Theophony wrote:

 shasolenzabi wrote:
Theo is alive!

Don't start any rumors I'm alive, no motivation or time to get through all the threads. Plus finished my capstone class last Monday, two more till my B.S. Degree is done.

UoP? that sounds like their terminology, got my B.A. from them for Communications.


Grim, paint when you feel up to it, health is very important!!!

Papa Nurgle is everywhere!!

He decided that I needed to spend time yesterday and today vomiting. Gross.

I'm feeling quite a bit better and I hope you are too!

I'm very much looking forward to your PanO. Is it just Icestorm and NCA stuff, or are there some other goodies you've failed to mention?

Yeah its ice storm and the neoterra box. But who knows, may get more eventually.

Yes, I too look forward to seeing you do some PanO. I've got a few awaiting their final touchups, too. I've also got a Neoterran box awaiting paint, but I lost track of it during the move. Hopefully it'll turn up once I get a new place.

I'm hoping the scheme I want to do is both doable and looks as cool as I'm hoping for.

I may actually paint a space marine dreadnought in a similar scheme since the lines will be a lot bigger an easier to experiment with the method of highlighting I want to use.

How does a space marine dreadnought compare size wise to infinity TAG's?

I don't actually have one. TAGs don't have any uniform size, some are barely bigger than a heavily armored infantry, others approach 2x the height of a normal human.

Dreads appear to be almost 2x 28mm human height, so the bigger tags are gonna probably be a bit taller, but way more spindly.

Alright managed to assemble the last two pano. Photo included below.

Click the photo at the bottom to embiggen.



Back Row-->Neoterra Bolts. These guys are medium infantry. They kind of fall into a weird category in my opinion. They aren't really potent enough to put all your bets on them, but they're not cheap enough to use for cheerleaders. Unlike a lot of the MI in my Nomad army, who are all highly specialized/quirky/good-at-certain-things, the bolts look pretty reliable, reasonably tough, but without anything that stands out to me. Could be inexperience though. They've got some useful special abilities though it seems to me the penny pincher would go for Fusileers, even in a Neoterra army. However they look badass, those masks are sick. I might consider using the FemBolt as a hacker, she's got the pose.. though they have kind of bad WP.

Middle Row--> Fusileers. The backbone of the Panoceania army, THE Pan-O army! Or at least that's what they say? Bog standard grunts if ever there was such a thing. They look cool though, near armor, battle khakis, and a beret? Seriously? A fething beret? Hell yes. And for stock infantry, these guys are actually pretty damn good. Compare them to either of my Nomad choices and Fusiliers come out better in terms of accuracy for no bump in cost. They don't have any bonus willpower, which makes their medics and hackers less attractive, but they're very potent for basic line infantry. And Berets. Duh.


Left to right (forgive spelling):

Akalis Sikh Commando: Reasonably elite dude, drops onto the battlefield with his cool drop pack thing, basic gun but in Infinity, basic gun shooting you in the back is nasty enough to kill damn near anything. Usually you try not to load up on things that start off the board in Infinity as it puts you at an order disadvantage, so I probably only need one of these guys. I hope his fiddlybits don't fall off all the time =/

Father Knight: New with Icestorm, best I can tell, he's a relatively nasty close combat specialist with the assault ability, giving him a much more reliable charge distance but at the cost of accuracy on that first swing. He's about as tough as non-ridiculous heavy infantry come, and his biotechnological shield is ridiculous, good luck immobilizing him with haxxorz.

Swiss Guard: Holy gak, This guy is so buff and expensive you may just as well buy a TAG, but no don't. The Swiss Guard is a heavy infantry with a pretty stacked stat line. Of course they run 64-70 points (remember standard games go upto 300 generally, so *a lot*). So what makes this guy worth his points? Did I forget to mention is Thermo Optic camouflage? Yeah, that's right, big ass power armored dude with a missile launcher THAT YOU CAN"T FUGGING SEE! Yes, Mr. Swiss Guard goes all GitS on your ass and opens up a can of highly explosive micro rockets. And just in case you try to close the gap, remember he's still got a pistol and an armor piercing close combat weapon with better than horrible CC capability.

Orc: This is Pan-O's standard/basic Heavy infantry. He's got superior PanO BS, good armor, and a reasonable selection of gear. Mine has a... combirifle maybe? Could be a multirifle, not entirely sure. He can be the Lieutenant, and is a fairly tough customer ready to dish out the pain and weather his fair share to bring home the victory.

Aquila Guard: Coming in just behind the Swiss Guard for super-elite power armored soldier, the Aquila Guard trades in the camo for a level three multispectral visor which means optical tricks (like the TO camo of aforementioned Swiss Guard) don't bother him. He *can* be the boss, and comes with either a multi rifle or HMG, mine has the rifle. Similar statline to the Swiss guard, not quite as heavily armored, bit cheaper.

Svalarheima Nisses: These guys are medium infantry with pretty solid armor and good ballistic skill. They're great at engaging enemy camo/optical disruption reliant troops with their multispectral visor L2, and they've got mimetism which makes them harder to hit (unless their opponent also has an MSV). Mine has a sniper rifle and I think it's a perfect match. Good armor, harder to hit than normal, long ranged (maximizing penalties to shoot at him combined with mimetism) and a sniper rifle combined with that visor is just going to ruin a lot of sneaky troops' days.

Hexas: Another TO unit, this sneaky little bastard is a light infantry and is packing a Spitfire which is the close-range answer to the heavy machine gun. Basically sneaks around till he can get close and unleashes hell with his nasty nasty gun. Also comes with an electric pulse which often comes on vehicles or remotes, but my Nomad Moderators also get them, I like to think of it as a badass tazer. It's a defensive CC weapon, if someone jumps him they'll be a pretty significant penalty to their attack and if they fail to hit *and the electric pulse's penalty made the difference* then they get stunned. I'm sure a dedicated CC unit will take him out just fine, but this may help to dissuade some lower tier cc unit or unit with a bad gun and reasonable CC score from trying to bum rush or something.

Nice little collection there, and looks like you could put together a decent NCA or just vanilla force from it! I kind of messed up there, as not too much from Op:Ice works with the Military Orders I went for as my first starter. Don't regret it, as those models are amazing, but I'll need another set (probably NCA, Bolts are Aquila/Swiss Guard are awesome) if I want to expand. Need to bulk up Nomads (Corregidor/vanilla) first. And the new CA starter is shiny as hell...

Too many awesome minis, not enough time/money/space!

Yeah.... time/money/space makes for problems

Drowning in pant projects eh? I know the feeling

psssh time/money/space who has those things...

Gallifreyans?


Just caught up on several pages...there were some interesting skellies, some nice junglist stuff, some good pulpy adventures, but the star attraction was definitely the cthulugon

Hah, thanks MT. I'm gonna get that thing sorted, I promise, just been out of commission for awhile now.

Alright so here are my latest 6 x-wing ships, should be all I need to buy unless I actually want to knock together a tournament list or something:



Soz bad picture. I'm gonna see about dragging them all outside someday and taking photos, or perhaps whenever I play another game.


Here's my fusilier scheme, I think I'm happy with it and gonna keep it. It's just the base colors, and mostly only one layer of everything, gotta smooth a lot of stuff out and get the colors nice and solid before moving onto highlights (which will probably be a bear).



I also see now that the camera decided to put the pictures of the soldiers in back more in focus than the actual model in the fore... sigh. Oh well, you'll get better pictures when he's better painted. But basically, black armor with a medium blue off-color, brown cloth/pants, very dark grey straps/flexible material type stuff, the guns will be the same grey mix as my Nomads. I've gotta do his arm too but since it's mounted on a stick I won't be able to put it in place until it's ready for glue anyway.

Thoughts?

Which ships are those Grim? I can see a Y wing, Xizor's Tie prototype. And x wings(?) don't recognise the others though

You're repainting your X-Wing ships?

Just about everyone I know reprints their xwing ships. I want to see grim's take on it.

The fusilier looks great. Very proper soldier as opposed to the rabble the nomads employ.

The two on the left and right are Z95 headhunters in the black sun theme from the most wanted box that's recently come out. Z95s are the precursor to x-wings, they're less shooty and aren't quite as sturdy.

The cute little brown one on the left is a Scyk Interceptor, kind of the Scum faction version of a TIE fighter but you can upgrade them to come with a big gun.

The pointy deathflower thing is called a Starviper, it's the mass production version of Prince Xizor's Virago prototype. It's fairly maneuverable and punchy, but I think the jury is out on how well it stacks up with stuff that's been around.

The pointy brown one with black windows is the HWK-290 or hawk, it's a personal transport. I think it originated in one of the starwars games as the ship of Kyle Katarn. It's a buff ship (or debuff ship in the scum faction) with a weak main weapon but the option to take turrets.

And then we've got the humble y-wing, in scum colors again.


I haven't repainted these actually, though someday I may decide to for fun, it's not on the agenda for now


May try to work on the fusilier a bit more today, time permitting.

Also doing some research into x-wing for a semi-local tournament I may try to attend at the end of the month. Gotta make up my mind and enter it to save my spot.

Fusilier scheme looks very nice! Will you be dipping after highlighting, or just painting normally?

I will probably dip just because it will make any of the lighter colors look better by default, and it won't hurt the black. Plus they're metal models and the dip makes a nice outer layer of armor to help protect them!

A little late to the party but, both the Knights of Badassdom and your Necromancer Gang are .... Bad Ass

Nice!! More infinity blogs! I love the minis they are putting out and are a real challenge for me to paint as All I've ever painted are GW models! Anyways show more as it comes

Cheers
BB

@Adamsouza thanks The skeletons were maybe a little too little work but I like how the cultists and necromancer turned out.

@bebopdrums A part-time Infinity blog at best, I only feel up to painting infinity models some of the time, and I like to churn out lots of other minis such as random reaper bones minis, stuff from deadzone, mars attacks, and even some fantasy mass battles stuff occasionally! But yeah, there will be Infinity stuff on occasion. I usually put the subject of the most recent update in the title if you're looking to just skim for Infinity stuff


About got the base colors done for the Fusilier, gonna start highlights when I feel a bit better.

Still sick Grim?

I have been working on a scratch built APC myself, now waiting on a delivery of Dreamforge stuff but the weather may delay that as well, despite 2nd day air being paid for.

Yeah. Today seems a bit better so maybe tomorrow I can actually say I think I'm getting better... we'll see. I think I may have caught the same thing twice.

I like your scratchbuilds, bit envious as they're somewhat out of my level of ability, but fun to watch from afar.

 GrimDork wrote:
Yeah. Today seems a bit better so maybe tomorrow I can actually say I think I'm getting better... we'll see. I think I may have caught the same thing twice.

I like your scratchbuilds, bit envious as they're somewhat out of my level of ability, but fun to watch from afar.

Hoping you get over it as I do like seeing the different paint ideas that you have, and enjoy the league vs necromancers stuff too!

I used to also be afraid of approaching scracthbuilding. I still am a bit uneven at times, (getting a metal safety ruler that is just 12" long from across the pond via Amazon) to get the lines more even in the future. But I just wanted something no one was making and well that got me down that road of making stuff provided I had the bits and raw materials to make it so. One here at Dakka that has me in awe of his scratch skills is Klaus not Santa, I mean we have a strong community of scrathchers here, but the level of things Klaus does is like me making a Ford and him making a Lamborghini if you want to do a quality comparison.

I'll have to look into this Klaus person then lol.

Like the scheme grim

Grim you will find Klaus here, prepare to feast eyes

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/310208.page

3-in-one turn counter/dice tower/scenery? BOOYAH, time to go upgrade my dice towers!

haha... crap I'm gonna have to read through this one, thanks for sharing.

No problem
His skills are incredi-mazing'

Soooo... Thoughts? He needs dipped, it should make the brown and fleshtones better, maybe even the blue areas. Won't do much for the black which is why they got 3 layers of highlights. Sorry for the pictures, too bright. I may try some later using the garage door as a filter for the sun. Basically it's dark/navy blue (royal blood), the 50/50 rb+white all over again but thinner as possible, and then little bits of pure white on select edges and corners. I wish I as better at it, but this is probably the level of highlighting I'm gonna be able to work with. Thoughts?

Oh, what color should I paint the white dots on the legs and the two bits on the chest under the head (looks kind of like a gasmask but it's just a part of the chest armor)? I was thinking orange may be a nice compliment to the blue?

I'll probably go in and clean the edge highlights up a bit too before it's all said and done, but they'll still be somewhat spotty if you ask me.

Looking pretty awesome! Great scheme (lots of contrast is always good for Infinity) and nice paintwork. If you mean the dots/recessed areas, I found on mine that red popped nicely with blue armour, so red or orange would certainly fit.

Oh, and if you do fine your highlights end up too chalky or spotty, a wash/glaze of the mid-tone can do wonders to bring it all together. What will look like 3 separate bands pre-wash will come together as a smooth blend after a wash. I'd do this before Dipping, though.

I really like the paint scheme.

I'd go either yellow or orange for the dots.

Are the pants brown or tan? On my monitor they look like they could be either.

I'm a bit biased, but I'd do the glowy bits in red.

Thanks guys

I may try washing the highlights, a blue glaze might be kind of interesting on the armor anyway...

The pants are kind of brown-tan, more or less what I was after. Too dark to be khaki but far from dark brown at the same time.

So a lot of calls for red. I like blue glowy bits too but since the off-color is already blue... I think I'll use hazard orange as a base, it's orange, but there's a bit of red in there.

May work on some scenery today too.

Orange or red-orange would go fine on the 'lights'. The black gives the fusiliers a more sinister look than I am used to seeing from them. A good change of pace.

Pardon the pun, but I figured these guys would be a crack team assembled to handle black ops outside of the public view. They're still obviously PanO troops, but the different color gives them a wider degree of separation from their parent army.

Managed to airbrush slightly glowy lights, photo later. Gun arm and hands are almost done, just gotta do black highlights I think, then assemble the pieces, inevitably touch up what I mess up doing that... let it cure for a good while, and dip.

I may look into using the airbrush a bit more on the first stages of these guys to get cleaner colors and kind of work on my skill with it. We'll see, some days I want to use the airbrush, other days I just really don't.

Finished the Fusilier, he still needs sealed and based, but you can get a pretty good idea from these... forgive the blurry photos, i'll get good ones tomorrow weather permitting:




Took a couple with slightly different light.

I'm really pleased with how well the dip interacted with the scheme. Helped what I thought it would, and even made the minor OSL stand out a bit better.

Dip has certainly helped with that fella.

That Fusilier has come up really great. Will you be giving him a coat of Matt to finish up - and will he be added to a clear acrylic base as well?

Yeah, I kinda jumped the gun and shot him early. I've sealed him already and will either base him later tonight or more likely in the morning. He's gonna be alone for a little while as I debate switching to the airbrush for many of the steps instead of traditional brush. Not sure which way I'll go, would be good to practice... may also save some time...maybe.. but I gotta be in the airbrushing mood.

But, yes, he should be photographed on a base and posted tomorrow, I'll probably wait for proper sunlight so probably in the afternoon my time.

I need to look him over once the sealer is cured and done stinking to high heaven, but I think I'm fairly happy with the results. I need to get a bit better at faces. The dip does a great job putting shading in, but faces sometimes like to have a little variance in tone...be it makeup for women, grey beard shadow for men, or what have you. Leaving it plain and dipping is kind of not doing them justice. However, there are only 2 more fusiliers in my PanO collection, and everybody else has a helmet/mask and literally no other skin is showing (except the midriff on the icestorm femsilier) so this isn't really the time or place for me to try to get better at painting skin. Maybe when I get back to the Nomads.

I'd like to bust out the PanO much like I did the Shasvastii, in waves of 2-4 models and straight through until they're done.... but highlighting the black will likely kill my momentum very quickly, I may have to fall back to some of my prepped Nomads or even to some really simple bones models to recover.


For now, I'm gonna introduce the latest installment of x-wing cards into the binder sleeves, and try to figure out a tournament viable list that I actually have the proper cards and ships for. So far the only thing I'm positive I have the essentials for is a classic TIE swarm and I *do not* have the practice at moving them. I think if I'm a good little hobbyist this year and I don't back too many kickstarters, or buy too many other models.. I'll pick up a couple of missing x-wing expansions and maybe get the epic ships while I'm at it. The expensive new imperial ship would make my beloved tie interceptor quite a bit more useful and give me all the cards I'd need to run two (the one I have, and the one that comes in the kit).

That model looks fantastic. I can't believe how well the dip worked over your highlighting.

Thanks

Minwax Polyshades Tudor Stain is basically magic.

I'm not sure which kind, I haven't felt more inclined to the dark side, nor murdered any kittens or harbored any more ill thoughts than usual... so I'm not thinking it's black magic. I don't recall learning it from a monster... so no blue magic. It buffs the crap out of my mediocre painting which kind of suggests white magic, but it's awful stinky. Maybe it's a druid spell?

I think he may look *even better* after the matt sealer, I'm really quite pleased with him, makes the extra bit of work worth it in the end.



And now I think I'm onto something.... There are a couple of Scum faction x-wing ships that can do some interesting blaster turret shenanigans... starting to sound like something I'd like to try.

He looks great, and once he's less shiny and has a few friends it'll be even better, I reckon!

Infinity minis (especially the newer ones) are a grest way to practice faces, as their features are usually defined well enough to get good gradients on. I think the Reverend Healer in O:I is probably the best face to work on, but I think you've already done her.

Loving the Fusilier paint job- looks badass

Alright I got him done, and I'm well pleased. May be my favorite paintjob yet, certainly it is for 2015.


Kind of strong lighting, I still need to take better photos.


I didn't notice the lighting on these was wonky until I went to edit them, and the light was gone. May get more later, may just wait for more finished pan-o.


Probably the best lighting and focus of the photos I've taken so far. For the fusilier at least.

Good job on the fusilier, looks great

Thanks MT

And as an added bonus... someone had asked if I could show off the clear acrylics doing their thing over multiple scenery types. I think I was meant to put one of my scenic based models in the shots for comparison, didn't though. Maybe it was Archer? Well, let the next few photos serve as a placeholder till I can take a larger photo shoot and actually do what I said:


At home in a gritty scifi interior.


And now they're happily traipsing about the countryside.


And back to the Mototronica facility to make sure things are properly locked down.


I didn't know they still had redbrick buildings and concrete in the space/future!


And they're even at home on a Dreadball Xtreme pitch in the manticverse.

Yep, he looks darn nice!

Sharp looking trooper you have there, very nice!

Thanks guys

I'm half tempted to use him as my entry under Space Marine for Para's painting event, as I'm running out of time to get both the Dreadnought and the terrain for the LoER comp done by the end of the month =/

 GrimDork wrote:
Thanks guys

I'm half tempted to use him as my entry under Space Marine for Para's painting event, as I'm running out of time to get both the Dreadnought and the terrain for the LoER comp done by the end of the month =/

Cheater. Get the dreadnought done lol

The action shots look amazing. Paint job is top notch.

The red lights (or are they orange?) turned out great! Helps give him that slightly more sinister look, I think. The color scheme overall looks very good for the fusilier. Now go an apply that scheme to the rest of the army

Thanks

They're Hazard orange, pretty solidly red-orange. Over white, the thinner the coat the more they'll look orange, solid almost looks red. I'm liking it for heat/engine glows.

Whew... I wanna knock these guys out like I did my shasvastii but the highlights kind of hurt my brain, even if I can do all of the other steps in batches, I won't be able to do the black highlights on more than one model at a time. At least I have one down. One that I consider to look cool and that I'm very happy with. That helps the burden, and I've only got 12 to go, not like I'm trying to paint a space marine army here.


Did some airbrushing just now. Nothing ready to show. I'll post when it is, got some scenery stuff in the works though.


I bought an Apache to crash into the jungle and then I realized it was a 'traditional' model tank/airplane/chopper kit and you can read traditional as 'not meant to be easy to assemble'. I much prefer the snapfit stuff. Often, you get something nearly as nice, and the assembly takes moments. I'm half tempted to pick up a revel snapfit/tite x-wing at hobby lobby to paint up as misc scifi table dressing, It's probably a tad small for 28mm but I think you could *probably* fit a mantic figure in the cockpit. After the coupon, for 6 bucks, probably worth a shot.

I put the helicopter right back in it's damn box though lol... I may still crash it into some scenery, won't have to follow as many of the icky assembly procedures then. I would rather scratch build an accident for the LoER competition but I can't decide what to do that would also fit in with my jungle themed 1x1' grids.


Also, I may have come up with my first x-wing repaint:

I would really like to emulate the art on the card. I think the pilot would be kinda fun to fly and I could still use it for other ships with the right insert. Honestly may get some more z95s just cause I like them. X-wings are cool and all, but the Z's are just a bit sleeker to me, and you can swarm them in x-wing which seems amusing.

Once I repaint the first ship it's over, I'll probably be repainting them in droves, especially any that fit the scum faction =/ And they'll all need engine glows. All of them. Because. =/

The trooper looks really nice with the matt finish.

You should be so proud of that Fusilier. He looks completely amazing!!

I really liked seeing the clear bases on all the different ground types.

I'm going to get some at some point.

Thanks guys You are certainly helping keep me motivated to turn over some more Pan O

Trying to decide if the fairly large effort of greenstuffing the connecting points on this scenery will be worth it. The open stuff would require twice as much work as the intact building, and that was a pain in my ass... The white blobs though, and how the corner looks on the test piece... acceptable? Also note that I accidentally sprayed nebula red on the ruin instead of innards or whatever I used on the intact building, the colors will match on future pieces.

I am not entirely sure what I am looking at for greenstuffing on the buildings. If it is the corners then I think they are fine as is.

With the paint job and all it looks great and the corner is only a minor detail. I personally would simply leave it.

they've got holes for the connectors you can kind of see them on the left building as they're a little bit wavy or sinky compared to the surrounding bricks. That's greenstuff repair/coverup. On the right, I simply left them empty and the dap filled them in a bit but its just a white mess rather than slightly distorted bricks. Where the tiles meet and form corners, I've put brick pattern on the left side, and left it plain on the right.

The right side takes *much* less time to do. It's also much more capable of being popped apart and reassembled.

I glued my Deadzone buildings together as I am not thinking my luck would hold out re-assembling w/o the jigs breaking.

I still need to make the saloon sign for the "Booty Bumper Bar and Grill,,,,,Open Dusk till Dawn"

Ruh roh, that sounds suspiciously like a vampire haven. Space/future vampires even.

There's something I haven't seen lately, space/future vampires. What gives? Pretty easy to avoid sunlight on a spaceship/station...

I think the brickwork looks fine there as-is.

I'm kinda glad I didn't put any MA scenery in my pledge. Painting brickwork looks boring as hell lol

Hmm.

What I'm after though, is the left piece takes a *lot* more work. Does the piece on the right look significantly worse? Each full tiles has upwards of 8 spots where the connectors go. I can fill them in with greenstuff which is what the left building is. Its a pain in the ass.

Does the section on the right look ok? Or are the left-to-their-own-devices connector slots too ugly?]


AoV it takes minutes. I'm not painting as much as you think. I just airbrush the whole piece the brick color, then take a cheap largish brush and paint the whole piece with dap crackshot. Basically spackle or plaster paste. Then I use either my thumb or a cloth and wipe away the stuff on the surface and it just leaves it in the cracks, it's super easy mode.

 GrimDork wrote:
Ruh roh, that sounds suspiciously like a vampire haven. Space/future vampires even.

There's something I haven't seen lately, space/future vampires. What gives? Pretty easy to avoid sunlight on a spaceship/station...

Well, if they had the resources to get to space, herd cattle for their supply, and not have to draw the wrath of humans down on them if they play it smart. Kind of like that town in the X-files. They didn't want any trouble, but that dumb pizza delivery kid...........

Haha. I just could see an entire race that was vampires being interesting in spaaaa'aaace. Obviously there would be a stigma with dealing with them, but y'know

 GrimDork wrote:
Haha. I just could see an entire race that was vampires being interesting in spaaaa'aaace. Obviously there would be a stigma with dealing with them, but y'know

Well, in Deadzone the issue is more the Plague hordes. I did watch a Sci-Fi now SyFy movie where a spacer crew made their corporate paychecks via hunting vampires in space.

Haha, that could be cool.

 GrimDork wrote:
Hmm.

What I'm after though, is the left piece takes a *lot* more work. Does the piece on the right look significantly worse? Each full tiles has upwards of 8 spots where the connectors go. I can fill them in with greenstuff which is what the left building is. Its a pain in the ass.

Does the section on the right look ok? Or are the left-to-their-own-devices connector slots too ugly?]


AoV it takes minutes. I'm not painting as much as you think. I just airbrush the whole piece the brick color, then take a cheap largish brush and paint the whole piece with dap crackshot. Basically spackle or plaster paste. Then I use either my thumb or a cloth and wipe away the stuff on the surface and it just leaves it in the cracks, it's super easy mode.

I do a similar thing for brick. Haven't started MA yet, but I've done resin brick ruins etc. Spray enamel brick red. Then once it's well dry, I paint the whole area with an appropriate colour (Vallejo Highlight British Tanker, etc) and wipe off, leaving it in the cracks and dulling down the normal bricks. Grim's method seems just as easy and even cheaper to boot.

Grim - the spackle works perfectly. It just looks like areas that have been concrete patched for some reason or another. It actually stands out a little less than your carefully-fixed sections because those aren't perfect (we can see the indents). I do think painting the corners in looks better, though - but they don't need it to be good looking wargame scenery. If you decide to paint in the corners, I'd suggest maybe using a hobby knife to create new mortar lines between the bricks on the plastic kit, and then letting the spackle do the work again.

Just fill the holes with spackle it looks fine,

Cool, that's what I was kind of hoping. The amount of time it takes to do the greenstuff... I could probably finish most of my 2x2' board stuff painting and spackling in the time it would take to do one of the larger building sections with greenstuff

Thats kind of something i thought about the greenstuff too, that even though it might look better it is kind of a funky organic look for bricks.

You tend to poster up and graffit your walls anyway. If you do just poster over the holes to mix it up a litte

Yeah I'm gonna have to get some MA-appropriate posters, probably won't cover all of the holes with them, but some for sure!

Brickwork looks fine!

As for Spaaaace Vamps, take the Mantic route! Goggles on your WFB/KoW Vampire lord of choice!

Don't push me, I'll DO IT!

Gonna call him Brother Badassius for now

In addition the the extra hardpoint, I wanted to give him some bags and containers to help reinforce his allies. I figure the dread is probably heavily overgunned when it comes to engine output and stability with those stumpy legs, so he may as well bring extra goodies for the other guys.

Did you glue your entire bitbox onto him?

Yeah I just hit him with a quick blast of spray glue and dumped him in a gallon freezer bag full of space marine bits.

I've still got quite of few left of everything I used on him except maybe the missile launcher lol.

 GrimDork wrote:
Yeah I just hit him with a quick blast of spray glue and dumped him in a gallon freezer bag full of space marine bits.

I've still got quite of few left of everything I used on him except maybe the missile launcher lol.

New way to do metallics. Cover the model in glue then roll in it glitter.

Hey!

Now we're talking!

LOL! But I do like that name "Badassius"

Like sternguard are just tactical marines that have been dragged through the bits box, so are venerable dreads. Will be interesting to see him painted.

I've got some space marines that are the same as the dreadnought. Or they will be. So far it's honor guard, using terminator legs, grey knight swords for relic blades, lot of one-handed boltering going on. I'm also using all of the fancy bits I can find in my collection, some of its blood angels/death company, some dark angels, some black templar. I don't care about tying the iconography together, I just want them to look as blatantly badass and over the top as possible. Kind of like angry marines that take themselves serious.

Blah. Slow going. And work comes back likely fulltime on tuesday. Eeesh! I had a fun Pulp Alley battle, I've got the photos on my machine, just need to upload them and do the write-up. May try a little more narrative, so kind of waiting for a better mood. Kind of out of it the last couple of days. Wife got something akin to what I had, but was worse off, leaving me with the kiddo slightly more than usual the last few days.

Been reworking my battle systems terrain into a 2x2' complex, I may have just enough fortification/exterior walls to make the outside 2 panels high, maybe 6"? They aren't meant to stack like that though... so it may or may not work out.

I've also got more walls so it *could* be possible to make another structure to go with it. No floors to match, but thats secondary... I guess that *may* be a better use... We'll see.

WOrked on the dreadnought a bit, nothing worth showing. Its annoying, like the PanOs.

Working on cleaning up some Kulathi Invaders. Well... all of them. 17 total. And a Bathalian too. I figure they're easy to paint and maybe I can do a batch of them to catch me up for the month. Got the short half of them left to clean up.

My bones models are proving to be a little bit tacky after dipping them... even after sealing. My nun, for instance, is super sticky, like I dipped her and have just come back a couple of hours later... useless. The rest are relatively ok... necroteam isn't great, cowboys, kulathi, and greys all seem fine though still noticeable, doesn't have an effect.

A bit apprehensive of finishing both the LoER campaign entry AND the dread. I think I can get the dread done easily enough if I just make myself do the edge highlights... still vacillating between LoER entries involving an accident, past or in progress.

ALright... more photos next update, promise.


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Oh yeah, finally got a Falcon and Slave 1, so that's pretty cool. They're both neat, though I have trouble resolving star wars ship design

I did put my hat in the ring for that tournament, though nobody as gotten back to me, so it's either full or they have to reply manually. We'll see. Playing some form of x-wing next time I play with my new opponent anyway so that's cool.


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Hmm... I've got enough walls, bunker walls.. and maybe I could stretch my ramps far enough to match... to make another building as big as the one I'm working on now... not enough walls to subdivide the inside though... and not enough wall clips to put up...basically anything else. Part of it was the way in which I ordered my add-ons... but yeah. Would cost 18 pounds, nearly 30 bucks to get enough clips... may investigate fashioning my own... maybe. Sigh.


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Huh... Found a few clips. Also determined that, while tedious, I have plenty of left over card-sheet-frame-stuff that the pieces came on that I could make enough of my own clips to get by instead of ordering more. It'll be a pain in the ass and I'm gonna have to find some way to match the color... won't look perfect but it'll nearly double the amount of interior space I can use. I could easily get some white cardstock and print out a similar interior grid for more flooring too. Cool.

The fusilier has come out well, and makes a fine avatar!

Bones are odd, there seems to be no real rhyme nor reason as to why some are fine and others seem to stay tacky. I've got a giant I started last year - no undercoat, high density paint (ok, Foundation paint) yet the foundation paint remains tacky. The only thing that seems to work 100% of the time is thinning down liquid greenstuff to the consistence of thin paint and applying that, and then going over it with the "real" paint. Dunno why, but it works well. Never tried dip with them, though.

Thanks.

And... that's kind of what I was thinking too, it's just a crapshoot.

Ahh well, only one model so far out of many has turned out effectively unusable.

Seems to me like anything after the first layer of paint should behave like it always does... but yeah I dunno maybe not.

You can thin liquid greenstuff? Maybe my pot of it isn't dried out and useless then.

Is it worth trying a spray-on Matt Varnish on the tacky minis? In theory, shouldn't that dry clear, flat and dry and fix the tackyness of the underlying paint?

I sprayed the nun with it. Twice.

I have a theory that maybe I didn't let the dip cure enough before putting the sealer down... but honestly I doubt that's it since I've done that to a *lot* of my models so far this year, all of the not-bones models have been 100% normal and not tacky regardless of when I've sealed them.

Could it be a reaction of some sorts with the bones miniatures? I generally tend to do a brush on wash myself.

Star Wars ship designs were always a tad strange, they were trying hard to make things not so familiar, even though the ships all use some form of turbo jet engines

Yeah, I think it was just the 70s-80s design theory, they wanted to make stuff look more space-future so they did all of that weird decentralized cockpit asymmetrical stuff. In some ways, the designs are endearing, in others... they're just plain goofy as heck. When you get to a big old capital ship, I don't think it matters what shape it is, you've got multiple people driving that by setting courses and whatnot, but it seems like anything a person is gonna drive with control sticks or whatever... ought to be symmetrical with a centered cockpit. I realize we drive slightly to the left (or right) in a car.. but that's a far cry away from a B-wing or the Falcon lol.

I'm not sure about the bones material... I've dipped everything I've done so I dunno if they'd be tacky if I hadn't or not.

I always figured the Falcon needed side viewing radar with the way it is arranged. In Star Wars Rebels, their ship, the "Ghost" has a center-line cockpit. Seems newer designs are favoring that.

Slave one flies one way then tilts and lands another, reminds me of the German prototype that stands up to launch/land, then tilts to fly in a normal direction, had 3 wings that had ramjets on the tips to spin them like a propeller.

That thing looks scary to fly

Slave 1 makes no sense to me. Why would you want to fly it in space the way it's done in the movies, you're presenting a much larger target area.... Can't fathom it. It's not like the little rotating guns couldn't still shoot forward or backward or anything, they just wanted it to look fuggin weird. I guess, for the most part, the Imperial designs make the most sense as most of them *are* symmetrical.

Uploading the pulp alley battle report, typing as I go so it's gonna take awhile, upwards of 40 pictures =/

Big report! oh and more pics of the Hanomag were loaded last night

Tired of having his plans thwarted by Buck Spencer, the Mad Scientist used his considerable political influence to call in some favors and send Buck off on a wild goose chase. Knowing that he could move without interference, for a time, the Mad Scientist enacted a plan he had been holding in reserve for quite awhile.

Calling once again upon his creations, the Gorilla Gangsters, the Mad Scientist sent them forth into the secret laboratory of one of his most successful competitors. Their mission was to grab certain formulas, research notes, and key scientists before escaping into the city sewers to rendezvous for pickup.

Little did the Mad Scientist know that his machinations were being watched, and that another had similar designs. The Necromancer was also covetous of Dr. Brighton's research, but unwilling to tip his hand so obviously as the Mad Scientist. However, attacking his unwitting adversary's minions in the sewers... this was acceptable. The Necromancer dispatched his top apprentice, Serine, as well as two Initiates and several undead minions. Their mission was clear, and time was on their side... they simply had to delay the Gorilla Gangsters long enough for the rendezvous to be missed.. and then the shambling hordes of the Necromancer could acquire the desired research at their leisure.

I'm gonna put turn sequence, rules commentary, and whatnot in green so as to not break up the pacing as much

The first 8 shots are all pre-game photos of the set-up. We used my battle systems terrain for the scientist's facility, and some terracilps malifaux sewer terrain that my opponent has for the sewers.

We decided to play the Dangerous Delivery scenario which involved one league trying to run the objectives across the map in order to claim them. The defender need only prevent this from happening to claim the objectives, allowing them to focus on offense and harassment rather than trying to solve plot points.

I rolled Serine's 5d8 finesse against the Network of Supporters ability to see how many extra points of contacts I could drum up for the battle. I managed a paltry 2, but I put them to pretty significant use. The first point bought me an upgrade to d8 on the initiative roll, and the second bought me an extra starting fortune card, and I put several of those to good use throughout the mission.

I won the Initiative roll and knew I had way better chances as the Defender, this mission is quite rough on the Attacker and I didn't favor my outlook on offense, even with my high league-wide dodge and intrepid explorers perk (allowing me to dodge in any direction instead of straight away from the damage).

So, I graciously gave the Attacker position to my opponent.

We decided that the entire sewer area should be perilous, meaning that anytime a model activated within that half of the board the opponent could play a card from his hand as a challenge, representing some perilous happenstance and potentially injuring the enemy model. For this map, most of the threat would come from collapsing masonry, albino sewer gators, and slippery stones.




Dr. Brighton's Labs, suspiciously connected to some old and run-down sewers. Perhaps Dr. B wasn't as aboveboard as he claimed to be...


The Perilous sewers abruptly terminate at the smooth concrete walls of the basement level of Brighton's facility.


The sewers are particularly perilous, brimming with foul waters and slippery stones. The masonry was also old and crumbling, and the occasional hiss could be heard.



The Gorilla Gangsters left much behind on their way out, taking only those bits they were specifically directed to take, the choicest notes and research.





The game commences with the Necromaner's team (me) having the initiative.


Having secured the most vital research notes (carried in the briefcase by the man in the trench coat), a crate of the most valuable supplies, and Brighton's best subordinate scientist... the Gangsters were ready to roll out. Bananas was in a nearby room, finishing one last task, and would join the rest one round behind.


But even as the gangsters prepared to make their escape, a sinister force emerged from that very tunnel entrance.
*sniff* "It smells even worse than you lot" drawled Serine.
"Spread out and wait to engage until they're close enough to reach, I don't want to explain to the Necromancer why his latest creations are riddled with holes" she quietly spoke, mostly to herself. The undead minions would follow her unspoken mental commands well enough, and the Initiates being alive would seek to keep themselves that way.




Serine led her unliving forces towards the center of the sewers while the Initiates moved into position to 'persuade' a fleeing scientist and haggard bum to accompany them back.


The gangsters crowd around the exit, with a big spike-clubbed bruiser leading, and everyone hot on his heels.




Serine still held the initiative after the initial moments of the encounter, and cautiously advanced her forces towards the gansters who must surely know of her presence by now.


This is where I started being nasty, and where my extra cards came in handy. I knew my opponent had more skilled and more reliable forces, so I used the perilous nature of the sewers to as much advantage as I could, throwing a lot of cards early to help thin out his forces (at least temporarily).
Channeling her energy, Serine afflicted the Fate of the charging gorilla bruiser, causing him to slip on a slick stone and run headfirst into a wall.


Mister Yellow and Mister Purple advanced behind the poor ape, noticing that his impact had loosed some masonry from the ceiling dealing him a fairly tremendous blow.


Fate proved to be out to get everyone, however, as the Initiate of the Blade found little success in coercing the bum.


The initiate of the Book had similar problems with the fleeing scientist, who only wanted to escape and who was quite terrified of the undead monstrosities passing him by.

Yeah, my opponent played the first card, and I randomly drew the second. Both initiates are good at a different skill, and both cards are the two abilities they aren't good at. The initiates basically did nothing the whole game due to bad cards, I should have had them switch off after such bad draws... but I never had to secure the objectives anyway, I was just looking at some insurance.


Sensing the approach of an enemy, Serine directed her forces to wait until they could spring forth and catch it unawares. Though the bone golem and the creature were evenly matched, it quickly tired and was eventually worn down by the axe-wielding skeleton.


Experiment #7 managed to stagger back to it's feet and fall back along the bridge, but the bruiser was down for the count.


Serine decided to take matters into her own hands, charging across the rickety planks to engage #7 herself.


The thuggish brute was no match for Serine, but Mister Yellow made short work of a skeleton.


As is the way of such lesser minions the skeleton, once sufficiently wounded, would have no chance to rise again without assistance after the battle. The lost of such a minor servitor was hardly disconcerting for Serine, however.


Marie, one of the Mad Scientist's many daughters, attempted to make a break for it but Fate was against her and she took a hard fall over some slippery stones, dropping the research materials. The Bone Golem tried to ford the swift flowing sewer water, but went down hard and could barely extract itself to the bank where it started.


Bananas had caught up with the gang and was trying to coerce the scientist that the bruiser had lost track of.


Da Boss boldly advanced forward making short work of one skeletal minion.


And that minion had no chance of recovering, such was the brutality of the onslaught.

We're on turn 4 from this point, the game will have 6 rather than 5 turns as one of the gangsters' objectives gave them the 'extend the game by a turn' ability.



Serine charged viciously at Mr Yellow, but was unable to definitely knock him out.


In fact, she took an injury herself.


The zombies advanced towards #7 but the gangsters had taken the initiative when serine was injured.


Bananas had trouble convincing the scientist to accompany him, as you may well imagine, but a revolver can be pretty persuasive and by this point he had almost made a job of it.


Da Boss continues to blaze a trail through the minions like they aren't even there.


Serine and Mr. Yellow battle it out while the zombies manage to overcome #7.


Serine managed to overcome the exhausted Mr yellow.


Turn 5 now, my opponent really had to make a break for the exit!
Mister Yellow and #7 both managed to hang in the fight, advancing against their foes.


Mr. Purple proves his worth by gunning down the initiate of the Book at close range.


The first exchanges in the ongoing melees prove fruitless.


But the zombies prove their worth yet again by holding down #7 for one more moment.


As the field lay in the last moments of the skirmish, the outcome was relatively clear.


Fearing retribution for anything less than fanatical devotion, the initiate of the Blade madly charged Da Boss but was knocked silly with little effort, leaving Da Boss a clear road to escape.


Though fights were still raging, their outcomes would be largely inconsequential as Da Boss caught the getaway car as it was pulling away, the rest of his gang would have to find their own way home, and the rest of the loot was claimed by the Necromancer's crew.


So, that's that. The battle ended at 4-3 in favor of the Necromancer, though I really wonder how things would have wound up in a more straightforward battle. We'll see I'm relatively pleased with Serine, she can't stand to Da Boss, and even Bananas would give her trouble (they'd likely just out dodge eachother till the end of time...) but she brought some useful abilities to the game through the extra contacts and did a decent job beyond that. I'm not sure how I feel about the followers. They go down, and stay down, really easily. I may trade two of the followers up for an ally instead, another melee brute to help protect the Initiates. A fun game at any rate! Next time we play it'll be X-wing, and I probably won't make much of a report for that as it usually devolves to a couple of ships circling eachother

Ah, it is always an awesome day when villains fight over the goodies

Been a while since I popped by. Lots to catch up on! Liking the colour scheme of the fusilier though. Nice work.

I thought it was pretty fun to have a badguy slugfest too

Ckig, there's a face I haven't seen around lately, good to see you still kicking about

First 10 up, got about 30 more

 GrimDork wrote:
I thought it was pretty fun to have a badguy slugfest too

Ckig, there's a face I haven't seen around lately, good to see you still kicking about

First 10 up, got about 30 more

It's good to be back!

Looking forward to it

20 now, halfway there lol.


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Alrighty, done now.

The tiles and walls helped make it set the feeling of the lab to sewer, what, I wonder was Dr. Brighton's plans? seems he was set to make an escape had someone come after him through the front doors of his lab? Now who of course would come trough hi front door and also make him afraid to need a escape way??????

I dunno. I just made the guy up, so I have trouble guessing his motives

 GrimDork wrote:
I dunno. I just made the guy up, so I have trouble guessing his motives

Sounds like new chances for a new bunch of minis/background!

And I remembered to add new Hanomag pics

The terrain looks amazing and really lifts the report to the next level of awesome.

The sewer terrain is Terraclips, right? How is that stuff?

Its my opponents but it seems solid enough. In some ways it's better than the BS terrain because I can see the clips and scenery holding up a lot longer because they try to do less with it. It's like 2.5D scenery, there are doors and walls but you probably aren't doing more than one floor with it. If you can... I haven't seen it done but that was my only experience with the terrain too. Battle systems lets you build up and has lots of neat scatter and cool stuff on the walls... but yeah, it's more complicated, has more points of failure/confusion, and without proper treatment I could see it wearing out faster.

That said... I think the BS stuff has sharper images at least to some degree, and the card, I'm pretty sure, was thicker than the terraclips.


Got my 2x2' building done, working on decorating the rooms and then I'm gonna add some models for many photos, maybe a mock battle report or something.

 GrimDork wrote:
Thanks.
And... that's kind of what I was thinking too, it's just a crapshoot.
Ahh well, only one model so far out of many has turned out effectively unusable.
Seems to me like anything after the first layer of paint should behave like it always does... but yeah I dunno maybe not.
You can thin liquid greenstuff? Maybe my pot of it isn't dried out and useless then.

Hell yeah - it's the only way I can get it to work decently. Just use water. And I know what you mean and agree with regard to after the first layer of paint.. but Bones is an odd material. Really odd.

That table looks fething awesome. The two types of card terrain actually merge really nicely, and the BR looks like it would be great fun!

Thanks. I'll have to try rezzing my liquid greenstuff.

It was pretty cool to have both sets though I regret how small a portion the BS stuff played in the end. Well enough though, it got me to more or less finish prep work on my set.

More later when I'm not so tired, and with better light. A brief shot of an apparent corporate takeover.

Damn you Grim, I do not visit your blog for a week or so and it progresses a few pages and you change your avatar.

The combined scenery set up looks fantastic, a whole evocative gaming world to get immersed in which i guess most of us are after.

The corporate takeover looks like it could get...messy.

Haha, I wish I was moving along at the pace I want to be... but I can barely get myself to play a video game after work right now, let alone paint And here we are on the weekend and I've only done just a touch of highlighting on a dread.

It goes like that, I think you may feel an added pressure because of the seasonal nature of your job. There is rarely any point in picking up a paint brush if you are not feeling it, it will just show up in your painting. I am sure it will pick up in no time at all.

Yeah you've pretty much got it right. Painting is for fun, especially since I so rarely play.

If I can find the right timing I may get into airbrushing a little more... its not that it's really any easier than brush-painting... honestly it's harder since I'm less experienced with it and I usually do it standing (best place to do it doesn't have good seating... when it warms up a bit more that may change though...).. but I dunno sometimes I can get into the mood for it more easily. Got a lot of scenery to work through.


Oooh I just remembered an Idea I had maybe 2-3 hours ago... gotta get on that. I'll report back if I find success.

Below are some images of two of my old z-corp marines. On the left is a litko 25x1.5mm clear acrylic base. On the right is a 1 inch bottle cap epoxy sticker glued to the opposite side of its backing sheet. Litko bases would be $15 per 100 and any orders will cost $7 to ship. I can get 200 of those sticker things for maybe $7-10 on Amazon. I haven't verified that the Amazon item is identical to what I got at hobby lobby but I just wonder..

What do you guys think of then aesthetically? Its the difference of $37 vs $7 under ideal conditions. One drawback is that I'm pretty sure they don't make those sticker things in 40 or 60mm sizes so I'd still have to use the straight non-beveled litko bases for those sizes.

Thoughts? Crazy cheaper but the two concerns are do the substitiues look good solo, and can they be mixed with the litko bases?

Don't the 1" bottlecaps have a sticky side ?

Oh, maybe I forgot go mention that part. I took the sticker off, flipped its backing sheet over, and stuck it to that side before carefully cutting the newly-backed base free of the sheet.

If it were me, I'd stick with the Litkos. Maybe get 400 of them and then forget about them for some time.

Well, that's kind of the default plan, I'm just exploring options at the moment. What led you to your conclusion?

The Litko ones look better to my eye, are still pretty bloody cheap, plus consistency with the many figures that you've already based with them. And of course, how much time and money have you spent on the figures, paints, etc?

As little as possible of each

Bah, you're probably right, the consistency alone is probably worth it. Gonna be a bigass order though, at least 45 dollars on 25mm bases (300 minimum for how many i've got to do....) probably need some more 40mms as I only ever ordered 25 of those... And then a lot of 60s... Screw Infinity, 55mm is stupid when everyone else is using 60 (because GW did it first ), but I've got 3 remotes that need (supposedly) bigger bases, 4 dreadnoughts, 6 striders, 3 iron ancestors (almost could do 40s lol), 3 of those Jotuum guns... maybe more... those start getting a bit expensive too.

Oh well, nature of the beast, gonna have to happen eventually.

Yep. Every so often you've just got to bite the bullet and spend $100 on bases.

I prefer the left ones as well. Consistency is a big deal for me and it's not too expensive still. They look much more durable too

The hardness of both base options is pretty similar... I mean I could probably snap the sticker thing in my fingers but it's not soft nor is it brittle. And the bottom is likely to be more scratch resistant because I could always remove the plastic and re-stick to another piece (though I'd have to find it somewhere).

Bah. Too bad they don't do a big order shipping discount

I vote for consistency as well. The Litko ones just look better.

I need to throw a spanner in the works and put my vote into the bottle lid thing. I just prefer the lower profile, rounded edges.

But I accede to the fact I am well and truly outvoted.

I like the botlecap ones but the lack of consistency probably make sticking with the ones you have already used a better option.

Yeah. That's what I think it's gonna come down to. If I had discovered the new, cheaper, idea first... it would have been the thing to do.

For now, I'll just bide my time and save some money for more litkos.

I vote for consistency as well. I dislike change though, so I may be biased.

I actually have a set of that terraclips sewer scenery. I have never used it but it looks great in your battle report. I may have to break it out.

I vote you keep going with the litko ones as well and send me the link for the bottle cap ones. I've already got a few of the bottle cap ones from hobby lobby, and have looked at going litko, but the price . I can do the bottle caps as I haven't started with litko. Plus the guy who came up with using them for infinity counters was a genius . Might look really neat with the figure bases and counters being the same.

Haha, fair enough. I was looking at ordering these
http://www.amazon.com/Beadaholique-200-Piece-Stickers-Bottle-Pendants/dp/B00AFRWINA/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1427050851&sr=8-2&keywords=1%22+bottle+cap+sticker
but they may or may not be the same thickness/hardness as the hobby lobby variety. The shipping is free, so I certainly would order only one set first to test the waters. The smaller set from the same people is the same price on sale, heh.

Another option,
http://www.amazon.com/LotFancy%C2%AE-Adhesive-Stickers-Bottle-Pendants/dp/B00R8S99ZY/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1427050996&sr=8-3&keywords=1%22+bottle+cap+sticker
and these even say they're 1.5mm thick. The other ones say .1 inches but that's probably the smallest inch measurement the description allowed because there's no way people would report the first link as flimsy if they were 2.5mm thick.



Another pretty cool thing that I've seen done with clear bases is that uhh... what's his name. Nuclear Messiah, maybe? He posts on the infinity portion of the boards I think... anyway If i'm thinking of the right person... he glues the infinity unit icon under the clear bases, kind of a neat idea.. and if a guy was gonna do that, the bottle cap stickers would be essentially the perfect way.

I was on the fence about using them becuase I didnt' know what to do with the sticky side, but the faction idea sounds good.

You don't have to limit yourself to faction, you could use any art udnerneath.

I just needed a cheap source of bases, and 100 for $7 is about as cheap as your going to find them.

Or 200 for 7. Or 300 for 10. It'll come down to whether or not the ones on amazon are the same as those that I've already verified would work... but there's a decent chance.

I meant 200 for $7. That was a Typo. From what I understand Beadaholique is "the" name brand in bottlecap stickers, and that link buys from Beadaholique through Amazon.

I'll let you know how they work out. If it's good I'll be buying a ton more.

Cool. Almost wish I wasn't already using litkos lol.

Good point about stuff underneath, even a team color or an RTS style selection indicator etc...

I used to do paper miniatures. Grass, pavement, dungeon, etc.. floor texutres are available for free for bases. Used to glue them on top of the bases, now it would just be a matter of sticking them underneath.

I think I remember seeing some of those in your blog on the earlier pages? I really do think the bottle caps have a lot of potential.

 GrimDork wrote:
I think I remember seeing some of those in your blog on the earlier pages?

Good memory you have there. It's been years since I've done anything with them. Designing and building high quality paper miniatures takes as much as time, if not more than, dealing with actual miniatures. Too much effort for models most people won't take seriously.

Here's a link if you're bored and want to see some of what I had done
http://cardboard-warriors.proboards.com/board/4/adamsouzas-projects

I really do think the bottle caps have a lot of potential.

Been thinking about using them as markers as well as bases. I'll keep you updated when I actually have them in hand and done something with them. I ordered them expecting 2 day shipping and I got an estimated delivery date of April 15th

Oh yeah that was the one thing about that link, no prime =/

Dag, that's a lot of stuff... i'll have to give it a look.

I'm half considering using them for misc fantasy models since those are less likely to mix with the scifi guys.

I still need to experiment with counter-sinking the clear bases into movement trays... it'll either look OK or stupid, but it would allow me to pop the models off and use them separately for D&D and whatnot.

I think I need to take some 1/8th" acrylic to my laser cutter, and see the actual economics of cutting 1" circles.

That could be interesting!

So here's a question guys... I'm getting booted from one room to another. The new room is actually bigger but I still need to consider economy of space.. What is more preferable in desk layout? I've got two desks both ab out 2-feet deep, ones about 48 inches the other just over 40 inches. I could do either

side-by side lengthsize, making them into one really long desk, effectively.

OR

combined into a corner desk.

Are there any major pros or cons to either setup? Basically gotta support a tower, two monitors, and another space for hobby stuff.

One really long desk.

If you put them in a corner you'll just end with the back corner not being easily accessable.

Hmm... wisdom there, perhaps. I think it may block one of the under-desk shelf areas on one of them if I do that too...


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Huh.... I was out in the garage and looked at that zombie I had on the sticker base. I went to try to peel the plastic I stuck it to to see if I could remove it or if it would hold up. It can off easily.. Too easily. I tried to stick it back to find that the base was completely free of the adhesive, smooth, and not sticky at all. Weird. I'm gonna have to set up a few more to see if this happens again.

Its technically ideal for me but may be an issue if it peels off of decorative pieces. Will report when I know what's up.

Long desk

I want to do a desk as long as the back wall in my office and then build shelves all the way up the wall above it.

Longer is probably better. I like to have a lot of space between the areas I do sanding/cutting/glueing and the space I paint in. Back when I was young and stupid, I did all the assembly and painting at the same spot, and there was some cross contamination issues. aka getting glue on my brushes. These days I rigidly enforce separation.

Corner desks aren’t the end of the world. You have less table space to work with, as the corner itself if dead space. But if you are anything like me, there is enough clutter and junk that having an out of the way spot to shove things is a good idea. And they generally take up less space in the room, which may be an issue. It’s also easier to swivel between the two halves of the table, which is a perk.

All good points.

I'm thinking long desk, the tower will probably divide the computer and hobbying areas. I usually use my mobile painting/lap station for painting, even though like most laptops it tends to stay on the desk... but I can easily pick it up and move it to another area when I want to cut/sand/glue/etc.

 GrimDork wrote:

Huh.... I was out in the garage and looked at that zombie I had on the sticker base. I went to try to peel the plastic I stuck it to to see if I could remove it or if it would hold up. It can off easily.. Too easily. I tried to stick it back to find that the base was completely free of the adhesive, smooth, and not sticky at all. Weird. I'm gonna have to set up a few more to see if this happens again.

If the adhesive comes off easily then these will make excellent cheap bases.

I tried to manually remove it and no luck so far. I could get the film to come away a bit, but not easily. I'm gonna leave them out in the cold garage again tonight and see if its a temperature thing.

If that works, then the conditions should be replicable in a fridge or freezer.

Gonna go semi-dark for a bit, gotta disconnect the main PC and get the router moved to another room as part of the office swap.

 GrimDork wrote:
Haha, fair enough. I was looking at ordering these
http://www.amazon.com/Beadaholique-200-Piece-Stickers-Bottle-Pendants/dp/B00AFRWINA/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1427050851&sr=8-2&keywords=1%22+bottle+cap+sticker
but they may or may not be the same thickness/hardness as the hobby lobby variety. The shipping is free, so I certainly would order only one set first to test the waters. The smaller set from the same people is the same price on sale, heh.

Another option,
http://www.amazon.com/LotFancy%C2%AE-Adhesive-Stickers-Bottle-Pendants/dp/B00R8S99ZY/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1427050996&sr=8-3&keywords=1%22+bottle+cap+sticker
and these even say they're 1.5mm thick. The other ones say .1 inches but that's probably the smallest inch measurement the description allowed because there's no way people would report the first link as flimsy if they were 2.5mm thick.



Another pretty cool thing that I've seen done with clear bases is that uhh... what's his name. Nuclear Messiah, maybe? He posts on the infinity portion of the boards I think... anyway If i'm thinking of the right person... he glues the infinity unit icon under the clear bases, kind of a neat idea.. and if a guy was gonna do that, the bottle cap stickers would be essentially the perfect way.

Thanks for the link off to order them now.

Honestly thought it was you who came up with the tokens. I've done about 50 that way, and like their looks. Guess I can just use them as backups once the mod cubes come out.


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Corner desk can work if you arrange things right.if you build shelves up in the corner you could have a nice display for paints, or a good spot for your power supply. Plus pivoting to a second workspace is better than sliding down, especially if you drop bits everywhere.

Modcubes seem interesting but i dunno if i'm sold, i don't usually bump up to acrylic tokens, even if they're cool ones.

I think i have my space sorted out.. I'll take a photo sometime.

The Modcubes are cool, but I'm too frugal to spend $30 for set of tokens. They seem to be popular with the X-wing crowd, but I'm avoiding that game to spare my bank account.

Yeah.. it'll bleed you dry =/

 GrimDork wrote:
Yeah.. it'll bleed you dry =/

its a slow happy bleed though

Interested to see what you come up with for your desk setup. Since I am still confinde to using the dining table I have a very portable setup. Would love to have a permanent setup.

I think for mixed use such as computer and hobbying a long desk setup would be the best idea as previous posters have said. Allows you to keep the dirty stuff away from the clean areas. Plus less wasted space.

Double decker desk - innovation is the name of the game...

Bwahahaha!

Not sure my chair's height setting goes that high....

Long desk seems to be a better choice. Besides, you can always add a small table or such into the corner for additional storage.

 GrimDork wrote:
Bwahahaha!

Not sure my chair's height setting goes that high....

Get a double decker chair too.. Obviously.

 GrimDork wrote:
Bwahahaha!

Not sure my chair's height setting goes that high....

Grabbing things that are supposedly out of reach is what kids are for.

Also, cats.

Heh, you guys...

So is it bad that I'm considering getting this?

60 bucks 22 sprues, 5 connector sprues, includes several of the newest angled/long building sprues. Not sure if any of the reported sprues are accessory sprues, which I barely count with the others.. but it's reaching down almost to first kickstarter levels in pricing and has sprues I don't have many of...

Am I crazy? I think I have too much as it is lol.

Looks cool. If you have the budget, go for it. I always tend to want more minis, rather then terrain, but a mix of both is good.

 GrimDork wrote:
Heh, you guys...

So is it bad that I'm considering getting this?

60 bucks 22 sprues, 5 connector sprues, includes several of the newest angled/long building sprues. Not sure if any of the reported sprues are accessory sprues, which I barely count with the others.. but it's reaching down almost to first kickstarter levels in pricing and has sprues I don't have many of...

Am I crazy? I think I have too much as it is lol.

More madness would be to buy the really big Military quadrant set haha. I dipped into the current KS for Deadzone for $100 of scenery pledgeness.

You probably do have too much as it is, but far be it for me to tell you not to spend money on more toys...

Just cruising the web and I rembered you mentioning wanting to build a notstar notgate

And it not only looks nice, but is affordable as well!

Or you could build one like Eldarain did (OK it's a Chaos warp gate.

Hope the tournament went good for you, or at least had a fun time today. (Wait Theo, what are you talking about?)

I got to meet GrimDork today . He travelled to St. Louis to play X-Wing at Miniaturemarkets tournament, and I couldn't pass up a chance at meeting a fellow Dakkite. We could only chat for about a half hour, but had a good time. Unfortunately I had plans with my wife (our 14th anniversary was this week) and couldn't join in on the pew pew noises.

Looking forward to hearing the battle reports.

Yeah... lol, the adepticon bundle for 50something sprues would have been a little bonkers, its just slightly larger than the $200 set and I already have one of those (got it for a hundred though, go bargaining and mantic points ) plus all of my kickstarter stuff....

Azazelx, lol.. yeah i'm sure I didn't need it buu'uuut....

Theophany mentioned they had one on the shelf half off (which is $10 better than the sale online ) and the only thing wrong with it was that it was returned.... so yeah I bought the damn stupid thing! I figure $50 would get you two battle zones even at kickstarter prices... 16 sprues 1 accessory sprue and maybe 2 connectors. And for that same price I got 20 sprues, 2 accessory sprues, and FIVE connector sprues. Booyah.

Think I'll build it as detailed on the box, looks kinda cool.



@AdamSouza, for less than 15 dollars that's awesome. 4"... that's ... pretty sizable. It's not huge.. but big enough to get a small vehicle and a couple people across at least. Almost need two though

The MDF option is actually 2-3 bucks cheaper.. and it makes a good iris, could easily print out something... Very nice, thanks for sharing.

Wait... only 10 more dollars for that display and the ramp and that.. other.. thing? That's pretty spectacular, I think they're gonna get some of my money.

Chaos warpgate is pretty cool too, i'll admit.


@Theo, tournament was a blast, all 3 games were really fun and everyone there seemed to be good peoples. I'll put more up about the specific games later tonight or tomorrow, little one is sitting with me and it's too much to type one handed. But much fun, and even won 2 out of 3 games but not the tournament. I did get one of those alternate art push the limits though... got the tie interceptor art, very posh.

Theo had a fun grab bag of random scratchbuilding supplies to hand off, for which I must say thanks I'm looking forward to using a few of the bits and I'll have to see if I can't rustle up a similar care package for when we meet again, surely there will come a day that Infinity or the like could be played


I didn't go pew pew, but I did make little zooming noises a couple of times.

Reports later.. but Kavil is a fugging beast.

That MDF Gate would look pretty good with your sci fi terrain I reckon!

So a bit more hobbying...


Trying to make a ship out of battlezones tiles. All of the ruins tiles, doors, and stuff like that won't be there, it'll just be made of various solid tiles. Probably one of those floor tiles with the small man-sized square hold in them to let the pilots get into the cockpit from the body...

I'm kind of happy with the shape, the cockpit, the gun is the whole reason this thing came about... make a ship big enough to have a laser flak cannon I need some of you smart folks to help advise me on how to finish it out though...

Does it VTOL? Should I be looking into attaching thrusters to the sides of the ship? This would allow me to put the egress ramp on the back end, easily allowing even a land raider to roll out...

Or should the back have a bank of thrusters and the bottom have some kind of thrusters/repulsors to generate lift? I could then just add some decorative fins/wings coming off the sides but I'd have to
figure out where the people would exit.. I'd be stuck with making the side bits able to open, and or having a port at the front.



Any bright ideas Dakka?

Could you use those medicine holder/drop ship things you got before on this ship?

Hmmmmmm.......

interesting idea.

I may have made it too big though, at least for one...

Space craft from tiles, wow. Looks good

Grim that is awesome. It'd save me years of trouble if you told me what those tiles were from.

The square bits on top (and in the final build they'll all be solid tiles) could come from the Mantic Battlezones landing pad, or standard sets. The triangles come from landing pad, and the new sprues. The long tiles that make up the sides and allow for the neat hexagonal shape come from the extra battle zone type they developed after the first Deadzone Kickstarter, they were available to backers during the second or third survey, and currently they only come in one set:

http://www.miniaturemarket.com/catalog/product/view/id/43384/s/mgtsc125-1/

which I can't even find on the Mantic webstore, so far just on Miniature market and other retailers, perhaps its a retailer only bundle. Anyway... It isn't fully assembled on the back but you need 4x of the long tiles sprues for each side, you can see 4x sprues showing, the other side would total it to 8x sprues.

Buying them from the kickstarter you could do the sides of the ship for 50 bucks and have extra sprues to spare (25 got you 4 of those sprues and 4 more sprues, and the long bits aren't the only thing on the one sprue), but to build the ship just from the forward outpost you'd need it twice =/


Sorry, not sure if you were after info on the long tiles, battlezones in general, or what have you, just felt I should be thorough

They are from the Mantic Battlezones / Deadzone terrain.

Just trying to make a hull for my gravity-well cruiser. I thought I would have to pull an Athena and do it all in plasticard. (Land based giant train/epic 40k lander to display my minis.)

This might save me so much trouble...

OK, that's pretty fething cool.

That is epic. My vote would be VTOL as I imagine it as a planetary or low orbit lifter. Therefore, it doesn't need rear thrusters to escape orbit leaving plenty of space for that really cool rear access ramp.

Starting to think I could just dig out more of that one panel I have sticking out of the side... put 4-6 on each side, model a bit of something on the top of ea ch like it could house a generator/engine/power source or whatever, could be as simple as a bottle cap over the center... paint the underside that still has that central hole in bright blue-white Ironman repulsor colors... I could leave it up to the imagination that they could swivel a bit to assist with horizontal thrust, and also put 4 more panels at 90 degree angles to the rear angled (wider) areas to give it some forward thrust all the time.

Still gotta do landing gear too, figure it shouldn't sit flat on the belly. Trying to decide if I want really squat, yet sturdy legs (~1.5"), or something a bit taller in the 3" range that would allow you to put this on a table and play under it if so-inclined. If I do the 3" landing gear, I think the belly would sit high enough to incorporate another quad/flak cannon. Should the sip have a top and bottom mounted flak cannon? Seems like it would be pretty nice for tackling both ground and air defenses while the forward mounted extra heavy laser cannons could be employed to bore a breach in emplacements or blow up enemy armor after deployment.


I'm thinking the floor on the inside will be left clear to accommodate tanks, striders, and what have you... But to better utilize the narrowing corners on the sides... to build it into maybe some kind of bleachers almost to seat troops. Otherwise the design wastes a lot of space.

I think opposite the cockpit I would put a little platform with a ladder for access, where a commander could stand high and deliver briefings. I may scrap that though and just put a ladder up to the entry to the cockpit which would be done by using one of those tiles with the small square cut out, way big enough to crawl through.

The interior doesn't need to have a massive amount of detail, but I want it to look at least basically functional and to have a working ramp.

Nice ship. For engines, you might want to go with something similar to a star destroyer. A couple of big thrusters on the back.

Landing gear I’d go squat and low. If you are relying on anti-grav to lift off, rather then honking big vertical thrusters, there is not a reason to keep the hull away from the surface.

Great Idea! and very creative use of the terrain. I think I prefer the squat look myself but that's just personal preference. I like the idea of the commander platform though. Looking forward to seeing this develop

I'm thinking I want 3'' gear just to allow for the second quad cannon on the belly.

I've had some thoughts on the interior... Can't say till I've test fit but ideas. May put some big thrusters on the triangular side parts on the rear, would probably compliment the profile of the cockpit.

When you said you were going to do a BZ Drop ship, I wasn't sure you actually would! But you are, and it's going to be epic!

Just who the hell do you think I am!?


If I say I'm gonna build a drop ship out of battlezones, I'm damn well gonna do it!

Great Caesar's Ghost! This has got to be the coolest modelling project of the year. I expect daily updates with photos.

What is going on around here??? Seriously though, thats pretty awesome, Grim. Keep posting pics of progress if you have the time.

Will do.

I'm pretty useless today, its starting to get hot out which leaves me barely functional after work for a while.

And I had a setback in my plans, some things aren't lining up like I was expecting so I still need to figure out something to do with the angled sides.

I'll figure it out though.

As soon as I feel up to digging through all of my tiles... gonna get out all of the pieces I think I need to finish, break down the parts that are incorrect (most of them) and start over from scratch with a boatload of connectors pre-clipped so I can readily throw it together as the must dictates.

Probably gonna gut my collection of tiles and leave weird quantities for the rest of my buildings, but I don't fuggin care anymore, I'm pretty excited to make this thing look cool.

I still wonder what delays their commitment to Warpath?

 shasolenzabi wrote:
I still wonder what delays their commitment to Warpath?

Not enough time in 2015 to pull off Dungeon Saga, Deadzone 2, Kings Of War 2, and Warpath.

They plan on using Deadzone 2 to fill in the gaps in the model range, so that when they get around to Warpath it will already have most of the infantry models already made, and they focus on vehicle kits during the Warzone Kickstarter.

What Mr Souza said. I think they're a bit worried about 'getting it right' and don't want to half ass it as a strong release after an extremely successful kickstarter could put them in a really good place with Warpath.

But they've been bleeding us loyal mantic fans dry with all of their kickstarters so they're gonna need new blood for it by golly... Not to mention more sensible stretch goals, add-ons, and management. You can tell they don't want DZ:I to get too big, or they don't care. Either way, there are a lot of things that could have been done to speed it along, just look at the jetbikes... almost stalled into steady, albeit slow, progress for quite a while. Pretty sure they don't want it to blow up and mess up their schedule, but if they want Warpath to blow up they have to do like none of the things they're doing now, none of them. All hard plastic kits all the time. Deadzone stalled on some big goals, they were eventually achieved and all was well.

You could use some of those black rollers I gave you on Saturday as your thrusters . Just a suggestion.

Hey now, that's an idea. Theg may be slightly too big but they may fit perfectly. I'll try it before or after work.

I was kind of getting a pseudo-Narcissus vibe from it.

Interesting ship.

Here's my entry for Paradigm's dakka painting comp, wave 2: veterans:



Obviously pretty damn veteran.

I'm trying to think of some witty comment... but don't have the words.

 squall018 wrote:
I'm trying to think of some witty comment... but don't have the words.

When in doubt:

Needs more Dakka!

Nah, just a joke for the old 4/1/xx, I'm planning to do one of those terminator legs marines I was doing many pages back, just a bit bigger and with oversized 3rd party power fists to counts as Calgar.

I was gonna do something more elaborate but I was pretty worthless after work yesterday.

 GrimDork wrote:
Nah, just a joke for the old 4/1/xx, I'm planning to do one of those terminator legs marines I was doing many pages back, just a bit bigger and with oversized 3rd party power fists to counts as Calgar.

I was gonna do something more elaborate but I was pretty worthless after work yesterday.

I did landscaping all through high school and college in the summers. The first month or so was just brutal. Its a hard job all the time, but the heat is just awful until your body adjusts, so I know what you mean about being worthless afterwards.

Yeah, it's kind of lame. I get some more light video game playing done and catch up on TV shows... but the Hobby just withers for awhile.

Yes, but just think of all the cool rocks, and twigs and terrain you bring home. plus you are getting weathered too, which should help you understand how to paint weathering techniques. You also become one with your models later as you realize just how that sand and grit gets into EVERYWHERE

I worked at our families landscape supply business and farm from the time I was 8 until I was 18. 100 degree temps out in a field with only well water (the rusty kind) to cool you down. I feel for you brother. Ive had more than one incident of third degree sunburn on my neck where actual medical services were needed.

Need some more pictures Gits, my imagination-foo is running low on where the drop ship is going.

I have an idea, just win a lottery so you don't need to work anymore so you can just be a pure source of hobby entertainment to the masses?

Yeah, I'll put up more photos of the ship as I progress. Slow going lately.

Here's the new dread engaging some old dwarfs on the new scenery:

What a showdown!!!

And here's what I'm thinking of doing for Para's painting challenge this month, Fistius Fistgar. He's next to the company champion of his honor guard. Just bluetacked, he needs many cuts and final posing... Plus much Gubbins...

Where are those hands from? They look like restic?

Dreadball giant Big Mech. Had a spare.

Oh man, I was browsing amazon for magnets to go with some bearings I'm about to order, several projects will be needing them... Someone asked about a certain set of magnets:

Q: are these magnets atracted to each other?

And the reply:

no, but they wanted to stay together for the tax benefits.

Had me short of air. So I find random jokes like that hilarious randomly, deal with it

Also decided it may be fun to magnetize my little x-wing ships on the top of their stands


Automatically Appended Next Post:
So yep, 500 assorted ball bearings from the 1/8th to 1/4th inch size, the 1/8th is marine/enforcer shoulders and the 1/4th should probably do striders. Got some more 1/4th x 1/16th disc magnets too, bit more on amazon but shipping from china takes *weeks* and I'm impatient. Probably could use the 1/8th bits for x-wing fighters and the 1/4ths will likely do the big ships. Not positive on that, I know magnet-to-magnet bonds will hold those respective sizes, though magnet-to-bearing trades a lot of power for the extra angles.

Automatically Appended Next Post:
EAT IT, stupid forums!



A bit more finalized layout for Fistius Fistgar, I'm really digging the 'fightin pose those arms settled into.

Space marine players help me out here... I've got a land raider and I was thinking to myself... well gak, that's probably the most pretentious thing a chapter master could ride around in... does one variant stand above all the others? I probably have the default lascannon model (actually a chaos rescue) but I was wondering if one was better than the others. I guess capacity doesn't matter, fistgar and honor guard only take up a spot apiece, or maybe 2 for fistgar if he's in the terminator armor (but how could you tell lol). I'll probably bedeck it in more guns that is reasonable anyway, assault cannons where the HBs go, probably some other swag up top. I guess lascannons on the sides are probably as legit as you need to be, huh?


I wonder if I can get away with doing another squad of 4-5 honor guard using the regular walking dark angels legs... they're pretty tall. I was thinking OTT double bladed power swords to count for the relic blades, and each of them gets the not-lion-helm-angel-wing-bunny-ears-helmets from the DA sprue, if I can find them all.

Whoa! That guy is unreasonably large. Which is to say, perfectly in scale with every other 40K mini. Where did you get those big fists?

Dreadball mvp/giant big mech. The whole project is big, everyone gets terminator legs and giant weapons such as GK 2handed swords and so on. Bolters in single hand poses like they're pistols and so on.

Geez, with those fists, I picture that guy walking around like this most of the time.

Ouch. My back hurts just thinking about it

He looks like he is doing a bit of morning Tai-Chi. A very nice bit of posing.

 GrimDork wrote:
Automatically Appended Next Post:
EAT IT, stupid forums!

I approve this message!

For some reason I'm hearing Mr. T's voice and him taunting Rocky Balboa

Lol.

You do know the trick to beat the evil autoappend right?

No, tell us the trick.

Also, frankly speaking, you want the Land Raider variant with the Vindicator Cannon mounted front.

Hey, that's an idea... the biggest nastiest land raider possible, as long as there's room for another book or two, and maybe some shrines and doilies

Any post you do which includes an attached image seems to bypass the auto-append cooldown. There is also nothing to stop you from removing the attached image in an edit if you don't want to slowly fill up your gallery with random uploaded images. I wouldn't get too spammy with it lest the mods, I dunno, become annoyed? But it's certainly nice for updating your own blog!

I tend to place Vulkan and his thunder hammer/Storm shield Termies in a Redeemer pattern Landraider.

If you can approximate it with the parts you have, how about the Land Raider Achilles? Because nothing says badass like sticking a 4-barrelled Thunderfire Cannon to the front of your Melta-proof, extra-armoured Land Raider!

CM is looking good, the pose kind of suggests kung fu... With Power Fists! Hiii-yaaaa!

I just love the idea of him exiting the Land Raider and having his honour guard have to have his fists removed from the floor with some major digging equipment.

Loving the dropship on the previous pages, its angular design looks like some proper 70s/80s sci-fi. Much work left to do on it?

Hey guys forgot about my own blog for a minute

I *do* have a scratch built thunderfire cannon, and I *am* kind of dissatisfied with the base of it.... SOLD!

Dropship is still in the planning phase. I managed to sort and dig out most of the tiles I will need the other day, now I've just got to tear down the mock-up and start building it the 'right way'.

Still gotta do some logistics on the ramp and landing gear too.

As soon as there is progress, there will be pictures







Got my bearings and magnets in, gonna be working on some enforcers and peacekeepers moving forward. The 3/16th inch bearings are perfect for peacekeepers.

Seriously considering doing a strider with 9 points of articulation... 'cause I'm silly.

 GrimDork wrote:
Any post you do which includes an attached image seems to bypass the auto-append cooldown. There is also nothing to stop you from removing the attached image in an edit if you don't want to slowly fill up your gallery with random uploaded images. I wouldn't get too spammy with it lest the mods, I dunno, become annoyed? But it's certainly nice for updating your own blog!

I might use this trick

Enforcers look good. How poseable are they? Are they the hard plastic? I don't keep up with mantic stuff.

Its a good trick.

They are hard plastic. The ball joints add a little bit of back and forth to the normal up and down of the magnet, but it's not a whole lot. Its pretty easy to poorly set a magnet-magnet join though which leaves the arm at a bad angle, this method doesn't have that risk.

Plus... no bother of checking magnet polarity, quite a plus.

Going back to your landershipthing, you could get some turbofan type things off ebay and attach them to the bottom and have a back ramp? Perhaps with some sort fins like you said. pretty much exactly what I think of when the fluff mentions bulk landers or the like!

Yeah that sounds like a thing that could work. Gonna have to try some stuff out for those details. The next time I work on it, I'll be tearing up the original test frame and rebuilding it with the right parts, so I can more easily test the parts I'm less sure about.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also, more magnets. Here's the first five enforcers (other guy is a peacekeeper, same faction, bigger armor).







Gonna be a lot of extra bits to paint if I do all of the arms. Probably will. I may get lazy a few batches in and not make *every* model read to rumble with both a rifle and cc option... but I dunno, if I don't do them straight away I may never go back either.

25 more enforcers to go, 9 peacekeepers. Plus the older restic stuff.

Pretty slick with the ball joints

Thanks. My main takeaway from doing this batch is to sink the magnets as deep as possible without breaking through the other side, some of them sit a bit off and make the rifle arms a bit more challenging.

Nice work on the magnetisation, more work than I would ever be bothered to do.

As an aside are the details on the Peacekeeper legs a little soft/lacking? I have never really looked at them in detail before.

I like your magnetising work there. Can we see some pics of them with the arms removed - to see how the magnets and bearings work together?

I agree would love to see the workings beneath the awesome models. I have never been one to think of magnetising. But your method looks really cool.

So...

Can't tell if double post or...

Alright so you should be able to somewhat see whats going on with the magnets in the photo. The green stuff that i dunno, 'cups', the magnets is really important as it artificially increases the contact area which keeps the parts from slipping. Normally the round magnet on a bearing has just a tiny contact point that freely rotates and makes parts more or less dangle.

There is a kind of neodymium magnet that involves a recessed.. well basically the same shape as the greenstuff, but they're more expensive and I didn't wanna try something new since I knew this would work.

The hold is not the same as the magnet-magnet bonds, gotta bit a bit more careful of these or parts may be lost.

I don't think the detail on the peacekeeper legs is soft. I think it's partially the angle of the earlier pictures and some rough mold line scraping work.

How about that. We ask and Grim provides.
That is some pretty hectic work. Very impressive. So is there are heap of weapon options for these guys?

I dunno if its a 'heap' or not. They all get a rifle and blade+pistol. Enforcers that is, they also get one energy fist and two heavy weapons per five. Peacekeepers get bigger guns and energy fists, one blade for a cheaper leader, two big guns, and a riot shield each.

Pretty sweet, I may order some myself

Sweet! Nice work as usual Grim

Very clever concept. It looks like it was a lot of work to get all of those bearings and magnets mounted, especially with the GS step as well (though I totally see how it is necessary/improves the grip.

Thanks guys. The bearings are at least as easy to set as magnets, and you can skip the check polarity step.

Got one more peace keeper and double arm set finished and got my 6 most recent enforcers primed. I had to resort to rattle can as I really didn't want to mount every single arm for painting, and thusly needed a more robust undercoat.

Also tried some candle+batting flame plumes but I think I need to source some inspiration as I've seen better.

Ack, so many white bits on a white background.

Making the smoke plumes (?) wispier is the tricky part. You may need underwiring.

Lol they're just primed. Just a photo of what I was doing at the time.

The clouds certainly need something, it'll come to me eventually, they're serviceable for now.

More enforcers for the plague zone eh?

Yeah, I wanna eventually get them all done, I've never gotten a fully painted 40k sized army done before, but between my corporation and enforcer models I should be able to hit that volume, even if I never use it for 40k.

I'm planning to do this first 5 man unit with all options. The next 20 models I'll just prepare 10 with combat blades and pistols, and 10 with rifles. Well, I'll do the heavy lasers and incinerators for those guys too. The last 5 hard plastic enforcers will also get all options. I figure that should be enough versatility and i'll still have the extra bits if i need them.

Fisty kung fu mcpunchalot looks awesome.

Gonna see if I can throw some paint on him today.

The colours of the smoke look really good. Just needs some shaping I think. Although they're perfectly fine as is for gaming.

look forward to the rest!

Between Enforcers and Valkir, plus a few others, I am set for a more generic power armor using game.

Yeah... i think i have enough too. Should probably make another attempt at selling off my marines, or at least shelf them so i don't see them as readily

Getting some airbrush time in today, may be something big shows up soon, maybe not.

I said I'd keep you guys updated on the ship:

Looks nice. Do you have any plans for the interior, or will the passengers be at the mercy of turbulence?

Ooooh! Roomy!

I have stuff to paint all boxed for when I feel the muse strike to finish them.

Yeah, I think I'll work on organizing and boxing up some stuff so it isn't cluttering anything. Just do a round with the sharpie and clearly label all the boxen.

@Josh the interior is what I'm trying to figure out. I think I want to keep the interior for crew/cargo only with any engines/rotors/motors/etc self-contained on the outside. That leaves me with a very spacious, yet weirdly shaped interior.


This is where I could really use some advice and idea soundboarding. Tiles won't clip in at this point given the way I've built it, but I can use hotglue and additional supports to fit most anything. Should I split it into two levels? Or will I be losing something by no longer being able to have really tall things in the hull. I could leave the 6" flat floor alone and put in a triangle from where it curves up from there to the wall. Basically make the bottom floor a 6" flat space for tanks and mechs, and have a raised platform on which I could put rows of seats and stuff for the troopers. OFC then they've gotta go down ladders to deploy which slows the process up a bit. In that option, the little sectioned off triangular area could be used for stowage (though a *lot* of it), or possibly enclosed entirely to imply engines and systems for whatever thrust additions I make to the hull on the lower angled portion.


I could discount drop ship altogether and make it into a kind of land vehicle, a sand crawler type thing


I'm not 100% sure, I'm still trying to figure out what will work best for the interior. At least now I have a solid shell to work with so I can try out ideas instead of just muse.

Oh that does sound like a plan, the lower levels for Tanks/APCs etc, and the upper section for the troopers to sit and prep, and maybe if you have some stuff lying about that can look like engines attached externally?

Awesome Idea with the battlezone stuff!

Thanks NobodyXY

@Shas, Yeah, something like that. I figure you could use the bottom for ground vehicles, walkers, cargo, or convert it to have seats (I figure this is kind of a basic blueprint frontier world defense force vehicle that can be cobbled together from the shipping containers like the buildings).

I'm not sure what to do for the engines. I was thinking about doing some fins on the sides, but I wonder if putting some kind of pods on the underside could do too. There's always the option of doing some kind of large fans to put on the edges as well although I've left myself a pretty narrow connection point with that corner.

Still have to sort out landing gear and decide if it needs another quad cannon on the bottom section or not.

Really there's no necessity of the quad cannon going on top at all, I could mount it under the cockpit possibly, or make some kind of swivel mount and put them on the top, or on the upper angled portion somewhere in the middle.

It isn't meant as a gunboat, I probably only want 1-2 quad cannons independent of where they're mounted, and a gun or two forward facing to use for zapping ground defense turrets/tanks.

That cargo hold is amazing. The photo gives it such an amazing depth. The aesthetic is making me think of Alien so please add a power lifter or at least a GW sentinel with powerlifter attachment.

I think split level would be great with the top level shallower for personnel and as much room as possible below deck.

Thanks

The triangular inserts to make the bottom a flat 6" with an upper level idea is growing on me. If I make that successfully happen, I think it makes the most sense to do the lift/propulsion along the slanted lower portions. Will research some stuff that looks cool.

How about a walkway (with our without railings) around the middle? That way you'd have vertical space for taller cargo while also giving places for models to fight over.

Yeah, a walkway could work out. I was already planning on putting one in at the back for easier cockpit access, one more across the center might work well.

Do you have any of those upright post things? I think they came in the landing pad set. Those could be used to prop a walkway up and make the floor seem less empty.

Google "C130 Interior" and "Hercules Interior" and see if anything inspires you there.

Any of the larger cargo planes really. Try the C-5A Galaxy too. It is a cool project.

Wow, I dunno how I lived before seeing the galaxy opening its front to eat troops and vehicles, that's just great

Damn... thats a *lot* of seats.

Yeah the interiors are pretty much what I was expecting, of course none of the planes have the funky outer hull shape that mine does. Food for thought though.

The multilevel idea really stuck in my head. I remember seeing the old tau dropship interior done wonderfully and this space gives you so so much room to play with. *starts googling through some images to find the ones I mean*
Ok so these are just some inspiration things for you in case you hadn't seen them
http://www.advancedtautactica.com/resource/sebs_gear/kauyon4.jpg

http://images.wikia.com/warhammer40k/images/8/8d/Manta21.jpg I mean this thing is HUUUGE but you see what I am saying? the sentinels could deffo be racked in a similar manner perhaps. seating could be similar too I guess, but less well nice. I mean the tau care too much about their minions! just toss em all in there!

http://www.forgeworld.co.uk/Images/Product/AlternativeFW/xlarge/orca15.jpg

These boys look ready to jump (yellow strops on everyones kit and general tidiness) but you could deffo make this work for standard infantry too.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7a/82nd_Airborne_paratroopers_in_a_C-17.jpg/640px-82nd_Airborne_paratroopers_in_a_C-17.jpg

Right sorry, dissertations are dull and this isn't lol!

 Archer wrote:
That cargo hold is amazing. The photo gives it such an amazing depth. The aesthetic is making me think of Alien so please add a power lifter or at least a GW sentinel with powerlifter attachment.

I think split level would be great with the top level shallower for personnel and as much room as possible below deck.

My first thought on seeing the interior was “This needs rows of alien eggs, ripe with facehuggers” Must be the curved sides.

Although a USCM inspired interior would also work. Sounds like a good excuse to watch Aliens for research.

Hmm... I could watch Alien/s again...

Good links Ed

I've got some stuff to play around with now that the hull is in one piece.

Your comments are inspiring people thanks a bunch

Oh I have been painting a little. Gonna let it roll to page 100 to reveal (not 100% done yet anyway).

Is it page 100 yet ?

That ship is a behomoth.

Maybe just some walkways across the walls, to give miniatures something to stand on, while leaving the middle open, for cargo, and firefights ?

Considering splitting it to a top and bottom with access ladders to the top. Fit more troops.

Bring on page 100!

Dropship is looking great!


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Woohoo, page 100! Pics, NOW!

Cool! It's huge. Looks like it could fit some vehicles or armour in there too or will it be mainly transporting troops? In any case looking forward to it!

Ckig: probably 4 rhinos or equivalent on the main floor. May stick to triangular raised seating arrangement to make room for troops and tanks, and give an area of implied engines/etc.

@para, before this page is over. I've got dome nitpicky details and probably a dip. But its coming together. I fear I overhyped it though lol.

*Cue derp MS paint visual* I did this just for you, since you hit 100 pages. What a cruddy reward. (No seriously though, congratulations.)

You could always do something like this?

The red area being a walkway/floor, with railing, the yellow circle part being an area set aside for seats like in a C-130. The blue square being an area for a rear ramp door, like on the Epic 40k lander. Then your purple area could be flat horizontal tiers added to the wall, on which items are stored. Green is the floor for your tanks, the black area is an apt place for computers, screens, repair tools, etc.

Just food for thought but, I already know you're going to do something better than that with this.

I don't think what I have planned is *exactly* like you laid it out... but its reasonably close. Rather than purple and black portions I *may* add triangular sections to 'square those areas off' so to speak. The walkway could still be there, and I'd want one at the far end too, possibly 3 total, at both ends and one in the middle. Troops sit up on the raised areas where you've put the green, tanks fit at the bottom like you've said, and the space I've effectively sealed off gets written off as fuel storage and space for engines and what not. Oh and the gate will be on the side that's missing to allow the view, the wall on the far side is where the cockpit sits.

Thanks for the diagram, its a few more fine points to consider while implementing what I've got in my head, and if my plans backfire, I've got backups now

You know I drew it in paint so you wouldn't take it too seriously, right?

I can't wait to see what you're up to, three walkways sound awesome.

I do a lot of work in paint


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Alright, that thing I'm painting is *almost* done. Just finished the base this morning, have one more bit of detailing to do and I can dip.

Boom.

Finally got the illithidragon/skinny cthulhu done. I'm also planning on using him as the leader of my green gribblies roving pirate/marauder 'faction'. Basically the shasvastii, kulathi invaders, any tyranids I decide to rescue, and so on.

So yeah, there you go, space dragon pirate king. How's that for a title? He's kind of like that dude from Metroid, was it Ridley or something? A non-humanoid high ranking pirate. Possibly the top boss, dunno.

He needs to dry. I may or may not matte seal as slimy almost works for such a model.

Thanks for waiting for him lol.

Is that from the Dragons Don't Share Reaper stuff?

Yeah. Head from xp1 goroloth.

Awesomely horrific looking Grim! So he is the leading entity then eh?

Oh primed my Deadzone buildings at last BTW

Yeah the boss.

Looking forward to your work with my favorite scenery Lego's.

Super big gribbly for the 100th page there Grim, excellent work. The wings look especially good.

Hurry up though, you have to get to page 200 now.

Goodness that'd be a lot of pages. That's more up to you guys than me. More of you than me. Your banter and comments will see that happen before my posting alone will

Geez Grim. That's pretty cool. Will you be using these griibly space pirates in Pulp Alley?

I dunno I'm pushing pulp alley pretty hard as it is with my zombies, cowboys, and spandexed secret agents. I've just got my models divided into subfactions...just because.

Damn what a way to celebrate 100 pages. Was it predominantly air brush or old school bristle brush?

Honestly I think thats the best model you have done so far grim.

Thanks again guys


@Archer Mostly with the airbrush. I did the base in grey and then hit more or less the whole model with a light coat of a light-medium green, the wings got just a bit in lieu of using an actual light-green on them, and the armor plates got more passes until they were solid. Went back over the armor with a darker green until they were nice and solid again, got a little bit of free blending/feather/whatever that way.

The wings were done with a mix of pink and lavender colors to get my alien pink like I used on shasvasti, tried to replicate the green/pink splotches I used on the smaller models and kind of overdid it with the pink. In order to bring it back into line a bit, I hit the entirety of the fleshy wing membrane with pink, just lightly dusting until it managed to tie the colors together better. The rest of the model may have gotten a little pink too, just to give it a bit more alien of a vibe.

I sprayed the tentacles with the same pink mix and then did a shoddy job of a gradient, mixing in more purple and spraying less of the tentacles each time.

The eyes, red sucky cups on the bottom of the tentacles, and all of the treasure were done by hand.

Dipped by brush with Tudor.


Thanks for the responses guys, I quite like the space dragon and I'm glad you do too I'm gonna see about working on some kulathi invaders to do his bidding soon, though I may work on some enforcers or venture back to Mars Attacks for awhile, not sure yet.

Here are the shots of Atavusk, Space Dragon Pirate King that I'll be using for Paradigm's comp. The colors.. aren't exactly right, I'm gonna take some daylight photos but I need to submit these now just in case.

Great work on that monster

Also huge congrats on the 100 pages, only 400 more to catch vik and dave

Haha, thats a lot of pages...

I'll require everyone's continued support

Oh yeah! Congrats on making it 100 pages thus far!

Very cool looking space pirate dragon thing.

Exercise in cool modelling, or do you have a use for it in mind ?

I think the shorter answer would be to answer what I "couldn't" use the space dragon pirate king for

But yeah mostly cause its cool. The space pirate thing kind of came later.

I mean, if I ever get to play a proper wargame I'll find something for him to do... but right now he just needs to menace gak.

I would like to do a series of comic-style battle reports using my own minis some day, webcomic/battle report, whatever. Doesn't really need to be dice in the background, just some kind of story using a bunch of my models. An exercise in taking photos, editing them, laying them out, thinking up funny quips and dialogue, crap like that. I'm no writer, nor much of an artist, but something like that sounds like a fun way to "use" the things I've been painting, just another something to do y'know.

Atavusk would feature prominently, often just to be menacing off camera as he plots and directs his minions. He's not really evil... just greedy and maybe a bit of a superiority complex... I mean he IS a space dragon.

Grats on page 100 you productive bastard! Atavusk looks great, really nice work. The different textures and shading on the different skin types is really good.

If he’s a space pirate dragon king, shouldn’t he be rocking some sort of crown and/or spiffy hat? If not, how can we tell him apart from the space pirate dragon cabin boys?

Looks eldrichy awesome!

Cthulu dragon FTW!

Wow pretty awesome, in deadzone for marauder faction a modified stuntbot special charcter or gribbly plague leader.

I think he needs his own rules and scenario I was planning to make some godzilla monster stats some time to use with Khanjira from bones 2 as it was

Y'know... if I *ever* played. Ever.

Sigh.




Good news on the dragon front, while the base is still having trouble curing the large majority of the rest of the model is about good.

I may have to stop dipping my bones minis, they seem to take to minwax like they do spraypaint... some handle it, some get sticky. Can probably just mix up a paint/ink based variant that'll do well enough.