Sporecon 2012 - Singapore's Annual Gaming Convention

I just got back from the madness of Sporecon 2012! This year's gaming event saw more tournaments as players begin to establish their player base in various gaming systems other than the usual Warhammer Fantasy, 40K and Warmahordes. 

Lots of things to see and many models showcased. At the bottom of the display is a very impressive looking Heavy Gear game. With lots of cool N-scale terrain bought from a Japanese toy/model maker. Sure looks great! 

The terrain all comes pre-assembled and painted! Reminds me of the days when we were younger and simply opening action figures and toys. Instant gratification. I'm gonna try to get my hands on these!

There was also a table where they had games of the old skool Subbuteo soccer game. Sure brings back memories. I heard they are re-releasing a new edition. Can't wait to play it with my friends and relive the old schoolboy days!

Some pictures of the 40k tournament and the tables with games going on.

Really nice terrain this year!

There was also a Deathwatch section.

This was what I was largely involved in during the event. FoW tournament. I hardly get involved in tournaments, as I'm mainly a casual gamer who would rather laugh my head off as my troops run off the table and lose the game dramatically. Rather than trying to lob the head off my opponent in a competitive deathmatch. However the FoW community (although small) in Singapore are a really great bunch and we are all doing it in hope to create a positive experience and to hopefully provide more exposure to this otherwise unpopular (unfortunately) game system here in Singapore.

A shot of the table for FoW. I felt the tables were a little to sparse though. 

A shot of my Russian Tanks in battle.

And a German Panther army ready to deploy.

And here is my Russian Forward Detachment Tank Company. All displayed out for the painting segment of the tournament.

Which I proudly bagged the Best Painted Army award!

Took a picture of the Malifaux table before the tournament began. Unfortunately I did not manage to take pictures when the games where going on because I was busy playing in my FoW games.

However one of us managed to snag the 3rd place in the tournament for that! Yeah!

Congrats Defeng!!!

Overall it was a good experience, as with all Sporecons. This is the only gaming convention in our little nation and brings us all together for 2 days yearly. But its good enough for me. 

Completed: Dust Allied Medium Walkers

I am currently in a DUST: Warfare painting frenzy. And that can only be a good thing as this means more painted models! As with my already planned color scheme of Team America. I wanted my walkers to have a white washed look. So I sprayed a heavy coat of White over a black undercoat and went to work painting in the colors and stars. Vallejo Game Color Ultramarine Blue and Vallejo Model Color Scarlet red respectively. 

Unfortunately I was so caught up painting these guys furiously that I did not manage to take any pics of the process. In short I gave the colored areas a wash of GW's Badab Black. Then using the torn sponge technique of weathering I applied GW's Adeptus Battlegrey liberally over parts that worn see most wear and areas that would be first to scrape off the white wash and reveal the paint underneath.

Here they are completed and based.

I painted all four different turrets to utilize in the game.

A side shot.

Another one.

And this is my army as it currently stands. I'm awaiting my large-ish order from Maelstrom to arrive. As well as heading down to my LGS over the weekend to pick up the revised core set I reserved. I should have a sizable army in no time!

Crushed glass bases & Completed DUST: Rangers Command Squad

Just finished up the HQ squad for the allied forces. Painted them up in the red,white and blue scheme. I think the army will look great when all amassed.

Also I decided to do my bases in a dirty melting snow cum urban theme. I saw how most snow flock simply looking very white and clean. So clean that nothing shows through. However secret weapon miniatures had a set of crushed glass flock. Which makes snow look extremely convincing along with its wet look and transparency. So I got an extra bottle of glass and went outside to smash it up. Wrapped in a few layers of plastic bags.

I then applied them with PVA glue. And once dried I applied a thick coat of Vallejo gloss varnish. I think it looks the part. Dirty, melting and convincing looking ice.

Hobby: Making Smoke & Flame Markers

Smoke & flame markers are an essential part of wargaming, for most part of my gaming I have used the simple white cotton wool to represent them. While this would be sufficient and simple enough (actually it required no work at all apart from buying it). Visually it did not have the impact of blown up vehicles. And sometimes it gets mistaken for just smoke markers. Which happens quite often when I play Flames of War. Therefore I told myself that I would make some for my Tankovy. Once again this has been done before many times and blogged by many others before. So here's just another version of my take to add to this library of Smoke & flame markers construction.

 Upon my net-research I found out that almost everyone who did their markers used Clump Foliage. I had this material at hand, but most of them required quite a number of steps to achieve the final outcome. I wanted something quick and simple. As well as cheap. As always I would check out my local dollar store (Daiso) and I found these steel scrubbers. I thought these were the perfect base so I bought a pack. I only used 2 bunches out of the 18 in a pack. So these definitely go a long long way!

As you can see the material has the properties of cotton wool, being able to simple pull them to reshape them was great. The added bonus was that they were steel after all. Therefore they held their shape perfectly without the need for an additional wire in the middle to hold them up. Something most other hobbyist need to use while making their markers.

One thing that I did was to follow Big Lee and spammed super glue all over the "wool" to harden it and make it super sturdy for the rigors of gaming. As he has already pointed out, this super glue spam will get messy no matter how careful you are.

To weigh them down I went the conventional way of putting them onto steel washers. These are just the right weight and best of all they stick to the already magnetized tanks in my Flames of War army!

Once it was all hardened and stuck to the washer bases I went outside and gave it a quick dose of black spray at the base of the marker. The silver color once stretched looks just the part for the smoke at the upper part of the marker.

I then cut off the strays. This step is totally optional as I just wanted my markers to be a neat solid piece instead of having to many strays flailing around like a bad hair day. (p.s I later discovered this step to be quite crucial when I had to paint the colors on as it would definitely hinder the coloring process no end, so I would strongly advise to do it!)

After which I simply wet-brushed red at the bottom most area, followed by a light dusting of yellow to highlight the flames. 

Here they are completed and eager to burn some tanks!

I even tested it out with some 40k miniatures and they look the part. Shower a certain area of the table with these markers during a 40k game to make the area impassable maybe? Definitely could add a nice dimension to the table, if not just purely for the looks.

Let the galaxy burn!

Hope this article helped. Those that have been putting off making them, go ahead and try it! It's simple and quick. Most importantly, even when your tanks die in battle, at least they go out in style! 

Blast from the past: 2pc Plastic Khorne Berzerkers

Definitely one of my first few 40k purchases. I remember painting these guys up using tamiya and humbrol paints.

The simple flat paintjob shows its age and my painting way back then.

Would be really fun if I fielded these guys in a game of 40k today. The scale creep makes these Berzerkers even smaller than a current Cadian Guardsmen!

Do you remember these guys? Anyone out there has them as well?

Completed: Garden Of Morr

What an excellent kit put of by GW, I got my hands on one a month ago and have been putting off painting it as I knew it would be an arduous undertaking. So with some spare time off work I decided to go ahead and paint it up. What a challenge indeed!

This kit took me approximately 12-15 painting hours. With the help of an airbrush to achieve the ghostly/glowy effect on the stone and roofs.

The details found in this kit is absolutely mind boogling. Majority of my painting time was spent picking out and highlighting every single of the skulls, flowers, skulls, leaves, skulls, you get my point. In fact I honestly think this is the most number of skulls I've ever painted in my life in one sitting! The last time I remembered painting that much skulls was when I was painting up my Undead army back in 5th edition. That was like 60-80 skeleton warriors? I did not count but I'm sure I painted more than 60 skulls in the Garden of Morr kit.

Pull the kit apart them and you can fill about half (or slightly less) of a typical Fantasy table.

And to keep things easy to transport (and my sanity) I made a base out of MDF board and magnetized the pcs on. 

All in all this is definitely one of the greatest kits I've ever worked on, ironically its not a miniature but a terrain piece by GW. I've got/done plenty of 40K terrain kits by GW, but this is my first foray into the Fantasy terrain kits and judging by the other kits out there (Deathknell, Withcfate Tor etc.) I'm definitely going to be getting those to paint up for my collection as well. After all, don't we all have more than enough miniatures already (who am I kidding)? Guess its time to spend some of that hobby money/time into these beautiful terrain kits.

First painted Dust Warfare squad: Grim reapers

With the release of Dust Warfare I'm very excited and want to get in on the game/miniatures/world. Had always been a fan of the range but I was not very interested in the Tactics, the board game version.

So with Warfare the entire range of minis are compatible so I went out and bough my first squad of Allied miniatures. The "Grim Reapers".

Dust is based on a World War 2 that never ended. And many miniatures were designed with heavy influence from real WW2 inspiration. However that also meant that the paint scheme tended to be along those lines too. Not that the colors were not nice. However painting so much Flames of War miniatures I wanted to get away from the "boring" greens and browns and browns and greens and greens.... you get the idea. 

Therefore I let my imagination run wild amidst this "weird WW2" with laser beams and walking tanks. I decided on a color scheme. What better color than the color of the 2 main Allies flag? That's right, I went with the scheme of Red, white and blue. Here's how I painted them.

Firstly I re-primed the figures (it came pre-primed in green) a flat black. Then I used the Zenithal method of airbrushing and sprayed Vallejo Air Aluminum.

Then I gave it a wash of Asurmen Blue wash all over the model. 

After the blue wash had dried I went in the details and separate armor plates with Vallejo Model Color Scarlet Red. I then washed it with Devlan Mud and highlighted the edges with Scarlet Red again. With a final highlight of Scarlet Red + a little white.

The White parts were first painted with GW Astronomican Grey. Then with 2 layers of white on it.

Do up the base.....And it's done!

Hope you guys like this "weird" color scheme of red, white and blue!

FoW game Russian tankovy vs German pioneer infantry

Had a good game today of FOW. The Germans brought along lots of pioneers and the Russians used their standard tank company.

I wanted to continue trying out my tankovy to see how I can either overcome and use my tanks effectively ever since the revised "Hens & Chicks" rule that I seriously feel brought the Russian tanks to almost uselessness.

We rolled fighting withdrawal for the mission. The game pretty much centred around the middle of the table where an objective was placed in between the two hills on the road.

After 6 turns of intense fighting for that objective we decided to call it as the Germans had too many infantry teams surrounding the objective with too little firepower from the Russian tanks to be able to take them out before the 8th Turn. When the defenders would win by default if no objectives have been taken by the attacker.

Simple movement trays

Got some reorganizing done to my huge empire army with the release of the new army book. So I did up some additional movement trays. Since I was doing some I figured I might as well do up the rest of the army that did not have trays!

And it did not sop there I did up more for my dark elf army as well! In total I honk I made like 20 or more movement trays!