Quality vs Quantity

When it comes to gaming, I have always had the tongue-in-cheek version of A.D. D. When I was younger I was more focused in my gaming and would take 1 aspect of a game and run it in to the ground. In middle school I was really in to wrestling video games, and I would pick one character and play him nonstop. The same was true of Mortal Kombat, Pokemon TCG, YuGiOh... if something gave me numerous options, I would pick my favorite and stick to it no matter what.

I'm not sure when I got tired of that, but as time wore on I found myself wanting to experience everything in a game. When I quit Warcraft I had five characters at max level and only one was remotely capable of raiding. When I quit Magic I had at least 10 different decks built, and none were very good. In the Elder Scrolls series I would beat the game once, and rather than go through and finish up quests I'd start the game with a completely different character. Even in Call of Duty I never stuck to one weapon, even if it meant I died a lot more using a different weapon.

And now that I play Warmachine, my restlessness has started setting in again. I started with Khador and bought a good chunk of the army over the last year. But after playing them for months on end, I got so bored with the big red machine. As I looked at other models I could buy to spice things up, my mind starter drifting to other factions. After all, for the price of buying a new Conquest I could buy a small starter army off Bartertown.

And so as I started selling off some of my older stuff, boxes started hitting my doorstep. The first one contained a large Circle Orboros army, which I've been really enjoying lately. But I found a few more deals at over 50% off, so I slowly started acquiring Cygnar and Skorne as well. And now with 4 armies to play, my painted Khador army has received no love other than a friend borrowing them one night and using them to teach Warmachine to a friend. I'm not even sure the last time I played them in a true game.

The question I often receive is "Why not just sell your Khador?" Because then I wouldn't have the option to play them! How broken is that? I can't stand playing the army, but reducing my number of potential options isn't acceptable.

And so I now have one large Khador force, one medium Circle force, and two small Cygnar and Skorne forces. And with my new resolution to only play painted models (which I may have to suspend in order to try out Infinity next week), I have a ton of models I don't have time to paint that may sit in their box for months before I can play them. And then I'm talking about buying in to Convergence of Cyriss...

My problem is that I want to know everything about a game. Sure I could become unstoppable with Khador, but I wonder what it's like to field Menoth and set your opponent's army on fire. Or ignore the majority of the battlefield using Legion. Or win with an underdog army like Minions or Retribution of Scyrah. Or spell assassinate with Cryx...

That's the eternal cycle of options that runs through my head about any game. It's also why I've found a great appreciation for games with limited options. Games like Tomb Raider or Assassin's Creed let me enjoy a game without wondering how different the game would be if I played it again using an entirely different approach. Yes, almost all games have some semblance of an ability tree, but those are more about adding flavor than dramatically changing how you experience the game. Specializing in shotguns over handguns isn't quite the same as playing as a spell-slinging wizard instead of a tough, vicious warrior.

I really wish I could value the quality of one option over the quantity of others. Maybe it's because I've always been a jack-of-all-trades sort, but I can't stand the idea of spending so much time focusing on one thing and making minimal gains at the expense of never experiencing what else a game has to offer.  I will probably never be a master, but I also never have to fear stagnation.

So which is the better way to be? Is it better to excel at one thing, or experience many things and be good at those? To be honest, I wish I had the personality that let me get good at one part of a game. However, I play games to relax and take a break from real life.

In the real world I like doing things perfectly, but it's also incredibly stressful. After you leap those big hurdles and see yourself making huge strides, all you're left with is to get better at smaller things, spending a lot of time to see a little progress. In life that's just fine, because the stress usually pays off. But if I'm trying to relax and take a break from reality, I don't want to waste that time trying to get slightly better at something, especially if it turns out I've basically hit the ceiling on how well I can do with the limited time I have.

From what I've seen, I think I'm in the minority here. And that's probably a good thing, because this personality quirk makes it hard for me to fully appreciate something until I feel satisfied that I've experienced every aspect of a game that might interest me. It's why I loved Tomb Raider so much, but it's also why I still feel like Dark Souls is incomplete despite beating it several times with several different characters.

So what about you? Can you focus on one thing for a long time, or do you need to experience most (or all) that a game has to offer?

See you tomorrow! Remember, just 5 more days until my Warmachine/Hordes faction dice giveaway!

Painting Adjectives

You'll have to indulge the English geek in me today.


I was painting a Cryx commission today and thought to myself "Man I'm having fun painting these guys." That's not a new thought for me, but today I must've had Socrates on the brain because I immediately countered with the thought "Why?" And as I paused and looked at what I was doing, I realized that it was because I was painting adjectives.

A few years ago I tutored various levels of writing. When it came to creative writing, by far the most common thing I'd do on a paper would be to circle a section and write "more..." My students knew what that meant - they'd said something that could be interesting or important, but completely lacked any detail. As a result, their story would suffer because everything was very bland and monotone.

Painting is the same way. When I first started painting, I blocked off areas with a solid basecoat and called it a day. I was happy with it because I was just starting, but it certainly wasn't interesting to look at. As I became more passionate about painting, I sought tutorials that would help me learn to do more than just a bland basecoat.

My first painting victim.

Finally I learned the importance of detail. Every bit of paint tells something about the model, much like every word contributes to a story. You can have something basic and it will still be better than nothing, but it's when you add those bits of detail that things really start coming to life. While shading and highlighting are key to making a model feel alive, I find that it's painting the tiny details sculpted in to a model that's the most rewarding. They are the adjectives that aren't necessary, but including them put the model on an entirely different level.

The models that inspired this idea are Stitch Thralls. Like the Brute Thralls I talked about previously, I basecoated them with Thrall Flesh, then washed their skin with purple and green to make the skin look more realistic. As a tabletop standard, that probably looked good enough. But when I'm looking at it up close, I see all the little details the sculptor added and those are what I love to paint. Like adjectives in a story, you don't realize how much a model is missing until you see the model with these tiny additions.



The details are pretty simple, but I think they add a lot to the model even though you may not realize you're paying attention to them. All I did was paint their seams red to emphasize where their body parts where stitched together, and then blackened the stitching to make them pop against the black skin. There are also some very small sores that I don't think the camera picked up. Like I said, it's a small thing but it gives a much stronger visual impression and makes the model look so much better without much extra work.

I think this is also why I love painting Privateer Press models more than anything else. I've always described their models as "characterful," and it's because almost every model has some kind of minor, almost inconsequential detail that can take a model from neat to amazing. I always appreciate when a model has that kind of detail built in to it because it lets me do much more with the model without having to do much more than highlighting and shading.

So when you hear me say a model is fun to paint, you can almost guarantee there's some cool details in it that were just waiting to be discovered and painted.

See you tomorrow! And if you're new around here, check out my Warmachine/Hordes faction dice giveaway coming up in less than a week! Be warned that you cannot enter from the Facebook mobile app.

Painting Tip - Washing Flesh

First, let me welcome all the new guys from the Wargamers Consortium group. If you are curious why I am posting every day, here's my first post of the year.

I love washes, but lately I've found that my painting abilities have matured passed the need to use them for their more basic effects. However, Privateer Press recently introduced me to a more advanced and effective way of using them.

When I was doing a recent Cygnar commission, I decided to see if/how they recommended doing flesh. As I read through their steps, my eyebrows rose in doubt. They suggested basecoating with the flesh, then doing a wash of flesh mixed with red, followed by a flesh mixed with green. My knowledge in color theory is rudimentary, but I couldn't fathom how that could end up not looking like vomit.

I bow to the knowledge of greater painters, because the resulting shading was fantastic. For cloth and armor that's not as big of a deal, but something translucent like skin needs more than just a darkening of the same color. The red and green aren't immediately apparent, but the mixing of the transparent colors on top of the skin tone is very convincing.

Today I started painting some Cryx Thralls using the Cryx faction book and decided to show you what I mean. I started off by airbrushing everyone with Thrall Flesh.

It's convincing for undead flesh, but two layers of washes will work miracles. The first wash was a drop of Beaten Purple and a drop of Matte Medium. I thinned this heavily with water; I lost count on the exact numbers, but it was around 15-20 by the time I was finally happy with it. I then put a light layer on everything, allowing the purple to just tint the skin and pushing any pigment buildups in to the deeper areas.

Finally, I made a 1:1:10 wash of Battledress Green: Matte Medium: Water and did the same thing on top of the purple. The end result made the flesh return to a more natural looking color (for as natural as undead flesh gets), removing the solid color from step 1 and replacing it with some color variations you barely notice, but do a lot to improve the overall color. In addition, the more obvious purple in the shadows provide a more convincing feeling of "yuck" than if I had just used a darkened Thrall Flesh.

I still have a long way to go before I understand why seemingly unrelated colors work so well together, but in the mean time I'll be content to love the results. So if you've been stuck in a rut regarding washes, try this out on flesh. Just make sure you get them very well thinned, otherwise you risk dyeing the model and removing the primary flesh color.

See you tomorrow! And if you haven't yet, make sure you click here to enter my giveaway for a set of Warmachine/Hordes faction dice!