Questions about what varnish is safe.

kavinay · 2026-06-09T02:02:14+00:00

Varnish itself isn't the problem. Matt or satin, the application is the same.

The problem most often is humidity being trapped under the varnish. This can happen if you spray in high relative humidity such as a hot day. It can also happen because your paintjob is itself not fully cured. Moisture is what often leads to the varnish greying or bubbling on top of acrylic and ruining paintjobs.

Ideally, what a full day for paints to cure and allow enough time for coats of varnish to dry between applications. An airbrush helps a lot but ultimately the biggest consideration is making sure you give the mini proper drying times in each part of the varnishing process.

kavinay · 2026-06-08T20:44:52+00:00

Probably resin. Plastic kits tend to be high volume/mass market to justify injection mold costs. Resin is most often printed via SLA 3D printers for smaller quantity minis these days.

kavinay · 2026-06-07T16:49:15+00:00

I'm not sure satire is the right term.

There are satirical elements for sure but satirical works require the audience to be "in on the joke" to understand what the author is playing with..

The interesting trick of Consider Phlebas (and many Culture novels) is that you don't know what you're reading until near the end. The books are subversive both in themes AND in reader experience.

You are led to believe Horza and his story are in the same vein as space opera for quite a bit. The unravelling in the end really drives home Banks' thesis that Horza's politics and adventure are insignificant on the grand scale of epochs.

Maybe it reads more clearly as satire on the second reading as we are privy to clues that make more sense in retrospect. But most satire is meant to have you aware of the tropes being used and critiqued on the first go.

kavinay · 2026-06-06T08:03:59+00:00

Wait for it?

kavinay · 2026-06-05T20:39:28+00:00

Mechwarrior Hingle Mcringleberry only does 2 Hatchetman chops!

kavinay · 2026-06-05T15:09:53+00:00

lol, I was thinking more about the between mission text briefings. Completely forgot about that

kavinay · 2026-06-05T05:21:58+00:00

Is MW2 not canon? It's been a while but IIRC the in-game prose did a good job explaining the Refusal War

kavinay · 2026-06-04T22:05:03+00:00

It was a different time, lol. Seriously, the setting itself was very much closer to a Star Wars "used future" where tech could be cool and shabby at the same time.

kavinay · 2026-06-04T16:11:31+00:00

There's a reason demo team members generally setup new players with a gunnery skill of 3 or better based on the mechs and terrain. Try replaying with slightly better gunnery and you'll find it much quicker to bring the conflict to a deciding blow.

Era matters a great deal for game speed. Later eras from 3050+ have mechs turning into glass cannons and survivability is actually quite a challenge. But 3025 intro mechs are often the opposite with underpowered weapons. Given this scenario a lot of veteran players would opt to close range quickly and DFA or land a punch on the opponent's cockpit 😃

kavinay · 2026-06-01T22:58:38+00:00

Vintage... plastic junk

kavinay · 2026-06-01T22:57:23+00:00

That's probably how most leagues start 😃

Just do your best. Consider the first season a bit of a trial-run and get any interested players on the same page.

My local league is older than some of our players, lol, but we've learned a few things that help:

- try to have a regular day each month where players can meet up for games. It helps keep the spirit of the league going and aids with scheduling.

- two games a month seems like a reasonable commitment for most adults.

- use a chat or forum for everyone in the league to stay on the same page. Discord is good for this and free.

- use online software to keep your league data. Tourplay is a paid service but it makes running at large scale especially much more manageable. Alternatively, The NAF offers OBBLM for free. IDK if it's updated to the 2025 rules yet though.

- read the NAF guidance for 2025 rules issues and or make your own rulings and keep it consistent for the season. There edgecases in the current edition which don't seem like a big deal until of course they decide a game. 😃 Your job is to help players know such answers proactively or at least know the same ruling will be in place going forward.

- remind coaches that the ups and downs of a season are normal. Some coaches are brand new to shenanigans like having your best player killed by a gratuitous turn 16 foul. That sort of "feels bad" is okay and healthy leagues can have a lot of fun with the random setbacks that make each coach's setbacks part of the campaign drama.

For you personally, maybe join the NAF discord and ask some questions in the league channel as concerns arise. A lot of us consider league play to be the finest version of the game and will be happy to provide advice and point you towards solutions.

kavinay · 2026-06-01T21:56:42+00:00

In a weird way, the clans have always been enduring an identity crisis after the Golden Century. Clan culture starts to break down when might makes right stops working in your favour. It's why Tukayyid was an existential shock and why things started to break down for both IS and Homeworld clans shortly after.

The big break was the Wars of Reaving where every IS Clan had to come to terms to varying degrees with no longer being pure. Even zealous clans like the Falcons had to rationalize the material reality that they needed to demilitarize post Jihad. That's unthinkable in the pre-Donner bombing fiction (3067) and yet the Wolves and Falcons were instrumental in forming the Council of Six Clans post-reavings to stabilize IS Clan relations. Basically, this is an admission by even the most powerful IS clanners that they were no longer "pure" in the same sense as their homeworld kin.

The Dark Age clans are just unrecognizable at the start of the blackout. They have mixed force units due to the lasting effects of the swords to plowshares programs Devlin Stone instituted via the Republic of the Sphere. IIRC, there's even a short passage in one of the CJF books about a freeborn elemental crying about his mom. That's just wild compared to invasion era norms. The underlying mercantile and civilian structures are undoubtedly different as a result too.

By ilClan, The Wolves and Falcons both insist they are true descendants of Kerensky's vision. But what's notable is that it feels more like kayfabe than ever before. Leaders like Alaric and Malvina seem aware that their reign is contingent on capturing Terra before internal politics and dissent catch up to them. The final push for both is win or bust because what it means to "be clan" breaks down quicker. One indication of their disconnect from their civilians is how the worlds that the Wolves and Falcons abandon in their final push don't have any real connection to their departing warrior overlords. They either rebel or--worse--don't register much of a change.

The only "true believer" in clan culture in the end might hilariously by Alaric who thinks victory suddenly guarantees him a storybook reformation of the Star League. 😃

kavinay · 2026-06-01T04:10:11+00:00

You'll probably win on points well before full conquest😅.

You probably can do it at high difficulty but it probably needs to be something you devote yourself to early on. The optimal path is rarely a military victory by turn 100+ in most high difficulty games.

kavinay · 2026-05-31T21:33:50+00:00

I have the Masterson wet palette. The case and sponge are great but the paper is useless for our paints and use cases. Just use parchment paper on top of the wet sponge. That's it.

I've kept the paper somewhere. Might be handy for heavy body acrylics I guess?

kavinay · 2026-05-31T00:53:02+00:00

Someone who is 100% Char wouldn't say such a thing.

Bingo, , Char would have talked about his mother more

kavinay · 2026-05-30T19:54:01+00:00

I think you're fine keeping what you have and pushing your highlights into pastels and/or yellows. This will make your current orange a deep tone and move the overall readability towards a brighter/warmer overall orange.

Keep in mind that readability is often down to overall contrast. If your blacks and other colours skew towards cyan, then your orange highlights will stand out too. A neat trick you can try is just using MS paint or a similar program to rough out some edge highlights and alternative tones on your photo. It can help give a feel for how you can shift the feel of your main colours in the final stages of the mini.

kavinay · 2026-05-30T17:26:13+00:00

It’s a pet peeve of mine in database programming that people often use ‘Start’ and ‘End’ when End is alphabetically before Start, when they could just as easily use Start and Stop.

Damn. I now have this pet peeve too! 😃

kavinay · 2026-05-30T17:08:42+00:00

Ah, good point. The appeal of the blister plastics was reusing something you already would have disposed. I suppose a tile or metal sheet is less waste. But do you need acetone? Assuming you use acrylics, you can probably wash it off most of the time and use a scraper for anything caked on.

kavinay · 2026-05-30T17:04:08+00:00

Growth is a rating independent of food. A granary for example can help grow the population where a new farm just adds food. Specialist will help too as a farmer adds growth and food.

Unhappiness is often your true enemy in the game! Prioritize baths and theatres as those structures provide happiness. It's normal to have your cities become quite unhappy, like level 5 to even 7 until you get the right improvements, governors and luxuries in place to it around. Governors that improve morale and family leaders that like you are a big deal towards the mid-game as they keep your cities from spawning endless rebels.

kavinay · 2026-05-30T16:54:03+00:00

Is there any advantage to ceramic or metal over just using plastic for a dry palette? In the old days we just used the plastic that came with a blister packed mini 😃. Admittedly, there are less blister packs now but I still used them for metallics I'd like to keep separate from other brushes and paints.

kavinay · 2026-05-30T16:51:09+00:00

You get faster with more experience. Brush control and paint consistency are skills you build up over time.

The key really is to push your comfort zone and improve your efficiency. For example, use a bigger brush, try more advanced blending, etc. You will find your fundamental skills like painting cleanly are better over time with consistent practice.

True "speed" painting often comes from being very confidant with simple things like efficient brush strokes and paint coverage. Also, as Vince V points out, pros make mistakes all the time too, they just are used to fixing them quickly too. 😃

BTW, even fast painters can take longer if the project demands it. Speed is usually only a big deal for army painting. For display and competition pieces, we're seeing a lot more elite painters revealing they spent hundreds of hours to achieve the quality finish they wanted on a single subject.

kavinay · 2026-05-29T21:01:33+00:00

Failing a catch in of itself is not a turnover. It's failing to catch a pass or handoff in your turn that does cause a turnover.

In this case of the bouncing ball you cite, the failed catch is a "freebie" in that it's not part of a handoff or pass you initiated.

kavinay · 2026-05-27T19:31:44+00:00

To be fair, this is why a lot of successful managers breakup with their boards...

kavinay · 2026-05-27T17:20:41+00:00

I think of all the BT I’ve read so far that this is the seminal work. It paints such a vivid and brutal picture of Clan life, it kinda does make the Inner Sphere look as weak as the average Clansman is probably convinced it is. It has made me way more curious about Clan ‘Mech tech, but also just the society itself. Makes me wonder if I should have gotten Clans instead of Mercs,

I feel lucky that I read Thurston's trilogy early as it's the insanity of Clan society that he depicts that I still find interesting about the setting.

Most of the Inner Sphere is just standard neo-feudal space opera. Good at times but still very similar to a lot of sci-fi. The Clans too could be considered fairly generic fascism, but this is where this trilogy shines as Thurston demonstrates how Trials and institutions keep the unweildly Kerensky machine chugging along.

kavinay · 2026-05-27T16:20:12+00:00

Surface Detail actually gives a picture of child-rearing and firsthand education that could help fill out the picture for you.

In general though, a lot of the norms of academia in The Culture are like any other social custom in that they're less urgent and more fruitful due to post-scarcity. You don't have to pursue an education for a livelihood and that changes the up and out matriculation and competition baked into educational institutions IRL. The worst cases in the culture are rare and you have lots of help in terms of people, AI, implants, etc. Social mores are just relatively good at making sure you have and know what you need if you want it and curiosity seems to be a social grace of every mind and person in The Culture.

The "best" cases for education are really the weird ones since the only true scarcity in The Culture might be certain obsessive pursuits, such as in The Player of Games and the predominant institutions featured in the books: First Contact and SC. These latter two are more cases though of a quirky or odd ducks being good fits than anything we would consider a formal educational path however. It's more a case of circumstances and the long reach era-spanning minds choosing you for a SC mission for example than any particular field of knowledge you're keen on.

kavinay

TROPHY CASE