Over the weekend I was lucky enough to get tickets for an advanced screening of Dungeon’s & Dragons “Honor Among Thieves”. I thought since it is coming out this week and a lot of people had questions about it, I’d write my thoughts down. Please remember – most of this is just my personal opinion. So experiences may vary (and that’s okay!)
To start off, a little bit about me. I’ve been playing D&D 5e for about 6 years now, and I’ve been a DM for 5 years now. I love Fighters (I know) and I run multiple homebrew campaigns as well as play in multiple different kinds of D&D or TTRPG campaigns. D&D is also something that has influenced my life professionally as well. When I’m not poking around on The Sentry Box social media I work in Theatre around Calgary. Specifically, a few years ago I wrote a play about Dungeons & Dragons and learned just how difficult translating Dungeons and Dragons into a visible experience can be.
So I feel weirdly qualified to talk about the new Dungeons and Dragons movie.
Going into it I didn’t have high hopes for this movie. Video game adaptations are rarely amazing, and there is such a fine line between good D&D representation and cringey representation. Also, writing a narrative about D&D is HARD. How do you capture what makes D&D great? How do you explain the inside jokes, the failures, the stories (especially when D&D is DESIGNED to be personalized for the campaign). So when I sat down all the way in the back of the theater with 100 or so other D&D nerds, I was ready to be groaning into my popcorn.
D&D clubs all over the city are starting up again and you may be considering which minis to use in your campaign. Earlier this year, WizKids released their new line of Frameworks minis. These minis are the most detailed WizKids D&D minis on the market right now. They may be at a slightly higher price point than other D&D models, but these are beautiful, showpiece models that should not be overlooked. In this writer’s opinion, they are some of, if not the best D&D miniatures to date. And here’s a few reasons why:
They are the most detailed officially licensed D&D minis on the market today
You’ve got options! Personalize your character your way with a crazy amount of customization
The fun accessories! Every kit comes with super fun accessories! (Heck, I would buy most of these kits *just* for the accessories!)
Even if you don’t care about customizing your models, these are some really beautiful miniatures!
Sue & Sean each painted the Hill Giant. They both felt that this was a fantastic model and have summarized their thoughts on the project below:
Sue:
I built both of the Hill Giants as I was originally going to do up 2 different Hill Giants myself, but I was really glad that Sean got involved because I love what he did with his model! I have assembled a few Frameworks minis now and I definitely recommend dry fitting your models before you commit to gluing them. Frameworks models have the option of painting accessories and hard to reach areas prior to gluing, which I like, or you can build the whole model and then paint. Really, there aren’t too many hard to reach places on this model so even though I glued the accessories on after, it really wasn’t necessary.
I ended up greenstuffing some quick fur on mine in place of cloth so his outfit was just a little bit different.
I liked all the options! It was tough choosing between them all! The Hill Giant comes with a bunch of fun accessories. The ham was definitely my favorite! Not shown: He also comes with the options of more furs, a cart for a backpack, and an alternate left hand that’s holding a cow!
I love this model! There is just so much detail and so many options! As you can see from the photos, the D&D Frameworks minis let you get quite creative. You can really personalize your model and end up with something quite unique. Even if everybody in your campaign got the same model, they could all end up looking quite different! And I think that is very cool.
Sean:
Buster Bonkeroff, is a Hill Giant of some local notoriety, Buster recognizable by his distinctive lucky hat and personal pungency. Amiable for a giant he often works as a mercenary as his rock lobbing skills are devastating in their effectiveness. His belt is decorated with shields of great warriors he has vanquished. Buster is a popular mercenary with less ethical warlords and generals as he asks little in pay, just so long as he gets his pick of the wounded and prisoners. A notable gourmand and chef, Buster’s pressed and smoked dwarf-ham is very popular with local monster-kind.
When Sue invited me into this project I was stoked. The Frameworks Hill Giant kit has an exceptional range of parts and options. The sculpt fired my imagination quite a bit and I saw some potential to it, really liking what WizKids is trying to do with this line even though I was a bit shy about the price sticker.
Sue presented me this half-built, half-painted lad that she had a start at and passed it to me to have a go.
I love Sue’s painting and ideas, but we approach painting methodology a bit differently and I had to change the base colours. I’m very much a ‘start dark and work up from there’ painter when it comes to flesh. And lemme tell ya folks, this guy has lots of flesh. So I covered with Vallejo Burnt Red, a smashing pigment for basing red toned skin colour on.
While doing that I started his eyes. I’m more typically a unit/army painter so I don’t do eyes. I’m pretty content with lots of dark shaded eye pits. But when I do eyes, I love what I call the Kabuki Eyes technique. Sue just did a sweet tutorial on it (link here) and it’s worth your time. The giant’s sculpt has tiny little piggy eyes, but I felt like he needed a bit more oomph.
In short you paint ridiculously exaggerated eyes and then using dark colours, shape and outline them. Hence the Kabuki look.
After that I started getting more ideas as to where I wanted to go with this guy. And before I did I had to address a wee issue with the kit. The big lad’s body is two hollow polystyrene parts. Assembling him is like a plastic model kit, tank or airplane. There will always be some variance with gaps and overlaps with plastic this size. This is a quality kit so there isn’t a lot, but there is some.
Cleverly most of the joins are covered by other parts like his furry cape. But there is a visible seem from behind his thick neck down to wrist. It really popped when the red dried. So I called up my old friend, Tamiya Putty and went to work. Sure green stuff or gap filler would work just as fine, but I’ve been using Tamiya for ages and I know its properties. There were two other visible joins on his side, but we’ll get to those later. Consider yourself forewarned, extra time dry fitting and shaping the parts will pay off later.
I am a big proponent of limiting your palette when you paint. I like a unity of shades. I picked two of my favourite shades as my base paints, GW Jokaero Orange and Vallejo Game Colours Heavy Goldbrown.
These two shades where mixed in to all pigments I used on the big guy, who I now had named Buster after the singular Buster Bloodvessel of the great Second Wave Ska band Bad Manners.
Buster Bloodvessel
Using a large brush, wet palette and judicious use of Vallejo Matt Medium I started mixing, layering and blending. As I lightened up I introduced Vallejo Heavy Skin Tone. Together with the orange it created a skin shade I thought really popped.
Let’s go back to the visible seem on the sides I previously referred to. So halfway through painting I sort of recycled the box and part diagrams. So I sort of glued things where I felt looked cool and didn’t really consider that their job was to disguise the join. So I improvised and dug out a bunch of shields from various fantasy and historical sprues I had kicking around.
Buster now has a very decorative belt with shields and a severed head from Warlord, Northstar, and Wargames Atlantic.
As you see we’re getting close to finishing up. And I really had to stop myself painting, if there wasn’t a deadline to this project I might still be going. As I said this guy has a lot of surface area and there is an agreeable amount of detail to paint and play with. I had fun painting his finger and toe nails, picking out patches on the banners that make up his breach cloth and his nifty skull necklace. Best feature by far was his cap. It fits snug on his head without gluing. So I painted both his shiny skull and the cap. The cap I finished with white polka dots over a faded red. It adds a whimsical extra pop of colour to his very fleshy and angry bulk.
For shadows I mixed up a wash with Army Painter Strong Tone and Sepia Wash. I used this blend in the deep folds. For lighter shadows I really like Tamiya Panel Liner.
It’s alcohol based and as such it flows differently than the water based inks and shading products, pooling deeper and not really staining the colours next to it. The stuff is magic. I finished with spraying two coats of Testor’s Gloss and one of Vallejo Matt Acrylic, I find this combo provides an excellent protection and look. I finish all minis as if they are going on the tabletop and get pushed around by potentially nasty fingers. I finished up the terrain base that came with the figure, using some washes and a grey for the rocks then adding Gamer’s Grass and Army Painter Tufts for the finishing touch.
So is this ‘The Last Hill Giant You’ll Ever Need?’ Very well could be. This kit is worthy of a major villain character as Sue suggests, naming hers after the Big Boss of the first Against The Giants modules. The customization potential gives a miniature building game master the chance to spring a mini on the group that is WYSIWYG. Table-top wargamers should take advantage of this guy as you can configure him for either melee or artillery capacities. The sheer size of the model is quite intimidating and would be splendid for smashing up a unit of silly elves.
For this guest article we have Michael, one of our local customers who is going to show us how he built and painted the Canadians Army Infantry box for Bolt Action by Warlord Games.
We gave Michael a box of the new British & Canadian Army Infantry from Warlord Games to review for us. So, let’s get right into the Review and see what Michael thinks after cracking the box and building some new models!
We always knew Kris was a liar, he said part 3 was supposed to be about Solo Play, and here he is writing about a comparison between the Resin and Plastic kits for Elder Scrolls: Call to Arms.
The store is always looking to bring in the best products for our customers and what’s more, we love being able to give you awesome folks an informed opinion, so before these guys hit the shelf we thought we would give them a try and get Uncle Mike to write up a quick review!
Kris is back with another look at the Games Workshop Contrast Paint line. In part 5 of the ongoing series he looks at some interesting ways of getting the most out of the fewest paints possible to give good variety whilst keeping up the pace for batch painting.
A new edition of Warhammer 40,000 is here and it’s a great time to get into the game or start a new collection. However, building up an entire army in 40k can be a bit of a daunting prospect – especially considering the cost in both money and time. Fortunately, the new 9th Edition has put some new emphasis into playing smaller-scale games. Combat Patrol is a specific size of game requiring a force of no more than 25 Power (or 500 points) worth of models. This translates into a compact collection of around a couple squads, a character or two and maybe a vehicle.
Better yet, most factions in the game have a ready-made starting point in the form of Start Collecting boxes. But which offer you the best bang for your buck? In this series, we’re taking a look at all 25 Start Collecting boxes available for 40k, and evaluating just how useful they are when building a Combat Patrol. We’re using Power here to compare the different boxes (just to keep things simple) but building your list with points instead will still come out quite similar. The values used here are also from the recently published Power level updates, so these should all be up to date with the latest info.
Today, we’re polishing off our series with a look at the Xenos factions. As befits a category of entirely different alien races, we have quite a variety of options to cover. Let’s dive in, shall we?
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