Elves: Nearly Finished

I managed to do some more work on my elves over the weekend, and finally got around to taking some photos. Here you go!

Father's Day

For Father's Day, B gave me a wooden model plane kit. It's a bunch of pre-cut pieces with some paints, brushes, glue and sandpaper. In other words, everything you need to build a wooden plane.

So we sat down to build it together.

First step was obviously getting all the bits sanded down. So I did that bit, then B helped me paint it up. We followed the paint scheme on the box, which was a pretty red and yellow colouring. Most of the pieces are a single colour, so it was the perfect sort of stuff for B to help with. He sat on my lap and help the brush while I helped make sure we didn't get paint everywhere.

After B's nap, we sat down to do the actual assembly. The biggest problem was that some of the pieces didn't line up properly. I think the main body section hadn't been cut correctly. Naturally, I didn't realise this until it was too late to do anything about it. So the wings aren't attached to the body correctly. We were also missing the piece that holds the propeller onto the plane, but that's not a huge deal.

Now B has a plane to play with that he built with his daddy! Awesome Father's day present!

Ex Illis

My latest discovery is Ex Illis. Ex Illis describes itself as the next generation in table top gaming. It seems to be a traditional miniatures game - two players sit down with their own little plastic men and make them fight. But the game is accompanied by an app (run on a laptop or iPhone) that takes care of all the hard stuff (combat, keeping track of in-game effects, etc).

There is a starter set for the game (two version - one with a fold-out paper game mat, and another with a modular plastic game board), but you can also increase your army with other miniature packs. Apparently the individual miniatures can level up and advance through out their lives (or through a campaign or something), so even just getting the starter pack gives you a living, evolving experience.

The app also keeps track of your previous battles, and there seems to be some online component.

Apparently it's been around since last year, and I think I may have noticed it in various banner ads around the place. But what caught my eye was a post on TableTopGamingNews about a free trial. This free trial seems to give you access to everything except the miniatures for 30 days. So basically you can play the whole game with proxies to see if you like it.

All of this has piqued my interest enough to want to look into it further. I've been thinking about the idea of merging physical games with various tech for a little while now, and from what I've read today, this seems like the most integration approach I've seen.

My research has been a little limited so far. Despite having a chunk of free time this lunch time, I'm currently stuck behind a filter that will let me get to BoardGameGeek and MaelstromGames (not to mention Facebook), but won't let me get to www.ex-illis.com or http://gameralone.blogspot.com because they're about "Games".

I know the starter set is available from Milsims for about $80, which from what I've seen of the models sounds like a pretty reasonable deal.

It's been a while since I did an update - real life hasn't left a lot of time for gaming/hobby stuff. Or writing about gaming/hobby stuff. But I do have a bunch of posts in the works, so I'm aiming to put them up over the weekend.

Quick Update on My Elves

I've got the elves primed and I've made a very small start to the painting job.

I'm aiming to keep my colour palette pretty simple - 3 colours (with washes and highlights) for the troops and maybe an extra colour of two for the captain. I know I want blue with a silver/white look, so maybe with a splash of orange somewhere on each figure.

Hopefully I'll be able to make some solid progress tonight and have some exciting pictures for tomorrow!

Triangle Bit for Mantic Elves

When I was putting together the Mantic elves, there was one pieces I couldn't work out. This little triangle thing.

There are 6 or 8 of them on the sprue, but I couldn't see anything similar modelled on any of the "special" bodies - the one without any arms and the one with the cloak, and I also couldn't spot the piece in any of the photos on the building instructions.

I wondered if it was a faceplate for the helms, but it seems to big. It also didn't seem to fit right as a shoulder pad.

Building Mantic Elves

I have a bit of time at home to myself this week, so I thought I'd tackle something a little ambitious. With all the talk of Warhammer flying around the modelling parts of the internet that I frequent, I've been getting the urge to play with something fantasy based. So I figured it was about time I broke out the Mantic Elves I picked up earlier in the year.

The box has 10 multi-part elves on a single sprue. I was hoping to get them all clipped, assembled and primed on Monday night, but I ended up only getting everything clipped. Last night I cleaned the parts up and assembled all the models, so first thing this evening I'll prime them, and hopefully be able to start painting tonight!

Finally, Some Photos!

I mentioned before that I'd improved my Angels of Redemption painting technique, but failed to actually post any images of it. Well, I've finally gotten around to it now!

This was taken after I was happy with the base coats, but before I'd added the black lining.

I still really like the extreme contrast that the black lining gives the armour, so despite it being a bit of a pain to do, I'm going to stick with it. You'll also (hopefully) notice that spent a bit more time on the faces.

I spent some time trying to get the hairy guy's skin to not look like his hair. I'm still not happy with how his eyes look, but I decided to stop trying. I was much happier with the bald guy's head.