All posts tagged: review

A review of Greyed Out Dice Bags

Cool Tools: Greyed Out Dice Bags

I’ve seen @greylikestorms dice bags now and then on Twitter, but never really paid too much attention to them. I thought dice bags were one of those things ‘hardcore’ players did. The same ones who came dressed up in costume or carried a banner to events. But after having the fortunate chance to get to know Mike as part of the Rainbow Warriors Project, I have changed my mind and even bought my own bag. Why Dice Bags? For many tabletop games, dice are used to test skills and perform heroism. Bigger games require more dice. Sometimes whole piles of dice. Looking at you orks and all your dakka Forever I have been using resealable plastic bags to hold my dice between games. Functional, cheap and easy. But they rip or disappear in the fog of war (more likely blown away and picked up as trash). Greyed Out Dice Bags Thanks to the power and reach of Twitter, I have seen Mike’s dice bags pop up now and again. But it wasn’t until we started …

Book Released! Learn How to Build Miniatures and Improve Your Skills

Technically, my book, How to Improve Your Hobby Building Skills, was released on Kindle June 3rd, but now it is available as a paperback as well! If you wanted to learn more about the book, or how you can help, this post is for you. When I was writing the series on How to Improve Your Hobby Skills, I kept trying to balance between going too deep, and thus blowing up the size of a blog post, and covering enough details to make it helpful. This spawned the idea that I could take each part (building, painting, showcasing) and expand it into a full-sized book. It’s a crazy idea for a guy who struggled in English class! But the more I dug into what it would take to self-publish a book and all the tools to get it done, the more excited I got. What is in This Book? When I started writing this book about building miniatures, I started with thinking about what are the things hobbyists struggle with. Many of these ideas came …

Book Review of Color Theory by Patti Mollica

Book Review: Color Theory by Patti Mollica

While doing research for my painting basics post, I pulled out a book I’ve had on color theory. After reading through it, I thought I would provide a book review and my takeaways from this book. Color Theory by Patti Mollica is a fairly short but dense book in the Artist’s Library Series aimed at more traditional artists. What I mean by this is that the colors she mentions and tools used are the typical set used by canvas painters. So while the topic of learning color theory is helpful, we just need to translate it into painting miniatures. I am listing learning color theory as one of the things to help painters improve. By learning how colors interact and mix, you can create moods and feeling, or create focus to particular areas of the model. Book Contents At only 52 pages, it is easy to skim through Color Theory and get a sense of what it offers. Patti breaks the book down into five sections: the history of color, color basics, pigments & paints, communicating with …

A collection of my favorite family board games

My Favorite Board Games

While I haven’t been able to play a game of 40k in many years, I have built up a good collection of board games that I love playing with my family. Some are fun and quick games, others are epic times when family visits for the holidays. While some of these are more common than others, I’ve added all the games we have played multiple times and really enjoy. A few others have been dudes, or just way too much setup time. What’s great about most of these games is that they are fairly easy to learn and get playing. This is an important factor with two little boys in the house who want to “help.” 🙂 Note: The links below are affiliate links to Amazon. There is no price difference to you, but I do earn a small commission if you buy it. This is how I pay for hosting services and keep this site alive, so if you want an awesome game and support Broken Paintbrush, I would appreciate the clicks! These games …

Review of Warcolours Paintbrushes

Cool Tools: Warcolours Paintbrushes

As you can image from my blog’s title (Broken Paintbrush), I’m rather hard on brushes. Even when using Brush Soap, my detail brushes seem to split almost as soon as I start the second model. This is why I’m excited to review the Warcolours Paintbrushes here. Disclaimer: Warcolours sent me a free set of paints and brushes to review for the Golden D6. The links below do include affiliate links, meaning that if you buy these great brushes, I get a small bonus to help fund this blog. Even though I got these for free, I still only recommend Cool Tools that I actually use and would want you to use too. Warcolours I first heard about Warcolours when Adam from the Golden D6 asked if I wanted to review their line. Try out free paints? Of course, I said yes! So Neo from Warcolours was awesome enough to send me a set of not only their paints but brushes and a pot of powder pigment as well. I wrote up a full review of the …

Golden D6 Review - Quality Content

Golden D6 Review Issue 3

How many of you remember a time of big White Dwarf magazines chock full of tutorials, battle reports, and jaw-dropping conversions? Not that I’m bashing on the new iteration of the WD (the weekly hit is nice), but over the years, the community spirit has been substantially depleted. This is why I’m so excited for what Adam from SprueGrey is doing and why I put together a Golden D6 review. For those who haven’t seen, The Golden D6 is a hobby magazine written by bloggers and pulled together by Adam Jones with the help of ex-White Dwarf Matt Weaver. This is his third issue and packed full of goodies. A bit of a disclaimer: Adam has been kind enough to feature me in his magazine, including this one. Also, if you buy a copy of The Golden D6 through my link Adam also pays me a portion of the sale. So if you buy a copy, you get an awesome hobby magazine, Adam get a sale and can continue his mad plan to build a media empire, …

Broken Paintbrush 2015 Year in Review

Despite most of the year living out of boxes, 2015 has probably been the best year for Broken Paintbrush. This post makes for the 70th one published this year, and the community involvement has been great, with 54 comments with over 19 of you amazing hobby addicts joining in on the discussion. On the Hobby Front As I’m not much a gamer any more, my hobby time has started to diverge. For me this mix of armies has been a great motivation so I’m not stuck painting endless amounts of the same colors. Its also given me a chance to a wider range of tutorials (down below). Coming into 2016 (as mentioned in my previous post) I am embracing this method even more so. Mentor Legion The Mentor Legion project has been a true labor of love as I have found they are a rather difficult color scheme to paint (part of my original decision to choose them – to my continued pain!). This year I was able to bring them from the original troop …

25mm to 32mm Conversion Ring Review

25mm to 32mm Conversion Ring Review

With Games Works change to Space Marine base sizes, I bought a set of Secret Weapon Miniatures 32mm Conversion Ring set to try out. I really like the end result, but the process was a bit of a pain so I figured it might be worth a tutorial post. As with any molded product it is first important to clean off any flash. The rings had a few sections of longer flash like the picture below, but overall were well done. The main area that needed trimming was the bottom edge of each piece so it didn’t interfere with the original base. Next up, I needed to drill out the hole a bit larger as it didn’t seem to be molded deep enough. I found a drill bit that fit within the hole and then used the xacto knife to round out the front edge. The big issue I had with the 32mm conversion rings are that they didn’t fit tightly against the base. To tighten it down a bit I sliced off a small …

Book Review: Iron Warrior by Graham McNeill

Being a bit of a fan of the Iron Warriors I was super excited when I heard about the new novella from Black Library titled “Iron Warrior“. This is another Graham McNeill store featuring Honsou and the Ultramarines continuing after the end of “Dead Sky, Black Sun.” Iron Warriors Book Review: Short Story and Disappointing Pictures The biggest selling point that got me to shell out the extra for this little book was the description that the book is “filled with many pieces of artwork, both illustrations and full-color portraits” which made me visualize an Index Astartes type of production. This ended up being my biggest disappointment of the book, the quality of the illustrations were more of the ’80 GW style of cartoony creations, but with hazard stripes to make them authentic Iron Warriors. Also, half the illustrations were of Ultramarines or imperial warriors, which is great to fill in the story and space but was disappointing when I was looking forward to a book featuring, I don’t know, maybe the Iron Warriors? The colored …