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Ok, here we go. 500pts of Guard Vs Orks, played using Vassal.

Turns out if the game had ended at turn 5 it would have been a draw, not a guard win.

Those diagrams are amazing! How did you make them?

We played the game online using Vassal, so those are just screen captures of the game in progress.

I just realised quite how long it has been since I did anything with this blog. I am still here, I promise! Life managed to get in the way for a while as I was helping out with a local theatre production of Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere doing photography and some painting of props, such as Mr Vandemar's rings. The skulls were made by my wife and painted by yours truly.



That is now all done and dusted, so it's back to the Guard.
Talking to Arakasi today I realised that I don't actually know what I've got, or what state it is in. So tomorrow I'm going to go through and work it all out, including the total points value. To get this rolling, I finally got around to starting an army profile with a unit by unit breakdown of what I've got. I'll take better pictures of everything in it's current state to use as a guideline.

In addition to this I do have a few progress reports to make.

1) I started making some scenic bases to cast up. I figure it will be easier to make a load, cast them, paint them all and *then* stick the troops to them. Much easier than trying to decorate bases that are already attached to a painted model.

2) I picked up some Krieg stormtroopers in a trade recently... these have been started and are just waiting for the masks to be painted and bases to attach them to.

3) Thanks to Godsized I should be receiving a rather bulky package next week. I appear to have grown by a few more thousand points of unmade plastic crack! (1x Baneblade, 60 cadians, 2x valkyries, 3x Cadian command squads, 2x sentinels, 3x hellhounds and 4 packs of FW cadian upgrade packs)

Expect lots of piccies tomorrow

oh i'll be 'specting!

Wow, it was a while! Glad to see you're working on this again. Looking forward to seeing what you have coming!

The 'spectin be over. The army profile has been updated with lots of fresh new photos. Seeing it all like that makes me realise quite how little is actually in a "Finished" state. Most things seem to be in an almost-but-not-quite-there-yet stage. I think this year I need to get everything into a proper finished state.

We're off to Warhammer world again in June, so I'd like to get most of it done by then so I can get a decent army shot and some more recent terrain backed shots for the profile. For now, this will have to do as it's the largest surface I have available in the house, other than the floor. Sorry for the poor lighting :/

This little lot totals to about 4000 points without adding any extras on to the vehicles, or veteran squads. If I count all the unbuilt stuff I have here as well as the nice package winging it's way to me, that total goes up to about 6000! *faint*



I also realised there are a few things that never made it onto here over the last month or so, so here's what you've missed

1) The Deathstrike is nearing completion. It needs a coat of varnish to seal in the powders before I can do the last few little bits of detailing and the spotter in the back. I tried some OSL, but I'm not sure it's worked... not that you can really see it in these photos



[update]Oh jeez, how did I miss not drilling out the heavy bolter?!![/update]

2) A Heavy Bolter servitor has been completed, to up the Techpriest's retinue to three



3) I picked up a set of Storm troopers in a trade. They have now been equipped with two meltas and the first 5 are nearly finished. There's still bits like the masks left to do... it's always the fiddly bits you forget about until you take a photo :/



I've also started building some bases to cast for my use. I have special heavy weapon bases that I'll show when they are nearer completion. In the mean time, these are all getting there, but have a bit more texturing to do

Looking good, nice paintjobs!

Thanks!

The more I look at these photos, the more I notice should be done on the supposedly finished models. Gah!

Painting resolutions for 2012 include:

1) Do 1 squad at a time; finish it and move on. Do NOT have 15 squads on the go at once as you *will* miss stuff :/

2) Buy the lightbox setup I've been looking at for over a year... a desk lamp is NOT good enough, even with long exposures.

3) Do NOT start to build anything else until the built stuff is finished! (unless it's a second Demolisher

hmm, those bases look awsome! and so does this latest vehicle. although my only thing is it seems like your OSL looks more like a blue pole glowing white, instead of a (insert your colour here) glowing blue.. although in person im sure its better

endtransmission wrote:Thanks!

The more I look at these photos, the more I notice should be done on the supposedly finished models. Gah!

Painting resolutions for 2012 include:

1) Do 1 squad at a time; finish it and move on. Do NOT have 15 squads on the go at once as you *will* miss stuff :/

2) Buy the lightbox setup I've been looking at for over a year... a desk lamp is NOT good enough, even with long exposures.

3) Do NOT start to build anything else until the built stuff is finished! (unless it's a second Demolisher

I know that feeling!

1) I could use this rule - just substitute "squad" for "model"

2) Let us know how this goes - I'm going to need to do some better photos in the future myself...

3) I *definitely* could use this rule (substitute Demolisher for Warkopta)

I *might* have 1000pts done by June...

Bases are looking neat too - looking forward to see how the casting goes (maybe I can steal a few )

(Happy Birthday BTW! )

ahh happy birthday sir!

Rogue Wolves wrote:hmm, those bases look awsome! and so does this latest vehicle. although my only thing is it seems like your OSL looks more like a blue pole glowing white, instead of a (insert your colour here) glowing blue.. although in person im sure its better

I do agree. The scanner's glow looks very wrong in those photos, which means it looks wrong in real life too, I just couldn't see it properly until now. It's a case of painter's blindness. You never see something wrong with your own stuff until it's photographed and in the public view... then it's blindingly obvious



Automatically Appended Next Post:

Arakasi wrote:I know that feeling!

... I *might* have 1000pts done by June...

Bases are looking neat too - looking forward to see how the casting goes (maybe I can steal a few )

Ok, new challenge for you Mr Arakasi. We both need to get our 1000 points all fully finished and based by June so we can take proper photos at WW.

If the base casting goes well, you're more than welcome to have a load. The resin arrives next week, so we shall see

I've just spent an hour trying to squeeze everything into a P.A.C.K Air... sadly it will not fit. No way, no how. The problem with playing Guard is the massive platoons! I'd need 5 infantry trays to fit what I currently have the models for and would need at least 2 more to fit in what I want to build in the future! I'm wondering how many infantry figures would fit in a custom PACK Air sized tray. My only other option is to go for one of their larger, modular bags :/

endtransmission wrote:The more I look at these photos, the more I notice should be done on the supposedly finished models. Gah!

You just described the entirety of my lifetime modeling experience in a single sentence. Well done.

Thanks for sharing all the photos! Glad you mentioned the barrel on the Heavy Bolter, I saw it and was ready to furiously type away about it until I saw your comment. Ha.

Really great to see you back on this project, I went back through a few pages and remembered how very much I like this thread, Great work all the way through (even if it isn't really "finished"... )

Thanks for the reprieve. I will drill it out tomorrow, just for you

Tomorrow I'm also going go through the profile and work out the exact state of each unit to see what is finished, or what I want to improve/finalise.

If you're lucky, I may even start a vote up to see which unit to tackle after I've finished making/casting the bases

I don't know about an open vote, I did that once and it backfired on me. Be absolutely certain you're up to painting anything you have.

Well, at the moment I'm not really finishing anything, so I need you guys to push me onwards and upwards. If that means you get to choose which unit I target next... all's good

So, it appears that I've broken the three rules already :/

The last two evenings I've been painting bits of three separate units (well, one unit and two HQ choices). Please excuse the photos, they were quick snaps this morning so I could actually do an update!

As the Servitors are all nicely painted, they were looking a bit left out with the Techpriest only half finished, so he was first up. There's still some detail work to do, including highlighting the metals and painting over the robe pattern by his waist. This didn't come out as I planned.


Then I decided to redo the cloak and robes for the Primaris. I've still got lots of tidying up to do with this one, not least is cleaning up the lines on his cloak design. The micron pen wasn't flowing very well, so it's all jagged and in some places it actually started to lift the paint ;(




While I tried to avoid the work needed to tidy up those two, I started on the other 5 Stormtroopers too.


I got my new batch of resin and rubber this morning, so tonight I can make a cast for some of the bases

Would a coat of varnish (gloss or matt) help the micro pen flow better? It would at least stop it lifting the paint, and possibly give you the ability to erase and try again too.

Nothing wrong with finishing character models (or anything really)

It's not the finishing characters that broke the three rules. It was working on more than one thing at a time

Using the micron pen on gloss tends to be just as tricky as the pen doesn't seem to want to leave the ink on the gloss. I think it might have just dried out as it won't even write on my hand or paper. St00pid pen.

Man i love that primaris pose, so badass.

The pose and overall model was based upon one someone did for a Star Wars 40k army. I thought it was an interesting idea, so stole it

Speaking of <s>stealing ideas</s> getting inspiration from people... BrotherArgos' thread has some great stuff in it now he's resurfaced, especially modifying the Forgeworld Ryza pattern Russ turrets for the plasma cannon. It looks so much better than the standard version.

There has been progress on my side as well (though not as much as I would have liked thanks to work). Today I poured the first mould for bases, so I get to see how successful that was later on. I also discovered that our local model shop sells the Squadron Green putty in a tube... I've heard good things about it so I'm giving it a try on the bases that needed a bit more smoothing out. Possibly piccies later once the Squadron Green has dried and been sanded smooth.

I forgot to take pictures of the finished bases before pouring rubber all over them, so no real pictorial update today. I assume you're not all that interested in 2 large blue rubber rectangles

One thing I'd forgotten from my last attempt at making moulds is that half a kilo of RTV silicone doesn't seem to go all that far (especially when you make a mistake and follow the 10:1 instructions on the tin, rather than the 20:1 instructions on the web!). The kilo of resin should keep me busy producing infantry bases, so I shouldn't need to order more rubber until I finish sculpting the weapon team bases. Hopefully I can start on those later in the week when I have some of the "special" bases cast up.

Tonight I've spent my evening raising a paypal dispute over this trader. Teach me to use the public swapshop for a too-good-to-be-true deal... I think I'll be sticking to the DCM traders section from now on where there are nice, reliable people like InMyGravenImage!

Still. It solves some of my case dilemmas as I can fit everything I currently own into a Pack Air and if I get the paypal refund (*fingers crossed*) that will go a long way to paying for it!

[update]
Seems I spoke too soon. The rubber has cured, so here is a sneak preview ;p

Two large blue rubber rectangles with some white spots....cooool!!

Nice idea to cast the 60mm base with removable 25mm.

Really looking forward to see how those turn out. I'm really too much of a coward to try my own casting. And thanks for the nod

I thought you might like the blue rubber

The 60mm base with the hole is going to be used to sculpt some barricades and bunkers onto for all my weapon teams. The full 60mm bases you can see in the right edge of the photo will be for things like sentinels.

I tried taking a photo of the cast bases, but they just came out as shiny white blobs. Next time I get some good weather I'm going to spray them all a sandy colour and start painting a large batch of them... so hopefully you'll get a good view of then. The plan is to have a box full of painted bases ready for whenever I finish a model. Makes it much easier as basing afterwards is something I hate.

Casting one piece moulds like this is dead simple. As the bases have a flat surface you can follow these simple steps:

1) get a piece of flat plastic or metal sheet
2) Glue your bases to the sheet so there's no leakage under the bases
3) Build a barrier around the bases. In my case I was using a pencil tin as it was deeper than the bases. In the past I've used lego or plasticine. If you use lego, glue this to the plastic/metal board as well so you don't get leakage
4) Mix the rubber in the recommended quantities. In my case that was 20 parts rubber to 1 part thickener
5) gently stir the mixture until it's a nice even blue
6) slowly pour the rubber into an empty corner and allow it to flow over the bases as this traps a lot less air than if you dump it onto whatever you want to cast.
7) leave for 24 hours to cure nicely

That's your mould all done once you've removed all the bits from the rubber.

Casting is much easier with a 1 part mould as you don't need to worry about clamping or air channels. Simply mix up your resin and gently pour it into the hollow parts of your mould.

Be careful when mixing the resin that it's evenly stirred. I did a batch of bases in a hurry last night and failed to mix it properly. This led to parts of the bases being solid and others... not so much. It's like a sweety with a gooey centre. Not something you want near your precious models!

I'm getting the urge to pick up some lego bits more and more lately....

I'm getting very tempted by the Batman and Superman stuff, but that's not for casting purposes

I started painting the bases tonight. It's looking good


And here's the stormtrooper sergeant posing with his new-found baseness

I like the contrasts in the DKoK uniform colours.