Frostgrave, Halo Ground Command and other tabletop minis

[TREX]

Originally Posted by Hahma

You're a machine @TREX

I picked up disney+ the other day in preparation for mandalorian season 2 and have been catching up on star wars rebels while I paint. Though Im not terribly engaged in the cartoons compared to the live stuff, the characters and story of rebels has grown on me. Apparently its supposed to be similar with clone wars but I havent started watching them again. Any of that stuff makes great background noise for painting though.

[TREX]

The body count for my zombicide painting is up to 130 models finished. As soon as Im done with my zombicide modern painting Im going to start a campaign with that game. Still working on the big season two box of 91 models. Then theres the toxic city mall box, angry neighbors box, and the the other big Rue Morgue season 3 box. I plan on leaving my game table up with all the different zombie types out and only plan on putting it all away once Im done playing through the entire length of all the zombicide modern scenarios in order. Ill be using all the supplements I have for each mission, making the difficulty much harder for the first handful of booklets. All survivors that die will be out of the campaign and I will either win or lose based on if I have any survivors left by the end of the campaign. Ill probably have another go at it once my zombicide modern season 2 arrives in the mail probably later this year. The urgency to paint these zombies and survivors is definitely because I plan on running some intense walking dead call to arms games with plenty of zombies on the board and proxying the characters I have cards for without the legit minis.

[Hahma]

Did you get all those done this weekend?

[TREX]

Originally Posted by Hahma

Did you get all those done this weekend?

Ive done about 30 or so this weekend. Finished the first box in a couple days a bit ago and the 24 figure booster box in a day awhile back. Painted the 30 of em in one evening. I have to wait a 24 hr period for the quickshade to set up. Then the matte varnish, blood effects, and some accent moss on some of the models doesnt take very long. The 130 of them has taken about 5 different sittings to complete. My simple speed painting method is super effective and looks great.

[Hahma]

Very efficient

Sounds like you need more miniatures

[TREX]

Originally Posted by Hahma

Very efficient

Sounds like you need more miniatures

I finished another 16 more zombies after posting. I really dont need any more but Im an addict. Between painting all my zombicide, zombicide fantasy kickstarter, massive darkness x2 kickstarters, runewars factions x4, ninja turtles board game, bloodrage, darksouls kickstarter, rising sun kickstarter, fallout starter box, wrath of kings 3 factions, leftover models to do from imperial assault, 3 more crews of run and bones pirates plus merc boxes, and whatever else I missed counting along with a few boxes of 3d prints. Oh and then theres my ankh kickstarter, zombicide 2.0 kickstarter, and the newly pledged massive darkness 2. I may not need anymore. I definitely have a problem. hopefully I can stay efficient enough to get these painted by the time I die so others can enjoy the fruits of my labor.

[TREX]

Ive been averaging about 30 models a day while painting these up. I plan on finishing the second core box up tonight with the exception of the survivors in the box. At this rate I should be finished with my modern zcide within the next week or so if all goes well. To be honest, I feel like the models look absolutely awful until the last few steps of the process. In which case they look pretty cool and definitely tabletop ready. Painting normal civilian zombies isnt the most exciting task until the last bid of blood is smeared on. Ill be very excited to move on to doing some fantasy monsters after modern zcide is done.

[Hahma]

Wow, cranking them out! I'm lucky to get an hour a day during the week and a couple hours on weekend days for hobbying, so I am quite a bit slower but it works out.

[TREX]

Originally Posted by Hahma

Wow, cranking them out! I'm lucky to get an hour a day during the week and a couple hours on weekend days for hobbying, so I am quite a bit slower but it works out.

Ive had a little bit of extra time lately because Im sick quite often and painting models doesnt require much effort.
For anybody out there following this wanting to knock out models faster hit me with any questions you have about improving your speed.
The tricks I use to get them done quick are:
1. Prime them in a color of spraypaint that is dominant on the model. Ex: I used smokey beige on my zombies because it looks like pale bloodless skin tone. Also keep the colors lighter in most cases for later steps.
2. Basecoat other areas. Generally a quick base coat on the other major parts of the model. A second coat on areas with lighter colors that dont have as good of pigment coverage.
3. Keep it simple. At 28mm I dont paint eyes or worry about any tiny details that can easily be represented with a wash. When painting hordes of minis keep the color count down. Rank and file minis dont need the extra pizazz that a hero mini might.
4.Batch paint. If you are waiting for a single model to dry it is wasting time. I general paint anywhere from 5 to 15 models at once if not more. By the time you paint a base coat on ten models, the first one will be ready for the next coat or color.
5. Quickshade/polyshade/wash. I use these because it brings out the details very easily and makes the model look way better.
6. Wipe. If Im using an oil based polyshade or quickshade I gently wipe the excess polyshade off of the highlighted areas of the model with a qtip covered in a thinner such as mineral spirits. The key here is the time frame that you wipe the model. If you wipe it away too quickly. You may wipe the details away. If you let it stay on too long before wiping you will have to wipe the model harder and risk pulling off the paint below the polyshade or quickshade. Ive found that you dont want to wait too much longer than about 5 minutes and before 10 minutes. This step is a shading and highlighting step all in one. If done correctly you wont have to go back in and add highlights. When using quickshade or polyshades its important to let it completely cure before adding matte varnish.
7. Matte clearcoat. Any matte clearcoat works here. The biggest reason for this is to take the shine off your models down from using quickshae or polyshade.

[Hahma]

Great tips Trex.

If I had hordes of creatures, I'd probably be all over that method. Or board game minis, where are a lot of samey types of minis. I do have a lot of soldier looking security minis for Mercs Recon. If I ever decide to paint them, I'd spray prime them green, paint the skin, weapons and odds and ends, then do the wash. Though I use Army Painter water based washes and wouldn't do the q-tip thing, but rather do highlights and then varnish.

Hope you are feeling better.

[Hahma]

Its been quite a while since I've played Walking Dead, but I had finished painting Lee, Clementine, Dale (prison advisor), Scott Moon and Michonne about a month or so ago, so I wanted to take them for a spin.
Simple solo scenario. The group entered from the corner by the food truck and had to exit from the opposite corner by the police car. The catch was, that there are 10 supply markers spread around the board and the group needed to search each one before leaving. There were even 2 in the building.

An Alarm event came out after a couple rounds and the ambulance was the vehicle with the alarm going off. It wasn't bad at first, managing the threat from the Mayhem the alarm caused, but by the time the group got out front of the tobacco store, the threat was creeping up and up. The events just pulled the walkers away from the ambulance and into melee, so even trying to avoid the threat caused by melee, it mostly couldn't be helped.

The group had to go near the ambulance, as there were 2 supply markers in the nearby grass, but there was also a supply token in the ambulance itself.

Scott had gotten bitten early and survived awhile, thanks to a couple sets of bandages, but when he was down to his last health, je went on his own toward the police car. He made it for a short time before succumbing to the infection which caused him to turn into a walker.

The group kept whittling down the walkers by the ambulance, and thanks to an event, more walkers had come by the ambulance than were there initially. The problem also was that with some big dice pools, there weren't enough headshots to get rid of walkers for good. They often just got knocked down or pushed back standing up.

Anyway, the group lost due to threat getting too high. Scott was a casualty, Michonne jad 2 regular wounds, and Clementine had 1 wound from being bitten.

I ended up playing this one again and won. Love this game.

[TREX]

Looks great @Hahma , All out war is pretty awesome. I like that the threat tracker and fear die arent used in call to arms. They definitely have their place in solo and coop campaigns but can be heavily abused in head to head play. My brother in law would always pick high nerve characters and run the threat level up as quickly as possible to make my low and medium nerve survivors freak out. I get that its a tactic for victory but wasnt a fun aspect of play when playing against one another. Ill have a mighty horde once the zombicide minis are done. I will definitely be putting even more walkers than is recommended on my battlefields for call to arms. Another great rule in call to arms is having an action to reload a gun that is out of ammo. In all out war you needed an ammo card and it made having an expensive rifle not so great sometimes. I have a ton of foam core and card board at my place and was contemplating throwing together some damaged prison buildings together to fill out the rest of my prison scene. I already have about 20 cars, a tank, a bunch of prison fences, some catwalks and small towers, road tiles, scatter terrain, a few 2 story houses, a barn, and a cabin. Some prison buildings would definitely be cool to fill out a 3x3 board. I plan on using the 3x3 board with slightly modified start zones for the different scenarios. In call to arms the are set up a little bit like legion. I just have to figure out where Im going to store the prison buildings. Im surprised my wife hasnt killed me yet. I had a good time yesterday with my daughter. I had the last batch of zombies completed all but the blood and she asked me if she could help putting the blood paint on the zombies. I told her to think of each ones story of why they had blood on them and where it was. It was pretty fun. She now is interested in playing zombicide and wants to help me put blood on the rest of the zombies as I paint them. I turned out great because she is much more liberal with the blood than I am and it gave them a more diversified look to mine.