Yoymart Review

I had seen a couple of adds for Warhammer miniatures from Yoymart.com and I thought I would check them out.  I will say that I used to play Warhammer 40k years ago, but gave it up.  I really like the miniatures, but I had a hard time keeping up with the army of the month.  I was also sick of trying to play and having guys constantly telling me what I should do or should be doing.  Then the 3rd thing is the price.  I remember when I started playing it was $30 Can. for a box of 10 space marines.  I stopped when they hit $40. Now I see that on GW's website they are $55 for a tactical squad.  Its insane.  I have since sold of a bunch of my stuff for more than I paid originally.  Like I said I really liked the miniatures.  Then I checked out yoymart and decided to place an order.  

I got 2 tactical squads of marines, and a terminator squad.  They are exactly the same with a few exceptions. Let me preface this by saying there aren't flaws in the casting or anything like that I have noticed.  I saw a lot of posts of people knocking the quality of the detail before I ordered.  I have not had a bad experience with poor casts in the product I received. 

 First off they are cast out of a resin.  Seems like there is 2 different formulas they use.  This is based off the colors you can see in the pictures. The terminator pieces look quite a bit lighter than the tactical marines molds.  This also means they are brittle. I could easily snap pieces of loose sprue that came in the bags they were shipped in.

Secondly lots of flash.  The mold lines are prominent as you can see with these terminator legs and there is quite a lot of excess on the missile launcher top as well.  

Here is a closer look at the tactical squads sprue.  You can see a lot of flash on the back pack and power sword on the left.  

Anyways everything was shipped with what appeared to be all the pieces.  I dont mind clearing a lot of flash, and the price is right.  Each tactical squad was only $21 USD, and the terminators were only like $19.  I am happy with my purchase, and probably would order from them in the future.  

Also I was not asked or compensated in any way by Yoymart.com to provide this review.

Harlequin Miniatures Skeletons... My first airbrushed.

Well I splurged and I got myself an airbrush for Christmas.  Since I ordered it from eBay and my hose never showed it wasn't able to start using it until mid January.  I decided I wanted to try something simple for my first figures with it.  These 3 Skeletons I got off of Kijiji, which if you don't know its a better version of craigslist that people tend to use more in Canada.  They are by Harlequin Miniatures and they were stamped 96', so they are coming close to 20 years old.  They are nice sculpts though and are available here.  I layered them with 3 colors and then gave them a burnt umber oil wash.  The colors go from ocher brown -> bleached bone or bone white -> 50/50 bleached bone/ white.  I thought they turned out pretty well.  I hope to use these with my new pathfinder rule book I picked up.

I know the picture isnt great.  But I think they look good even with bad lighting. 

Goal Achieved, Its been a good year.

Well I am pretty excited, I have finished my goal for this last year to paint 52 miniatures in 52 weeks. I am happy that I finished, but I do have a couple of WIP pieces that I wasn't able to complete. One of those a large red dragon is only 3/4 done and still has quite a bit of work left to be done on it. Well here are the piece that I completed. This includes all the terrain that they are displayed on.

Thanks to those who shared their support and followed my progress when I was posting earlier this year. Keep checking in to see what's going on with my blog in the future, I have good plans for projects this next year. 

Re-Branding

So the year is almost up and I have decided to re brand my blog since I will no longer be continuing the goal of 52 minis in 52 weeks into this next year.  I am coming up on my year end on Jan 20th and I am about 9 miniatures behind, but I am confident that I will finish by the 20th.  As of now though my blog is going to be more casual and less goal driven.  I know I didn't post very much in the later part of the year, but I found that worrying about posting took me away from the painting which I enjoy.  But look forward to RPG and miniature related posts on this blog in the near future.

Fixing Bent Reaper Bones

A lot of people who have purchased bones miniatures have probably seen that swords are bent, figures don't stand up as well sometimes because they are warped on the bases. Soft plastic miniatures unlike metal figures, cannot be simply bent back into shape. There is a way however to get your figures to look straight and perfect again. If you take boiling water (doesn't have to be a rolling boil) and a container of cold water (ice is recommended but not necessary). Grab the bent figure with tongs. (Warning hot water can scald you and steam can cause 1st and 2nd degree burns.) Dip the bent figure in the water for a few seconds. Generally 5-10 for thin parts and 10-30 for thick. Take the figure out of the water and bend it to the way you want. Most of the times the plastic straightened up without me having to adjust anything. Once you have bent the figure the way you want, place mini in the cool water. This will cause the plastic to stiffen up again.  Here are some examples of figures I did with this technique. 

Some things I could not fix totally with this method. But out of the 30 figures I straightened out. Only 2 couldn't be fixed. One figure was to thick to fix. And the other can be repaired by basing it on a different base. 

#15 Its a Purple Worm!

Here it is, a Purple Worm.  Not a very exciting miniature.  It was an expensive one though.  I ended up getting a speeding ticket in the mail that I got on the way home from picking this guy up.  From what I could find on the internet this is a 1982 Giant Worm miniature released by Citadel.  I guess I can add the Games Workshop tag to my post now right? Any ways what can I say about this other than its a terrible sculpt.  I only say this because I know I can do better than this, and I have.  It wasn't fun to paint, just layering purple, then purple with black wash, then layers of more purple.  The base I made out of Hirst Arts Castle Molds. It looks like the base is 3''x 3'' but its actually about 1/3 smaller than that.  I thought it would look weird if I based him on to large of a base since the mini isn't as huge as it is supposed to be.

The Hideous Maw of the Worm

#14 Granadier 1984 Vampire

I know I said in the past that I have painted to many vampires but here is another. I think this one might be my favorite. Also, I know I am far behind my goal, but I have another couple minis I have painted that I will be posting soon. I think sometimes the pressure of putting together blog posts scares me off of finishing projects. I have about 13 different minis on the go, but I think I have gotten a little bit of a second wind. I feel I can catch up and finish my goal by next feb. They say us Albertans are getting an early winter this year, sounds like a good excuse to spend time inside painting. Any ways here's the figure. Let me know what you think.