KublaCon2017 Recap

No pictures. No detailed write up. Just stream of consciousness. I played 2 small Malifaux tournaments this last weekend. One at KublaCon and one at Game Kastle Fremont.

Kubla tournament:

Round 1: Got the bye unfortunately, but Chrissy offered to play me a pickup game. She played Arcanists (Ramos). Howard Langston is a beast but I managed to get 2 Gambles from the Stitched on it and nearly take him out but not before he whacked both my Waldgeist and Mr Graves. Rest of the battle was a jam in the middle but Ramos' spiders were nailing scheme points on the flanks. After 3 rounds I lost 6-4. My key takeaway in this game is that Chrisy DuBois is super badass. She is an incredible community builder.

Round 2: Played against Rezzers (Seamus). My opponent's execution fell apart after the first round. I went strong on one side with Dreamer and he basically tried to hold that Stash with a Doxie. Once I cleared that I was just shoving things at him to pin him back and keep pressure on the Strategy. Again my Framed Changeling pulled out points and I won 6-3. My key takeaway here is that losing models and getting lured isn't the end of the world if your opponent is busy not keeping the strategy in mind. He admitted to coming off of a previous weird game that left him with a bad mindset which very likely threw off his whole game.

Round 3: Top table! Gremlins (Somer). This may have been the most amusing game I played all weekend. Somer pushed right up into the center and was doing "bigger hat" on Dreamer which only worked once fortunately. In this game my key takeaway was that I had completely mis-read a feature of summoning Daydreams which results in the Primordial Magic being sacrificed once a Daydream is summoned. This was a really low scoring game and right near the end I got too preoccupied with trying to kill Somer that I spaced on my second scheme (Undercover Entourage) otherwise I would have won by just rocketing Dreamer to the far corner. The final score was 3-1.

Recap: I went 2-1 in this tournament, coming in second place, and earning myself a sweet mystery box that contained Miss Anne Thrope!

Game Kastle Fremont tournament:

Round 1: Played against Neverborn (Lucius) and who would become the tournament winner. This match was weird because we both had a bunch of the same models (Thorn, Waldgeists, Changelings, Mr Graves). My opponent just straight up out-played me though and his list had some really nice synergies in it (Terracota Warriors to give protection to key front-line models was a key takeaway. The final score was 6-3.

Round 2: Played against Gremlins (Zoraida) in what was a completely bizzare list to me. Zoraida with Animal Shape and Tarot Reading, Fingers, Burt Jebsen, Iggy, Rooster Rider, Nurse, Bayou Gremlin. Shockingly though the list worked great. I got schooled pretty hard. Key takeaway is NEVER play a Stitched Together against Zoraida. He also Obeyed one of my models to take a final hit on Burt to finish him off (who was also his Frame for Murder). Final score was 6-2.

Round 3: Played against Gremlins (Ophelia) and another highly amusing list. I don't remember it exactly, but it was roughly Ophelia, Old Major, Francios and a whole swatch of piglets (like at least 8). I owned this guy pretty hard. I ended up nailing Ophelia and Old Major, and the final score was 6-4.

Recap: I came in 6th place out of 8.

Final takeaway: Two hour time limits (including deployment) and playing all new stuff meant every game I played was only 3 rounds, which honestly was just a little disappointing to me. From what I overheard, out of both tournaments I think only maybe 2 games went to a 4th round.

Total games played this year: 8

From the Desk: KublaCon, London, and Distractions

Hooray! Another KublaCon has come and gone. I only managed to get one entry this year (more on that later). It was McBain, and he placed a bronze in the masterclass level. I'm actually really stoked about this for a couple reasons. First, I was only hoping to place at all and had no designs on a silver. Second is that the judging was really rough this year, and there were a number of entries (especially in the open category) that didn't place at all despite being solid pieces. So all things considered, this was a win for me. You can read more about the KublaCon painting events on Facebook.

In addition to the painting competition, I got great feedback on McBain from Mr Justin of Secret Weapon. It was mostly around improving the color quality of the basing and using more color modulation to draw the attention to the face more. Overall though they said that the technical painting aspects were solid which pleased me quite a bit.

As to why I haven't been posting much, it's mainly due to work travel. This also prevented me from getting a second model completed. I was in London, Paris and southern California. I've been living out of suitcases for about 3 weeks prior to KublaCon and that was a severe crushing to any painting opportunity. On the plus side, I got to visit London and Paris for the first time and it was a real delight.

Lastly, I have to fess up to getting Diablo 3, and it's eating a large amount of my painting time. I aspire to overcome this addiction and better control the amount of time I spend playing it, but I'm very aware of my own shortcomings when it comes to controlling my obsession to finish a game. However I'm also starting to plan next year's painting entry and that might shake me out of my addiction (I hope).

Drake McBain

There comes a point at which working more on a particular model becomes an exercise in self torture. McBain here had definitely reached that point for me. I'm quite happy with what I've ended up with (even if the photos are sub-par). I spent a lot of time working on him, and re-working... and re-working some more. The end result is a model that I'm pretty happy with and plan to enter in the KublaCon painting competition. This post is going to end up as a mash-up of a gallery posting and an RtC post all together. So, in that spirit, I'm going to settle in with a beverage to write out the rest of this post and I suggest you find your favorite beverage if you plan to read the whole thing.

The final tweaks that I made to this model were pretty straightforward. I cleaned up the undersides of surfaces that I had previously missed. I added static grass and the razor wire (both from Army Painter). The razor wire got a number of wash treatments to make it look older. I also did some additional cleanup on the metals. I'm still not 100% happy with them, but more on that later.

As a competition piece, I think it's ok. I was comparing it to last year's entry (the WarHog) and have to say I'm satisfied enough. I feel like this model is slightly above the WarHog, but not necessarily award worthy. The one thing I am happy about is how the overall scheme comes together. It's sort of a slightly-narrowed triadic scheme of green/blue/red-orange. As I continue to refine my own painting style, doing higher-end paint jobs like this start to really bring out my personal preferences and characteristics. One such characteristic is that when I build up base coats, I tend to use thinner coats and a wider variety of hues. This creates much more variation in the color, and I personally like that complexity. On the downside, that technique can easily create challenges when trying to shade, and I need more refinement on making that process better.

Do I think this is going to earn me an award at Kubla? Honestly I doubt it. However I'm not really feeling like more time is going to take it to the next level. There's a point at which I have to acknowledge that further painting is likely to make things worse by obscuring detail, ruining good points, and just getting frustrating. So I'm calling it good and moving on to a second entry for the competition.

What went well:
* Basing - Really happy with this. Spending the time to make my own spent casings and paint cross-hatching on the sandbags to create that bit more of realism was worth the time.
* Feedback - Getting lots of feedback, and over multiple iterations, was very helpful. Particularly for helping me course correct as I went along.
* Triadic scheme - The color scheme works pretty well overall I think. I used a little blue in shading the green armor. I used some purple to shade the flesh. Overall I tried to get some blue into most everything, and I felt it helped tie the whole thing together.
* Face - Honestly, I don't think I've painted such a good face ever before. Totally happy with the results for my current skill level.

What could have been better:
* Metals - Just kinda frustrated with these. I can see why some people prefer NMM. It's just easier to force the lighting effects that way. Still though, I'm a true real-metal fan at heart, so I'll keep doing my thing and trying to get better.
* Arms - The flesh of his arms could definitely been a little smoother.
* Sealing - Ok seriously, he's a bit too glossy. But I'm not taking any chances to hit him with an additional coat of dullcoat.

And that wraps up McBain, my first Kubla entry, and my last outstanding unpainted merc! Whew! Time to refill my drink and start looking at my next project.

From the Desk: Nephilim Putty Party

Confession time: I finally broke down and bought Starcraft 2. This coupled with more work travel will likely impair my painting/modeling productivity. In fairness to myself though, I did hold out quite a while. And it is pretty rockin. Anyway, that's not what this blog is here for, so...

One of the tips I got from Derek Schubert's sculpting class came in really handy this last weekend: stick the putty to your off-hand thumbnail. It sort of makes a little putty palette, and I found it works really well. I just kneaded up some, stuck it to my thumbnail, and then I could slice off a bit with my sculpting tool easily. The thumbnail makes a good surface because the putty sticks enough to not fall off, but not so much to be hard to remove. It's so simple and yet such a helpful tip. And why was I putting this into practice? Well...


My Nephilim are almost all assembled! The Bolt Thrower is going to have his quiver attached after painting simply due to the amount of problems it will cause for accessing parts of the model once it's on. The Solider just needs his sword/arm attached which will require a little putty work. The Protector is in a similar state, but his arms and polearm are going to be a bit more work to get all together. I'm trying to decide on a pinning strategy still.

I also tried out some Krylon Satin Finish last week. I can honestly say that appearance-wise, it looks pretty much the same as my double coating of gloss/dull. I haven't really tested it for durability, but I'm very likely to make this switch for things going forward once I run out of Testors supplies, especially since the cost is so much better.

From the Desk: Recap, Notes and Progress

In an effort to stay blogging, I'm going to aim to do more of my "From the Desk" posts with random tidbits of information. We'll see how long this new resolution lasts.

Poor Anastasia here as been sitting on my desk, primed, awaiting paint, for a couple months. After coming off of the big competition effort, I wanted to do something relatively fast, but still feel like I could pour quality effort into it, so this was a nice coincidence. This model is quite small and fairly simple. After seeing Derek spend an hour and a half on a face, I'm a bit more inspired to be practicing painting faces and eyes in more detail. I've definitely learned in the past that painting more (and spending just above average effort each time) goes a long ways towards improving my skills in particular areas. To that end, I've decided to focus on more models with clear faces and eyes, and also to find small opportunities to practice freehand work as well.

In other news, the classes at KublaCon left me with a list of things to follow up on. Here's the summary:
* Try out Reaper liner paints - Derek recommended these. I picked up the triad and tried out the brown liner. It's definitely interesting stuff. Pre-thinned for quick use. I see myself using these more and more.
* Paint freehand using the "constellation" method - Basically sketch a design, pick out points, transfer the points to the model, then fill in the design. More on that in future posts.
* Airbrush - Yeah, I totally bought an airbrush already after seeing Justin use it and answer a bunch of questions. Lots lots more on that in the future.
* Fine mist spray nozzles for primer - Justin recommended GW Skull White because the new primer cans have "fine mist" nozzles. I've got one reserved at my LGS to try out and see if I notice a difference.
* Krylon Satin Finish sealer - Another Justin recommendation. Gotta see if it's very different from my current 2-coats method. This would be nice not only because it would be a single coat to seal, but also because the local store that I got Testors supplies from closed recently.
* Weathering techniques - More on this later, but I want to try out Justin's techniques: hairspray/salt, dry pigments, and dot oil filter.

Ok, last note for today. While painting last night I watched a delightful film titled Perfume. Great movie! Loved it! Absolutely nothing to do with painting, but totally interesting concept and well executed. I love it when I find movies that are interesting but don't require me to pay complete visual attention to them (thus allowing me to paint while watching).

War Hog

Apologies in advance, this post is going to be like 3 posts in 1, and longer than a normal gallery entry. I'll start with the normal gallery entry stuff and then move on to the Road-to-Competition stuff.

So here's my competition War Hog, in all his final glory! I have no idea how many hours I spent on this guy. Overall this model was pretty cool. Organic parts, mechanical parts, and just generally pretty interesting. He was pretty big and complex though, which made painting him pretty challenging. I should note that I didn't seal him since he is unlikely to be used on the table, and also sealing him would have affected the effects on the metals that I spent a lot of time on. So he's likely to just sit on the top shelf of my models cabinet where all the other best stuff sits. Perhaps sad, but honestly I'm not really very interested in playing Farrow at present, and regardless of whether I did play them or not, I had intended to paint this model.

What went well:
* Metals - I seriously feel like the metals worked out really well on this model. I spent a lot of time on them, both in terms of weathering and shading. I'm one of those people that like the look of metallic metal paints rather than NMM.
* Flesh - I spent a lot of time here too. It's not perfect, but I feel like the extra effort really paid off.
* Overall composition - Much of my time near the end was making little tweaks here and there to bring the overall composition together. I gathered a lot of feedback from people/places I trust on this. That leads me to...
* Getting feedback - Definitely very helpful. Not just friends getting in person viewings, but I also posted on the BrushThralls forum for feedback and got some really helpful critique. I'll definitely be doing that again for future competitions.

What could have been better:
* Not getting exhausted - Ugh! By the end, after having been working on it off and on for almost 2 months (just painting), I was ready to be done. I was pretty sick of looking at it in fact. I need a better way to tackle such large projects if I'm going to do them this seriously.
* Pigments - In all fairness, this was the first time I used dry pigments, so I'm still getting the hang of them. They were too thick in some places. I definitely like them though, and I'm looking forward to using them more in the future.
* Some details get lost - The model is huge and complex with a lot of details. I feel like some of the detailing work I did wound up lost in the overall complexity of the model.

Ok, so all that aside, time to talk about the competition itself. This year I entered the "masters" level which is still an "open judging" system, but did not place at all. According to the competition organizer, I was super close to getting a bronze. I was in good company actually, as there were other masters entries that didn't place, much to my surprise actually. There was a 40K Tyrant that was pretty impressive I though, but didn't get anything either. I can honestly say I'm not terribly disappointed. Why? Well...

After the awards ceremony I got a chance to sit down with Derek Schubert and he spent probably 20 minutes giving me an in-depth critique of my model. It was very education, and I am very grateful to him for his time. I've included notes about his feedback below, but before that I'll close with some things that I'm taking away to keep in mind for next year:
* Smaller model - Yeah, this one was too big. It's impressive, but smaller is better for the competition I think.
* Avoid metals - I think my love of metallics and trying to refine that style doesn't mesh well with the judges' perspectives. I'm probably better off avoiding them next year.
* Forced lighting perspective - This is something I'm still not comfortable with, but I think it's something I need to keep in mind.
* Telling a story - The model needs to tell a story much better. Overall composition is one thing, but if the model is able to convey a story then I'll have succeeded much better. It's not enough for the War Hog to be angry. There needs to be more of a sense of what's going on. I think my model selection for last year needs to take that into account.

	The blending/shading on the muzzle needed to be tightened up considerably. Totally agree with this. I just sort of lost my steam in this area.
	There should be reflections of light on the red of the gauntlet. Totally disagree with this one. I get where Derek's coming from, but this is a style thing that I just don't buy into. Forced light perspectives are a mixed bag. When you force the lighting perspective in a particular way, you must look at that model from that perspective to make sense of it. Just not my style, but it was interesting feedback.
	The shading/transition of the hoof didn't work. Totally agree here. I blew this. It probably looks ok in the photo, but honestly the angling on it was wrong.
	The plating "bumps" needed stronger contrast to stand out. Yeah, I mostly agree with this. They just didn't work out as good as I wanted. They needed more raise to their surface and just didn't have it to work with.
	The blue hose stood out too much, and the busted pipe was somewhat unnecessary. This was something I hadn't even considered. The blue hose definitely stood out too much, and there wasn't any other blue on the model from that angle to balance with it. In comparison, the red hose worked well because there was plenty of red to balance with. The pipe, well, I'm torn on that. I like having it there, but it does make the whole thing a bit more busy. Point taken.
	Mohawk needed more shading/highlighting to make it pop. Well, I'm torn on this. To some degree I wish I had done more on this. But on the flipside, I didn't want to be highlighting all the strands and making it look too gaudy. I've seen that too much already, and I got some very good advice from EricJ on the Wyrd forums about hair that I still very much subscribe to. I'll have to mull this over a lot more before I can decide whether I should have taken this advice.
	Brighter highlights for the metals. Yeah, I mostly agree here. Overall there were plenty of opportunities to push the metal highlights farther. Derek picked out this section as an example where I could have put highlights on the lower half of the holes to emphasize reflections. Definitely a good point here. Overall there were other comments about metals not being smooth enough, and I sort of get that as well. Still more to learn with metallics.

Ok, I can't really handle posting anything more about this model. I'm done, and well past ready to be done. Time to move on to something faster and crank out some army stuff. I'll start thinking about the next competition in a couple months. In hindsight, I may not have even gotten a bronze, but I definitely feel like I painted like I had a pair!

KublaCon 2011 Summary

So KublaCon has come to a close once again, and as before I had a very good time. What follows is a whole slew of photos and some notes about my experience of the con. Many of these photos are of, shall we say, sub-par quality. Hopefully Santa will bring me a better camera this Christmas. On Friday evening there was a 15pt WM/H tournament that had a 1 unit and 1 solo max limitation. The Sacramento PG Jimmy ran the event and I had quite a lot of fun, despite getting my butt kicked in 4 out of 5 of the games. However I did receive one of the 2 sportsmanship awards which was a poster of the new Wrath book cover! Overall, great event. I think there were 24 people there in total, with a great representation of factions. I think I saw everything except Skorne and perhaps Minions. Next day I dropped in to attend a class by Derek Schubert on sculpting. Although I floated in and out, the class was quite good. I learned a bunch of random little tricks and techniques to assist with the sculpting process. Being a novice in the realm of sculpting, it wasn't hard to learn a lot. Some of the tips were simple things like having a small sponge and water on hand to moisten tools with, putting the mixed green stuff on your off-handed thumb as a temporary working area, and how to create basic frames for sculpting on to. For those of you unfamiliar with Derek Schubert, he's done freelance sculpting and painting for Reaper for several years. His class was interesting in that not only did he give a lot of helpful tips for basic sculpting, he also talked about materials and the overall casting process along with considerations to keep in mind about that process. Overall, delightful class.

At the same time as the class, there was a 50pt WM/H Steamroller tournament going on. There were 19 or so people for this event, again with most factions represented. Given that I didn't participate in the tournament I can't really comment on the event, but it definitely seemed like a huge battleground.

My day was rounded by participating in one of the speed painting competitions. The rules were pretty straight forward. They provide a brush (terrible synthetic with curved bristles), paints (also pretty terrible craft paints), and a primed model. Everything was the same for each participant. We got 45 minutes to paint as good as possible. Amazingly, having never done something like this before, I got 1st place in this group, which qualified me for the masters speed painting. Here you can see my poor little samurai warrior.

The next day was all classes for me pretty much. First up was another class with Derek where he basically spent about 90 minutes painting a face on a model and sharing a wide variety of pieces of information. I really enjoyed this time because it afforded the opportunity to just ask Derek a lot of questions about his process and techniques. Pictured here are a couple of his models that he passed around for close examination.

During the same time slots as most of these classes I was taking, there was a 35pt tier 2 WM/H tournament going on. Again, not having participated in it, all I can say is that at this point I think the WM/H players were starting to wane in strength as this was the 4th event.

The next two classes were with Justin McCoy of Secret Weapon Miniatures. He was teaching about weathering using a few different techniques. These classes were outstanding. Now to be fair, all of the techniques Justin demonstrated were completely different from anything I do. I'd read bits and pieces about them, but never seen them properly demonstrated. These classes were one of those "Ah ha!" type moments. Justin demoed the salt and hairspray technique, chipping, using pigments, and oils, all for weathering a vehicle. I also particularly enjoyed that he brought an airbrush and demonstrated using it as a part of the process. He had a number of good tips, and as a result I went out and bought an airbrush starter kit myself. It certainly helped that by his recommendation, I was able to get a basic double action airbrush and compressor for a mere $90. I'm very much looking forward to practicing some of those techniques in the future.

Ok, I'm just throwing this in for commentary. Seriously people! Just because it's a convention and everyone is indulging in a weekend of geekly decadence, but honestly! And take a shower while you're dropping that fistful of cheese balls!!

Before rounding out my day, I was in the masters speed painting competition. Same as before, however we got 2 terrible brushes. My lowly model is here, which came in 4th out of the group of 9. In all fairness, Derek was in the masters here as well. I have to say, it was a very amusing challenge and I'm looking forward to doing it again next year.

What follows are pictures of models submitted to the painting competition. My own entry did not place in the masters, but I'll go over that in more detail in another post tomorrow.