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!

Heroes of the Sword Coast Campaign Open

Wondering what has been happening on the RPG front here at the Wargate??  Where is all the cool stuff??  Well, you know we've been playing Dungeons & Dragons, 5th Edition for a while now.  This season began January 1st, of course...so we've got a few weeks to catch you up on.

First off, the new system is fun.  There, I said it.  I like it, and I think most of us do.  If there's one thing about it that's bothering us is that it's not as complex as we're used to these games being.  That's alright - but when we're used to something being a certain way, it can be hard to not want to try to find out how the rules are changed.

We'll be posting the session updates in the next few weeks until we're caught up, as we've got a backlog of session notes.

For this campaign, Reverend Greg is taking us for a ride in the newly published dungeons for the newly published editions.  We're quite excited, and it's been a fun ride.

Come on out to the Forgotten Realms, guys!  Wrestle Owlbears with Betsy the Dragonborn!  Be reckless and bold, adventurer...and climb up in a tree if all else fails.

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!!