BFG 2010.03.25 & Fleet Builds

So we played BFG last night and I think everyone enjoyed themselves. For those that have not built their Imperial or Chaos cruisers, one way to decide which cruiser to build would be to consider which battleship you might want in the future. It will be highly unlikely to field more than one battleship in a game. Thus if you want a carrier as a battleship, build no more than one cruiser as a carrier. If you want a gunship as your battleship, then at least one, if not two, of the cruisers should be carriers.

Chaos have 3 battleships available: the Despoiler (carrier), the Desolator (gunship), and the Planet Killer (gunship)
Imperial Navy has 5 battleships available: the Emperor (carrier), the Retribution (gunship), the Apocalypse (gunship), the Oberon (gunship-carrier mix), and allied Space Marine Battlebarge (gunship-carrier mix).

Necron, Tau, Corsair Eldar all only have one battleship choice.

New Morgul and Swan Knight Minis

So this is either a command pack or they will have options for a horn blower/musician and a banner bearer.

On a further note, other things that are to appear soon:
Blackroot Vale Archers
Duinhir
Mauhur
Dwimmerlaik
Ruins of osgiliath terrain kit (whoops aristo)
Faramir captain of osgiliath

Also, the source books will be going direct only. So pick them up in a store now and save on the shipping.

BFG Gaming

BFG gaming session announced for 3/25/2010. Points? 600? 750?

Update: lets do a fleet between 600 and 700 pts.

LotR Heroes & Evil Shooting

Two thoughts.

1. Heroes work best in pair, especially when one is a strong fighter and the other a supportive hero.

2. To counter higher fight value models by outnumbering, it only works with increasing shooting, i.e. shooting is the counter to fight.

Rumor of new plastic kits.

So with the new battlehosts supplement coming in may it looks like GW will have some new models outside the current metals.
Rumor is that there will be plastic swan knights as well as plastic morgul knights. Is it true? Sounds like a good idea but we will have to wait.

New Rohan and Dunland SBG rules in brief

Here they are thanks to Grashnar again.
I was thinking of starting dunland a little while ago because no one plays them and I just started some rohan. Looks like Thrydan and Grimbold will be in m y mailbox soon :).

Priming with Gesso and some stripping

So, I linked to an article earlier that talked about using acrylic gesso to prime miniatures.
Most of the article spoke about using black acrylic gesso(liquitex brand) to prime. I have been trying to find a way to use the white gesso(also liquitex) in the same manner. The white does not share the shrink to fit property of the black gesso. To account for that I have tried diluting the white gesso with water about 1:2 water:gesso. So far this has produced some good results. The following pictures are of a dwarf warrior that was stripped using 50/50 pine-sol:water. The first pic is pre gesso, the next is right after application and the final pic is after drying (with a king done earlier). The drying is done fairly quickly but I usually wait overnight before painting. It takes very little of this mixture to coat the miniature. While not as fast as spray priming, doing this allows easy priming anytime anywhere, is non-toxic, water soluble and can be removed by pine-sol stripping. It looks like a reverse wash, it makes the deeper recess look white instead of dark. The details are still there as you can see. The only issue is this: it is easy to put on too much. Just dip the very end of a medium flat brush into the gesso and you will be able to cover about 50% of a typical 25mm model. Getting excess off is easy, just wipe it off or take a brush that is dry and soak it up. Any big bubbles have always popped, while small bubbles go away by blowing on them, yes blowing.


























So I took some pics of pine sol stripped vs simple green stripped mini's some of finished models. Head on over to Stoney point refugees for a post on simple green. The model on the far left is pine-sol, next simple green, then new, then primed with black gesso, then white gesso. Next pic is finished product.