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@masterslowpoke all I did was prime the building in red (rattle can red is preferable to airbrush or hand brush, although applying a coat of sealer after doing those would make them just as durable) and slather some DAP crackshot (basically whichever drywall repair/spackle/whatever you prefer, I think I picked this one cause it dries fast) on the bricks and scrape it away with something straight and flat like a bit of plasticard, old credit card, cardboard, whatever. This won't get it perfect, you'll need to use your finger or a paper towel or something to get any film remaining on the bricks. Careful on that last step because you can dig 'mortar' out of the dips and make more mess than you're fixing After it dried/cured/set, I hit it with an uneven watered down black wash. The last step is not necessary, but my choice of spackle is pretty white and toning it down seemed appropriate. Applying the wash a bit unevenly and getting some spots darker just turns that last step into some amateur hour free weathering

If I walk into a gamestore in the next week or two and see those Tau... would probably buy them. If it comes to a premeditated cold blooded purchase... I can probably hold off doing so for awhile. We'll see, the Wife is planning on taking me out of town for my birthday here in a week or so and there happens to be a store where we're going. Almost never has anything I want, though 40k stuff is one of their mainstream products.

Gonna see about doing some scenery or orclings today.

nice work on the house!

did you use actual stucco?

Thanks! Not so much stucco as spackling paste. I don't think they're terribly far removed from each other though

Aha! Spackle for miniature buildings!

Work in progress.


More coats down. What should I do with chimney. I would have defaulted to the grey I used on the walls...but I used it on the walls. Roof shingles will be dark grey. I could do some kind of redbrick but the bricks are much too large to be regular bricks. Could do some kind of fancy stonework pattern with 2-4 shades of tan/brown (or greys). Could just do a lighter grey than the walls. I'm leaning towards the light grey for expediency but I dunno. What say you folks?


Oh here's this:


This is what the contents of that mars attacks 3 building scenery pack look like. There are extra clips from the previous project (I've got a lot of unassembled ruined pieces floating around yet, and bought 4 packs of extras (one of which is in the pile there).

I should have enough to make the three pictured buildings, and then one (possibly) even larger building from the spares I'll save by doing custom roofs. I may make that into a small factory/warehouse with catwalks around the second floor, so I can just do a regular removable roof. Catwalks courtesy of the scifi battlezones scenery pile .

Make it granite. Paint it dark grey, then sponge on a couple lighter shades, maybe a hint of brown or blue, finish with light grey.

Or sandstone, same but with stripes and red/brown not grey.

Or marble, bit rough hewn for marble but could be done.

Must steal storage idea for the battlezone pieces. Definitely feeling more like the cabin from Evil Dead: Amy of Darkness.

I made one for deadzone back in the day too. It works for a lot of stuff, I have my battle systems bits and pieces in one. Just hotglue strips of cardboard into a larger box.

Nothing wrong with evil dead cabin, I can do evil dead cabin. I suppose I could have made rooms instead of one big open space but I wanted it kinda simple.

I agree that your terrain box is a great idea. I have so many battlezones on sprue taking up space, but the thought of cutting them all off the sprues terrifies me. Having a sorting system would solve a lot of that. How about making one for me?

Yes, and then I'll just ship the empty box to Japan right

I think sandstone for the chimney. Make it a real feature of the room since we would all be huddled around it in the cold depths of whatever wood that cabin is going to end up in.

 GrimDork wrote:
Yes, and then I'll just ship the empty box to Japan right

Make one for him, take a photo of it, and then post it here with a note: "Stop by any time to pick it up!"

--Brian, helping

 GrimDork wrote:
Yes, and then I'll just ship the empty box to Japan right

If sending it empty bothers you, you can fill it with battlezones or something.

Brick reds for the chimney. It would contrast well with the walls, which, at least in the photos have some blue tones (which could be the lighting or something...)

That terrain box reminds me of the boxes that deck building games sometimes come with. Very cool.

Really like what you're doing with the terrain/scenery. That building with the lipped roof for cover looks great.

EDC

Thanks guys, here's where the cabin is now:





So as you can see I've gone for a kind of mixed color sandstone style chimney, even though you usually don't get such straight blocks/bricks of it... they *do* get cut that way sometimes. Windows work, doors work. Roof comes off... I'd say we're good. I'm gonna dip the whole thing probably. Some of the white that shows through is gonna have to get fixed by the dip or be there forever, my brushes and regular paint just aren't penetrating that far down. I think it's ready for dip. Almost there.

As the LoER competition ends March 3rd I have a few weeks of wiggle room. I'd like to try and push this over the top, or at least add some more scenery to go with it. The comp is about recycling, so reusing found/household items for terrain instead of their usual purpose. So far all I've included that I feel meets that criteria are the windows (from heroclix packaging), and maybe the chimney as it originally entered service as part of a portable game board. Maybe the door handles, I dunno. Anyway. I could make furniture but... meh I have so much dungeon saga stuff I could easily add and that would work well for both outdated furniture in a modern setting, and as fantasy furniture.

Not sure what else to make. I could make a small board 2-4ft square in size, adding some basic hill/rocks/trees...*might* have time for that...I'd like to do a water feature but they usually involve expensive materials, at least the ones that look nice. A stone-ringed trash/burn pile would be easy and appropriate near a cabin...not sure there's any house in the woods that doesn't have somewhere to burn sticks, branches, and leaves. Just not sure.

I could do a shed and or outhouse, but I'm not sure if I have enough time to finish many more buildings, I've still got Orc stuff to paint this month.

Chimney looks fantastic. Love the colours.

Maybe a well out the back? Definitely a couple of groups of trees.

Looking good. The cabin is made of some kind of stiff cardboard, right? Does it take the urethane dip without warping?

I've used sandstone in those colors for work but not in those shapes or for a chimney. Made sense enough to use them here.

You know... A well would be nice Archer. I have 3 from dungeon saga but I could make a nice big one for this... Good idea.


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It's strips of thin cardboard glued to sheets of the same, the floors corners and roof are wood. It's thinner than corrugated but its much thicker than cereal box chipboard. Maybe 1mm thick. Curing crackshot does warp two layers slightly but I think it's doing ok with the dip


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Cabin photos. Needs matte seal.

Quite the cabin for a zombie fight!

The action shots show it off fantastically. Had come up an absolute treat. The scale looks perfect as well.

great use of the Dungeon Saga stuff . The cabin looks great, now you need a crawler coming out of the fireplace and greenstuff some flames

So I dinged 30 today (you may have to have played everquest for that to make sense...not sure DING ## even survived to other MMOs honestly) and the wife took me out of town for lunch and some light shopping. I gave in to my whims of the last few days and between the wife and some other birthday funds I came home with:


Whoops!

The two technical paints are needed replacements/backups, and the leadbelcher is going to replace my dwindling boltgun so I can finish the orcs and other legacy projects (almost all scifi uses not-metallic colors for their traditionally metal parts.

The Tau... I have no idea. I guess I always kind of liked them but my primary 40k opponent had them as his second army and when your total player pool is like 2-4 guys...you tend to not play the same armies just for everyone's sake The Start Collecting! deal was pretty solid (not Seraphon/Lizardmen solid, but still) and had a nice smattering of the Tau units that I like. I may just paint up the box and be done, I may collect a couple more units before it's over... I doubt I'll ever get anything approaching a proper game sized force of Tau, and that's fine. I don't really wanna buy the codex or new rulebook anyway! I'll probably assemble these guys mostly codex legal, maybe no the right number of types of guns..probably heavily magnetize the crisis suits as at $25 a pop I doubt I'll be buying m/any more! The Ethereal...never really liked them and it's kind of a harder to get item so I may just ebay it for $15-20 bucks, scrape a few more dollars into the war chest.

I'll probably paint those guys kind of like the box art... dirty/worn white. Using my methods instead of theirs (because I'd fail if I tried to do it their way), and maybe with a different off-color. Gonna prime some old space marines white to get a feel for how I want to finish the white on the Tau stuff.

I could see myself getting select other Tau units. The Riptide is a whole lot of kit even if it does cost $85...I'd say you're getting a better deal than on that stormsurge thing for a hundred and fitty (WOAH). The Ghostkeel, however, is probably the one I'd get. Even though it looks considerably smaller than the riptide, and with only a 10 dollar difference in it's favor... it still looks way cooler to me. I could also see getting some of the newer bulkier stealth suits (but just like, three), and maybe a Devilfish transport to 'complete the look' of the force. That way everything would be in a suit or have a vehicle.

Anyhoo, not sure when I'll get to these guys. I want to perfect the white scheme before I start, though that doesn't mean I can't start assembling sooner... And I still plan to finish my scenery for the LoER comp and continue my unit-a-month for Azazelx's tale of painters challenge.

Any additional birthday funds will be diverted to the warchest and saved for "Important Hobby Expenditures". No fething kickstarters this time. I will probably want a kit or three from Warlord Games when Project Z hits the shelves, and if I actually get this Tau stuff done, I may allow myself to get more.

DZ2 should be shipping next month (in theory), so I'm gonna have a lot of that to deal with too. Having the tau at least started would help ensure that they get done and end up on the pride pile instead of in the shame drawer. It comes to mind that the Tau will be similarly numerous to the Veermyn and Enforcers (well, I have a lot more enforcers but only the will to handle so many at a time). This will make them good sparring partners, if Firefight works out or I can find another 20-50 model size game for them. The space dwarfs I ordered will probably outnumber them all...eep. Tragic decisions of my youth (see what I did there?)...

Congrats on leveling up!

I'd say more about he cabin and stuff, but since we're doing the EQ thing...


/y grats

I've been looking at that Tau box myself. And I do like their new white scheme over the old yellow color they used.

Also, happy birthday!

I don't even remember 30

Congrats sir, nice birthday loot as well.

Thanks guys

I like the white much better than the orange. So much so that I intend to emulate it.

So I clipped all the bits for the fire warriors and crisis suits out. Leaving the ethereal alone for now since he's not my favorite but is kind of hard to get a hold of. If I could sell him for 20 bucks on eBay and net at least $15 after fees and shipping, would be a nice little deposit into the war chest.

Thoughts on the sprues? Sure. I am really impressed with the vast array of options, there are a lot for both kits. I'm a little sad that they though it was a good idea to include 26 heads for 10 guys but couldn't make room for enough torsos to go with the 12 legs to make 12 guys. I guess they figured they didn't ha e room enough to add 2 more of each gun so as to include full options for each type...but now I just gotta find two more equivalent torsos in my bits box.

The fire warriors have inset lettering to describe which sets of arms match each other which is amazing. Doing it on the sprue is good, hidden in the arms though? That's brilliant. There are several holstered pistols, strips of grenades, one each of the three gun types that's loose, and a few other bits and bobs. Since I'm planning to build these guys like a skirmish force, the added individuality will be great.

The crisis suits have a lot of sweet guns and extra bits. I like the extra up armored bits for making the experimental iridium class suit. I'm going to have three points of articulation and 3-4 hard points per suit depending how many slots they have on their backs. The arms will ball joint at the shoulder, and the heads will too. The arm mounted guns and back slots will be magnetized too. I plan to have them all standing as I prefer that look, I think. Probably. Much sturdier.

The main complaints I'd have for the kits are now jam-packed the bits are... Hard to get clippers into a lot of places for clean cuts. Will have more nubs to trim off than usual. The drone antennae are weak, it was a real task to get them off safely and at least two are broken. Minor issues though.

Looking forward to these Tau, they've always struck me as a force that lacks a certain something in terms of character/personality, but if you're aiming to make these more individual then I eagerly await the results. I'd be interested to see just what these new kits can do, the newer SM plastics are a converter's dream so it'll be interesting to see if the Tau compare.

Cabin looks superb!