First Painting Foray into Infinity

You have no idea how much restraint it took for me to not title this "Painting to Infinity and Beyond". However, after my last post brow-beating the overuse of the Spanish Inquisition jokes, I felt it best not to. I do try and not be hypocritical, after all.

I've been fairly enamored with Infinity as a game for quite some time now. My favorite GW game has always been Necromunda, and with the release of Infinity a couple years back, I got all giddy with excitement for a highly detailed skirmish game.

I recently was given the opportunity to paint one of the newer Tohaa figures, the Hatail Spec Ops, and jumped at the chance.

How Many Spanish Inquisition Jokes Are There?

I mean, seriously? It was comedy gold when first spoofed by Monty Python back in 1970, and it still garners a chuckle whenever I hear someone say at a well-timed moment today. I absolutely love the Spanish Inquisition models by Victoria Miniatures, and have come up with every excuse in the book to buy them and paint them for myself.

However, there is such a thing as a dead horse, and I do believe the blogosphere has severely beaten it to a mangled pulp lately with the upcoming Codex: Inquisition. You can't browse the interwebz lately without tripping over either a title invoking the Spanish Inquisition, or the oft-linked to models that Victoria Miniatures put out. Enough is enough, people! We get it, there is many an opportunity to coin that phrase lately, and will be next week as well…but please do try and come up with something more original? Your readers will thank you for it, trust me.

*steps down off his well-worn soap box*

There. That being said, let's discuss my excitement and modeling hopes and dreams for the upcoming codex!

What Bloggers Do, When We Aren't Blogging

 Does anyone else hear crickets?

Wow.  This has literally been the longest span between blog posts that I've ever had.  It has also marked the only month in over 2 and a half years that I've only posted twice in said month.  Typically, you will see bloggers start apologizing for long gaps between posts, claiming that Real Life(™) got in the way, etc.  I'm not here to do that, though it did spark a topic that is interesting to me, at least from an editorial point of view…

Just what do we do when we aren't blogging?

Airbrush Newb Needs Advice

Hi, my name is Tim T., and I'm an Airbrush Newb.

After years of seeing even what an airbrush can do for the hobbyist in blogs like Dark Future Games, and talking to award-winning painters who compete in Golden Demon and Crystal Brush, I took the plunge and emptied my wallet on an entire set-up.

…but what do I do now?

Placing a Value on a Finished Army

Now we've talked about placing a value on your services as a commission modeler and painter in the hobby. How to price yourself, and the level of commitment it takes to actually be successful with your commissions.

At the same time, I don't think any of us have an issue with placing a monetary value on a box of bits, individual bits, or even just a half-finished model. Heck, there are entire bits trading nights at some hobby stores and national events like Adepticon.

But how do you place a value on a finished, personal army?

Is the New Codex the End of "Counts-As" for Marines?

Back in 4th Edition, we had the glory of the Chapter Traits system. So long as you balanced everything out, you could create a custom Marine Chapter that fit your taste, be it for story or competition. In 5th Edition, we had that carpet pulled out from under us, but it was replaced by the new musical chairs, HQ edition. Didn't feel like playing your Imperial Fists AS Imperial Fists? That's okay! Just use Calgar, paint him yellow, and give them a different rules set!

So far, the bonus in either of the past two editions, is that you could have your collection, model whatever you wanted according to the rules, and still use it. Who cares what color of the rainbow the figures were, so long as they were WYSIWYG, and your list was correct.

With the new 6th Edition Codex, however, and it's Chapter-specific rules, rather than character-specific ones, is this the end of the grand age of Counts-As?

New Space Marine Sprues...Was it Enough?

Now that the new horse is out of the gate, so-to-speak, how's he faring? Are the new marine rules playing to everyone's expectations? Better? Worse? I know that those of us getting the "Enhanced" iBooks version of the codex were let down quite a bit with the absence of the Force Requisition portion of the book. I'm sure that an update will rectify that, but still.

For those of us hobbyists, however, who do so enjoy the building, converting, and ransacking of kits for a single, solitary bit, just how do the new releases fare when in comparison to the bar set so high by the new Tau and Eldar kits?