Dreadstone Blight again!

This terrain peice seems to take forever! At least I finally managed to glue it together somewhat. I had to pull apart everything previously done and clean it up. I then shaved the pieces back much more. This helped them join together better. However I am still conviced one of the pieces ir warped as I still am uable to get the walls flush with the floor in the curve they are supposed to be. I glued them together anyway and filled the gap with green stuffed stones. Curretly I am just base coating the piece and washing it down with black to get some definition. I will probably not get the Dreadstone Blight finished for another few weeks yet so you ca expect some more WIP posts.

My other posts on this piece can be foud here:
A big fail
A promising start

Vilmon, stop dying!

So I got Vilmon finished last week for a game. I rushed him a lot.I could go back and do some more work on him but I really don't feel like it at the moment. I was annoyed with him right from the beginning. There is a hellishly annooying mould line right across the cloak in a very visible place and due to a misalignment or maybe just the age of the mould I had a really tough time removing it. Especially considering I don't have a good needle file anymore so getting the area I 'doctored' smooth was time consuming. The arms also didn't fit together despite my best attempts to get everything ready. After a lot of curses and some green stuff I managed to assemble Vilmon.

Of course I was looking forward to using him on the tabletop. As you can predict the second he stuck his neck out even a little bit he got stomped on by the Withershadow Combine. So he didn't really get to shine on the tabletop just yet. I am hoping to give him some more game time on Sunday, maybe he can do better then!

Warhammer Terrain on the Cheap

Getting terrain done is always a bit of a chore. Despite the fact I don't have a board to play on at home still I decided to push on and get some of my terrain done. I started these rocks a while ago and had left them sitting half done for ages. Its like all the other terrain projects I have at the moment. There is an unfinshed trench piece, a house and the dreaded Dreadstone Blight sitting awaiting some paint on my desk at the moment.

Getting these rocks together was really cheap. It is €5 for a big bag of cork chunks. It is even possible to get a much larger bag for €10. I think this one weighs in at 180 grams of cork which is suprisingly a lot. I break these up into more managable chunks and glue them to a CD. I generally try to use the inserts you get in a CD spindle, the clear plastic CD's that are used to stop the real ones from scratching on the spindle. Even using the actual blank CD's are cheap enough. The most frequent target has to be free game CD's I get with demos and such. These as bases are great as they are strong and not too flexible so they won't warp much. With the cork glued on I usually use some air drying clay to fix the edges. The cork won't sit flush with the base and it can look a little odd. Adding a clay edge makes the join flush. It also offers some weight to the piece. I flock over the clay once it is dry and then these pieces are ready to get some paint. All in all the piece can't cost more than a Euro to make.

I spray the piece grey. As you can see I miss a lot of the cracks and odd angles that the cork has. This is fine as it adds a nice texture once the painting is complete. I wouldn't recommend leaving too many, a few here and there are fine. If it is overdone then the effect can be lost. Once the grey is dry I then add some green. This is to represent moss or lichen. I just mix some catachan green with a glaze medium and apply it where water might sit under overhangs on the rocks or along run-off channels. It only takes a few seconds but helps to add a nice texture to the rock once everything is done. Over this a light wash of badab black is applied to heighten the shadows. Finally I dry brush in two stages of lightening grey. All in all if you are not counting drying times this takes little more than fifteen minutes with adequately sized brushes. If you are doing it with a big bag of cork over a few bases there is barely any waiting for things to dry.

Friday Showcase - The Oldest Dwarf

This guy is one of the oldest Dwarves I have had in my collection. I might have a few metal models that were made before this guy but he is the one I bought first. I used to have a good regiment (never painted) of these but over the years they have slowly vanished leaving me with this guy and a few others scattered around various boxes. It would be nice if I could scrounge up enough to make this regiment anew but they are very hard to come by now. They came from what I think was GW's first endeavour into plastic miniatures. The box was simply called Fantasy Regiments I think. It contained a good mixture of troops, ten Dwarves, ten Dark Elves, ten Skaven, ten Orcs, ten Goblins and I think ten Wood Elves. I could be wrong though as this was well back in the eighties.

Confessions of a painting table

I have a backlog. My lead pile has steadily grown this year. While I have been able to push through a lot of stuff I have to admit, I have a problem! My shelves are straining somewhat under the weight I have stacked there and I can't seem to stop acquiring stuff. I say acquiring as buying is a harsh word... Getting things from ebay isn't really buying... right? It is at such a discount it is more like acquiring or gathering. The picture on the right here shows one quarter of my stock and it doesn't include whats actually on the table awaiting paint. On top you can barely make out my menites. The camera seemed unable to focus when I took this picture. Below these lie almost two deep boxes of 40k Orks and Warhammer Chaos. On the bottom shelf are my Warmachine boxes and some Forgeworld stuff I never got around to starting! As you can see I really have a backlog. The other areas in the shelves are just as full if not more.

The Guardian is the first on the list of what is sitting on my table. Thankfully he is well underway and a few hours should see him finished. I am going to make him stand out a little more than my other menite 'jacks by keeping him in white and having less red. Combined withthe golden armour that should help. The banners I am not sure about still. Should they be white also or red? I am thinking red to give some contrast.The Redeemer is one in a number of 'jacks that has a basecoat on. I paint all my 'jacks with a drakflesh undercoat so that it makes weathering them much easier. Over the weekend these fellows will get some attention from my newly acquired hairspray. I doubt I will have much time due to some gaming commitments but they may also get sprayed white.The Devout is in the same boat as the Redeemer. I do at least have the base finished. I have varnished it a few times in an attempt to toughen up the wood and the clay into which a pin will be sunk to hold the model on the base. I hope it works!The final in the trio the Revenger also has his base done. I have also strengthened this with varnish. I don't actually know if this method works but I guess it can't cause any harm. The wood I have been using is just balsa wood and thats not really tough at all. The pin will sink into the base as normal but I do want it to be as stron as possible. Finally on my desk is the nightmare - Avatar. I had such a terrible time getting this model together that I really don't care for it at all. Its not really that nicely sculpted either and so I am not eager to paint it. Maybe once I get back into the mood for Warmachine I will be motivated for this fellow? So there was a brief tour of my painting table. It doesn't include everything thats sitting there but it does include some of the stuff. Maybe next week I can bring the rest to light?