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.

Super-secret side project… REVEALED! Part II

I completed the first part of my desert terrain project a couple of weeks ago and last night applied the finishing touches to Part II.  Again I’ll provide some detail on how I made each piece for any readers wishing to follow my example.

Rocky outcrops and spires

Large Rock spire - constructed

Firstly I used cork board to mark out the rock formation areas, this provided a starting block and would help to tie in the various aspects of the outcrops and provide some height.

Small Rock spires - constructed

 I then used a bread knife to carve 1” thick blue high density styrofoam (insulation board).  I never use the lighter white polystyrene used as packaging as it is bloody awful to use and it gives a poor finish; also if you have a partner you won’t be in good books with all the mess it creates!  I used a hobby scalpel to do any fine carving once the main shape was created. 

Small rock spires - filler applied

Large rock spire - filler applied

As seen the styrofoam was cut into rough circles and carved at the mid point to make a double ridge.  A 1” thick ridge would be out of scale I felt.

Outcrop 1 - filler applied

Outcrop 2 - filler applied

The styrofoam was filed, then a layer of filler applied to soften the edges and blend in any areas that were still a bit rough, then filed smooth.  

 

Rock spires ready for painting

Outcrops spires ready for painting

Various grades of gravel were added to the outcrops to keep them model friendly and also look a bit better on the finished item.

Similarly to the terrain in Part I a layer of watered down PVA was painted on to seal the filler and sand, preventing any loose material coming off in the heavy drybrush painting that would be applied later.

Sand dunes

Sand dunes - at filler applied stage

The sand dunes were very simple, literally a large piece of high density styrofoam glued to the baseboard, then carved to shape with the bread knife.  Similarly to the rock spires and outcrops filler and sand was applied.  I did try and take extra care sculpting the dunes to create the crescent shape seen in real deserts, though I had to be mindful this was wargames terrain and as such had to be usable too. 

Oasis

Again a very simple technique; I used off-cuts of the styrofoam to build relief around when the water area would be and smooth the transition with filler.  The photo to the left shows the oasis in its most basic shape, I added lots of smaller off-cuts to ease the burdone of the more expensive filler. 

 Once the filler had dried I re-carved the  contour with the bread knife to get a more appealing gentle slope, the filler was re-applied at this point to further enhance the oasis' shape.


I did add a lot of slate and gravels to the fringes of the oasis to make it a bit more interesting.  The photo to the left shows it ready for painting.

 Painting was identical to Part I, however the spires and outcrops were differentiated by painting them Scorched Brown, then drybrushing Beastial Brown, then Bubonic Brown and finally Bleached Bone.

I finished off the terrain by applying some Army Painter tufts as well as some static grass sparingly.

Finished desert terrain Part II: 

Rock spires

Oasis

Sand dune

Rocky Outcrop 1

Rocky Outcrop2

Super-secret side project… REVEALED! Part I

I quite like making wargames terrain; I used to build it a lot when I worked for GW as well as my own personal collection.  Recently I had an idea of creating some new terrain and fancied making a desert themed board and terrain.

The Desert; source

Maybe I was granted a vision by Menoth, who knows?  I have been using both prime and epic Severius after-all…

"We knew the land so close to the Bloodstone Marshes was bitter and hot, but as Hierarch Sulon once said, hardship is the coin of Urcrean. Menoth would be proud of his children should they survive in such a place".   Prime II, p125.

The following details part 1 of my desert themed terrain.  Its quite detailed as I wanted to explain exactly how I built it so thanks for reading in advance!

Ideas and concept

The first order of the day was to sketch out some ideas, I drew some sand dunes, which would count as hills, the crescent shapes would be challenging from a modelling point of view, but look great on the field.  I thought of rocky out crops, these would be difficult ground, but maybe not block LOS.  A rock spire would look iconic (see Star Wars epIII on Tatooine as Anikin storms through the desert on his speeder), this would be a simple impassable object.  I liked the idea of palm tree clusters counting as woods and maybe an oasis for a shallow water feature.

Research

With the ideas I had gathered so far I researched ‘desert terrain’ in Google, found a few interesting modelling sites as well as imagery of real world deserts for inspiration.  I did have a few issues with this terrain project, the main one being the palm trees, there are some interesting ones at Warhammer World and I think they’re made with Christmas tree branches and a few other household bits, not that easy to build or able to get to look good, plus I’d be in bother in a few months when the Christmas tree was obviously missing a branch or two. ;-)  Instead I found this site selling plastic palm trees and like a golden nugget some plastic cacti too!!

Base boards ready for cutting

Stage 1 - Baseboards

I marked out terrain bases on hardboard sheet, I actually made a paper template for the crescent sand dunes.  Photo (left) shows this; highly exciting stuff!  Then I used a jigsaw to cut them out, finally I used a sanding tool attachment on a Dremel to bevel the edges.

 

      

Plastic palm tree components

Stage 2 - Palm trees

The Pegasus Palm trees come in five bright green plastic fronds and a turd coloured brown for the trunk and base!  

I just sprayed the plastic with black primer and painted the fronds and trunk with acrylic paint.  The fronds were painted with Dark Angels Green, then drybrushed with Goblin Green and  Bilious Green.

The trunks were drybrushed with Khemeri Brown, then Deneb Stone.

A top tip for this kind of thing is to file off any paint where the plastic has to be glued, mainly because it becomes too tight a fit due to the paint and also if using plastic glue it tends not to create such a strong bond if paint is present.

Stage 3 – drop terrain bases

The tree bases and cactus bases were built together.  The palm trees had coins attached to the bases in order to weight them given the height and top heavy nature of the palm tree style.

Cork tile was used on the cactus drop terrain to create height, the edges bevelled with a hobby knife.  I cut down dome of the cactus’ plastic bases as they were a bit big or overhung the cork in places, but for the most part they were fine.




After this I applied some Polyfiller over the whole thing to marry in the bases and get rid of any imperfections – this was filed when dry to further ease transition.  Prior to the filler drying I inserted some larger stones in select places, they’d just look a bit better when slightly sunk in I felt.





Once the filler had dried and been tidied up I added a layer of sand and gravel, I like to apply a watered down layer of PVA once it has dried fully as this seals it from the top, it really bugs me whilst drybrushing a bit of gravel flies off revealing the bare unpainted sand beneath, the sealing layer of PVA reduces the chances of this I find.  The final step was to undercoat the pieces in black primer.

Stage 4 Painting
Once the drop terrain was modelled I proceeded with the painting.  I purchased a litre of desert looking paint from B&Q, I took a pot of Desert Yellow Citadel paint to the store and got a colour match.  I painted two 4'x4' MDF gaming boards using a decorating roller, that was why I needed a litre.  I painted each gaming board twice to have a strong even coat.  I had considered modelling the gaming boards, or at least texturing them with a view to drybrushing them, but opted for the simple option.  I may change my mind at a later date, but flat colour boards are fine at this time.

I used the same Desert Yellow emulsion to base coat the drop terrain, then drybrushed the sandy texture with Bleached Bone to add a highlight.  The rocks were painted grey to add a bit of variation and the cacti base coated with Knarloc Green.  I realised the cacti were two different species of plant and through my research realised one was more of a bluey green, these were drybrushed with a mix of Vile Green and Ultramarine Blue, the other species received a drybrush of Bilious Green.  Both species of cacti were then washed with Thraka Green  in order to bring their colour closer together.

After the painting was done I added a couple of snakes from the Lizardmen Warhammer range as well as some 6mm Highland Tufts from the Army Painter Battlefields range.  See below for the final results:

Palm tree base

A brace of Reckoners wander through the desert!

Errants manoeuvre through the desert flora!

Hope they've got their UA...

Oops, no UA, then no pathfinder... hope that cobra is domesticated...

Thanks for reading :-)
Part II will have the remaining terrain features: oasis, dunes and rock spire.

Super-secret side project…

I’ve still got the Vanquisher jack to complete for Golden Troll at the end of the month, but haven’t made any progress with that yet, other than a bolt gun metal drybrush...

The reason for my tardiness is, as the title suggests, that I have embarked upon a small side project.  This is top secret at the moment and I have enlisted the “help” of a family member as seen below:

Miss Alice "helping" Daddy ;-)

As you can see my help is very cute and says “I like to do the painting Daddy”, clearly following in my footsteps, how could I refuse!

The super secret project will be revealed very soon – watch this space!