Dreadstone Blight arrives

Dreadstone Blight... well it arrived in the post yesterday and I was rather shocked. I was expecting a rather complicated piece of kit. However what I received was really simple. I am guessing but this kit seems to have about twelve parts! The walls are three interlocking sections on the bottom level with two extra bits. These fit onto the really super thick plastic base. The stairs just glues in under the floor pieces. Putting this together would only take about ten minutes, maybe with another ten involved in cleaning the mould lines. The piece comes alredy removed from the sprue. The levels are individually wrapped in a bag. Really this kit has barely any work needed! The picture comes from here. I spotted it this morning and I am astounded at how quickly it was painted to such quality. I want to duplicate the result so I will be ordering some of the vajello weathering powders soon. I am assuming this is what was used to get the wonderful effects on the stonework. The brown on the base for instance.

I have slowly been gathering up terrain pieces for Warhammer with a thought to getting a really high quality board created. The only problem with this is the table itself. While my apartment isn't that small it is still hard to store a 6" x 4" table somewhere. If I went with my previous solution of a board that folds in half along the centre then I have to deal with the problems it had. You still need a large table to balance the board on as otherwise it could fold over during the battle. The one I made, and still have back in Ireland, was really heavy which minimised the possibility to fold. I commissioned these from a carpenter and he put the hinges on the underside! This time I will try to go with half inch MDF with the hinges some how on the top. It should be possible to 'bury' then into the table so that they are not obvious during the battle... I would texture the table of course but again this leads to more problems as generally this causes warping. Reinforcing the boards to prevent this makes them annoying to store and to lay down on a table.

What I really want though is a modular set up. A number of 2" x 2" sections should be enough, maybe eight? However storing these things is next to impossible too. Nowhere have I ever seen a shelving system (with doors) that would allow these to be stored out of sight! Again warping would be a problem, probably even more so as you don't have the weight of the boards themselves acting somewhat as a counter balance.

Having looked around the internet for some inspiration I really haven't found any. The only things of interest were basically premanent set-ups and that doesn't suit me at all. What I need must be packed away after use... Anyway I hopefully will come up with something soon or at least find someone elses idea I can steal!

Wood... uuuugh

Slowly my marauders are coming together! This is once again a very work in progress shot. I have a good bit more to do with the shields, basically all the detail work there. On the marauders themselves I only have a small few details to do. The weapons especially need some attention. Thankfully this is half the regiment nearly done. While they are boring and time consuming to do, doubly so when you consider that they are only worth about five point each! Still these have been a massive annoyance to me for a long time. The two big blocks have been sitting on my desk sapping my will to continue. Now that I see some good progress being made my motivation is slowly returning.

Its strange how just looking at a block of miniatures awaiting some paint can really take away your motivation to continue. With the amount I have done now over half the marauders are finished. I still have sixteen to construct ans sculpt cloaks for but I am finally enthusiastic about doing it. I am under no illusions though that the army is nearing completion. I am assuming I have about another forty warrior models to paint... at least these are not constructed and therefore sitting on my desk begging for paint.

I hope the beastman shields work work out on the marauders. I really didn't want to suddenly put brightly painted shields on these. However the beastman shields could be a little dark? I can't judge the effect over the entire regiment just yet but hopefully the pale skin can still make them stand out. Painting the wood is not fun. I start with a basecoat of scorched brown and work it up with a mix of snakebite leather. It keeps the colour muted and stops it from blending into the other browns I have used on the model. Building up those layers can take a while though. I have kindly been donated enough shields to finish the regiment, thanks Lenny!

Back to the grindstone

I have gotten something done. Well truthfully I have gotten something started! My big marauder block is underway finally. These six are still pretty much work in progress pieces but at least some parts of them are finished. I am probably going to scale it down from forty models to more like twenty five. That means only another seven cloaks to sculpt but thats not too bad. Getting the heads together,thats going to be a problem. While painting these was a little bit of a chore is was nice to make such progress within a day practically. I had some of the basecoating done from a long time ago and that always helps. At this pace I might get the regiment done within a month... sounds long but with only some all too small windows of opportunity within which to paint it is at least realistic!

This is a shot from the back showing the cloaks. I have improved somewhat since I started but these are still rather annoying to have to paint. As I haven't the talents of a real sculptor I make the strands sometimes almost impossible to paint. Altogether they look good. The next thing to do for these guys is to get the shields prepared. I am thinking about using the old beastman shields. The ones that are completely wooden. I am not sure if the current models have the same shields as I will probably need to beg, borrow or steal to get all the ones I will need. I have some lying around and I can use them as a test. If I don't like them I can always intersperse them into the regiment to break up monotony of the marauders standard shields.

Finally some inspiration

Well as you may notice from the abscence of any new posts here I haven't been painting that much recently. Getting everything ready in a rush for the tournament in Gorey(Ireland) and then trying to get more stuff ready for the tournament in Bad Odelsoe(Germany) really killed my desire to paint. This week I got a number of things in the post that really got me hungry to paint again! It all came in a big box courtesy of Maelstrom Games. I bought Warhammer: Invasion. While it is a card game, generally something I avoid, I was tempted by how much I had enjoyed Dominion. Having played exactly two games of it I found myself quickly thinking about collecting Orcs and Goblins again. I had been playing that deck. It was nice to see the artwork as some of it is from the old box covers. Coupled with playing the game was the other contents of the box: enough pieces to add two more trolls to the army, some more warriors and finally some terrain.

Having been delighted with the quality of the 40k terrain that Games Workshop have produced I decided to see what the fantasy stuff was like. I picked up the chapel. While I haven't even unboxed it yet it looks great. I had seen it at a few tournaments before but as the tournament terrain is usually all glued together in a hurry and then simply airbrushed a few appropriate colours, I had never payed the chapel much attention. As soon as I find an appropriate base I will glue it together and get it painted. Sadly the nice high stone wally you get with the manor kit are only available there and even then you don't get many. I had hoped to put a high wall around the chapel but unless GW release them separately thats not going to ahppen. I guess it just doesn't look right with the lower walls. I also bought some of the fences. I will make a small few fields which generally look nice and add a nice tactical feel to the battlefield. In seventh edition they were just a nuisance. However now with the general -1 to hit for shooting and combat for being behind them, coupled with the fact they don't impede movement for infantry makes them pretty good. As long as they are big and can easily contain a regiment of up to forty that should be fine. A nice blog I found on terrain can be seen here. Hopefully I will get everything togther soon so I can post some pictures of my terrain on here.

So hopefully I can get some painting done this weekend. I am going to try and focus on the marauders as getting the two regiments of them finished would really take the bul out of the army and allow me to concentrate on the fun stuff!