Our friends over at Hyacinth Games have sent us some minis from their new line. If you aren’t familiar with their work they have a game called Wreck-Age which will be a community-building table-top skirmish game with a companion cooperative role-playing game to be released in late 2012.

Today we are going to take a look at the bare metal minis they have sent before we hand them off to one of our painters.

Staker Outrider

This models defining features are its relatively light armor, the long scoped rifle, the shovel it carries on its back (to bury dead bodies perhaps?) and its rather punk-looking Mohawk haircut.

Staker Scout

This lady is definitely kitted out for surviving on her own. Equipped with more bags, equipment for scouting ahead and alerting her allies, her only armament appears to be her side pistol.

Pack boar

While not as exciting as his exploding cousin the pack boar has a much longer life and comes carrying all the essentials his owners may need.

Stitchmen Male Hunter

The stitchmen seem to wear better gear and more durable armor than the stakers. The male hunter comes with what looks like night vision goggles and a nasty looking pistol.

Stitchmen Female Hunter

The female hunter wears a very similar outfit to her male counterpart but comes packing a even nastier looking rifle.

Pack of Dogs

The pack of dogs are rather cute furry little mongrels and its hard to imagine them as fearsome enemies..

Gencon Exclusive

As a surprise, they also sent along this GenCon Exclusive for us.  This guy is wearing some serious armor and carries a wicked-looking bow.

All the models are designed with true scale in mind as opposed to the heroic scale of other miniature games. So they have a feeling much closer to historical miniatures than the traditional si-fi and fantasy miniatures that most of our readers would be used to.

I really like the look of the minis as it can be hard to sculpt in true scale and look forward to seeing what the future releases have in store for us.

If you want to get your hands on some of these minis you can currently buy them direct from Hyacinth Games at their online store.

I’m baa-aack! With an appropriately named tutorial to boot. It’s been what, a month since I did an ‘official’ tutorial for Hand Cannon?? Not counting the previews of course. I hope you all enjoy, good readers!

This is another in my Basics series of tutorials, that covers some of the fundamental techniques in miniature painting. A lot of novice (and experienced!) painters have trouble with painting blacks. This proves to be a colour that is just a problematic for some as painting white. In this article I will cover the basic techniques for painting black; specifically, black armour plating. In addition to this, since it’s a very short article, and easy technique to master, I’ll cover making snow for your miniatures bases as well.
All paints used in this tutorial are Formula P3, unless stated otherwise.

For this tutorial, I’m using a commissioned model from one of my regular clients; the character Warjack that released in Warmachine: Wrath for Khador – Black Ivan.

I’ve already covered painting black, using several tints of highlight, which was for cloth: Painting Cloth and Highlighting Black, in which I go over proper techniques for thinning your paint, and several colors that can be used for highlighting black cloth. These methods work fine for clothing, and if the surface is rounded, and organic. But the techniques are less applicable to flat armor plates.

This tutorial also uses extensively, Two-Brush Blending. Familiarize yourself with this technique, and practice it over and over as much as you can. It becomes invaluable when painting larger models like Warjacks, and flat, featureless surfaces. You will need a smooth graduation of color to get this method to work, and look it’s best.

The most basic rule to follow when painting black armour;
If you want a surface to appear black, then 50% or more of that surface must remain pure, untouched black.
I call this the 50-50 Rule.

If you’re wondering why your models don’t appear black when you finish highlighting them, this is 99% likely the reason; too much of the surface is painted with highlight colors.

When painting Warjacks, I usually paint all the pistons and innards first. As per my standard means of applying paint – work from the inside out. Anything that is difficult to access, or hard to reach will get paint first. I always completely paint an area before moving onto the next. In this case, however, I left the final glaze on the reds until the very end. This was to enable a more consistent colour overall, and keep the reds coherent across the entire model.

Once the preliminary painting is complete, I base coated all of the black armor plates with Thamar Black.

I then highlighted 50% of each plate with pure Coal Black, and blended the bottom edge out with a second brush. This is going to be difficult to see in the first photo, as it’s very subtle in the bright light of my lightbox. After this first photo, I took the pictures directly on my painting table, as it’s much clearer and easier to see what’s happening.

Treat every armor plate as a separate surface, with its own lighting for the best effect.

There are several colors you can use to lighten Coal Black, and the P3 color chart suggests Menoth White Base. I don’t.
Coal Black has a fair bit of green in it, and Menoth White Base, having such a yellow tint, accentuates this. I find it makes the Coal Black turn into a sickly green, and not a blue-ish black I assume it’s supposed to be.

You can use Underbelly Blue, Frostbite, Arcane Blue, and Morrow White, depending on what tint you want. Don’t use Menoth White Highlight, as the creamy white will again emphasize the greenish tint of the Coal Black, leaving you with an undesirable highlight. Well, unless you want your blacks highlighted a sickly green (Cryx!).

For this tutorial, I used Frostbite, and it’s usually my go-to color for lightening Coal Black.

I used roughly a 5:1 ratio of Coal Black to Frostbite for the second highlight. This was applied to the top 50% of the first, Coal Black highlight, and the bottom …

Gus here!

Hi, I’m Gus: welcome to THE HANDCANNON.

If you’re into crafting and painting miniatures, you’re in the right place. Hand Cannon is where you can find all of my crafting fun, including some papercraft, scrapbooking, and Cricut tutorials.

I’m also looking to get into 3d printing soon, so stay tuned as I make my own miniatures in the future!