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Dreadball Orx / Goblins team painted

After hearing such great things about Dreadball on the Meeples & Miniatures podcast, I decided to pick it up. It’s around $55 on Amazon.com, which is way less than the $75 MSRP.

I have not played yet, but I’ve read the rules, and it seems pretty straightforward. The main holdup it that it took me 3 weeks to paint just one team! I usually paint 15mm, and these are 28mm, with the giant Orx guards more like 35mm. I was very surprised by how much longer it took to paint this larger scale.

Now that one team is done, I’m going to assemble, prime and wash the other team, and start playing. Then I’ll paint that team gradually, so that I can actually play the game sometime this month.

The time it took aside, I’m really happy with the way they came out. Here’s some pics along with my comments:

This is how they come straight out of the box. They are a plastic resin – not quite resin, and not quite plastic.

Sorted into the pieces for each figure.

The Orx / Goblins, ref and balls assembled and primed. Everything fit fine. No trimming or bending was needed.

I did clean up a lot of mold lines and some flash. I used a file on the mold lines, and it did not file as cleanly as metal. As some point I decided I was doing more harm than good, and just left the mold lines.

In hindsight, any “damage” I did was easily covered by the paint, but the mold lines I left are still visible. So I wish I had proceeded to clean up the rest of the mold lines. Too late now.

I did one Orx first, to make sure my plan was going to look OK. You can see the other 3 Orx in progress.

Goblins in progress.

Goblins basecoated and drybrushed, ready for a wash.

After a wash and highlights.

The back, with the number decal. I bought the official decals from Mantic, for , I think, $1.99.

Completed Orx.

The back of the Orx with the number decal.

The whole Orx / Goblin team, along with the ref and balls.

Here is the size of the different figures.

I learned a lot painting these figures, my first foray into a scale that’s not 15mm. Also, my first dealings with resin / plastic. I’d assembled and painted 1 vehicle in the past that was a mix of resin and metal, but these were my first all resin minis.

Full Thrust QRS

I made a quick reference sheet for Full Thrust a while back, and someone recently asked me for a copy. So, I made it into a PDF that you can download here.

It’s for the Cross Dimensions version of Full Thrust, which is the version I play.

If you find any errors, please let me know.

Gam3 Day May 2013

I just got back from May Gam3 Day 2013, put on by the Gam3rCon people. I had a really good time.

It’s held at the 10th Ave Theater downtown, which is about 8 miles from my house, so I really had no excuse not to go. Hodad’s (a great burger joint) is next door. So, I walk in at about 3pm, Hodad’s in hand, and 10 seconds later I’m sitting at a table playing Pandemic.

Pandemic is a cooperative game where the players are trying to stop a plague from wiping out humanity. We lost. 🙁 It was fun though, I definitely need to pick it up.

Immediately after that, I played a demo of Judge Dredd.

This was hosted by a guy named Ron, who was a good guy. The Judge Dredd rules can be downloaded for free.

Then I watched a quick game of Chrononauts :

Chrononauts was crazy. I’m not sure I quite grasped it.

After that, Ron (the Judge Dredd guy – above) hosted a game of Dungeon Crawl Classics which was a ton of fun.

Closing time rolled around too soon, and we got cut a bit short, but it was a great afternoon.

GZG’s Spider Drones

Over the last 2 weeks I’ve been working on 12 of GZG’s Spider Drones – 2 packs each of the standard and rotary canon. I paused in the middle and painted some other stuff, then my bases finally arrived from Litko, so I finished them up this weekend.

I painted them all the same, except for the top, which I painted in a similar style as I did the Grav Drones a while back. Then I based them using Green Stuff.

Cleaned and assembled. There’s a bit of flash around the leg joints that I just left – it was going to be very time consuming to clean, and leaving just added to the “spider legs” effect, I think.

Primed.

Various stages. Here’s was my process:

Do the bottom parts of all of them with a rough coat of metallic silver.
One at a time, do the metallic brass parts, then the black guns, the red lens, and highlights
Wash the bottom in heavy black
Paint the top

Here’s the bases in various stages. Litko 0.8mm thick wooden bases, 30mm in diameter, with a Litko heavy duty magnet bottom under it. Then I pre-cut the bits for the top of the base. That’s some metal mesh from the hardware store – I also use it to make chain link fences – and some square plastic mesh I got at the craft store in the knitting section.

Here’s with the Green Stuff – ready for primer.

There’s the Green Stuff, rolled flat. I put the base on it and use the razor blade to cut it to fit. The copper pipe fitting I use to make the circular indent. I have a smaller one, also. The mesh I just press gently into it, and it sticks. No glue needed.

All primed.

All painted.

A coat of shiny varnish, and then I glued the drone on to it.

Making the bases was fun, but I don’t think they look as good on the Spiders as they did on the Grav Drones. It’s too busy and dark. Lesson learned.

Two New Kickstarters

The Drunk Quest guys have a new Kickstarter for the 90 Proof Seas expansion. I’ve written about Drunk Quest here before. It’s a great game, and the people involved are good people.

Also, there’s a “pre Kickstarter” for All Quiet On The Martian Front. Grab it now, before the actual Kickstarter is approved.

I think this pre-Kickstarter idea is genius. You get some extra goodies, and they get a better launch day. Kickstarters tend to go big the first day or two, then level off, and then pick up again at the end. If a project has a good first few days, it greatly increases the potential success of the project.

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Miniatures and the games that use them.