QT3 hobby desk thread

Infinitely. See an unpainted version of merry’s marines from above:

The improvements over minis from the 80s are generally two fold: a switch from metal to plastic and are that most quality minis are designed to be painted and so sculptors make sacrifices for that when it comes to decision points regarding realism, detail, etc. You can really tell the difference between a mini that is designed to be ‘realistic’ and one that is designed to be painted.

Note the large edges on the shoulder pads and the exaggerated recessed detail on the chest pieces, etc. These are largely there so that even relatively unskilled mini painters can produce something that looks good on the table using relatively simple techniques.

I’m not selling merry short here – he does awesome work. But it’s not nearly as hard to paint a mini today as it was 30 years ago.

The exaggerated sculpts also serve to make the models “pop” more on the table and give them greater table presence. You can actually find highly realistic “true scale” models and they look great in dioramas but a bit lackluster on the tabletop. Different strokes.

So this thing is now on my desk. A Ma.K Gladiator.

Really fun build so far, specially because after the Sababi, tackling something with so much weathering were mistakes are easily fixable feels very relaxing. (in a clean build like the Sazabi, a mistake takes you a long time to fix, sanding, stripping and priming the piece anew).

What is a “Ma.K Gladiator” and where is it from?

Is it the S.F.3.D stuff?

Well, a Ma.K Gladiator is this:

But my wife calls it the tick :P

It comes from Maschinen Krieger (previously SF3D as Sharaleo says) which is a series of models based on a series of designs by a Japanese model maker that used to take very different kits and slap them together to create cool futuristic war machines. they developed a story to go with them ans starting making models of the kitbashes (this was in the 80s, there’s a long tradition of Ma.K stuff).

Nowadays there are some companies making resin kits and two companies making plastic models (this one is plastic).

The best thing about these models is that you have to weather and modify them to take them to the next level.

I’ve tried several things with this one. First, I have added two different king of textures to the armor. It is not smooth like plastic anymore, and it will help with later weathering. I also did welding beads out of miliput (see the little protusion in the underside of the leg and how in my model it seems welded to the main model) and added extra tubing to the engine.

It’s still a long way to go, even just the legs, since what you are seeing now is just basic paint + scratches (two layers with hairspray in the middle). I’m still missing the camo and the whole weathering process.

One really cool thing about Ma.K models is that except for the priming, the models can be hand painted to amazing results (because hand painting the base color already gives a weathering effect. In this case, because of the hairspray chipping I used an airbrush for the main light blue, but will use brushes for most of the build, as a way to learn.

Nice. The “tick” looks pretty sweet. Can’t wait to see it finished up!

That effect looks really good.

A little good news for GW fans. According to a newsletter from Miniature Market, GW is lifting it’s ban on retailers selling their products online. Starting in Mid May, retailers will be able to list GW product on their sites normally, but are bound to not discounting the product by more than 15% off.

For which market(s)? GW is notorious for having different rules in place for different regions.

This is all I have to go on, no word on different markets.

What a clusterf by GW.

More than a few brick and mortar stores shut down after GW locked down online sales to ‘improve’ the consistency of the customer experience, and now they’re bringing them back because they realized that those the online sales those stores lost in the process didn’t completely transfer to purchases from GW online store.

I think it’s a positive course correct from GW, one of many we have seen lately from them.

So it’s not quite as cool as a lot of the miniatures in this thread, but I finished my very first foam core insert yesterday. I wanted to start with something a little easier, with a strong secondary preference for a game that really needed it the most. I looked through the big geeklist of foam core inserts at BGG and settled on the Lord of the Rings LCG.

I wish I had taken a picture of what I was doing before, but I basically inverted the insert that came with the game, and had stacks of cards that were mostly held in place by the fact that the sleeves made them fit a little snugly in the space available. Nevertheless, any serious jarring of the box would jumble the stacks up pretty easily.

Here’s the insert I ended up making:


It’s nowhere near perfect, but I’m fairly happy with how it turned out considering it was my first time and I am absolutely not crafty at all. I also learned a lot about what to do and what not to do. One big thing I’ll be changing, my wife had a hot glue gun, and I had read that they can be pretty good with foam core. Well, they do create very really good bonds between the pieces, but the glue sets so fast, that there’s very little time for any adjustments. I had pieces where the glue was essentially set as soon as I put in on the piece I was joining. It also was near impossible to clean up if there was excess (you can see the glue pretty clearly in some places). And worst of all, if the tip of the glue gun hits the foam board at all, it will cause it to melt.

I also really need to find some sort of square I can use. I ended up with most of my pieces not being completely straight, and differences of even half a millimeter can cause problems. For instance, the removable tray will not go into its slot if I rotate it 180 degrees without applying more pressure than I’m comfortable with.

Some of the things I really like about the insert:

  1. The removable tray will save me a few minutes in the setup and tear down of the game (I normally use plastic baggies and apple sauce cups for holding tokens.
  2. The dividers between the cards are removable and can be adjusted as I get more cards.
  3. The different sections allow me to hold my different decks, and I can put an encounter deck into the middle bottom section pretty easily for faster setup if I’m replaying.
  4. There’s definitely room to grow. I’m just starting to get into the second cycle (I just picked up the deluxe expansion recently), and now that the cards aren’t laying sideways, it’ll be much easier to fit them in.

All-in-all, I’ll be much more likely to play it now that I know I won’t have to spend extra time separating out the decks or dumping tokens. I’m also planning to print out some card stock dividers for the different spheres or types of cards which will make the deckbuilding a little quicker as well.

Some tips from a guy who professionally puts together high end custom packaging pieces, and sometimes uses foam and hot glue

*Don’t use the gun as soon as the glue melts, wait another few minutes for it to get further beyond the melting point, it gives you more time to set the pieces.
*have a sharp exacto blade around. It is a good way to separate pieces glued incorrectly, and to clean of any excess glue on non porous surfaces.
*there is a problem I call ‘spiderwebs’. Basically when you pull the gun away from the surface you get these long thin strands of glue that float around and make a mess. Push the tip into the surface and ‘grind’ it off. Done correctly it will cut the glue bead off, and not have the dangling spiderwebs.
*using some type of square edge or other block to allow you to place pieces correctly will help a lot.
*different foams melt at different rates. Using a higher density foam will help reduce this. A cross link or HDPE style will give best results for heat tolerance.

Hope this helps!

Nice work there! I especially like your choice of game. :)

Also, there are apparently ‘high heat’ and ‘low heat’ glue guns. Maybe the opposite of whichever yours is would make a difference?

And then, for people with more money than crafting ability and/or time, just buy your inserts from Broken Token.

Thanks for the tips Craig!

[quote=“CraigM, post:457, topic:77193”]
*Don’t use the gun as soon as the glue melts, wait another few minutes for it to get further beyond the melting point, it gives you more time to set the pieces.[/quote]

I tended to plug the gun in well before I needed to use it. The gun got very hot, almost to the point where it was a little hard to hold because of the heat coming off the thing. That said, it’s very possible that a few of the joints were done with the gun maybe not as hot as it could be.

I did have to do this a few times, but I probably should have done it a few more, particularly on the joints that fairly heavily globbed up.

That’s the perfect term for them. I had this happen a lot, but thankfully they were easy to clean up. I was worried about pushing the tip into the surface though because of the melting.

The gun I was using had a hot setting, and something else, maybe warm? It’s possible that it might make a difference, but I would think using the cooler setting would make the glue dry even faster. It would definitely help with melting the foam though.

I think I’m going to try getting some craft glue, or maybe even using something like Gorilla glue that makes a good bond, but takes a little longer to set.

Thanks Merry. I last played in September after finishing the first cycle. I wanted to take a break and try some other games like Arkham (nifty ideas, but it didn’t grab me) and the Oniverse (lots of fun in short bursts). Looking forward to digging into Khazad-dum soon.

So, I’m still progressing on the Gladiator/tick, but something else came up.

A friend of mine that can’t own an airbrush (he has kids and no working room at home) wants to get into painting/weathering his kits after I introduced him to the hobby, so we decided to do the same model and weather it together by hand (his will be unpainted and mine painted but at the end of the day they might look very similar with the heavy weathering we are going to do).

This is what we are going to be working on. This is painted, panel lined and decaled (and some moderate seam line removing too):

This is a Plamax Cherno Alpha (from Pacific Rim). Cool model with a nice lighting setup (leds in a pre-assembled piece) but pretty crappy articulation compared to Bandai kits (which remain the best in the hobby).