hylentor

The downside to activator is that the bond will be a bit weaker than if you let it dry on its own. I've actually taken to not hitting anything small with activator anymore after regluing a few to many minis - not even factoring the higher glue-self-to-mini rate activating on a small part has I will have to try that glue/greenstuff tip though - looks like it could work well.

@sleeper00 - I absolutely agree that its a very cheap way to start, and it gets you painted minis. You'll notice as you get more advanced though that the pigment in "gaming" paints is much more finely ground, so (in the future) if you compare a mini you did a few years back with what you're doing currently, you'll see it look a bit fuzzy (for lack of a better term). I'd show a picture, but I've already stripped those minis and repainted them... I use a bit of everything, but my main lines are the GW foundation paints, vallejo, and reaper master series. I love the foundation coverage, but prefer the dropper bottles for longevity of paint and ease of use/mixing/etc. I've also tested out the army painter line (colored primer + dipping) - works good for large armies, not so good for skirmish games like Malifaux

Some of us also have family from the south and it rubs off Anyway, hiya Chris, sounds like you're out by my neck of the woods with the SW of Chicago. Leisure Hours Hobbies is my home store, I know they've been selling a lot of Malifaux, but I haven't seen any being played yet (I've just started painting mine - I had a unit of saurus that had dibs on the painting table).

While it's not online, look for a train shop locally for basing stuff as well as building material. Between woodland scenics and plastruct, I rarely have to dip into "game company" terrain stuff.

I feel your pain there. Back when I managed a game store, there were occasional things I went round and round with my Alliance rep on (not in a "this is your fault" way, in a "well, can you check, or find someone who can? way). Occasionally I did just what you did and asked the game company itself what's up Okay, it was occasionally in a "this is your fault" way, but only when it actually was

I'm used to thick tabs most of the time, actually. Sprue nippers, like used for plastic models is what I use for most of them (essentially like the nail clippers). If it looks likely to be damaged by the nipper, I'll use a jeweler's saw - essentially a coping saw with a very flexible blade. GW markets all these sorts of tools, but if you have a general hobby store nearby you can find them without the GW markup.

I actually used to work for my local store before I started teaching. They survive by being a general hobby store (with an ever-growing slant towards radio control) rather than games only. It took us three years of badgering to get the owner to agree to a single gaming table, but at least it gets used somewhat regularly. Some gaming stuff is always marked down (Magic, GW stuff), but I'm not sure if anything is going on right now - I worked for them long enough that they still give me a discount, but I'm ineligible for other sales. I'm hoping Malifaux takes off locally - I won't drive for an hour just to play a game (school is a two hour round trip, so desire to go elsewhere doesn't exist right now).

If its any consolation, I mangled the first attempt at pinning small hands that I did (Privateer's Alexia Ciannor). you need three things: 1. very small drill bit (or two - use a few sizes smaller for a starter hole. That can make all the difference in a tight working area) 2. a very good eye for estimating position (the hands/wrists are too small for the dab-of-paint trick with pinning - imo, of course) 3. very very steady hands My Vik, while suffering more than her fair share of cursing, managed to go together fine... outside of forgetting to drill in the wrists before I put her on the base (d'oh). I was actually tempted to cross swords just for looks, but ended up not doing so due to how I had to hold the thing to dry...

I primarily use a mixture of 1 part Winsor & Newton Flow Improver : 1 part Liquitex Slo-Dri : 2 parts distilled H2O for any of my paint brands. I think I got that formula from an article by Jen Haley years ago, so its a good starting point, and it works well for the most part. Don't ever be afraid to experiment though, there are lots of different brands, and every artist needs to use what they like... for that matter, I *still* experiment when I have time, as I have lots of Retarders and Flow Improvers left over from Reaper, Golden, Vallejo, Liquitex, etc. (I'm a paint geek... sue me ) Now, when I'm doing armies, I tend to use future with water (about 1:4 future:h2o) because its waaaay cheaper, but individual/showpiece models get always get the "good stuff."

Thanks for the welcome! Good to hear on the hands. Thankfully I had practice with small hands from one of Privateer's models (Alexia), so I did a relatively fast job of it (since I had to do two of Alexia due to screwing up the first so badly). The downside, of course, is that I needed another 10 models to paint like a hole in the head

Now that Alliance carries this, my FLGS finally got some in, and I picked up the Rasputina & Viktorias boxes (2 boxes as I now get to try to talk my friends into playing this - shouldn't be hard, dice absolutely hate one of my friends, even in rpgs). Nice sculpts overall, although please slap the person who decided to make sword-Viktoria's hands separate - I hate pinning hands, especially female hands :club: I'm also finding some of the models have very icky mold lines in very awkward places to deal with, but that's why I have micro-files. I'll probably get my painting done mid-May after I get finals & everything else graded. Something about a distinct lack of time prior to that (which starts tomorrow with term papers due)....