Honestly if I ever find a viable source of ~1/48 scale tank police tanks... its over.

I'm bad at scratchbuilding too.

Yeah, that'd pretty much end my marriage as well (because of how I'd buy them all).

Pretty much not going to Google it just in case

Ooh in unrelated but awesome news, Chris at Mantic got back to me and reported that he would be pushing to get my DZ shipment out the door tomorrow. So that's nice . I won't plan for one day shipping just in case that was a volume/ timing deal.. but it should be courier and show up fairly quickly once its dispatched.

I googled. I found nothing. My marriage is safe.

For now. Maybe Mantic will put something out - or antenoctis.

Holy balls those non-gamer scale modelers take their color choices seriously. I guess the old Israeli stuff was sand, the new stuff is some kind of dark green. Kind of like old school us army drab, I'm just going to approximate and get it done, I don't think the recipient is gonna care


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Merkava Basecoat Complete

Clearly you are lacking in Google-fu and because I had the hell of a day, I feel like ruining some marriages.

http://www.starshipmodeler.com/rv/tc_bona.htm

Good luck with the tank GD, hopefully with an airbrush the basecoating was a breeze.

Fortunately 1/35 is s bit too big for 28mm and its just the little guy. A full set would destroy me though.

Tank is basecoated, needs maybe a dry brush and a few details picked out and then probably brush-dip time. Then corrosion and rust. Dust would be great but I don't have the right color on hand.

 TheDraconicLord wrote:
Clearly you are lacking in Google-fu and because I had the hell of a day, I feel like ruining some marriages.

http://www.starshipmodeler.com/rv/tc_bona.htm

Good luck with the tank GD, hopefully with an airbrush the basecoating was a breeze.

The Bonaparte I'd found. I (and Grim) want the larger one from here:

http://webspace.webring.com/people/cm/maiyeng/bonaparte/bonaparte06.jpg

I want an appropriately scaled bonaparte, but I want a horde of the bigger tanks and the boss's luft tiger or whatever it ad called

GrimDork wrote:Fortunately 1/35 is s bit too big for 28mm and its just the little guy. A full set would destroy me though.

Tank is basecoated, needs maybe a dry brush and a few details picked out and then probably brush-dip time. Then corrosion and rust. Dust would be great but I don't have the right color on hand.

rigeld2 wrote:

 TheDraconicLord wrote:
Clearly you are lacking in Google-fu and because I had the hell of a day, I feel like ruining some marriages.

http://www.starshipmodeler.com/rv/tc_bona.htm

Good luck with the tank GD, hopefully with an airbrush the basecoating was a breeze.

The Bonaparte I'd found. I (and Grim) want the larger one from here:

http://webspace.webring.com/people/cm/maiyeng/bonaparte/bonaparte06.jpg

*Shakes fist* My plan, ruined! (Urgh, I find the bigger tank so... ugly. I did love Tank Police, tho )

I just think they're neat and futury (and probably impossible, track ball wheels??).

Methinks the time of the drybrushening is nigh!

Happy Birthday, old man.

 GrimDork wrote:

If I like working with it enough, I may grab a couple. I think they're like 15-17 dollars from Korea (pretty sure that's where the Academy company lives) on eBay and one of my sisters gave me some kind of eBay gift card. May look around at some bits sellers too, but a tank or two wouldn't hurt. Of course, with warpath around the corner... May wait on them too.

Judging by the sprue shot in your gallery, it's the exact same model. Which of course makes sense in the context of economies of scale as well.

The not-deadball mech looks great. Hit that canopy with gloss varnish and it'll help with the blending - moreso IRL than in photos.

Thanks

It should be the same tank, but I hate to make promises without verification

I like big Steve for the effort i put in. The most recent group shots had gloss down, think another layer would further the effect?


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Drybrushed/edged. Gonna stop myself before I get too carried away and rush it worse than I already have. Will take a measured approach tomorrow, just need to add some grey areas and darken the area right around the barrel, then I can dip.

Merkava Complete
Pictures to follow. I've got to de-gunk the moving parts before I can put the treads back on in a workable fashion. I figured that this would happen, though it is kind of a pain to fix.


I'll have to see how the rest of the evening goes. I want to get my two built and painted (in the old scheme) enforcers repainted into the new scheme and ready for monday night. I hold no illusions that my shipment will arrive earlier in the day than 5pm. That's when UPS comes, ofc this is fedex. I'll have to go pick it up from where it's going anyway, having moved inbetween. Anyhoo... I'd like to get the rest of my standing enforcers ready to play so I can bust out plague and enforcer strike teams ASAHP.

As fast as they paint, if I put in some time tonight, and get them at least finished painted and to the dip and dry stage tomorrow.. I should be good. Or even dip and dry by tomorrow night, then I can seal and base monday before the package shows up.

I don't think I'll be doing a full glorious unboxing like I had originally intended, check the internet, subject has a bit of bloat I think. But I will be posting up as or more often than I always do, and will give my usual thoughts.

But if I'm gonna beat my Enforcer Duo Challenge Extreme! in time, I better get crackin


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*ahem. Why not just do ALL of my enforcers in time for deadzone to arrive? Halfway done bashing together a fusion gun enforcer, I've got the bit, why waste $5 to get an odd metal model ehh? I think I'm gonna do a thermal rifle too maybe, with the non fusion non flamer gun from the marines sprues. The one I called a plasmagun stand in in my first unboxing of the blog. So two rifle guys, and two special weapon guys. If I can get everything cleaned, bashed, assembled, and undercoated tonight, I'm pretty confident about getting them painted and dipped tomorrow, which just leaves flat coat and bases to do on monday before my stuff supposedly arrives.

I may get caught up somewhere halfway through, but I feel it a noble cause worth my efforts and so I won't be sad if I fall while executing my dreams!

Back to it!


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Think in my haste that I messed up my math. I've got a defender totally done. The assault/sgt just needs sprayed. That leaves 3 bodies. One is assembled down to the arms, which are getting switched from the missile launcher to a rifle. That leaves two... I should probably do two rifle guys so maybe I'll keep the fusion gun but skip the thermal for now. Order one of the metal guys from the second survey instead of two, and bash more up later if I would ever use them. Cool, that will probably save a few minutes.


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23:22 CST: 2 prepped to spray, 2 in assembly line
Getting a bit late as it is... I think I can I think I can...


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23:39 CST: 2 ready, 2 to be nailed and left to dry for a bit
Ok, so those were about half done when I last updated. Legs and torsos together, I had to do the arms and heads. I have to say... for tough joins (like doing both arms to the body, and both wrists to the gun... all at the same time!) I'm glad to have craftics #33 on hand. It's like proper plastic glue in most ways, except it works on restic too Due to the time constraints, I still reinforced a couple of the joints with after-the-fact super glue. I need to get these dudes up on their nails and give everything some time to set. Onwards!

--casualty report--
R.I.P. Sprue clippers #1, aka rough cutters. The sprue clippers I use to snap off the mantic integrated bases (and other rough activities) suffered from a spring blow out. I can still use them to a point, but it will only get worse. Will have to pick up another pair and renegotiate the current good pair into what the fallen pair was doing.

23:57 CST:Everything prepped, brief pause to allow glues to set
As it says^ Gonna clean out the other set of track wheels on the Merkava. I may get pictures tonight, but it's more likely to happen tomorrow. Maybe. Soz.

00:45 CST:Everything base coated.
I think I was a little heavy handed, these probably won't be my 4 prettiest enforcers, but they will be done sooner than later. Didn't get around to messing with the tank. Tomorrow between steps, perhaps.

Sounds like quite the marathon there, looking forward to pics.

How long does it normally take you per model or tank. You seem to smash through groups of models quicker than I could get one done.

I cheat and cut corners when necessary

Its a bit harder to count my time these days as I start and stop so often. I'll try to keep track on these enforcers. The base coat is always quick due to airbrush, just a couple of minutes per model. After that it depends on how economical my scheme is. These enforcers may take half an hour each at my guess... I'll try to track my time.

The merkava doesn't look bad but I didn't go for perfection by any means.. I need to work out my method for brush dipping larger minis, when I take shots of the tank you'll see why, just isn't the smoothest coat by a long shot.

Taking it slow this morning and degunking the tread wheels so the tank will respond properly to the remote. Then is painting time.

Honestly, I'm not sure what has me moving at the pace I am.. I'm unemployed due to nobody wanting landscaping in the winter, but as much babysitting as I do I don't really get a massively significantly greater deal of time to work on models. Usually upwards of an hour of napping and 1-2 hours at night after bedtime. And that competes with video games, reading, and so on. I'm usually more tired after work when I'm in season, but I get a similar amount of potential hours so it should be interesting to see if I can keep pace after I go back in full time.

I try to set up my painting situation so its ready for me to plop down and work, even for 5-10 minutes at a time, I think that's where a fair portion of my daily progress shows up.

I imagine the airbrush is a great time saver.

The tank is an RC? or are you making it one?

Kit is sold without, but this one had it included yes. Its only somewhat working after paint/stain got into the wheel mechanisms. I knew it would happen but I didn't see a good way around it. Maybe some WD 40.

Some people can do whole models with their airbrush, I can mostly do basecoats but it saves that time and is smoother. I've done beyond base coats but masking and set up tear down for the airbrush means I can usually do it faster by hand. The red and base blue on the big mech were airbrushed to save time and get a smoother coat.


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Ok then. Got one enforcer's off-color down, took maybe 30 minutes. Gotta do that 3 more times and do the white/yellow/blue parts, and the highlighting before I can dip. I assume the brights might take half an hour or so for all 4 together, mostly drying time. Highlighting should be pretty quick too.

I would really like an airbrush but they are just way to expensive for me atm. Its on my list of things to pick up though.

Took me about half hour to get "most" of the mould lines of a single enforcer before giving up.

Warpath Enforcers are pretty rough, my lines so far have been small but several of the angles are a pain to navigate Anne restic is as restic does...

I think some of the strain are worse causes of the organic shape, but wp enforcers aren't particularly easy either.

I really like my airbrush. I'd be less then half as productive this season without it.. too cold to rattle can prime anything. And if ii ever get around to painting my vehicles...

Oh yeah I gave the tank to father in law, took some pictures first. Not my best or favorite work but it wasn't bad. Will post up later if ii can.

Btw are you painting the enforcers all blue? Or mixing them p a little?

I am using the warpath ones we got with deadzone to do a few test paints.

I'll probably do my first strike team 5/6 warpath enforcers, the odd DZ guy will probably be the sniper. I have 5 now from a previous purchase so I can get a strike team almost knocked out before my box arrives, and then I can start in on the plague.

Whoops, I hadn't realized I didn't feature my new color scheme except for a couple of times as an extra. The enforcer on the right in this group shot:

The enforcer on the right, that's how I'm painting them all now. It's very quick and I think it looks a lot better both up close and at "gaming range" than the original scheme.

I'm not 100% sure I'll finish all four of them tonight. Got the bulk of the work done on two, and there's time, but batchpainting these guys has a higher burnout coefficient than the strain did. So I'm gonna inundate you fine folks with pictures of the Merkava, which is no longer with me. I hope they turned out well or I'll have to take some more next time I visit the inlaws.

Pictures to follow, gotta feed the gallery beast first.

Ok first a few disclaimers. I could probably have done better, I admit it. I just didn't have the motivation. I think I can explain why in the next couple of disclaimers. I think any merkava currently in service would have a similar color to this one. Well, darker. This one turned out almost oldschool american olive drab, but too vibrant of a green for that. And the Israeli color is darker still than the olive drab. So it isn't quite the right color, but wait. This is, to the best of my knowledge now and after the fact, a merkava 1 or maybe a 2 or whatever. The first merkavas would have been in the older style sand coloration, and it looked as much on the box, but I thought it was a newer merkava at the time and should be painted like the new one. So, not having things "just right" kind of hurt my motivation a bit. Beyond that, I wasn't keeping it, and It won't see any gameplay.. so there was no personalization and therefore no drive to do better to make it my own. Still, I think it looks alright :p
Lastly, I realized right as I was walking out to hand it to him (they were visiting), I had forgotten the stickers. So I slapped them on but didn't end up putting a gloss coat or painting around it so as to better tie in the larger words (you can see the blank space of the sticker over the hull, it grates a bit). Still, not unhappy with it.

http://www.dakkadakka.com/gallery/images-70053-39352_Merkava.html
Gallery with everything about the Merkava, I probably left a few out below:


I'm no expert on rust, but I think it adds a a lot to the project overall, it would have been boring with nothing and I didn't have an appropriate sand/dust pigment on hand.


The highlighting, and especially the less-than-smooth application of the dip are my least favorite things, and what I will need to improve for the next tank I do (whenever that may be), and or probably for the deadzone terrain too.


I probably went a little too heavy on the rust in some places, but at the typical viewing distance for this kind of thing, I figured too little would be invisible.


Definitely feels like a tank when compared to other models, I could comfortably believe that four human sized minis could be inside piloting it.


Aww crap, I had found my chimera and leman russ too, totally forgot to do comparisons.. well most of you know the size of a rhino so it'll have to do!


The merkava is a lot lower to the ground than the rhino, but way longer, pretty close to the same width. Almost too sleek and futury compared to standard 40k tank fare.


Stickers!


Poor planning here, that larger sticker should be further over to the right to match the other side, but it wouldn't have sat right on top of the little patch of rust.



The rear identification number is noticeably crooked, sticker wasn't in a mood to be lifted for repositioning =/



So there's the merkava. I've probably spent longer on single infantry models. The color isn't for me, but it's nice to know I could bang out an army's worth of tanks pretty rapidly if I felt the need. I think it has miles to go in terms of quality cap, but I also believe it's plenty solid to toss down onto a table for gaming (or on a shelf somewhere to be occasionally glanced as is more likely it's fate... ooh and maybe driven around a bit )

On the off chance my friends/family get around to the blog and read it, I probably won't post too actively about these... but I do have plans to do some more large pieces/dioramas for gifts as birthdays come 'round. I know I'm getting a not-tardis from my reaper bones 2 kickstarter rewards, and there are plenty of doctor who 28mm figures (and my sister is a doctor who fan something fierce) so you can expect a diorama of some kind along that vein before the year is out.


I'm really getting the itch to use all of these GW technical paints more than I already have. Kind of want to take some of my space marines and tall-scale them, converting them to chaos in the process. Maybe nurgle, or a combination of nurgle/tech heavy. Like iron warriors if they decided to jump ship and follow nurgle.. all plague bellies and pustules meets mecha-tendrils and crazy wires all over the place. I still want to figure out some kind of 2000 points or so of any one 40k army to complete to have on hand in case I ever get the chance to play. Something low model count, with a lot of opportunity to convert and have fun with the modeling aspect. Low model count because I'll probably never use it, and because any standard marines would have to be tall-scaled or bust. I just can't do normal height marines against standard guardsmen or the like. A space marine the same height as one of mantic's enforcers though... that's terrifying because then they're like twice as big overall. Maybe I'll look into chaos lists, although you probably need some kind of hell turkey flyers to make that book work, and I've already got one space marine and one imperial guard flyer on standby. Those may get bogarded for deadzone terrain though

Gonna indulge the video game loving part of my brain, then pick out some more details on those enforcers. I figure if my DZ box comes early enough that I don't have time to finish them tomorrow, it can only be seen as a good thing

Nice update mate. I prefer the new colour scheme if a little unsure of the blue and yellow colour scheme, reminds me too much of a ball catch game I had when I was younger to feel at place on a power armoured killers shoulder. Of course thats a personal thing. YMMV.



The tank still turned out decent mate. The stickers are probably the only bits that are noticeably lacking. The rest is solid.

What games are you playing. Besides BG:EE?

Considering it was almost a "Speed paint challenge", the Tank doesn't look bad at all! Pity about the stickers =/

Your "time your work" thing isn't a bad idea at all... I'm considering doing the same once I start with my SM project. I need to improve how long I take to paint "Troops" so that can be a good motivator. A kind of "Time Trial", I suppose.

Happy gaming

Mostly BG and bg2 ATM. Gonna get that batch of goodies from good old games today... Diablo 3 if BG sounds too slow or tedious.

I'm reconsidering the blue and yellow...maybe some kind of red or orange or something..

If I'm only painting one mini at a time I don't worry about time as much, bit even then its nice to know.


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Gah Deadzone is here! At 9 in the morning! Wooo! Gotta go get it right after breakfast. If I don't show up again, I drowned in plastic/restic goodness.

Finally! Awesome news that you've got your hands on DZ, hope it was worth the wait. I have a feeling you're going to be very impressed with it.

Happy unboxing-day!

Its in hand but we're at my parents so I'm letting them visit with baby. Soon though. Soon...

Your original enforcer scheme resembled mine somewhat

May you happily drown in plastic!

We demand pics!

Here is my enforcer scheme which is similar apparently to your first concept, although the present scheme seems more along the lines with the other stuff I have seen

But yes, here are my "Ice Sanction" units
[/img]

I liked the dark blue but I dunno the whole model was too dark overall. I think the scheme was OK up close but kind of s blur/blob at a distance.


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See your guys pull it off better though. At a distance you can still tell there's more than one color.


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Tdl- may not do the full unbox but there will be zomgwtfbbq pics and shots of everything I do as per usual.

Wifey did get me the 'every dnd game GoG sells' bundle today... but I shall be delving into this stuff first most.


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Ok well. There's a lot of gak in the box, that's for sure. And it wasn't just carelessly tossed in either, I got retail packaging for at least some of my stuff, which is nice.

Not as nice, I can tell I'm definitely missing stuff. I either have too much (which would be fine) or not enough terrain. Gonna have to sit down with the chart to figure out which it is.

Missing the metal mercenaries for sure, I guess they must have still been out. And I get the feeling I didn't get enough accessory sprues, so we'll see about that.

Gonna do some more digging and picture taking.

I think using a dark wash over the steel, and asurman blue for the blue metalliacs helped it out had to wait for the washes to dry on one before doing the other to avoid bleed.

Waaagh, I drop off the map for a bit, and you've got Deadzone! Great! I am happy for you, hope it's living up to expectations.

I think the tank looked great, though I am pretty ignorant of the specifics of how it's SUPPOSED to look. The close up shots of your skellies kinda make me wish I'd gone for e brighter scheme with mine- yours have come out really well!

Shaso- they look good.

Da boss- long time no see . Thanks. Tank was good enough for me and who got it. I like my skellies but I need to finish their mutibase, my memory is poor but I'm pretty sure I remember liking your undeads too.

Dz is OK so far. Missing a few things that are noted on my shipping invoice/label thing. Checking the rest of it to see if ii got enough bags of everything. Will have to check the bag contents later.. gonna want to dig into this stuff sooner or later.


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Cursory examination of the minis shows I have what I'm supposed to. Seems like there's an extra bag of plague and or marauders, I think its symptomatic of how they shipped the faction boosters and it happened to a lot of people and shouldn't be misconstrued as "generous amount of extras" of which I think I was loosely promised

I still have to check through my marauder and rebs faction starters to make sure nothing is missing but those were in retail packaging so it's not so likely. Then I gotta count up my terrain sprues.

Sounds like you still haven't got what you ordered never mind generous extras.

Yeah, cursory investigation says I got just enough stuff, sans things that are noted as missing on the shipping invoice.

Missing chovar and helfather which I can get over for the short term, additional accessory sprues I ordered in addition to what comes with the bzs, and the rebs booster bundle, so my rebs faction is significantly smaller and less diverse than my other factions (enforcers are small too, but we all knew that was the temporary case).

Anybody know who this is?

I think it's supposed to be a dreadball MvP but I can't find a match. Looks kind of like a ME Geth.


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Ahh it is a not-geth one of the MvPs that was kickstarter exclusive, well that's nice of them at least

Well Grim, I spend a little time away from Dakka and it looks like you've been quite busy. Like the Dreadball mech quite a bit, but I really like the KOW Skelly base.

You should make the next one look like a graveyard. Graves come with the sprue, and you could use some of the GW chaos bits to look like bits of gate or whatever that surround the graveyard. Just a thought.

I'm torn between switching my base color up a bit and have them all coming out of graveyards and give it kind of a darkish moor-like look.. or something, or doing them up snow style. Could be a snowy graveyard too

For now I'll be putting together city terrain though Deadzone is in, and minus a few things (fuggin rebs booster bundle CURSES!!!), it's all here and waiting to be assembled and painted!

Small photo dump:


Open box, nicely packed.




Holy battle zones Batman!


One battle zone. Most of those tiles are stacked 2-4 high.


One accessory sprue (is actually 2 sprues cause they split the big one in half later on)


Layout for a landing pad that I'm considering making.

I'd show you my tower but its half painted so we'll just wait till its done
Some stuff

Wow, that's a lot of Battlezones! Can't wait to see what you do with all that plasticy goodness.

Me either! I've gotta do some boring stuff for a little bit, but then I'm gonna try to finish airbrushing my first structure. I think I messed up by going in with the final grey color first, I should have done black, then grey, then just a bit of white, like people seem to be doing with rattle cans. Basically makes it look good with no need to go back in and hit recesses for the most part. I think this tower is going to get brush dipped. After this, I may try the layered spray method. I like the idea of dipping anyway though, since it adds a lot of durability to the paint job for eventual tear-downs.

I plan to build my structures with as many clips as it takes to make them as stable as possible, in a quasi-permanent fashion. Basically, I'm using the clips to build structures with no intention of breaking them down any time soon. But after a few months If I have an idea or want to adjust something... I should be able to in theory. I'm kind of considering the clips to be disposable. The tiles will hold up to a lot of abuse, but the clips are pretty fragile (lost half a dozen corner clips after a couple of strong-arm tactics went bad and I broke my tower twice ). They can come out, and I'm sure even after I paint everything I'll be able to salvage some. But I have no illusions of saving them all. So I'll be ordering a bucketload on the second survey at the bundle discount for when I decide to change things up in the future.

I'll have to get some models ready, but until I've got most of a board ready to go... not much point. I'm a little unsure of using my big whopping landing pad on a normal game board, but who knows, it could be a perfect way to break up the low/high level areas.

I'm definitely going to clip battlezones out ahead of myself, but there's no way that I'm gonna clean all 12 before I do anything. Back to my standard clip/trim while baby is away and tolerant of me doing so, and paint while she's sleeping or visiting relatives etc.

I plan to do some of my review-style musings, but I really want to tear into this stuff since I've been waiting so long, so it'll be with a bit of lag

That is a metric fethton of scenery.

If you're breaking a lot of clips (I did when I started playing with the terrain) try using the end of a file/nail/paintbrush (basically anything pointy) to push them out, it's far easier and less prone to breakage than pulling.

Also, it's a lot of work, but it might be worth filing down the inside of some holes if you can't get a good fit. The floor tiles, for some reason, have been a really bad fit for me.

@carlos yes it is. I've been waiting for something like this to come around for years. Almost got a bunch of GW cities of death stuff, but then they jacked the prices up by over 30% and added to my general unlove of GW lately, that got aborted and this then showed up

@Paradigm, I use a tool to push out the clips, where I broke most if not all of them was when I was building the lower levels of my tower. I was pressuring a clip (both times) and my tool or hands slipped out of place put put a crap load of force in the wrong direction and sheared 3-4 clips the first time, and 1-2 the second. It was more of an accident than doing it wrong I don't like to file them too much, but I try a soft dry fit of any connector now, and file little bits at a time until it fits but still snugly. I wish the plastic weren't such a brittle mix though!

Some connectors are just not quite the same size as others. The lamp post from the accessory sprue has pegs that are at least 10-20% larger and always require cutting or filing it seems. And the stairs from the landing pad... I think they're supposed to go together to make wider stairs but the sockets are like.. half the size of the pegs, no joke. Still trying to figure that one out, may look it up.


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Poor set-up, had to take pictures in a hurry but yeah...





I see it as some kind of guard/watch tower. Got a couple of lamps and access on the rear of the tower. The door opens to nowhere, but that's where you connect it to another building and so on. I figure the kind of path that runs underneath the tower could be extended into kind of an above ground trench line.

Going with the same base grey as my enforcers for this piece, and maybe another few, but I'm going to vary the coloration. This stuff used to be shipping containers so I figure different corporations may use differently colored containers. I've got to do black and then metal, pick out a bright off color--probably yellow or blue-- do some nicknacks like the lights and door control panel... and then dip. At least for this piece.

I've got the landing pad over halfway trimmed up, and I've got some scatter terrain from the accessory sprues (large boxes, canisters, and barrels) that I'll be painting soon too. Once the baby is asleep probably.

I can already tell that I want to start with a black under/base coat so I don't have to repaint it for all of the metal bits.

That is one beautiful overkill ammount of terrain. I'm honest when I ask this: can you even properly store all that?

I like tower, a but of plasticard and boom, that door is now a window. Can you fit 1 or 2 guardsmen sized miniatures inside?

Once its all assembled into buildings? I... don't... know!?

Nah we have garages with lots of unused shelf space I'm good unless I move.

But I think you aren't getting the scale right, let me take a picture.


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There's 6 guys up top and 15 total around, plus the big Steve and the rhino. The tiles are 3'' square so we can get a fair number of minis inside

I am now in love with that tower

Muahaha! I didn't want to make too big of a structure to start with. I have enough left over from that first battlezone to make a decent sized (probably at least 6x9x3(tall) " building with a gap or two in it. You get a pretty good pile of panels for your money. I won't be able to tell though, I already clipped out a second core worlds battlezone and a landing pad battlezone as well.

I've been trying to utilize as many of the non-connector connector pieces as I can (there are lamp posts, structural support looking things, and so on that act as connectors but offer additional visual appeal, I will have a lot before its over thanks to ordering so many accessory sprues). I hear you tend to run out of standard connectors, and they really should have sent double the connectors they did, so I'm trying to improvise as much as possible without compromising structural integrity. You can order the connectors fairly cheaply from the second survey and I plan to get a ton of them.

Really want that terrain, it's so pretty.

Nice setup for the tower. If you're concerned about the door opening to thin air, there's always the clip-in-clip-off door panel for when you want it free-standing.

I agree about the use of the non-standard connectors, they do add a lot to the look of a structure.

Tower looks great mate. I am hoping my standard strike team pledge has enough scenery to play a decent game with.

I think two battllezones is plenty for a 2x2 board, especially if you use every thing and all of your accessory bits. You should be able to get plenty of density but not a whole lot of height.

People who got the retail pack without a bundled extra bz are the ones that will need to add other scenery and or improvise.

@paradigm I'm just gonna connect it to soomeething else at that level . Become kind of a perimeter line for a facility.

@camkierhi but your orcs surely don't like pretty things


I have a rough idea forming... I want to do a vehicle bay/hangar/garage capable of fitting my rhinos at least. Load up some tanks for free los blocking or potential objectives. Maybe destructible terrain features? . May have to do some tinkering to make rhinos fit, we'll see!

What do the connectors look like? Would it be possible to use something else? In a more robust material?

I'll drop a photo later. They're fairly precise. And I've no experience in casting an alternative. I think I read that some people were using those zippy cable ties but after seeing the clips I'm not sure that could possibly work. If I were willing to glue I could probably make blanks the shape of the clips without worrying about the pegs.. but I'd rather just order more.

The question is do I take advantage of the kickstarter survey price (which is almost apologetically low) or spend close to twice that now. I'll still have to wait probably a couple of weeks or better, think they're still playing catch-up from the KS and their January sale. Plus I'd have to pay shipping or order extra mantic goodies I don't need. Though.. the survey is probably not gonna ship for several months yet. Hmmmm. Could redeem some mantic points and have the reward shipped along. Dunno... probably only enough connectors to do half of my terrain.

The landing pad is done. My Valkyrie is like an inch too wide. I think I will adjust some of the blast shields to be flat out and it should fit such that the rear ramp deploys directly to the ladder down. Holding off on the stairs till I find a tutorial or example of what I'm supposed to do with it.

Got about half of a 2x3x1 tile building set up too. Gonna have to break into a 4th connector sprue to finish it and I've still got like half of the first three battle zones to work with. Ahh well. After this building I need to look into some barricades and other scatter, then some smaller building sections to scatter around and maybe stick on top of larger buildings.

You guys will have to look at this building and let me know what you think. Gonna experiment with doing a full and intact structure with the back side missing, with that side facing the table edge for ease of play.

This is the connector Sprue



You can see some one of the bottom connectors with two squares on it near the top of the guard tower.

There he is, I was on my phone up until now visiting with relatives so I couldn't afford the time to dig it up, so thanks Carlos

You just don't get enough straight connectors for making large flat planes, if I were just making buildings I'd run out of them a lot more evenly... but the landing pad just devoured them and still wants more later when they're plentiful.. You don't really get enough corners either, even if you use them at the optimal ratio. As tiny and hard plasticy as that sprue is, they really ought to have included two per battlezone. At the very least it should be 50% larger than it is, but really two gives you all of your options. I doubt you'd still have many left. I've refitted the landing pad to accommodate the Valkyrie, gonna try to finish my building construction and get pics up.

I have been told that you get half as many as you should and thats probably still too little.

I'm not far enough along to comment properly, but I can tell I'll be short at some point.

for permanent use building, I might have to just use the glue it method and use the connectors as help jigs

I think that's the conclusion that I'm coming to as well. Use half as many connectors (if that) to make the shape hold, but barely. Fill in around with hot glue as necessary. Mad a 1x1x1 cube which seems pretty sturdy. Then when I want to combine such pieces, I can use the left over connectors to do so for temporary per-game or per-setup basis joins. Months or years in the future, the hot glue should still be manageable if I want to tear something down and start over.

Probably will still need more connector though =/

Sorted out a passable use for the stair pieces, and implemented it to finish the first build/design for my landing pad. Also finished the first build of my 2x3x1 building, though I may pop up some connectors and add that little cube to the top..


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Starting to get whatever latest plague my daughter has gotten. May turn in early tonight so I can get up early (and feel worse anyway). Got a few plague stage 3's cleaned and prepped. I want to paint my batch of enforcers first to test something.

I've been gluing everyone to nails to paint them, but two of my enforcers were already painted in a different scheme so I had to mask off their clear acrylic bases to airbrush (and later to dip) them. Gonna see how that works, and if it goes well enough, I'll probably switch to it. There are some advantages to having the models already on their bases in terms of extra work avoided by not wrangling the nails. But I'll have to make sure the bases come out just as well.

I'm also going back and removing extraneous connectors so I can spread them out a little thinner. I won't know for sure until I do my next building (current plan is a 2x2x2 cube with a small landing pad on top, potentially considering 2x2x3 instead) if the hot glue in the seams is a viable alternative to using a proper amount of connectors. I do know that popped 14 connectors off of the top of my 2x3x1 building (broke one =/) and it didn't seem any less sound, even before hot glue. I can't decide if it would be better to hot glue the bottom (where you won't see it) or the top. If I do the top, I'll have to leave the connector slots clear so I can socket smaller buildings and accessories later on.

As soon as I get something to the point it's worth sharing, I'll do so happily. Just got a lot of irons in the fire but none of them are hot enough so to speak. AKA: boring update, soz

Well poop. I feel worse. Bit of a sore throat into sinus issues thing. Hopefully it upswings by tomorrow or I may be in for a doctor visit. It's nothing too terrible at the moment, but if its the strep throat, I'll have to go in to get it taken care of. Oh well, got a mercy baby sitting out of it and as I don't feel up to doing too much fancy hobby work (some, but not much) I've stopped by here to throw out a few pictures.

I'll also put forth that I've been a little distracted by Dreadball Xtreme. I missed out on the first dreadball, and having watched the Beasts of War Dreadball Academy 1, I'm at least a little bit intrigued. I have some more deadzone stuff I want to add in on the survey though, so we'll see what happens in the next 3 weeks.

Here are some pictures and some thoughts:

I felt more up to cleaning models than painting them yesterday, so I got started on the plague! This first batch is all from the same baggie, and contains three third generation plague models, one of which has an HMG and is a specialist. I'll use all 3 in my first plague strike team.

So, yes, there are mold lines. Some of them are kinda tall, but that just makes them more obvious to the lazy eye. Nothing on these guys was bent that I could tell and I didn't have to use any hot water. The guns that are held by two hands have a socket with the left arm, and they're fairly easy to assemble (some can be an absolute bear, fortunately these are only two pieces with the right arm and gun connected). These are obviously multi part models, though they're designed for one pose. The easiest way to alter this is with hot water bending, though this first batch was assembled as intended.


They have a lot of details to pick out, I especially like the bulging ammo pouch on the HMG guy and the row of spikes coming off the spine. A lot of people don't like these because of what I've dubbed the "supertorso", their crazy out of proportion upper body and long waist. I think it's fine, makes them look like scary mutants and not just butch dudes with a disease. I will get into the supertorso later on as I attempt to generate photographic evidence that all three humanoid generations of the plague have roughly similar proportions, and that if people really like the first gen, these third gens are closer to him than they might think. The 2nd and 1st generation plague models (I'm working on them next) have comparatively short legs, long torsos, and huge upper bodies, the advanced mutation just blends it all in a bit better. Anyway, very subjective, but I like these guys just fine They're also huge! I'll do a size comparison for you later, but they're like enforcer height!


Here's kind of a teaser/preview shot of some of my terrain and the plague. I'm waiting to finish my next 4 enforcers before I nail/base the plague models. I'm hoping that the 'glue them to their bases as soon as they're built and mask the base off before painting' method wins out, because it seems a touch more convenient. You can see a slightly converted second gen atop the building, he has one of my least favorite poses in his faction. Given that aesthetics and taste are highly subjective, it would be pretentious for me to say that I've improved upon the original pose, but I can say that I've made it more to my own liking. He's got more of a roaring at the sky look now as opposed to what I would call 'gimme a hug' or 'you ain't getting down *this* alley' stance. You can also see the back of the massive and awesome first gen. Such a cool model


And here's the big steve making a break for the parked Valkyrie on my landing pad. The pad is just a touch to short to comfortably house the valkyrie, at least with all of the shields up, so three of them have been lowered to accommodate it. Would take a hell of a pilot to stick that landing, even with VTOL! You can also see my take on the stairs, I'm not sure how else you were supposed to assemble them, but this seems to work.

So yes, still more talking that pictures. But hey, I'm sick, and at least I've brought you something We're just lucky I haven't cracked into my GoG order and started playing icewind dale 2 or something. I'll be gone for a week or three

Gonna try to finish those enforcers, but I may be running out of free time for the day.


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Ok, well mixed results with the "base-the-model-before-painting-and-use-masking-tape-to-protect-the-base" approach. There was just the tiniest halo of color around the feet of my enforcer, and with the right tools (probably those tiny finely pointed cotton swaps they sell at hobby shops, and rubbing alcohol), I can probably fix those bits. Seems like roughly as much work as doing the nail though. Another issue is that the thing I put the models onto instead of the nail doesn't have an innately spin-able component, so I'll probably have to glue nails down anyway. I think I may stick to nails for things with big feet and solid legs... and use the pre-base method for stuff with weak ankles or spindly legs. I dont think I could glue one of these plague dogs to a nail and keep the limb intact throughout the process.

SO, of course, no perfect solution was found. But at least the process does seem viable, if not outright better.

I looked at my fortification sprue. I think I want a couple more, it's a neat kit with lots of bits for up-armoring your other buildings. It's a little heavy on the defense line bits

And for putting up with wall of text... surprise fun pictures!


My assault enforcer has gotten a promotion to Sergeant (on the right). Only notable changes to the color scheme are the shoulders and the back of the head (you'll see it later). Improvement? Meh? I think the actual Deadzone Enforcer Sergeant will look cooler, but this guy will do for now and I've still got his assault blade handy in case of demotion!


A really simple not-so-glowey effect for the energy fist. He's either threatening the one that got away, or face palming here. Mostly just wanted to show off the fist, won't be magnetizing anyone else probably. Too much work/potential for lost bits.


I like this shot, even though you can tell my Paint-fu is weak (look at the canisters right around the Yndij). Now I just need to get that scenery painted and the rest of my enforcers finished. Plague are 3 minis away from my first strike team being prepped, just got to base/nail them and get to painting!

More later, now is sleepy time.

This lot is making me itch, but I have spent too much lately. Looking great.

Me too, but I've waited forever for my city fight/urban board so I had to

Nice stuff, Grim. This is inspiring me to get back on my Deadzone stuff. Been on a small hiatus, looks like I need to get back.

Yes, I be the implacable progress turtle of destruction. You may lap me, but I'll keep doing while you sleep and leave naught for you but scorched earth in my wake!

Or something. Still kind of sick so gonna go sleep now instead of saying such weird things

Yeah, makes me think of getting Deadzone myself, dose buildings!

They're nice, to be sure. I'm not sure what I ordered is going to cover as much table as I anticipated, or at least not as densely.. but they should do a pretty darn good job in any case. I had pretty high expectations and I'm not really any kind of disappointed yet (minus the low number of connectors). Getting sick kind of threw a traffic jam on my progress, and I've got some pre-work testing/licensing stuff to do this week, but I should have a nice upswing in progress before work begins again in earnest. I want to get a 2x2' table reasonably covered and have my initial plague and enforcer teams painted, just in case I get a chance to play or show it off during the season. Then we'll see at what kind of rate I can move during the busy season.


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I'd like to get some stuff together and painted, ready to play, then look into doing some conversions and non-box additions. Plasticard ramps and walkways, stuff like that. If they send me as many more accessory sprues as they're supposed to, I'll probably glue my crates, canisters, and barrels together into piles and then onto plasticard strips, for ease of placement and play. I'd like to do a little scratchbuilding to make some additions. I don't want to ruin the clean look, but generally this stuff represents a frontier world where stuff has gone bad, so hasty defenses and piles of junk shouldn't be too out of the norm.


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Another non-update. Still working out a good method to carry out my second mounting option for models with weak ankles (man.. that sounds reeeealy bad out of context doesn't it )... umm MINIATURES with wea... no wait that could still... ok so right. I'm still trying to add the nail to the bottom of the glue pots that I'll be sticking the clear acrylic bases to with blue tack. Then masking over them. For minis with particularly small feet, weak ankles, or any other reason to not glue them straight onto the nail. I just have to get the nails onto the bottom of the new mount. Epoxy just popped right off, guess the plastic was too smooth/nonporous or something. Gonna try hot glue for laughs before trying superglue last (but it's most likely to work).

Then I'm gonna build me a couple of Deadzone Dice Towers! They'll be much the same shape as my first tower, but use up fairly different components. They should still be usable as terrain, players would just be encouraged to roll on the table when the building was occupied I don't think I'll be out more than a battlezone to make two, and probably not even close to that, and it only seems fair to make one for both sides

I should have my plague mounted up on bases sometime tonight as well, leaving three minis to clean and base/nail to having the whole team ready for spray. Enforcers just need 3 guys dipped and a sniper done from bits to flat coat.

Today I built a Dice Tower, I shamelessly copied the design from someone on the containment protocols facebook group. There aren't too many ways to do it, but I definitely give them credit for using the up-armor panels as baffles to "shuffle" the dice on the way down. Any other way I could think of to do it (short of using boring plasticard) involved a boatload of cutting. They said they did theirs to where it would come apart again, but I glued mine. I had to glue the baffles/deflectors and I glued the rest to save on clips. The entire top half has no clips on the outside, all of the barriers around the top are just glued. You can use the clips to give it structure, glue, then remove the outermost clips, leaving just a few in the inside.

I'm gonna make another dice tower fortress out of the fortification battlezone bits. There aren't really enough to up-armor a bunch of buildings, I mean.. I guess there are. But I only have one batch of the fort stuff so I'd rather drop it all in one place rather than token representations. This way, both players will get a sweet dice tower for rolling (and for sniping ), but they don't have to look identical.

I've also got three enforcers that just need a flat coat and either based or unmasked for those on bases. I need to clean the enforcer sniper and three plague, and then paint those nine models (8 plague, sniper), and I'll have both of my starter strike teams completed. The plague should go pretty quick once I get things down. I may well basecoat the big guys in that coal color I'll be using for their armor plates and just go back in with flesh then red over most of that since it's exposed muscle. Maybe a pinkish color, then a reasonable amount of BftBG to help make them grisly

Oh right, pictures of the tower... Once I hit my stride with the airbrush, this scenery will be getting painted nearly as fast as it gets built, just haven't felt like using the mask too much with sniffles. That should be resolved, so any time now...


The way models interact with the terrain in the game, you can totally climb up to the top, and get into the fence (ware ye the dice!), though I'm kind of having trouble explaining the purpose of the structure fluff-wise


Dice go in the chute, tumble a couple of times, and come out the bottom into the fence. So far 90% or better of my rolls have ended clearly visible in the fenced area, and those that stray behind are still easy enough to see from a slightly skewed perspective. Nothing has gotten stuck yet, save for one enforcer who had a bit of a fall


I Can. Not. Wait. to get this stuff painted up and start taking fancy photos, maybe even touching/enhancing with photoshop/gimp. I think I'll have more fun doing that than I do painting or even playing

If I get the enforcers done later, I'll post them up. I've got a thing tomorrow, gonna have to get up a couple of hours earlier than usual... so I may or may not abort the plan in favor of sleep

I really like that Dice Tower. I need to decide what I'm doing with my MA pledge today ($300 one-click plus extra terrain or just $325 worth of terrain packs) - which will then affect what I do with DeadZone. How are you finding the game itself?

One thing's for sure, I'll be stealing your dice tower when I get my components...

S'okay, I already stole the dicetower from someone on facebook! I mean, there are only so many ways you could do it, once you got it in your head to try. But I do give them solid credit for using the struts and armor pieces to make the deflectors, I dunno how they supposedly did it without gluing (the wording was that it all still came back apart), but it's so much easier, less time consuming, and elegant that trying to hack up floor pieces.

I haven't gotten to play :( Kind of waiting until I have a painted set of terrain and two painted strike teams before I try to strong arm any friends/family into playing. Really want that A.I. deck and solo rules expansion As to your MA quandary...

I would say if you have the disposable income, get the 1-click and buy dz scenery too. The terrain is really neat. If you don't use glue, you'll want extra connectors, but I don't know that those are offered on the MA pledge (maybe you could work something out via the message system, if they ever reply ). I think if you use as many connectors as you can to make your constructions rock-solid, you probably genuinely need twice as much as they send. If you use connectors to set the pieces in place then glue, you can get away with half as many or less (probably none, honestly, but it might be more of a pain to go in and unclip connectors than it is to just leave a few in.. especially the inside corners).

If you have someone who will play MA with you, it looks really fun and I think all of the goodies would take ages to play through and add a lot of value. Most of it is also colored plastic so you wouldn't even have to feel obligated to paint it right away.

If I had to choose, I'd pick up the scenery first, though the base MA game will probably offer a fair amount of replay value for what it costs.



I haven't really tried any fancy constructs with the LZ connectors (150/130 degrees or something?), but I'm finding that I don't care for the landing pad sprue as much as I thought. I mean... one is great, two.. isn't bad. Three though? Its just extra tiles at that point, and they're in kind of funny shapes. Now... when you combine it with the new sprue they made available on survey 2... you can probably make some hexagonal or octagonal buildings. That is nice.. though they won't really fit properly into the cube structure of the game mat so I question the validity

The fortification sprue is just more tiles, with thicker armor, and instead of the triangle pieces and something or another, you get a bunch of up-armor panels, and corner/wall posts to make normal structures look like solid bunkers, it's pretty neat. Just need to figure out what to do with all of those giant laser cannons...

I still can't decide what else to order, if I'm reading my shipping info right they didn't send me 13 total accessory sprues, which would be 26 frames. If they send that many, it would be more than I think I ordered, but it could be because they added accessory sprues to all core world battlezones due to the way the sell them retail? Not sure. Also not sure what to do about my missing items. Until they get back to me on the kickstarter page, if they do, I've gotten emails about it but they seem like the bulk/generic kind. I mean if they want to send me my entire order again I suppose I wouldn't complain , but it's all left me confused as to if I need to contact them again or not. Gonna give it a bit, and then I'll go in again.

I think as far as extra battlezones go I would mostly just want a couple of fortification BZs for making a fortified quarter possible, and the new sprue set, for making wonky stuff. Then just some selection of the antenocitis stuff to round out terrain. I just can't decide if I want to get one of each via two bundles, or if I only like a couple of them, and if I'd want four with one or more duplicates or not. Most of the sets have somewhere between 50-70% things I like and then 30-50% things I'm not sold on. Medicenter is nice, but I could only see needing one set of beds (but the screens would work anywhere). I also ordered all of that battle systems stuff and though it's card and not pretty resin, it all pretty much duplicates the accessory sprue/antenocitis stuff. Hard to say...


I made another dice tower. I started taking pictures but halfway up I decided to finish it while my phone was charging in the baby's room, didn't want to disturb her sleep

I think I'm gonna start in on some modular stackable buliding bits next, build your own high rise kind of thing. I've been using a decent amount of hotglue and the connectors are going way way further. I'll still order some more, but will probably wait for the survey.

Probably not gonna make progress tonight, need a day off after all day seminars/testing the last two days. At least now I'm certified to spray pesticides on stuff. Take that, pests!

Ok, I'll tried a bunch of text for the last time, how 'bout a bunch of pictures this time instead? Mostly been playing with the scenery tiles so far. I do have five enforcers finished, still need to get the last 4 models for my initial strike teams done... but been playing with buildings First the dice tower:


Almost identical to the first one, I think this tower has one more windowed wall and is made from the fortification sprue wall tiles. It also has defense line bits up top instead of the standard barricade/partial wall bits the initial tower had. Seems to work just as well, and now both players get to have one The way these take up space on the table (2.5 cubes across), I almost wonder if it wouldn't be a good idea to have them set with their fences going out of bounds, so just a tower on a board edge. I guess low LoS blocking terrain is useful too though.

For the building, each vertical section is a separate piece, most of them are held together with gravity and 3 or so strategically placed corner clips to keep them from sliding off of each other. I've used a 3x2, 2x2, 1x1, and towards the end I added the newest 2x1 addition to make it 4 total cubes (and 12 inches) high. I realize now that I didn't take any shots of the back, the larger buildings don't have tiles on their backs, they're meant to be aligned with the board edge, to allow easy access to the models moving around inside the building. The deeper buildings may require a little pusher tool to get optimal placement (there are supports in place so there are no gaps larger than 3", kind of hard to get your whole hand in there to move things just so). The 2x2, 2x1, and 1x1 are all secured with internal corner clips and hot glue. I don't think they have any straight clips, if they do it would be safe to remove them. Mostly I'll be using corner clips and glue to hold my discrete units together, and straight clips to hold additional parts on where necessary. The little platform at the 3H layer is just dry clipped on and could be removed at any time. The buildings are ready to be painted, most of the loose crates and barrels still need cleaned first.


Depending on what I figure out for my marines, I may steal a rhino or two and turn them into permanent terrain bits for use like this one. Do a bit more battle damage and some weathering, representative of the vehicles used by the planet's fallen defense forces.


If you squint into the darkness of the door (or blow up the image a bit, they up size pretty well), you can actually see the barricade on the far side of the building a cube away, there's no back to the building. The idea is to suggest/simulate a larger building that's cut off by the play area and out of the mission boundaries, also leaves off some tiles and lets you get at the insides of the building for ease of use.


I really, really like all of the fun configurations you can come up with. I was just dry stacking my subunits and got it in my head to try some stuff with ramps and walkways, then this platform was born and I got around to taking all of these pictures New fusion gun enforcer about to jump off the roof.


I like this angle, shows off the height a bit. We're not at dizzying, vertigo inducing, fear of shattering models from fall damage heights yet... but they're not insignificantly elevated


This poor Yndij used his agility to get a climb action has only half his turn (normally takes both moves), too bad he's unlikely to hurt the defender through his shield even with a clear shot bonus, and guess what will happen when that defender blasts the Yndij right back off the roof!


Here's a decent view of one of the two strike/rifle Enforcers and one of the plague 3rd gens. The barrels and canisters really help fill in edges when you can't or don't want to use another rail/barrier. There's technically no reasonable way out to this platform, the enforcer can reach it with his jump pack and you can move standard sized models through the X wall pieces, but what purpose did this layout serve before the plague came? Perhaps it was a skyway to another building that has since collapsed? We may never know


Wider shot to show off how much fun we're having, and it's only a buliding and a tower, just wait till I've got the whole 2x2 area covered and interconnected like this Oh, I see. The original design did allow walking access to the platform, it was just removed when I added the 2x1 to go 5 high


This kind of vaguely reminds me of one of those G.I. Joe play sets where you only have the outside face, and the inside, and they'd always show a bunch of figures running around using the built in slides/ladders/traps. Dunno why, just a nice wide angle shot to show all the action. Looks like I have two clips to pull from my 2x2 buliding, and the bottom building can free up a bunch if I glue it from the inside.


Lots of fun places to hide and fight around this building, gonna be so much fun to play.


I like how visible models can sometimes be if you squint through windows and doors. Whoever is behind the camera has a nice shot at the sgt's back!

So yeah, gotta get some of these painted I will, the airbrush will make it go pretty quick once I get in the zone. For now, I've switched to Icewind Dale 2 and have been having fun making a themed party, which I shall now go lead on a merry romp through the northlands!

More later, happy hobbies!

Not much today yet worth showing. I finally organized all of my tiles into a box. Just did a rough custom job since I couldn't find any nice plastic tote/tackle box solutions. I still need to sort and organize my tiles, but after that's done I'll be able to tell how many of each I have at a glance, kind of like a file folder with tabs, just with really thick pieces of paper. A rough count of my tiles says I have about twice as many left as I've already used (counting both dice towers, the landing pad, that first tower, and the 4 modular structures going for 1x1 to 3x2). If I was only covering at single height with the occasional tower.. I could *probably* squeeze out a 6x4 city table. I guess with city tables the point is to have more height and clutter, and I think that I could do a lot more height/walkways at the 4x4 range.

I think my dreams of a "doom" cube, or a 2x2x2' gaming area are probably a bit crazy. I've stacked these pretty comfortable up to five levels (counting the roof of the 1x1 when it was on top of the 2x2 in a couple of the prior pictures), but it would take a huge amount of tiles to get that high. We'll see. I'm not writing it off yet or anything, but it wouldn't leave me a lot to work with for other boards. I realize having anything over a 2 cube (6 inch) high building is a bit of a luxury and not necessary to play the game, but I do like it

Remembering that I have two ruined battlzones coming, and even some mars attacks terrain (whatever the deal came with, either one battle zone, or half of one, or maybe one and a half... no more than two at least), I think I could pull off a fairly dense 4x4 urban table pretty well. If I were designing it for 40k I may even be able to stretch it a little bit by adding roadways that are mostly bare or with debris piles. I think a board full of chunky variable height buildings will be pretty solid for Infinity games as well, and if I really want to get stupid in a 2x2 single mat, I should be able to. I'm stretched even thinner than I had thought from the winter layoff, so I'm looking for cuts to make in my DZ second survey (payment won't be due till june, I think, but it's a matter of total expenditures at this point more than what I can do at a time). I still plan to get at least one battlezone's worth of the new wonky shapes sprues, and the zombies and all of that. Wondering about the fancy resin bundles, though I did technically receive funds for those by way of birthday

Also have to realize that I can make my own terrain and additions to this stuff, I'm not amazing but I think I can up my plasticard game enough for my scratchbuilt stuff to not look too bad. Roofs, junk/detritus/rubble piles, and probably stuff like walkways should all be pretty doable which leaves me to use my tiles for structural stuff like walls and the barricades on the top of buildings for cover, rather than sprinkled all over the ground.

As recompense for reading all of that (or having to scroll past ), I give you my first five Enforcers posing in front of my latest terrain feature, the fortifications gate bits:


The gate comes off of the half-tiles but those are all glued together for stability. You can drive a space marine rhino under it and the Big Steve just barely fits without scraping his missiles. The enforcers on the right and left are genuine strike/rifle enforcers (standard guys), the center is a Sergeant with converted energy gauntlet, to his left is my first stab at a fusion gun conversion, and the guy with a shield is a defender conversion.

I think a "proper" city board as you say, with all the high rises, walkways and interconnections would be awesome for skirmish gaming. I reckon 4'x4' is probably good enough for that.
As you say with 40K being what it is these days, you'd need some pretty big streets and so on to make it work for that game, I reckon. (I've always wanted a big overpass, possibly partially ruined. But I have my sights on a different project at the moment).

Enforcers are looking good!

With regard to terrain, you could try making some stuff out of foam core (which is pretty cheap - I got a box of offcuts - perfect size for miniature buildings - from an art supply store years ago for either free or next to nothing) and then using both plasticard and DeadZone terrain pieces to detail them up - rather then needing to build the entire buildings out of the DZ sprues.

You have totally got me in the mood for some terrain now. It looks so good.

The enforcer squad there look amazing together. Nice work on the conversions.

Terrain looks great GrimDork! Really interesting builds that I haven't seen before. I'll be checking in on this later!

Thanks guys

I've got the rest of my terrain cut out and organized, though I should probably get my strike teams moved along. I think I've got plenty of terrain for a standard dz game so I should now turn to painting it also. I think Icewind Dale 2 is slowing up my airbrush progress with its lovely music, third edition rules, and so on...

@azazelx I have a bad record at making viable terrain out of foam core but I may give it another try sometime. Its a goods resource we just don't tend to get along

All considered, may make some more buildings today... kind of easier to do while watching the little one, and a bit less frustrating than cleaning restic.

You have been busy with that terrain, and I'm looking forward to painted pics. Starting playing with a setup like that should be awesome enough to rope anyone into the game!

^I should think so, I'm really eager to get the solo/ai deck so I can try some stuff out myself

I think I'm getting somewhere between 2.5-3 sets of similar scenery from mars attacks too. Whatever comes in the box, plus the equivalent of a battlezone's worth of the same ruined redbrick scenery, and then one battlezones worth of the non-ruined redbrick scenery. And two more battlezones left from my initial DZ order coming in the second wave.

Was gonna prime but the tiny master has awoken, erp!

I absolutely LOVE the height of the battle field. I feel all too often we play our games on the ground floor and it gets a little one dimensional.

Having so many levels and angles is just amazing and I am so, so jealous.

I'm jealous of your army project, you're making solid progress, I'll never get as many done as you've got planned. I am glad to finally have a city board I've wanted one since the first codex:city fight came out and I've never gotten past a false start. Not this time, 4x4 at minimum fully floored and painted mark my words. Thankfully I can has handy rubber mats for the board texture.


Making progress on the minis front too, just gotta glue the sniper and get him and the last plague models mounted and it'll be base coat time. Hopefully I'll base coat before I start in on IWD2... have a themed party that's just coming in to its first wind and its getting more fun to play

I absolutely love what you are doing with that terrain <3 it looks so freakin' good, I'm being converted. I never gave any real thought to terrain creation or get some of those lovely lazer cut stuff we can buy, but that terrain is converting me.

The idea of 40k in that environment is getting so seductive.

I'm considering picking up the new killteam PDF and making some lists and forces for that so I doing have a bunch of useless marines laying around... I'm not super familiar with 6th ed but if kill team would work on my dz/infinity layout... I would be not insignificantly enthused.

For 40k if there is no current city codex, it might work with some wider spaces for vehicles at street level. Dense los blocking terrain seems to favor deathstars but what can you do.


Speaking of 40k... the local-ish game store has at least one tournament a month it seems like. If not monthly, often enough.. I kind of want to get a 40k list put together that's reasonably fun to paint but might stand half a chance. Probably marines, I've got almost 1+ of everything but a legitimate thunder fire and vindicator. I'm game for official chapters, supplements that the store allows, diy, codex marines, dark angels, space wolves, chaos but not buying more fliers.. no gk or ba. I'd prefer a lower model count but only if it were playable..
Have you guys got any suggestions? May open a poll or other thread in the 40k general/tactics/somewhere. Gotta call the store and see what they do about counts as and so on, don't wanna work something out only to find out its barred lol.

Sounds good. I guess first step is to call the store and find out what their parameters are - both what they allows and the points - and if they require anything specific like Wolves or Angels to be painted in whatever they deem appropriate colours, etc.

Yeah, it's a gamestore I went to over 10 years ago, though then it was called the Medieval Starship (best name ever ), now it's part of some kind of mini-chain called Fantasy Books (and Games, for this particular location). I'm assuming the rule of cool is in effect, I'm pretty sure the newsletter mentioning the tournament said something to the effect of escalation being legal and while I'm a bit behind on the creep/fw debate/legality of not-codex books, that probably means just about everything goes as far as official. Will have to see if the TO/players are purists or if the RoC is in solid effect. I'd like to potentially drag along my corporation marines as guardsmen (have a Valkyrie that just needs paint and a weapons refit), if they're ok with it. Also I want to verify no problems with my 1.5mm thick clear rounds... shouldn't be an issue but I don't want someone throwing a fit only to find out I'd be branded MFA lol.

Mostly I want to generate a fun list to paint, that can also play games. My lack of experience and general lack of think-ahead-edness (haven't played in a loooong time, but I'm pretty sure I'm bad at chess) will likely ensure I never pull down a win overall, but even pushing a close game or winning 1-2 out of 3 would be nice. And it seems like with 40k winning starts (and can stop) with the list.

I kind of just want to go crazy with guitar string, wire, greenstuff, and hot glue... make some crazy technurgle army... could cannibalize a lot of my Sedition Wars stuff since I won't likely play it over deadzone (and people seem to think it sucks/is broken) to really 'flesh' it out But... I could just paint up a bunch of green/grey/yellow/black space marines and have fun throwing dice either way so I'll have to give them a call soon and see what's what. Any space wolves are getting the sexy dark grey alt scheme though, I'm not painting powder blue for anything.

Without wishing to cause offense- the dice tower seems like a terrible waste of DZ scenery tiles lol.

Ehh, saves me from buying a tower (do get kinda sick of dice going all over), and they're totally viable terrain. I may add some half tiles either halfway up or at the top to provide some additional playable surface, and they'll most likely be attached to other terrain via walkways. The only parts I would agree are underutilized are the armor panels but they were the most elegant solution for deflectors and really only cosmetic if used as intended.

But no offence taken, I don't not see your point

I had to lower my rather tall 4 storey watch tower as I'd run out of specific tiles to make my comms bunker. Cost me though- 8 clips died during disassembly lol.

Yeah, it's so much easier to break clips taking things apart than it is assembling. I don't use nearly as many hot-gluing structures, but I'm still gonna nab a bunch for when I want to take things apart. You can't build buildings quickly out of this stuff from raw tiles, but you can make bigger buildings out of small ones in seconds if you set them up right, it only takes 2-3 strategically placed corner clips to secure buildings to a "good enough for gaming" level of temporary durability.

The worst thing is when you break off a clip and those slots have a clip on the other side, *especially when the remaining clip (that you have to remove to get at the broken stud) is a corner clip on the inside angle of a corner, ESPECIALLY when there's hot glue involved making further disassembly difficult. I haven't run into this yet, but I mildly fear it :p

I'll put up some more shots of those same buildings broken down and spread out to cover a 2x2' board, sans landing pad and one of the towers (with a space marine rhino filling in for ground cover). I'm going to leave a lot of tiles (mostly half tiles, but several full as well) unused in actual construction so I can use them as temporary ramp/walkway/platforms between buildings. I think this stuff looks so much better when it's got a lot of interconnected parts.




Needs rails/barricades on the walls, and a smattering of barrels/canisters/crates and so on, but I think you could play a solid game of deadzone here, and all reducible to 1h structures, you could transport it pretty easily.

Here's what I've got left to work with, finally organized:

Marvel at my custom organizer and it's brilliant engineering! It doesn't seem like a lot condensed like this, but I think there are still 120-140 tiles, and there are a couple boxes of misc parts not shown.

Got the sniper and half of the plague sprayed last night. I underestimated how long it would take to wrap the clear bases in tape and didn't get them all finished before I needed to sleep. Perhaps today!

That whole getting sick thing threw off my painting, haven't gotten back to it yet and I've been fine for a good while. Mostly I've been putting the DZ scenery together. I'm aiming for a bunch of modular chunks of 1x1, 1x2, 2x2, 2x3, etc sized building components that I can clip together to create the battlefield. Today's offering is more of the same, the first batch includes tiles stacked up to an 8 cube high tower. When I was waiting for this stuff I had a vision of a very complicated and tall board involving a 2x2x2' cube of terrain. I'm a little afraid right now that if such a structure weren't completely glued and reinforced it would be a bit dangerous to itself and the models battling over it. I think heights up to 4-5 cubes up (12-15") should be significantly impressive and fun to play with, and the terrain will stretch further. The other batch of photos includes some of my newer structures.




This is a bit crooked in places, I didn't fully clip all of the connectors in since I just wanted to assemble it to the height, take pictures, and tear it back down again. I would need more terrain with supporting walkways and so on before I would try to have something this tall on a board I intended to use for gaming.










I had to let my moderator, dwarfs, and corporation guys out to play, they were all getting bored. Zombies next time, they've been stuffed away for too long! This stuff is too fun to play with, I could sit around all day rearranging the structures I already have just to take pictures

My current quandary is whether or not to to get a few more infinity models, or put in a sweet spot pledge for Mantic's Dreadball Xtreme. The DBX kickstarter would cost a bit more of my own funding (parsing out some birthday funds), but it includes a game system and a bucketful of models. The Infinity models would be more fun to paint for sure, but I might actually be able to get my sister and her boyfriend to play DBX... Not to mention all of the awesome Deadzone friendly models.. nothing is listed as a crossover at the moment, but you could easily mod the poses, slap a gun in somebody's hand, and photoshop/paintbrush up a new unit card for them, even just copying an existing unit. The DBX stuff is also colored plastic so I wouldn't be turbo-obligated to paint it right away either. I'm thinking about it... the Gekko's Corvus Belli just put out are amazing, as is the Iguana, and a Corregedor starter box would love to pal around with either...and be sooo much fun to paint. I've still got 9 nomads left to paint though.

Well, anyway, I just thought I'd drop some more fun building pictures and move on. Diablo 3 is threatening to actually be fun again so I'm gonna give it a shot for a bit.

I can sympathize with the whole getting sick thing. My Wife has been off work for a week now and I am starting to feel the dreaded hallmarks of the same symptoms that have knocked her down, as such my life seems to be put on hold.

Although you seem to still be able to put out the eye candy to the adoring fans. So jealous right now. I would vote for the Infinity models, I think Covus Belli do some absolutely amazing models.

Yeah my next infinity purchases/gifts would be along the following lines:

So much fun to paint packed into even one or two of those kits.

But the DBX gives me a whole new game to play and there may even be interest in playing it =/ There are some neat models in there too though I dunno how the board game plastic will turn out. The mars attacks stuff seems to look pretty good though. I do have about 10 infinity models to work through as well and i paint them sloowly compared to my other guys. If I didn't have any I'd be more inclined towards getting some.

We'll see, got almost 1 0 days to figure it out

Geez, you look like you're having a ball with the scenery. I wish I were that motivated to make buildings. I'm a little tempted to steal your dice tower idea though. That could be really useful.

Totally ganked it from somebody on the facebook group. The core design would be hard to do any other way, but the armor plate dice deflectors mounted on the 90 degree strut connector bits was inspired and so much easier than using cut down wall tiles and I can't take any credit for that bit at all

I'll post more pictures later or tomorrow or something, but I'm really starting to see the value in the landing pad battlezones, once you're done making proper landing pads that stand alone or come off of buildings (got a large and medium/small already) you can use the extra tiles for ceilings or walls, or even wide walkways, and any extra support post thingies work really well under your walkways to hold them up and add extra LoS blocking terrain under the walkway as well. You should only get a clear shot in Deadzone if you outmaneuver your opponent with a move card and or agility, not because the board is too lacking in los-blocking bits and pieces

I think with a generous covering of railings and scatter terrain I should have enough to cover two 2x2' boards adequately now. I still have a bunch of tiles. I think I should be able to cover a 4x4' area pretty decently, but the height will only be from point to point, not foot-high terrain evenly spaced throughout the 4x4' area. I think I could give a decent infinity board a run for it's money, though I'm not sure I could precisely duplicate the 9-ish 3 story buildings in a grid style they seem to suggest. Would have more uneven height, but lots of walkways instead.

I have a bunch of plasticard and old computer parts too though, and I've been itching to use it all. I know that hard drive case has been cropping up in some of my pictures and it's almost just the same size as a 2x2x1 cube buliding. Just need to dress it up a bit to make it blend with the other scenery, perhaps in an 'old quarter' or 'new construction' portion of a given board along with other similar pieces.

More from me on this later, for now I fully intend to see if I like the changes to diablo 3. I'm not one to stay stuck in the past and lament how it isn't diablo 2, I'll give it a fair chance to impress me on it's own. He said, as he continued to generate party ideas for old-school D&D rpgs instead of looking out for new ones

That super tall tower makes me nervous. I can just imagine it tumbling down. You are a braver man than I, sir.

My gaming group and I are about to start playing some 40k kill team scenarios, and I can't wait to use the deadzone terrain for that. I might even try your 7 story tower of doooooom!

The more I think about it, the more realize super tall towers are impractical lol. Large complicated buildings with a fair amount of height are still snazzy though.

 GrimDork wrote:
The more I think about it, the more realize super tall towers are impractical lol. Large complicated buildings with a fair amount of height are still snazzy though.

Yeah I learnt that myself. 2-3 storey size is as high as I'll go. Gets really expensive in tiles (and clips). Good luck dismantling it lol

Oh it's long since down to more reasonable heights, was only sitting in place with a couple of clips per building, mostly why it was so rickety.

'whatever you do, Yndij, don't look down...'

It may be dangerously impractical, but it does look cool. For gaming purposes, I think anything up to 4-5 stories should be fine so long as you have plenty of access to the upper levels.

^yeah I'll be aiming for 4-5 high on the outside. Gotta make sure I leave access for silly non-enforcers too.

Haha, I've just thought of a game where the enforcers fly up to the top of a 4+ story building while the Plague just mill around on the floor getting blasted. Maximum trolling value.

 Paradigm wrote:
Haha, I've just thought of a game where the enforcers fly up to the top of a 4+ story building while the Plague just mill around on the floor getting blasted. Maximum trolling value.

At least until the Plague Teraton teleports behind said Enforcers lol.

That's possible, I haven't looked into how jump packs work with the climb ability, as in can they climb two spaces without a wall or not... but teleport is a direct shunt of two spaces so anything they can do he can do, wonder if 4 enforcers supporting would have a chance in melee against one of those... I guess the next best thing to do would be to get them out on a bridge that high up, then the teraton's size means he can't follow onto the half tiles... and it'll be up to the boomstick plague to get a grenade to land on the walkway then Watch 'em all fall down then muahaha!

 GrimDork wrote:
That's possible, I haven't looked into how jump packs work with the climb ability, as in can they climb two spaces without a wall or not... but teleport is a direct shunt of two spaces so anything they can do he can do, wonder if 4 enforcers supporting would have a chance in melee against one of those... I guess the next best thing to do would be to get them out on a bridge that high up, then the teraton's size means he can't follow onto the half tiles... and it'll be up to the boomstick plague to get a grenade to land on the walkway then Watch 'em all fall down then muahaha!

Would the mortar team be able to hit someone at that height?

I haven't looked into them but surely? The grenade launcher is something like 3-6 range too I think, doubling that would easily reach that far, but hitting may be less than guaranteed.

Shame there aren't rules for knocking down the buildings. Imagine the terror that could cause with some of those huge buildings and towers.

Bwahaha. That would be amusing.

Don't know why I have never visited this blog before Grim, but it did mean that I had 24 pages of awesome sauce to get through. Loving the Deadzone work, you Sir are an inspiration.

Thanks . I try to keep moving forward, ever so much on which to work.

I've missed a lot oof blogs that were staring me in the face and then went dur.. how I do that dur...there are some real gems here on dakka that I've failed to notice for months. I wouldn't rate myself among those either.. It is really easy to overlook a little link at the end of a post. Maybe I need a flashy banner in my sig.

Today I'm working on another building, a fortified 2x2, and hopefully getting some paint on those plague.

Totally forgot to take shots of the fortified 2x2, it's pretty substantial though. I managed to lose one of the small seals inside my airbrush and now I've got air bubbling up into the cup. You can still spray water like nothing is wrong but the paint bubbles up like from a straw in chocolate milk... too insubstantial to blow out a smooth spray. Will have to see about replacing it, I think Amazon is out.. they have parts but I don't think they've got this one. I could probably grab something generic, it's just a little plastic ring, but it's super tiny and would have to be just right. I'm gonna see if either of my previous brushes has a comparable part (unlikely as they were Iwata knockoffs), and try to cheat with some pipe thread tape stragetically placed... but I think i'll just have to find a good way of ordering the part. I hope I don't have to order the whole head, the gun has a really high theoretical value of $400 something. They seem to be on amazon permanently for 70-90 so the MSRP is a joke, however, it tends to drive up the prices for replacements and spares.

^TLDR: Airbrush broke, painting will be slowed down.

I've got my 8 plague and enforcer left to finish, so there's that at least.

I cleaned out the garage today, I was just in there a little bit ago and noticed the sun hits the garage door really hard this time of day and it was diffusing the light pretty well. Kind of like a light box. I took some pictures to try it out, I think I may do some more shooting in there as the sun's going down, these turned out pretty alright.






Could be worse, yeah?

So I'll be trying to work on those plague later tonight, possibly reorganize my hobby room, been meaning to do that for awhile.

I've been digging around in my previous 'found items terrain' pile, I think I may start working on some of that on the side. I got a lot of Deadzone scenery, but I know it probably won't go quite as far as I'd like it to go, so I'm going to start working this stuff in here and there before I run out of tiles altogether. I've still got at least two more battlezones already paid for coming in the second survey, and may order a handful more, not to mention my mars attacks scenery... But I want a really super cram-packed board. I'll use the found items stuff in a section meant to represent an old or abandoned section of the city, made of local materials either before the colonists arrived with their habtainers (deadzone scenery is basically cargo containers that are designed to break down and be repurposed into buildings for colonists/workers) or by the colonists as they expanded beyond the limits of their supply chain.

Looks like I'm going to re purpose some of my second survey funds to pay for Dreadball Xtreme too. It looks like it might be a fun game, and there are so many models in it that would make lovely additions to my horde of painted minis, and crossover into deadzone fairly easily. I mean half of the models in it are probably going to be used to swell my rebs ranks

More from me later, I may not be painting the buildings for awhile but I'll hit them hard when I start up again.

It looks like Nature provided you with a pretty nice lightbox. Lucky find

Yeah I could do worse. Plus its a comparatively huge area so it should work for terrain shots.

Tried dipping, cant say was a fan of the results. Was using Dark Tone though so that may be part of it.

The enforcer and the infinity models are great. Were they the results of dipping?

Everything from the corporation zombies forward has been dipped. Those were a brown tone, dwarfs are mahogany and everything else is Tudor which is kind of like a dirty black. What didnt you like about your dipping attempt? I wouldn't say is much of a skill, but it is possible to mess things up if you don't siphon the extra quick enough, and you really wanna flat/matte/dull coat it too.

I think it just filled in a little to much of the detail.

I cleaned up best I could as quickly as I could.

I dont have the advantage of power tools to get the excess off which may be a factor.

The test model was a model I wasn't a huge fan of either which may certainly be a factor.

Will post a picture up on my blog once based. (Probably tomorrow.)

Dint have to use s drill grab it with pliers and swing it like you mean it, that was my first approach. Little rolled up bits of paper towel or napkin and q-tips (those are s thing everywhere right?) especially help to clean it out quickly. Then you kind of need to babysit it for up to five minutes to correct for any stain pooling after you clean it initially.

In other news, finally ordered my Teflon washer for the Sotar so hopefully that comes quick and I can get terrain painted. Been eyeing those plague too but work may keep me too tired. We'll see.

The infinity guy with the Enforcer up there came out really well. Especially nice work on the armour glow. I'm also enjoying seeing what you do with the buildings. One day when my MA ones arrive, I'll be able to have a good play with them, with the benefit of having watched you guys put stuff together.

And since I'm only gluing sub-units together, once you make something really cool, I'll be able to break my stuff down and then copy you back

I used nothing behind those guys, no additional lights, and it gets that way basically every day around 4-5... or well any time after noon and before sundown it should be fairly viable really, as soon as the sun hits that side of the house. The garage door acts like a giant diffuser for the light, should make taking larger scale imaged of terrain work out better.

I'm probably going to move my airbrushing set-up to the garage as well, as soon as the weather gets to where it's saying consistently warm. Then I'll be able to charge up the tank regardless of napping toddler and spray to my hearts content with a box fan blowing sucking the atomized paint away from me and blowing it out the open garage door.

Growing Terrain collection
I think my terrain collection is going to be steadily growing all year long lol. I've got 2 more battlezones already paid for that should come in with the second survey, I think I'll go ahead and add one of the battlezone sized extra scenery sprue they funded with survey monies, but that's it. I want another fortification zone, but I'll wait till those hit retail, its maybe a six dollar difference (as long as I pick it up or combine shipping somewhere) and I probably don't *really* need it.

Then I've got Battle systems coming in roughly a month from now. I ordered the stronghold which is for a 2x2' area but it will probably stretch a bit more than that with the extras I ordered. It can either be assembled as a full isolated interior or as discrete buildings with a viable exterior thanks to an add-on. I'm not sure if the paper terrain will blend or clash with the deadzone and scratchbuilt stuff, but I got a lot of it so hopefully it works out. Lots of crates, tables, cyro/specimen tanks, screens and computers, chairs, large standalone items like turbines, etc.

Mars attacks will bring in something like 2-3 more battlezones worth of scenery as well, sometime in august if things go as planned.

And then around November/December I've got two scifi expansion packs coming from Reaper Bones which means two large shipping containers, two reasonably sized dumpsters and weapon locker/crates, two not-tardises woot, a couple of 'starship generators' and computer terminals which might act as objectives or at least additional dressing, two jersey barriers, and 6 dragons teeth concrete looking thingies, and a couple of doors for giggles. Plus a bunch of aliens I plan to convert to work in deadzone

Plus anything I come up with from scratch. Mantic also got back to me about my missing items (great call in hassling them through the DBX comments, finally got around to it there ) and they should be coming at some point. The rebs were marked to show up in the second survey so I dunno if that's still a thing and if they'll send them all second survey or if they'll send them out intermittently like other peoples' missing parts. I'd be happy to get them sooner, and all of those accessory sprues should help bulk out my table.

Moving forward
Hopefully I adapt to work quickly and get back on the painting train. I should have my airbrush back in commission after a week or so (hopefully) and I really want to hit the terrain heavily and get a board ready to rumble. I've only just started my plague strike team but I think 2-4 hours of work, one to four concentrated painting sessions with a little time for dipping and sealing, and they'll be good and done. I'm going to do the marauders next and I'm really excited to be working on those, think I'm gonna try a red/brown skin-tone. I want them to look like they take themselves very seriously, probably dark shiny black garments with crisp white/grey edge highlights, potentially gold or silver trim where viable, especially on the captain. Ripper suits will be painted shiny and serviceable as well. Might have to go with a light red (more towards orange than pink) slash tan skin tone (but nothing too human).

Upcoming potential projects
I've got some side project ideas cooking too, I want to knock out some more sedition wars minis to use as counts-as rebs just because I can and a lot of the unit types fit. Private security force maybe. I also still want to try some re-posing some space marines to get a tad more height, and some experiments in leaving off their shoulder pads and backpacks (probably add an aftermarket rucksack or smaller power generator etc, but not those huge power plant packs) and trying out some different heads. Get them to look more like starcraft marines with hasslefree guns instead of bolters, and something along the lines of catachan heads. May stick with marine helmets too but I think those heads, or some other similar theme, would really bring home the merc angle. Then maybe I'd repurpose some of my old GW goblin wolf cav wolves as counts-as mawbeasts, trained wolves used for sniffing out objectives and for attack purposes. These would probably be counts-as marauders.

Anyway lots of typing no pictures, I'll fix that as I get moving again. I think I'm going to take some time arranging my terrain into suitable layouts for each of the five location assault nexus psi campaign scenarios and take pictures before tearing them back down. Well ok, the dreadball scenario too, and if either of the ambush scenarios has a special setup.

More later, thanks for watching, happy hobbies!

Ok I guess it's only been three days, was starting to think I hadn't updated for a week. Still nothing to show for it :p

DBX finished, went in for their sweet spot and will probably add some extras later. Sounds fun, and i'll probably convert at least half of it to be more deadzone friendly Let's see how about a list of what I've done and then when anything is picture worthy I'll be back with plenty.

Stage 3 plague dunked, just needs sealed.

Airbrush part in, need to test if it works right after the new part.

Started trimming marauders but nothing put together yet.

Still building more buildings. I have several small/medium left to put together... but the pile is definitely starting to dwindle. Made another 2 high tower with a platform at the top level, so I've got two of those now, meant to be attached to buildings generally. I made a 3x1 to either stand alone along the board edge or combine with other buildings. A few new walk-way structures as well. Probably going to make maybe one more tower (lot of X frames left) and then the rest buildings between 1x1-2x2. I should have plenty to cover several 2x2' boards or to really just pile it high on one.

I ordered some bits. I now have an Eisenkern stormtrooper accessory kit (load of arms, grenades, pouches, pistols, knives, hands, etc... all for $15something most places). I also hit up a different eBay seller for some hasslefree bits. Probably 12-15 scifi guns of various types. Ostensibly these are intended for the DBX models to further weaponize them and make them look cooler/more deadzone friendly. I may use them for some other pet projects though. If I have anything left when reaper bones comes in I may weaponize some fantasy minis and bring them into the future

Gotta work tomorrow but if I can get this kid to sleep early enough I'll try to get to work on some terrain and show it off. At the very least I should get that 3rd gen done so I can get some feedback.

Actual substance to come, happy hobbies.

It certainly sounds like you will have one heck of a board to play on.

If I could just find someone to play! At least deadzone has solo rules coming out. Once I get this stuff painted I'll probably just sit around arranging it to take pictures over and over. Maybe do some battle reports... maybe make s comic strip out of minis but I'm not much of a writer.

Ok guys, sorry I've been a bit slow with the updates. Work is starting to pick up so I've had a bit less time. Rather than spring for a camera immediately, I've instead obtained a portable computing solution to help me get some stuff done whilst also watching the toddler without allowing her to destroy my hobby room

Been trying to figure that thing out, windows 8 is... different.

I got my missing deadzone pieces in, even the rebs booster which sounded like they were gonna send that with the second shipment, so that's cool. Just more wood on the pile at this point, so to speak. I also got in my noble knight games package of hasslefree bits. Not sure if nkg will become an ebay seller I check often or not, good service on this order but their selection was a bit divergent from my usual ordering habits. The Eisenkern bits are supposed to show up tomorrow. I should be able to judge future hasslefree orders based on the stuff I currently have. A few pieces are kind of chunky and probably meant for their space halfling/dwarf guys. I did manage to successfully implement one of the guns already though, pic to follow.

I got my airbrush part in. Still getting some bubbles. Not pleased. Not sure if the washer is not properly engineered, the wrong part, or if something else is wrong. Airbrushes are very precise, finicky tools and while this brush has been very good to me so far, it's nature is finally starting to show. Maybe some pipe thread tape in conjunction with the washer. Maybe the back flow is slow enough it won't bubble up my paint as bad and I can still get a steady spray... we'll see. Kind of afraid to try since it's going to take some time and i hate wasting time unsuccessfully trying to fix my stinky airbrushes...

Anyway... pictures!


Pretty standard Marauder Rainmaker ripper suit. I tried to angle the head and H.E.W. beamer to look vaguely like he was aiming at... anything, rather than just going hey y'all iz can haz gunnez! Only moderate success. Should be a blast in game. I'm thinking of doing black armor with sharp stark edge highlights, really crisp and professional, these guys are a pro merc outfit.


Here's Anne Marie Helder or whatever she's called, the Dreadball void siren MVP, next to the helfather. What a tall friggen dwarf! She's almost as tall as a normal corporation marine so that dwarf is massive. He's got leg extensions, only an evil dwarf would heighten. I'm gonna the one on the left Helga though. Helga is also a merc, she's got a plasma rifle (hasslefree) and a modified wristblade (dark angel accessory) to go along with armor which is based on a modified dreadball suit. Looking forward to painting both, I think the helfather is gonna get a yellow scheme so I can try something new for my dwarf collection.


This guy is the Chovar Psychic, he got left out of my first order but here s/he/it is! The model is sort of tall. I would feel a bit jipped if I spent the 18 or so they're asking retail, but he'll look pretty neat with his tentacles glued on and paint applied. He's got a lot of bulk over an infantry model, but he seems smaller than I had figured him to be. A support model in Deadzone, he mostly helps with your own teams activation and morale, or hinders your opponent, interesting for sure.


Here's everyone you've seen so far in front of my newest buliding. It's just a 3x1x1 cube structure with the back walls left off. I'll either cover them with advertising boards, or put the building along the edge of the board implying a larger building that is cut off by the battlefield, ReBoot style


Here are my hasslefree guns in their respective piles. One plasma gun is already on a model, the kit comes with five. These come on sprues in little blister packs, they cost something like 2.50-4 dollars or so from hasslefree. A dollar a gun ins't too bad really, way better than what you get trying to order meltaguns or plasmaguns from GW. The guns on the left are interesting bullpup assault rifles and are smaller than I had anticipated. They look nice but they will need a specific kind of pose to make them work. The plasma guns are fairly straightforward and I like them. Helga cut the stock off of hers. The top two guns on the far right are kind of chunky, I think they go with those Grims. May be ok for space marine scaled models. I like the middle gun, it's kind of like a P90 in the grip, will be hard to implement though. The bottom two guns look promising in both design and ability to put them on a model.

I need to see the Eisenkern stuff, then I'll decide which kind to get more of. I can say already that the stormtrooper accessory kit is going to have waaay more bits and bobs for the price, though it's hard plastic so that isn't super surprising.


This is a trial scheme for my plague. I realize now you can't see much of the spikes, they're the same color as the gun. Thoughts? He needs flat coated, and then maybe some BftBG to gory him up a bit. Thoughts?




A couple of shots of some more layouts I've been playing with. Can't wait to do this with painted terrain

So yeah, there you go, I'm still plodding away, it's just a bit slower. As soon as I hit the mood, those plague are getting finished on the quick. Looking forward to the Eisenkern bits arriving, unless the scale is off or wonky, I'm pretty excited to put some of those bits to use. More from me later, gonna see about watching the latest Superman movie with the Wife. Happy Hobbies!

I'm kind of jealous of your setup. But then I remember, at some point it'd have to get put away, and I'm not so jealous anymore.

The Helfather is a neat, chunky figure though, isn't he? I'm glad I got him. Maybe I'll actually finish mine up sometime soon.

Those Hasslefree guns aren't bad looking. I think I may do something similar when I get my eventual Dreadball robots. I bet they'll look nice armed up.

For now it doesn't have to get put up Some time though... There's still probably another reasonably occupied 2x2' section left to assemble too. And then 2-3 more battlezones from mars attacks and the DZ survey as well.

The hasslefree guns aren't bad, not all of them are the ones I would have ordered from their website. I had an eBay gift certificate so I used the remainder of it to order those from there, and that seller only had some of the blisters. I'm gonna wait till I've got the Eisenkern accessory box in hand before I decide what to get more of, I'm thinking the kit has a lot of potential, I will just have to get it in hand and see how thing scale up. Yonan did a nice comparison on either the mantic news and rumors or dz or dbx kickstarter pages a few days ago, the bits looked pretty good.

The helfather is fuggin huge. The stilts help, and he's still well under an enforcer in height but he's really broad and stout. Looks alien just because of the proportions which is cool. He's really big compared to the currently existing forge father line too... but I think he's just got a ridiculous amount of armor on.

Great stuff, mutie looks great, and really like the big guy.

Is it just me or is your plague scheme strangely related to the Pipboy cartoon character from Fallout 3? Isn't he a blonde guy with blue pants? Or am I just seeing things?

Personally I think the spikes should be a darker or plaguier (is that a word) color, really make it a contrast. Unless you are interested in a cyber-plague type idea?

Am really interested to see the Space Dwarf painted up, and the Marauder, they look like very detailed models.

Keep it coming.

That Chovar is pretty big. I would be scared to play with the thing once I had it built as I would be afraid the arms would fall off. What do you think you're gonna do for a paint scheme for it?

That is a nice sized complex you built there!

=/ How do they not build stuff like session saver into chrome from the ground up? I should have stuck with firefox. Lemme see if I can retype my long winded post from memory...

The big marauder, ripper suit, I think I will paint somewhat similarly to the big mech robot I did earlier. I want my Marauders to look like they're attempting to be fairly professional. Probably a lot of boltgun so the guns don't blend in too much.

The dwarf will be yellow. Probably mustard yellow, I have an idea of what I want their color to be, and I think I'll try to establish it initially and dip with tudor as opposed to tinting another yellow with brown stain.

I guess that plague does look a little like the pipboy guy, if you want him to I think the blonde/blue is there, though the pipboy mascot had a shirt and not (usually) massive upper body muscles.

I want my chovar to be evil. The Nexus Psi campaign has a side box about a badguy chovar and I would like to do something similar. So mean/agressive/angry colors. Maybe some red, possibly some black accents. And the red would probably have some purple involved. Looking forward to trying some things out, though it will mean attempting blending again. I'm probably gonna assemble the extra tentacles in such a way that they don't stick out all over the place, and are less likely to snap off. I dunno though, may decide I really want that look, it isn't like I travel or even get to play much.

I think I can get one more 2x2' section covered with the terrain I still haven't assembled. I should be able to squeeze out another 2x2' after that from the DZ second survey and or possibly the mars attacks stuff. And I'll be showing off all of my battlesystems terrain within a month if thing keep going well over there.


I've been cleaning more Marauders, I've got a goblin sniper, commando, and mawbeast ready to go. I still have another mawbeast, 4 commandos, and the captain to finish for my first team. Helga has gotten some accessories from my DFG Stormtrooper Acessory Kit. The bits are interesting, they range from almost too small to too large. The heads are space marine sized, so won't work for mantic/infinity. The drumstick style grenades and most of the pouches are pretty small and may look funny on space marines, but are pretty solid for mantic and infinity. The medkit is just kind of a round tube shaped thing with some texture, it isn't as obvious as I was hoping. I may do a full breakdown and review with pictures when I get the chance. There are only a few guns, so the kit itself won't be weaponizing my dreadball minis, so I'll still likely be putting in a reasonably sized order to hasslefree before it's over.

I need to get some painting done today, we'll see though, it's been kind of hectic lately.

Thanks for commenting folks, and happy hobbies!


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Hmmm. The teflon washer seems to be doing it's job now... but the brush still isn't spraying correctly. I think I accidentally screwed up the nozzle/tip. I'll see if one of my backup needles fixes things, but when that inevitably fails I'll have to order a nearly $30 tip ftl. I guess it's worth it if I'll be able to get some of this terrain painted though. More later.

The landing pad looks great, is that just from the basic landing pad set of sprues?

I got my Nexus Psi "1 click collection" delivered yesterday including the Chovar and Helfather, I have totally cheated and glued most of the Chovar's tentacles to his base for added support. I still like the model though. I look forward to your Helfather too Grim, best of luck.

The 3x4 cube pad? Yes, that one was made with components from a single LP battlezone. I'm not sure about the bridges going off of it, I made those later after I had sorted all of my parts into bins. I had some left over bits from the LP sprue but probably not those flat landing strip tiles, those probably came from one of my other sets. And the barricade walls they have are core world barricades. But the big 3x4 pad, that's all one LP BZ and there were left overs of some kind.

Hmmmmm. Gluing the tentacles to the base... Brilliant! I may have to steal your idea

Thanks for the support, hopefully I can come up with *something* this weekend.

I think the bridge is fine, it just needs to connect to something. How do you have the stairs connected to the landing pad? Are they just sitting there, or are they actually clipped on?

Most of my designs tend to extend off into the rest of the city and get cut off by the battlefield ReBoot style. It wouldn't be a thing, however, to integrate the larger bridge, but it would have to come off of one of the shorter edges of the pad since it's reaching the table edge as it is.

The stairs are just chillin. You can clip them onto things sideways, the clips built into them are meant to do that, or you can put the triangle side on them. Those stairs aren't really done, they're clipped together with triangle bits, but I will eventually extract those, clip off the connector nubs, and glue them flush (like the smaller 2 wide staircase I think I've shown somewhere). Models are able to stand on stairs done in that manner much easier, without the triangle bit sticking up and interfering with the bases.

Gah getting started back up with work always kills me at first. Progress will probably stay lower than in the winter, but it should pick up from what it is now. More as it comes!

Hey guys.

Just wanted to let you know I'll be closing down the blog, potentially forever. Just not feeling it anymore, even though all of you are lovely people and I enjoy interacting with you all, just lost my love for the hobby. Fortunately I live in a neighborhood with nice quiet streets so I'll be taking up Power Walking and trying to talk the wife into picking it back up.

I've got my headband, wrist cuffs, and shoes priced to make GW blush so this is GrimDork signing off, it's been a blast guys, happy hobbying, or should I say happy trails!

You can make running shoes out of deadzone terrain.

Shoes.. no.. but a shoe rack.... I may have to call into work today to get started! Brilliant!

 GrimDork wrote:
Hey guys.

Just wanted to let you know I'll be closing down the blog, potentially forever. Just not feeling it anymore, even though all of you are lovely people and I enjoy interacting with you all, just lost my love for the hobby. Fortunately I live in a neighborhood with nice quiet streets so I'll be taking up Power Walking and trying to talk the wife into picking it back up.

I've got my headband, wrist cuffs, and shoes priced to make GW blush so this is GrimDork signing off, it's been a blast guys, happy hobbying, or should I say happy trails!

I'm just gonna assume this is April fool's. I hope so anyways.

I'll admit it, you had me going for a second. Just a second, though.

My dad is king troll on 4/1/xx so I've picked up the habit. The trick is to be sort of believable but off kilter enough that people still get it. The mantic one this year is a good example, you can believe it... but can probably tell its a joke.

I actually hadn't seen that Mantic one, it is very funny. I kinda want a table-Dreadball now.

Not as good as their last one, though, with the Zombies+goggles Plague teaser.

Woah they got me good with that one! I noticed them never making them... I guess it was this time last year I was first getting into mantic stuff so I didn't know them as well or the kind of joke/stigma of taking fantasy models and sticking goggles on them so it makes sense. But yeah that is hilarious in retrospect.

Aahh, Grim, this was the first thing that came to my mind after reading that title.



nicely done

I'll have to think of something more elaborate for next year...

Gah sorry guys, I've been a bit busier lately. And lazier, never not that... Anyway, kind of tough to get painting when I get back from work and all I want to do is melt into the couch. I've bee playing with my Battlezone tiles and I figured I'd take some pictures of the result. Poor lighting still, once I get some things painted I intend to relocate my board into the garage where the setting sun provides excellent lighting and the open space will make turning the board around much easier. I've also taken shots of my new laptop painting station, which will hopefully help me get some more work done. Lastly, I busted out my old skaven army and arrayed them all to take shots as well. Why not, I've been neglecting the blog so time to choke it with pictures!

I did order a new camera so I'm hoping to be posting somewhat better pictures (and more frequently, pretty sure it will just send them straight to my computer). I should have it already but a payment type snafu and their failure to notify me of it in time to do anything about it turned one day shipping on thursday into a monday delivery. Grr face.

First up, the largest and most complicated deadzone set up I've put together yet. If everything was painted and pretty, I'd have used more clips and tried a bit harder to make all of the joins straight. Some are just a tad bendy, but this was only an exercise in building not something meant to stick around.


Pretty much what I was working with. I think I grabbed some extra walkways and decorative bits before it was over.






This piece is leaning back due to no connectors. The landing pad needs the connector/feet pieces added, and until they are, it sits a bit lower than other things.



This is my solution to interiors, leave off the back panels of the building in question, and position it against the board edge, kind of like the playing field has cut the buildings off ReBoot game style.

And just to prove that I've painted a little since last I updated:

So, basically, I've made progress on the 2nd gen down in front, and the 3rd gens in back. The bigger guy is probably ready for dipping, his flesh will mostly be covered in Blood for the Blood god since it looks like raw muscle. I could have painted it pink/red first, and might need to yet... We'll see after I get this guy finished.


The face needs some work too before dipping, but not much, I'm leaving highlights and shading in the capable hands of the Tudor.


What do you guys think about the colors I've chosen? note that most of them still need weapons and plaguey spiny bits painted and so on... but what about the clothes? The first two I was trying for bright yellow hazmat suits. The leather pouches kind of clash, but if I painted them glossy black to go with a hazmat look, it wouldn't make sense. They're ammo pouches and such, which would have been added after they plagued up, and shouldn't necessarily match their hazmat suits. The other guy has faded blue pants and a green shirt, either civilian or military.

Ok, that's as much new as I've done except for the painting station so here's that:


So like I said, it's a piece of insulation foam (that just happens to have green paint and static grass on top... I've been cannibalizing an old fantasy board for foam lately...) mounted to a flat metal panel from my old computer.


Everything got its own hole cut out and fits down into the foam. Everything comes out, though most of it doesn't need to. There's plenty of room for enough paint for any single project, and lots of space to hold my painting queue.


Here's a closeup of the side just because. The little metal tabs on the panel were pretty handy! I used duct tape everywhere else because I thought that the flex/torsion of the panel and foam whenever I moved the station would simply pop any glue in short order. Or if not the glue, then the foam itself would rip. So the duct tape may not be pretty but it works by golly.

Ok, I think I'll do the skaven in the next post, they've got a lot of pictures too.

VERY nice board setup. I'm not sure how practical it would be for gaming (might be a bit fiddly with LOS/movement) but looks awesome.

Yeah, it is entirely possible that such a set up is largely impractical, but its fun to build!

Skaven later on, family gathering in progress.

It is indeed fun to build, I need to get another set at some point and play with it some more. It's like LEGO for grown-ups... Oh wait, LEGO is for grown-ups!

I'm currently debating over whether I want a Landing Pad or just another Core Worlds set. The cheaper option for the latter (sans accessory sprue) is a great deal, but on the other hand, the Landing Pad also gives me a potential skyshield/ADL/Icarus Lascannon for 40k.

Landing pad has a lot of cool bits and bobs. I'm glad I got a few. Pad plus that new sprue they developed should allow for some really neat construction.

I'm working on some stuff to add in with the bzs. Scratch build some walkways and other add ons. Maybe this weekend.



Ok. Back to my main rig, time to clean these up and comment (used my phone previously, blech!). Above is one unit of clanrats.



This is my second unit of clanrats, I think the banner was intended for skeletons, skaven, and goblins maybe, the sprue seemed a tad generic. Been ages though so the memory is foggy. You can also see a warp fire thrower in line to the right.


Here's my unit of storm vermin. They used to be fairly shiny silver, but the mahogany stain took care of that, it looks like they still need to be dull coated. The banner is a bit dorky, but I like it. The bearer had to nibble away at the corner so he could see though!


Here's a unit of metal gutter runners, only four poses now that I look them over, but I still like them. They were fun to use and ninja rat-sassins are just hilarious!


Here's the second batch of gutter runners, technically they're the troop version--night runners-- but I decided I'd rather have two of the elite units instead so I matched up their color schemes and picked the more aggressive and dynamic bits for these guys. The rest of that box became slaves, I think.




Rat ogres! The left one had extensive greenstuff surgery to install his large boney spines, and to affix the right arm which came from a D&D metal umberhulk mini I had laying around. That one still needs dullcoat. Next to him is the older version of the bonebreaker, who was like a character rat ogre attached to one of the special character sorcerer guys.


Here we have some slaves. I used to take them in 20-25 rat blocks, but it was more fun to make them into a 40 rat horde If I ever use these again it will probably be for kings of war as either count-as-goblins or using a fan-made skaven list. So I'm not sure if their station will really chance to improve or not. I had fun with these guys, I used a hot knife to cut gouges into their clothes and bloody whip marks into their backs. Some of them are chained together to discourage fleeing, many of them have weeping boils and pustules from working the warpstone mines. Fun stuff


More slaves. You can see some goblins and gutter runners mixed in, fodder is fodder, my skaven are not picky. The goblins came from a goblin wolfrider box set that happened to include the standing legs too, I used the wolves for the smurfs project.


Giant mutant rats! I especially love the three rat-centaurs in the front, so creepy! Half or more of these little dudes got conversions, a lot of the bone you see that isn't spikes off their spines was added (horns, claws, head ram) and you can maybe see the large bloodshot eye growing out of one of their sides. One got two heads, another has a green stuffed human face and hands and is named Brown Janken.. it's a reference, if you get it, your sanity is probably not where it should be... mind the angles and watch for the hounds! There's also a fun tentacle and maybe some armor plating somewhere. Fun unit!


These are old metal clanrats I got from ebay, and a few plastic left-overs. I'll use them to round out units to 25 strong, or splice in here or there. If I ever re-based the army for Kings of War, the extra bodies would stretch pretty far since when I multibase I expect to use only 65-80% of the actual number of models in the unit, on the correct sized base. Of course there will be filler too so the base wouldn't be too sparse.


Poisoned wind globadiers. The glass on the orbs is meh, but it works, and these were probably my first not terrible attempt at glass lenses, though they aren't great either.


The warp lightning cannon, and more poisoned wind globadiers. The unpainted flag is for when/if a unit with a banner gets it captured, a marker for my opponent.

Whew that's slow going on the phone! Need to take better shots of the characters. If there is interest, I'll take more when I get the new camera when there is better lighting. Some of the slaves have fun details.

Family thing taking awhile... was planning on painting a bit.

Holy beans! My so-doomed-to-failure-it-may-as-well-not-have-been-attempted plan to use the larger size needle in my airbrush actually worked! I spent what baby nap time I had left after making this discovery spraying as many terrain pieces as possible! I painted one of my remaining undercoated pieces to the light grey I've been using so far, and got a dice tower and a few bits of scenery undercoated too.


I tried to use the brush to add some shading as I went, or well not-not add some shading. Leave parts of it darker.. same thing. Working?


Dice tower in the back, crates stored in the little cube building.

Hopefully I can do more later, but it'll have to be after the kiddo is asleep and I don't want to start the work week off with additional sleep debt so we'll see.

Buildings look nice and natural, add some weathering and they'll be perfect. Shading works well but I'd still hit some areas with washes/chips to add a little more depth, personally.

Plenty good enough, though.

Yeah, I just hit up the dollar store to get some 3" standard and foam paint brushes to try to evenly apply the same Tudor I use on everything else. I can lightly scratch the paint with my nail and bring it up, so I've got to seal it. And minwax makes everything look better anyway.

But yeah, I've got some sponge weathering in the plan. Not sure if I want to do scrape/scratch or dust/dirt or both. Probably not rust.. but then again GW's technical rust combo (the one with the micro microbeads, and the thick bright orange) are pretty tempting... Maybe rust on the metal looking parts.

Oh and blood spatter. There's a neat thing you can do with the airbrush. You fill up the cup and draw back the trigger (to let paint out) but you don't push it down (to spray the air). You let the trigger back and then pop it down spitting out a small burst of drops from whatever had pooled on the end of the needle. I think if I have the pressure set right and I do a good angle, I can probably make it look like an angled spray too, rather than just drops.

I'm mostly trying to decide the order of everything. If I do the weathering after I dip, it will show up better but it will be easier to knock off. Weathering my weathering... hrmm. If I do *everything* and then dip, it's possible the dip will hide some of the details.

It's also possible that I'm going to paint a bunch of the terrain to the above standard, dip it, matte seal it, and put it into the done pile. Then I'll come back and weather stuff as I get around to it. Kind of like doing all of the basecoats on a model but leaving off the highlights for later so you can get it done for a tourney lol.

I got some other cool stuff at the dollar store too... got some mesh stuff intended for some kind of grilling, but it's right at 6" tall by whatever wide, so it cuts in half to make tile-high mesh fencing. The grid is kind of large, but most 28mm figures still shouldn't be able to squeeze through. I got some floral stuff that may look good on my skeleton multibase. I found some cheap vinyl containers that may be easy to cut to make something resembling a force field or tinted door/window glass.

Hoping to get a little painting done but I'm kind of apathetic. Mostly waiting for the kiddo to go to sleep so I can airbrush more terrain

Buildings look nice. Going for lots of different colours or one main one? That kings of war rules in background?

So, you're going to brush on the tudor, or you did brush it on? Let me know how that works out because I'll probably have to do something similar whenever I get a TAG model.

I see you've made yourself a storage shed, too.

Its my unopened kow mohrgoths rising undead vs dwarf starter set. I got two of them for 30-35 dollars apiece from the bargain shelf at one of my nearby game stores. I opened one, but until I run out of undead from the first I intend to leave the second box sealed. It just happens to be the right size to block the over spray from my airbrush.

I plan to get my method down with the grey, then branch out to some other colors. Maybe some yellow, possibly with black hazard stripes... mostly medium to bright colors since it'll be easier to shade and weather them.

@Barzam I haven't done anything yet, I hope to give it a shot tonight. I will be brushing the tudor on because there's no way I can dip in a whole structure and I'm too far in to do individual tiles. Plus.. it would waste a LOT of mats. I got both a sponge brush and a normal paint brush that are at least 3 inches wide, I'm hoping to take the top and then each side of any structure in as few passes as possible so I can quickly start dabbing away any extra that starts to pool. I may have to do interiors and exteriors in two waves, lest things get too messy to handle. It's gonna be tricky, and I have a feeling the first few pieces are going to need some weathering specifically to hide errors. And I'll have to see if I can use mineral spirits to get the brushes cleaned out, or else I'll have to do big batches.

I dipped a carnifex by brush and it turned out alright. One of the old metal ones, but it's the same thing, wouldn't quite fit into the dip can. Just gotta go fast and hit as much area in a pass as possible. The big can has an almost 3" wide gap though, you could probably get most not-crazy-dynamic tags in there.

First things first, good to see the Skaven come out. Thats a pretty nice army you have there. If we lived closer I would offer to pit it against my OnG army in a battle of hordes.

I've been struggling to get my Deadzone buildings done. I can see where the airbrush would come in handy for those, as doing it with a brush is a slow process. I think your idea for the blood splatter is neat, and want to see how that turns out.

I forget where I saw them, but maybe the mantic forums... There were at least a couple of nice tutorials on painting the scenery and at least one of them did it with layers from regular old rattle cans. Spray black, spray grey from a particular direction, spray white from further away. Many of them added salt inbetween layers as well which was later removed to give chipping weathering.

I think if the airbrushing goes well I may have some Infinity figures primed tonight too, been taking an increasing interesting in them so I've been cleaning them up tonight. We'll see. May just blaze away at all of the terrain too.

The blood spatter is still a theory, I know the brush will do what I say, but if it looks right... is left to be seen.

A bit late since I've been off this section of the board - busy with work and lost my enthusiasm for painting and such since I couldn't get any photos taken for my blog and haven't been playing anything. I'm not sure about the bright yellow on the Mutants, maybe if you changed the pouches to black? There are, after all more black ammo pouches than brown these days. Brown is more of a WW2-era leather holdover that's been used by GW for forever. (and even then there were a variety of colours). There's also no reason why tool pouches and belts wouldn't be repurposed by any but 1st tier military forces.

Skaven look good, now all you need is an opponent and you can give the KoW rules a go. I need to get back on the horse and get some more figures painted for it.

I really do like the look of your Necromund...eadzone board. I can't wait until I get my stuff sent out! It'll look all the much better when painted as well. And good to see some progress starting.

Yeah, I don't like the yellow and brown either. The pouches look like raw leather pouches, the way they're sculpted and especially the machine gun ammo bag... but it's the future and space and stuff, it's probably more likely that they'd bring synthetic everything along and be too cool to use native fauna for stuff. So hmm. Black would definitely help the yellow dudes, probably won't make the other guys look bad either. A good suggestion, perhaps the next time I get to painting on them I'll implement it.

The skaven need a little work, several models never got finished (most of those were picked up off of eBay towards the end of my WHFB days and never got attention aside from the undercoat), but they are reasonably close to complete. They'll be ready to give my undead force a fun for it's money whenever I build more than one unit for it.

I hope to get more and more of this stuff painted in the near future, if the airbrush continues to work as well as it did this afternoon, all I need is time and motivation to proceed. I also look forward to you receiving your DZ goodies, having seen your intentions for the stuff, can't wait for it to arrive


Think I'm gonna bust the airbrush out now, put a little more paint down. I think I'll run my tank out of air and then go brush dip one or two of the pieces I have... except I'll need to do the detail bits first. I dunno, I don't want to rush but I really want to see if the brush dipping is going to pan out. Maybe I'll do a bit of a rush job on one of the little cube structures, just need gun metal on certain parts, any bright spot colors can be added later after I figure out a good pattern for them.


Thanks for dropping by guys, helps keep me motivated!


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Well the thing is still glistening wet so I don't want to shoot it right now, and I'll have the better camera tomorrow too... But yeah, it wasn't really easy, and it was terribly messy, and the inside still isn't done... but one of my little scenery cubes (the one you saw earlier) has been brush dipped with a 3" paintbrush and the same Tudor we've come to know and love. It was messy, and I started off using the wrong q-tips. I got the shaped beauty aisle variety because of the shape... but they're totally different than normal cotton swabs, and just weren't working. The pointy part proved semi-effective at cleaning out the connector holes, I guess.

Anyway. Wow. It looks, to my eyes, really good. Darker, shaded, really grimy looking. I think it's because there's a lot more dip remaining on the cube than I'd leave on a model. In terms of thickness I mean. I got rid of pooling, but I think a thicker (and therefore darker) layer of stain was left on the surface by the brush than would have been by a dip plus vigorous drill spin. Kind of not in the cards though. It's a little disconcerting that my method isn't identical to smaller stuff, and I would technically like to keep as much of the underlying color as possible... but I definitely call this a success. I'll let it dry overnight and while I'm at work and then see about a matte coat over the top to tone down the gloss. Then pictures! Hopefully done with the new camera in the setting-sun-garage-lightbox-of-awesomeness, if possible.

Doing a larger structure is going to be an endurance trial, but I think I can manage. Probably... There's kind of a trick I discovered to using the q-tips, you kind of roll it between your fingers as you pass over the stain, lightly, and kind of lift up as you leave the surface. I'll think of some better words to describe it, if I can. It leaves behind little bubbles but they melt back into a relatively smooth surface coat after a few seconds.

So far, I'm really quite happy with the piece, I'll let you guys know more tomorrow once I've seen it in the daylight from better angles (it was hard to move it around to look).

Got some infinity minis nearly ready for mounting too, this will make 6 total cleaned and ready, four to go including a monkey-man and robot SQUEEE!


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Quick teaser still needs seal.

 GrimDork wrote:
Yeah, I don't like the yellow and brown either. The pouches look like raw leather pouches, the way they're sculpted and especially the machine gun ammo bag... but it's the future and space and stuff, it's probably more likely that they'd bring synthetic everything along and be too cool to use native fauna for stuff. So hmm. Black would definitely help the yellow dudes, probably won't make the other guys look bad either. A good suggestion, perhaps the next time I get to painting on them I'll implement it.

Try Vallejo Black Grey if you have it. Dark enough to be black, but light enough to "shade" with your dip.

The skaven need a little work, several models never got finished (most of those were picked up off of eBay towards the end of my WHFB days and never got attention aside from the undercoat), but they are reasonably close to complete. They'll be ready to give my undead force a fun for it's money whenever I build more than one unit for it.

I hope to get more and more of this stuff painted in the near future, if the airbrush continues to work as well as it did this afternoon, all I need is time and motivation to proceed. I also look forward to you receiving your DZ goodies, having seen your intentions for the stuff, can't wait for it to arrive

Putting up the final shelf and the bike racks ran into a little bit of a snag. Stud finder didn't want to play nicely, and there's AC behind that wall so it got to try a new career as a missile. A fan got in my way as I stormed out of the room, so it got kicked, and when I found out I'd broken the shaft, it unfortunately got curbstomped. So anyway, I still have to put those holes into the wall, and buy a new fan for next summer. It's also pissing down rain now, so it looks like it'll be a no go for the electrician tomorrow morning, since installing lights in a ceiling and heavy rain don't play well together either.

On a brighter note, I did a gakload of cleaning in there and also inside my so-called studio where it was starting to become a bit of a dump(ing ground), so if this gak ever gets finished, it'll be sweet from that point onwards. I'm still a little aggro right now, though. Neighbours were having a huge drama shouting match outside, so I was forced to open the back door and window and listen to a System of a Down album at full volume. It just finished, and now it's rather quiet out there.




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That dipped cube has come up really well. What exactly are you using? Minwax polyshades?

I might use the same coal I have been using for the guns... possibly I will just paint them dark black and drybrush, the dip doesn't HAVE to show, and it will probably smooth over the drybrushed highlights anyway.

Wow, did you ruin a good shirt and most of a pair of pants when you went all "hulk smash" on the stud finder and innocent bystander fan? Sounds like something I might do

Hmm I haven't listened to SoaD in awhile. The political undertones eventually get annoying but it's been *years* so maybe my tolerance is built back up. Actually haven't listened to anything in a while (hard to have headphones on when the baby is around, and I won't play loud angry music while she's around ), my death metals are probably getting sad.

It is minwax polyshades Tudor, yes. Lemme check the can...

...
This is Tudor Satin 360, if they make a flat, it probably works even better. If you are looking the UPC is 0 2742661360 7 . At least on my can here in the states. I usually try to get the larger cans due to economy of bulk and being able to dip larger models

I like the result so far, but I still want to add some rust and hit it with a flat coat. Probably some blood. I'm not so sure that I need to do a whole lot of chipping since the greasy look the minwax has given it is kind of it's own weathering. I'd think about doing some dust weathering around the bottom but the bottom may not always be ground level, may be on top of another building.

I got half of the tower sprayed, will do more when able, perhaps during baby nap today.


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Also got new camera, but it has many fangles and is kind of tricky to use at the moment. Also, I can't find that little square thing that sockets into the tripod so doing anything with those is out for the moment...

Crikey! you have a whole modern colony town there!

And what's sad is that It still doesn't feel like enough! I'm digging through my found items looking to see what I can integrate. Making the terrain isn't so hard, it's making it fit somewhat well into the grid system of deadzone that is. I've got some bits for buildings and other such things already lined up, I'm going to work on integrating them as the mood strikes me.

Hey Grim- didn't realise you were a Skaven collector! Just started some myself. Got the Island of Blood stuff -all 47 minis for £30/$50USD coming today (just the Skaven army though- not a big high elf fan)

Can't wait to get my teeth into em.

That cube looked like it turned out pretty good. So you just used a regular paint brush on it? That didn't leave any streaks or anything?

Yeah, I was crazy into skaven for a good while there, later part of highschool or perhaps early college still. Never got to use them much but it was fun collecting. I've got an unassembled hell pit abomination sitting on my shelves too. I wanted a vaguely cheese-themed souvenir from when we randomly went to Wisconsin, and just happened to see that in a gamestore that just happened to be within a block or two of our hotel. I was practically done with the army at that point but ehh, I'll probably build it some time just for fun, would be a good model to expand my airbrush skills.

I almost ordered the Isle of blood skaven set i don't know how many times... It was and is still a good deal. I think the new guys would clash with my oldschool rats though and I have plenty. The high elves got the shaft, I'm pretty sure those griffon things are lame and there's barely enough to do anything with after you take that out.


Yeah, a regular 3 or so inch wide brush. I don't recall any streaks. The stain kind of bleeds together if you disrupt it. It's like regenerative shielding! I had to use a bunch of cotton swabs to clean off the excess, and there was a lot since I couldn't fling the thing around to get rid of most of it like you can with models. Every cotton swab pass left a bunch of little bubbles but they all kind of melted back into a relatively flat surface by the time I was done cleaning the next face.

I'll keep an eye out for tips, tricks, and pitfalls as I do the next piece. I should be able to do the tower with another half hour or so of airbrushing and I don't think that one even has many metal bits to pick out. So, it shouldn't be terribly long before I get around to dipping another piece. I need to read up on standard paintbrush maintenance when using wood stain, I think that my brush didn't get all the way clean and may or may not work properly the next time.

I'm also going to look into both applying it and siphoning the extra away with those disposable sponge brushes, they also come pretty cheap by the pack in the dollar store.

If you are gonna use a brush to paint the dip on cosnider that brush a dip only brush from now onwards. That stuff pretty mcuh ruins brushes.

Yeah, I'm using standard house painting brushes, like the 3" wide variety, can get them at the dollar store if I have to, though I would like to reuse them at least a couple of times. If it isn't possible, I'll just wait to dip till I have a larger queue of buildings and time to do them.

Meh sorry guys, work and other distractions are keeping me busy. I did do some more work on my Infinity minis for fun. I still really need to get my plague finished, but this stuff was easier to get myself to work on. Anyway...


Here's a a 'teaser' of the dice tower in progress, a gratuitous shot of that moderator, and a look at that re-purposed bbq thingie turned mega fence.


These two weren't working out that well, so I had to take some steps! The 5-minute epoxy is what it is, it means five minutes when it says it! So the three models that follow this image all worked out to be fairly balanced and didn't need any help. The female moderator on the left was too tippy and needed help to set, and the feet were too small for my smallest drill bit to try pinning. The robot didn't get a good set, so I drilled out little divots to set the feet claw things into, hoping this works out better for both of them.


These three all gave me little to no problems with the epoxy. The big guy with the long coat (Sin Eater Observant) needed to lean against something, but he did pretty well. This guy reminds me of that creepy albino guy from the Davinci Code, religious fanatic with the flagellation and righteous murderizing. They've had their nervous systems rewired to make them really really strong on overwatch, but they aren't as good at taking normal orders. The other dude is just another moderator, which is kind of a more militarized version of the SWAT teams. They handle counter-terrorism, and all kinds of weird stuff since Bakunin is full of fun things like gene splicing and so on. The tall lady is a Reverend Custodier, basically a military hacker. The Nomads seceded from the rest of humanity 'cause they don't like the super-AI that's running the show now, so their hackers are pretty important. She's got medium armor and her combi rifle has a marker attachment, kind of like an underslung grenade launcher or a master key shotgun, it shoots a module that anchors itself to a surface and increases the ranger of her hacking abilities, letting her create no-zones to bottleneck enemy heavy infantry and TAGs.

Anyway, lot of text for not so many pictures, and not much in the way of painted, but what can I say, been busy with work

Alrighty, baby took a long nap and I got some more stuff done

First, we'll continue the Infinity lineup:


So, to the right we have another Moderator. The robot in the middle is a Lunokhod Sputnik, which is a Remote, a robot unit for Infinity. They get some different rules but they behave the same as everything else for the most part. This guy is a minesweeper with close range gear. The sputnik is almost unique among Infinity remotes, most units have at least quasi-analogues in most armies but the Sputnik only has vague mirrors in a couple of forces. I like them, I want to get the double set of the shooty variant. He gets a boarding (read that: extra heavy) shotgun and either what amounts to a limited ammo adhesive/glue cannon and demolition charges (root big TAG unit, amble over and set charges to blow it up!) or a flame thrower and a pair of Krazy Koalas. I haven't put the Koalas together yet, but they're basically adorable little suicide robots, kind of like proximity mines. The lady on the left is a Zero. Their description is pretty straightforward, they're Bakunin's scout/infiltrator unit. They take care of business and don't play fair. This one has an E-Mauler, which is deployed like a tent stake and then emits an EM field that remote units and TAGs and stuff can't enter without taking damage and or shutting down. Kind of like an all the time mine.


Here you can see the bits I've got left to clean and assemble to make Bran Do Castro, another Sin Eater, and those Crazy Koalas.


Don't mind the blurry shot... The Sputniks have climbing plus which lets them climb faster than normal and stop on any surface, thanks to thin bases, terrain walls, and strong magnets, I was able to visually represent just such an activity! Those miscellaneous zombies would be doomed if the weapons node hadn't just fallen off. It's back on now, ball joints can sometimes be tricky...

Here are some painted s3 and cube shots, as well as a WIP dipped s2.


Classic front view. He got a bit much blood in his face, I've been toying with using the airbrush to splatter blood and it obscured his eyes. Not sure which color to paint them yet, any suggestions?


The blood on this side of the cube was done with a brush, I think I will hand paint those big veins on the rest of my s3's, they shouldn't be exactly the same color as the skin around them.


A bit of rust on the metal parts of the cube.


A bit more rust and blood, I love how details like that show through the clear bases instead of getting covered up! You can also see the *almost* finished tower behind him too. It got sides 3 and 4 done, as well as the interior (just a quick dusting so it wasn't black, you won't see it unless you use a mirror on a stick ). Need to pick out a few metal bits and dip it, but I will need a solid block of time to do so successfully so I'm holding off for the next long nap


I think I got a little too close to this guy, whoops. If the blood isn't shiny enough after the eventual flat coat, I'll apply some more. The scheme is looking alright to me, I still need to sort out the face but otherwise he's getting close. I want to work out the kinks here before I move on to the big guy.

As I get plague guys done I'll be moving them off of their holders freeing those up for the Infinity models. I'm not sure if the Infinity minis or Marauders will be getting painted first, or if I will do more than one Infinity mini at a time, but I'm planning to get them primed soon one way or the other. I've got until late May or probably June before I get any more models in so my goal is to get as much done as possible within that time. It's basically two months.

I'm considering making it a public bet with the winner picking what I do next from a list (with some oddball options for the cruel and/or unusual among you ). I've been going kind of slow and a bit of motivation may inspire me to paint models instead of plopping down and playing a video game or just reading. I've technically run out of books but I'm rereading the Dresden Files since there are 14 of them and I've already started to forget some of what's happened Back on topic (), I may even make a personal contest for myself like the TODO or Die list, with a reward of, uhh, something... at the end. It would have to be appropriate somehow... Either more Infinity minis for painting all the ones I have, or something. It would be more fitting to set the reward as something for finishing 4 deadzone lists like I said I would... but the only new thing I'd want is Infinity but I'd rather not add more metal to the pile if I'm not also finishing those They're kind of expensive anyway, maybe they should be the reward for selling off my old stuff

Anyway, a fair bit of blabbering like I usually do when I get a free moment, I better go check on the baby to make sure she isn't in a coma

Happy hobbying, hopefully more soon. I mean it about the bet/contest stuff, but I've got to think something up that makes sense

I really wanna see what you do with the I fifty stuff, the deadzone models are ok but the infinity stuff is so far above them quality wise.

Geez, I'd be very scared to stick that remote to the side of the building like that. One fall and it's done for.

Have you decided on a color scheme for your non Moderator Nomads? Or are they all going to stick that the scheme you've already used?

@Barzam, they're good magnets And it isn't as if he's painted yet

I think I"m going to stick with my *scheme* of follow the studio scheme/box or card art, changing thing as they suit me. A majority of the models seem to have that ribbed under layer to them, dunno if its armor or an undershirt or what, but most of them have it so far. I painted it blue on my moderator instead of orange, will likely continue that. I will probably continue the trend of whites and grays which is pretty much what they're doing. My remote may not be red though. I like red, in theory, but I suck at painting it. I can maybe pull off orange. Maybe. I may go stupid and paint him yellow, or possibly even tachicoma blue to go with the light blue theme the models will likely have with that under armor. I may do red lining on all the capes, and maybe on just the moira.

I'm not sure I plan to paint the second male moderator like they did, the hair and skintone imply shark DNA splicing, I may just give him brown hair, paint the FeModerator black instead of white with purple hair and go with the names Hank, Dean, and Trianna

I'm getting in deep with this Infinity stuff, almost wish I didn't have so many other models coming. I still want Der Morlock Gruppen, The UberfallKommando, pretty much every moderator sculpt I don't have, probably more Bakunin stuff I forgot already.... then I probably want several corregedor units, maybe the starter I dunno, their tag, the new two tag set...

And that's before we get to my Yu Jing Akira themed biker gang...


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If I buy all of that... who knows, don't think I'll allow it unless I move some of my old stuff first.

Your Deadzone buildings are looking great. The little details like the rust and blood add a lot.

Also, do you have any other pics on that 2nd gen? I would like to see him from the front.

I just flat coated him today. I'm gonna go back over the teeth and eyes. I think I may go for the whole blank zombie stare look for the eyes, just all white. Maybe with just a slight tinge of yellow or green so it doesn't look like I forgot to add dots. And the teeth, with all of the chitin being almost black, I figured the bones and teeth would have changed similarly, but only if I can do it without making it look like I missed them or something.

Of course, I just got out the laptop so I may accidentally start playing one of my laptop friendly video games

Hopefully I put some effort down on that guy and some of the other plague to make room for Infinity minis or marauders.

I also got some of the details done on my first tower. Just some little bits of silver for unpainted metallic parts and a few of the small panels are getting a bit of blue for some eye-catching spot color, otherwise it would be too plain.

This may be of interest to you for the Akira theme

http://www.lead-adventure.de/index.php?topic=55891.0

Huh, cool, thanks for sharing

Love the infinity stuff, one day I will get around to painting a few of there models. Definitely a Nomad supporter.

The remote on the building is really awesome. Would add such a great thematic feeling to the games to have them crawling all over the place.

Keep up the inspiring work.

Thanks I'd almost want to glue one of the supermagnets to the base if I were going to do it very often, but for the purpose of being silly and taking interesting photos, I can probably get by with just setting them there. One of the remotes in the game has a 360 degree visor (seems self explanatory ) and total reaction which makes him really good at taking shots at enemy who expose themselves. Hanging upside down under a bridge with a wide-long LoS seems pretty advantageous for such a unit




Gonna try to paint tonight, but kind of came home with a headache and it's all cold and stuff, sort of lazy.

 GrimDork wrote:
I might use the same coal I have been using for the guns... possibly I will just paint them dark black and drybrush, the dip doesn't HAVE to show, and it will probably smooth over the drybrushed highlights anyway.

Wow, did you ruin a good shirt and most of a pair of pants when you went all "hulk smash" on the stud finder and innocent bystander fan? Sounds like something I might do

Well, not quite. But I probably should have taken a photo of the fan. For posterity.

Hmm I haven't listened to SoaD in awhile. The political undertones eventually get annoying but it's been *years* so maybe my tolerance is built back up. Actually haven't listened to anything in a while (hard to have headphones on when the baby is around, and I won't play loud angry music while she's around ), my death metals are probably getting sad.

I see it as a time and place thing. I like SOAD, but I tend to listen to something or other for a few weeks then move onto the next thing. Recently I actually discovered Coldplay, and found that despite the fact that I'm supposed to hate them, their stuff is quite alright. I'm glad I've gotten to the age where I don't give a rats what people think of my musical choices. (Now break out the Miley Cyrus!) I've been listening to Hunters and Collectors a lot in the last few weeks. I should update that blog sidebar thing more often.

It is minwax polyshades Tudor, yes. Lemme check the can...
...
This is Tudor Satin 360, if they make a flat, it probably works even better. If you are looking the UPC is 0 2742661360 7 . At least on my can here in the states. I usually try to get the larger cans due to economy of bulk and being able to dip larger models

Yep, looks like I can get it locally.
https://www.masters.com.au/product/100659620/minwax-polyshades-satin-tudor-946ml

I've got a couple of tins of Army Painter stuff I should probably use as well. I was originally going to use it on my zombies and such, but then I found their inks worked just as well for those figures and gave me a lot more control. I used a similar stuff to the Minwax in the past for my Tranids, though a local brand.

I like the result so far, but I still want to add some rust and hit it with a flat coat. Probably some blood. I'm not so sure that I need to do a whole lot of chipping since the greasy look the minwax has given it is kind of it's own weathering. I'd think about doing some dust weathering around the bottom but the bottom may not always be ground level, may be on top of another building.

I got half of the tower sprayed, will do more when able, perhaps during baby nap today.

That terrain is coming along really nicely. The rough rust has worked well and even the blood looks good since you've kept it subtle. (I usually hate the look of blood-spattered terrain). Have you used Pledge One Go before? I've used that before with orange paint for rust runs from rivets and mesh flooring. Squall hit on a good point - it's often the really small details that bring our scenery kits ot the next level - do you have any unused decals floating around? GW ones/model kit ones/aircraft ones/etc? They can be really useful for this sort of thing. Numbers, nostep, arrows, etc

Now I'm gonna take a break from posting and play a couple of rounds of Payday 2.

Hope you feel better.

All looking good, especially the scenery, like has been said nice and subtle, great job.

Cold play!?

COLD PLAY!?!?

It leaves our blog precious, and never comes BACK. It LEAVES our BLOG and NEVER comes BACK!

Ahem...

Yeah, there's a lot I still won't listen to, but not because I think it isn't cool. Some things I just dont like. Not even sure I've heard any coldplay unless it's on the radio and I barely listen to that. Sometimes the poppier songs from bands I like make it onto the radio, but usually not. I have expanded my range significantly over the years. I started with metallica and a select band of metal. Then I picked up several other kinds of metal but only specific to certain bands, I've always liked Queen. Lately I've come to like some techno/dance/whatever sub genre they've got out now and occasionally Dubstep, which is kind of like the Metal to Techno's rock or whatever Hell, I listen to video game music too and some of that crazy J-Pop stuff too, so I can throw no stones

I shall have to look into pledge One Go, I assume its used to make the paint runny but keep the pigments up top where they show off somehow? I could probably use the typhus corrosion too, very carefully run it down, and maybe just a nick of orange here and there.

I think as far as weathering goes my terrain will be evolving over time. I'm probably going to focus on getting pieces basically finished and dipped, then as I have time and inclination I'll go back in with rust, blood, and so on.

I hadn't considered using my old GW/other decals... That's not a bad idea I do have plans to print out various propaganda and advertisement signs, posters, and so on. The open faces of some of my buildings are likely going to have custom mega ad-boards built for them. Designed such that they look like a screen displaying a changing ad/commercial. Maybe some tagging too. I wanna get some terrain finished and ready to play, but then I'll start bringing it to life as I go.

@Cam Oh, I was just being a baby, work makes me tired and it was waaaay too cold for april yesterday (and this morning!). Also thanks, any compliment coming from you after seeing what you've been doing on your other stuff blog (seriously guys, check it out, its in his sig) is more than my humble efforts warrant


We've got a hobby lobby opening I think in june or july. I cannot tell you how fugging excited I am. I mean, they don't really cater to wargamers, even model train people, but they do carry stuff like woodland scenics and sometimes airbrush stuff. And generic hobby stuff that can be bent to our will. But to actually be able to get certain things without driving an hour away, and to be able to spend an unreasonable amount of time perusing their wares just to see if I missed anything in my shorter trips out of town... priceless! I'll probably expand on my scenery with some good re purposed and found items one they're open.

Hopefully I'm less of a wuss this evening and get something knocked out.

We have a Hobby Lobby here and I LOVE it. Mine stocks Vallejo paints and all sorts of hobby stuff. They even have stuff to make your own moulds and what not. Its not a FLGS, but its the best I have here and its most certainly better than nothing.

You should be very excited!

Totally am, it's a small town so they probably wont start out with anything cool that I like But we'll see.

I know what you mean. We just got one (18k person town) and I love it.

I think we've shrunk down to closer to 15k, still, I'll take what I can get.

I quite like Coldplay too, been well over a year since I listened to any of their music though.

If I am listening to music when painting I like to listen to relatively chilled out stuff for the most part.

The weekend tend to be my go to background music ATM it's not for everyone though.

Not sure if they exist in the USA but I went to hobbycraft the other day and picked up a load of deco art acrylicss for 1.50 each. They are 60ml bottle. I am sure they won't be as good as proper miniture paints but for the price I figured I would give it a go. If they are no good they will be great for painting terrain.

Probably similar to Apple Barrel stuff here. Work fine if you thin them doe some.

Acrylic paint is acrylic paint.

I use the good stuff on my scenery but only because I don't want to clog my airbrush with it's tiny nozzle. If I ever intend to paint some scenery by brush then I'll probably buy the cheaper stuff.

Still no progress tonight, starting to sound like a broken record and I'm about out of interesting things I've already got done to show you guys

Hopefully this weekend I can come up with something, still getting used to the full time outside work after a fairly lethargic winter. I may have to come up with a deadline/goal of some kind (as previously mentioned) to get the lead out. As long as it's fun, I don't want to make it too much of a chore.


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So I think my next terrain project is going to be an apartment building. I want to say I'm stealing the idea from one or more Japanese apartment buildings I've seen in various animes, though I think my brother in laws old apartment there was similar so its not just iconic. Really, I think there are a fair number of american buildings like this too, especially motels. Gonna use deadzone tiles of course.

You know the one, a 2-3 storey building with a staircase on the outside that goes up to a walkway along the front of the building g. The walkway is kind of a cover/awning for the lower apartments. Not sure if it'll look right with 3 storeys but if I can't do that I'll at least have a cube up there for some purpose.

I'm thinking of going 2x3 tiles so 6x9" which would make for 3 apartments on each floor. They'd be small, maybe the equivalent of 10x20', but room enough for a bed, desk, kitchinette, vertical shower and toillette surely. Really dz tiles may be a tad taller than two models too, which would make the apartments even roomier.

I plan to go with at least two stories, three if I have enough of the right tiles and the design allows for it. I've just had an idea.. for the interior walls I may use plasticard instead of bz tiles to save materials. I think it would actually look better since the bz walls look like sturdy bulkheads and these would be cheaper dividing walls. I may even look into seeing if my printer can print on thin plasticard or hell just use photo paper... then j could print the interior decorations. I need to get the process doin for ads and billboards anyway...

I'll glue the building but leave the tiles on back side glue less and attach with connectors so the interior will remain usable when desired.

The title of this update says it, I managed to spam out the last few steps on all of my little plague and paint my second second gen and my first gen. I kind of feel bad. He's such an awesome model and I probably spent... I dunno, way less than an hour on him. Basically two heavy drybrushes of coal (more or less a solid coat, just faster than the other brush) and a light drybrush of the dusty ground (really light grey). Plus the original flesh "wash" and a generous application of blood for the blood god, probably with one more to come after dipping and sealing. I still think he will look pretty cool, there just wasn't a whole lot to do the way I engineered my scheme, it's really simple on purpose, I just feel weird spending so little time on what is probably my favorite deadzone model, favorite plague model for sure.

Anyway, maybe less than an hour of dipping and they'll be ready to seal. I went with bright red eyes, because, why not. I've also got that one s2 (there's like three ways to call these guys, not sure which is becoming the most common, this way is the most succinct ) who's ready to go, just need to base him so there may be pictures of that later. I'm holding off to dip until the baby goes to sleep. Should be soon. I may try to finish painting my first tower too, we'll see. I may also do a sketch for my apartment building, though it would be pretty hard to mess it up, or to do it any other way given my intentions.

Once these plague are finished, I intend to get several Infinity models set up in their place, though that doesn't necessitate me doing those next, the marauders will probably go straight onto nails since their big feet are at little risk of breaking from the strain.


So a bit of a funny thing... I was thinking I wanted to do something wonky with my remote Sputnik. I was torn between blue to match my off color and then hot pink just because :p Then I decided it needed to be called Bubbles if it were pink... Then I thought bubbles... And the fact that I want to eventually get two more sputniks (there's a double pack of the shootier variants).... Totally have to go with a powerpuff girls theme just because it'll be silly So I'll be painting my remote light/baby blue and eventually painting it's sister units light green and red/pink. Cause it's silly I've also come up with names for almost all of my existing Infinity minis too, got a lot of time to think mowing yards most of the day

Alright off to read my Containment Protocols deadzone short story compilation until the child is in snoozeland. I'll try to pop back in with pictures when I get the chance.


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Ok got my plague guys dipped, I just have to seal the last six and get the two big guys on bases and the strike team is complete. Strike teams are the standard sized force you use in deadzone. The new campaign book has one mission with a group about 2/3 the size, and there's another standard game type with about 40% more points, but this is done enough for me. I'll build and paint up some options once I get the other factions their own finished team. I need to finish my enforcer sniper and then that faction will have a complete strike team as well. Then it's just rebs and marauders, with half of the marauders already assembled. And I'll be priming some Infinity figures just as soon as I've got them up on painting mounts with their clear bases masked over. I'll also be trying to keep terrain in mind as I move forward.

Here's a couple of shots of that second gen now that he's flat coated and on his base. Whatever I did to his eyes wasn't enough, I will have to go back and touch those up at least. maybe his teeth too, not sure.



Huh, this second shot is blurrier than I thought it was, whoops.


So there's what I've got, the whole plague team is present, six with dip drying, two finished off to the side. You can also see my tower, which is *almost* ready to dip, and another cube I've got in the queue.


The last picture was taken (well a lot of them recently) in my recently claimed hobby space in garagelandia, it's starting to get warm enough to keep stuff like paints out there, and I only go out there to paint.. and nobody else goes there. So what I'm getting at is that I can leave stuff right in process without fear of it being disturbed or the need to do any picking up. The compressor is far enough from the bedrooms that it can't possibly be heard. TLDR: This is a nice space that will promote progress, I just need a barstool for the slightly higher table and I'll be gtg.

I'm liking your Plague stuff Grim, the Stage 1 in paticular looks badass in that scheme.

Some great work you are knocking out, team looks brilliant, assembled together.

Good news on the work space, should help improve productivity.

Thanks guys! I hope to be back with sealed and based team tonight. Maybe I can keep the momentum into the weekend.

Well, speed painting is an art in itself, so you are getting pro in that particular skill in less than an hour he's very cool looking, excellent job!

I totally support the Powerpuff Girls theme. We all need more silliness

So your S1 and S2 with the ourstretched arms look sweet. Looks like they just got done tearing some enfocers to bits with the blood everywhere. Thats what plague are supposed to be doing!


The only thing that looks off to me is on the S2 gorilla guy (thats what I call him). He has blood all over him but almost none on his hands. Did he wash his hands? I'm not trying to nitpick, but y ou know what I mean. Another coat of blood on the hands would make him look more in place with the other ones and make the blood everywhere else on him make more sense.

Plague look great, but I think the S3s might need more blood. At the moment, the 1+2s look red from a distance, while the 3s look green. A little more blood might add some more unity to the force.

A really nice scheme, though.

Good news then, I've had more blood in the plan all along. You are right about the hands on gorilla guy and everyone will get a fresh coat and some splatter. May do it before pictures tonight.

Had then all done but roaring s2 broke an ankle coming off his nail.


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Well, that second gen's ankle got nice and set while I was at work, I glued him down to his base and came back with the bloods. I did some touching up on everyone with the brush, and then used the airbrush to blast some splatter onto them. I'm pretty happy with how the whole batch turned out and I wouldn't mind working on some more, but I've got a lot of other stuff I want to take care of first.

Group shot, these will look a lot better once I have a bit more terrain finished:


Here's everyone, go team!


Here's the big guy, I love this model, he almost has an overload on gore, but he's been around since the start of the infection and he'll keep killing until he goes down or he's out of victims.


Due to feedback, everyone got more blood. For the third gens I decided to still keep it to certain areas, the second gens are kind of covered but some of it is their own from raw muscles showing etc. I really like the claw on this third gen, the dog... there wasn't much I could do really. Oh... I still need to do this guy's belt buckle, there are a couple more buckles to do and the hmg guy needs his bullets painted.


I like this guy quite a bit more than I had originally. I spent awhile bending him back from his original pose to get more of a roaring at the sky pose, I like it.


I blooded up the gorilla pose, the red is almost too spread out in places and looks more like his coloration than a bunch of gore. I may touch it up some time, several of these guys need their eyes fixed/improved.


This one didn't look this blurry on the camera, whoops! I changed the pouches on the hazmat suit guys to black/grey, it looks better. I'll get some more shots later.

So, yay. Several models down. I will probably start working on the enforcer sniper, and maybe put some more time in on the reverend moira, though I'm not sure exactly how I want to paint her given my subtle modifications to the stock scheme. We'll see. More later!

 GrimDork wrote:
Cold play!?

COLD PLAY!?!?

It leaves our blog precious, and never comes BACK. It LEAVES our BLOG and NEVER comes BACK!

Ahem...

Ah, it's fine for inoffensive background music, and that's what I use it as. Not sure I get the hate, there's plenty of other stuff that seems to be similar and doesn't attract the same ire. Are the band members massive public douchebags or something? I admit to not really knowing much at all about them.

Yeah, there's a lot I still won't listen to, but not because I think it isn't cool. Some things I just dont like. Not even sure I've heard any coldplay unless it's on the radio and I barely listen to that. Sometimes the poppier songs from bands I like make it onto the radio, but usually not. I have expanded my range significantly over the years. I started with metallica and a select band of metal. Then I picked up several other kinds of metal but only specific to certain bands, I've always liked Queen. Lately I've come to like some techno/dance/whatever sub genre they've got out now and occasionally Dubstep, which is kind of like the Metal to Techno's rock or whatever Hell, I listen to video game music too and some of that crazy J-Pop stuff too, so I can throw no stones

I have a complicated relationship with Metallica. I used to like them but the whole Napster thing still leaves a sour taste in my mouth towards them. I always describe my musical tastes as "there's stuff you'l love and stuff you'll hate" when people ask. I have to admit, I still have a degree of snobbery, though - so no Miley or Videogame music for me!


I shall have to look into pledge One Go, I assume its used to make the paint runny but keep the pigments up top where they show off somehow? I could probably use the typhus corrosion too, very carefully run it down, and maybe just a nick of orange here and there.


Pledge One Go is aka Future Floor Wax. Or the other way around, probably. I think.

Here's some good info.
http://gator896.hostgator.com/~sabc/howto/matt_01/matt_01.htm
https://sites.google.com/site/donsairbrushtips/future-floor-polish
http://ilovewood001.tripod.com/modeling/future.html

According to one of those links, it might now be called Pledge Floor Care Multi-Surface Finish

years and years ago I assembled one of those Russian "Urban War" Scenery kits that are now known as "Pegasus Hobbies" kits. There was a tutorial somewhere on the net that described a way of creating a wash using Future and orange paint, because when the future would dry it would "suck" the pigment down into the crevasses in the detail of the model, rather than "pool" and create those horrible drying circles we get when paint or washes "pool" and dry like that. I eventually found some kind of cleaning substance that was being described as the Aussie equivalent at the time, and it worked really well. Last year, though - I tracked down the real stuff, and got two large bottles for AU$60 (yeah, ridiculously priced, but it's imported from the US, and I compared it to the amount we pay for our paints, and figured that two 800ml bottles is pretty much a lifetime supply). And yes, my wife knows that it's not for polishing the floor tiles with(!)

I think as far as weathering goes my terrain will be evolving over time. I'm probably going to focus on getting pieces basically finished and dipped, then as I have time and inclination I'll go back in with rust, blood, and so on.

I hadn't considered using my old GW/other decals... That's not a bad idea I do have plans to print out various propaganda and advertisement signs, posters, and so on. The open faces of some of my buildings are likely going to have custom mega ad-boards built for them. Designed such that they look like a screen displaying a changing ad/commercial. Maybe some tagging too. I wanna get some terrain finished and ready to play, but then I'll start bringing it to life as I go.

Also, check out the MIG rust washes. You'll need to clear coat the models to protect them first, but these are good stuff and easy as hell to use, though they are enamel-based. Any of the three brands will have much the same stuff.
MIG
AK Interactive
Mig Jiminez Ammo

Actually, I see there's now an acrylic one in a Vallejo-style bottle.
http://www.migjimenez.com/en/buscar?controller=search&orderby=position&orderway=desc&search_query=rust&submit_search=Search

We've got a hobby lobby opening I think in june or july. I cannot tell you how fugging excited I am. I mean, they don't really cater to wargamers, even model train people, but they do carry stuff like woodland scenics and sometimes airbrush stuff. And generic hobby stuff that can be bent to our will. But to actually be able to get certain things without driving an hour away, and to be able to spend an unreasonable amount of time perusing their wares just to see if I missed anything in my shorter trips out of town... priceless! I'll probably expand on my scenery with some good re purposed and found items one they're open.

Hopefully I'm less of a wuss this evening and get something knocked out.

Sounds good. Also check out your hardware stores if you're looking for interesting things to repurpose for scenery or bolt-on to your Mantic and GW buildings. I always have to keep myself in check when I go down to Bunnings or Masters here...

edit - quote tags

I find some cool stuff in dollar stores. My brain must be just a few degrees off of seeing all of the PVC pipes and tubes and connecting it to terrain. I see people do it, but my own brain never goes there first. I think I will try to know something out oof this plastic Filters can though.

Just finished my sixth enforcer. I lovve the sniper's pose but he has some softer details in places.

I was gonna start my infinity minis but they all came off their bases... I. Guess I will try scoring the surfaces and iif that doesn't work ill find another adhesive.

Will dip enforcer once paint has had a moment to cure. Might spray some terrain but I'm kind of stuck watching this weird anime atm.


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And about coldd play, I basically know nothing about the band. You could have said the Corrs or whatever, I was just being a faux jerk




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Enforcer sniper finished, just need to get some light going on and I'll have some pictures of him up, maybe a group shot just because.

I also got the first marauder strike team cleaned and built, going to see about getting them all nailed and ready for painting in the next few hours before baby nap, then base coating them after she does nap. I guess I'll do white, I'm not 100% on how I'm going to paint them yet. I kind of want to do a crisp black and professional military/merc look.. but I dunno.

I was just thinking too, the commando captain's suit looks kind of familiar...





Ehh, ehh? But then what about everyone else, and it kind of kills my idea for red skin tone, but there's no going back to green cause I don't want christmas Orx.

Hmm, if there will be that much red, I would need to undercoat red. Thoughts?

Alright, got pictures of the sniper and the rest of the team too.


Simple, but I didn't want to have the one model look too different from the rest.



I need to work on my composition, but I will have more terrain soon!

So yeah, not sure if I'll get the marauders sprayed during the nap today, but maybe before tomorrow.

I really like the cape on the Sniper. The gloss finish and extreme highlights make it look more like it uses active camo than just plain hiding, making it far more fitting to the setting.

Are you going to be adding blue stripes to the other shoulder pads as well? Because, to me, having it on just one mini is a little odd (unless you're using it to denote specialist status or something)

I think they will be all yellow, that was the first test model, it needs to be fixed. Whoops.

Nice touch on the plagued there, like the disease or such made them hard armor out of metallicized bone and such!

Yeah I figured the disease may work on the bones, hardening them and pushing/growing them out to the surface for additional protection.


No progress on the marauders tonight, toddler thought my paints were fun to play with so I put the station up and I've been researching terrain and scenery ideas instead.

I really like the bloody plague. When I first saw it I thought that you had painted them to make it look like to their skin / muscle was bloody and sore from the infection. But I am assuming it is meant to be the blood of people they have slaughtered?

I don't have the skill to do it but I would love to see someone paint the snipers cloak in this kind of style.

I thought about trying that but with the clear base ii wasn't sure what to have him blending into. Plus it would make the model way more complex then its peers. Also not sure I could do it first try and repainting is demoralizing

The plague have a mix of raw bleeding muscle and acquired gore. I'm still undecided as to if I should have painted the muscle parts red before applying the blood for the blood god or not. I like how they look but they do lend to some confusion as you point out.



Yay progress, I got the outside of my tower dipped as well as the inside of two cubes. The test piece should now be officially done. Gonna dip the insides first going forward as I'm less concerned with their appearance and second side dipping accidents will show less n the inside. I used a one inch sponge brush to apply the dip, it worked pretty well and packs of them are dirt cheap. The overall appearance is kind of rough, it looked dirty and dinjy which works here but leaves me wondering if certain projects will reject the process.

 GrimDork wrote:
Yeah I figured the disease may work on the bones, hardening them and pushing/growing them out to the surface for additional protection.

That way they were sculpted gave me that same impression. Also, the way the Mantic team painted them, boney plates and such with muscle bundles in between.But unlike pure zombies, these guys are just nutters with a cunning plan to expand, if the can just beat the uninfected teams against them.

Yeah. Classic zombie thing is an epidemic or pandemic or whatever. These guys are more like a foothold scenario followed by full scale invasion as they systematically eliminate the inhabitants of the planet, swelling their ranks. And THEN they try to spread to new planets to do it again.

I think the developing blood splatter from 1st Gen through to the 3rd Gens works great, newly turned guys, especially since they have the use of ranged weapons are likely to not get much splatter all that often.

In regards to the blood for the blood god paint, how easy is it to work with? I had the idea of doing a World Eaters army and painting them in there original Legion Colours (white and blue) and then adding so much of the blood god paint that from a distance they will actually appear to be red, its only once you get close do you realize that the red is actually the gore they are covered in.... would this be possible or would I need to do something a little different?

I think it's pretty easy to work with. It's the only red I used aside from the eyes, I think. You have to use a lot of it to get opacity, otherwise its kind of a glaze. If you put it on heavy enough though you can get it into the recesses.

I think you could do what you say, but it might take a while to get the right technique/application method down to portray what you're after instead of something confused in the middle. I'm not sure if it would be best to do the splatter method or brush it on.. probably some of both really. The splatter method will build up some texture pretty quick after a few applications since this stuff is thick and the little drops may not be totally flat when they dry.

I would say that it's definitely worth picking up a pot for experimenting, and that it's at least somewhat probable that you could do what you want.



Gah, FTL got a free expansion and that's been distracting me Probably not for long though, I played the game a LOT when I first got it and my burn out resistance is pretty low.

SO, got Easter stuff today. Gonna try to get my marauders worked on when there is time. May see about pinning my Infinity team if I can find my thinnest wire.


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Uh oh.... I guess it's about time. I have trouble being productive in the heat. I'm kind of like a computer in that way, I do fine in a cold room all day (though my painting stuff doesn't necessarily like it!), but if it's even a little arm I get sweaty and unproductive. I have trouble sleeping in the heat too. It's always something trying to drag my progress down :p

So I might still get some marauder painting done, it's not actually hot yet, just approaching it. May not be putting pics for a bit though, I want to execute the scheme through to dipping on a test model before I approve it for the whole unit.

 GrimDork wrote:
Yeah. Classic zombie thing is an epidemic or pandemic or whatever. These guys are more like a foothold scenario followed by full scale invasion as they systematically eliminate the inhabitants of the planet, swelling their ranks. And THEN they try to spread to new planets to do it again.

Like the makers of the artifacts made them so that if they were accessed correctly, or with the right attitude, no big deal, maybe knowledge shared? But Corporates will do it for profit/greed, so they unleashe the Beast Virus as I call it, and see the population transformed into an army that takes the uninfected as it's own, spreading, then looking to use ships to spread to other worlds is like a Nids within and that Marauders have immunity makes one wonder about their origins and why they are uninfectable.

 carlos13th wrote:
I really like the bloody plague. When I first saw it I thought that you had painted them to make it look like to their skin / muscle was bloody and sore from the infection. But I am assuming it is meant to be the blood of people they have slaughtered?

I don't have the skill to do it but I would love to see someone paint the snipers cloak in this kind of style.

It is simpler than you think, he just used dry-brushing like on the base. it is really difficult when you try to do shimmering cloak effects

I just read one of the stories in the Containment Protocols compilation that suggested that orx could carry the infection without it doing anything to them, they'd be a nasty infection vector if the plague realized that (and if it was actually meant to be canon and not a slip up by the fact checkers ). The plague virus could be as you say, or it could even be something along the lines of teraforming. The aliens that made it are a long-plan type, they built it to wipe out all intelligent life and went into stasis so when they woke up they could shape the universe in their own image unopposed (maybe the plague even have an limited shelf life so they aren't around either). Or maybe it was the asterians, like a crazy wing of one of their political or religious sects trying to do something grandiose, and that's why the others sometimes go to the deadzones to shut down the infection. Maybe it was just a biological WMD, kind of like the gunk that made the whatever that made the things in Promethius (that was the new not-Alien movie right, I get lost on names sometimes ) into nasty killer aliens. The death arc or whatever it's called was the frontline of an ancient battle and the plague artifacts are just leftovers. Lots of cool possibilities

I really like the sick hexagonal patterns people put down with airbrushes on tau vehicles, I think it's actually relatively easy but I'm still a n00b with my airbrush so I can't do anything fancy with it. The above is basically painting the model with two different schemes and meeting them up with a little line inside a big line, it looks cool but it isn't necessarily hard. Still don't think it would have looked right next to my other guys though.

I think people use stencils to do the hexagon stuff.

Could you give an example of shimmering cloak effects?

Yeah its stencils or sometimes they use certain kinds of frisket as a stencil, but I'm not goods enough with the AB to get the fancy effects people do. Yet.

I too would be interested in these 'shimmering cloaks' of which you speak.



No progress tonight, almost. Found some new anime on Netflix and watching TV is easier than painting after work...

How about this, M'lud?

http://www.anarchymodels.co.uk/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQVKmzvxDDM

Yeah, I saw that kickstarter, I either didn't have money or it was before I was backing them. I think some people even just hold a frisket or what have you over the target and spray.

http://www.beastsofwar.com/groups/painting/forum/topic/otaka-cadre-tau-osl-airbrushing-carbon-fibre/
Is along the lines of what I mean when I say forcefield or shield effects, and why I think you'd use a little hexagonal mesh or something.

Sweet video too, if I every try to paint camo I may have to look into a set of those.

Need to get to work on my dad blasted marauders, lazines rising...

Meh, progress and updates are slower than I would like, folks. I have been doing some stuff though, just haven't taken pictures. I might after this. I got a few buildings primed with a rattlecan. The airbrush paint acts like it will be easy to scrape off, whereas the spray can finishes usually don't. It may be the building material too, but I dunno. I have three square buildings, another tower, and some smaller pieces drying/curing at the moment. I've been investigating my extra stuff/junk containers to see about improvised terrain as well.

I've got one thing, which used to be a medium sized Folgers plastic tub, that I plan to implement as a liquid storage container. It would do better on the ground or on a larger building, but if I modify the base of it a bit more, I could probably mount it on top of one of the towers to use it as a water tower. I think I'm gonna nab a couple of ladders for it, and I need to fix the top to be a bit more reasonable, maybe some railings too. I've also got some plans for improvised walkways too, since you can't have enough walkways... and since that would free up half-tiles to become wall sections.

My marauder Captain is getting there. There are a bunch of little steps and details yet to pick out, but it probably won't take an hour or so before I can dip him. The grunts should be a fair bit easier to paint too.

Hope to get a few thing done, though I think I'll go take some photos after I finish lunch.

Still haven't shot the Marauder Captain, I'll just wait till he's more or less finished I guess. Here are a few shots of my recently primed buildings:





Tower and second cube still need rust, blood splatter, etc. I'm gonna do those things as I get time, I consider anything dipped to more or less be done for the time being. Oh.. whoops those last two still need a flat coat on top. Hmm... technically I should do the rust first... so I guess things are where they're meant to be.

One of the white buildings is yellow as of late last night, I'll get pictures of that after I've gotten more progress on it though.

I may throw a post up in the general 40k thread to take suggestions as to what to do with my space marines. I still want to get my deadzone stuff sorted out, but I've learned of a club or something that plays 40k around an hour away so I'm going to do some probing on that lead. If it pans out, I may want to get a playable force of marines sorted out too and I'll need some help choosing and updating it for the more recent developments.

You are doing a great job on this lot, I have to resist going and getting this lot, too much to do. Looks brilliant though.

The terrain in the last picture looks fantastic. Don't be so hard on yourself for lack of progress Grimm I would kill for your output speed.


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In regards to the marines I recommend picking an army you like the sound of tactically then painting them a custom colour scheme.

Thanks Carlos, I'm hoping to step up my game with some signage and posters soon too. Yep, that's what I'm going to mostly be after when I make my HALP MAH post later, looking to figure out which chapter/tactics best fit my playstyle and collection. I'm seriously considering doing a test model in white, maybe with black. Not to necessarily look like storm troopers, I'm only somewhat a fan of the star wars, but because white and black are good colors and they would make for a ridiculously simple scheme. We'll see, I may wait a bit and theme it loosely towards whichever chapter(s) I go with.

Thanks Cam, I'm finally getting to fulfill my dream of an urban table so I'm hoping to keep up my momentum on this until it's become something special. Probably not as ridonkulous as your Hotel Kaliforknia, but something I can be proud of anyway


In other news, my Marauder Captain is almost finished. Just have to get another layer or two of copper onto the bullets coming out of the crate he's Captain Morganing and let the paint dry/cure a bit before I can dip him. Hopefully do that before the little one gets up, so I can give you a photo tonight. I'm fairly pleased but I'll wait to say more till he's dipped. I also primed my water/storage container thing, wanted to blend the bits on it with the old existing item so I could post it later and ask you guys what else it needs to fit in with the rest of my DZ terrain.


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Marauder Captain:

Needs a flat coat to mitigate the shiny dip, and a base. I'm fairly happy with the color scheme and look forward to replicating it on his minions with their simpler details.


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Hey guys, while I'm taking pictures today... here's a tower-less water tower, or other fluid storage container thingie I whipped together from a medium Folgers container and a few battlezone bits:




Plague 3rd gen for scale, he's not massively different in height from a space marine, though probably a bit taller.

What does this need? Some kind of pipes or tubes maybe? A control panel? A port or other means of access for filling/removing the contents? Something else? What could I use to make this look more complete? I sprayed it to this point 'cause it looked funny with the battlezone bits just tacked on

Might paint another marauder tonight, who knows.

A tube from the top or side into the ground and a control panel or genetic wheel valve should help spice it up.


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A tube from the top or side into the ground and a control panel or genetic wheel valve should help spice it up.

Ayup! I made a thread over in painting and modeling and got pretty much the same suggestions so I've begun to implement them. It has a large (or well probably just normal sized) billboard with a control panel on the back with an emergency physical shut-off valve on one half. The other half has a tiny monitor, probably 1-2 cm square, or about the same size as a marine's chest, that I'll put a print-out design into, and two little vertical bits that I may fill with a sort of digital gauge. I'm adding the pipes to one side and a light post opposite them. I'm also adding a round port to the front which will be arranged like it's meant for a truck to back up to it and resupply it. I'll want to add some warning posters but I can do those (and the ad for the ad-board) after this is painted. I'm also thinking of making a paired set of fencing to go along with this to just make it a 6x6" terrain feature, whether I use it for deadzone or not.

That is a LOT of fighting terrain

Indeed! I intend to uncomfortably cram-pack at least a 4x4' board before I'm done. Preferably a 4x6'.

So I got my marauder captain done. I'm pretty happy with the overall result. I think, like the model, the colors show the duality of the Marauders. The way I perceive the faction is that they are really quite clever, just as smart as humans but with the race seen as dumb and brutish by most corporation folk. This farce is fabricated by the corporations as a way to save face for conscripting, training, and then losing their grip on what became the Marauder faction. The individual Marauder crews are happy to play dumb and further the ruse, as it gives them an edge in dealing with the uninformed. To that effect, these crack military units dress the part, but my crew (and likely others) does so garishly enough so as to have the affectation of "getting it wrong". Just further playing the part, acting frail when you're weak, dumb when you're smart, that kind of thing. Too many words, little enough point, pictures now for you:






Don't mind those white flecks of whatever, they'll brush off. It's paint that was on the bottom of the crate which needed to be removed before he got cemented to his base.

Do you guys like him? Can you tell which character I loosely based his colors on? The grunts will look a lot like this but with way less in the way of medals, tassels, and probably none of the blue-green.


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Oh and if anyone is desperate to see more WIP shots of that container/tower thing... I just put them in the thread asking for suggestions for finishing it:
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/592263.page#6771342

So goodnight

Reminds me of M Bison, Or Vega depending on the translation.

Not sure that's who you were going for though.

The stick on my marauder captin arrived snapped was yours ok?

Awesome paint job and great model.

 carlos13th wrote:
Reminds me of M Bison, Or Vega depending on the translation.

Not sure that's who you were going for though.

The stick on my marauder captin arrived snapped was yours ok?

He DOES look just like M. Bison. Love it even more now!!

I couldn't help it, he had the cape and hat and glove and boots... it was meant to be

His stick is just a little bent but in a way that would have been hard to fix.

Love the paint job. I take it they are the "ork" equivalent in their game setting?

Yeah they are archer, but they see not dumb and stupid like orks,

I think Mantic is still trying to get a full grasp on what they want for the Warpath Universe, he's an Orx part of a larger faction of marauders. They were a lower tech race that was giving the corporation fits, one guy went in and more or less conscripted the lot of them. They got trained and geared up and it worked out well until they decided they were better off on their own and they separated from the corporations and established themselves as independent raiders/mercs. I think it was to save face that the corporation makes them sound dumb, though it just gives the Marauders another advantage. There are the Orx, goblins (also called stunts), and some big troll-like things called Hulks.

Or TLDR: It's an Orc/k/x, yes

Got another marauder about halfway done or better, and some work on the two mawbeasts.

Look forward to seeing them, didn't fancy green skin?

I figured I would try something different. If I paint some fantasy orcs I'll probably do green... I dunno I'm still kinda partial to somewhat realistic skin tones, I just don't see green skin making a lot of sense for a mammal. Of course orcs may not be as such.

You know what, if I'm being honest... its probably at least 50% a product of my Snowflake Syndrome. I take medication for it, you know, to prevent the onset of full blown hipsteritis... but there are flare ups now and again. Not as bad as my altitis, but still a thing.

Worked today which is outside the norm, so not much hobbying done. Revamped my marine list a bit. Probably going to have to buy another AA unit if I get around to actually playing games be it a stalker/hunter kit, another stormtalon, or a stormraven. For now I just want to get a nice list tweaked and on standby so I can be reach to paint Marines when the mood strikes me.

I was considering painting mine blue if I ever got around to them. Same kind of blue as the Warmahordes troll bloods. Gave them to a friend who loves orks instead.

It could work, its a new universe and lots of stuff can happen in SciFi.


Before I forget I wanted to mention a dead zone billboard idea. Think Joe Camel cigarrete ad, but Steve Sorak, a potential leather jacket wearing sorak with a nic-stic in his mouth spouting out a message like 'hey kids! Brand x nicstics makes you 20% cooler, have 50% more narcotic goodness, and only 15% more carcinogens than brand y!'. Probably gotta be more succinct though or it won't be readable from a distance.

How about

Smoke blah blah, sure you will die early but you'll die looking cool.

Ehh, if you can afford it, there's probably scifi medicine to cure your lung cancer. Or well... probably just buy some grey market lungs. Or download yourself into an immortal robot body. If you're rich, otherwise you're probably too low down under the hypersmog layer to even see the adverts, and too busy being mashed into the grease that keeps the corporate machinery running Cheerful, I know!


Speaking of cheerful, hmm it is Monday at that, I think I've got some more doom and gloom.

Well not really. It may well be a good thing.

But apparently there will be a new 40k book dropping soon. Like, this month? I'm not usually one to latch onto rumors and hearsay, though I think this was loosely confirmed in the official magazine thing, but since I'm already tired and grumpy... I'm definitely not paying more for a new book than the last one. It was pretty and shiny, and the fluff was vaguely interesting, but $75 for a rulebook is kind of crazy. I don't think I'll be buying one, even with that semi-local gaming group as a potential chance to play. I'll at least be waiting for the dust to settle so I can read some reviews/posts and determine if it's something in which I am still interested. So yeah, DOOMGLOOM.

On the bright side, this means that I can probably just crampack all of my space marines back into their little boxes or foams, and continue to focus on getting deadzone stuff done. I still have time to get at least a strike team for each faction finished before the second shipment arrives. Probably not before battle systems gets here but that one requires very little work and will be primarily gravy. Or ice cream. Lets think about icecream instead since its hot out. On that note, I did manage to dip that marauder commando. Still 8 models left in the faction but y'know, any progress in the doldrums right?

If I do determine the 7th edition of 40k to be truly 'not my thing', I'm probably gonna just sell off all of my marines along with the eldar and tyranids, just to be done with it. I mean I may keep a few models to paint, if I like them. Really... if prices don't fluctuate wildly when the edition drops, it may be a good time to sell some things back eBay... I paid about $13 each for the 3 sets of 3 bikers from Dark Vengeance... and now they're closer to $20 per and a lot more scarce. May actually manage to turn a small profit in the end.


I'll be keeping all of the tanks for use as scenery, and the dreadnoughts may still someday serve as conversion fodder for armored core style robots

We'll see, not going to sell anything until at least a decent look and review has been given about the book, but I've learned not to be hopeful about such things. Which only makes me hopeful to pad out my hobby budget by hocking my armies


Oh yeah, sorry for the weird post. I'm tired today, trying to get used to what looks to be some heat at work. Like outside heat, cause it's getting hot out there. Yeah. Brain do good, now make sleepy bye. But I'll try to get you fine folks some pictures in the next one. Was going to shoot a group shot of the army I was going to try to build on the side... but that's definitely in limbo again now.


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See told you I'd dump a picture eventually.

If there is a new book out there will be a new starter set, if they happens buy the mini rule book from eBay instead of the big expesive one,

 carlos13th wrote:
If there is a new book out there will be a new starter set, if they happens buy the mini rule book from eBay instead of the big expesive one,

The mini rulebooks won't include all the rules this time. It only contains the rules that allow you to play with the units in the box. So no vehicle rules, etc. At least, thats the rumor.

Yep thats the rumor. More than anything I'd have to see how itsall being rreceived with the group I may try to play with. If they're all excited and it doesn't sound too bad, starting s new edition would be good since I barely know the current game and it would level the playing field a bit. On the other hand, its another expense and Im not interested in an arms race so if that's the case I'd rather skip it.

Either way I've gotta wait for the launch before I can figure out what's going on. I could be optimistic and work ahead... but I just don't see much to lead me to optimism.

Just let's me keep plugging away at deadzone.

 squall018 wrote:

 carlos13th wrote:
If there is a new book out there will be a new starter set, if they happens buy the mini rule book from eBay instead of the big expesive one,

The mini rulebooks won't include all the rules this time. It only contains the rules that allow you to play with the units in the box. So no vehicle rules, etc. At least, thats the rumor.

Well feth that for a laugh. I saw the price of the 6th edition and didnt bother buying it at that price.

I see the red uniforms and can't help think: The Orx of Shadaloo

 shasolenzabi wrote:
I see the red uniforms and can't help think: The Orx of Shadaloo

Pretty much the thought I had. Leader has to be called M.Bison or Vega. Depending on if you prefer the English or Japanese version.

I always knew him as M Bison but Vega almost works better here. Wasn't it called shadowlaw too at some point? Maybe in the sf2 cartoon/anime series or something. I guess I could do some of the not-orx as other SF characters. Oh dear god blanka mawbeasts! Zomgwtfbbqwin. Maybe the hulk can look a bit more like zangief somehow...

Yeah I think its been called both.

Like the skin tone and uniforms on the Marauders, I only put red on their funky little caps. Good to hear that we will be seeing more DZ work in the future too, no idea how people are keeping up with the new rulebooks/codexes/dataslates etc for 40K.

Thanks ToT. I haven't kept up with 40k at all, but having glanced at what's different now, I'm not sure I could have. I always steered clear of forgeworld and the like since my former local group was all fair-centric and FW stuff tended to wax powerful and we didn't want to start up any arms races. I'd probably do a lot of "show up with a list and get demolished by some new dataslate or formation", which would be disheartening on the quick.

I'm planning to dig into my marauders soon, but I've taken a detour to finish a little terrain piece. I've got some ideas to expand it, but I think I'm going to do the base piece and move on so I can get back on task for the marauders. I quite like way your marauders turned out (check it out guys, link in his sig ).

I should have some photos up for this terrain piece later, it's basically done sans sealing. Working on printing out some warning/advert posters atm.


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Alrighty, got a little work done today. I'm gonna call the following piece finished. I may change the billboard later when I progress to the GIMP over MS paint. The signs and posters were pilfered from various sources on the internet, largely googled for things like sign, sign collection, sci fi sign, you get the idea.


wip after the airbrushing


wip after the dipping


Slightly blurry final shot of the front


Sorak Steve says nicstix are better than sex!









And some fun shots with some minis:







This Sorak is not amused. He's preparing to demo charge the offensive billboard.

I took some of the advice I was given, and saved some of the other advice for future projects. I still want to do a little tagging on this piece, maybe the Dreadball Xtreme logo?

Grim, this is one the coolest things I've seen you do! How did you make that board? Did you free hand it or print it? The weathering is also good, and I like thats its there but you didn't go overboard with it. I'm a little jealous right now.

Thanks I had a lot of fun working on it. The smoking Sorak? That's a no talent MS paintbrush hack job Then printed and applied to the board, just like all of the signs, posters, and the computer screens. I'm hoping to do a better job eventually but I've got to learn how to work the GIMP first.

The dipping process is really good at making something look kind of nasty like this, and GW's corrosion and rust paints are great for quick and easy rust. I may have to work something different out when I try to do some cleaner buildings... maybe. We'll see.


Oooh, yeah. I also need to report that my faith in Krylon has been sustained. I picked up a can of their clear flat top coat stuff, about 3-4 bucks, and it works a lot better than my Minitare airbrush sealer. I mean... the minitare stuff is fine, but it isn't nearly as flat as I want. The Minitaire paints as a whole are a little shiny/glossy in their finish so I needed something really flat to level them out. This piece (and the second marauder I painted) are proving it to be quite capable of that task, and with no frosting so far. I'm pretty well sold. I may have to redo some of my other minis to flatten them out some more.

Got a lot of decisions to make today, so I may not make a whole lot of progress. I'm hoping to figure out what to do next though. Either a piece or two of terrain, or continue on the Marauders.

Marauders have my vote.

Billboard is a nice touch though!

I must have commented on your other thread on this, It is fantastic, billboard is a brilliant touch, weathering is excellent.

I would vote Marauders myself as well.

Though, your terrain is looking amazing.

Thanks guys . How can I say no to you, next painting session will be marauders then! I'll have to have you fine folk advise me on my ripper suit. He either needs to be red or black primary. I'm thinking maybe switch it up from the commandos and do black with red accents.. kind of like my big mech. Thoughts?

The Marauders are looking solid, and besides - brown is a classic colour for orc skin anyway.

More importantly, I'm absolutely loving that scenery piece! Seeing the progression, it's bloody amazing. If you didn't live so far away, I'd get you to build me one and send it over. The weathering and rust are great as well, but it's the decals that really bring it to life. Outstanding job there!

Thanks . I'm really tempted to do another one given how much everybody likes this, but I guess I better do some more marauders as promised

Honestly I wasn't sure how it would turn out but it looks pretty sweet. Would like to see it on a board with your other terrain.

That terrain piece is exceptional Grim. Love the board with the Sorak as a kindof Marlon Brando circa "The Wild One" figure. The weathering and painting is brilliant, it will be a tremendous addition to your DZ board. It will certainly teach me to look at more everyday objects with a modellers eye, more please.

Again thanks guys

The smoking Sorak used an old Joe camel cigarrete ad as the base, I want to make a nicer one when I get around to using the gimp.

I've been taking an increasing interest in the scratchbuilt and found item terrain blogs. Adamsouza, skalkbloodaxe, pretty much all of the LoeR guys like Cam and the rest.


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I think after I eventually finish off my recently acquired Folgers cinnamon swirl, I may use the can/jar/thing flipped the other way from the chemical storage tank topping 6-9 inches worth of 3x3" deadzone tower. Probably just the x-frames, it would be a proper water tower. Large pipe going straight down, maybe in the middle. Ladder all the way up, potentially enclosed with a cover granting guard rail, probably a little something on top dunno if I'd put as much as the billboard or not. This one may get advertisements on the drum itself instead.

But first I promised Marauders, so those will be up next just as soon as I sit down to paint again.

I'm late to the party, but I too have to say that piece of terrain is fantastic. The metal silo thing looks pretty good with some kick-ass weathering but that billboard is ridiculous how good it looks.
My favorite pic is the one with the "sniper" now that's an awesome scenario.

A little off-topic: I'm curious to see if the rumour GeeDubs is releasing FAQs and corrections free so our 6th edition book still works is true. I wouldn't bet my life on it since, well GW got their fame for a reason, but I'm still curious.

Thanks
They may put a mini rulebook in the DV box that's updated to 7th... but I sincerely doubt an update to make 6th ed book viable.

Got some shots to post to see what you guys think about some future terrain projects. Its a question of orientation/usability. Those will show up sooner or later.


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Alright here's a question for all of you. I'm gonna post two pictures with some PVC pipes/tubes and other cheap components, I want to know which orientation you guys think looks best.




The first shot, with the pipes elevated off the ground, seems to have more visual interest... but at the same time it's blocking a lot of LoS for normal models and raising a funny question of why aren't they just crouching to look under it at the exposed legs? The second shot is a lot more functional, with roughly waist high cover that's a bit different from yet more barrels or barricades. To make the second setup work, I'd probably cut the elbow off such that it would sit flush on the ground while still appearing to continue below the surface. This stuff was less than five bucks and should make for a fairly interesting terrain piece, but which way should I go about it? Obviously the box would be dressed up a little bit, but this wouldn't take a terribly large amount of effort to turn into a nice little piece.

I took a bunch more shots while I was fiddling with the above potential terrain, but most of them were blurry or lame. Testing the waters and seeing what my camera can do, but so far I'm mostly coming up empty.


I believe someone wanted to see the tower with the rest of my stuff, I really need to get some more painted it's kind of a piddly collection at the moment. The large fence piece still needs to be painted and it will probably get some posts too, I just wanted to break things up a little.

Hmm... When I do paint the fencing... should it be rusty metal to go along with the water tower and grim gray deadzone buildings, or should it be a black drybrushed blue lightly drybrushed light blue energy style fence?


Looks like these workers are mad as hell, and they're not going to take it anymore!

Thats it for me for now, hopefully I use the rest of this rainy day to come up with something.

In answer to your questions. I like the second picture better for the terrain. It makes it more playable and I like the idea of turning the 90 to make it flush. Side note about that, I actually sell plumbing for a living (don't ask me how I got into this). If you ever want smaller pipe, especially the fittings, use CPVC instead of PVC. Its smaller pipe and the fittings aren't near as large. I have found that it scales better, depending on what you are using. Main point, be aware that there are different types of plastic pipes to use.

On the fence, make it rusty, I feel like it will fit with your aesthetic you have going with the rest of the terrain.

Good points. The taller pipes just seem hard to play with. One vote for rust, and I'm probably in agreement.

I've been pipe shopping at Lowes mostly, where might I look for this other type of plastic?

 GrimDork wrote:
Good points. The taller pipes just seem hard to play with. One vote for rust, and I'm probably in agreement.

I've been pipe shopping at Lowes mostly, where might I look for this other type of plastic?

It will be in the plumbing section as well. It is a slightly off white color. If you ask them for CPVC they will know exactly what you are talking about. You will also immediately notice the size difference, especially in the fittings.

Oh hmm I guess I probably did see it earlier, just glanced past it. I'll check that out next time for sure.

Yeah the pipes do seem a bit tall

Nice work. What'd I tell you about the hardware store, eh?

I'd also go a little rusty. It fits in better with the aesthetic of the rest of the place, and even if you use it for Infinity, it seems like the ...lower end of town anyway - with fewer day-glow hexagons.

Yeah, sound advice. I've always been a better dirty painter than clean anyway. Blerk rain outs and working Saturday are killing my hobby progress. Gonna have to do spoke housekeeping tomorrow, as well as sorting out my gencon events list so I can get into the popular ones when they open on Sunday. And Sunday is also my daughter's birthday so even less likely to get anything done..

Speaking of gencon, tentatively planning on visiting on Friday/Saturday so I'll be a day late for breaking news, but I should still manage some 'live coverage' if my phone isn't too spazzy by then.

That warning sign is so full of win I can't find words to describe my amusement with it adequitely.



The whole project is pretty awesome

Stix are better than sex... he's either not doing right, or those stix are pretty amazing