Blessings of the Plaguefather - Scabeiathrax 5

Update on Scabby, still lots to do but started on the base, added more washes and detailing, started on his big weapon and got some blood on there. Not decided on the discharge colour yet...

Blessings of the Plaguefather - Scabeiathrax 4 & Plague Drones 1

Update time (rejoice if you are so inclined).

Scabeiathrax 4

Scabby is getting painted. This is still early with lots more to do.

Still need a bit more work on the skin needed, plus teeth, eyes, horns, pus, 'discharge', blood and a few other things to do. Plus of course the base and associated Nurglings.

Plague Drones 1.

Well these are fun.

And by 'fun' I of course mean a pain in the bloody arse. In hindsight it would of been far better to leave the wings and legs off for painting as I can't get into paint areas of the body or wings. I'm rushing them because I am fed up with them already. Still a lot to do (unfortunately).

I know the carapace looks black but it is actually a dark blue. I will add a little highlight but the plan is to gloss varnish the carapace to make it all shiny. I carved into the one carapace and put in a Nurgle icon.

Before I undercoated I did more work on the bodies by using a LGS and sugar mix to add texture - mainly to fill the gap between the two body halves. This seems to be a problem with this kit, the join between the two halves is very noticeable.

Recalcitrant Daze - This and That.

Welcome to post 400.

A combination of things has resulted in a lack of updates recently. One is work, one is a tattoo convention and the other is the water effects I put in the board ponds.

As the water effect was taking so damn long to go off I at first didn't want to do anything near them that could spoil it (e.g. getting dust into the stuff as it cured), the boards have also taken up most of the room so I haven't been able to cast or even do moulds.

As such I've not been able to do enough on one particular project to do an update on them. But as it's been a while I thought i'd do a generally 'this is what I have done' post.

Realm of Battle Boards:

The water effect I put in finally cured. I then moved onto adding the next layer. For this I needed some new water effect, turned out GW has changed the stuff they sell. This is a problem. For a start it is more expensive (what a surprise) but the main problem is that it appears to be shit.

The first stuff added finally cured.

Basically the water effect went white - not a problem I thought as it is probably just what it does.

The problem is as it has cured in some areas it has started to peel away round the edges. As you can see in the picture below it is hardly a small thing that can be brushed aside.

The new stuff...

So I am now going to have to wait for the two pools I have added the new stuff to to fully cure so I can then peel it out without damaging what is underneath it.

So has anyone got a good recommendation for water effect? Keep in mind I have a river to fill so don't want to spend an absolute fortune on it...but on the other hand with the amount of work I have put in to building the river I won't be looking to scrimp now.

Talking of river boards I did get a bit more painting on them done. Namely neaten things up, add was to rocks in river and pick out the two skulls.

Papa Nurgle:

Sitting on my desk are a few Daemon units I have made a start on getting finished:

I know I should of begun by finishing the Plaguebearers and Nurglings I started painting a while back but to be honest I couldn't be arsed.

Big Drone, Little Drones, Scabby...

I must sort out my paints soon as well...

Talking of Daemons I have some new recruits for them which arrived yesterday...namely a Plague Hulk and a Jabberthingymejig which I plan on converting into a Nurgley Great Spined Beast.

The Hulk wasn't the only thing to arrive from Forge World, the Death Guard are almost complete (in the sense of buying all the bits, they are somewhere off being actually 'finished').

Ah, the smell of Resin in the morning.

That is that for now.

If you can give me some pointers to good water effects please post it up as it would be highly appreciated.

Realm of Battle Gaming Board 13

After a quick trip to the local hobby store to pick up some Raw Umber paint I was able to crack on with the Realm of Battle gaming boards.

To recap (as it has been a while since I last did work on these) I modified some Realm of Battle gaming boards to give me more variety in set ups.

Two boards had the hills extended...

And two others had rivers carved into them...

So the paint job has come on a lot today. Unfortunately as the sun had long gone by the time I had finished just the first two I won't be able to touch up the paint jobs or paint any corrections so that these match the existing boards I have. I will also add some washes at this stage as well before adding a bit of foliage. The river boards will then get some water effect.

Here is the current state of the boards:

I still have two hill panels untouched. The plan for one will be a waterfall of some kind, the other is currently in limbo. I did think of doing a panel similar to FW's Imperial Strongpoint but I went off that idea so if you have any ideas post them up and I might (might) do it.

Recalcitrant Daze - This Still Isn't a Review Post.

So yeah, not a review post. More of a 'what-may-be-coming-in-the-near-future-type-of-post' post.

Realm of Battle Gaming Boards.

After the gaming over the last couple of days I decided not to pack away the gaming boards just yet. Even though I started these several years ago I have never had chance to finish them off. So to begin with I have poured more water effect into the pools onto the first two boards.

After these pools, and the ones on the remaining board, are filled i'll move onto the other RoB boards I have started...



Extended Hills

River Boards

Nurgle Daemons...

Awaiting my attention are my Nurgle Deamons.

Still to finish off are a unit of Plaguebearers, some Nurgling Bases, three Plague Drones, a Blight Drone and of course Scabby...

Dreadball.

The futuristic ball game is a blast to play so it seems natural to pick up a team to build.

I'm not a fan of many of the teams but the Robots caught my eye so I have those sitting on my workbench.

Fortifications.

As mentioned before I got hold of Stronghold Assault. Being a fan of all things siege-y I can't help thinking that in the coming months I will turn my hand to building something that will play a part in a defensive line.

Whether Ork or Imperial I am yet to decide...

Other things...

On top of those I have my Deathwing Zone Mortalis force to paint up...

Oh and of course the Death Guard Horus Heresy force which while I have some models for but I am still in the process of planning as you can see left and right:








I think that is everything I can think of at the moment.

Just to finish off I should mention last night I had an article go up on Bell of Lost Souls which can be found here.

Recalcitrant Daze - This Isn't a Review of the Year Post.

..it just happens to fall on New Years Eve.

Due to the holiday festivities not a huge amount on the hobby front has been done lately.

What I did have was a couple of days of gaming, it broke down to a day of Dreadball and a day of 40K.

Dreadball...

For Dreadball I had to knock up some bases for my Robot team. Basically Dreadball team members can be either Strikers, Guards or Jacks (i.e. Jack of all trades). Robot teams though all start as Jacks and then have the ability to change roles during the game. So to keep track of all these changes I modified a Dreadball Hex base and then cast up a shed load of them. Adding a washer into the base and a magnet to the players I could colour code the bases...

Blue for Jacks, Red for Guards and White for Strikers.

The bases worked perfectly - except for the blue on the Jacks being a bit too dark to see easily in the light. As such I'll change that to a lighter colour, probably green.

I also had to knock up some counters, while I had bought everything else I needed to play the game I didn't buy the handful of counters you need. Simple enough job to do.

As for the games themselves all three finished 3-0 which was a bit weird. I won two and lost one (but so very nearly one that one with the last play of the game).

Hopefully I'll start putting the team itself together soon so expect some updates in the near future.

40K...

The Daemons had a run out...nothing to really see here except for the first time in the new house I got to set up the full gaming board in the living room, I say 'full board' but I mean a full 6x4 gaming board...not all the RoB panels I've got as that would be something of a squeeze.

Gaming in Comfort

The two games ended up a win each, with some of the dice rolling I had I'm surprised I didn't lose both heavily.

In case we played ZM I also cast up some more pallets...

In the end I didn't need them, but i'll get on with adding the stowage and tarps now so they should be ready for the next 'Gaming Meet Up'.

Talking of terrain I don't usually get hobby related stuff as presents but this year I did get Stronghold Assault. Nice book though would of been so much better if they had put the effort in to do non-Imperial themed fortifications. However as I do love a Siege expect at some point more terrain in the shape of bunkers etc appearing on RD. You have been warned.


And Finally...

As I've not done one of these general rambling type of posts here are a couple of new Blogs I am now following...

Seismic Miniature Painting Studio

40k Hobby Blog

Scatter Terrain 16

Well after six straight posts on the Junka I thought it would be good to have a post which is completely different.

I've been doing some casting recently due to getting some new equipment (I'll cover that in another post on it's own later) and I decided to return to a project I last looked at way back in July 2012 - I can't believe it has been that long...- namely some pallets for scatter terrain, especially for games of Zone Mortalis.

Due to it being so long it is probably best if I start from the beginning.

I did some 3D models...

You can make out in the pics that one hole was skull shaped, just for fun.

Each pallet was in two parts, namely a base and a top. These were then 3D printed, and after cleaning up (the ID plates didn't come out at all) and a coat of grey spray they looked like this:

So going with the large pallet I decided to finally get some moulds done and pieces cast.

The base went off without a hitch and I've now got seven cast up, I say without a hitch I made a cock up with two of them and amazingly managed to not put enough resin in, but I just carved a bit of battle damage into the one corner and it'll be fine.

 

When I opened up the mould for the top I hit a problem. I can without worry of being contradicted say that this it the worse mould I have done. Due to me rushing it and trying to recycle old rubber I found there was a number of air bubbles (more than a dozen), but those can be worked round easy enough - it just means more clean up of the casts will be required. However the worst thing is that a small area of rubber had 'lifted away' (I can't think of a better way to describe it) from the master. It's not an air bubble as the 'lifted' area has the detail moulded in it...

 

Weird.

So I am in split mind as to what to do, I could do a new mould but that would take a couple of days and even recycling the old mould would still cause some waste and I need what unused rubber I have left for other things. I think I can get away with it. It's in an area where stores can always cover it, plus I will be adding tarps to most of the finished pieces so I think I can always cover up what isn't covered by stores. Certainly for now I am going to use this mould to knock out some pallets.

Once cleaned up the assembled pallet looks like this:

And with some quicky cast barrels...

As mentioned above the plan will eventually have tarps over these things, as shown in my earlier experiments...

So that's that for now, I will knock out some more pallets and start getting stores on them and tarps added. I'm not sure if I want to do the small pallet, I think it is a bit redundant to be honest. But I may come back to it in the future.