Bones II Unboxing

Our long awaited Bones II miniatures from the Reaper Mini KickStarter have finally arrived!

We are happy to support Reaper and all the cool stuff they have been doing on KickStarter, and the club has been behind every single one.  Today we have a video of wild hoodlums being A-class nerds as they dig through the Wargate's new package.  It's fun to be excited!


Now to get them rendered into the collection!  There's tons more stuff to work on, and we're going to work to bring every single project we finish to you here on the site.  With all the Reaper madness going on, it's going to be a busy year for modelling!

Reaper Bones Day!!

It's been a while since our Reaper Bones Day - and I'm ashamed to admit that I'm just NOW getting around to posting this since it was done in September, 2013.  Yeah, more than a year sitting in the vault...but, it's here now - and with Reaper Bones II coming up we're set to have more than one more of these little sit ins.   Better late than never, I suppose - in most cases.

We picked a good cross-section of sci-fi and fantasy miniatures to paint, of varying sizes.  For this project, we'd be using the Army Painter system.  Sprays, paints and Quickshade would all be applied, and we would show everyone how it worked.  Yeah, this was a while back.

Leather Brown, Dragon Red, Greenskin and Crystal Blue were chosen as the colors.  Each color would would be used on three miniatures:  1 fantasy, 1 non-fantasy, and 1 large model.  After getting spray primed, the miniatures would be painted by some of our members for a project day.  It was great fun getting it all together, and getting to paint with a larger group all at once.

Turanil, Elf Paladin;  Eldritch Demon;  Ellen Stone

Crystal Blue is an interesting color.  It's quite bright, especially going on over the white of the Bones miniatures.  This was nice - the even coat given by the spray does away with a lot of the issues you can get by trying to paint up from white if white is used as a base primer.  No brush strokes to deal with is just one of the fantastic reasons to use these products.

Army Painter Crystal Blue

We realized a portion of the way though that some of these would not need bases.  That was an easy problem to take care of, though.  Definitely learned a lot about how certain things interacted with one another, especially different types of inks and even Quickshade.

Marsh Troll;  Horace Action;  Dita, Steampunk Witch

From this point we've been all about Warpaints.  Hands down, this is one of the best ranges of model paints on the market.  Whether or not you are going to use Quickshade, the sprays and the matched color bottle are still one of the best ways to go about getting a basecoat on your models quickly.

Army Painter Greenskin

Greenskin is another great color, a bright green easily coating the models in a smooth, even coat.  I can see where it would be easy to get really creative just by lining up the colors.  Army Painter has a lot of different colors available as both spray primer and Warpaint, and you can check those out at their site here.  If you're not already familiar with their products, take it from me - our club has moved to using this line almost exclusively.

Ape-X;  Khael Stonekindle, Dwarf Wizard;  Rosie, Chronotechnician

Now that we've broken free of the mold that demands all games to have miniatures specific to them, a lot of cool stuff we've previously pulled away from have potential here at the Wargate.  Since Bones on Kickstarter, we've been in all of the Reaper Miniatures projects they've put on that site, including CAV.  We've already received part of that Kickstarter, but Bones II  is still on the way.

Army Painter Dragon Red

Dragon Red is a slightly darker red than some of the other reds in the range.  Still, it's pretty bright compared to what we're used to for basecoating sprays.  It's nice to have a few of these lighter colors in spray form like this.  It's a boon to those of us that hate those pesky brush strokes and tedious layering when painting up a smooth, bright coat.

I've prepared a number of projects using these materials, and they are ready for the club to tackle as a group project.  We'll be able to paint up units in short order like this.  Those projects will have their own entries eventually.  Note, that the models featured in this article aren't really related to each other, only in that they are Reaper Bones.  

Owlbear;  Valeros, Iconic Fighter;  Deadeye Slim

In the future, these will be grouped together by genre, game or unit.  We'd like to get to the point where we paint entire boxed sets at once, but we've got a lot of unpainted models already.  The tools are there, however.

Army Painter Leather Brown

Leather Brown is a nice brown that's not too dark, like most primers.  It's more of a natural tone, and lends itself well to inks or Quickshade.  It looks great applied to both fur and leathers, and is probably the deepest and most opaque tone we used for this project.

The Bones miniatures are fantastic.  They may lack a little in detail, but by and large this is not an issue.  The larger models don't suffer from this as much as some of the faces on certain sculpts.

Painted by:  Foley, Captain Video and Jerry Wargate

Once again, Quickshade proves it's worth.  Although we had misgivings about the details on some of the faces, once the shade and Anti-Shine were applied they look fantastic.  Definitely not an issue putting these on the table.

We actually had an incident with these models involving Anti-Shine.  A botched coat required a few of these models to have to be stripped - most notably Turanil, Elven Paladin, painted by Jerry Wargate.  We are happy to inform you that these minis can take the Super Clean bath and not be damaged at all.  After a quick bath to get the most of the botched Anti-Shine coat off, it was touched up and completed normally.

Painted by Foley, Joe Kool and Dave Bone

Reaper has really pushed us to expand the scope of the Wargate's collection.  We've got a few different scales now, across several genres.  I can't really praise these Bones enough.  Along with a few other companies and their products, they have given gamers enough inexpensive models to actually begin to build that epic collection they have always wanted.

Painted by Reverend Greg, Dave Bone and Foley

We also got a chance to experiment with all those cool basing materials we've collected from Army Painter, Gale Force 9 and other companies.  We mixed and matched from the various tufts, flocks and other bits and bobs in the basing bin to get a good look for each model.  We soon learned how to make the rather large bases on the Bones blend better with our game standard bases.

As stated before, it became apparent that some of these models wouldn't need an extra base, as the size of their own was sufficient to hold them on the table.  Our own suggestion is if the base is circular and at least 20mm in size, let it stand on it's own.  If it's irregular or needs extra support on the table, place it on a suitable base prior to basecoating.

Painted by Dave Bone and Captain Video.

Definitely fun to paint and very easy on the wallet, I recommend every gamer find a few of these Bones to fit into their gaming paradigm.  It's certain that the Kickstarter was worth every penny.  We are quite happy with the CAV stuff, and are eagerly watching the Bones II updates waiting to hear they've begun to ship it.

Thanks to everyone who came out and helped paint these models.  You guys are the bomb - sorry we made you wait so long to see the fruits of your labors here on the site.  It will never be this long again - I promise!   In addition, we'll be getting more sessions like this ready for the group and presented on certain Sundays, so come on in and learn those paint techniques and show off your skills for the next Bones Day!!

Bones II Club Fund

Last year, we were fortunate enough to get in on the original Reaper Bones Kickstarter.  This year, Reaper's giving us another go around with Bones II - a new set of minis made with the company's new material.  We liked the original package so much that this time, we've gone in for almost twice as much as we put in last year - and next fall when we get our Bones II, we'll be getting a huge package of minis for a fraction of what it would cost us in any other medium, or at any other time.

The funding period for Bones II has passed, but we're still collecting funds to add more to our package.  Already we've raised quite a bit, but everyone has their favorite pieces they want to see added to the club's miniature vault.  For that reason, I thought I'd provide a list of the sections that we're getting so far.

• Core Set
• Expansion #1
• Greater Demons
• Gelatinous Cubes
• Demon Lords
• Devils
• Dungeon Decor
• Mouselings
• Dragons Don't Share II
• Thank You
• Hill Giants

If you see a set on the Bones II page that you would like to see added to the Wargate's vault, drop me a line here and we'll get on the funding.  We're still looking at adding Expansion #3, and possibly Expansion #2 as well.  We're on our way to having most of these Bones in our set already, but take some time and go over it at least once more.

We have until near the end of December to fund everything we like, which is a long time for a collective like we have.  We'll most likely take the final sums for Bones II a little after Krampus Day this year, so we'll keep it open for at least another month.  This Bones Kickstarter is going to be as awesome as the first one...so make sure you grab what you like now!  They will be much more expensive once they hit the store shelves, and this is too great an opportunity to miss.

Let us know what you think about the new Bones II promotion, and how we've handled it for the club.  With the way we've been operating in the last two years, we're likely to see more club activities like this.  Who knows...maybe there will be a Bones III next year...

Reaper Miniatures: Digging Through the Bones!

Last week, we got our Kickstarter pledge from Reaper Miniatures' Bones.  We had a blast opening it up, and we even posted a video over at the new Facebook page.  We're going to be adding features on prominent miniature companies, including Reaper and Wargames Factory, our club's favorite manufacturers.  To start it off, I thought I'd let everyone in on why we're wrestling with the storage right now.

Well, we jumped into the Kickstarter for the Vampire reward, but other than that, we got the following:

• Deathsleet
• Ebonwrath
• Pathfinder Red Dragon
• There Be Dragons!
• Mythos Monsters
• Spider Centaurs
• Kaladrax
• Cthulhu

Here's a link to a breakdown of the Vampire level stuff we obtained.

Now that I've had a chance to sort some of it out, there's even more cool stuff than I could have thought of.  More info on some Mordheim and Necromunda bands that will be available for the next campaigns and more options for RPG characters will be rolling out shortly, as soon as we can get them cleaned up, based and in a case.

Jerry Wargate and I posted a video of the opening of the vault.  More updates later this week, as we'll be wrapping up last season's campaigns and starting the next!