Painting Nolzur's Marvellous Miniatures Part 1 - Giant Spider

In my last post I took a look at some of the new unpainted (but primed) miniatures labelled "Nolzurs Marvellous Miniatures" from Wizkids. Now painting isn't necessarily a big thing for a lot of D&D players, so I thought I'd put out a quick guide for those of you who might be new to this side of the hobby, and/or want some general advice in painting minis of this sort. To start with, I'm going to have a look at the spiders, since they're relatively easy to get good results with for gaming purposes - and it's always nice to get started with a positive experience.

Materials

Now there are a few things you need when you get started in miniature painting. The obvious ones are paints and brushes - here I'm going to be using acrylics by Army Painter and Vallejo, but other brands are available and suitable. One manufacturer that you'll probably have easy access to is Games Workshop, and their paints are fine too (though they can be a little thicker to work with then the others). Generally, any acrylics made for modelling purposes are suitable, though ones for hobby or craft use are generally not. This is because of the size of the milled pigment particles and thick consistency, which gives them good general coverage and colour density for scenery and larger items, but fills detail and makes them difficult to work with for minis.

As for brushes, I generally use ones designed for acrylic paints and available from art shops. Now there are a massive number of options here, but all I'll say is that good quality brushes will save you time and money in the end - cheap brushes have their uses, but generally it's not for mini painting. I'm going to use Daler Rowney and Windsor & Newton brushes here (plus a knackered old brush - I'll explain that later), but I use a number of different ones, so don't take that as this is what you should use - find a brush make and type you are happy with from a local supplier, and stick with that. I find size 1 down round brushes are the most useful, with a couple of flat brushes for larger areas too.

Other things that help are a painting area, newspaper or something to protect whatever you're painting on, a palette (for mixing paints - which can be a simple tile, pot or a dedicated plastic one from a store (they're inexpensive), and an old jar or glass for water. I try to use two - one with fresh water for diluting paints and another for washing out brushes. A good light source is very helpful, plus some way of seeing the detail on the model - which may include a magnifying lens or glasses.

Setting up

The best way to start painting is to prepare well. Get all the paints you need together, clear everything else away, set things out, ensure you've clean water and your brushes are washed out. Make sure you mix your paints well - shaking usually achieves this but be careful you don't end up showering yourself and your surroundings with it - it tend to hamper the painting process and make you extremely unpopular to boot!

If you can afford a dedicated painting area, tray etc, this helps a lot, because you don't have to clear things away after every bit of painting - especially useful if you can't dedicate much time at any given session to the hobby. That being said, it's not essential and all of this can be done on a limited budget - but I'll let you work out the details of what's right for you and your particular depth of pocket. Here's the setup I used for this:

The first thing we need to do is remove any obvious flash, casting spurs etc from our mini - this spider has a bit on its abdomen, easily dealt with by trimming with a hobby knife or scalpel (but be careful not to cut your fingers off in the process!)

Now you're ready to paint!

Painting - Base Coat

So, here we have a spider.

I'm going to paint this mini in a similar way to the colour renders shown by Wizkids:

That means I'm going to start by painting it with a base coat of grey. I'm using Uniform Grey by Army Painter, but any mid-tone grey you're happy with will do - the great thing about spiders is you can paint them lots of different shades and they'll still look pretty realistic.

First thing to do is to thin the paint a little - how much will depend on the brand you're using, but you want something that will flow, and not gum up the detail. A rough guide is a brush of water to a drop or two of paint. I use water with a little propanol (rubbing alcohol) in it (a millilitre or so in a glass), which helps to break the surface tension of the water and lets it flow better. It's not essential, but a bottle of this will cost very little and last a VERY long time.

So, paint thinned, I give our spider a complete, overall coat of grey. As you will have already seen, I've unceremoniously stabbed it in the underside with a pin (with a tiny amount of superglue on it) to allow me to do this without handling it - this won't be seen at the end, and it speeds up the process since I don't have to paint it in sections. Now, don't worry if your coverage here doesn't look good - give it a second coat if necessary - two thin coats are better (and quicker) than one thick coat.

Now we have a grey spider.

We want to have brown hairy bits to give our spider an even more "shuddery" response from any arachnophobes, and to do this I'm going to use Monster Brown on all the "furry" areas of the abdomen and legs. I'm using thinned paint again, and not worrying about being too precise.

It's now painted, but it looks a bit "flat". This is the thing with miniature painting - you're trying to recreate the effect of light on a larger object on a much smaller one, so you need to cheat. Larger objects create more shadows, giving the eye the impression of depth, and we need to artificially recreate this on our mini, since at its small scale the light scatter drowns this effect out. So now we move onto the magical step know as "washing".

Painting - Washing

Now there are two routes to washing - buying pre-mixed or making your own. I've covered making your own washes on a previous blog article (http://mannmomo.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/washes.html), so here I'm just going to use pre-made washes, this time from Vallejo, but I'm going to mix them. I'm using Umber Shade and Black Shade in a 2:1 ratio (that is, two drops of umber to one drop of black). I'm not diluting them here, because I want a strong effect and the colours are quite dark.

Now using a wash is the easiest thing in the world - you just paint the whole mini liberally with it and let it dry!

Once dried, the wash will darken the overall aspect of the model, but by differentially settling into the recesses of the model it creates the illusion of shade.

Painting - Finishing Touches

Our spider is quite usable now, but if you're getting into this painting thing there are a couple more steps you can go down. One is highlighting, the other is detail painting. Highlighting a model like this is easily done by drybrushing, which is a technique that can take a while to develop, but rapidly enhances models like this.

There are many posts and articles on drybrushing, but the short story is you remove as much of the paint from a brush as possible (so the brush is "dry"), and then you drag the brush across the model so that any paint remaining on the brush catches the raised surfaces on the model. You can do this as little or as much as you like to build up the effect, and as you use a lighter shade, it simulates light falling onto and picking out those higher areas of the model.

Detail painting is done last, and it's the little things that just add that extra something to a model, and can really make it stand out - for our spider this is really just the painting of the eyes.

So let's start by dry-brushing the model. Using the original Monster Brown with a little white, I used the crappy brush (because dry-brushing WRECKS brushes), get a little paint on it and then rub it off on some paper, and then the back of my hand. Why the back of the hand? Well, you can tell exactly how much paint is on the brush this way - you can weel how dry the brush is and how much paint is coming off. You want to get it so that basically nothing is coming off. You can then use that brush against the model, swiping it across the area you want, and tiny amounts of paint will be left on the raised areas - here you can see the effect on the back of the spider - compare that with the last photo and you can see the effect, which should be quite subtle.

Finally, I'm using some Army Painter Matt Black to paint the eyes

This is thinned as previously, but this time I've using a size zero brush and very carefully painting in the large eyes on the model (which are still tiny!)

It's not much, but it does add something to the model, doesn't it?

And here we have the completed mini, ready to menace our adventurers as they progress towards their destiny!

I hope that's proved helpful to those of you who have not tried painting minis before - the whole process to paint a spider is not long at all, mostly drying time. The effect is pretty good for using in your games, and easy to achieve - so what are you waiting for? Get painting!

Nolzur's Marvellous Miniatures - Part 1

When I saw that there were some "official" D&D minis coming out, I was fairly uninterested. Then I took a look at some renders and they looked quite nice, pre-primed minis and they were doing monsters as well as PCs. They were also touted as pre-primed with Vallejo, enabling you to just get right into painting them...Then the product started hitting the market in the US for a very reasonable price, and this started to look like something worth taking a look at further...when they hit UK shores, they did so at £3.99 RRP for an average of two minis -which is pretty insane value...so I decided to pick some up. Online I found them for £3.59 from Magic Madhouse, and being a DM I ordered a bunch of monsters...here they are;

So let's take a look in greater detail. I broke open the giant spider blister, which contains 3 minis, 2 scenic base add-ons or tokens, and 3 bases. The bases are a little thin, so I'll probably not use them and use my standard size 3D printed ones instead for consistency. Anyway, here they are...

These are very realistic - painted up and they could easily be mistaken for real spiders if put in the bath etc.

There's a little light flashing on the body and some of the legs where the moulds must meet, but overall the detail is excellent and cleanup will be minimal -they're certainly a quantum leap up form a lot of giant spider minis available, and their price-point means you could field a real hoard of these against a party. Detail continues to the underside of the mini too, which is really nice to see...dead spider, anyone?

The included base tokens are also a very nice addition to this set, I especially like the cocooned humanoids - this is a greta little piece!

Three giant spiders and two little scenery add-ons for this price is insanely good value - I expect to see a lot more campaigns featuring spiders now!

Next up are gargoyles - something that's hard to 3D print well and although I have a Reaper figure, it is rather big. Now the gargoyles did surprise me with how small they are, but they're beautiful little minis and will be a doddle to paint (mainly being grey, wash, drybrush) like stone. I bought 2 sets because I like gargoyles - my party has fought quite a few in Tyranny of Dragons, to the point they now trust no statues!

Next up are much larger figures - Bugbears!

These guys are really nice, and pretty big - and again the same price. Here they are individually to show off their detail;

Once again, they are very close to the artwork in the MM, and very evocative of everything a bugbear should be. The next monsters are very similar in both size and accuracy of their depication - another classic D&D monster - Gnolls!

The hyaena-faced Gnolls are really good - I hope they do some more sculpts for variety as I'd like to get a big bunch of these.

The last mini is another spider, but this time it's just a single mini, but it's big - a phase spider;

Coming on a scenic base this time, the phase spider is fabulous - just like the MM rendition and different enough from a standard giant spider, both in size and looks to be distinctive. That said, there would be nothing to stop you fielding this as another type of spider - different paint jobs would probably do it no problem.

Overall I'm very impressed with this new range of minis, they're detailed and evocative, well posed and nicely produced and packaged. The price point for this type of quality and the official stamp makes them a steal, and I've already pre-ordered a bunch more, including displacer beasts! Bring them on!

So what are you waiting for? Get buying and painting!

D&D 5e - Session Zero - the most important one?

I'm a member of a few D&D 5e groups on Facebook, including ones for DMs. I'm always amazed by some of the commentary, often by DMs, with complaints about their players behaviour. Sometimes it's also about DMs too, but the ratio does seem out of kilter with the ratio of players to DMs. Anyway, distribution aside, many of these comments are pretty shocking - players and DMs throwing tantrums, demanding certain things "or else", using their phones (for non-game related stuff) whilst playing - all sorts of disruptive behaviour that would generally be considered anti-social in just about any other setting.

There are questions on some home-brewed rules - a common one being critical failures. Many DMs have house-ruled that a natural "1"  a player attack equals a dropped weapon, a broken bowstring, an attack that hits another player or some such. Cries of outrage are expressed - "My group would never tolerate this", "This slows down gameplay and fun for all", "You're destroying the rules" - all kinds of things are mooted and counter-argued.

Distilling down to the route cause of an awful lot of these, a huge source of these issues boils down to communication - or a lack of it. Some of these get so bad that players are excluded, forced out, or in some cases, groups even disbanded entirely. Now the group I DM is a pretty large one, yet we rarely have any of these issues. Not only that, but none of us knew each other at all this time last year...we were all strangers and got together through MeetUp. Surely we aren't that different? Why haven't we come across this?

Well, I think the reason is that we had a Session Zero - essentially a discussion between us all on our experience, how we wanted to play, what we thought was fun, what we didn't want, schedules - pretty much everything. Everyone had a voice, everyone agreed with what we decided and we had created an open environment where if things changed, we could bring it up. We did this before even rolling a single dice. When we did then roll for stats everyone had a clear idea of what the path ahead of them was - some chose to roll, some chose standard stats, and they also had the option to points buy - that was one of the agreements we made.

We covered things like;

• What style of play did we want? - minis, tiles, paper, "theatre of the mind" (we chose minis),
• How should the characters level up? (we chose needing a long rest after gaining the relevant experience)
• Regular sessions or ad-hoc? (We chose regular)
• Where to play? (A couple of the players offered their home dining room, which was great!)
• What was acceptable at the table - mobile phones being a primary topic. (we agreed phones could be left on in case of emergencies, but not used at the table unless for a D&D related app, like a stat or spell tracker)
• What classes/races, optional rules etc would we use - like Feats, for example (we agreed that we'd just use Players Handbook races & classes, and then expand out from that when we all had a bit more experience with 5th edition)
• What, if any, home-brewed rules would we use? (more below)

Now we use a critical fail mechanic, whereby a 1 in melee will drop the weapon, a 1 on a ranged attack risks hitting another creature in the way. As our party often takes risks in firing into combat, this has resulted in a LOT of very cinematic (and often hilarious) moments - to the point where the party has been named "The Backbiters". Does this mechanic slow the game down? No. Does it hamper the party in a way that breaks the game? No. Is it breaking the rules? OF COURSE NOT! This is D&D! Don't you remember Gygax's famous quote about rules?!?!?!

Now we're not perfect - no group of humans is - we've had some tense and/or uncomfortable points around the table before...but these weren't brought on by rules discussions or mechanics. In any case, they were aired and passed pretty quickly, and we moved on...everyone remained friends. Why? Well, I think we've got a good bunch of folks, which helps, but also everyone has agreed to a common framework in a group franchise - we're all part of this, and all have a similar understanding - in the main because of our session zero.

Everything we have done since that point has thus been an exploration together - everyone is there to have fun, and I'd say we're getting better at it all the time - the sessions we've had in the past couple of months have included some of the best sessions I've ever played  - and I've had skin in the game since the early '80s....

So my advice to any group starting out in D&D, any DM looking for a new group or any existing players who want to get into another campaign - have a session zero. It might seem like a waste of time when you first suggest it, but in my opinion it forms one of the best foundations for building good sessions in the future that you can have. So what are you waiting for? Get together and get talking!

Salute 2017

So another Salute show has come & gone - what did this one bring?

Well, for starters this was Oscar & my first Salute show in 4 years that we'd not been at the SG stand helping out, so it gave us a lot more time to look around, and that was a great thing - how much we'd missed out on in prior years! To start with, this year the bag had the Salute exclusive mini;

Also in the bag was another model, this time an injection moulded plastic figure for Wild West Exodus, which is another good thing! They actually had a stand at the show too, together with somone actually dressed as Captain Nimue - and no, I didn't take a picture!

Now having a look around Salute all day is (as many of you will know from any show) an exhausting experience. Gamers are a mixed bunch, and the amount of pretty rude and backpack-wearing blunderers in the show seems abnormally high! Still, that aside, most folks are pretty cool, and we got to meet face-to-face a fair few folks we'd had on the Hub Systems podcast, which was great.

Anyway, let's not get ahead of ourselves - what did we see at Salute? Well, let's run down our highlights;

1. Runewars
2. D&D Figures
3. Hawk Wargames
4. Dark Souls
5. Shattered Void
6. The Drowned Earth
7. Mierce Miniatures

I'll also talk a little bit about the Spartan Games stand, and some other random thoughts that come to me...

1. Runewars

So let's kick off with Runewars. This is Fantasy Flight's entry into the fantasy wargaming genre, and I've been thinking about it for a while, especially so after watching Sorastro's YouTube guides to painting (https://www.youtube.com/user/Sorastro). After watching a small part of a demo game, I decided to take the punge and buy the absolutely enormous box, at a discounted show price (though I later found it for slightly less elsewhere in the show....well, you can't win 'em all, can you?). I'm going to do a proper unboxing on this one in another post, so will leave those thoughts for then.

2. D&D Figures

Salute is a dream if you're looking for figures for D&D - there are so many manufacturers and traders selling appropriate items, from generic adventurers through very specific classes (Halfling Barbarian, anyone?) to monsters of all sizes and shapes (giant rats and beetles to enormous dragons). I picked up a couple of Wizard/Mage figures as they looked ideal for Red Wizards of Thay for the Rise of Tiamat campaign. Here they are:

3. Hawk Wargames

Hawk are easily identifiable at major events like salute because of the 10mm scale frigate that Dave and his team constructed and cart about as a central icon for their stand. This was as impressive as ever, and around it were demo tables with both Dropzone and Dropfleet. Behind it is the trade booth with product and display cases. I wanted to get an Athens for Oscar's UCM, and also another for a friend over in the US. Unfortunately we got to their booth after the first 30mins of the show in which all 150 they brought sold out. They did have Corvettes, launch assets, resin objectives and other pieces, which I was sorely tempted to buy, but also found them at a lower price through other traders (unsurprisingly!).

On display were the new casts for the Scourge and UCM Battlecruisers, which looked great - the Scourge one looking especially good. 

There were also the advanced sector tokens for display as well:

There were full display cases with fleets for all four races, looking as sexy as ever, this time with the Corvettes added to them. There were plenty of staff around, including Hawk Dave himself, and the stand felt like it was buzzing every time we went to it or past. In short, Hawk seemed to be having a really good day, and their games seem to be doing very well.

4. Dark Souls

We backed the Dark Souls Kickstarter, and this was the first time we got to see physical models and play first hand. The models are beautiful, and the gameplay is as brutal as in the video game. Oscar and I played the warrior and the herald against the Dancer, and actually did ok - getting it down to 6HP (from 34!) before I finally succumbed to a nasty attack (and when one of you dies, you all die!). The AI system is very good, and the models are incredibly detailed for board game items - something we all tend to expect nowadays. The chap who demoed the game was very good, and showed us all the models first hand. We had such a good time we forgot to take any pictures, so here's one borrowed from Beasts of War to show the Dancer in action

Really looking forward to getting this when it hits UK distribution!

5. Shattered Void

Meeting podcast guests in person is always a pleasure, and that was very true of the chaps at White Dragon which we covered in Episode 23. Oscar and I both backed their Kickstarter, and the ships shown at Salute this year still look great and the plastic games components and cards also look really nice - the stats slider is particularly good, and has a really nice feel to it when using the sliders - something like this for Firestorm would work really well, I think. Alan & Mark were pretty hoarse from talking most of the day by the time we met them, which is a good sign for the game, and we look forward to getting all of our goodies when they arrive soon!

6. The Drowned Earth

We covered The Drowned Earth in Episode 29, and met James to put a face to the name. We also got to play a demo game, where Oscar tried to crush my lizard dude with his hulking simian, jumping down a platform at him after taking three arrows from my leader...only to have his cold-blooded nerves of steel win for him, as he shot him squarely between the eyes as he sailed through the air at him, stepping aside as the lifeless body tumbled down the stairs behind him. He then bravely raced toward the objective to transmit the coordinates, only to be reduced to a flaming corpse by a dual hand-flamer wielding woman guarding the stairs. Oscars strange cross-dressing chap then successfully reached the transmitter, as my monkey-man couldn't shoot for crap.

Their Kickstarter is live, and I'd throughly recommend both listening to The Hub Systems episode where we talk to James and backing the game (we have!), as it's a very cinematic and fun game, with some really nice unique elements, such as the mixed factions (not "Apes vs Humans" or "Lizards vs Women" etc). I'm not sure how long we played (maybe 20 minutes?), but it felt like five minutes of complete fun - our thanks to Chris for that, he did a great job. The minis are very good, and seeing them cast when we were talking about initial concepts, art and renders back in December was a real treat. Also, although James was pointing out the unfinished bits of his boards for the game (you always see the flaws in your own work!), they actually looked great and really added to the experience.

7. Mierce Miniatures & Darklands

The Mierce Miniatures stand has drawn our attention over the past few Salute shows due to its incredibly detailed resin monsters, and this was no exception. This time they were also giving out free rules for their game Darklands. Their miniatures are absolutely A1+ grade, but they are pricey (though compared to GW, this makes more sense, and compared to Forgeworld there's no contest). Giving the rules and lore booklets out for free is a nice move, and I'll have cast a critical eye over them in the near future. For the time being, however, they remain as eye candy. If the prices were 20% or so less, they would be very desirable purchases, at the moment I think they're just too high-end to appeal to many beyond the exceptional display-piece painters out there.

Unfortunately Mierce's website is horrible, and really doesn't make it easy to showcase their beautiful sculpts, so the best place to see them is at shows. They organise models by factions, which unless you're already a Darklands player (unlikely) you've no idea where to look. This might make sense for the creators, but it doesn't help at all for new players to get into the game.

As an example, you have to go through about 4 screens before you get to see the mini above, which is a really nice sculpt and very nicely painted - yet hiding in the recesses of the site. Really the first thing you should see when you get onto their site are models like their Chimera, which is simply staggeringly beautiful. Unfortunately, even knowing what to look for, all they have on their website is this:

Now you can tell this is nice, but they have a painted mini, which shows the detail off beautifully and there's also absolutely nothing to show scale here - the actual model is massive, so why not have another stunning 28mm model paladin or something fighting it to show this? I mean, at the RRP of about £120, you need to see what you're getting! I think this is really limiting Mierce at the moment - they haven't really understood that their website is their shop window, and at the moment it looks like the outside of a German adult store.

Final Thoughts

Salute 2017 was a good show - it was great to see gameplay in person of games we've backed through Kickstarter, and good to meet the people we've chatted to over the ether for the Podcast, and see their labours come to fruition. It got me excited about mini games and painting, which is always a good sign. My main regret was not buying more Hawk stuff, but then I need to get more built and painted first, so that's probably a good thing!

Now of course I haven't mentioned Spartan Games here - something many of you may be glad about! Well, they were present, but with quite an underwhelming stand, with Halo being (perhaps predictably) the most predominant game. One could argue that there are good reasons for this, they're doing a lot behind the scenes etc, but let's face it - at a show, who cares about that? No one, that's who. Spartan need to improve their game dramatically or they're going to find it impossible to claw back any market share for their games beyond their status as a niche with a dedicated following. 

Having seen the leaps and bounds Hawk have made, and the abundance of fun, slick-looking games made out of people's attics (as Shattered Void is), then if they want to survive they need to do better, MUCH better. They've made a whole bunch of promises lately, but then Spartan's promises aren't even as good as GWs loose rumours, so we'll wait and see - it's not like  haven't got a whole lot of other shineys to look forward to right now!

Salute is a very particular kind of show, a real showcase exhibition point in the UK gaming calendar. It's a great show for looking at what's hot and upcoming, and you can bag a few bargains along the way (Terminator game for £10 anyone?...no, we didn't think so either....!). It's still a firm date for any gamer, though you need to get in early to grab those desirable show exclusives. If you're not concerned about that, its big enough and lasts for enough of the day that you can take it at a nice pace, though its still exhausting, and I still hate paying double for anything food or drink related "just because it's London". That's not enough to dissuade me from going, however, so I'll be looking forward to next year!