Roy Greenhilt Painted

Some time back I finally got around to painting Roy Greenhilt from Order of the Stick. It was actually a very very simple pain job, since keeping in line with the comic style of things it didn't really take any shading/highlighting.

Instead of using the guide supplied by Moorland Studios I chose to look at a few strips from the comic itself and do the painting based on that. That meant that the arms are black (as pr. the comic) while they were painted blue in the guide to illustrate that Roy is wearing a shirt. It really comes down to personal preference, but I really like to have this painted as close to the comic strip Roy as I can.

so to sum up this monumental task of painting.

1. Prime with white
2. Paint in bright pure colors
3. Job done!

And still excuse the poor pics, I'll post better ones once I get my camera back :)

Sedition Wars Unboxing

A couple of weeks back UPS knocked on my door with a nice box and heavy box containing Sedition Wars: Battle for Alabaster. So this is just a few pictures from when I opened the box and a few comments here and there.

First of all as before I still haven't gotten my camera back, so pics are of a less than stellar quality, so consider yourself warned.

Anyways, upon opening the box late at night when everyone else was sleeping, I found a game box and an additional box containing the Biohazard contents inside as well as the signed lithograph that appearantly all the CMON kickstarters are doing. All was very nicely packed with lots of foam padding, so that's really a plus.

Top: The game itself, bottom left: Biohazard pack, bottom right: Signed lithograph

The biohazard pack contained a lot of additional minis all packed up (they still are btw), 2 sets of dice, stat cards for the additional minis and a little vanguard patch. The dice are quite nice with strain and vanguard logos put instead of the number 6 (green is strain dice, blue is vanguard).

Contents of the Biohazard pack: Miniatures, 2 sets of dice, stat cards and a Vanguard badge

The box itself is quite heavy and seems quite sturdy, so I would imagine it should be able to withstand a bit of use. The front contains the picture that we've seen countless times in relation to the kickstarter and the back pictures of the components in the box (which came in quite handy during assembly).

The box itself

The back of the box

All laid out on the table these are the components, 5 bags of miniatures, dice, nanospore cloud conters, infections markers, 2 sheets of tokens and 5 double sided game boards and a load of stat cards.

All the contents laid out: 2 sheets of counters, 5 board tiles, 5 packs of minis, 1 pack of tokens for infection etc, 1 pack of nanospore markers and a rulebook

Concerning the game boards there has been quite a few posts around the internet that the boards are delaminating and warping. Perhaps I was just lucky but I've observed none of this. The only thing I can really point my finger at, at this point, is that some of the tokens are printed a bit off-center, but nothing that isn't acceptable I'd say.

Although I have no pictures to show for it, I've started to assemble the minis. They are a decent quality I'd say and full of detail, so they really deserve to be painted at some point in the future (and considering my hobby time, paint speed, and the pile of lead/plastic I have lying around, then that's probably within a few years).

Open Fire Germans Assembly

Well time for another update. Due to a busy schedule hobby time has been reduced significantly for the last months, however a few things have been happening.

In this post I'll quickly show the product from last week, the germans from the Flames of War Open Fire box set. I'll only focus on the germans since The Black Knight (co-author of this blog) took the allied troops of my hands (perhaps he'll post some pics of those later)

Anyways the german side consists of :
3 Stug III G,
2 PaK40
Grenadiers (10 stands)
Panzershrek (1 stand)
Commands (4 stands in total)
1 V1 Flying Bomb
Cardboard tokens and objective markers

Everything comes nicely packed and with easy to follow assembly instructions. I guess in total it took about 1½ hour to assemble everything while watching a bit of TV on the side.

Forgive the poor picture quality, but I forgot our camera at some family during the holidays and thus I have to resort to the camera of my iPad, which is less than stellar when taking pictures indoors in the evening I think. Closeups will follow once painting starts and I get my camera back :)

Anyways, one thing I really appreciated was that the there is a very clear and concise guide to which models goes on which bases for the grenadiers. For someone quite new to FoW and unknowing of the weaponry of WWII this is actually a huge benefit, that I can actually assemble the rifle/MG teams so they are correctly based.

There's been some discussion of that the allied tanks didn't really fit well together, this has not been the case for the Stugs where the parts fitted very nicely and only slight trimming of sprue remains was necessary. So I guess all in all I think the set is really nice and provides a good amount of troops considering the price.

Roy Greenhilt Unpacking and Assembly

Just a few days back I had a nice little package arrive from overseas, my first purchase from Morland Studios. Upon opening the box I found a securely packed blister pack containing the 32 mm Roy Greenhilt miniature. For those unfamiliar with Roy, he is the leader of Order of the Stick, the protagonists of a most excellent webcomic by Rich Burlew at Giant in the Playground.

Also coming along with the purchase was a 29 page assembly and painting guide by Maya Morland (Sent as a pdf along with notice of shipping), which I think would get even the most inexperienced hobbyist through the procedure of making Roy more than a few parts in a blister box.

So, back to the blister, Roy is made from 2 metal leg parts where one has the part that goes into the slotted base. both arms and two eyebrow options are also supplied in metal, while the head and torso is a 1-part resin as is his sword.

The pieces are fairly well cast, although the head and torso had a bit of flash and some mold lines. Still nothing that couldn't be handled with a gentle scraping with a sharp blade.

Now that I was actually handed such a detailed assembly guide I tried to follow the steps provided with the miniature. However it soon turned out I started doing it my own way (I guess that comes with having assembled miniatures for some time). Anyways what I did was:

1. First up was the eyebrows, where I went with the angry eyebrows, thinking that if Roy is going to be fighting other minis he should look a bit angry. 
2. Next the right leg was inserted into the base
3. As the third part I glued both hands to the sword, which was a major diversion from the assembly guide, but I was quite certain it would be easier to mount the hands on the sword and then mount the arms on the torso instead of doing it arm then sword then arm.
4. While the sword and hands were drying I put in the left leg in the torso part
5. Then I put the arms on the torso. This was a bit tricky and required extensive drilling of the holes for the arms. 
6. Finally I attached the torso to the right leg...and PRESTO! Roy Greenhilt assembled...

So what to say in conclusion. Roy is a great figure, but I'm biased though as I'm a big fan of the comic. I think that Sebastian Archer that sculpted the mini has done a great job taking a 2-dimensional stick figure and making it 3-dimensional. 

I think the parts are very fiddly, especially the arms are quite tricky to work with, so one certainly has to be careful and patient when assembling the miniature. Although it looks like it'll fall over since only one leg is supporting it, the miniature, once assembled, seems quite solid and robust. How it'll withstand actual gaming time will tell though. 

Hello World

So the first post of this brand new blog. This blog will focus on various aspects of miniature wargaming (and perhaps a bit of boardgaming as well) from modelling/painting to playing all sorts of games.

Currently we're 2 authors on the blog, myself and the Black Knight, who will be showing off our newest creations and adventures in everything from 6 to 32 mm scales.

Happy reading.