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My Rants and Opinions

Some stuff about the hobby in general:
Success and failure when it comes to painting
The top 7 things you do when you can't hobby
Do you have a painting style or do you struggle?
I only paint what I can see on a model
Outside of miniature wargaming, what competes for your hobby time?
They make fun of my "nerd man armies"
My Top Five color schemes of all time
Did I build and paint my HQ wrong?
Why you should mark your vehicles
There is no "auto-tie" mission
You can change your Codex, but not the rules
What do the words "Pro-Painted" mean to you?
What is 40k to you?
The call of Fantasy, or why I don't play.
On any given Sunday, any army can win
Are resin bases right for your army?
Painting with GW Foundation paints, why I don't
Conversions live and die in the tiny details
Deepstriking: It's not dangerous, it's random
The "social contract" we agree to when playing 40k.
What's my army missing?
Carrying cases: I don't get it, Build your own and transporting large models
Defining area terrain edges, a must have game mechanic?
Scratchbuilding no, kitbashing yes... my limits.
A Painting Quiz, how much detail do you need to paint?
Finding an army that suits you.
How do you make your army stand out?
Learn your army AND the rules
Would you pay to play 40k?
Army Building: Do you build what you really want to?
It's not your army that loses, it's you
My painting style over time, What I've learned (Part 2)
Painting your models: Love to or hate to?
40k, 5th Edition... extinction level event?
List Building: Offense or Defense?
40k Rumors, but I can't tell you
Hobby Time and how it differs from Real Time
How many shots does that thing have?
Conversions: Can you "see" the end result?
Timed turns for 40k?
Using Forge World stuff

My Wife's Perspective
Balancing hobby and home
Playing to Win

Guest Author Articles:
Getting your army finished, how to
The Return of Herohammer?
What kind of list do you build?
Themed Army Lists: The Air Cav, Part 1 and Part 2
What, no model for your must have unit?

Some stuff on blogging in general:
The top three things you should not say in a post
The purpose of your Warhammer 40k blog
Asumptions you make when posting
But what should I post about?
10 ways to improve your blog
Profanity and the hobby
What's in it for me?
The FTW Blogger Group, for what?
Really, is your little blog worth it?
FTW, the first year in review
I struggle with my blog
Blogging about 40k and making money?
An analytical look at FTW

MOST POPULAR OF ALL TIME

How to sculpt greenstuff cloaks and capes

Sculpting greenstuff cloaks takes patience and a little bit of know how. In this post, I'm going to show you how I make regular full length cloaks. I'd planned on adding fur pelts to this post, but it was getting far too big for one post. This post covers fur. What you're going to need (for both types of cloaks) A good amount of greenstuff Cooking oil or other suitable non-sticky greenstuff working agent Your sculpting tools and X-Acto knife Color Shapers (optional, but very helpful) Plasticard and some cardstock (index cards work great) BluStuff (this is for molding the additional fur pelts) The color shapers are for sculpting and allow you to get smooth textures to your greenstuff. I use them for the smaller folds in cloth. They aren't required, but are very helpful. If all you have is the regular GW sculpting tool, you can still do this. The BluStuff is another optional tool for the fur pelts. The idea is to sculpt your fur once and then use a mold of ...

8 ways to base your models with snow

This is a Guest Post by misterjustin When I first decided to post about snow basing, there were a few scattered tutorials out there, but not a lot of step-by-step guides. Now there seems to be a glut of them. Rather than scrap my plan altogether, I decided to take a look at eight different ways to make snow. My goal is to show what a couple of material combinations can create without any additional tricks. To that end, I've used eight plastic bases that are unprimed and won't have anything on them other than the snow mix. The materials I've used: PVA (white glue) Water Effects Sodium Bicarbonate (baking soda) Soft Flake Snow (from Woodland Scenics) "Water Effects" and "modeling snow" are available from a variety of manufacturers. I've used a number of brands of "snow" and out of all of them, the stuff made by Woodland Scenics is my personal favorite. It also happens to be what comes in the Secret Weapon winter scenery kit which ...

Basics: Line highlighting made simple

Line highlighting can be easy if you take a few steps in the beginning and set yourself up for success. Part of it is knowing what to do before you get to the highlighting stage and the other part is taking your time once you get there. That's not to say it will take you forever to line highlight a model, but as with any aspect of painting, it takes some time to get really nice results. Sure, your bigger models will take longer and if you're sloppy, you'll have to go behind and clean it up. But... the end result is definitely worth it. So what tools do you need? Aside from paints, there is one thing you really do need to have. That's a good quality paintbrush with a fine tip. If you find yourself sitting there trying to think if you have any of these in your collection... you don't. And if you think you can use your basecoating brush to do your fine highight work, you can't. You really ought to pick up a better quality brush, take good care of it and use i...

How to paint Dark Angels fast and dark

Most if not all of my previous Dark Angels work centered around Deathwing. This time though, I'm going to look at how to paint the power armoured troops in a Dark Angels force. Getting a nice, dark green doesn't have to be hard to do. This is a very quick process but requires a steady hand in the later stages of the model. I painted this guy up in no time at all and if I hadn't stopped to snap pics along the way, he would have gone even quicker. The freehand work added some time, but that's easily shortened with the use of decals. Expanding this out to a squad of models would be no problem at all. Getting the basecoat down This really is the biggest part of the model. I've never painted a "green" power armoured troop before, but this is definitely a workable method. I'd say that this technique would easily translate over to painting Salamander Space Marines with no trouble at all. Step 1: I started by priming him black. Nothing fancy, just a...

7 tips for painting vehicles without an airbrush

It seems like everyone has an airbrush these days, they're all the rage. And rightfully so, they can help you paint models quicker, in some case better and allow you to get certain effects not easily achieved using more traditional methods. But not everyone has an airbrush. Including me. I may get one eventually, but for now, I'm still painting vehicles the old-fashioned way... with a brush. And it's not wrong. There are just a few things you need to keep in mind when doing it this way. The idea for this post comes from a reader email who was curious how to go about painting his landspeeder and Predator tank without an airbrush. I figured I might be able to help and share a few of the things I do when painting my vehicles. I've gone through and pulled photos from older posts that I thought illustrated the important points as I went along. Starting off on the right foot It might seem like common sense, but it pays off to start out the right way. By that, I mean m...

How to apply waterslide transfers (decals)

You can use Micro Set and Micro Sol or you can skip them when it comes to applying waterslide transfers (decals). This post will look at both ways. With Games Workshop releasing a handful of new transfers for a couple more chapters, I finally decided to share how I go about adding decals to my models. This post will look at how I apply the standard GW decal to a model without using Micro Set/Sol and then trying to use them for the first time. Games Workshop gives us their approach and there's nothing wrong with it. In fact, it may be a bit better than what I'm doing here, but I haven't found a need to do it exactly as they suggest. Just like everything else in this hobby, there are a hundred ways to do something. I use one of two ways I'm going to look at two methods to get your decals applied in the post. The first one is with water alone and nothing fancy at all. The second method uses Micro Sol and Micro Set to get the decal applied. As far as tools, you...

How I paint tabletop level metallic gold

I was asked the other day how I painted the gold on the crozius for the Dark Vengeance Chaplain I posted. I've actually got a couple different ways I paint gold. This is the method I use for quick, tabletop results. There are tons of ways to paint any metallic, but this is my "go to" method for quick and basic gold. It's worth noting that this method yields a warm, bright gold in the end. While it might look like a bunch of steps, they are super easy and the biggest problem you'll have is waiting for your washes to dry. What you'll need to do this You aren't going to need much and I'm almost certain you have the four colors/washes already in your collection. For the base, I use GW Shining Gold. I believe it's Gehenna's Gold now in the new range. Other than that, you'll need a dark brown and two washes, Seraphim Sepia and Agrax Earthsahde. Here's the step by step Priming can be any color based on the predominant color your mode...

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