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Thanks guys! I appreciate you sticking with me after such a long dry period.

@whalemusic: Well, helping out with the Bushido GT and casual play events. That's it. Just going to hang out... though I'm sick as a dog right now... so I may just end up dropping things off, getting the keys to the hotel room for wife and son & then heading back home so I don't make anyone sick. Then coming back Sunday to pick all my terrain up again.

I can empathise. Seems all I do is get ready for Sundays warhammer club. Can't remember the last time I actually scratch built anything!

OK, added a little bit of armor over the windows. Didn't want to go nuts with it but I though some reinforcement was needed to sell it as a post-apoc vehicle.

 Gitsplitta wrote:
OK, added a little bit of armor over the windows. Didn't want to go nuts with it but I though some reinforcement was needed to sell it as a post-apoc vehicle.

Much more post apoc with those windows. Maybe a little coil of wire on the bumper? Nothing says apocalyptic like a little razor wire. Expect maybe spikes. Or radioactive glowing mutants. Ok, there are a lot of things that say post apocalyptic road warrior. Windows armored with scrap is another good one.

Needs more dakka.

All good ideas. Let me think on it...

Hello everyone! By everyone I mean the half-dozen of you that are still following this thread.)

After maybe 3 years of not really gaming at all... I'm starting to think about working my way back in. Getting a smidge interested in 40k again... at least for casual play. Adepticon coming up helps too, as I'll be neck-deep in helping with the Bushido events.

As far as painting goes... my eyesight is significantly worse and I have tremors in my hands. Getting old sucks. However, I can still pull it together somewhat. I thought I'd start by working on something big and easy, then getting progressively smaller and more complex until I'm able to work on actual wargaming models again.

Each Christmas I lay out an oval of track around our Christmas tree to run a Christmas-themed On30 passenger train. I scatter a few random buildings around just for fun, but this year I finally decided to clean them up and give them proper paint. These aren't intended to pass the kind of photography you get here, but just look good and a few feet of distance around the tree. This year's goal is to get everything fixed and painted. Next year I'll work on details, extra weathering and snow effects.

I've added grots to obey Dakka's photo storage rules, and because I love my little grot artillery bits. Though the buildings *would* make decent terrain for wargaming (if a bit on the large side). Thanks you my friends. If you're still with me, please drop me a quick note (anything), just so I know you're out there.

Passenger Station being guarded by a grot armored column:


Freight Station (blurry... sorry) also under guard:


House of Grots:



Thanks, I hope to be posting more soon.

How dare you, sir- I have always followed your shenanigans with great enjoyment! It's nice to hear from you- I'm sorry your eyesight and paws are giving you issues though.

Had a rather sobering realisation that I might be 50 by the time all my current projects are finished

Those buildings look nice, and of course always a pleasure seeing Grot Tanks! Hopefully you are getting enjoyment out of it, which is the key thing for this hobby.

Ragsta

Getting old sucks, but beats the alternative they say.

Not going to slap some rusty metal and ork glyphs onto those buildings? Mod the train into a dakka filled engine of destruction? In the grim darkness of holiday decorations, there is only war!

Good to see you posting and back in the hobby.

@Ragsta: Thanks man. I'm not dead yet as they say. The buildings were fun to do, and I've forgotten the sense of accomplishment when you finish a project... even a simple one.

@Nev: LOL! My dad used to say that! I'm not planning on doing those mods at the moment... but I have a lot of train crap... so it's not impossible. I have actually thought about trying to put a working train on the gaming surface. Have it run 2d6 seconds each turn before stopping and creating a new place for the "terrain".

Good to have you back brother

Thanks Graven. I hope to stay back.

In answer to your "ork-off" challenge. Here are the old school orks (care of Solar_lion) that I've chosen for the challenge. Will clean them up ASAP so I can start contributing to the painting melee.

Whoop! Good to see you back in the saddle old son! I'm glad to see the slice of retro orky goodness has got your juices flowing again.

Hi bud, housing looks great. I bet the layout looks great. I purchased a tree train this year. It literally runs around the tree at about half way up!

Look forward to seeing the orks.

PS sorry for my absence I have no excuse!

As I work in a train museum(the bigger ones), I have to boost anyone with a layout. Nice work on the buildings!

Looking forward to seeing your dead old orkses painted up!

Camkierhi wrote:Hi bud, housing looks great. I bet the layout looks great. I purchased a tree train this year. It literally runs around the tree at about half way up!

Glad to see you Cam. I've been following your work all the past years I've been "gone". Very inspiring. You MUST have a pic of your train around the tree, right? Please show us! Right here is fine!

Olthannon wrote:As I work in a train museum(the bigger ones), I have to boost anyone with a layout. Nice work on the buildings!

Looking forward to seeing your dead old orkses painted up!

I'm jealous. I've always been cranked up about model (and real) railroading... but I suck at just about every aspect of it except painting the cars. History knowledge? Nope. Railroading knowledge? Nope. Handy with electronics? Nope. Good at modeling acres of realistic terrain? Nope. So I've finally settled on trying to make a really nice tree "layout". That... I think I can handle... and it's mostly painting, which I can do.

I finished cleaning up the ork models... getting the paint off of them, etc. I think I absorbed enough acetone and lead dust through my left hand to be showing medical symptoms in a few days. We'll see if I can't get some painting done before then.

Thanks guys. I really appreciate knowing people are still out there.

Welcome back Gits, as an admirer of your Mantis warriors and other projects I’m looking forward to see what you will be churning out. Those orks are a great archeological find from Solar, what clan are you planning to paint them as?

And on the subject of tree trains, it is definitely a future goal to get one to satisfy the inner kid in me, and I’ve been granted permission now so just need to pull my finger out (and find the pennies for it) but I’ve always wondered how do you do presents under the tree if there is a train there????

Hey Jordy, great to hear from you!

Here are the cleaned up orks... very blurry.


Well, I wasn't thinking clan per-se. I think these old orks were inspired by WWII German infantry and tankers, so I'm going to take a look at some uniforms of the period and try something roughly like it.

As far as the tree train goes... here I put the train track as far in as I can get it, then the presents go on the outside. I think it would be much cooler the other way around, but there are just too many opportunities for train calamities if boxes are being shuttled back and fourth across the track.... and I'm arthritic... so getting up and down in order to re-rail the cars really hurts.

Next piece of terrain. A little crossing shed. I'll do the base in gravel at some point with some weeds here and there... might even add a guy
Only one terrain piece left, an old barrel loader made by Lionel. Cheap little piece of trash, but it should provide some visual interest..

You are making it hard not to go digging into the PoS to unearth some old orky lead and join you painting. I’ve got enough going on without adding more projects. Fun old sculpts though, nice to see them out getting some love.

Thanks Nev, it's all graven's fault. Just got the first one primed last night so I'll start working on it ASAP.

Attaboy!

OK, so I've gotten really distracted trying to get ready for Adepticon and my part in helping to run the Bushido events, specifically providing boards, terrain, etc. I'm happy to say that everything is sorted and packed for the event save the two gaming mats I just ordered, which will hopefully be coming in soon.

As part of this, I found some crystal terrain that I'd painted years ago, but never finished the basing on. I just had the bases painted grey because they were on a volcanic lava kind of board. I never liked it, especially after all the effort of painting the crystals. So, I finally based them (the volcanic board is long gone). They look much better this way. Granted, the crystals could still be improved, but for now... this will do.

The group:


... and the closeups.






Probably didn't need to post the close-ups... but... you can take it or leave it as you like.

Thanks for reading!


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OH, I forgot. I have more, just in case I'm ever insane enough to try painting the rest. They aren't perfect prints (I think they either tossed in some misprints or deeply discounted them). I think I can make most of this look like something though.

They look great! And the prints are pretty decent for what they are, I think

Thanks graven. I got them a long time ago... I suspect printing has come a long way since then. They look fine at arm's length... though they'd probably benefit from some edge highlighting and a think gloss coat to hide the printing lines.


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Just a small patch of winter terrain I slapped out. It was cast by someone else... I just did the painting.

Looks beautiful and blooming cold!

All looking spot on bud.

Thanks Cam.

Sooooo... a bit more of Bushido terrain. Sending a care package out to my eldest son with enough stuff to play bushido in it. All his models, a mat, terrain, cards, dice, rules, objectives, etc. in one relatively small bag. Here's what I've been working on the past few days.

Terrain.

A pair of zen gardens, which can be placed individually in corners or side by side for a larger piece.


A terrain piece with separate difficult ground and "cover" components... the cover can be removed to allow models to move across the difficult ground freely.




Last but not least... a little clump of trees.


Next project *should* be one of the oldl, metal orks... but it's not impossible that I get distracted.

Nothing wrong with a bit of distraction! Great to see you back at it.

Some great terrain! I love the little zen garden.

Thanks guys!

I've been steadily working on cleaning up my studio/gaming room... which is a large room above our garage that over the past few years of disuse... had turned into a huge garbage pile. I work on it nearly every day. I've cleaned out some floor space, threw a bunch of stuff out, sorted some things out for sale, put things away, etc.

I have a very long way to go, but I'm hoping my desire to game/paint will increase dramatically when my work space has been cleaned up.