Painted Locust 1V

Short update today, but I wanted to get some pics of my most recently painted model up.

The most recent addition to my BattleTech force is a humble Locust, and it was a fun little project to help me get a quick win and some momentum back. Work has been brutal in recent months, and so hobby time is very hard to come by. Small but fun projects are a good way to help you feel confident and shake the rust off.

 

 

I also did the quick basecoat on another small batch of minis I want to paint soon. Should be fun, there’s misty heavies and assaults in that next batch!

Anyway, that’s it for now. Hopefully a bigger update next time 🙂

First Forays into 3D Modelling

All right, let’s get the old post editor going here.

So, it’s been a while. Since the Hobby Night podcast started up, my time and energy for the blog has gone down, which sucks, but I don’t have any plans for shutting it down. I haven’t done much painting either this summer, so I’m going to try and get the old good habits back by making more regular updates.

One of my current adventures, as some of you are aware, involves 3D printed miniatures. Pretty much just from a customer’s perspective so far, and maybe giving a little creative input here or there. The work that some of these normal, everyday people can come up with is pretty inspiring. After all, every professional got started somewhere.

So with all that in mind I’ve decided to download Blender, go through some basic courses, and see where it takes me. I liked the setup for the first few (free) videos in the link above, so I may grab a paid membership to keep working through the tutorials. They have a monthly or annual option, and paying a few bucks to learn how to effectively use some pretty complex free software is a pretty good deal overall.

My ultimate goal is to be able to extract files from video games to make 3D printable objects for my own personal use (naturally), and also to come up with some stuff myself. Like maybe some cool bits of terrain or something. Possibly throw it up on Shapeways, possibly get a prototype made and let someone resin cast it. Sky’s the limit sorta deal. For example, if SyFy does a good job with the TV adaptation of the Expanse and fails to create merchandise, I could see myself trying to model the Roci to make myself a miniature to put on the shelf. If that sentence made no sense to you, go read a book (or five).

In the meantime, I also wanted to say thanks to everyone who kept coming back to the site, even when I wasn’t updating much/at all. Pretty cool to see the little following I have is able to survive my legendary periods of neglect!

A Closer Look at Drea Renthal

I have to admit, I have been guilty of overlooking Drea up until now. Taking a stress to acquire a new TL seems decent, but not overwhelming. Makes Proton Torps nice (almost guarantees you 3 hits and a crit). But stress on Y-wings is generally bad.

All hail the pirate queen.

However, I had a bit of an epiphany moment the other day and looked at her card text again. It doesn’t say anything like “once per round”, or “you cannot use this ability if you have a stress token”. Hell, it doesn’t even say you have to acquire a target lock on the ship you’re currently shooting at! So can we add Drea to the list of S&V ships you don’t want to go anywhere near? That might be the case.

So what happens if you decide to never bother trying to clear that stress? True, you won’t be able to do any K-turns, hard turns at speed 3, or a straight 4. That kinda sucks, I suppose. But you do get some fun options that I hadn’t considered before. Tycho might even get jealous!

Scum and Villainy Hobby Plans

As I’ve been forced to wait a little bit for my giant Scum and Villainy order, I have been passing the time by painting up some BattleTech minis (pics on the Facebook page until I can write up an article for them) and planning what I will do to customize my Scum.

A few things have come to mind. For starters, the Y-wings and Z-95s won’t need very much attention, since the Y-wing looks amazing as-is and Z-95s don’t really demand that much customization. I will probably do some rusty, brownish-red markings on the Zs to help them mesh with the Y-wings, and maybe I’ll paint one specifically to be N’dru since he is a pretty decent little filler ship/flanker in a lot of lists. A nice red and charcoal grey color scheme should do the trick, inverting the colors of the regular Zs so he doesn’t look too out of place next to them..

Ending Soon – Greenman Designs Dynamic Colored X-wing Template Sets

Plenty of colors to choose from.

Just a quick reminder to everyone out there who might be interested in the Greenman Designs maneuver templates Kickstarter, the pledge window closes Saturday morning. The full color sets look great, and you get a huge pile of tokens for considerably less than what you’d pay from the other acrylic token/template shops.

A leather carrying case for your new templates is a wicked add-on.

Unlocked stretch goals include a ton of freebies and upgrades, based on how much you pledge. From faction specific target locks to acrylic asteroids, there’s plenty of goodies to be had. The $100 pledge level gets you a massive haul of goodies, and is well worth considering.