Merchants and Marauders ready to Sail

Avast! So many little ships to paint!
Merchants and Marauders is great fun, and what better than to play it with painted up ships and gold doubloons! I've had the doubloons for a few years now, and they have become universal gold for many other games.


At some point I finally got the gumption to start going through all the ships and painting them up. Using brown primer did not speed up the paint jobs as I originally hoped. I ended up using foundation paints (super opaque vallejo versions) to get the main color on the sails, and even then it took a few coats. I think it would have been easier to have started from white, and wash or ink in the brown for the wooden parts.


Each player has 4 ships available to them, so I went for the most detail on these. I tried to layer and shadow them to keep them interesting without adding emblems or texturing. They came out well, but I think some are higher quality than others. Green in particular could use some highlighting..


The NPC ships saw considerably less time. I decided to keep them all white sailed for easy differentiation, and use the main sail as a flag identifier. They could definitely use another coat on the sails, and I haven't yet made any tiny fleur-de-lise for the French ships, but I don't anticipate that being much of a problem to complete when I have a night free. These flaws are not really noticeable during the game so I am not too concerned.


The Pirates were comparably easier, thanks to quick coverage of black sails. The skull and crossbones was nothing special to recreate, as freehand on a black surface is very easy compared to over a gradient color.
Here are some shots of the game in action!

Dreadball Season 1 Teams

Dreadball was one of those Kickstarters that I wasn't sure about, but pulled the trigger and backed it anyway. Once I got it I opened it up, assembled most of the main team, and promptly put it away..

 It wasn't until I watched the BeastofWar videos for it that I actually got the desire to play it. I knew I would want to have my teams ready to go for anyone who wanted to play without buying another "army". Because some of the teams have very similar looking models for each position, I wanted to make some semi-unified method of identifying them, without resorting to color coding. I chose shoulder pad symbols with cross hairs for Strikers, checkers for Jacks, and triangular shields for Guards.


After a few games I also decided to identify the front arcs a bit more with a fully painted blue sides. This helps some of the poses with more ambiguous front arcs.

 The Humans were my first team to get through. I took a slightly different color scheme from the default, and decided to give them Mass Effect style omni-tool ball gloves.


 The rats were my favorite team to paint. I think they are great models and I really like their cobbled gear and dynamic poses. I would probably use them for a league game.


For the Dwarves I tried to keep the stock blue color, but instead of whites I chose more golds and browns. They are nicely detailed in their armor, though their cloth is rather boring after awhile.


Orcs were the last to do, and I definitely rushed them towards the end. Plenty of quick drybrush and washing got the job finished. That being said, there isn't much I could do that would improve them that much.



I plan to eventually work on another set of the models, as I still have a few extras for each team, some ref's, and MVP's. I also have some number decals to add should we ever start up a league play. With quite a few of the other JBL players having bought their own teams, I expect a league might not be too far off! I also backed the second kickstarter, so I will have another infusion of minis in the near future. Mosh pit!

Mansions of Madness Core set Complete

Mansions of Madness was one of those boardgames that sat around mostly completely painted for years before I finally sat down and finished it. The monsters were not as interesting to paint as I originally hoped. I varied the colors on the second wave of the better monsters, which I don't think will interfere with the gameplay that much. I did enjoy the investigators however, and found I was able to set a nice mood with lights and shadows on their bases. I worked this up with an almost watercolor consistency of painting, and it came out better then expected. The bigger monsters weren't too tough to paint, so much as time consuming. I got bored of painting these guys, but kept at it to finish the set out. So now I just need to get it to the table..