so hope he survives and flourishes as the adventure continues.
On the hobby front I’ve put in lot of hours this week for what appear to be very little gain. That’s because two of the models that are in competition for my Crystal Brush entry have arrived and I have to say I’m impressed with both of them. Knowing that I’m going to be handing one of these over to people who really know how to paint I knew I was going to take my time and give myself every chance not to be too humiliated. So I’ve taking things slow and steady. First up I have a couple of picture of the packaging and of the models themselves before I’ve started any work.
The first thing I did after opening them both was to give them a really good wash to make sure there was no mould release of anything else that effect the paint left on them. This actually turned into a couple of cycles of washing and drying just to make sure everything was nice and clean. Then it was on to the really boring part of cleaning everything up. This was the stage that took the most time and it’s ironic that it takes so long because the model are so well made. The Scale 75 on in particular was a really pain. On first glance it looks like there is nothing to do but if you don’t look really closely you will miss a few mould lines that would certainly show up under a coat of paint. So I’ve spent quite a bit of time checking and rechecking things to make sure I haven’t missed anything before I started assembly.
Nero needed a few gaps filling once it had been assembled and I did this with some Vallejo liquid plastic that I then smoothed out to try and make sure the joints weren’t visible. I also spent quite a bit of time at this stage trying to decide if I should completely assemble both models or if I should go with a series of subassemblies to make it easier to paint them. In the end I decided to build up as much as I thought was practical and ended up with four parts to the ‘Scale 75’ one and three parts for Nero, including the bases.
Part of the reason for this was to make it a bit easier for me to get access to all parts of the model. Also in the case of Nero I also want this model to be used for games and because he can be used with or without ‘Septimus’ I wanted to magnetise the horns so that both options were open to me. The only problem with this approach is that the join between the plastic/resin material and the metal is very fragile. It’s a really small contact point so I don’t know if it will actually stay together once I start working on it. What I may end up doing is painting most of the model in sub components and then then assemble everything and paint up the area around the joints. But I’ll just have to see how things go.
I’m hoping all of this effort will be worth it in the end but it does look like I’ve been really lazy all week, and that’s not exactly true. The plan for the weekend is going to be to get the priming done and I’m going to take my time with this as well. I’ve read somewhere that you should really leave everything for twenty four hours once you’ve applied the primer to allow it go off properly so I’m going to do that with these. Whilst that might slow progress down I’m working on the principle that it’s worth it to get the foundations right, after all I’m looking to make a good impression.
With that I’ll bring this weeks waffle to an end, hopefully I’ll have made a bit more visible hobby progress for next week. Until then have a great week and I’ll catch you all again next week.
