Well, this week certainly did go as I expected hobby-wise. I had started working on the Golden Demon project and out of nowhere, I got the desire to work on something else. I started splitting my time between the two miniatures and by the end of the week, I was painting the something else full-time. Here is a look at what that miniature was.
If you’ve been following this site for a while, you know that I’ve had trouble finding motivation to get the objective markers painted. This is one I’ve wanted to do for a while because explosive crates are pretty common in Fallout 4. As I’ve said with previous markers, the amount of stuff around this crate is not realistic to the game and is too good to be true. With that said, it is neat to see all kinds of explosive objects from the game gathered together. I’ve got 7/10 of these done now which is not too shabby either. I see a few little things that I need to touch up before varnishing it but its close enough to being done that I won’t mind doing that at all.
I know last week I promised to show off the Golden Demon project but I almost talked myself out of it. I haven’t made as much progress as I originally expected. This mini had some fairly large gaps that took a bit of work to fix which was surprising and disappointing. I had nearly all of the exposed horse bits painted with some really smooth layers and was happy with them when my good painting friend told me that I should go for a fur effect instead. So in a sense, the effort was wasted even though I knew he is right that the fur effect will look better and it is a technique that not a lot of painters use which is perfect for a painting competition piece. So what you see now is half-finished fur on the horse that needs more work. The only thing that is really done is the leather straps which do look pretty good, I’d say. I’m hoping that showing this off and getting the objective marker done will push me to work a bit more on this project in the near future as I’d love to get it done in plenty of time before the competition. I’ll be curious if anybody recognizes the sculpt as it is half-built too. I think it will be a challenge for all but a couple of you.
In Arkham Horror corner, after about two weeks of slowly playing (it was a lot longer if you ask my wife!) through Edge of the Earth for the first time, the campaign ended in failure for the brave expedition members who went to Antarctica. I used Norman and Daniela for the first time in the campaign and while both are good investigators, I still got humbled in the end. More on that in a bit.
Norman is a pretty cool investigator for being a bookish old man. He starts off as a Seeker when you first build and use your deck, so he’s great at getting clues but as you gain experience, he can only take Mystic cards to improve his deck. This means he can improve his combat abilities and clue grabbing skills a bit. Of course, the problem with any Mystic deck is having the resources to pay for everything. Fortunately, his investigator ability lets you not only see the top card of your deck at all times, but you get a little discount if you play that card during your turn too. Maybe I’m wrong about this but to me, this actually kind of works as a bit of extra card drawing power too which is pretty neat. While I don’t have an enormous card pool, I think Norman is hands down my favorite Seeker investigator and he’s way more fun to play than Rex. Norman’s special abilities are cooler and more useful than Daisy (who I want to like and use more than I do).
Daniela is a strong investigator too but I don’t think I figured out how best to use her. She can basically “tank” enemies and do damage back to them or automatically evade them instead which is pretty powerful. Her special item is a wrench which lets her do even more along those lines. While my deck had allies to absorb damage and weapons to give her reliable damage, I wasn’t able to turn her into the combat powerhouse in the way that I wanted. The fact that she only can take Survivor cards with her experience didn’t help with my card pool and I ran out of good upgrades for her pretty early I felt like. Ultimately, my playthrough of Edge of the Earth failed because she couldn’t handle a larger, tougher monster very quickly so that was a bummer. I think she has potential to be a great investigator but I didn’t do well with her and maybe she isn’t suited to my playstyle too. Time will tell on that one.
What I learned is that any campaign past Dunwich Horror gives out more experience and so you need to think ahead as far as what cards you want to add to your deck. I generally played a scenario, think about what could be improved in the deck, and then spend experience (assuming I got some in that scenario of course). There are pluses to this approach but it let me down this time as I got lazy towards the end and didn’t strengthen the two decks as well as I should have, partially because I didn’t realize how much experience I’d have at my disposal. I think that is ultimately why the campaign ended in failure. I will try not to make this mistake again in the future as fizzling out at the end is no way to go.
As far as Edge of the Earth goes, it is pretty darn cool overall. I like it better for theme and immersion than Dunwich Legacy or Night of the Zealot. It really emphasizes exploration which is a fun part of Arkham Horror. There are several standout scenarios including climbing a gigantic mountain in Antartica. The one area that I am not sold on is the amount of “upkeep” between games. There is a lot more to read before and after each scenario and there are interludes between scenarios where you get some RPG-like choices. I need to play the campaign more to know exactly how I feel and I appreciate that FFG tried some new things with this campaign anyway. I’m also glad that Fantasy Flight made a campaign around the Mountains of Madness which is probably my favorite Lovecraft story. They certainly did it justice and while I’ll have to wait until after Christmas, I’m already itching to get some new investigator cards and play this campaign again!
This might be my last hobby progress update for the year since I’ll be busy over the next week or so. I have at least one more Fallout Getting Started article I’d like to write so I may work on that as I continue to make progress on the Golden Demon project. I hope everyone has an excellent holiday break in the meantime and that Santa treats you well!
Kuribo's Painting 
As always mate paint whatever inspires you at the time and have a great Christmas. 🙂
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I do try my best though we all have our painting obligations at the same time. Thank you and I hope you and your family have a great festive period too!
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Nice explosives’n’stuff! 🙂 And that looks like a very good start on the horse which, as you no doubt guessed, I didn’t recognise! Sounds like you’re enjoying Arkham Horror as well! Hope you have a great Christmas!
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Thanks, John! If you would have known the miniature I’m painting, I would have been shocked and called it a Christmas miracle 😉 I hope you and your family have a great Christmas as well!
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I prefer the smooth paintwork on the horse flesh but I can see where the fur effect will play better to the painting competition crowd. I think I recognize the model but do not want to spoil it for anyone else.
The Fallout markers, as all your Fallout items, makes my nostalgia rise and my envy grow. Yeah, the sculpts are a bit over the top but Fallout is over the top. It is a caricature. And your painting really makes the Fallout pieces look brilliant.
It is good to hear you enjoying Arkham. I know very little about it but your passion makes it interesting to read your posts.
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And have happy winter holidays mate!
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Thank you! I hope you enjoy the holidays too! I hope to see another update or two from you before the year ends too!
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I have to admit, when my friend suggested painting the fur, part of me wasn’t happy because I had spent a decent amount of time glazing everything nicely and was basically just going to paint over it all. At the same time, I’m going to try to paint the fur so well that it wins you and I over. We’ll see how I do with that.
I’m really glad you like the latest Fallout marker too. I really put a lot of energy and soul into painting Fallout but the high quality sculpts make it easy to do that, thankfully. Hopefully in 2023, I take a big step towards having impressive battlefields that bring the video games to life even more.
I’m glad that the Arkham bits are still interesting to those who don’t know or play it. I’m always a bit reluctant to talk about it because only one person who follows this blog and comments regularly plays it but at the same time, I enjoy writing about it so I suppose that is reason enough to keep talking about it.
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You are an articulate, passionate and positive blog writer. It is a joy to read your posts.
And of course you help broaden my horizons. So thanks for that! 👍
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You’re too kind and I’m sure some of my former writing professors and teachers would be glad to hear you say that as well 🙂
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Vera dico.
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You always do such a nice job on wood, that crate looks excellent.
Yes, I do recognize that model, it has been quite prevalent on my Instagram feed since it came out. I didn’t know what a fur effect was until I looked at that picture, don’t know if I have seen that before.
Your Arkham game sounded interesting, like you say, the more you play a game the better you get at it.
Enjoy the holidays!
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Thank you for the kind words as always! I cut my teeth painting wood with LOTR minis and have always enjoy doing so.
I thought you’d know the mini right away and I’ve seen a couple good takes on it lately. Mine is going to be something fresh so hopefully that will catch the judges’ eye and look impressive at the end.
If you enjoy the older version of Arkham Horror, the card game is a leaner version of that basically. I’d recommend it but it does get expensive if you get addicted like me so that might scare you away!
I hope you have a Merry Christmas as well!
Don’t be surprised if I send an email your way sometime after Christmas. Nothing too urgent or important. Just something I’m starting to ponder.
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Well done on getting another excellent looking marker Jeff, and nice start on the horse, must admit I prefer seeing the horse colours smooth, as the fur texture makes them look more Shetland Pony with the distinguishable fur lines, but if that’s the way you think it will get noticed, then that’s the way to go.
Shame the campaign failed at the end but lessons learned for next time.
Hope you and the good lady have a fantastic Christmas, and hobby santa pays you a visit.
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Cheers, Dave! I usually paint horses smoothly and I hope that when I get the fur finished, it will win you over. It isn’t where it needs to be yet unfortunately but I’m working on it this weekend to try and make some progress.
Thank you and I hope your family has a wonderful Christmas as well! 🙂
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You definitely wouldn’t want to be shooting anywhere near that crate! Great painting as always, and not to see too much but I think you’ll need to work on your cloth textures along the fur work 😉 really cool model and I’m excited to see you tackle it!
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Certainly not! 🙂 There will definitely be cloth painting to come. While I can’t say that I picked this model due to your prediction in the past, I certainly am happy to give it a shot as I think I have a good idea for how to make it interesting and hopefully impressive!
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Nice mate and it’s a great start on the horse. Have a merry Christmas
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Thank you and I hope you and your family have an excellent holiday break as well!
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Great start on your Golden Demon entry. I’m not sure what the “fur effect”, but I imagine it differs from my Wife convincing me to grow a beard this time of year! 😂 Looking at the pic, I’m guessing you’re glazing lighter lines over the ‘skin’ you originally painted? Will be interesting to see how it shapes up! 😃
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Thank you, Faust! Haha, that wasn’t the fur effect I had in mind but I suppose that works 🙂 That is the exact technique I used and when its done, hopefully it will be less obvious what I was doing, if you know what I mean. Hopefully with some time away from work, I can make some decent progress on the project as there is plenty more to do!
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I forgot Modiphius made objective markers for FWW, though if I remember right they only did Fallout 4 markers in early waves. You’ve done a fantastic job with painting the details on the objects. 🙂
I have a suspicion that the horse looks very similar to the Knight of Shrouds on Ethereal Steed. 🤔
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Yeah, they really only fit Fallout 4 come to think of it. I will probably be focused on Fallout 4 exclusively for a long time because there is so much to paint for it and I’m a slow painter with too many projects as it is.
This is a great guess! Without looking it up, I think that is an AOS, Nighthaunt model? This would be from a different game system made by GW. You’re on the right track that it is in the fantasy genre as well!
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Neat work Jeff, I will be checking out more of your brilliant work soon but I just wanted to wish you and your family a happy Xmas and a safe New Year. Cheers mate!
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Thank you, Pat! I survived some cold and snowy weather but got to spend time with family and am now back home with some time off from work ahead. I hope you and your family are having an excellent holiday week too!
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We are thanks mate one of my daughters is up for a few days and we just played golf , pretty warm though 36 degree C 🥵he won so I shouted the beers👍🏻.
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That’s great to hear! I hope that is a dry heat, otherwise that sounds difficult to golf in. I left Chicago and missed out on wind chills as low is -30 so there’s little warmth where I live. A visit to Oz sounds pretty good right now! 🙂
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Yeah matey very dry, I don’t miss the damp heat we had when we lived in QLD , I even start to imagine -30 wind chill!!!
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Dry heat is definitely much better. The wind chill is best imagined. I try to stay inside as much as possible when its that cold! I hope you enjoy the rest of your holiday week 🙂
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It’s funny that even being retired I still feel the holiday mood🤔😃. I stay indoors also over here even though we suffer nowhere near as low temperatures that you experience. 🥶.
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Keep on going with that horse, I can’t wait to watch along your WIP posts and see how it turns out. The treasure marker for Fallout looks very cool – well done for getting up the motivation to complete it.
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Thanks for the kind words on the marker and I’ll definitely keep the updates coming on this new project. I’ve been away for a few days but now I’m ready to get back to it!
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The objective marker looks great, I do love little marker type things like these.
Regarding the horse its a great start and I think your mate is correct the fur affect will look great in the end.
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Thank you, mate and I like the markers too. They really add some flavor to your games which I always like. Thanks for the kind words on the horse too. I’ll be curious to see if you think it is shaping up nicely when you see it next.
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