Birthday Giveaway! Miniature Tim is 1 Year Old!

1 year ago today I re-entered the blogosphere with Miniature Tim. All short jokes aside, I made a commitment to make this blog a priority for me, posting at least once per week with content that I would actually want to read and hoping that a few folks out there would want to read it as well. I did my research, read articles on how to run a successful blog by successful bloggers, and cannonballed into the deep end.

Holy crap…it's been a year already?!?!

Life Imitates Hobby?

Spend as much time, work and money on a hobby like ours and it is bound to begin influencing other aspects of your life. Typically most folks would take that to mean we spend less time and money doing other things, and more building and playing with little army men.

I tend to have a different perspective.

Brand Loyalty...Is It Worth It?

If I were to put on my fake old-guy accent and start out with "Back in MY day…", I could wax poetic about how there weren't many competitors to the big miniature design studios. I could also make the cliche remark about walking 3 miles to my local hobby store in the snow, uphill, both ways, but that's besides the point.

Back then, while there were miniature companies to choose from, typically your game of choice had you buying from one manufacturer, especially if it was a tabletop wargame. That time period instilled a certain kind of brand-loyalty in gamers. Not to mention games who's figures were exclusive to one manufacturer such as FASA's Batttletech and Ral Partha, and our ubiquitous GW and Citadel.

But what about now? Is there competition worthy of killing Brand Loyalty? Is Brand Loyalty already dead for other reasons?

Custom Objective Markers

With objective-based missions comes the need for an objective to fight over, yes? And considering the scenarios in the rulebooks, not to mention national events like Adepticon, frequently you need multiple objective markers to get through the day. Speaking of Adepticon, it's a requirement to bring 3 objective markers to the table with you for each game, whether the scenario calls for them or not, and they need to be represented on 40mm bases at that!

So what's a wargamer to do, just go online and buy some? No, I say!

Umm…well okay, you could, but where's the fun in that?

All Your Bases: Ballast Textures

A while back, I touched on the topic of different ways of basing our miniatures, both in technique and difficulty. After having been asked how I made the bases for my Grey Knights this past Adepticon, I decided it was high time to start detailing those techniques in a new series called "All Your Bases".

To kick off the series, we're going to take a look at the most basic of the materials we base with, ballast, and how simple it can be to go above and beyond the norm.

Tools of the Trade: House Paint

No, that's not a typo, I really do mean house paint. Glidden, Behr, and other lines of house paints are an excellent resource for our hobby. You think the selection of the new Citadel line of paints are impressive? Take a field trip to your local home improvement store and peruse their paint department. There are more colors, tints and shades than your can shake a paint stick at.

"Okay fine, so there are a ton of paints at the home improvement store, thanks Captain Obvious. What does that mean for the hobby?"


Read on, my friends, read on...

Miniature Tim Sculpts for Dragon Forge Designs!

Now there's an announcement I've been dying to break to all of you for some time now. A while back I contacted Dragon Forge to see if they were planning on expanding their Goth Tech line of bases, as I was contemplating buying an army's worth. Through a series of emails, I was given the chance to work with Jeff at Dragon Forge to expand that particular line of bases.

Needless to say, I jumped at the chance!