Major_Gilbear

I recently got these too, but just wanted to point out that the single big crystal is supposed to look 'fallen over' and be laid on its side... That's why it looks rough, because it's actually the base! Anyway, these are really nice bits of terrain, and I'm glad you've put them to good use!

Sorry ninjahamster, but all the sets have now been sold! Thanks for your interest though, and good luck in finding some!

Simple Green doesn't damage plastic apparently - lots of folks on other forums use SG to strip GW tanks bought from fleabay.

Okay, some first principles for you. One; you need to post here on the boards please. Posting pix elsewhere and then having folks navigate to them is just lazy. It says "Hey folks, please come and look at my stuff - I'm not bothered enough to show you though, so you'll have to come and see them yourself". It's a poor way to get comments. For example: Two; you need a decent light. No matter how good you or your materials are, it's all wasted if you can't see what you're doing. Get an anglepoise with a low-energy bulb, preferably a "daylight" bulb or one whose light is more white than yellow. You need a very bright but low energy bulb as you can see properly that way, but the lamp doesn't give out heat over your workspace and doesn't therefore dry the paints too fast. Three; get some new brushes: That will kill your brush permanently. Just buy a better brush (a Size 1) with a very sharp point. Not a long point, a sharp one. That's how you do the little details without the paint drying on the brush. Maybe go to an art or good hobby shop and try some out in person. They don't need to be super-expensive, but you should be able to find something good for $7.00 or less. Go for natural Sable at the very least, and try for Kolinsky Sable if you can. Look after your brush by rinsing it in clean water regularly while you paint and after each session. Don't stand the brush in water on its end, and don't do anything that causes the bristles to splay if you can avoid it at all. That will help keep the point sharp. Four; don't rush. Take your time, do the main areas on one colour first, then shade it, then highlight it, then move onto the next area. It helps to do all areas of the same colour at the same time. It also helps to thin your paints (at least 50:50 with some clean water on your palette (you do have a palette, right?). Paint several thin coats of a colour rather than aiming to cover in one thick one. This paint in thin layers will look smoother, dry faster and will preserve the model's detail. It takes more effort, but strangely not much more actual time. Read a few tutorials around the web and watch some painting vids on YouTube to get tips on good painting techniques and see how they are done. Spending around 8-10 hours (or more) over several sessions just on the painting of your Master is not too long! The Master is the centrepeice of your force after all. Five; Gloss varnish is protective, but a thick layer just obscures detail and the finish makes most models look fairly unappealing. After you've varnished with one or more thin layers of gloss, go back and do one of matte varnish to kill the shine. Six; plan your model. So, plan the colours, plan the base (and the base's colours) before you start. You want the model to stand out a bit from the base, but also to fit it. You want to consider what areas will be which colours and how they will look together, and how the different details will look together. Adjacent areas are that are done in the same colours will visually blend together for example, so you need to find a way of either defining them or otherwise separating them visually. If you are not confident in making bases, either buy a pre-made one (lots of places on the internet sell them), or stick to something simple that looks good (sand, gavel, painted, and then a few patches of static grass for example). Complicated bases that distract you from the model or which cause the model to 'blend in' to them are usually not a great idea. Seven; in the end -if you really hate what you've done- it is usually better to start afresh than to keep fiddling with it in the vague hope that it will magically be fixed. There are several sayings about this (some ruder than others), but one that applies quite well is "You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear". If you are just touching up a few details, then starting over is a bit drastic and can be avoided. But if you don't like the main areas or colours or something else that is fundamental, you will waste a lot of time of trying to fix something that probably isn't worth the time investment. In this case you can either buy a new model, or paint-strip the one you are unhappy with. Most people paint-strip, as it is cheaper. I hope that helps you somewhat, and please understand that my advice here is meant to be honest rather than rude! If you get stuck or need more help, please feel free to ask more questions.

I think Perdita would like a word with you...

I do feel that Perdita is already a pretty top-tier Master, but I do agree that her ability 'Bullet Bending' was gutted so badly that it is almost pointless. And if your CB drops to 5, ignoring the negative flip for cover is somewhat moot anyway if you can't get a big enough score difference to get a straight flip to cheat. Frankly, I agree that ignoring LOS was too good - even though it was super-cool. I just think that 'Bullet Bending' should give her to hit on all her subsequent Peacebringer Strikes for that turn. That would effectively negate cover, give her a bonus against models in the open, and wouldn't change the damage output too drastically against models with 'Hard To Wound' or similar abilities. It would also be a good option against her other '0' Actions.

Very, very nice terrain! Must've been hard work, but looking at it I'd say it was worth it!

No problem glad I could help! As for the dropper bottles, you can get them from Vallejo or Reaper (or sites that stock their products, like Maelstrom Games). You can also get bottles just like them from chemists in the US apparently.

Hasslefree Miniatures makes the models.

I think most people use the GW Skellies / Zombies, and Wargames Factory make some super-cheap modern hard plastic Zombies too. Depends what you want them for really, because some companies make nicer stuff (and of course charge you more for it).

Okay, some general advice and some specific comments on what I do/use. 1) I find that the retarder is too hard to use on its own. What I do is get an empty dropper bottle, and fill it 1/4 with the retarder. Then, I fill the bottle up to 3/4 with distilled water and shake it super-vigorously for five or six minutes with the lid on. The following day, I repeat the shaking to make sure it has mixed well. After that, the stuff stays mixed and I can add a single drop to my various mixes knowing that it will do its job without messing up the paint. 2) Matte medium is like 'blank' paint. In other words, it is very matte paint with no pigment. I normally add at least a tiny bit to most paint that I put on my palette just to ensure that it dries fully matte. However, it's main effect is to make normal paint more translucent and effectively cover less well. The advantage of this is that the paint still retains it usual work properties. 3) Glaze medium is both a flow release and an extender. I don't find it particularly matte (more satin actually), but I do find that it helps paint dry more evenly than just matte medium and water does if I happen to make a particularly thin paint mix. 4) I mostly use P3 paints because they have a great coverage and have liquid rather than ground pigments. This means that however much I dilute the paint with water, the paint never becomes 'gritty'. The finish is quite satin though, so you will need to add a tiny bit of Matte medium, or seal with matte varnish at the end. I have transferred all my P3 paints to Vallejo dropper bottles for two reasons; I like the dropper bottles more because I'm not dipping my brushes into the paint pot, and because the drops are the same size as the other paints and additives I use which makes the ratios easier to track. 5) A typical layering/blending mix (over a base coat for example) would be: - 1 drop of diluted retarder (longer working time on the palette, but still dries reasonably fast on the model because I'm only painting a thin layer) - 1 drop of paint (kinda obvious!) - 1-2 drops of matte medium (depends on the natural coverage of the paint; more opaque paints mean I add a second drop) - 1 drop of glaze medium (helps the flow and drying) - 3 drops of clean water (keeps the paint nice and thin and with the retarder, it stays wet for a long time of the palette). 6) A typical glazing mix (for shading with for example) would be the same as above but with half the paint and maybe a fourth drop of water. 7) A single drop of ink can be substituted for paint in (5) and (6). If I use ink 'straight', I still add a drop of matte medium and a drop of water anyway. This gives me a better (matte) finish, and better control of the ink. I find a small hairdryer is also handy; I can waft hot air across the model on a low fan setting to help the washes and glazes dry if I need to. Higher fan settings will blow the paint about if you've applied it thickly and you're not careful though, so watch out! I dug out my Perdita crew painted with washes and glazes over a grey sprayed undercoat for you to see the results of building up dilute colours using the ratios I gave you above. Highlights on the crew were minimal, and were sparingly applied between the glazing stages. These highlights were largely done with very dilute mostly pure white. The darkest shading was done with very dilute mostly pure black ink. As a side note, if you want to make your own 'washes' in the GW style, simply mix three drops of matte medium, three drop of glaze medium and one drop of ink together. If you use P3 (or other liquid pigment paints), add a drop of that instead of the ink to make any colour into a similar 'wash'.

Very true NE! I use the felt shapes to put trees on even on a fully painted board - I can remove the trees as I need to in order to let models occupy the terrain and still know where it is, and put them back when they move out again. Works excellently.

You could also buy and print your own card/paper terrain. Companies like Hotz, Dave Graffam, Fat Dragon and Worldworks all sell decent bundle packs for low cost, and you can then print and assemble as much as you like. It is cheap, doesn't need painting, can easily be replaced, and you can get younger siblings to help you on a dull afternoon. It'll fit in well with the Terraclips too.

For a complete rundown on what they all are, what they are for, and how the work, check out this Brushthralls article here. Thanks to that article, I use Vallejo's Matte Medium, Glaze Medium and Retarder extensively and I've never looked back. I used to have a thread around here on these boards which showed off my Perdita crew - have a search if you like and see for yourself what you can achieve by pretty much just washing colours mixed with mediums over a grey undercoat!

I still have 5 sets of 11 stones each for sale. I've sent you a PM AvatarForm!