PuppetsWar and Third-Party Model Pricing

One of my friends posted a link to PuppetsWar, the other day. They're a third party miniatures maker with some cool sculpts that are clearly intended to work with 40k. I like a number of their figs and they have some cool stuff coming out (particularly some demonic dogs that'd make perfect Flesh Hounds). Of the stuff that's out now, I think I like the bikes, Ork vehicles and SM aircraft best.

When shopping though, and especially when shopping for third-party stuff, I want to save money over what official GW things cost. Or I want sculpts that offer something GW's don't, either in craftsmanship or in subject matter (or both!; looking at you, Kingdom Death). The Ork vehicles here look good, but do they look good enough to justify the cost the way KD figs do? Ork trukks etc. are among the easiest scratch builds to throw together using cheap kid's models/toys, plasticard and a little ingenuity. PW sells their trukks $16 cheaper than GW, though, and they look good so it might be a good option for a less-ambitious modeler/gamer.

Would I recommend these figs to someone looking for a little variety or to save some cash? Maybe. Essentially, the problem is that depending on the kit, the prices can be really high. It's getting to the point where shopping at Tiffany's for my wife would be cheaper than even browsing the GW online store. And that's the main reason I ever consider third-party figures. But when the third-party makers charge 20 bucks for a single SM biker, what's the point in shopping for unofficial figs? Variety is nice, but I don't know that it's worth this much to me. On the other hand their flyers are a good deal cheaper and that's very convenient. I suppose it matters which unit you want and how many you need, but I'd recommend checking and double-checking the prices against other brands because the prices at PW for non-vehicle kits are just not competitive enough to make an army out of their models.

Seen any third-party stuff that looks great and costs right? Post it up! I'd love to hear what else is out there.

Making Mistakes So You Don't Have To: On Using Liquid Mask

I bought this product on impulse, barely even knowing what it was for. I mean, I knew from the name, but I didn't know such a thing existed so it was hard for me to imagine how it was used. Well, falling back on ultimate wisdom and immaculate technique, obviously the thing to do was jump in without tests and use it on a model I put hours and hours of work into converting =D Okay, maybe that wasn't so wise hehe. It did turn out fine, but more experience or research might have prepared me for some of this substance's unique characteristics. This is to be the first of many tutorials/reviews/articles where I try to help you avoid the mistakes I've made myself.

Like the bottle says, Liquid Mask is a resin. Having not looked up anything whatsoever about liquid resin, I had no idea what it would be like once I dropped some onto my palette. I dropped out a generous amount, maybe 7-10 drops and went to apply it with a generic crappy brush I got at a 100 yen shop. I don't even know if I got my brush onto my Wave Serpent's LEDs (no pics really, except in the background of the one up top) before the bristles were ruined. NEVER use a good brush with this stuff. I was damn close to using my favorite (a Loeb sable, best I've ever used) but thought better of it just in time. The Liquid Mask starts to congeal almost immediately when exposed to the air. It becomes a lot like rubber cement. This had my brush gunked up, but I spread the bristles wide and was able to use it like a tiny rubber spatula.

When I did the LEDs I had no real idea how much I needed to apply. As with any mask, all you need to do is cover the thing being masked. The thickness doesn't really matter. But I didn't know anything about this stuff's adhesion or durability. Worried that it might scratch off in handling, I applied a decently thick coat. This caused trouble when it pooled at the bottom of the LED, where it contacts the Serpent hull. Okay, I thought, no problem. I'll just scratch it off there when it dries. Yeah...no. When it dries it gets so rubbery that it is almost impossible to cut without tearing or peeling what you need to remain. I feel like preventing it from pooling in the first place is the best option, but I haven't gotten a chance to try that out.

Here you can see some canopies I did. The one on the left has already been peeled and the one on the right has paint covering the resin. In the picture below you can see from the clear bottom what the resin looks like when dried. Peeling is easy enough. I do it with a tooth pick. Incidentally, I also applied these with toothpicks. But as with the brush they get gunked up quickly and need to be replaced because they stop sliding across the plastic.

Next time I do canopies this way I am going to remember to coat the bottom side too. I spray my primer and these windows look a little foggy because they weren't masked on the bottom side. Although on second thought, since the bottom doesn't need to be done precisely at all and because it curves gradually, tape would work just as well.

Because of the way the resin pools in crevices, I found that I had to go back and black line these anyway. I was hoping doing this would save me from having to be careful when painting around the clear plastic, but it couldn't be avoided this time around. I'd like to try again, redoing parts that pool up too much. If you try this stuff, don't worry about it if you redo parts. It peels easy and leaves no residue. It doesn't rework well at all, so try to get it right while it's still wet.

How would I rate this product after a couple small projects? Only above average considering what a pain in the butt it is to apply. If I could cut it with a hobby knife to clean it up I'd love the stuff, but as is I only like it. The simple fact is that it does something you can't do with tape: mask shapes with steep curvature. It was amazing on my LEDs where I had to spray the hull, but on small canopies that I was painting by brush, I don't know that it saved me any time at all. If you paint with an airbrush it may hold some value to you. On the other hand, Vallejo products are so cheap that it's easy to think "well, I'd rather have it than not...just in case." Dangerous thinking. That's how I've come to have a paint collection that's almost bigger than my model collection.

Have you used any products like this? Were they anything like this one? How well did they work for you?

How I Almost Wasted Money on Expensive Perfect Dice (That I Secretly Still Want)

Here is a link to an article I found while frantically hunting for a good price on some precision dice. "Casino Dice are NOT for boardgaming" is post on boardgamegeek.com that makes a mostly sensible argument for why casino dice are not perfectly suited to wargaming. The only reason I found that thread was because I spent like an hour and a half Googling for a Japanese site where I could buy these magically average dice that I'd read about in a really interesting article that Natfka linked to on Faeit 212. For some reason his site and some other Blogger sites are down at the moment, but I'll edit in the link later on.

In that article, a mechanical engineer ran an incredibly thorough experiment, testing the reliability of different brands of dice. He tested some GW dice (which I own), some Chessex dice (which I was about to buy) and some precision casino dice like they use at craps tables. To shorten it all quite a lot, GW dice were terribly crafted and rolled 29% 1s. The Chessex dice weren't much better. The casino dice, as you might expect, were pretty near perfect.

So obviously I needed to buy 50 of these amazing, perfectly average dice! Or so I thought...until I saw the price. 5USD or 500yen for one freaking die? Really? Rolling average would be sweet and all, but come on. There were a few places to get them cheaper, but the best I found was 250yen. I was about to buy about 15 of those, but luckily that's when I stumbled onto that boardgamegeek thread.

The crux of it is that casino dice are meant to be bounced against the surface and specially textured wall of a craps table to ensure that the roll is truly random. These surfaces are also padded with felt to protect the dice from chipping. In the engineer's experiment, he did section off each die and was rolling it against the wall of the compartments. I don't recall if it was padded or not, but clearly he was taking the proper precautions to ensure ideal rolling conditions. The weight and machining of the dice could produce less than perfect results if simply rolled on a flat surface like the floor or a wargaming table.

When I play I'm generally am rolling dice on the floor. Or maybe a mat or a bunch of basing rocks. I travel with my dice in a regular dice bag on a train and generally have to travel 3-5 hours to play. It would cost almost 200 bucks to get casino dice in the quantities that I need for 40k. And I'd be pretty upset if I had to replace them due to chipping (considering that really defeats the purpose of perfect dice). I mean, it makes a little more sense for craps where you need only 2 of them, but I think it would be really impractical for wargaming. In the end I still needed dice and went with some brand I've never heard of, but that does sell casino dice as well. I'm thinking of doing a much simpler test for the ones I bought and recording the data in Excel. Maybe 100 rolls for each of the 4 types I bought. Hopefully I'll just forget about that by the time I'm freed up enough to actually do it...

Shopping for Paints and Supplies in the Japanese Countryside

I live in a little tiny town in the center of the country and getting supplies is a tremendous hassle for me. There is one hardware store that is of great help to me, but the closest actual hobby shop is over an hour away and the train schedule here is awful. If I do go that far to do some shopping, I can't find any of the paints I like there. I've come to use Tamiya paints a little more than I otherwise would have because of how easy it is to get. Not that that's a bad thing. Their paints are nice, but there are tons of times when I want to be using MIG, AK, PP or Vallejo. There's also the utter lack of non-train scale scenery and flock. To get any of these things, I find that I have to order from the net.

Here are a few of the sites I use the most:

Hobbyland (probably my favorite due to their selection and good customer service)

Kiyahobby

Malefic (carries some stuff you just can't find anywhere else)

And obviously Amazon.jp is a good resource too.

Anyone know any other good Japanese sites to order from? Or even international sites with convenient/reasonable shipping?