Raggy's Gaming Adventures

A friend on Instagram was asking about the desk set up that I have for my painting. This is something I have put a lot of thought into but, tried to limit how much I spend on it. My desk set up is for my painting but also doubles as my home office space which allowed me to justify a little more spend on it. I've tried to keep this to the more long term items so it doesn't include paints, brushes, or even brush cleaner. These are things that you will probably never 'run out'. Absolute Essentials: When thinking about my desk set up there are a few things I knew I'd need and others that I'd want: Comfortable seating position. (I have only been half successful here!) A comfortable chair with good support (this is where I have failed - your chair should be where you put most of your money. It will save your back in the long run) The desk must be at the correct height. - You should be able to comfortably set your elbows on the table top to bring your ha

A brief note here for future reference. Having had an accident at the weekend were a bunch of models (unpainted) got knocked into a puddle of spilled candle wax. The result was a bunch of miniatures seemingly ruined. What to do? - DO NOT do this for PVC miniatures (eg most boardgame minis) Get the miniatures out of the wax as soon as possible. Remove as much wax as you safely can (without damaging the paint etc) Put the models on kitchen towel and fold towel over top (help soak wax and prevent minis from flying all over the place). Use a hairdryer to gentle heat the model to remove any further excess wax. Be mindful of how powerful the hairdryer is!) You can be more aggressive with heating metal minis. Polystyrene has a Heat Distortion Temperature (HDT) of 95oC - at this temperature you need to be mindful the plastic will warp so go slowly! Paraffin Wax (the wax in most candles) has a melting point of 37-82oC depending on additives. Soy and Beeswax are similar.  PVC has an

This article is something of a follow up to my previous article about priming Black Scorpion miniatures. Not just because I am too lazy to write a real post, but this issue has been on my mind a lot recently as I am getting started on painting up another two black scorpion resin teams. In that first article, I concluded that  Rustoleum Painter's Touch Flat White Primer  works for these figures. These primers will eat very slightly into the surface and help holds the paint. Since this article went up, I have played out the rest of the Blood Bowl Season with the Amazon team that I painted with this method. Now I will say that the team was painted over some time and with some rough handling in between sessions and so they are certainly not the best figures I have, even so they seem to be wearing out faster than I would have expected and this lead me to go back to the drawing board with priming these troublesome Black Scorpion figures. Since asking the question around more widely

Another, less than popular aspect of the hobby is clipping, cleaning and gluing the minis prior to any kind of painting. Logically this topic should have come before even touching upon priming but I'm nothing if not ass-backwards. Clipping is only usually an issue with plastic miniatures, removing the parts from the sprue (the access plastic that they come on). Clipping may also be needed for some metals where there is either a sprue (often the case with Heresy miniatures and some Hasslefree minis) or if the casts have flash (excess bits of metal that stick out from the surface like pins - flash is actually the residue from risers in the mould, necessary to get a high level of detail in the model). The best method of clipping, I have found is with side clippers, you can oftn get these for only a few quid and they work perfectly. If you can, get two - one for plastics and another for metals... the ones used for metals will get notched and worn a lot quicker, when they are unusable,