Zuzzy (final thoughts)

I was pretty annoyed with Zuzzy in June and July. I didn't get any kind of communication and had basically given up on ever getting these mats. 

It is such a shame that the company is so small and unable to properly communicate with its customers. A simple email saying that there is a delay would satisfy most customers. 

I do think the company is reliable. I have seen a lot of people say that their mats hadn't been sent and then turn around an say that they did eventually get it. 

When you get the mats, you are super happy. The quality and design of the mats are great. I have played on a number of tables, but I have never played on a mat that seems a cool as a Zuzzy when it is all painted up. 

So, as consumers, I guess we have to weigh the problems with the process versus the end result. 

For me, I don't think I could recommend Zuzzy in its current state. The long shipping times are actually quite acceptable. It is a niche market and they are a small company. The no communication is a whole new problem, though.  These days, there is a lot of competition in basically every market. Customer service is a must for an online company. 

If you come across their mats for sale, I would say to buy it immediately. But otherwise, it is a hard sale. 

Now, if you are extremely patient and trusting, then it might be an okay thing to try out. Eventually, you will get your mats it seems. But if you are the kind of person who constantly checks your inbox after you order something, well then you may end up going crazy waiting. 

I hope that this company can get its administration and customer service side running a bit better. It would be great to see more people ordering these mats!  

As for me right now, I am certainly pleased. But I know there are a lot of people waiting patiently and impatiently for news about their orders. 

Zuzzy (Verdant Fields)

After painting my first mat, I had said to myself that I would leave the second mat until later. 

Well, the next day I got the urge to paint it up. (I guess technically that is 'later')

This is what the mat looked like before painting. 

Although this is the smaller version, the idea is the same. This mat had a lot more texture than the other mat.

I didn't take pictures of the process this time and just went at it. The process took about 2 1/2 hours again. 

I started with a black primer over the whole mat again. From there, I covered it with a dark brown. Next, I put on a lighter brown in the areas I thought I was going to leave brown. 

It then got a wash and when that dried, I went in with the green. I put the green in all of the forested areas and tried to go a bit heavier in the parts that looked particularly dense. 

I then washed the whole mat again with a light coat of black. Finally, I went in with a brush and dry brushed the hell out of each area. I tried to lighten up the green and the brown. 

I would say that I am happier with the end result of this mat more than I was with the other mat. This mat simply looks a lot more vibrant and exciting.

Both mats will certainly serve me well. I will hopefully be testing them out this Saturday with some games of Bushido. 

Zuzzy Mats (when painted)

When I first ordered my Zuzzy mats, I was told that they didn't really need to be painted. I disagree. 

Although they are very well textured and they do have the appropriate base color, they still look rather plain before they are painted. 

Here is what it looks like as is. 

I did a test paint on one of the free smaller mats that Zuzzy sent me. It was fairly small, so it didn't take me too long to do it. 

It got a black base coat to start. 

From there, I did a inconsistent dark brown layer. 

A did another quick pass with a slightly lighter brown. 

Next, I went in with a brush and added the brick details and the black cracks with a cheaper black wash. 

My last step was dry brushing  with a light brown and the a light brown mixed with a grey. 

It was a good quick test job. I wasn't completely sold on the black lines, but a friend convinced me that he liked them. I also used the cheap black wash on the bricks and it didn't really work well. When I completed the bigger mat, I changed to the GW wash for just the bricks. 

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So, the next day, I started on the bigger mat. This time, I went and bought some cheaper acrylic paints. I used mostly Vallejo stuff with the test mat. 

I got to painting the larger mat and I think I underestimated how much work it would be to complete the bigger mat. 

I used my airbrush for the vast majority of this mat. The first layer was a black primer. 

The black primer didn't fully cover the mat, but I was using a lot more primer than I expected and I figured it would be okay like this. 

Next, I went over the mat with the cheaper brown acrylics I bought in the morning. My original test mat was a bit more grey than I intended. This time I wanted I give it a more earthy look. 

A lighter brown was used sporadically over the mat to give it some contrast. 

I then went in with a brush and did the details just as I did with the smaller mat. I painted black wash into all of the little cracks. This time, I actually painted the bricks with the airbrush. It didn't make much of a difference. 

A light black wash was the used and it was done. In total, it took me about 2 1/2 hours to complete. 

Overall, it was quite a great learning experience. I had never painted a mat before and I had certainly not painted anything of this size before. I am happy that I ended up going with a more brown look. 

I think this setting will work really well for Malifaux and the western style terrain I have. 

Zuzzy Mats (finally arrived)

I have wanted to have a few nice gaming mats for a while now. I have tried making my own here and there, but none of them were satisfying. 

So I asked around and got a recommendation for Zuzzy. I ended up ordering two mats back in May. The price was very reasonable and the shipping wasn't too bad considering that they were being sent half way across the world. 

Now, the main problem was the delay. If you do any research about this company, you are going to find three very true comments: 

1) the product is absolutely great. 

2) the company has probably the worst communication ever. 

3) you will likely wait a long ass time for your mats. 

So, I order two mats (3x3 feet) in May. I contacted the seller after about 7 weeks and got no reply. I emailed him again after about 10 weeks and nothing. 

Unfortunately, the time on a paypal refund had lapsed at this point. So I had basically given up on these mats and just considered it a loss. 

Well, sometime in early August, I finally got an email. The email apologized and said that the mats would ship out the next day. 

Great. I had my faith restored slightly and I was excited. A week later, the mats arrived!  

In the package was a small note that said sorry again and he included two small mats as a slight bonus/apology. 

This is a picture of the smaller mat. The larger mats are very similar. The mats roll up very well and store easily. The slight bump in the middle is from my cutting board. The mats sit very flat. 

So, now that I had them, it was time to start painting them!

Malifaux Game 50 Pts: Seamus Vs. Mcmourning

When I first got into Malifaux, I went a little crazy with the crew boxes. I kind of bought all the boxes I could from my local shop and painted them up. Well, immediately I fell in love with The Guild and played a lot of games with these crews. That meant that the other crews were largely ignored. So recently, I have been making an effort to play as these crews. This time around, I decided to try Seamus. 

Now, I haven't purchased any other Resurrectionists blister packs. So I just had the base set. We decided to play a 50 point game, so I borrowed 3 punk zombies from a friend to fill out the crew. 

Turn 1 was great. I really felt like I was using the crew's abilities as intended. On turn 1, my opponent sped up Franky and had him move to about the center of the table. I used this as an opportunity to get Franky out of position and to put a lot of early damage on his tank. 

Franky did manage to sop up a lot of wounds, but he inevitably died just a few moves into turn 2. 

Turn two presented me with an opportunity to quickly pop McMourning. My opponent moved McMourning to the second floor to the left of Seamus. Since these walls are climbable, I decided to rush Seamus over the wall to take a shot at the doctor. After that, I brought my totem in and put a ton more damage on him. 

I really felt that I was in control of this game. And this is when it all went to shit. 

My opponent quickly reacted by bringing in reinforcements to help out the doctor. I ended up cluttering up my crew and separating the punk zombies and Seamus from my belles. 

Turn 3 would be a poisonous blood bath for me. 

Our focus on turn 3 was all about this cluster ****. I was hell bent on finishing off McMourning. Maybe too much so. I ended up using the punk zombie to get at McMourning to do the last point of damage. When I did that, my opponent moved in the poisonous dogs and gave most of my crew poison 2. With Sebastian also in the room, that meant I was taking 3 damage on activation and 3 damage at the end of the turn. 

From this point, the game turned into him running the schemes and me scrambling to kill Sebastian. 

In the end, the game's score was 9-1 for my opponent. I foolishly took breakthrough, which didn't net me anything and I also took Make them Suffer, which only scored me a single point. 

As for the main scenario, we did one of the story encounters. My objective was to kill his master and 2 henchmen. I managed to get 2/3 done, but that didn't give any points. 

I learned a lot about both crews this game and I am eager to try out Seamus again. 

14 Century German Infanteyman

I painted something a little bit different this week. I went shopping last Friday and stumbled across this random model. 

I thought it looked interesting and that it would be a nice change of pace from the fantasy stuff I have been doing. 

The model glued together fairly well. The only issue I had was with his left arm, however, I think that was mostly the result of how I glued his left hand onto his left arm. A little green stuff mostly fixed that. 

I also had a bit of trouble with his left leg. The stance of the model seemed a bit strange and in the end, I had to pin him to the base to give him the stability that his legs weren't. 

I bought a new bottle of black primer and wanted to try it out. It actually worked a lot better than the normal black that I had been using. 

Painting him wasn't too hard. I focused quite a bit on his face. I am still trying to learn how to bring out the details in faces. I think this face turned out fairly well. 

I then washed the metal and tried to lighten up some areas with lighter silvers. I also touched up a few other parts that I missed. 

The last step was finishing the base. It was just a simply drybrushing job. 

Overall, he was a pretty neat model. I didn't completely like how his robes turned out. The paint I used was a new cream/bone from GW and the mixture seems clumpy. I am not sure I will use it much in the future. 

So now, it is back to some Orks!

Ork Meganobz

Last weekend, I got around to painting up my first three Meganobz. They had tons of little bits and details to deal with. They took me about 10 hours from start to finish. Near the end, I started to get lazy and wrapped them up quickly. I could probably spend another few hours on them. 

My friend already informed me that the Big Mek has the wrong gun. So I switched it with the Nob on the right. I still have such a hard time distinguishing  weapons in 40k. 

I decided to go with the Big Mek because why not. However, this decision is forcing me to buy another box of Meganobz. Oh well. 

I got lazy on this model near the end and didn't bother to paint any of the details on his teleporta gun thingy. 

I didn't glue down any of the weapons on these models, so I have the choice to switch them out if need be. 

Overall, these were really fun models to paint and this is just one step closer to having a playable Ork army. I sill have a long ways to go, though. 

Bushido Silvermoon

I bought a second starter set of Bushido models about 4 or 5 months ago. I assembled them and based them in black. I even painted one of them, stripped him and then painted him again. The rest of the models just sat there. 

I think the reason was mostly because I was a little disappointed in the models. They were very fragile and dainty. Their arms kept breaking off and I just didn't want to bother with them. 

Well, another friend recently shows some interest in Bushido and we decided to order some more models. But before those models arrive, I figured I could teach him how to play with my Ito Clan and my Silvermoon Syndicate models. 

So, I took two nights this week and quickly finished up the project I started nearly half a year ago. 

 

I didn't put much effort into each model. I most did a base color and washed it. I might go back and touch them up later, but that is doubtful. 

My pictures are still incredibly dark. The lighting in my house is quite poor and I still haven't made a light box. 

I was surprised at how well this guys skin turned out. The models are actually very well modeled and they show details very well with just a little wash. 

My next Bushido crew will be the Bakemono. I have been eyeing them up for a long time and I think they will be quite fun.