Surprise, time for the start of the month update. As seen in the past, I am terrible at sticking with my carefully laid out templates for anything longer than a year so it’s time for a change! Basically anytime I’m doing a set of titles and I start having to write “Not much happened!” it’s time to tweak how I report things.
Taking a break
Yeah, it’s been a bit quiet around here hasn’t it? As I mentioned earlier in the month, I started the month off with a week on holiday travelling down south. Disconnecting for a week, stepping away from the desk and leaving the paints behind was nice.
“But Michael”, I hear you say, “That was only a week, what about the rest of the month?” Well, I’m currently in the early stages of buying a house, so I have big chunks of the week being spent going out to look at places and enjoying the high speed property market that seems to be changing whenever they feel like it while the rest involves waiting for people to get back to you which murder your brains with worry. This obviously conspires to leave me with basically zero energy in the evenings, so there has been much less umph to sit down and paint (and instead the cheap delights of video games and TV call). However, I haven’t been entirely unproductive as you can see…
Spectre Things
I painted a new Spectre model! This is the CIA SAD operator from Patreon. I printed it on my Elegoo Saturn at 0.03mm layer height and I’m pretty damn happy with the quality I got from it. It’s also that style of figure that’s useful for pretty much any theatre – expect him to pop up frequently in my ChargeReal games as some form of undercover asset.
Also yes, I really need to paint the edge of that base.
Speaking of Spectre, we are two months into the Spectre Patreon so it’s worth a little bit of a check-in. I’ve decided to go with STL only tier (I’m not that fussed about the Spectre rules additions for several reasons which maybe I’ll get into at some point) and at the moment, this is what has been released (alongside a welcome pack with three figures that show off the benefit of the STL release (the Delta I had to repair the stock of and the Criminal heavy with the long thin FAL pointing vertically). On the positive side, I’m going to say that the models are really well done – the sculpts are good and crisp, printing with ease. The supports are, for the most part, pretty good and I’ve only had a minor issue with one of the figures I tried to print. I can really see the point of this release system – small units or individuals that probably wouldn’t sell huge amounts, but could prove very useful. I could see some of the Salute exclusives ending up here.
On the other hand, I REALLY dislike how the Patreon is being promoted – to be blunt, it’s crap. There are no public facing previews (aside from anything that appears on Facebook) so you have no idea what you’re getting with your money. There is also a distinct lack of previews as to what is coming next – literally aside from a line of text, we didn’t know about the CBRN release until it was out. There is also the problem of leaving out the still rather large number of non-3d printing folks which are also known as the core of their audience. The fact that there isn’t a merchant license available means they are pretty much out of luck when it comes to getting their hands on these releases.
AND while I’m talking about Spectre, they did a physical release this month and… I didn’t get it. Now, some of this was down to the whole “buying house” thing but also I have to say it didn’t excite me. The only figure I think I was really interested in is the operator with the MP9 on the far side. The camo equipped figures look far too passive for a skirmish game and the other Covert guys are… okay. But I already have plenty of pretty good Covert/Tier 1 figures with AR pattern weapons so adding more to the pile didn’t seem like a good idea. I know adding more SKUs is a bad idea for stock keeping but this release to me looks like something that should have been split in half, the Covert and Overt elements of the SRR being sold separately.
Shurta
My main painting aim for this month was getting further progress with the contents of the Black Powder Red Earth 28mm, beginning with the hordes of the Shurta figures. I’ve managed to finish the first four fully (including the basing material) while getting most of the way through the second batch. These figures are definitely fun to paint (even with some of the imperfections on them) and I’m really excited to jump in on the rest. I’ll write up something more once I get some more painted, including the paints I chose for my selection.
Scenarios
While my brain may be fried for painting models, it is pretty excited about writing scenarios. I went back to my campaign idea while away on holiday and started sketching out more parts of the background and the forces involved in it. I also got to start thinking how the gameplay would work, including some cross play between the two parts of the campaign. Events in the short BPRE 28mm campaign will affect the Ultramodern Chain of Command ladder campaign to represent the action. I’m going to write some information on this on the blog going forward, especially as it’s playing into the world building I’ve been doing. Oh, and I need to finish my Ultramodern Chain of Command tweaks…
Finally maps – I’ve always considered myself to be a bit of a rock handed idiot when it comes to drawing, despite having invested in the tools to do it. However, much like with painting, I decided it was now time to just get on with it. Picking up some brushes in CSP let me quickly throw this rough political map together, with a map of the target area coming soon. It’s not the highest quality but good enough for someone who barely knows how to draw.
Youtube
Youtube isn’t dead! Its something that I think has done really well to begin with – plenty of views and people always react to video better than text. However, MAN it’s such a change of workflow and with the whole “0 energy” problem doesn’t tie into remembering to take video when painting models. That said, not abandoning it yet.
That’s all for this month – I’ll be posting my plans for the month over on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/ChargeBlog. As I’ve always said, the Patreon is a tip jar, letting me help to cover some of the costs associated with the blog and help me get my hands on the 3d printing STLs I use. I want to start providing more stuff for the Patrons (more than just a name at the end of a YouTube video) and the campaign above will end up being something that the patrons see first.