Pirates: Ainsty pirate ship battle damage

Another Port from the Old blog. I did a massive Ainsty order (to receive maximum discount and free shipping) around Dec 2011. I received the full package early in 2012. I must say early that Andy Lyon over in the UK (of Ainsty castings) is a princely individual. He was very good about keeping in touch with me. The first set of packages got bounced from Canadian customs for some weird reason, so he had to sent them again (these were 2 very large boxes). When they arrived (the second attempt) this is what I found.....

Shipping damage to a wonderful pirate ship fig. Everything was well packed, but transit across the atlantic can be rough, and it's easy to blame the monkeys who deal with the mail (FedEx in this case).

I'm hoping to get some advice on the best way to proceed with repairs.....afterall this looks like a clean break and it's not comminuted at all (I'm sure anyone familiary with broken ones will appreciate this comment).

I emailed Andy to ask what the best way to repair this was, not really wanting to cost the guy MORE of his margin on shipping, instead I got this message:

Hi David

Jeez thats really frustrating. I will send another Hull over to you next week. Fortunately this doesn’t happen too often but thats no joy to you. At least I guess it got through customs this time.

Will get one packed up early in the week

Apologies

Regards,

Andy Lyon

The final (Third!) package arrived very quickly and was a whole other hull! I basically have 2 whole ships (minus one set metal fittings and mast). Like a said, I was very impressed with Ainsty. I'll try and review of the stuff I got and have finally been getting around to washing up (oh resin....sigh). 

Lamenters: Decisions Decisions.... (2)

Originally posted in December on my other blog I've ported this one over.

I'm consolidating my blogs so I've ported this one over....

I'm trying to decide how to finish off my lamenters. These chaps are largely complete......It's simply a matter of deciding what colour to do on their shoulder pad trim. I'm also willing to try over suggested colours.

Right to Left
1/. Currently the base colour doesn't seem to pop enough. I've had the comment that the mini look unfinished.
2/. The gold is very similar and is hard to recognize as much different from the base colour. Perhaps the subtlety is good? Looks similar but there is a contrast? Not sure on this one.

3/. The white is alright. It pops. The checks still look good with it. This is an ivory, I may dirty it up a bit by doing a grey underneath and highlighting up to white. 

4/. The red also pops and looks good. It matches with the red line on the helmet. I'd prefer to dirty this one up a bit as well. I'd need to buy another red (darker) so i can highlight up to the blood red that is here.




5/. The black I don't particularly like as it detracts from the checker pattern. 










 The boys all lined up for comparison. All pictures should go much larger if you open as a new window.

I *may* also change the colour of the cover on the bolter to a khaki/tan type thing. Alternatively the bolter cover could match the shoulder pad trim.Comments highly solicited.


Here are the replies in the Comments (I received some others verbally and via email)

1/.
I did what I always do when I have a colour conundrum, which is ask Grace. She thinks the gold trim is best, but she also says that the other shoulder pad should be dark green.

For me, I like the gold and red options. The white is most contrasty, but I don't know if it works as well with the rest of the minis.

2/. Model with Red trim stands out the best IMO. Do not use Green on anything with Red, unless you are confident you can avoid the Christmas Colour Conundrum.

One Green Shoulder might look good with the Gold trim. I do like the Gold trim, but it unless you highlight your model more its going to blend in and look plain.

White is a poor trim to use on the Check pattern Red, Green, Blue or Yellow would be better.

In all cases use highlights to pick out any details that might blend in and not stand out. With painting minis I find there two classes. Tabletop and Collector. Models can be awesome in tabletop quality, but they tend to not be as awesome when looked at from about 10 inches or so. Collector Generally is good under close examination but fails to be impressive on the table unless great care is taken to make it pop.

I like your scheme with the red and the one with the gold. Red will pop on the table the Gold will look great with some extra effort and look nice under closer examination.

All IMO of course.

2012 Year in Review

I had 7 resolution for 2012. I decided to break them up into domains of life (as I figured these are usually the areas that cause people grief, and health/exercise is a traditional resolution area). As 3 of the 7 are game/hobby related I'm going to get side tracked and hit them all.

Money

-Save and couple of grand and max rrsp.

2 for 2. 

Successes - This was a bit of a cop out as my RRSP max was only 800$ this year. I got a hose job on a rental property the previous year which reduced my apparent income (thankfully I got out from under that albatross. I doubt I'll ever own a rental property away from where I live again)

Failures. I didn't bother to find a new roommate after my last one moved out with his girlfriend in May. I could have done better with savings (and buffed the frivilous spending) with a rent helper.

Hobby
-Inventory figs
-paint 1 skirmish gang

-play 6 board/tabletop games
#1 killteamx2
#2 operation squad forward
#3 ticket to ride-multiple times

#4 trumpeter salute - westras panzer game
#5 unhappy king charles

#6 too fat lardies ww2 game

#7 descent

#8 mansions of madness

#9 descent

#10 Runequest

#11 kids game and zombiecide

1 for 3.

Successes. I managed to get in a fair number of games which I'm pleased about. I think I missed a few games over the year. 

Unsung hero.  I've been playing a TON of rpg's this year. Everything from DCC, Osric, savage 1889, dark heresy, gamma world, darksun, and star wars. I was pretty burnt out as a GM coming into 2012 after running a highly convoluted dark heresy campaign that was well received by my players so I barely GM'd this year. I think I'd like that to change for 2013.

Failures

The inventory has had major progress....but it's certainly not complete. I've also been trying to reduce the collection some, so hopefully that will help as well. Probably an item to carry forward. 

Painting a skirmish gang. I honestly don't think I've completed painting ANYTHING this year. I've made good progress in assembling and cleaning many things, I've partially painted a lot, but I've not actually finished anything. It didn't help that our mordheim games stopped after the winter of 2011. I have a partially finished gang, so I will carry this one forward as well.

Health/Exercise

Bike to work 1 per week.

1 for 1

Successes. I'm going to give myself this one....averaged over the year. Certain weeks with snow were impossible as were holiday weeks. I'm sure I fell off the wagon a few times, but I've been making the occasional ride in november and december. 

Unsung hero.  I started to swing dance with my gf in the early summer (weekly classes). It's been amazing. I'm sorta hoping that swing will take off again in popularity and we get to be early adopters and 'cool' for a bit. I remember being jealous of the swing dancers back during the last surge and wishing I knew how to do it.

Family
Learn about art deco

0 for 1

Failures. This is a code named project. It was a fairly ambitious project which required, at the minimum, a lot of learning on my part. I sorta doubt it will happen as I envisioned it originally, which is a shame, I'm hoping money I've invested into the project won't go to waste and can be co-opted into something new and cool. 

4 for 7!  Not half bad (scraping by though). I could probably give myself some partial credits here but I'll be virtuous and call failures failures.