Hobby Night & Bitz Baazar

Thursday night found me in the company of long time co conspirators Ian and Chuck, there was sausage (not pictured but delicious) there was beer (pictured and also delicious) and there were bitz (pictured and apparently delicious as well according to Ian) Below are some quick shots from last nights hobby jam, sorry about the lighting but I require being back lit at all times to accentuate my glowing visage, if you don’t buy that, it was a bit dark in Ian’s office so we grabbed every table lamp in the house.

This Sunday Legends will be holding a bitz bazaar, come and trade your bits, build something fun out of your own bits box and show off your kit bashing skills. The bazaar opens at 11am but will probably run until close. You can get more info on Legends here.

 

Ian’s new nick name is lightning fingers, I swear I looked away for like five minutes and when I looked back he had banged out this awesome objective marker/diorama from his bed of bitz (which is now a table of bitz) Chuck and I also gave a quick tutorial on bounce lighting and focus, and I learned that there is indeed a minimum requirement hardware wise for taking cellphone pics. Ian’s phone did not meet this requirement, and I was subsequently humbled by my previous claims of skill using any device, in the end we just used mine, but I learned Ian was gifted a Nokia 800 some time back, so he should be seeing a marked increase in his photo quality shortly.

 

 

 

Ian rocking the brush on another storm trooper, I am still kicking myself for forgetting to get a pic of his Tempestor in a Hawaiian shirt.

It’s easy to pick out the difference of technique between Ian and I, its tight brush control and edging detail vs broad strokes and blending, interesting contrast.

Chuck started base coating his new wraithguard, I have yet to actually assemble mine, maybe next week.

 

Wraithguard awaiting wraithing.

Kahuna Yarrick makes a brief appearance along with a sack of rogue trader rhinos (no literally, Ian had a sack full of them)

 

Not a shocker here, I managed to get the base coat on a few more sentinels over the course of the evening, I love to say I got more done, but I was distracted by ale and sausage and the occasional jokes of varying degrees of taste.

 

 

We attempted to teach him to use tools and we are pleased to announce that things are progressing well in our study.

The following are my attempts to salvage my reputation of being a” guy who knows things about cameras” and who totally doesn’t forget four years’ worth of photography courses and basic lighting after two (albeit large) beers.

 

 

 

 I would like to thank I an for inviting me out to his hobby bunker, and for a treating evening of plastic dolls and drinks (and turning me on to what is possibly the best sausage place in San Jose) Its mothers day this Sunday, so don't forget to put down your brushes and give it up for mom (sorry couldn't think of anything creative, brain running on fumes)

 

Cheers

 

-Scott

BH Senior Brewmaster  

Army Stolen: Please read

On Friday May 2nd one of our players and long time friend of the shop Bill had his car broken into and his Battlefoam bag with his army stolen. Its always a terrible thing when it happens, all I can do is ask is for the community keep an eye out on ebay or Craigslist. As you can see below its a very visually unique army. This happened in the San Jose/Cupertino area.

 

 

If you see or find anything you can contact us at bayhammer@gmail.com or post to the Legends Facebook group https://www.facebook.com/groups/Legends40k/ We are all pulling for Bill over at the shop and hopefully something will turn up, all we can do at this point though is put more eyeballs on the situation.


Thank You.

Scott

Hobby Progress/KR Review

I preach the word of Carl.

 

This week has been quite the toasty one, despite my workspace having an identical atmosphere to an easy bake oven I did manage to get some hobby time in this week. As you can see by my highly advanced project tracking system I finished all of D’s guard commissions for the month. With that out of the way I have had more time to work on my sentinels I decided the best way to go on this project was to break everything down into squads of three. Not counting basing I have managed to clear six of them since Monday, after getting my jungle funge layering system down its gotten a lot easier to crank these guys out, basing is still going to be a bit of a chore, but as a whole they have been coming out pretty consistently painted.

My army grows.

One of the first ones I did up out of the set.

 

I heard you like sentinels...

Aaannndddd more sentinels.

 

Random sniper, why not.

Oh yeah, did I mention I finally broke down and bought some soft blue foam, and if I didn’t upgrade my kit soon I would have keep running with my old set up (battle damaged army sabol bag filled with packing peanuts, old large GW figure case) add to that I have been doing hobby demos and taking pictures for the Escalation league over at Legends, I basically looked like a Sherpa every time I went to the shop. So I decided I try there auto fill app for my guard stuff and picked up a single case with no bag. Let me start by saying there are plenty of reviews for KR floating around out there that go into great detail about their product, this will not be one of those, as a matter of fact “just plain awesome” pretty much sums up my experience with KR so far, everything about this product is plain and functional with little extra ornamentation or frill and I mean that in the most positive manner. I have seen other more expensive options that simply add nothing more than extra flair and decide its worth double the price, KR on the other hand doesn’t bother with overly specialized options, they make a simple highly modular product that is designed to fit your needs and there has yet to be an issue with my purchase that really stands out as a negative, I do kind of wish they had a tray that was half troop half heavy weapons squad ( as you can see above I found a work around) but other than that everything seems well designed and optimized. You can cram a lot into a single case and not just troops (though I hear you can cram over 200 into a single hard case) I managed to get two troop choices (about 60 pieces of infantry) plus armor and HQ’s into one case, and there was no wiggle and no loose minis jangling around during transit.

I cut plugs in half so I could put more infantry in the empty slots.

For comparison here’s a few shots of the cores for my other bags (SABOL and GW) GW’s foam comes closest, but it’s still a far cry from the quality and softness of KR’s trays, GW’s trays are soft but much more dense and springy, with a little give, KR by comparison is quite soft and malleable almost plush to the touch with enough density to keep everything in place, but also has enough give to make sure that piece that’s just a little too wide can be made to fit without fear of damage.

 

Sabol sad to say represents the old school, pick n pluck was the norm 7-8 years ago, but now feels quite dated (KR does offer pick n pluck style trays, which do still have their uses) Compared with the more modern purpose cut foam trays from companies like KR and Battlefoam this stuff just doesn’t stack up. The foam itself has very little give and does not feel that far removed from those little bits you used to get in the GW metal single packs. Still though I use it for over flow and I will never get rid of my army carrier bag (It has far too much character to throw out, and it doubles as a cooler) So sadly I can no longer recommend them, or most of their product line, they do still make a quality and consistant product, but there are better evenly priced options out there now.

That’s it, for now anyways, I plan to get another batch of sentinels done up tonight and maybe another sniper or medic, but for the most part that’s all my hobby progress for this week. Before I sign off though, a quick shout out for the stuff of legends podcast. This Sunday we will be recording episode 13, we’ll be going over escalation news, some of the 6.1ed stuff that’s been bubbling up lately, and I review my first issue of WD visions. You can check out all the previous episodes of TSoL here.

Cheers

-Scott

BH Senior Adjunct Sommelier  

Spent a few hours working on getting the first batch of sentinels done up in the new "jungle funge" style. After a bit of touching in Photoshop its a little harder to tell, but the greens are a little more muted then they appear, and it really helps make the highlights stand out a bit more prominently under normal lighting conditions, which I am still 50/50 on weather I really like that effect, but again those GW technical's really pull their weight when it comes to detailing.

I apologize in advance for the rough quality, it was around midnight when I finally got these guys in the light box. Tonight I m going to work on some melta guardsmen, but I wanted to get the flamer sentinel done up before my mortalis game with D this Sunday over at Legends and I had the multi laser sitting all done up and ready from the previous night, so I managed to bust out the duce.

Cheers

-Scott

BH Senior Fluff bunny shearer

A bad knightmere

 

For no other reason than I simply like sentinels, I have amassed enough to field an entire auxiliary force of nothing but imperial walkers. Thanks to a trade I made with 'D' for painting his guard, I am now the proud owner of about 20x sentinels. As of this writing they are about to go into their perquisite simple green bath for the night.

Cheers

-Scott
BH Senior Hornswoggle Dance Commander Jr. Senior Editor