Cool Mini?

Or Not?

I've been lurking on Cool Mini Or Not for a while now.  The site is a showcase for gamers' work, and features images of 174,536 minis! But it's not just a photo collection: anyone, member or not, can rate the images. 

The quality of painting, scratch-built figures and dioramas on this site is just amazing. To be honest, it was a little intimidating and delayed me getting started with my Dystopian Wars fleets.

I have a few new miniatures painted now and I've created a new picture gallery.  Spartan Games and Dystopian Wars is underrepresented on Cool Mini or Not, so I'm glad I put some pictures up there.  You can vote on each of my miniatures from this gallery.

Artists are also rated.  I'm in last place.  No, I'm being too hard on myself.  I am actually in joint last place ... with all the other artists that do not have enough votes to be ranked.  You need 5 pictures, each with 50 votes before you are rated.  Some of my images have been up for less that 24 hours so I'm surprised I have any votes at all.  It would be good to get off the bottom, though.

So now we'll know if my miniatures are cool or not.  Get out there and vote!

CoA: Thales Class Corvettes

My CoA Fleet just expanded to 9 miniatures.  I have six Thales Class Corvettes, so I painted them all together.  It took two weeks, but I am still painting a squad per week.  Just.

I tried a lighter blue as my base, which worked well.  I am still having trouble with the metallics.  I tried mixing the green ink into the metallics: fail, no colour on the figure.  I tried starting with a darker metal paint lower on the model: fail, too dark.  I tried mixing the ink with some medium, so it would coat better: not much difference.  But in the end, I like the effect, which I am calling malachite steel.  I need to work on my layering; dry brushing really brings out the tool marks on the miniatures.

My CoA industrialists have access to pure sturginium, hence the yellow neon engines.  They sell unrefined sturginium to the rest of the world, see what the KoB has to use here and here.

So here are my Thales Class Corvettes, in Blue Ice with Malachite Steel Plating:

And a looming close-up:

My Time Dilation Orb is primed and ready to go.  It's time to add a huge miniature to this fleet!

Burney 109 Scout Flyers

"What?", I hear you say, "When did Spartan Games release the new Burney miniatures?"  Relax, you'll notice these look a lot like Prussian Pflichts; surprise, they also have the same stats! It's just not steampunk without dirigibles, so I had to co-opt these guys into my KoB fleet.  I think these are some of the best Dystopian Wars models.
These are often painted some shade of grey and look suitably German.  But when I saw Straet's Prussian Blimps painted in a weathered canvas scheme, I knew could I borrow the idea for some Britannian Blimps.

Burney 109 Scout Flyers:

Looming above:

First Brush: Tribal Class Cruisers

I think the Spartan Games miniatures for Dystopian Wars are great, but I found painting them a bit daunting.  I had never painted such large miniatures, my techniques were rusty and I had no good idea of the paint scheme I wanted, having never painted ships.

For the Kingdom of Britannia, I knew I wanted something historically realistic, a camouflage scheme to break up the large flat areas, and a dirty, smoky, weathered look.  But I couldn't make these ideas gel into a completed idea.

The Spartan Games community website really helped me get started, especially once I saw Maestro's work:
Maestro's KoB Fleet
Seeing these miniatures immediately got me going. This was the first camo scheme I really liked and the colours fit my dull, grey, dirty, realistic ideas.  I knew I couldn't come up with anything this good, so I unashamedly copied it (thanks Maestro).  I added more metallic colours, which made it a little more steampunky, and glowing green sturginium engines.  Here is the first result, on the Tribal Class Cruisers.

Here are some other views:

There's an ugly one at the back of each picture, my first attempt.  The next two were much better.
I'm looking forwards to painting the rest of the fleet.

And So It Begins

Wow! My first blog post.

It’s been about 10 years since I last painted a war game miniature.  Computer games spoiled me; no time consuming setup, no rules to memorise, no problems stopping halfway through a game, no backlog of unpainted miniatures.  A vague interest in steampunk and a random visit to the Spartan Games website changed that.  Although their Dystopian Wars rule set is so complex I might never play a game, I knew immediately, I had to paint some of their miniatures.  Steam ships, blimps, giant tanks, tiny fliers, it’s a great range that captures steampunk perfectly.

And the miniatures are huge!