News from the front line

Painting update:

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.

 

Molik Base2

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.

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.

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 31^st 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 31^st 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:

Battle Mechanics guard a straight section of fence

Battle Mechanics tell old war stories near a  broken section of fence

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.