Cerridwyn1st

I'm going to order cards today for minis I have, and send in Swag for a full set. By the time the SWAG gets there and is processed, they will have them all available for me. If I order all the data cards today, it will take forever. It would be great if you could just hit Control A and choose all at once. Or even use the Control Key and select multiples

The Reaper online store is extraordinarily slow this afternoon - must be lots of people scooping up the new goodness. I've already ordered Baby Dragons and I'm waiting for the card link to update.

I went into a whole thing about how I clean my brushes, having three kinds of cleaners and all. I might be a bit over the top, but it all works really well and I haven't worn out a brush yet. Of course, I've only been doing the "serious" painting with nice brushes for about a year, which isn't much time to use a high-end brush. Honelsty, I'm a bit afraid of using anything BUT brush cleaners and conditioners on my brushes. What's the point of paying $7.00 for a brush, then pinch pennies taking care of it?

Well, Shak, you could always sculpt a greestuff bikini top on her. Most people would just go with it - the model would distract opponents.

The problem of paints drying on the pallet is exactly why I have an atomizer bottle of clean water on my desk. I lightly spray the whole pallet when it starts to dry. Easy does it, as you can add too much water and the whole pallet smears. Drat all the luck, my atomizer went cablooie at GenCon. I need another one. At $0.50 each, it woun't break me to replace it, it's just annoying. With a deep-well pallet, you could just add drops of water or additive to the paint, and be good to go. FP, you can get the pallets at an art store. Before you make the investment, may I suggest a cheap alternative? Creamer cups, like the kind you use to add creamer to your coffee at a convinience store. Try thinning your paint in a couple of those, and if you really like it, get a pallet so you can do a bunch of colors at a time. I use creamer cups to thin large amounts of paint, work with ink, use as painting jigs (glue or poster tack the mini to the top), etc., etc. Free, disposable, easy to get, what more can you ask for? Rank right up there with bottle caps as a great freebie for painters. Oh, and I'll chime in with the others - there is no exact science to thinning. Brands tend to have their own consistancy, but exact paint thickness varies bottle by bottle. A fresher bottle may need less thinning than an older one, for instance. By the way, it isn't a bad idea to add a drop or two of distilled water to your paint, especially those in little jars like Reaper or Citadel. A paint that is a perfect consistancy for one task may be two thick or too thin for another. Just paint, paint, paint, and find out what works for you.

That is cool, expecially all the straps on the skirt.

I've taken Gwenneth Roanmane and given her a bow in her left hand instead of the staff. I need to do some sculpting on her hand, since the fingers look a bit short on the bow. Her right arm looks a little odd, since it is pulled back against the body, and to me it should be closer to the bow. Just not sure if I'm confident enough of my sculpting ability to remove and re-sculpt and entire arm. That's a good suggestion on what to do with the base; the Cavalry is a 2x1, and the Large is 1.5x1.5, correct? So I can put Gwenneth on the Large base, remove what's hanging over, and add greenstuff to make the whole thing look like a hillock. From a strategic standpoint, I was thinking of using the Centaurs to go and retrieve loot from fallen opponents that the archers have knocked out. They move pretty fast, so hopefully they could run in, grab treasure, and then get out of there before the opponents can surround them. I was also thinking of giving Lysette a teleport spell, and having her send Mossbeard to do the same job. But that's a lot of points just to have someone to retrieve treasure. So, the all-Chick elven force (yeah, that was me, so don't flame Bryan) is certainly viable, especially since in smaller games a warlord isn't required. He may even take points away from me having additional troups to beef up my forces. I just have to keep the Leadership to Grunt ratios correct, and I'm good to go. Mossbeard would be more likely to wade in and finish off a damaged troup than just grab and run.

Thanks for the complete official run-down. In my own gaming crew, proxies are ONLY being used for models not yet in print. This allows the players to run the armies they want, wether "official" models are available or not. I did use a few proxies early on, simply because I couldn't paiint fast enough to get everything I wanted to field done. So I took some pieces I already had and glued them to 1x1 bases. Those are being replaced by the real deal. I will probably do some customization for my own Fighting Company - Elf Chick force, Front and Center! Just wish I'd known about the base change for Centaurs BEFORE I put my customized Female Centaur Archer on a Cavalry base. With rock-hard cheap plumber's epoxy; that stuff is like kneadable concrete.

OK, so the final word is that for large Reaper sponsored tournaments, players cannot proxy models that are in print. This is to ensure that everyone knows what's what and how it works. For personal games, do what you like. For smaller tournaments, it is at the discretion of the AO running the event, and must be announced in advance. Have I got it straight now?

yup, those would be the ones - didn't know you got a chance to see those. Did you attend her class? (oops sorry off topic there) debby No on the class, yes on seeing the lights. Sue was using them to photograph the stuff from the contest, and I saw the box Lilli mailed them to the con in. I saw one online yesterday that also had a magnifier. (drool)

Boy, am I lazy when it comes to thinning paint. I like to thin - and mix - brush by brush. I put the paint on my pallet and load the brush with water before I load it with paint, in effect thinning the paint as I put it in the brush. Sometimes I'll thin the paint a little on my pallet, and I also dip my paint loaded brush lightly into clean water. Jen and Anne swear by using a big ceramic pallet with deep wells. They thin the paint in the wells and paint from that. So you can thin a lot of paint at once and paint that way. I pretty much started the brush-by-brush mixing method after discussing painting with Thierry Husser. Aparently, he does the same thing. I don't know if he uses a wet pallet, but judging by how simply he does everything else, he probably uses a chipped old dinner plate. :) By the way Lars, what are you using to thin your metals? Water will cause it to separate, but an extender won't. Something like Plaid extender might thin your paint without causing separation problems.

At GenCon, Jen stressed that testing a brush for quality is more important than buying a specific brand. You can get a deal buying brushes online, but if they are bad, then what do you do? A good art store will provide water and paper for you to test a brush before you buy it. If at all possible, blow the extra cash to go to a good art store and test your brushes. High-end brushes are all hand-made, so quality can vary greatly. I've got several WN7s, most of which I bought online. For the most part, they are good brushes, but I've got at least one that is a little flakey and splays when it gets used. I've got a Lowe Cornell series GG that I picked myself and it's a wonderful brush. So if you know how to look, you can get a less expensive brush that is still quite good; but if you get them mail order you have no final quality control. Man, cleaning brushes was one thing I got to talk about at GenCon again and again. I personally have three brush cleaners - a solvent, a cake soap and a liquid soap. The solvent is for soaking brushes, always suspended in a bit of foam so they don't touch the bottom or side of the jar. Cake soap is good for quick cleanups and can be carried without spilling. Liquid is also good for quick cleaning at my desk. NEVER soak brushes in water - it will ruin the handles and damage the ferules so the don't fit tightly on the brush handle. When you are done cleaning, coat the brush with a little extra soap, shape it and allow it to dry. This conditions the bristles and "trains" them into the proper place.

Hey, Thane, creativity is what makes the game a lot of fun. I did overplay the Toss thing a bit, but I'll know better next time. It is more for psycological effect than for an effective strategy. By the way, we were doing "blowthrough" wrong. The attack looses power with each subsiquent target, but it is NOT stopped if the target does not drop. We were playing it as the attack was stopped if a target did not drop, but the power remained the same throughout. At least, that's how I was told to run it; should have read the directions for myself. Scott, it's pretty good if you were able to get a bunch of players to cooperate to bring down the dragon. Were they people who knew each other, or did they just decide to work together? There was one guy who had done Beta Testing who played again and again. I think his name was Colin. I hope he will get into running demos when the book comes out. It looked like he was having a lot of fun. The way I see it, participating in a con for us has two benefits. First, we create excitement about the game, and hopefully the people who play with us will go home, buy their own armies and play. The other is that we get the chance to become better Assault Officers; running more games in a weekend than we otherwise would in several months is a great chance to learn more about the game. I personally would not be running Warlord if I hadn't had the chance to attend Orgins. I learned the basics of the game there and bought the OLE that I have been using to run demos at my home store. I'd printed out the Beta version, but never having played a tabletop game, I was lost trying to use it. Origins gave me the experience I needed to take the next step and start running demos of the game on my own.

My magnifying lamp uses regular incandescent bulbs and was about $20 at Wal Mart. Bought mine and I've never seen them again. I have two tables: painting and assembly. I'd like to have a mag light for my assembly table.

Thanks, Deb. Were the lights Lilli brought with her OTT?

You're correct, the ancients (not just the Egyptians) often painted their statuary.

This is an easy way to get started on highlights and shadows. It's best to do this with something that has a nice big cloak so you have lots of different surface levels. Don't choose one with lots of metalic surfaces, since it is a pain to paint metals on a mini done this way. Prime your miniature black. Once it has dried, get a really stiff bristle brush (a small tole brush works great) and drybrush white on the mini. This will give you a quick way to see highlights and shadows as they would occur on the mini. Now paint this mini with thin glazes of color. See how the color on the high spots is "true", while that in the low spots is darker. This can help you see where shade and highlight occur, and add lighter or darker color as appropriate.

Gus: I got to hold the Scribe mini after the con - it's really beautiful. Jen was telling me how she painted the gold trim (it's the "Bronze" Thierry recipie). I love the way she took the horns off that little familiar - it makes him look so cute! Good luck with negotiations - I'm sure you'll love the piece. Mel

So you play like I do? (you know - sacrifice your best units early in a tactic sure to bring out his big guns fast, that way the big guns will chew up your little grunts sooner?) I find it makes the games much faster if you can $krew yourself in the first couple of turns and then roll badly for the rest of them. . . . LOL Bryan. Unfortunately, I haven't had enough play-time yet to know if I'm any good at this game. I was kinda surprised at GenCon by how much of the rules I'd managed to learn, though FreeFall pointed out I was making some mistakes. Still, give me half a chance, and I will teach you to respect the might of the elven archers! Fear my laserpointer! Ha ha!

LOL, Scott. The only demo I ran with kids had the rest of the family as well - those kids didn't dare act up. They were outnumbered four to one. They didn't mess with the dragon, either.

Yeah, Frosh, other Evil spellcasters can buy Undying Host, but it's casting grade 3 for them, and I think it costs 75 points.

What's and OTT light?

Frosh: I keep a small amount of solvent in a GW flip top bottle. To soak a brush, I poke it handle first through a bit of foam from a blister pack, so the bristles are sticking out. I set this over the top of the bottle. This lets the brush bristles soak without touching the bottom or sides, and keeps the handle out of the solvent. Takes a bit of balancing sometimes, but generally this works like a champ, and the flip top bottle is easy to take with me when I travel. Mel

I'm with Laralu about cleaning your brushes. That's something I talked a lot about at GenCon. I have a solvent based cleaner for soaking out stubborn paint, cake soap for heavy cleaning and liquid for quick cleaning. Just make sure you don't soak your brushes in water. It will ruin your brush handles. If you must soak your brushes, use a solvent based brush cleaner. I also agree that it is important to paint regularly. If you set up a tray with brushes, minis, and a small wet pallet you can sit down at any time and get in a few minutes painting. Painting the same mini over and over might be dull, but it really helps you get beyond just figuring out what needs to be painted and working on how you will do it. I don't agree that any old paint will do. You are better off buying a few good paints than lots of crap. Better quality paint requires less of your time to make it useable. You don't spend as much time thinning or adding stuff to it to get it "right". That means more time to spend painting.

If you go to Cool Mini Or Not and search on Lysette, you will find a lot of inspiration. There are many beautiful versions of that model painted there. You could always use the contrasting colors, but in muted shades so they look more earthy. Deep purples or rich reds would offset the green and blue of the base. Maybe a little gold here and there.