SDE Paladin WIP

I started working on my first SDE mini last night. I'm coming at these minis differently than usual. Basically the look of the overall set is more important than the individual minis. Meaning, I'd rather have a fully painted set than a few really stellar models. With that in mind I'm trying to keep the paint techniques and style simple. For example:

1) I'm only doing a basecoat and rough highlights. This will allow me to move quickly but I think it will also add to the pixelated 8-bit feel.

2) I'm not doing NMM but I'm not using metallic paints either. Metallic paints take a long time for me and I think they'll stand out oddly against the cartoony feel of the minis. In Legend of Zelda Link's sword doesn't shimmer and shine. It's a brown stick but you still know it's a sword. So my steels will be grey and my golds will be yellow but I think you'll still be able to tell that it's a sword, not a grey stick.

3) Paint the heroes, dip the mobs. Yes that's right this will be my first foray into dipping. I plan on painting the heroes, drakes, mini-bosses and boss by hand but all the kobolds are getting dipped. I just need to decide what color their skin will be so I can get that color primer for Christmas. At this point I'm thinking blue.

With all that said here's my Paladin. I'm calling him a WIP because there's some touchups I'd like to do (stray paint etc)but in the interest of getting everything painted I'm moving on.

Super Dungeon Explore Boxing

There are plenty of Super Dungeon Explore unboxing videos and reviews out there so I thought I'd just do a boxing post in which we all admire the box that SDE comes in. Sounds like fun right!

Here is the box in all of its glory. The first thing I noticed about the box was how big and heavy it is. Quite the impressive product based on girth alone. If you squint you can see a fully grown man standing to the side of the box, engulfed in its shadow as the sheer awesomeness of SDE overshadows him. I have to say the cardboard is a little thin, if you run you hand across the box you can feel the corrugation. But in the less than 24 hours that I've had it the box has held up admirably.

Like many boxes this one has 4 sides. Here are some pictures of those sides (with bonus uncropped knees if you're into that sort of thing).

The box also has a back which details the contents of the box and gives a description of the game. For those of you who like to read the last page of a book first you may be tempted to skip right to the back of the box, but don't let that distract you from savoring the box in its entirety.

A unique feature of this box is that it opens to reveal objects stored inside of it. Here we can see what awaits us when we fold up the lid of the box:

So there you have it, a complete box review of Super Dungeon Explore. What's that you say? You want me to press on further into the labyrinth mysteries of this box? Well the people have spoken!

The first things that will greet you upon opening the box is the rulebook and two (count them two!) sheets of double sided counters:

After that we have the 5 double sided dungeon tiles and the adventure tracker:

And below that we have a plastic tray with dice, cards and a big ol' bag of minis:

And a short while later the Heroes are assembled:

And there you have it. My Super Dungeon Explore experiences to date.

Super Dungeon Explore Board

Jon was kind enough to hook me up with some pink foam so I could make a Super Dungeon Explore board. This is my first time working with pink foam so many mistakes have been made so far. Hopefully it will be at least playable by the time we get together to give the game a spin, but this is what I have done at this point.

Janissa- Test Model

I'm not a huge fan of Janissa's model, her head reminds me of a Jelly Bean. With that said I painted her up in a few hours to test my Trollblood scheme. It's quick and dirty and her skin is more grey in person but here she is.

Terminus Update!

So I've gotten a bit more work done on Terminus. Now that he's finally attached to his base for real, I can actually put him in my case and play some games with him.









I also have been making a soul cage using my dremel (as shown to make cannons in the privateer insider here).





There are a few tricks that I'm still trying to work it out with how to make it all look good, but it's fun to figure out.

C&C always welcome.

Harlen Versh!

So I've had a hard time finding Harlen Versh. He's just never in stock in most stores, much like epic Eiryss. However, Game Empire in Pasadena just got in a new shipment of privateer models, including Harlan Versh and the last blister of Kayazy that I needed. Granted, the only reason I knew about that was showing up for a 2-list character limited 50 pt Steamroller last weekend. Tournament went okay, but I made game-ending mistakes in my last 2 games, walking forward for no good reason and dieing and stuff. *shrug* I really have to get into practice with my Cryx again because I don't have the Merc collection to run what I want with the character restrictions.

Anyways, enough with the rambling. I managed to get Versh painted up in about 2 or 3 hours or so, which is pretty fast for me. I used the zenithal priming technique on him, and pretty happy with how it's helped.

I'm not too happy with the face, but I'm usually not, so that could be worse. This is after all the varnishing, but I'm not sure why he's still so shiny since I put on 2 coats of matte varnish after the gloss varnish. Hopefully it gets better as time goes on.

Finally, an update/scale picture on one of the Wraith Engines. Harlen Versh is going to have a hard time killing that monster of a model by himself.

I should hopefully have some good progress on Terminus to post later this week. I think I'm finally satisfied with his armor, so I just have to finish up everything on his lower body before gluing him to the base.

Yes, I'm "that guy"

So it's been a while since I've updated. Been a bit busy, but I've still been painting up my Mercs and such, but just too lazy to take pictures. But this post isn't about Mercs, it's about Cryx. I've been trying to focus on Mercs, but it's hard to stay away from Cryx. So I randomly was checking out ebay for Wraith Engines after reading some of Zerosoul's thoughts on them over on Focus and Fury. Lo and behold, I found 2 for $53 each. So yeah, bought both and have assembled one. I'll be proxying the second until I decide if I really want it or not. If not, I can still sell it for cheap :p.

Anyways, here are pics of what I've got on my assembled Wraith Engine. He still needs some cleaning up and gap filling. This was probably the worst PP model I've ever dealt with in terms of the amount of cleanup and such I had to do. Probably another reason why I won't be assembling the second anytime soon.









So if I can get a decent paint job on this guy, he'll be partially incorporeal from where he's going through the "rocks". I'll probably try and put some other interesting stuff on the base as well, so who knows.