Been very gradually grinding through the Shaltari fleet. I’ve kept telling myself that I’d post something once more were done, but the momentum has been glacial, so fuck it.
One thing I’ve discovered is that they look much better with a very heavy dry brushing, so there’s something of a clear distinction between older, darker models, and newer more heavily colored ones. Bugs me a little but nothing major.
Did manage to get the Hangar feature tokens done quickly after receiving them though, as I wanted at least one complete in time for a game. Was nice to take the Shaltari out for their first go earlier this year:
Also, made a short video about the Striketeam models:
Going to be honest; from conception to completion it was about an hour and it shows. It exists entirely because I felt like doing that little skit, not because I wanted to actually cover discussing the models. Still might be of interest to someone who wants to see how they compare to each other and their 10mm versions, at least.
Originally I intended it to feel more organic, as in actual video where I hold and show off the models that more smoothly transitions into the skit, but I simply can’t get my camera to do video of sufficient quality on anything that needs closeups. It’s nothing fancy, a Canon Rebel EOS T6, but theoretically should handle it. However, I’ve spent way too long in the past trying to get it to take quality video and no matter the camera settings, lighting, whatever, just can’t get it to do the trick.
On a somewhat related topic, an idea I generally hold to is that for any creative endeavor, the final result should be something that would interest you if it was made by someone else and/or that you learn something from doing. Be it read, play, watch, whatever, unless you have successfully driven your soul into exile and approach creating things from a pure profit or engagement driven stance, the best results will come from sincerity combined with a drive to improve.
Why bring this up? I’ve spent some time browsing through battle report videos for a whole range of games, and to put it politely, the vast majority are nearly all either terrible, boring, or little more than a veneer of overproduction. Ranging from three unedited hours of handheld phone video tracking every die roll to reality TV style talking head reaction shot productions, there’s a lot of trash out there. So, what makes a good video about table top games?
For some surface level media analysis, as I reckon it, there’s two major reasons to watch anything: information and entertainment. For table top games, you might be interested in a particular game and want to get an idea of how a system plays or what the models are like. A straightforward “how it plays” video might do the trick there, but a good one should still blend in something engaging to hook you in as well and hype things up. In any case, to put on my pompous and judgemental affectations, I don’t really see the worth of learning from tutorial videos versus simply going directly to the source and reading the rules, so said videos need some sort of unique flavor to make themselves worthwhile.
As for the more typical entertainment focused productions? It feels like a lot of people putting out these battle report videos assume that just watching them play a game is where the value is at, and I mean, sort of? The strengths of miniature gaming as I see it are spectacle and structured narrative. You and whoever you’re playing the game with are creating a collaborative art project, using a particular set of rules, themes, and props to play out a story together. Is a theater kid level of role play drama necessary? God no. But a video that results in mostly sitting there watching dice and shuffling miniatures for two hours is doing a disservice to what could be.
Actually, backing up a bit, I suppose there’s a third reason people watch videos that seems to crop up a lot in discussions of online media. You just want something on in the background that serves as white noise to keep you from feeling alone. I don’t think there’s much to engage with or discuss there.
You could easily say, “the fuck are you on about, you’ve only put out a handful of battle reports that are boilerplate nothings at best”, and yes. You are correct! I’ve tried to learn something about the process every video, improving on something (better audio, editing, game state clarity, whatever) with each one, but they still largely lack either the engaging narrative structures that would hook you in, or some sort of unique approach to the whole production to justify themselves. So I come to the point of this rambling jerk off session; I doubt I’m making another battle report soon unless there’s something I can do to make them both better quality and more interesting. The first step would be to invest in the gear needed to get to that baseline level of sufficient quality, and I’m not willing to throw down the cash for that at the moment. I might still toss together dumb gag videos like the above one when the desire comes, though, since they’re fun little learning experiments. But treading water with the same type of video over and over for no real purpose other than pumping out ‘content’? Eh.
To touch on Striketeam briefly, as the Kickstarter is going at the moment, I plan to pick up some PHR and Scourge infantry as 1) they’re neat and 2) having a complete set of models for each faction ranging from individuals, to armies, to fleets provides some aspirational game and narrative ideas.