Subnautica: The first few days (hours) of play

 Day 1 (2 hours of play)

Wake up and the Aurora is exploding. No idea what happened, jumped into an escape pod, launched, landed in a huge ocean. Looks like the whole planet is covered by water. The Aurora crashed a few hundred meters away, too far to swim, have to look for resources so I can build some equipment. After a few hours of searching the surrounding ocean I get enough stuff to make a radiation suit, some containers, a seaglide, and some basic tools: flashlight, knife, scanner, and repair tool. I have not been able to successfully dodge a small red fish that likes to blow up. Though with the seaglide I do sometimes avoid it. The nest it leaves has sulfur, with is useful. Going to attempt to go check out the Aurora wreckage.

Oh, the Aurora just blew up. Good thing I have that radiation suit, and with the seaglide I should be able to get there faster. There is a small patch of wreckage on the way that I explored and found some useful tech I scanned. There is also a large kelp forrest, scanner says it is creep vines, that is also home to a hostile animal. A couple knife slashes tends to drive them off. Tomorrow I will see how close I can get to the Auror.

Addendum - Went to the Aurora wreck, did not make it inside, only the front destroyed area. Lots of small crab creatures attacked me and my knife was useless. Crafted a larger oxygen tank though and and am going to attempt to create a more permanent habitat. I also got a warning about the Aurora's engine going to cause some radiation leakage or environmental impact in the the next 24 hours. Hopefully I can go and harvest materials and find some way to get rid of those crabs things.

#105 all the stuff I painted in 2019

All the stuff I painted in 2019 minus 14 items I painted on commission. Over all a good year, painted 96 miniatures.

#104 Hopey

We had to put down one of our dogs today. It was sudden and painful and I don't want to think about the pain she must have been in during all of it. She was a cute, sassy, puppy-sized bundle of awesome and I'll miss her greatly.

I think she was very brave at the end. I hope she wasn't hurting.

#103 X-wing and some more painting

I've managed to get quite a few games of x-wing in over the past few weeks. Imperial is what I've been flying since 2.0 came out, primarily strikers. I was using a reaper and various tie/ln at first then last week I dropped the reaper and tie/ln for tie phantoms. So far I have liked how the two ship types mix. I just need to focus on better mine laying so I can bring my phantoms in to flank or vice versa.

I finished painting the ugnaught and without thinking about it I put the rebel saboteurs up for painting next.

For commissions I've got two e-wings and if I remember to get them another fang/star viper robotech duo paint scheme. Max and Mirya again, which looks awesome on the table.

If only painting could be my job instead of finding all these dead end ones. Which reminds I have to double check some emails about some hopefully decent jobs.

#102 Some painting done

I'd love to post some pictures though blogger seems to have other ideas at the moment.
Anyways, I've gotten a few things painted since the end of April. I did two commissions for x-wing miniatures: an Escape shuttle painted in BB-8 colors, a Star Viper painted in Zentradi and Mirya colors, a Fang in Roy Fokkers colors and another Fang painted in Max Sterlings colors. They came out quite well.

In the Imperial Assault side of things I painted the HK-47 units, the Death troopers, the Alliance rangers, the Wookie warriors, the Lolth cats and the Wing guards.

Next on the table are the Ugnaughts and the Hired Guns. I want to get through all the non-unique figures before I start the unique characters.

If blogger works again the I'll update this post (or make a new post).

#101 Not much, some painting & a lot of cooking.

Well it's been a while since I've posted. I've been job searching and besides working haven't had too much time for much else. I've gotten a lot of Imperial Assault minis ready to paint and really hoping to get more gaming in once I find a  new job. I painted some x-wing miniatures too, maybe start some commissions if I'm lucky.

I've played the rpg Unity recently and it's a fun system. My group had to do a bit of rules/content creation to cover some gaps in the base rules. I've been wanting to get a session or two of the new Wrath & Glory 40k rpg. Probably just try some one shots around an Imperial Guard kill team.

I've been doing a lot of cooking too.

Blogger app not working, I'll try to post pics later.

#100 Lego sets TIE striker micro and Imperial Trooper battle pack

Post 100! Yay. Anyways I'm still posting irregularly though that might change (or not). On to the Lego!

I just picked these up today along with Yoda's starfighter, which should be in the X-wing miniatures game but that's a whole other discussion. Starting with the:

TIE striker microfighter:
Build time: 10 minutes +/-
Build complexity: 1
Swoosh factor: high
This set is easy to build comes with neat parts and TIE striker pilot. It has a nice printed canopy piece and a printed control panel. The wings don't move up and down a whwile lot but that's alright since the model for X-wing miniatures doesn't move a whole lot either. Good stuff might buy another.

Imperial Troopers battle pack:

Build time: 15 mins +/-
Build complexity: 1
Swoosh factor: low (it only comes with a 1 trooper walker)
This is also an easy build, nothing particularly complex. It also comes with... Deathtroopers! I don't need to buy Krennic's shuttle... yet. The weapons are the usual stud shooters and it also has two vehicle studd shooters. Two regular Stormtroopers round out the set nicely. Good way to bulk up troop numbers, I want another set just to get more Deathtroopers.

The printing on the helmets and figures of both sets are nicely done and well detailed. The Deathtroopers even have a little color on the helmets too. Well done Lego, well done. I recommend both these sets.

Only thing is that they all have the same angry face.

#99 Lego set 75099 Rey's Speeder

The build went pretty quickly. The set is only 193 pieces though a lot of them seem like they could be useful for MOC builds. The overall construction is pretty solid except the lower engine has a little more flex than I'd like especially since it's a major part of the gimmick of the set, the opening side doors.

The minifigs are good. The printed details look pretty accurate and Rey has two faces, one stern and one smiling. Unkar's thug looks pretty thug-like and has crowbar. The set also has ten stickers that add details to a few areas. I don't like putting stickers on my sets though do those will hangout with the instruction book for the rest of time.

Build time: 25 minutes +/-
Design: 4/5
Difficulty: 1/5

Cons: the opposite side of the speeder has no detail to speak of, somewhat understandable since I don't remember seeing it in the film. It might seem minor though I see it as a lost opportunity to make the kit just a little better.

#98 The Kraken rises!

Ok, this one was a real monster of a project. The kraken itself was 14 pieces: 4  for the body and 10 tentacles. The ship base I'm not sure of, there might be 3-4 pieces. I only had to attach the tentacles after painting the body. It is not attached to the ship yet since it would be even more of a hassle to move or store.

The painting prices was simple just time consuming. The main colors are turquoise and black. The fleshy areas around the break I thought should stand out a bit so I painted those areas with a muscle tone. The turquoise was three stages: a base coat, a couple washes and some highlights. So far so good. The shell areas were painted black highlighted grey then washed black.

#97 Star Wars: Imperial Assault

Tough to stay motivated the past few weeks. Figure I'll post up some pics of some of the star warsv miniatures I painted from the imperial assault game.

It's a fun game though I enjoy the campaign more than the skirmish side of things. I've picked up a few of the expansions. I'm privacy not going to be getting any more unless I find people who want to play regularly. Probably won't paint any new figures unless it really stars bothering me. Anyways on to pictures!

I plan on making a better post later...

#96 Lego Exo-suit

I was really happy to find this set at the Lego store this past weekend. The build went pretty quick despite having a lot of little pieces to connect and short through.

The suit itself is surprisingly articulate with some good joints. The hands were a nice surprise despite only having one joint they do have five fingers and look cool. There are some nice additional pieces too: 2 minifigs, a turtlebot and a small cargo pad.

Design: 5/5
Difficulty: 3/5

Build time: 1hr 15 mins (roughly)
Only con is that it could use a little more color.

#95 Lord Chompy Bits

This was a pretty big miniature. I'm not sure if I put more work into assembling him or painting him. I'm not quite pleased with how all the seam lines cane out in the end but at least they are not gaping chasms now. The paint job came out just about how I wanted it.  I did a reverse highlight as best I could and when in good lighting ask the colors show up nicely. I did a wash of blue on his face to bring out the details and liked the look so much I left it as it makes a nice contrast to the body and claws.

I magnetized him so storage well hopefully be a little easier. Now into the rest of the Malifaux I have and I hope nothing else breaks off, Katrina's bow is a pain in the butt to glue back together...

*I thought I had a pick of both his halves maybe I'll put one up later.

#94 Adventurers, party of three

Just finished these up this week. The human male is a ranger (dead currently), the human female might be a paladin (have not met her yet) and the gnome is a wizard, who uses a lot of fire spells and currently in the party.

I did some osl on the gnome since he's holding a fireball and thought it would add some extra sizzle.

Extra internet points if you can recognize the gnome's cloak. *I've made the cloak darker, next step would be black I suppose. 

#93 Two dragons... you get the idea...

Painted this pair up a few weeks ago. The gold one came out ok, looks much better in person than in the picture. The black dragon came out a little better, the highlights and the wings I'm most pleased with and my friend was very pleased with both if them.

 

#92 Giant skeleton

I painted this guy for my groups GM add a thank you during DM appreciation month (I know it was awhile ago). Anyways, this figure was really fun to paint as I rarely buy figured this big. Did the usual weathered bones look along with the scraps of clothing. I added some glowing runes to the little hammer on its arm since that looked like a good piece to show the magic enchantment that keeps it animated. Not a while lot else to say great figure I highly recommend it. 

#91 KD Great Game Hunter Rogue

I painted up this guy awhile ago just got lazy and didn't post anything about anything so I hope to change that in the next few days.  I'm also not gong to bother with my process unless asked. Just a blurb about the mini and then pics. 

#90 Menagerie of creepies

I finished these miniatures up awhile ago and just had not found the time to write about them. This group was comprised of snakes from Wrath of Ashardalon, spiders from Castle Ravenloft and Hellhounds and bigger spiders from Descent. They were fun to paint up and the owner had a distinct scheme for each group.

#89 Liche king of sorts

This was a neat sculpt. Lots of little details in the armor and sword. I also liked how it's floating or at least gives the impression of hovering. Not much else to stay on that part. Good details and lots of character.

I started by blocking in the armor, outside of the cloak, inside of the cloak and the lower robe area. All armor sections started out black. I also painted the sword black at this point. For the inside of the cloak I mixed a nice dark bloody red. The outside got a coat of black. The robe I started off with a mid grey. My idea for the cloak was to make it look dirty and tattered.

#88 Flesh golem (aka Frankenstein)

This guy is from the Castle Ravenloft DnD adventure board game. A lot of these figures are also in the pre -painted lines for DnD and seeing the naked figure shows that these mini's have great detail they just get covered up with the simple pre-paint jobs. Though I don't mind getting pre-painted figures for use as cannon fodder some of the bigger miniatures really could benefit from a more in depth paint job. Though recent Pathfinder pre-painted mini's do look pretty good.

So I had to primer this guy first after washing since I'm sure he was coated with mold release. I blocked out the main flesh areas and then my girlfriend pointed out that he was a little too symmetrical. So I went and repainted some the flesh areas to further break up the colors. The hardest part here was getting the metal staples. There are quite a few of them and they were a pain in the neck. The rest of the metal bits were easy. I think the best part on this figure is the left arm. It has flesh falling off and making it look a bloody mess was fun.

#87 Werewolves!

I'm loving the Reaper Bones line of mini's. Great details, the paint sticks without primer (if you use Reaper paints) and they are cheap. I bought quite a few for the price of one from certain other companies. Anyways on to the wolves.

This was another commission that had a few supernatural creatures. I started with the werewolves because the main requirement for them was having different fur colors. They painted up great as usual. I blocked in the fur and the flesh of each one. I basically used the fur color of the previous for the flesh areas of the next going from white to gray to black. Then I washed then with some brown, picked out highlights and got the details.