The Adventures of Geek Dad: Part 11

Happy Thursday everyone!

So usually I would be over the moon about today, as it's the day before Friday, but this week that excitement is slightly muted due to a shift I have to work on Saturday. Sure I get to have a Rest Day in Lieu because of it, but it's not quite the same.

Some good news however! Yesterday the wife and Mini Moo returned home from visiting relatives!

If you had told me 6 months ago that I would be so excited about seeing my daughter after only 2 nights absence, I'd have said that you knew nothing of me and given a mock sucker punch. But there I was for two nights in a row, sat in front of the TV and feeling lost without them both there.

But I did not let that time go to waste, oh no!

Rather than wallow in loneliness I picked up my Salute purchases and got working. (please excuse the photos, the room I took them in was dark so I had to use a flash, will take better photos when they're done)

First off we have my Night Terrors:






These dudes are standard objective grabbers for either The Dreamer or any Resser Crew. It took me a while to decide on how to base them because of a number of factors:
1). The models themselves are sculpted onto a large rock and removing them from said rock would be more tricky than is worth.
2). I want to allow for the chance that if I wanted to pick up a Resser crew, that i don't have Night Terrors looking totally out of place.

So I based them up as you can see. Sure it doesn't match the cobblestone theme of my Dreamer, but that's ok - I think of my Dreamer crew as more on 'Victorian' bases than anything, so in this instance, the Terrors are just on some rocky grassland.

Next up are my Alps:


The models themselves are pretty much unpainted at present, but instead I wanted to try making some more cobblestone bases but have them look better than my other ones. I think these came out very well.

Next up we have my modified Insidious Madness:





You'll notice the additional tentacles around the base of the model. I can't speak for everyone, but one thing I've always disliked about this model was how 2D it looked, which it what these tentacles are supposed to reduce. I can't say I'm 100% happy with the result, but if I want another one I can always proxy. Still have a few touch ups needed on the model mind.

Last but not least is The Hooded Rider:


Again this dude is largely unpainted, but his resin base is coming along nicely.
- the thing I like about this guy is that his base acts as a bridge between the rest of my crew and the Terrors.

So what's next? Well I'm going to finish all the lesser minions over the next couple of days, and then once they're all done and varnished I'm going to get started on the rider - you see he is such a detailed model that I want to make sure I give him the attention he deserves.

After all of that, I'll probably look to painting my Sulaco model I built the other week.

However how all of this will tie in to my available time I have no idea, this is largely due to next Tuesday when I am finally having my Gall Bladder out.
- fingers crossed it will be a nice simple operation with only a couple of days bed rest needed, but I have to allow for the possibility of things going wrong.

Speaking of hospitals: a big shout out to my fellow mali-blogger and twitterer Richard Smith who by now should have his little bundle of joy, hope everything goes well man!

And that's it for now, as always thanks for reading, and see you through the breach!

- Your friendly neighbourhood Doctor Loxley

The Adventures of Geek Dad: Part Nine

Morning all!

Well it's Friday, which means the weekend is drawing close. Of course that also means my week off is nearly over.

But no matter, as tomorrow is one day I am looking forward to a hell of a lot!

Not only am I going to Salute 2012 with my significant other, but the two of us are following that with a meal in Gilgamesh Camden, followed by a hotel stay in Central to celebrate 5 years of marriage!

So how has this weekend been for me?

Let me tell you, this week off was just what I needed, my afternoons were spent with the wife and girl, with the occasional nap here and there (and what man doesn't love a mid afternoon nap?) followed by some tv and some evening/night time gaming.

I'll be honest here, my Sulaco I show cased on Monday, that's exactly as I left it, instead my evenings have been spent playing Deus Ex: Human Revolution for a second play through (I can not stress just how much everyone NEEDS to, playing a little of Darksiders for a second run (I've been feeling very Horsemen of the Apocalypse recently, but more on that in due course) and last night, me, my wife and 2 Guildies did a run at the Black Temple in WoW:



Now for those who don't know, this is a raid in WoW which was released a good (4?) years ago and even now is still quite a challenge if you only have a few people in your group, especially one boss who can in theory stun a whole small team until their all dead, not fun.

Thankfully the adventure was a success and we came away with the knowledge that most of the encounters are quite simple for us now, which is very good as the boss of the raid has some things that I want!

In parenting news, the MiniMoo is finally beginning to master rolling onto her tummy and then back onto her back, this is really good news as its one of the first steps on the way to her being able to crawl.

So as I mentioned earlier, tomorrow is Salute, and after reading through some pages I know of some deals I'm defiantly going to be taking advantage of (4 for the price of 3, that sort of thing) and a chance to win a foam bag too! Thankfully for the latter I'll be getting my wife's entry do that's 2 entries! Whoop!

So I mentioned earlier that I've been very much in a horseman mood recently, and this is manifested in playing Darksiders:



Part of the reason behind this is that I've been thinking of experimenting with my Dreamer crew and picking up a Hooded Rider:



This is for a number of reasons, 1 I like the model, 2 I really want to try and convert him to look more like War from the above picture and 3, the idea of using a semi fast, semi tough non nightmare opens up a lot of possibilities for my crew:

You see at the moment my crew feels like its very vapoured for the first turn or two. There's very little I can do other than move day dreams and the dreamer so that I can unleash hell in later turns. So far this is find, I love that my opponent doesn't know what my plans are and that I can adapt my plans at the last minute, what I don't like is how boring it makes the first turn of two.

This is where the hooded rider comes in! He is relatively speedy, can move to grab objectives and or fill gaps in the board but he can also be used as an added distraction.

You see in theory he can cause a nuisance and will need to be dealt with, but in theory he should force the opponent to think twice, do they send a decent model or two to deal with him, or instead hold back for the Nightmare assault. Either way there is a gamble but I think it should make things more fun for both me and the opponent.

Anyway I'd love to hear your thoughts, have you ever used something similar? Did it work out for you? If not, any advice?

Anyway that's enough from me, I'll be sure to try and run some tweets tomorrow from the show and will be writing a full report in a few days time.

- Your friendly neighbourhood Doctor Loxley

The Adventures of Geek Dad: Part Seven

Happy Easter Sunday all!

Wow what an interesting number of days it's been for me.

It all started on Thursday, where after work I came home and found to my enjoyment a beta key for the new World of Warcraft expansion: Mists of Pandaria.

Trust me in time I'll do an initial feedback for this, but right now I have a few more pressing matters to talk about, namely The Secret World



Now for those of you who don't know this is an upcoming MMO set in a modern day Earth. The theme of this game is focused around the supernatural and conspiracy theories.

Anyway, Pre orders are now live for this, and if you order it from Amazon(like I did, this applies for other retailers too but I didn't use them and therefore can't properly vouch for them) then you get access to the beta weekends which start on May 11th, some fun stuff like ingame tshirt and ring and a wolf companion to help you bring the smacks own to some nasty zombies! And of course, there's no deposit, so if you try the beta weekends and don't enjoy it, you can cancel your order and not have spent a penny!

So with this I started thinking of a character (part of the preorder is the ability to reserve a name of your choice), and I came up with the following - with the help of my inspirational wife.

Steven Corn, before the apocalypse Steven was a simple tech geek, his spare time was spent playing FPS and Playstation, and during the day he worked for the NYPD as a tech support operative, but on occasion he would dust off his weights and pull a few reps, he never knew why, but in the back of his mind he knew he had to stay in top physical shape, that something was going to happen, and he would have to be ready for it.

Then the shit hit the fan, his friends started disappearing and he began to hear rumours of animal attacks and gruesome murders, he knew in the back of his mind that there was more to it than that, so with his pilfered security codes he snuck into the NYPD's contraband store and 'borrowed' a few things, a 10mm, a 12 gage and a rather interesting looking sword, the type of thing he'd seen in an eastern martial arts movie. He would take on his persona from the online world, for now the world needed him, they needed Mr S. Corn! No, they needed Skorn!

Ok ok maybe I got a little carried away, but you see this weekend I've been doing something I haven't done in a LONG time.

On Thursday my wife and I logged into WoW for the first time together since December, and as a celebratory treat we loaded up Blackwing Lair again and brought down Neffy in classic lvl 60 mode:



Then on Friday we did some PvP and I bought myself a level 80 WotLK dagger to use as a transmogrified skin for my current ugly dagger, and then yesterday we loaded up Aion which of course is now free to play and had a jigg around that (I forget how beautiful that game is).

Then to finish off yesterday I loaded up Deus Ex (first time since December) and played some more of that, it's just as engrossing as I remember!

Now tonight my regular Malifaux partner is coming over and for the first time since its completion, I'll be putting Chapel Hill to use!

All of this thanks to the Mini Moo's enforced 1900-1930 bed time!

I am hoping tomorrow to either play some co-op ResE5 or Hunted, should be fun!

And on that note, I leave you all, take care and keep on gaming!


- Your friendly neighbourhood Doctor Loxley

Nightmare's Friend

Good Wednesday everyone,

It's your friendly neighbourhood Doctor Loxley here with another page of inane ramblings at a time in the morning unknown to both students and Jeremy Kyle contestants!

So first things first, tomorrow's Geek Dad will be put off for a day, instead I'll be running Geek Dad on Good Friday: this is because on Thursday night my wife and I are looking to both log on to WoW for the first time since our Mini Moo was born, as such it will be interesting to see how that goes.

In the meantime, I've been thinking of how to expand my Dreamer crew and how it can fit into my 1 purchase a month plan:

So currently I have the starter pack (Dreamer, Chompy, Coppelious, 2x Stitched) Teddy, and 3x Daydreams, and the plan is as follows:

May: Insidious Madness
June: Night Terrors
July: Alps
August/September: Weaver Widdow & Wicked Dolls
October: Avatar Dreamer
November: Second Teddy

And I believe this completes my options, clearly things may change depending on release dates, but that takes me up to December and with it the option of starting a new crew, I'm thinking Pandora as she can use 1 of my teddies, Coppelious (and with him the Alps through summons) and the Insidious Madness so that should mean that I'll already have some choices when I get her going, unlike my Dreamer who at the moment feels a little gimped through lack of choice.

And with that, if you will excuse me, I'm going to now take a power nap before my train pulls in at Finsbury Park and I have the fun 35 min walk to work.

(Two more days till the bank holiday weekend!)

- Your friendly neighbourhood Doctor Loxley

The Limits of the Imagination

This morning I woke up, climbed out of bed, checked on the little one and then popped into the bathroom to freshen up ready for the day ahead.

To most people this is probably a really usual start to a usual day. That was sadly not the case for me, oh no.

When I got into the bathroom I looked into the mirror and was met by something very unsettling. It appears that the morning prior, when I had trimmed my beard, I appear to have shaved off a massive chunk from the beard itself straight down to the skin and had spent all day walking around with a completely stupid and mis balanced beard!

This would have been fine if not for 1 major factor: I don't remember doing it!

Now I do have a history of sleep walking and all manner of other REM Sleep Disorder activities, and so I wouldn't be surprised if I did in fact sleep-shave!

Anyway, this wouldn't do, and so I spent the next 5mins trying my best to make the other side of my face match this side so I can grow the beard back out. I'm not happy with the results, it's not what I want for a beard, but it looks better than it did, and so for now until it grows back it will just have to do.

"What does this have to do with your blog!?!" I hear you cry! Well let me tell you:

About 3-4 weeks ago I was finishing off my Dreamer crew, this included Coppellious. The paint scheme I was going for was a slimy green skin with white hair and a dark purple jacket.

It should have been pretty easy, nothing adventurous, but for some reason I just couldn't get the skin tones right.

Eventually I gave in and gave him regular flesh colours and it worked infinitely better:


Am I happy with this paint scheme? No I'm not! But it's better than what it looked before hand.

This got me thinking, why did I let it get so bad in the first place? It wasn't my painting ability, I can paint better than that every day of the week, and twice on Wednesdays!

No the reason was because the painting scheme was uninspired, it was a bland choice instead of an inspiration from my imagination. For some reason that I can not explain, whenever I tried to imagine Coppellious and what he would look like, I always drew a blank.

And here my friends is where I really started to worry:

You see, it's one thing to have your paint jobs limited by your own talent, I deal with that every time I pick up a brush, and it can be overcome with practice, tutorials and more practice. But how are you supposed to overcome your limitations, when it's your own imagination that is holding you back?

So far the only problem I've had this with us Coppellious, and who knows, maybe I just struggle to imagine a squid faced German boogy man, but in about a months time I'll be picking up some more models, and in the back of my mind I can see ol' squid face laughing in anticipation.

I guess we'll have to wait and see...


- Your friendly neighbourhood Doctor Loxley

Random Thoughts on the Upcoming Releases

Evening all, so I've been sitting on this thought since I saw that April's releases have already been announced.
Now I know I don't own any of these models, and I'm sure in person they look very different, but I just can't hold it in.
So as you all know my current crew of focus is my Nightmares, so with that in mind, let's look at the Neverborn releases for 2012 so far:


So here we have 2 sculpts for The Hag. They're great, if you play her.
In March (note there were no Neverborn in February) we have the following:


The Spawn Mother and Gupps, great sculpts, but they have a real Zoraida theme to them in my opinion. That's 4 sculpts to the Hag.
Now we have April:


That's 2 sculpts to Lilith, great models but still no nightmares.
Finally we have:

Now this dude's look is so specific, if you are going for a certain theme it will be really hard to fit him in.
Now come on, where's the Nightmare love?
- Your friendly neighbourhood Doctor Loxleyww

The Lies We Tell Ourselves...

... And The Broken Promises It Leaves.

Just prior to Christmas I made a promise to myself to keep practicing new things, to keep pushing the boundaries of my own painting and modelling skill.

When I first got into Malifaux and back into the hobby, my first crew were Gremlins. I painted these us in my usual style, with nothing experimental at all.

My second crew was the Dead Justice NE box. I wanted to try something new with them and so made my own bases using a great how to guide i found online (i still need to link to that guide).

After this i started trying new things, from mixing models together as with my austringer, using putty to add features as with my executioner and using a combo of putty and a modelling drill to make new features and gouge out others, as with my hounds.

But prior to Christmas I knew I was going to start work on my Dreamer crew and that I was actually quite happy with the stock models.

So I spoke with a friend of mine and he told me of a technique he uses quite a lot to paint his models, I think he called it 'wet shading' or something similar, where you soak a washed model in water and then use this water to create gradients of highlights.

I promised myself that this would be my experimentation for this crew. And so shortly after Xmas day I started painting my Dreamer crew, but despite my earlier promise I did my usual technique.

Now this got me thinking, 'why do we do this to ourselves?' as a gamer and modeller I am always telling myself similar things, about pushing new ideas, expanding from my comfort zone, trying new techniques.

But it appears that this only applies if these new ideas are 1 step further/away from what I am comfortable with.

And so I present you with my latest model, Lord Chompy Bits / Nytemare...



Painted in my usual style, with a purely home made putty base. I am quite happy with him, but I can't help but look at him and wonder what he would look like if I had been brave and tried that new technique.

The future of Hobby Minis

Afternoon all,
So i was thinking all weekend about todays post and just what to do, and then it struck me:

The Future of Hobby Miniatures and Wargaming!

So prior to pickimg up the hobby last year with Malifaux, i had been out of The Hobby since i was 16, thats a good 11 years.

And i got to thinking: "Why did i quit in the first place?"

The answer was simple. I didn't like the direction the hobby was heading.

Now I know I'm not alone here, that there were many people who around the same time decided to bail and never look back, but what was the reason for this?

Well let me first tell you about some of my first ever models I owned/painted...

They were Ral Pather AD&D, my favourite of them being the Golden Dragon:

But what did I love about these models? Part was the size, they were so much bigger than the others I had seen through games like Heroquest, but more so than anything it was that the mini was a multi part with an amazing amount of detail.

And so we get to the turning point for me. Things were going one way or the other: on one hand GW started making multi-part boxed sets, however these were all plastic, and i am sorry but i think when you pick up a model the size of your fist, it is supposed to feel meaty, not like a delicate kit-model.

On the other hand, virtually all their metal models were single piece sculpts, this caused awkward poses and a lack of detail to become even more apparent (just look at the metal GorkaMorka Orks with shootas sculpts).

Anyway, fastforward 11 years, it's April/May 2011 and I randomly stumble across a website advertising Malifaux. A couple of things strike me, 1). metal models, 2).Incredible detail and character that i had never seen in a model range before. I just had to get involved.

And so, a quick purchase of the Gremlin crew later and a long painful wait for it to arrive via the post, i was then privvy to see for myself how beautiful the sculpts were.

the attention to detail was obvious, as was the intent to make each model a little scenic story in itself.

About a month or two later i aquired the Le'Croix boxed set, and i noticed a change, the models contained less 'thin' bits. Gone were the intricate components, like the Grem holding the gun to his head, or the telescope, and in came big chunky components.

Looking at other book 2 models, I can see the same almost across the board: What should be fine detailed models are less so. Multi part kits replaced with single sculpts, and this has partially broken my heart.

Is this the future for wargaming? Are companies forced to abandon the quest for amazing multi part models in the search for a greater profit margin?

Currently Wyrd Miniatures have yet to move imto plastic models, and with the high detailed Avatars coming out, i do hope that Book 2 was a one off.

Fingers Crossed

Nightmare Invaders!

Afternoon all, thought I would tease you all with a side project I am working on: The Dreaming Sadako and her beloved Teddy:

More to come for them soon :)

Dead Doggies

Morning all. It's the morning commute and I want to kill myself... Not literally. No one should be allowed up before 0800. Any who, what better to start the day off with a post. This should in theory be the last one for my undeads, other than perhaps one more group shot. Today we have my undead Guild Hounds:

These boys were of course inspired by the dead doggies from ResEvil, and if I get the chance I should be able toget a new group shot together later this evening. Hope you like

Undead Guild

Greetings once again, well i have another post for you today. Please welcome... The near complete Undead Guild!

I actually have 2 zombie guild hounds to add to this shot. Fingers crossed I'll do this tomorrow.

Austringer

Ever since playing a game with a friend's Austringer I knew I had to have one in my crew. The stock model I was looking at appears as such:

Now don't get me wrong, it's a nice model, but it didn't quite look Undead enough for my crew. And so with some Graveyard accessories and a pair of pliers I removed what was attached to his arm, changed the hawk for a vulture perched on a grave and attached the two with a real metal chain I had from an old Macfarlain model:

Executioner

A popular model with Guild players is The Executioner:

Personally, there were a few things I didn't like about this sculpt, namely his face and belly. And so my beasty was born:

As you can see, with nothing more than a selection of putty I turned this WWE contestant into a nasty, sac wearing, guts spilled zombie of doom!

Welcome to New Fairbank

Welcome to The New Fairbank News! A blog show casing my current works in the world of Malifaux and beyond.