Blaze

I guess I've yet to read a book by Richard Bachman aka Stephen King that I wholly like. I don't want to say that "Blaze" is bad but it just failed to suck me in from the very beginning. 

The story is fairly simple. The main character - Clayton Blaisdell is not a likable person. He's a simpleton and a criminal. Not by choice, he had a difficult childhood and bad company while growing up. 

The narrative is split into two parts, one describing how Blaze tries to snatch a baby from a rich family, the other one giving background on his story from early childhood to adult life. This adds some dynamism but doesn't help in lighting the mood of the novel, which is pretty dark and heavy. I like the way King reflects on society as he shows how an orphanage or a prison system can change a person's character. Blaze is not a reflective type, he takes actions without thinking about consequences and is easily influenced. Because of his mental handicap, it's hard to judge him and describe his as an utterly evil person. The way he uses his simplistic reasoning almost makes one think that some of his actions may be actually justified. I think creating a protagonist like him added a lot of depth to this otherwise fairly shallow novel. So my final verdict is 3-/6 

Diablo 3: Reaper of Souls

The long awaited expansion to Diablo 3 has finally been released. While the plot seems a bit sloppy (unsuccessfully hiding the black stone... again), the opening cinematics is impressive and the gameplay looks neat too.

Crusader is the new Paladin:

The environment looks a bit darker than in the original game, which is nice. I haven't played D3 for a long time but might just came back to it when RoS is released., though as with any Blizzard game, that will take some time...

Basically... bases

Here's what came in the post yesterday:

I've written about Micro Art Studio before so there's no need for me to shower praise on the quality of their products again. I'll be using them for Malifaux. Lucas and his Relic Hunters will be placed on the cobblestones, new Lady Justice crew will feature cemetery bases and new Ortegas (once they're released) will be put on wasteland bases. I also think I'll get Sonnia's crew when it's released and mystic bases should work well with her.
I used to go with the same style of bases for the whole faction but in the end I decided to use more themed bases as they can nicely emphasize the character of a crew.

Perdita!

I've had both of these miniatures for more than a year. I bought the avatar version during last year's Gencon and the other one had been bought even before that. For some reason I've been putting off working on them for so long. In general I tend to leave heroes/captains etc. for the end, as a kind of small reward to myself for dealing with a number of similar regular warriors. 

The avatar version was a bit of a challenge to put together. I wasn't sure if the model would stand solidly as the whole beast is attached to the base only in one point (the crystals on the base are part of the original sculpt). Fortunately, it seems strong enough and I didn't have to add additional bits to keep it stable.

I used artwork from the box as reference for color scheme but went for slightly brighter shades. I used VGC Falcon Turquoise as base color and kept adding white to it for successful (numerous) highlights.

I made painting it more challenging by putting the whole miniature together before it was even primed. I should have left Perdita's body for the end as it would have been so much easier to paint it separately. Well, that's just another lesson learnt.

The classic Perdita sculpt is a really nice sculpt. The only thing that I don't really like that much is the length and thickness of hair. I know it's all a fantasy game but having such long hair would be incredibly impractical. Anyway, I actually like this miniature even more than the avatar version. She looks very cool and confident.
I used two halves of a broken column on their bases to somehow tie the models together. Other than that, there's the same type of static grass.

Now my Ortega crew is almost complete. I still have Latigo Pistolleros but I'll be working on them later this year, probably not earlier than in Fall.

Wrath of Kings Kickstarter

It looks like crowdfunding can be a good platform for launching new war games. After successful campaigns of games like Kingdom Death: Monster, Warzone Ressurection and some others, there's another one that's bound for money. Coolminiornot has already funded a few interesting projects via Kickstarter (Rivet Wars, Kaosball, Zombicide), it came back with Wrath of Kings.

It's a fantasy war game set in an interesting universe. Very nice miniatures, some great artwork and a gaming system that looks good too. I'm not going to back this one (I already have too many irons in the fire) but if you're interested, you can check it out here.

The big and the ugly

I'm finally done with all the orcs from Hobbit. "Finally" because I felt I was getting in a rut with painting the same type of model. I started with a box of 12 of them on foot, then painted the versions on wargs and finished off with the heroes. 

Azog is a miniature I haven't really made up my mind about yet. The version on warg is very dynamic and everything looks more or less OK on it. I only have to mention that the warg is cast in two halves with separate legs and... the halves didn't fit too well. I had to do the hot water-reshaping-cold water trick to fix that.

The version on foot is ridiculously large. Azog as an infantryman is much bigger than the version on warg and the details look much poorer on this one too, especially areas like legs or armor.

Painting him was tricky as you get white orc on a white warg and I wanted to make sure that the shades of white are distinct enough no to blend together. I started the warg with light brown/khaki basecoat and Azog with Tallarn Flesh and built over than with several layers of base color mixed with increasing amounts of white. Sounds easy but the trick was to avoid a pinkish look and remember about the scars on his chest, arms and back. Pictures don't show the final effect that well ( I really struggled here, for some reason my camera wasn't picking up the colors and highlights on this one) but I'm pretty happy with him nonetheless.

Yazneg has a unique look with his human-like skin and an impressive bone armor. If you look closely, the cloth he's wearing is also something made of a material that resembles human skin (?) and there are even shapes that look like faces in agony around his belt area. He has a really nasty and fierce look with excellent details on the face and clothes. Can't really complain about the miniature here as everything fit pretty well.

As I mentioned in the beginning, painting so many orcs was a bit tedious so I took some time off Hobbit and painted two minis for Malifaux - a master and her avatar version. Check back soon for pics :)

Figure Painter Magazine #4

Just a heads-up that issue 4 is up. For £1.00 you get, in words of authors:

In this huge issue we have not one but two interviews from James Wappel the American painter and successful kickstarter entrepreneur and Justin Gibbs, games developer from Wyrd Miniatures. We also have reviews of Pontosh the Archer, Michael Kontraros Collectibles' Elf dragon Prince, APG's Hessien Jeager & Guild of Harmony's Arielle. There is also four fantastic tutorials that will help painter of every skill level, plus all the regular features including show reports, reader gallery, whats on the market and the best of the latest miniature release's