Switching Gears

As Paul had mentioned a few days ago, we are going to be attending GASPCon XI  next weekend at Pittsburgh's beautiful and historic Best Western in the Parkway Center Mall.  For me, this is going to be a landmark event as I've never attended a large-scale convention before so I'm not totally sure what to expect.  What I do know is that nobody can host a convention like Pittsburgh, who is famous for such annual gatherings as Anthrocon:

Furries!

And let's NOT forget the International Bridge Conference, an entertainment juggernaut in it's own right...

I think all those overturned water glasses speak for themselves.

It's safe to say that the bar has been set fairly high and I expect nothing but good things from my first convention experience.  In particular, I'm looking forward to the Classic Battletech 'Poker Run' event.  You can take a look at the rules here, but the basic jist of it is each person brings one 'Mech to the table, and you get playing cards by holding objectives and damaging enemy 'Mechs.  At the end of the fight, the person with the best poker hand wins the game.

I decided speed and firepower would be key and settled on a shiny new Marauder-3R to get the job done.  It has decent speed, packs a wallop with two PPC's and a low Battle Value means I'll be hitting almost everything I shoot at.

Everybody knows that a painted mini kills better and after spending entirely too much time on the Space Marine Sternguard Squad, I thought a 'Mech would be a nice change of pace...so let's get to it!

1.  I started out with a dark grey basecoat:

Stormy Grey

2.   To start bringing out detail, this was followed up by drybrushing a slightly lighter shade on top.  For those of you (like me) who don't have time to bother with mixing your own shades for this, Reaper Miniatures sells 'Triads' of three paints in varying shades.  For this 'Mech I used the Neutral Grays set.

Stormy Grey + Cloudy Grey

3.  At this point, I filled in details on the 'Mech like regimental colors, cockpit glass and gun metal.  After this was done, I lightly drybrushed on a third shade of grey.

Stormy + Cloudy + Misty Grey (seeing a pattern, here?)

4.  Now, at this point, most purists and professionals would start yammering on and on about applying washes, inks, more drybrushing, more inking, sandwich making and five more shades of grey.  Call me a cheater and heretic, but I don't have time or the patience for this for this.  Thus, I'm going to tip you off to a little gem I recently discovered called Quickshade by a company called The Army Painter.  In short, "Dipping" is a technique wherein one takes a miniature and literally dips it into a pot of watered down, inky paint-like...stuff.  With a little help from gravity, the ink then settles into the cracks and folds of the model and dries dark.  This creates a really neat shading effect that the pro's spend hours on. Suckas.

INTO THE DIP

So, I dipped the 'Mech into a pot of Quickshade "Dark" Tone and let him rest.  The important thing to remember about this stuff is at needs a good 12 hours at least to dry completely.

5.  Last but not least, I based him using a no-frills technique of green paint, Elmer's Glue and some Woodland Scenics flocking.  If you are interested in the Quickshade, one thing to remember is as well as being a sweet shortcut, it's also a varnish and dries shiny.  For this, the folks at The Army Painters have created an Anti-Shine spray.  You don't need much of this at all, just a few very quick passes over the front and sides of the mini and it's done!  Note: MAKE SURE THE QUICKSHADE IS COMPLETELY DRY BEFORE APPLYING THE ANTI-SHINE. If it's not, it'll turn everything white.

6.  Go to the convention and kick some ass!

This is our blog, which is totally about Texas Hold 'Em.

As the other contributor to this blog, I'll introduce myself as well. I'm in a pretty similar situation to our fearless leader here. 28 years old, gainfully employed, living with my (surprisingly supportive) lady friend, and after a long hiatus, getting back into the swing of serious gaming.

I came to find miniatures gaming when I was about 12. I can't remember how exactly I found it; it may have been through the first Battletech video game, or maybe randomly because I was a kid who was really into the idea of giant robots. I got my parents to buy me the old Battletech boxed game, back in the day when FASA was still owner of the rights, and the Japanese hadn't sued them to make all my favorite 'Mechs look dumb as heck. I took to it quickly, and soon had amassed an enormous stack of sourcebooks, which eventually came to include an awful lot of RPG stuff as well (mostly Shadowrun, the Star Wars RPG, and Rifts). It was way easier to find Star Wars nerds to play RPGs with, but I really loved Battletech, and despite not getting to play all that often, I kept buying books all the way through high school.

Cue the same old story: went to college, boxed up all my stuff, didn't even bother to look for it again until a few years ago, and then somehow it all got lost during a couple of years of vagary. Then I ran into that other dude who writes for this thing, found out he was a former M:tG/Warhammer 40k nerd, and then it all started over again. I learned how to play 40k from him, and then while talking about gaming plans one day, I asked, "Ever played Battletech? That shit is awesome." So now we play both.

The real miniatures aspect of gaming is pretty new to me, as when I was a kid I didn't have the patience to paint shit. Now, however, I find it to be a relaxing hobby, and I'm working on learning all the techniques. I'll be sharing my trials and tribulations here, and hopefully the end results won't look too bad. My attempts on the crappy plastic minis from the boxed game haven't turned out all that bad so far, but I'm still learning, and my minis look nowhere near as good as the ones Rob paints.

Currently, I'm working on getting my crap together for GASPcon, where Rob and I will be participating in a few games, the highlight of which (for me) is bound to be the Battletech Poker Run. I'm painting up a few minis in preparation, with one extra because I didn't read the rules very closely before I decided to blow money on a new mini expressly for the con. In the next week or so, I'll be posting pics of a Bushwacker, a Mongoose, a Solitaire, and probably a Wolfhound and a Highlander as well.

So that's where I stand on this thing. The game has changed a lot in ten years, and it's been sold off a few times, leading to some weirdness (Battletech using the Clix system? Get the fuck out of here with that shit) but I'm pretty excited about a lot of the new material I'm seeing, and I'm really looking forward to gaming a lot more and posting it up. I figure I'll probably think differently after I get owned at that con, though...