Painting update:
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| Molik Base 1 |
Painting:- Skorne
I decided the Skorne bases would be a desert scheme some
time ago and I added quite a lot of slate rocks and coarse grades to make the
‘stony desert’ effect I wanted. I wasn’t
sure initially how I would paint the bases, but the recent desert terrain board
inspired my choices of colour.
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| Molik Base2 |
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| Brute Base 1 |
[Left] are some photos of the bases after painting, but
before application of static grass/tufts.
I’ll add these after the models themselves have been painted as a
mistake can more easily be rectified this way.
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| Brute Base |
Colours/technique used:
Basecoat Citadel
Desert Yellow*
Wash with thinned Citadel Brown Ink (Ratio of 1:6)
Drybrush Citadel
Desert Yellow*
Drybrush P3 Menoth
White Base
Drybrush P3 Menoth
White Highlight
*I used the Desert
Yellow coloured emulsion I got made up for the desert terrain and base
boards as it seemed a good use of the spare paint, effectively it was a bit better at covering
the black undercoat I used than the Citadel pot paint.
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| It looks god-awful with just the gold done! |
Painting:- Menoth
Not a massive amount of work done here, but as I’ve paid for
the Grand Slam tournament, held on 31st of this Month I felt the
need to complete the Errants. They’re
not complete yet, not by a long shot, however I have completed their bases, bar
the static grass/tufts/water effect.
After the initial base painting step I started with the gold
armour as this would be a fairly messy technique to get a good solid coat. I applied two layers of heavy brushed Citadel
Shining Gold, followed by a thinned
wash of Citadel Chestnut Ink. The ink gives depth to the gold by shading
the recessed areas. I sometimes use the Badab Black Citadel
Wash to shade gold, but I wanted to remain
consistent with the existing Errant unit’s painting style. Above is a snap of the completed gold. More to follow…
Gaming update:
General
I’ve played a few games lately and have used the Skorne,
again using Zaal, though I do have a yearning to try out Rasheth and have
bought a few bits to try him out at Tier 4.
The fat man, as Rasheth is
known, is a large based caster with abysmal defensive stats, though he does
have a few special abilities and tricks to help keep him alive from
assassination. He is Fury 8, so can
sling some spells out and isn’t short on CTRL area and game influence. I plan on using him with some Gatormen and
quite a few Titan warbeasts as his themed list focus here. So it should be a bit interesting to see what
happens there!
Tournament
The Grand Slam tournament series has been launched,
something that Luke and myself have had some bearing on and the first
tournament of the series is being held in York
on 31st March 2012 (details here). Myself and a few others intend of supporting
the event and it will be a great laugh as well as a challenging
tournament. With Grand Slam rapidly
approaching I have placed the Skorne on hold in favour of the tried and tested
Menoth and have chosen my two casters: Severius1 and Kreoss1. The former is probably my signature caster
and I feel most competent with him.
Kreoss1 needs a bit more work to refine getting the most out of him, but
the pop and drop technique is quite
valid as a strategy in the current meta game.
The tournament will use 7 minute timed turns and as such the event will
be very fast paced and I need to be competent with all of my choices, no time
to keep checking spells and cards to see what the MAT,
RAT and speed is etc during the game!!
Grand Slam has a second event, 15 points Mangled Metal and I
have decided to bring along my Khador for that, most likely Sorscha2 and
Karchev as the casters, each with a character jack and a second basic one. More on this when I’ve decided on the lists!
Terrain update:
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| Battle Mechanics guard a straight section of fence |
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| Battle Mechanics tell old war stories near a broken section of fence |
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| Battle Mechanics scratch ass near a corner section of fen |
The desert terrain I built a few months back refreshed the
games played round at my house with something a little different. Generally we found that using one of the
cactus base boards as a trees base board (thus creating three woods) worked
best as LOS-blocking terrain is quite important in any strategic wargame. The rock spires work well as obstacles, but
what the terrain set was lacking was linear features. As deserts tend to lack much terrain, other
than lots of sand, I had to think of something fitting. There was an article on Menoth wall building
in an old No Quarter magazine, but this would be difficult to achieve given the
complexity of the design and need for an expensive bitz order from the USA. I ended up going for a simple wooden fence
design using balsa and wooden hot drink stirrers.
I Simply cut the balsa into 25x7x7mm sections for the
upright posts. Then I cut base boards
from a suitable material (card, hardboard etc) I used plasticard for this
example to a size of 1”x4”, but whatever size/shape appeals to be honest. To make the horizontal sections I used hobby
clippers to remove the rounded end of the drink stirrer and used it to push an
indent deep into the balsa where it would eventually sit permanently. I decided to keep the horizontal sections
full length and used a hobby knife to make a suitable slot right through the
central post.
The next stage was assembly;I used construction adhesive (No
Nails) to glue the posts into position and simply placed the horizontals into
place in their slots (no glue at this point).
Next I mixed up modelling sand and PVA
into a thick soup and applied this to the bases making sure to ‘cement’ the
posts into place. Once dry I used a
hobby knife to carve the posts, giving them a more natural weathered look. The whole thing was then coated in watered
down PVA, I made doubly sure the joins where
post met horizontal were covered so the whole fence was as sturdy as I could
make it. The watered down PVA
seals the balsa (for painting) as well as adding some strength to what could be
a weak structure.
The final step was painting, I used the same technique for
the desert as previously used and the fence was a question of drybrushing from
a basecoat of Scorched brown, through Bestial Brown and Snakebite Leather, then
finally a very light dusting of Bleached Bone.
The drybrushing brought out the details of the carving I made on the posts. Finally tufts and static grass were applied.
