Kingdoms of Equality-tane

[TheBeninator]

Update!

Ok, getting serious about this timing jazz. 

I threw down a primer coat last night. I am using an airbrush for a few reasons. 

1) I'm out of rattle can primer

2) I am wary of using rattle can indoors

3) The humidity is not optimal for rattle can priming anyways (though I have no clue if the same applies for airbrushing or not).

What I found is that I spent 53 minutes between setup and breakdown (plus airbrush cleaning) to prime just 7 sprues (more like 5). Rattle cans should take something like... 10 min max?

This looks like an easy spot to save some time for the future. So I pose to you rattle can primers.

What do you do in the winter when the humidity is not within the bounds of what people say is "optimal"?

[Andrewgeddon]

Do you have a garage? I've primed via rattle can when it's cold (like snowing cold) without issue, I think if you have a space that's relatively dry you might be ok. 

I don't know if this is helpful at all, heh.

[TheBeninator]

Ahh I have a basement, doye, that had not occurred to me.

What’s your primer of choice?

[Andrewgeddon]

5 minutes ago, TheBeninator said:

Ahh I have a basement, doye, that had not occurred to me.

What’s your primer of choice?

I use Krylon, either the Colormaxx flat black or the "specialty flat" camouflage line. I've used a bunch of different primers over the years (GW, Armory, Privateer Press, and others), and they all really work the same in my experience, so I get what's cheap. I will say I have had mixed results with Krylon's white prime though.

[TheBeninator]

Update!

Yes, I am probably updating too often, but it keeps me engaged!

Made some color decisions and just went to town. I find that I often dont start projects because I dither about on what the color scheme should be. This time I took all of about 5 minutes to pick the colors for riders and horses.

First up we have 4 primary colors for the riders/shields. I decided to just go with 4x of the blue/red/green, and make all the capes the brown. The reason for this is that in the end, all of the cav will look pretty darn similar. Differentiation by cape color seems like a good way to make it easier for people to identify what is what in game.

Next up is the horse colors. I wanted to try a few different colors out, but I like the idea of a mix of horses. Makes me feel more like the army is mustered, and not a highly regimented and correctly equipped professional army.

Finally here is about 30 minutes or so (dont have my log with me) of air brushing. The extra time is switching out colors 4 times. In addition, I did about 70 minutes of metal painting (the arms, necks, and ankles are all chainmail). This process was slowed down substantially by Season 6 of The Office.

For some time savings, I think I need to stay away from half watching the Office and concentrate on my current Audiobook. Right now I am rocking "The Crusades" by Thomas Asbridge. It is a fairly comprehensive telling of the story, ripe with the tales and intrigues of the time. A neat feature to this book is that he tries to tell the story from both the European perspective, and the Middle Eastern perspective. Still seems like there is a slight slant towards the European perspective, but I presume that has a lot to do with availability of sources in his native language. The mention of crusading peasants, Teutonic Knights, and siege warfare really gets me jazzed when I paint.

Next steps are getting base coats on the horses and the rider heads. Then the clipping from sprue begins!

[Ish]

On the book front, I highly recommend 1066: The Year of the Conquest by David Howarth. I haven't listened to it as an audiobook but I've read the dead-tree edition a half dozen times. 

Obviously, the Crusades were a few decades to a few centuries after 1066. The First Crusade (1095–1099) and the Third Crusade (1189–1192) being the most well known... Since the First Crusader was the most successful one for Christians and the Third Crusade had all the "big names" like Richard the Lionheart, Balian of Ibelin, Saladin, et. al. Still, the Norman Conquest of England isn't too far removed from the early Crusades and it is an event of singular importance in the history of Great Britain, western Europe, and the English-speaking world. (The Fireforge Games Templar and Teutonic Knight models are all Third Crusade era.)

Howarth takes the somewhat convoluted succession crisis that triggered it and explains it in a easy to follow way, but he also takes care to explain why the succession dispute was mostly just a fig-leaf for the real causes of the war: economics, population pressures, and naked ambition. Howarth also makes it about more than just names, dates, and dry recitation of battlefield stats. The book is still a work of history, but he weaves it into a cohesive narrative that makes it feel almost like you're reading a novel. 

 

[TheBeninator]

32 minutes ago, Ish said:

On the book front, I highly recommend 1066: The Year of the Conquest by David Howarth. I haven't listened to it as an audiobook but I've read the dead-tree edition a half dozen times. 

Yeah, the first Crusade was MUCH more interesting than the second. Nothing quite as epic as the taking (and even more astounding the holding) of Antioch.

Ill probably need to switch subject matter after this book. Its about 24 hours of content, though it hardly holds a candle to the last book I got through "Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" which was about 56 hours of content. Still, there is a lot of Sci-Fi out there that needs a listening.

[valourunbound]

2 hours ago, TheBeninator said:

Yes, I am probably updating too often, but it keeps me engaged!

No

such

thing!

 

Bring on the updates! Even better when they're during work hours 🙂

I don't know how you have the discipline to paint before building. First thing I do is glue everything together and throw it on the table for half a dozen years games. Then I start pondering how I'm going to reach past that shield/gun/spikey bit to paint the inside of the model. It doesn't usually end well.

[Ish]

The High Crusade by Poul Anderson is a rip-roaring adventure from the golden age of sci-fi, although I like The Excalibur Alternative by David Weber better. (Weber's book most definitely owes its existence to Anderson's, it's essentially the same story.) Both involve medieval armies encountering aliens and spiral out from there... Might be a fun way to wean yourself off of medieval drama and into sci-fi adventure.

And give you perfect justification for having the Kingdom of Equality-tane do battle with Space Marines. 

[WestRider]

On 11/19/2019 at 1:04 PM, TheBeninator said:

Update!

Ok, getting serious about this timing jazz. 

I threw down a primer coat last night. I am using an airbrush for a few reasons. 

1) I'm out of rattle can primer

2) I am wary of using rattle can indoors

3) The humidity is not optimal for rattle can priming anyways (though I have no clue if the same applies for airbrushing or not).

What I found is that I spent 53 minutes between setup and breakdown (plus airbrush cleaning) to prime just 7 sprues (more like 5). Rattle cans should take something like... 10 min max?

This looks like an easy spot to save some time for the future. So I pose to you rattle can primers.

What do you do in the winter when the humidity is not within the bounds of what people say is "optimal"?

AFAIK, humidity doesn't affect airbrushes the same way. I think it's not actually the paint, but the propellant in the rattlecans that reacts badly. I usually try to wait for a day when it's below freezing. Get your spray can nice and warmed up, keep your Models in the house (and thus reasonably warm) until you're ready to go out, do relatively small batches because your materials are going to chill down fast.

On 11/19/2019 at 1:53 PM, Andrewgeddon said:

I use Krylon, either the Colormaxx flat black or the "specialty flat" camouflage line. I've used a bunch of different primers over the years (GW, Armory, Privateer Press, and others), and they all really work the same in my experience, so I get what's cheap. I will say I have had mixed results with Krylon's white prime though.

The problems with white paint are, unfortunately, pretty much a direct follow-on from the laws of physics and biology. The best available pigment that actually looks like a good white is Titanium Dioxide, ideally with pigment particles about 220nm across, which is absolutely enormous for a pigment. By way of comparison, the most common black pigment (Carbon) has particles around 8nm across. The larger particle size makes both uneven coverage and clumping more likely. There are other pigments for white, but they tend to be either problematic in other ways (zinc), or pretty seriously toxic (lead).

[TheBeninator]

Aaaaaaaand

Horses! 30 min

That'l be 3 primary rider colors x 4 riders, each main rider color on a different colored horse. Therefore there will be 12 unique combinations of primary rider color and horse color.

All things must remain equal!

 

[Ish]

Okay, I’m hijacking the thread again, but no one’s told me to shut up yet and people seem to find it interesting. 

I found this excellent picture that illustrates the heraldic concept of “this is on top of that” that I was talking about earlier.

When writing the description for a coat of arms, known as a blazon, heralds use a specific set of jargon, syntax, and keywords that works almost like a programming language. Just like two computers on opposite sides of the globe fed identical lines of machine code will spit out the same data, give two heralds the same blazon and you’ll get the same shield. 

The blazon for the below shield would be Gules a pale argent on a chief azure three mullets of the second. Which “translated” into words normal people is would be Red, a vertical line of white, on a horizontal line at the top of blue, three five-pointed stars of white.

The first line in most blazons tells you the color of “the field,” this will be the main background that everything else sits on. In this case it’s red, so we begin simply with the word: “Gules...”

Next, we need to know if their are any complex designs (“charges”) like lions or dragons or just simple geometric shapes (“ordinaries”) on the field. In this case, we have a vertical white band that takes up approximately 1/3 to 1/5 of the space, this is a very common design an is the ordinary known as the “pale.” (There’s a modern variation that’s 1/2 to 4/5 of the space known as the Canadian Pale. It was invented in 1964 for their flag.) So in the blazon we need to identify the shape and it’s size: “Gules, a pale argent...”

This shield has two ordinaries on it, the white vertical line and the horizontal blue line that take up about 1/3 to 1/5 of the shield. This line across the top is known as a “chief” and is always along the top. A horizontal band across the middle is a “fess.” Since the chief will be going “over” the pale it is listed second in the blazon: “Gules, a pale argent, a chief azure...”

This shield has three complex shapes or charges on the chief. All the various charges used in heraldry have specific names and there is a whole lot of rules on how that all works. But suffice it to say that it’s kinda like keywords. Every herald knows that “lion rampant” means a lion posed to attack and a “lion dormant” means a lion sleeping and a thousand other variations. In the case of our example shield, we’ve got the five-pointed stars that were common in English heraldry but not the heraldry on the continent that favored six-pointed stars. Well, the French nabbed the keyword “star” first so that charge is always a six-pointed star by default. So the five-pointed star came to be called a “mullet.” We add them to the blazon with just a bit editing to be certain to get them where we want. Like so: “Gules, a pale argent, on a chief azure three mullets argent.”

Alternatively, when a blazon has lots of colors repeated in it, you can just refer back to one previously mentioned. “Gules, a pale argent, on a chief azure three mullets of the second.” A herald will read that “of the second” bit and then return to the start of the blazon and look for the second color mentioned. Basically, like a 20 GOTO 10 line in computer code. If it read “...of the first” the stars would be red, if it said “..of the third” they’d be blue. (Both of those are bad examples that break the rule of tincture, but you get my drift.)

Thank you for coming to my TEDTalk.

[Guest]

2 hours ago, Ish said:

Okay, I’m hijacking the thread again, but no one’s told me to shut up yet and people seem to find it interesting.

I keep forgetting that this isn't your thread....

[TheBeninator]

Well, I forgot to time myself. And it’s been pretty stretched out work, but here’s some WIP that are getting close.

The lances are enormous, these are going to present a challenge for army transport on a bicycle.

 

Things left to do...

finish assembly

touchups

paint bases brown

a nice strong tone bath for he whole lot

finally doing he flocking/basing

[TheBeninator]

Does one of the few of you who actually look at this thread have a single skeleton knight?

Something like this.

https://images.app.goo.gl/LLURRXyf8aBKSGkg9

I wanted to do something a bit dark for the Green Knight.

[Andrewgeddon]

21 minutes ago, TheBeninator said:

Does one of the few of you who actually look at this thread have a single skeleton knight?

Something like this.

https://images.app.goo.gl/LLURRXyf8aBKSGkg9

I wanted to do something a bit dark for the Green Knight.

I'll take a look when I get home, don't think so though

[Ish]

If you’re only looking for a single mini to use as a hero, check out Gamezone Minitures, they have some absolutely gorgeous models... €12.00 is a bit much to try to build units (let alone armies) out of, but for a single hero it ain’t bad. The “Major Guardian Hero on Horseback” from their mummified undead line, with a weapon swap to a more European sword and a knightly headcrest on the helmet (or a full head swap) would make for something that should serve your purpose:

 

[TheBeninator]

1 minute ago, Ish said:

If you’re only looking for a single mini to use as a hero, check out Gamezone Minitures, they have some absolutely gorgeous models... €12.00 is a bit much to try to build units (let alone armies) out of, but for a single hero it ain’t bad. The “Major Guardian Hero on Horseback” from their mummified undead line, with a weapon swap to a more European sword and a knightly headcrest on the helmet (or a full head swap) would make for something that should serve your purpose:

 

#minierection

Not that my erection is small, but its about the miniatures...

seriously...!

 

[Ish]

As soon as those PowerBall numbers come through, I’m going to have a massive army of their Faux-Bretonnians.

[Guest]

This green knight looks pretty good:

https://aradiaminiatures.com/index.php?id_product=18&controller=product

Though, personally, I think the Green Knight would be a follower of Kuulima, as it's Knight Green with Envy...😉

[Ish]

Umm, Pax... That Green Knight is €85.00 EUR, approximately $95.00 USD! 

[Guest]

13 hours ago, Ish said:

Umm, Pax... That Green Knight is €85.00 EUR, approximately $95.00 USD! 

It's also a much larger scale (says 70mm), both of which I only noticed after posting.

[Ish]

I saw that, but assumed it was the height not the scale... I’ve never seen anything listed as 70 mm scale. 

[Guest]

4 hours ago, Ish said:

I saw that, but assumed it was the height not the scale... I’ve never seen anything listed as 70 mm scale. 

Well, given the price, might be the scale - that's what I'm thinking.

[Ish]

70 mm would just be a really weird scale... We're talking something like 1:18 scale. The closest approximation I can think of would be the 3.75" G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero action figures of the Eighties.