Sector Mechanicus Pt.1

I've finally managed to get working on my Necromunda and 40k terrain. Here is a short video showing the first of many buildings I'll be working on over the coming weeks. I've a campaign coming up, well a few actually, and I need terrain for them. With that in mind I've been beavering away trying to get a prototype done.

I don't know much about videos so this one might be a little poor in quality. I don't seem to be able to get it to display correctly but I'll persevere and make improvements as I keep making these.

Casting 40k Terrain: Initial Tests

With the New 40k coming out and the imminent release of Necromunda, I've found myself needing some terrain. I bought a Ferratonic Incinerator but I quickly realised that this wasn't going to go far in covering a 4x4 table, never mind a 6x4. I can't really justify spending the amount of money I'd need to buy all the sets. So instead I had planned on making my own terrain. I bought a few builts to scratch build panels I could cast but to be honest they just weren't coming out as well as I'd hoped. After wondering what to do I thought that maybe I'd try casting some of the pieces from the sets I had. In the picture you can see where I made a few holes in the casts. This was as a result of not having mixed the Stewalin plaster at the right ratio and probably demoulding it too quickly.

I bought some silicone and Stewalin plaster. I have used the plaster and the silicone before while maing some scatter terrain for the Old West. You can expect a post on that at a later point. To make the mould I just followed one of the plethora of videos online. It was really simple and worked a charm, though next time I might break them into single pieces as that way I can judge what I need to cast them better and also I don't have a huge amount of working time with the Stewalin and it taes a lot of time to work it into a mould this highly detailed. Anyway I have to approach this project as a learning process. I haven't moulded or cast anything like this before.

This is a picture of the mould. As you can hopefully make out its pretty detailed. It is 100% bubble free which is impressive. The crevices are deep and tight yet the silicone was able to flow into them. I used an electric toothbrush as a vibration device which wasn't very effective. It seems I didn't need it or it was far more effective than I thought it was. The plan for this project is to make a few low structures with walkways connecting them. I'm going to keep them fairly modular for storage purposes. I'm going to concentrate on getting a  single structure done and then I'll know better how to get these mass produced quickly. Just as a note to the curious: I won't be selling, trading or otherwise giving away the moulds or the casts I make from them, please don't ask. The purpose of this blog post is to show whats possible and to track my progress.

 

Sanctifier Test Squad

I've been painting some Warhammer 40k recently and these are the result, my first combat squad of marines. I've painted a few Space Marines over the years, individual models here and there. I have never however managed to get a squad, albeit a small one, done. I had started these as Ultramarines but I got a little bored with them and as I thin I said a friend of mine has just brought his Ultramarines out to play. I therefore switched the scheme slightly and went with white arms. It does serve to make them look distinct from their primogenitors but I think I would have gone for a completely different scheme if I was to start these models from scratch. Its not that I dislike the scheme, I just think I could have done something more striking.

40k Campaign - Malleus

My map making for 40K continues apace. I love the background provided in the Forgeworld supplements, especially the cut aways to various planetary descriptions and such. They provide a lot of flavour and atmosphere without it being too dense. I decided that I would make out some similar descriptions for planets that we would fight over. As we have been discussing and actually writing background for the campaign it turns out that we are fighting elsewhere but this description of Malleus isn't wasted. Eventually the war might arrive here and if not at least there is some nice bacground to other planets in the Viator System.

Warboss Grimrak

I recently finished my Orruk Megaboss, Grimrak. He came out surprisingly well for the amount of time I put into him. I've slowly been collecting Ironjawz over the last few months and painting them up. As a lazy blogger I haven't been posting shots up but I hoping to get a few more regular ones up here. Anyway this is just a taster of whats to come with my Ironjawz.

40k Campaign - The Thorn Sub-sector

We are starting a few Warhammer 40K campaigns in my local area and online very soon. One has actually kicked off on VASSAL already. I'll be playing in them all and as such I wanted to have a map that we could use to track where the action is taking place. Its always nice to have a setting for the battles we fight on the tabletop. The overall campaigns won't really be linked but they can at least all take place in the same area and from that we can start filling in some details on that area. This might mean it comes to life and gets us more enthusiastic about playing or well it can just be an interesting read for the players if they want to come back and check out what we did. Anyway this location will be the Thorn Sub-Sector. I placed this on the fringes of the Imperium where anything we do won't really be effected by anything else that happens in the fluff. As we will have a heavy Ultramarine participation it would be best close enough to Ultramar, at least the marines won't have to travel far to fight. I shall be playing an Inquisitorial force that mainly consists of a homebrew Space Marine Chapter: the Sanctifiers. At the start of the year I painted some Ultramarines but as a friend already has them I instead modified them to have white arms and shoulders. A sufficent change to make them distinct but identifiable. 

Legends of the Old West roster

When it came to playing Legends of the Old West I quickly realised that I had a problem. The models are great but slightly generic which makes telling them apart during the game a little difficult. I used to paint the names of each of the gang members on the base when I played Mordheim or Necromunda but as we want to have this campaign last a while longer than standard I felt having guys with permanent names wasn't an elegant solution. This way I can keep the models in the gang (Posse) and simply rename them if they die. So far we have had a high attrition rate so I am glad I've done this. 

Wasteland Bases

It's not the greatest of photographs but I think it gets the message across. I usually always do the same type of bases for my armies as it makes it easier to mix and match them as I want and it fits with my terrain collection. For the Ironjawz however I really wanted to do something different. I had tried a few ways that would combine what you see here with what I have done previously and well it just didn't work. I had been wanting to play with the new GW texture paints too so this served a double purpose. I could do some new basing techniques and try out the new paints at the same time. While this isn't finished its close to being done. The addition of the skull adds a lot of character and evokes the landscape in a way that the colours and texture just don't manage. I'll stick with this scheme for now and add a few more elements. Some dried grass tufts and low bushes would also be good. I just have to get some wire thats fine enough to make the style of thorny bushes I imagine growing in this wasteland.

WIP Ironjawz

I've finally made a start on my Orruk Brutes. These are interesting models. This one is at least thirteen pieces to put together but the result is great. The detail is sharp and crisp and the effect is very layered, something impossible only a few years ago with plastics. I am quite impressed. I can only wonder how good the bigger kits that have come out must be. As for painting I went with a slightly different and rather time consuming weathering technique. The large armour plates need a bit more work to look good and so I went with this style. Its come out okay so far but hopefully I can refine it a bit as I continue so that its quicker and maybe not so stark. I do the scratches with a dark red. I layer some orange over this. Its a little stark but its hard to get a colour that works over the yellow and the black segments.  I still have a lot to go with this model. The skin will be especially intersting to do as the few ways I've tried so far haen't come out as I'd like and I think I'll have to resort to the tried and tested pallid green skin. I've spent way too long on this model already which doesn't bode well for the rest of the army...

Pulling out my Chaos

As I said in my last post I've been getting some games of Age of Sigmar in recently.  As I don't really have a suitable army I've taken out my old Chaos stuff from when I started this blog up. We are only playing 1000 point games. The armies are small but well I only have 1000 points painted so that's fine with me. I didn't really study up all the possible synergies and basically just cobbled a list together. That combined with some poor dice really effected how I played. The list just didn't perform the way I had expected it to. Thankfully I'll have some Ironjawz to use soon so hopefully they can be a more competitive and fun army to use. I don't really want to expand my Slaves to Darkness beyond what I have painted despite having the models. Rebasing them all would be a chore as I put a fair bit of effort into basing them in the first place. I also have a few other projects such as my Stormcast that I think I would prefer to get finished and on the tabletop though they will take me a long while to really get done. I just don't have the time to paint them and that saps my enthusiasm. Maybe I can get back into the mood to do them after I have played some more. I also need to see what armies the other players go for as we only have a small group and there is no point in doubling up on armies at this point.

The scenarios from the Generals Handbook have proven to be good. They force a balanced enough army though I can see how shooting could come to be dominant in a meta. Terrain, as always, needs to be good quality and abundant. We played in the local GW store and I was a bit shocked at how bad the terrain was. The 40k stuff looked acceptable but the AOS stuff was really poor. I can understand that the terrain would take a bit of a bashing over time but this stuff was just bad. As they are actually trying to sell this stuff to customers one wuld think that they would make more of an effort in getting some good stuff onto the tables. The Realm of Battle boards were nice though the whole winter scheme was a little excessive. Again as these are going to be sold a little effort would have gone a long way.

Anyway the last game we didn't get finished but it ended at a 2:2 draw against the Wanderers. The Wood Elves in this new edition are really not what they used to be. They could stand up to a charge and realyly dish out some hurt. I was expecting that once I got up close to them I would sweep through their ranks but that was definitely not what happened. Luckily I managed to target my opponents characters preventing him from scoring the objectives and letting me claw back into the game. It really was funa nd quite tactically challenging. I've a lot to learn and I'm looking forward to it.

Into the Wild West

I drew up a map for our upcoming Wild West campaign. We are going to use the Legends of the Old West rules. I'm starting off with a Mountain Man posse with plans to also use a Lawman posse. I haven't played before despite having the rule book since it came out. I drew the map using Inkarnate and photoshop. It was actually really simple to do.

The game will tell the story of the McGregor and Dalton Feud. As I will have two posses and Steve, the main opponent, likely will too we have to get a story together where our posses won't fight each other. Anyway you can expect more posts about it soon.

Ironjawz, how did that happen?

It seems I've started a new Warhammer army... I'm not sure how that happened. It's been nine years since I really started a new army for Warhammer. Actually I suppose the Stormcast I got count as a new one too. I've been eager to get some Ironjawz since they released. I have a fair collection on 'Ardboyz already so ading only a few units to them makes the army relatively cheap to collect. I'll be painting these in the same scheme as the 'Ardboyz I've shown here. Its going to be fun.

I have managed to get a few games under my belt recently an that's set my enthusiasm for the game at an all time high. We are getting a small but regular group together in Hamburg finally. You can find us on Facebook under Age of Sigmar Hamburg.

January Progress

I made some progress on my projects this month though The Walking Dead has interfered with the plans somewhat.I somehow managed to make the most progress with my Malifaux stuff, due I think to a local league starting up which I won't be really taking a part in. I had the models lying around for a long while so its good that I made a start with them.

I tried the underpainting technique with these models to mixed results. They are definitely tabletop worthy but they are no where near whatI would usually do. The problem I am finding is with the glazes. I have to relearn a lot of things to get the colours to look right. I knew the process wouldn't be easy but it is definitely fun and I will pursue it a little more. It is definitely a faster way to paint.

The Flesh Construct was undercoated white and I built up colours using GW glazes and washes. The silver I painted as normal as I doubt the technique really works with metallics and as they are fast to paint anyway I didn't worry aoubt it too much. I am happy with the skin tones and the mix of red and green seems good. I am tempted to pick up the alternative sculpt in the coming months as this guy was fun to paint.

The Canine Remains were also fast enough to paint, the Zombie Chichuaua especially so. I kep with the underpainting though I mixed some glazes from paint to get a deeper and more varied colour to their pelts. I may have applied it a little too heavily but it works and I am happy. The motto with these is: Finished not Perfect. As there are no other sculpts readily available and I doubt I really need more I can consider this contingent of my R.ssurectionists complete.

The nurses are very annoying to paint. White is such a horrible colour to do for me and while I had hoped that the underpainting technique would help it still didn't make much of an improvement. Again Finished not Perfect applies but I feel I could have done a better job. I have experimented with McMournings lab coat but that hasn't come out any better and I will probably have to repaint him in base white. The blue as a contrast worked fairly nicely even if it is slightly heavier than I would have liked. I think in future a splash of blue into a glaze for white will be done, so it seems I am learning.

I also managed to paint some Space Marines but I will post them next week. All in all progress was a little slower than hoped, especially considering the initial enthusiasm but for the month I would rank myself B-.

Time for something a little different

One of the things I really want to do this year is to get back into some roleplaying games. I have played a few short ones recently but the plan is to run something that lasts a little longer. The usual go to system for my group, with me as the Story Teller at least, is Hunter: the Vigil. I recently picked up the newest edition and that has got the creativity working again.

I have been thinking about this chronicle for a while but I have to start making notes soon so that I can get everything compiled in a fashion that will make some sense. Having everything bubbling in my mind doesn't really make for a coherent game. The basic setting is a mid-sized town located in Green County, Wisconsin. The city is completely finctional and the county is very much an approximation of reality. I am calling the city Deliverance Falls. It was designed and built in the early 60's as a shining beacon of progress in the mid-west.

Deliverance Falls:
A plan was developed in Chicago in the late fifties to build a high speed railway between the city and Madison, Wisconsin with an eventual connection to the twin cities of St.Paul/Minnesota. This was hoped to alleviate urban crowding in the big cities and facilitate commerce between the three State Capitals. The plan was finished and a budget assigned. The first phase was the laying of the railway line and building of the commuter towns along the route. It was decided that the first city should be the one located at the centre of the route, a symbol to the cooperation between Wisconsin and Illinois. A few small farmsteads were already in the area and went by the name of Deliverance. These were bought up quickly but the name was used in the early stages of the development. When the new town was finally planned theplanners had incorporated a small waterfall into the city as part of the city park. The urban planners thereafter renamed the city to Deliverance Falls.

Deliverance Falls was initially planned to be more than twice as large as it currently is. The infrastructure for the town was built first. The area was subject to flooding so a large network of storm drains and sewers were built. Once this task was completed work began on the town itself. The first half of the town, that surrounding the train station was rapidly built by investors in the project. The buildings were designed to form the heart of a new community and were subsequently designed to be taller than would be standard for such a city. Areas along the outskirts of the town were not developped extensively as the return on investment wasn't deemed by most of the investors to be currently worth it. The land was purchased however with hopes that rises in property value in the area over time would yield a healthy profit.

The train-line was built in record time connecting downtown Chicago to Deliverance Falls. The Wisconsin Government had collapsed after a scandal was revealed whereby Republican candidates were accepting monies from development lobbyists who wanted the train corridor moved to incorporate lands owned by them. As a result construction firms hired for the job hadn't yet begun heavy construction works but the railway corridor had been purchased and upgrades to Madisons railway station were underway albeit delayed. Delays also hampered the building of the high speed train.

Families eagerly moved into Deliverance Falls, the houses and apartments were cheap and while the connection to Chicago was still only served by slower commuter trains everyone was assured that very soon the first high speed Metroliner service would commence.

By 2015 Deliverance Falls is still not connected to Madison by train-line. The high speed connection still hasn't been delivered and talks are that the train-line itself would need extensive modification if indeed it was to be finally used. The Midwest Regional Rail Initiative has included the line connecting Chicago and Madison. Some hope exists that finally after sixty years in the planning that the original plan may come to fruition. Deliverance Falls has grown slowly with a number of small industries moving into the west of the city over the years. The population remains steady with sizable minorities living in the area. A large percentage of the workforce endure the long commute into Chicago every day while the rest work locally. Crime is low in the area and in general the city is peaceful and prosperous.

Just in case you are interested here is a link to my older Hunter: the Vigil chronicle on this blog:

I am back, again.

I need to get back on track and do some painting. I have barely done any over the last year and while I have been blaming not having a clear hobby focus I realy think it comes down to me being a bit lazy. Well that and a severe lack of free time. I started my own company last year which seemed managable at the time and well while it has been relatively succesful it also means I have a lot less time than I would like to have. In the end it came down to having easier options to spend the idle hours in the evening on. However I am pretty determined to get back to the table and to do some painting. Exactly what I am going to do is the problem.

Anyway so what is the challenge part? The challenge is to paint 150pts (or equivalent) of an army a month as a baseline for my efforts. If I could manage that I would have a good 1800pt GW army which would be nice to have. I also have to restrict my spending. I don't currently spend that much on my hobby but I am getting more and more tempted by all the releases I am seeing. What options on painting do I have?

Ultramarines
I picked up some of my old Space Marines from the miniature repository that is my parents house. I have a few to my name but being honest I have never painted a Space Marine. I really want to start painting something new with a different style and this would be perfect for that. I wouldn't have to spend too much but as theses marines are from fifth edition I would have to update them a little.
Inquisition
I don't really have many models for this but maybe enough for a retinue for an Inquisitor. I have always wanted an Inquisition army due to the sheer variety that the army can have and as such I could tie them in with the Marines above. I also note that there might be some new models coming out soon and if so that would definitely spark my interest.
Khorne Bloodbound
I picked these up cheap recently and as a painting project they would be great. i have enough pieces from my old Chaos army to bulk up what I got so I could probably hit the 1800pts easily enough. I am also tempted to try out an underpainting technique on these which should make them fast to paint. That would also be important.
Khador
I have had a sizable Khador force for a long while with only small bits of it painted up. While MKIII hasn't been tempting me too much I would like to get these models finished for a long time. I would have to buy a few things to update the force to be a more useable one, something I am hesitant to do. I also don't think I would enjoy painting them that much.
Orruks
I missed out on the fantastic GW army deal in December for these. I would have had a completed force if I could have picked it up. Sadly it sold out fast. I have a lot of 'Ardboyz here already and I only need a few brutes and characters to have this army completed. If I was getting regular games of AOS I would definitely pick this army, sadly I am not.
Free People
I always wanted an Empire army even though I actually had one. I collected an all mounted army a long time ago. Basically the idea was born of trying to get 1000pts for €100. I managed it by getting all knights. However I really wanted a foot army. I have a lot of bits I could use for this army and it is tempting to trawl ebay for the previous edition of miniatures. They don't come up that often and still sem to command a good price so I don't think I will go for this army just yet.
Cowboys/Lawmen
Plans are already afoot here in Hamburg to have an ongoing Wild West themed game. An agreement may have been made to purchase these at Tactica this year. I guess these are definitely on the table.
Malifaux
Again this is inevitable. I mainly play Malifaux and I want to have a crew. What is holding me back is the fact that I play almost exclusively online via VASSAL. Eventually however I will take the plunge.