Battle of the Brushes

When I started painting minis, brushes were just plain standard brushes and the ones that were too old and worn got trimmed, and were used for drybrushing at the last stage of their lifecycles. I tried GW’s brushes made specifically for this technique, and I was pleased with them: the flat profiles worked surprisingly well and since it offered a range of sizes, I could choose the right one for every task.

When I saw the Series D Drybrush Set from Artis Opus, I found it really weird: the brushes had huge, rounded heads, and were sold in elegant wooden boxes at a shockingly high price. In the end, the tutorial videos I saw convinced me and, I bought my own set. A few months later I found that The Army Painter’s Masterclass Drybrush Set had an undeniably similar design, but for less than one-third of the price. Is it possible that their brushes can offer the same, or is it too good to be true? I had to find out, so I bought their set as well and tested both products.

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Summer Haul Report 2020 – aka The Treasure Hunt Goes On

This quarter has been busier than expected, practically I haven’t painted anything but have luckily had very good RPG (Cepheus Light and D&D) and wargame (Stargrunt II) sessions. COVID-19 is still around, so there was no wargame show to report about and the games I played were online, not face to face. But there is something reassuring about buying hobby stuff. This time it wasn’t panic buying like it was in the spring, but a more methodical one.

Let’s start with Patrick Todoroff’s Hardwired rulebook and The Tsim Sha Tsui expansion: these are both short, fifty-page black and white booklets with a bit of background, complete rules, list of equipment and a handful of missions for cybernetically enhanced agents. Sounds familiar? There’s a good reason: Syndicate, the old PC game was one of the inspirations for this game. The subtitle “Cyberpunk espionage and mayhem” refers to a cyberpunk setting, but it’s very adaptable – you can swap the agents with a black ops team, a commando unit, a squad of mercenaries, a recon or a SWAT team and swap the opposing security forces to insurgents, alien bugs, zombies, rogue AI robots, vicious gangs, or your favourite villains.

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