Pocket Money Hobby - Part 2: Paints

Welcome to part two of Pocket Money Hobby. Rather than concentrating on a system this time round we’ll be looking at how to get yourself painting your models up for cheap. Rather than working with a £40 budget for this we’ll be looking at the cheapest way to get an effective range of paints.

We’ll begin by looking at the paints we need to paint up our Deadzone faction starter. Luckily Mantic games themselves offer us a few options.

On their web store Mantic have 4 paint sets for £15 that all come with a brush, 6 paints and a few models to practise on. The Mantic paint set is my top pic of the three if you’re going Enforcers or Rebs, with two brushes, 6 paints and 4 models to practise on you’ll be well on your way.
The Goblin paint set is great for Marauders as you might imagine, the Undead set will give a great finish to plague and enforcers, and the skeletons will be great for basing.

Of course Mantic aren’t your only option.

For those starting 40k Games Workshop’s 40k paint set is a solid start. With all the paints you need to do a great Dark Angels colour scheme and a brush to boot. To bolster your Space Marine force (or to practice on) you also get 5 tactical marines. This a great set if you’ve got the Dark Vengeance box or are starting Marine force. For £23.50 it’s a little steep but a great for Dark Angels player.

For Warmachine or Hordes P3 do some great sets of 6 paints for £12. There’s one for every faction and also a generic “colours of the Iron Kingdoms” which gives you a great set of base colours. Unfortunately these don’t come with a brush but for £2 you can get an Army Painter brush, that’s a great choice.  This paint set comes with every paint you’ll need for your faction and the P3 paints are some of the best quality paints around. 

A great generic option for all systems (so Malifaux, Batman, and any other system we may not mention and all those we have as well) is the Army painter War Paints Starter set. This set comes with 9 core colours and a quick shade to give your models great definition, and also a starter brush which is great for large areas and detail. Another solid generic choice especially for those more advanced painter is the Vallejo starter set. This comes with nine core paints, a pallet and a brush. It’ll need a little more patience and mixing but will give a great result.  Both these sets are £20 and I’d recommend the Army Painter set for the novice and the Vallejo for the more advanced painter.
Army Painter
Vallejo

Well those are our suggestions to get you going for £20 or less for each set (GW not withstanding). Of course for our monthly budget a couple of these will give you a very solid base to begin. Don't forget as well that you'll need to prime your models before painting. I recommend Army painter Matt Black for £7.50 a can as your best choice.

Next time we'll be taking a look at Warmachine/ Hordes for a pocket money budget.

Pocket Money Hobby - Part 1 Deadzone.

Greetings and welcome to the first in the series of “Pocket Money Hobby”. This series of articles aims to continue the work of my on a budget articles by helping those who may not have loads of spare cash to spend on hobby get the most out of what they can spend.
We’ll be working with an “average” pocket money budget of £10 a week or £40 a month. With this we’ll look at paints, models, and all the ancillary gaming material s you may need.

In this article we’ll be looking at starting Mantic Games’ new game system Deadzone. Deadzone is a great little sci-fi skirmish game that makes a perfect introductory game for a beginner. It’s light on models, extra materials and is very easy to learn. 

So let’s get started.  Picture the scene, you’ve been past your FLGS (Friendly local gaming store) you’ve popped in and had a chat saved up a little cash and settled on a sci-fi system. You’ve got no hobby resources back at home so what can your £40 get you to start you playing?

First up you’re going to need some models. Deadzone makes this very easy.  There are four factions:
Enforcers – super humans in high tech armour, the elite of the “Corporation”.
Rebels – An eclectic bag of freedom fighters.
Marauders – Well trained alien mercenaries.
Plague – An intelligent strain of virus bent on destruction.

Each of these factions has a starter box that costs £20. For half our monthly budget we get; between 11 and 12 models which are enough to play the game, and the cards needed to play your faction (mission, stat and battle). The box also comes with two Mantic points. These little guys are your friend. They work like loyalty points that you can collect to cash in for free models, including Deadzone bits.Another great point about the boxes Mantic's products come in is that they are plastic cases lined with foam that are great for transporting your models in complete safety.

Right we now have our models; however you may notice they are in lots of tiny pieces with extraneous bits hanging on them. We’re going to need to clean them up and stick them together.
The cheapest and most effective solution for this is “The Army Painters” metal/resin assembly set. At £8 you get clippers, glue and a file so your models should be near perfect once you’re done clipping and filing the flash away.

So £28 in and we’ve nearly got everything we need to play and our models are built all be it still grey plastic. To get playing in our first month, we’re also going to need some D8’s and some tokens.
Mantic do an Acrylic token set for £10 which is nice but a little steep for many gamers. However some generic counters would do the trick. Mantic also sell d8’s, £5 for a pack of 10. However some search round the internet or your FLGS should find you some cheaper alternatives that fit in the remainder of our £12 or less.

D8's - £3
Mantic tokens - £10

This gives you most of what you need for Deadzone for £41 (a little over budget sorry), but you're going to need to find a local club or FLGS to play in. Most of these will be able to provide a extra crates and the bits you're missing and of course a board and an opponent.


Next time we’ll look at getting paints and brushes sorted for £40 or less

A New Year, A New Start.

Hello and welcome to/back to A Murder of Ravens. I started this blog in 2011 while at university to be a record of my own hobby and to help out other hobbyists with a few helpful articles I could link them to while hanging around my FLGS.

Three years later and  I have a new FLGS new games I play and some I played that I play no longer. I also spend most of my blogging time over at the Hobbynomicon, which is great and you should totally go and check it out, but I miss having a little corner of the internet that's mine.

I'll still be writing over at the Hobbynomicon (if anything I'll be doing even more) but I also want my own little space for personal projects away from the bright lights of HNom. From time to time you may see something from here posted over at the Hobbynomicon or vice versa, and I hope you'll forgive the spreading.

For now though I shall bid you farewell and a happy new year. Check back tomorrow for a new article series.