Road to Adepticon: Project Francis

Greetings all! The rumor mill has the crystal brush parting ways with Adepticon for 2020. Hopefully this means a new in house run painting competition that we mere mortals have a chance against the pro painters. In that spirit I am throwing my hat in next year. I have never entered a painting competition and I want to challenge myself this year.  So I introduce Project Francis.

Get Painting!: The Adepticon Paint Rubric!

Greetings all.  SeerK here with an update on The Schaumburg Prime Offensive and The Schaumburg Beachhead.  Tim Toolen of the Minature Tim Blog has signed on as a Sponsor of our endeavors at Adepticon 2016. He is hard at work on this years missions patch!  Tim is also coming back as the Painting judge this year.  He will be the man in charge of determining who has the best painted fleet and army for both Tournaments.

To prepare everybody for what to expect and what he will be looking for, Tim has sent me the rubric for the painting portion of the tournaments.  Painting is required by Adepticon rules.  Painting is not part of your overall score though for The Schaumburg Prime Offensive or The Schaumburg Beachhead.  The painting prize is a separate prize that all Players are eligible for.  So without further Adieu here is the Rubric for this year.


1. Is the Force Painted? Y/ N If the force is not painted to a standard minimum, it is not eligible for a painting prize. 2. Fleet Coherency: 0-3 Does the force on the table look like a fleet? Are there cohesive color choices or effects which tie the models together as a force? 3. Shading: 0-3 1 pt - "Paint by number" flat colors 2 pts - Some work done on shading. Basic dry brushing, washes etc to add some depth 3 pts - Great depth of color and/or shading effects used. 4. Details: 0-3 1 pt - A basic attempt was made to bring out detailed portions of the models. 2 pts - Further work done on detals. Shading on rivets, unit/fleet markings, perhaps further details added that weren't sculpted on the model. 3 pts - The detailed parts of the models are very well done and catch the eye. A lot of attention was paid to bringing out every major/minor detail and further added details really stand out. 5. Standout Pieces: 0-3 Do any key pieces of the army stand out on the table? 6. Subjective Points: 0-3 Was there something not covered above that impresses you about this fleet? Are there incredible details or fantastic shading? Does this force just demand to be seen from across the room? Award points for that here.


 So there you have it.  Get painting!  We are only about 70 days away from the big show!  I am hoping to have Primer Missions for The Schaumburg Beachhead up by the end of the month or beginning of February.  We are working with Spartan on this one so we want to make sure everything is done right.

That is all for now.  Stay tuned for more information!  You may have noticed a new contributor on the Admirals list.  Telarion joins the fray officially.  The Shoal Commander will be posting soon talking about Aquans.  He was the #1 Aquan Admiral on the Spartan Games Community Warlog this past year.  So stay Tuned!


Until next time crush the Alliance and as always


REMEMBER DRAMOS!!!!!

Painting Aquans for Firestorm Armada

Finished the space fleet to go with the Aquan ground forces in the previous post.

Painting Aquans for Planetfall

I finished up an army of Aquans for Planetfall for FLGS manager. Here they are:

Finer points of Stripping

Well due to Father Nurgle bestowing his blessing on the house and a friend visiting this weekend i have no battle report.  So while i play a few games this week to test the list for the Ard Boyz tournament this coming Saturday I will be doing some posts about painting and modeling.  I have some Seer council bike conversion kits coming from Chapter House Studios, www.chapterhousestudios.com,  so i can do a bike council.  I have, possibly, some bike coming from a auction on Ebay that need to be stripped.


So lets look at the art of stripping miniatures.

I received these Dire Avengers painted when I bought a large lot of Eldar from a local Player.  He had already painted them.  These brave warriors will be the lab rats for my little experiment.

As some of you may or may not know people have used all sorts of chemical and stripping agents to remove paint from miniatures.  Stripping a metal mini is rather easy.  You can use paint stripper or thinner.  Some people even use brake fluid.  The point is that water based acrylic paints will fall right off when you use any of these harsh chemicals.  Plastic is another story.  Plastic will melt.  You must use care when stripping paint off of a plastic or resin miniature or model.  I have used one method and I am trying another.

The first method I have tried with some success is using Pine Sol.  Soaking the model in an undiluted bath of Pine Sol Stripes paint and primer.  Some scrubbing with a coarse brush , like a tooth brush, is in order to get the paint that did not just sluff off.

My only two complaints are.  The pine smell is overpowering and really permeates the model.  you must rinse and scrub for a while in order to minimize the smell and get the residue off.  The other complaint is that prolonged soaking does in fact distort the plastic.  There is a film left on the model from the plastic beginning to melt and distort.  So this method is great for metal and sparingly for plastic as long as you monitor it and get the stuff off ASAP.

The next method I am trying involves chemicals like Simple Green.  It is a degreaser and floor cleaner.  I am using a generic kind from Car Quest that I had in the house.  One of the Dire Avengers is currently soaking in a bath of it in a nice metal coffee can.  Once he has soaked for a few hours I will post the aftermath.  Supposedly Simple Green and chemical like it will not harm the plastic.  I will also be trying simple green itself once I go buy some.  So we will see which will reign supreme and make it so buying that great deal you found on ebay even greater.  Greater because you know how to get that crappy paint job off of them so the model will be pristine and require very little work in order to get a good paint job on the it.

So next time we will see the aftermath of the stripping experiment and hopefully we will be starting the conversion of the Seer council on bikes.  Now wish me luck as I start a week of intense training for the Ard Boyz tournament.  T minus 6 days and as always


Blood Runs, Anger Rises, Death Wakes, War Calls!