Games Workshop Customer Service for the win

Posted on June 16, 2014 by Peter Kelly

I spent Father’s day enjoying myself and doing little of importance. After How to Train Your Dragon 2 I was inspired to assemble three Beasts of Nurgle and a set of ten Plague Bearers. My beasts are older metals kits, back when they came on 40mm bases. Only 1 of them still was in the blister pack. Anyway, out of all of them, the model in the blister was missing a piece, the small elbow. A quick call to GW customer service this morning and I’m expecting a replacement piece in the mail in 8-10 days.

For all of the things I don’t like about the compnay, Games Workshop has always had top notch customer service. It is the one thing that makes me willing to buy product and keep in on the shelf so that if/when I want it later I have it. I know that as long as the product is current they will stand by the model and fix any problems.

Hobby Progress Update

Posted on May 20, 2014 by Peter Kelly

Wow, it’s been a few months since I’ve been able to write an update. My apologies. My wife and I took a trip to the east coast, I finished out one job and then I changed jobs about 6 weeks ago. The last two months have been a whirlwind. I played about 5 games in all this time, 3 of which were a team tournament; more on that later. I guess, then, it was unavoidable that I got sick last week. Turns out it was a good stimulus for my hobbying.

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Buy local – new game company “Fire Squadron”

Posted on May 19, 2014 by Peter Kelly

I have two friends, Andy and Tracy, who have been talking about starting a game company as long as I’ve known them. Well, they’ve finally done it. Their Kickstarter was launched, and funded inside a few days. There is still time to get on board:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/firesquadron/black-market-warehouse

With 18 days left I expect they will unlock most, if not all of their stretch goals. At $15, the game is a steal. How do I know, I got to play test it before they launched their Kickstarter. This game is LUMP approved.

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HPC: Belial Complete

Posted on April 26, 2014 by Erik Kenneally

After almost two months I’ve finally finished up the Belial model I’ve been working on. There are a few reasons why this model has taken longer than the six models I did for the last part of the challenge (the Deathwing Knights). First and foremost, the model was made of finecast, which required a ridiculous amount of prepping. On the bright side, its multitude of issues gave me good examples to use for my finecast article. The second reason was that I really wanted to try some new things with this model, hopefully leading to something that I can enter into a painting competition if the opportunity arises.

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Creature Caster now on Kickstarter

Posted on April 20, 2014 by Peter Kelly

If you’re a Chaos Daemon player, or generally like to paint larger organic models, then you need to check out this long awaited Kickstarter from the guy that brought us Ultraforge daemons. The kickstarter campaign is less than a day old, has tripled its goal and already unlocked 5 bonus options.

You can check it out here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jeremyglen/creature-caster-first-wave

Tutorial: Glazing (Part 1)

Posted on April 18, 2014 by Erik Kenneally

There are few skills more valuable than glazing to a serious painter. It can be used to make the smoothest blends imaginable, it can tweak colors, and it can even be used to smooth out layering blends. While there are other methods of blending (such as wet blending, airbrushing, and traditional layering) none seem to offer the same level of precision and versatility that glazing does. The drawback, of course, is that it is potentially a time consuming process. In this tutorial I hope to share some of my techniques and tricks for glazing. A word of caution, this is one of the more difficult techniques to master in my opinion because it is very counter-intuitive to normal painting. Additionally, paint transparency adds a whole new dimension to the paints. Regardless, the time spent learning the process is worth the effort.

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Tutorial: Prepping and Fixing Finecast models

Posted on March 10, 2014 by Erik Kenneally

Since I’m currently putting together a Deathwing force for the 2014 HPC, I thought it might be prudent to get a Belial model and paint him up. Unfortunately, this model is only available in the much loathed finecast material. The internet is abound with horror stories about how bad finecast models are, and with good reason. The models are quite pricey and often have many problems. This issue is compounded with the fact that GW stores don’t stock many finecast models that aren’t brand new, so picking through a pile for the best example is often not an option. On the bright side, the material is reasonably easy to work with, and from what I’ve heard GW has a great return policy on them if you aren’t satisfied. Aside from returning models ad nauseam though, you’re likely to settle on an imperfect model. Here are some tips to get it into tip-top shape.

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Product Review: Slip Grip Hobby Mat

Posted on March 6, 2014 by Erik Kenneally

As most people know, painting can be a particularly messy hobby. Add in the overspray of airbrushing and most work surfaces are doomed to become an acrylic caked jumble of colors. Enter the Slip Grip hobby mat, a product that claims to be Teflon-like in nature. Paints, adhesives, and more are stated to effortlessly wipe away, leaving behind only a clean work-space. Does it live up to these claims? I put it through its paces over the last 8 months to find out.

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Product Review: Chapterhouse Studios Space Bug Defense Lines

Posted on March 2, 2014 by Peter Kelly

February was a good month for me for Kickstarters. I received 3 shipments, completing my Frontline Gaming/Tablewar Megamat, Tablewar Mini Case and finally, my Chapterhouse Studios Defense line sets. Both Tablewar and Frontline Gaming were spot on, or darn close on shipment timelines.

If you want to see some of the other designs you can checkout the already funded CHS kickstarter here. Continue reading →

HPC: Deathwing Knight Squad Batariel Complete

Posted on March 1, 2014 by Erik Kenneally

Another month passed, another challenge completed. I made the questionable choice to paint the most ornate and difficult squad in my army on the shortest month of the year. It was down to the wire at 9:00 PM on the last night of the month, but I managed to finish and take pictures while the paint was still drying.

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