About Me

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My name is Gavin McClements. I am a wargamer and family man, living in Los Gatos, which is a suburb of San Jose, CA. Building terrain is one of my favorite aspects of the wargaming hobby - in fact, lately I've become more interested in making my battlefields "pop" than in actually playing.

Monday, March 5, 2012

Another 6mm building by JR Miniatures

This is JRM's #13802, Destroyed Red October Factory. I painted it to match a burnt down brick factory, and think I succeeded really well.

The ink here is GW's Devlan Mud. I hadnt thought to use the Badab Black here, but I think it still turned out nicely.














You may notice a slight sheen to the building, which is a little bothersome, but it has been coated with Krylon Matte Varnish that I got at the local Ace Hardware. I am testing out Tester's Dullcoat on my other JRM piece I just finished, in the hopes that I can compare the two...but Dullcoat is expensive and hard to find here in San Jose, CA, at least as far as I can tell.

Making these pieces helps me feel like I have unique terrain, even if they are just store-bought, and spending so much time on them makes it that much more rewarding. Hope you like it.

Im not alone when it comes to not wanting to paint rank after rank...

Ive been surfing over at Tabletop Gaming News today as I often do, and came across this article reviewing Warpath, the to-be-40k-competitor by the guys over at Mantic Games. You can read it here:

http://thefrontlinegamer.blogspot.com/2012/03/games-that-currently-intrigue-me.html

But what caught my eye was the comment at the end:

"The reality is that I'm not quite as enamoured with the idea of mass battle games like I once was. It no longer fits with how, or indeed where I want my hobby to go. I've done that for roughly the past 15 years or so and in the end I didn't find it a very enjoyable all round hobby experience. I guess it's because deep down I love painting and being forced to have to paint row after row of identikit miniatures fills me with dread now, no matter how I approach it. Painting them to as high a standard as I can achieve, which is what I'd normally choose to do, scares the hell out of me. Especially when I think of the time commitment I'd have to make to such a joyless task. Yet speed painting them, and just doing the basics isn't what I like doing either and I find it a bit soul destroying. Big games take a big commitment and I guess my life isn't quite in that same 'hobby zone' right now that it used to be."
You've just nailed my attitude exactly. I can't tell you whether it's a general trend or just a few of us, but I'm over the whole fill-the-table-with-28mm models thing. It's an excess I can no longer afford either time-wise or cash-wise.

I love painting, which might be evident in the terrain I have done lately, but I think this is because the pieces themselves are so individualistic that it is almost like a skirmish game with terrain :)

I have a new JR Miniatures building to show, maybe tonight, but I wanted to get this out there. It echoes how I feel a lot too...and is one of the reasons that 6mm is such a joy to me right now.

Thursday, March 1, 2012

JR Miniatures 6mm ruins

I love painting, but I dont tend to find it therapeutic as many do simply because I often cannot sit for long periods without feeling some pretty major discomfort in my back and neck as I work away, all hunched over and whatnot (I know, I know, posture is everything...).

But I still really enjoy. I love making the terrain and I love making it look nice. Sometimes, however, a ready-made piece just looks so good that you cannot help but love it. I feel this way about JR Miniature's stuff.

Here is the JRM #1351 City Block Ruin #2:


















Im pretty happy with how the weathering turned out. I observed how the game developers of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 textured their buildings on Dome, and I wanted to replicate the building from Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare's "Vacant", which had a seafoam green-ish color that I loved.

I used GW's Badab Black wash first, then went back over it with Devlan Mud. I kept my strokes vertical and think it really did the job.

I'll put more up as I finish them.

More discussion at: http://www.tacticalwargames.net/taccmd/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=22691