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Monthly Archive March 2017

Review: Army Painter tufts

ARMY PAINTER

The Army Painter – a worldwide supplier of hobby products, such as paints, colour primers, glues, brushes, tufts and well… fck’n barbaric ‘Quickshades’. The company entered the market in 2007th introducing a medium sized offer of hobby products meant, as the name suggests, to paint entire armies. My personal adventure with Army Painter started pretty early, as I was a hobby store manager back in the days they’ve appeared. Easy to say that throughout ten years I had a pleasure of getting to know their entire range to a point, where Army Painter’s products had no secrets from me. Since 2007 the Army Painter’s offer had grewn potentially expandindg their paints range more than thrice and introducing some revamped products as well. This brings even more opportunities to get to know some new cool stuff.

When it comes to my opinion about entire AP’s range – I have mixed feelings. AP do have some fantastic products like:

  • Washes Warpaints, love them, old Games Workshop’s washes 100%, Strong Tone INK = Devlan Mud etc.
  • Metallic Warpaints, again love them, old GW’s ripped off 100%, they even taste the same and I will always use them!
  • Basic colours from Acrylic Warpaints, 18ml of white/black priced 25% cheaper than 12ml GW’s? Count me in!
  • Miniature & Model Super Glue, best in the world, I love it, it’s my favorite hobby product – ever.

Still, they also produce stuff like:

  • Quickshades, such barbarism… just watch THIS and frankly: die laughting (and I’ve tested them thoroughly).
  • Battlefields flocks and basings, reminding me of the old guys modelling trains, not nowaday’s quality, nor price.
  • Brushes, which are ok, but such quality comes waaay cheaper where I’m from.
  • Colour primers, varrying from awesome to utter crap.

Atop of all the above they also produce Hobby Tools, different glues, paints, Licensed Warpaints and Battlefields XP Tufts – and today I would like to take a closer look at the latter.

QUALITY:

For me the most important trait of a product is the quality. There’s plenty of products priced closely in the market, but among them there are some which exceed in quality. That’s where I aim, when deciding if I should purchase a range of particular products or not. In case of Army Painter’s Battlefield XP Tufts I used them for a very long time due to easy access and limited competition. Back in the days I wasn’t entirely happy with the AP’s tufts, as their quality varried between good and very bad. Old tufts were applied randomly, rendering a significant part of the product useless, be it due to not enought material being used or some tufts being applied to the fold in the foil, they came attached to. New tufts in the contruary, are applied selectively, numbering the exact 77 ideal pieces in a straight raws and varrying in shapes and sizes. This makes the new tufts superior to their previous incarnation and most of the current competition in the market. One might say that they are as close to being perfect as possible.

VISUALS:

They come in a variety of colours and designs. I really dig the entire range. One thing that set’s me on edge and lowers my rating from ‘awesome’ to ‘very good’ is the number of differently coloured blades mixed with the main colour. Oh’ Army Painter – why, for the love of God, you do things like this? These black hair are more horrific than your graphic layout and it is ‘a thing’…

Jokes (or not) aside, I miss the old Swamp Tuft’s strong green colour, not to mention old Winter Tuft. I do hope that with all the new designs and revamps you will bring more tufts to the fold and fill the void in my heart. Either way – be it mixed or solo, all the new Tufts look very good.

FUNCTIONALITY:

I have the exact zero issues with new Army Painter Battlefield XP Tufts. They come in perfect shapes, hair held firmly in the adhesive base. All hair are pointed upwards and on the sides. Colours are mixed well and in some cases different colours are also of a different length. Being arranged in straight raws makes these tufts easy to grab, while adhesive base has enough glue to keep them in place once used.

I have a little fetish of mine, tending to apply tufts over Super Glue and AP’s tufts behave very good when done so.

PRICE:

Army Painter’s Battlefield XP Tufts are very well priced. They are priced close to previously reviewed Paint Forge products, offering 77 pieces in a variety of sizes, including big ones. Would be awesome if they were cheaper, but that would be just too good, to say the least.

SUMMARY:

Army Painter’s Battlefields XP Tufts look cool, are very user friendly, easy to apply, of solid quality and come in a variety of colors – and the price is exactly what I would expect of these. Solid stuff.

All in all I’m happy to finally be reviewing the Army Painter, with which I spent like ten years of solid painting by now. In my opinion some of their products are totally undervalued by hobbyists around the globe. I plan to bring more AP’s products on to the review table in the future. Mostly, the ones I like to use and have plenty of, like Washes or the best of the best Miniature & Model Super Glue.

Where to purchase? If you are lucky, then your local hobby store has some, but if not – go straight to the source at Army Painters Online store. If you happen to be managing a hobby store in Poland, then I strongly recommend you to contact THESE GUYS, they are very friendly distributors based here in Rzeczpospolita Polska.

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Tutorial: Overgrown Bases

Today I’m going to reveal one of my dearest secrets: how Super Glue and Basing Glue can be used to make some fantastic, crazy, awesome stuff! I have invented it by accident when I was a kid, used it since and love it for both simplicity and awesome texture effect. In this easy, step-by-step tutorial I will show you how to produce your own Overgrown Bases!

I USED:

  • Super Glue,
  • Basing Glue,
  • Birch-tree seeds*
  • Bitz of dried out grapes**
  • Random small balls***

*I purchased a huge pack of these for approximately 1€,

**Once you eat up all the goodie goodie grapes, you have like a bunch of wooden leftovers. Once dried out these are awesome bor basing miniatures.

***I use either Air Soft Gun ammuniton, or for smaller calliber moist absorber balls obtainable with every new pair of shoes. Just ask your gf to dig out one of her shoeboxes, there should be a small paper bag filled with tiny, translucent balls in it.

1  I started by applying basing glue all over the base. No need to make it smooth, just enough not to leave any empty spaces.

2  I then dropped some of the tiny balls and Birch-tree seeds over the wet glue.

3  Here's where MAGIC begun. I covered entire base with Super Glue and watched as it was warped before my eyes in a matter of merely seconds.

4  Before it dried out I added some pieces of dry grape vines to make it look like some strange, alien mushrooms, or plants. I then covered additional stuff with more Super Glue to harden it.

5  Last step was to leave entire thing to dry out. Usually it takes around five minutes for a base to get dry, but it might take a bit longer, depending on how much basing glue is used.

6  The final step was to undercoat dried out base with Chaos Black spray... then do a quick paint job with random colours.

Now seriously – tell my that’s not an awesome texture effect XD This is like ultra-fast, mega-cool way of using two glues to create utter chaos on any surface. Chaos mutations, warped stuff, Zerg creep, alien planet foliage, jungle floor, faerie glade, name it – then glue+glue it 😉

Do not hesitate to let me know and send some pictures via FACEBOOK if you ever use the tutorial. I will be happy to see how it turned out 😉

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Tutorial: Cave Bases

In this easy, step-by-step tutorial I’m going to show you how to create a Cave Base.

I USED:

  • Super Glue,
  • Basing Glue,
  • Toothpicks and nail sticks*
  • Small gravel stones**
  • Games Workshop Texture Paints,

*Ask your GF if you don’t know where to obtain the latter.

**Search in IKEA or any home/garden store. A lifetime stockpile of these is less than 5€.

1  I started by cutting off the tips of both toothpicks and nail sticks. These would do for fine stalagmites later on.

2  I then applied couple of drops of basing glue onto the base. Before it dried out I applied Super Glue on it and mounted stalagmites, tip upwards, on the mix.

3  Next I covered entire stalagmites with basing glue and left it to dry. The excess glue, moved by the power of gravity, was drawn downwards, where it rested around the base of the stalagmites, making them look smooth and natural.

4  Using the previous technique I applied some basing glue in few spots and then Super Glue'ed some gravel over it. You can actually glue any type of stuff with this - like skulls, some pieces of armour etc.

5  I then covered antire surface, except for any fillers, with Games Workshop's texture paints. I used a mix of Agrellan Earth and Agrellan Badland for this tutorial, but actually any of the range will do - as long as you would like to undercoat the base afterwards.

6  The final step was to undercoat dried out base with Chaos Black spray...

Now, what’s left is just to paint the bases with your preferable colour scheme. I chose to go red/copper style similar to ‘the Wave’ and watered some spots with clear resin, but the number of potential colour schemes is unlimited.

If you ever use the tutorial – be sure to let me know and send some pictures via FACEBOOK. I will be happy to see how it turned out 😉

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