Still here! Sorry for the absence- I've been really focused on work (a growing company working on taking over an entire market!) and just haven't had a strong focus in any one game during off-time. I still do the hobby thing and even squeeze in a contest once in a while, especially with my peer group- my brother finally got into 40k and started up a Blood Angels army, while my son has been focused on 3d printing (where I've backed projects and forced him to be my production center) and my wife has been slapping some paint on non-gamer models. But none of it had the 'draw' for me to sit down and make a post.
In fast, Google has already tried to shut down this blog-site once for inactivity and I'm trying to avoid that again. More, I actually (finally) found something to get excited about and wanted to blog about it! Last year, I went to a little convention known as Reapercon and decided to fish out a new game to distract from the rest of my ridiculous collection. This is where I ran into something I'd already seen years before and just wasn't interested, but fate knows the 'call-back' technique and sometimes uses it. I like painting models (well, I like it enough anyway, but at least I'm good at it) and I love being part of a new thing- at the ground-floor, one of the "first adopters", being part of it before it's so-called 'cool', and this reappearance definitely presented that opportunity. That's right- I have a word count... (IYKYK)
This game first popped up as a very successful crowd-funding project that had a poor reception for a number of post-production reasons that weren't limited to communication, logistics, quality, or even consistency. But it did have a novel concept and enough of a following to not disappear completely. A big-dog (I don't remember if he's one of the original creators or just a super-fan or what) reached out to an experienced game designer to re-work it and bring the project to life again, and I'm here for it. The models are actually quite good (both the old and new- completely different materials and designs though) and the rules are very fast. In fact, the whole game is so novel that it didn't even require dice- my arch-nemesis! It is set in a sci-fi universe with fantasy elements carried on an 'anime'-aesthetic, and only made this come-back in 2025. The game is called Relic Knights.
I have to spread these posts out a bit, so I'm not going to go into the game-play aspects and certainly not the background (I actually don't know the 'fluff' since the online resources are poor and I don't own any of the old stuff), but I have been taking the opportunity to paint models and even work on some new techniques. In this case, I'm just going to show off the models. I have a very common style when painting miniatures as I'm a student of the "Citadel System" from the very first introduction of it (like I said- I dig starting at the beginning!), but I wanted to spread my wings a bit and try some stuff.
I'm used to that aforementioned approach of 'base, shade, highlight', often involving copious amounts of wash and singular lines of accents with brighter colours- ideally drawing your eye to the detail and not the lighting or aspect/pose. GW models are high-detail and meant to really impress based on bringing all that out with layers and line-highlighting. That system is easy and effective and anyone can get great results following it. In the interest of breaking away from that very system, I tried to get the airbrush involved, applied zenithal principles, tested out Contrast paints, concentrated on highlights and placement, and even dusted off the old non-metallic technique once or twice. It's been some time and my equipment is not the highest quality which means that I'm not always ecstatic with the results, but I'm very happy overall. It's the uniqueness and overall aesthetic of these models that really allowed for that artistic expression more than the GW style and I had a bit of fun with it. Check 'em out:
Radiant Faction (the good guys)
Void Faction (the bad guys)
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