{"id":1,"date":"2016-12-04T20:16:48","date_gmt":"2016-12-04T20:16:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kaihaku.net\/roleplaying\/?p=1"},"modified":"2016-12-05T02:10:09","modified_gmt":"2016-12-05T02:10:09","slug":"nightshade","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kaihaku.net\/roleplaying\/2016\/12\/04\/nightshade\/","title":{"rendered":"CAV: Strike Operations Nightshade"},"content":{"rendered":"

For a long time my favorite “mech” has been\u00a0Battletech’s Marauder. Granted, the Marauder design is\u00a0a relicensing of the Glaug\u00a0battle pod from Macross, but I first encountered in the novel Decision at Thunder Rift<\/a> and it’s stuck as my favorite\u00a0“mech” design since. So when one of my friends decided to start up a tabletop mech game I decided that would have to\u00a0get a proper miniature. The problem was then that it was difficult to find a proper Marauder due to the legal issues that sometimes come with copyright infringement.\u00a0There are models out there but they\u00a0were either more expensive than I was willing to spend or made out of\u00a0metal which really intimidated me at the time. So I did some\u00a0looking around and picked up the Nightshade from CAV: Strike Operations<\/a>. It’s basically a Marauder clone.<\/p>\n

\"Painted<\/p>\n

This is the finished product.\u00a0My character in the game is a hacker\u00a0using the call sign Null, hence the symbol on the side of the walker. I was very pleased with the\u00a0sculpt and quality of the miniature. However, while I was pleased with it as my first attempt at painting, there were some major mistakes with\u00a0the paint job and\u00a0I think that I’ll eventually “upgrade” to another model that’s a bit closer to Marauder.<\/p>\n

My first mistake was priming the miniature.\u00a0It’s necessary to prime\u00a0metal miniatures but this miniature was made from\u00a0“Bones” plastic which can be painted on directly. I’ve painted several miniatures made from Bones since this one. Something else that may have been a mistake was using Krylon’s CoverMax<\/a> as a spray-on primer. It came on clumpy and\u00a0obscured many of the fine details of the sculpt. It did leave the model with a cool sort of cast iron roughness that I appreciate. I’m not sure what exactly went wrong with the priming (but something clearly went wrong).\u00a0I’ve seen a lot of painters recommend\u00a0CoverMax as an alternative to more expensive brands of spray on primers but\u00a0it could be that I just went too cheap. It could also be that the humidity was off, something that commonly screws up spray on primers. It being my first attempt my\u00a0technique was also bad. \u00a0To be honest, the whole experience put me off spray on primers and I’ve had a lot more success with \u00a0easier to control paint on primer.<\/p>\n

For my final step I lathered\u00a0the\u00a0painted miniature in\u00a0Minwax Polyshades Antique Walnut Satin<\/a>.\u00a0This was a take on DIP method<\/a>\u00a0of varnishing miniatures – the miniature was too large to actually dip. I decided to take this route because\u00a0this method is relatively cheap and results in very\u00a0durable miniatures. I tend to be rough on my miniatures in tabletop and want them to be able to hold up.\u00a0This did leave the Nightshade miniature tacky to the touch for about a week before it fully dried. I’ll talk more\u00a0about this pros and cons of this method later – but I’m a big\u00a0fan so far primarily because I’m out for rough and tumble miniatures. Also, I’m developing a dislike for spray on anything because I’ve had bad luck.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For a long time my favorite “mech” has been\u00a0Battletech’s Marauder. Granted, the Marauder design is\u00a0a relicensing of the Glaug\u00a0battle pod from Macross, but I first encountered in the novel Decision at Thunder Rift and it’s stuck as my favorite\u00a0“mech” design since. So when one of my friends decided to start up a tabletop mech game… <\/p>\n

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