Well, this happened.

Yeah, well. It's hard to say no when one of these buggers comes along...

The big question is do I stop at just one of them?

In other news I had the second sketch book from the excellent Karl Kopinski arrive yesterday.

Like the first volume it is full of great sketches and each one has a one off sketch in the front cover.

In other, other, news I've not touched anything hobby wise still, except getting some gaming in over the weekend. I am thinking that I need to get something going just to keep my eye in.

With the Weekender coming in February my eye is turning to the Adeptus Mechanicum Zone Mortalis force I have unbuilt in a box.

Aeronautica Imperialis - Terrain 1

I've actually done some hobby stuff.

A very small amount, but in the light of how much I have done over the last couple of months it can be counted as progress and worthy of an update.

As soon as I picked up that load of AI planes from eBay I was thinking I needed something Eldary for my airplanes to blow up and/or capture from the pointy eared ones (which will be referred to as "Panzies" when I'm using the Bommerz).

So I thought some bit of half buried Eldar structure, maybe a warp gate or some such would be good.

A couple of years ago I was commissioned to do a mould and casts of some Warp Vanes for a Wraithknight by the extremely talented Andy Hicks. He is an awesome converter of Eldar infantry and vehicles, if you haven't seen them I suggest you take a few hours off to browse his website. The Wraithknight with the warp vanes in place can be found on this page. He was selling casts of the vanes, so if you want some yourself drop him a line and he might be able to help you out.

I'd got a couple of the warp vanes knocking around from when I was doing the first test casts so I decided to turn them into a piece of AI terrain.

Crappy pictures I know but you get the idea. I mounted the vanes on some 1mm styrene then added milliput to bulk the bases out and help it look a bit more 'natural'. I decided to split the base so they could be either set up together or as two separate pieces. However I do wish I had made the join a bit more natural as now they can't really be set up as anything other than a pair.

Scale shot, I know, using an Eldar aircraft would have been more appropriate but I have packed them away ready to give to Nife and I couldn't be arsed to get them out just for one picture.

After the milliput had cured I covered the bases in tissue and thinned PVA. Then filler was added to the PVA and painted over. More filler (in powder form) was then sprinkled over.

To be honest I was making it up as I went along hoping to get a pleasing result. I didn't want to just sand it as I thought that would be both boring and not really fit the scale.

Quite happy overall. Needs bit more cleaning up and GS to the one air bubble but otherwise it is close to being done. I may decide to add more filler to one base to have the vane a bit more buried. We'll see.

Aeronautica Imperialis.

I've not touched any models since the last post, but as usual that's not stopped me buying more...

I have been a fan of Aeronautica Imperialis since the first book came out and I am still disappointed FW canned it when GW pulled the Epic range. While there is a chance the new Specialist Games department may bring it back the fact is it would almost certainly be in the new Epic scale.

You may (but probably don't) remember I picked up some Chaos aircraft from eBay a while back so that I could finally put together a Chaos airforce. They cost me a fortune but ever since then I have been keeping my eye on eBay for more aircraft, but Chaos and others so that I could expand the playing options.

So last week I hit gold by picking up a single auction for a large amount of aircraft. It arrived yesterday...

Once combined with the aircraft I already have I'll have a large Chaos force.

But that isn't all that was in the box, oh no...

A decently sized complete Tau force. With fighters, bombers, large transport and AA units this covers everything I'll need.

But that's not the end, the box contained a third force, larger than the other two.

A full, large Eldar force. With Nightwing Interceptors, Phoenix Fighter-Bombers, Vampire Raiders and Vampire Bombers as well as some AA units we have enough there to play any scenario from small to large.

Alas the Eldar will not be staying with me as Nife will be having those.

I might start looking at that Chaos force soon, might be what get's me back into the swing of things again.

Though the Chaos force will be large it will be missing two big elements.

1. A Chaos Thunderhawk to give some transport craft in the force.
2. One of these buggers:

Isn't it awesome?

6mm Terrain from Gregster's Lab

Back in November last year I went in on an Indiegogo campaign run by Gregster's Lab for some 6mm terrain.

I had not bought anything from the company before but the look of the 3D models and initial prints looked very promising.

By the end of the campaign there was three systems you could go in for:

Bunker System

Sigma Star Systems Walled Compound

Grey Dark Industries Research Centre.

I decided to go in for the Sigma Star System and Grey Dark Industries. The Bunker system didn't quite do it for me and I thought the other two fitted 40k far more. My plan was to use these for Aeronautica Imperialis and Epic (eventually).

This weekend the bits turned up...

Grey Dark Industries Research Centre:

Above are the corridor and building pieces. The design is Gothic enough to fit into the Imperial aesthetic. In hindsight I wish I had gone in for more of the larger corridor sections. Also in the pitcure above are the two bunkers with weapon options.

Second picture shows the smaller weapons which can be added to the system, though I'm not sure I will bother with those after all. Also top right is the large building (though it doesn't come with a roof) and bottom right the missile silos...

Better picture of the missile silos with the two different missile options. These will make great objectives to blow up in AI as will the power generator piece which is shown assembled up...

I think this is the only piece with any real quality issue, I think just from it being removed from it's sprue, the clippers might have got a bit close in this case. However this just highlights how good the pieces are overall. Flash is a minimum and the casts are sharp.

I did a quick set up of some pieces:

And a shot showing them alongside a couple of FW pieces and a FW Salamander.

Overall I am very happy with them. Ideally I think the small corridors could be a mm or two taller but otherwise I have no issues.

Sigma Star Systems Walled Compound

The Sigma Star System is basically a Tau terrain set. It reminds me of the Tau board at Warhammer World (which is in no way a bad thing).

Some of the extras I picked up include the bunkers and generators/tower thing to use as objectives (again to blow up).

The separate 'wing' piece can be attached to the walls as shown above.

Again I did a quick set up...

My plan is to make up a few bases but keep the objective pieces separate so they can be placed for each game.

My hat goes off to Greg for running a great Indiegogo campaign, communication was top notch with regular updates and it all seemed to go smoothly (it seemed to from this end anyway, I'm sure for Greg there were some stress behind the scenes).

I have some 6mm building pieces on order, if they are the same quality as these I will be more than happy with them.

Gregster's Lab can be found on Facebook. Also have a look at the Indiegogo campaign for more pictures of the systems above and the Bunker System.

Dambustas 40k 3

Well.

The boards have been repainted and had a couple of coats of lacquer.

I took the colour I wanted into the DIY store and they mixed up a pot of paint to match it, or at least they did in theory. It hasn't quite turned out like that. To begin with the paint was basically a brown, I hoped when it dried it would change colour to the dark green with a mild blue tint to it. In fairness it did, but so dark that the boards are almost black.

I'm not painting these again, probably. I may in the future get another paint mixed up, this time one that dries so you can actually see the green in it more.

Bit of a bitch to photograph as they are so reflective. Out of the sunlight they appear too dark, in the light you just get a lot of white.

Best I could do...

Bommer not painted by me...

So a mixed success overall. The boards look better, thanks to the repair work and getting rid of the horrible blue. But the new colour is far from perfect. I can see me redoing them again at a later date.

Dambustas 40k 2

Progress has been made, i'm not saying by much, just saying it has been made.

I gave the boards some attention, sanding a few areas which were a bit rough then using a bit of wood filler in a few gouges. This got a bit of sanding with some wet & dry then the whole lot got a quick clean ready for painting.

The plan was then to go up to the DIY store to buy some paint, however, it turned out they were all closed due to it being Easter Sunday.

So instead I had a play with the aim of deciding what colour to actually make the boards.

This involved mixing up different colours then painting some pieces of card. Once the paint was dry I used some gloss varnish to cover half of each sample. I could then use a bit of the Dambustas terrain to see what the effect was. In the end I picked one which I liked the most, a dark green with a (very small) tint of blue.

I will now take the piece of card, without the varnish on, to the DIY store so they can mix a small pot up for me.

NB: The colours in the pic aren't completely accurate. As such i'm not sure off hand which of the above is the one I picked.

Once the boards are painted I'll give it a good coat or two of gloss varnish. This time I will use a spray varnish to avoid any brush strokes showing up.

Dambustas 40k 1

Another post in an attempt to get everything up on the Blog, however this is more than just a 'lookie what I did' type of post as I will be doing a bit more work on this soon...more after the pics.

Basically I do rather like Aeronautica Imperialis, the Epic scale air combat game from Forge World and to cut to the chase ended up building a table to allow a scenario (which I need to re-write actually) called 'Dambustas 40k' to be played on it, Ork Bommerz attempting to destroy a dam with their Meks latest creation - 'Da Bouncin' Bomm'.

Here it is set up at Warhammer World last year at the Ammobunker Open Bash.

Close up...

The Imperial Installation







The other side of the Dam. FW Bunkers/AA gun not in the pic.



The lift, to save the officers legs.



Better shot of the Aquilla



The Dam itself, though the small statues are missing (dunno where they were)



The Dam in place between the retaining walls





Another part of the valley walls, this one with the road that
leads to the Imperial installation.






Another piece, with close up.

 

Please note, the infantry, vehicles and FW bunkers were painted by other people...it was enough to do the board for me.

What needs to be done, and what I hope to be tackling in the next week or so is repainting the board itself. The blue is far too blue. It may be an alien world but the water colour is just too unnatural.

Not entirely sure what I am going to do about it yet in all honesty. So if anyone reading this has any suggestions let me know...