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I think I will need to investigate some other crackle effects as the GW stuff is being used up very quickly and so far it has only been used on the Dunecrawler base. It looks really nice when it actually works, but mine is flaking off already... so it is going to need a lot of varnish to keep it in place. The Dunecrawler is the last piece of the Getting Started box, so I can now happily say I am done with month one!



Not the best group shot ever, but it shows it all complete




Now I just need to find out what next month's entry is supposed to be...


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A quick shuffle through WD back issues, it seems that this month is Elite.

Yeah, it's kind of a pain to use. To think and it falls off. To thin and it doesn't crack.

shame really as it looks really good once the base is dry, especially when you mix the two different rusty ones on one base.

So this month is Elites. The only Elite I currently have is the Datasmith that comes with the Kastelan box, so the robots are also going into the pot for this month. I wasn't overly keen on these models when they first came out, but playing with the kits in person, I'm quite liking them now... with a few tweaks.

There are a few little tabs/nubs on the leg sections that give you the very static, fixed poses that I wasn't keen on. Snipping these off allow for some much more dynamic poses. The heads are still not good, but one of the spare pieces from the DuneCrawler makes a good replacement for the front.



The arms are very stiff as well. I would have liked these as two part things, but for this set I'm not going to fiddle with these. Maybe next time if I pick up more



The next step is to try and work out what colour to do the robots. I can't help but feel that red is just going to be overkill with everything else being nearly pure red. I've seen someone do them up in bare metal, which looks nice. I'm also considering pure copper or brass to go with the metals as they would then also fit into the long standing Inquisitor Gale idea as Tik/Tok, the clockwork soldier(s). I've not painted up large scale copper or brass before either, so it could be an interesting challenge.

That's a cool head conversion, haven't seen it done before.

I LOVE those heads!

Thanks! Now I just need to try and make the second look vaguely similar...

What is the bit? Maybe we can ebay it up. Or if it isn't used in both builds, might be easy to find.

I had a second one of the pieces. It is one of the options for the Dunecrawler sensor array. Thankfully I bought two Getting Started boxes so I have two.

Last night I managed to piece together the second head and they match. The tricky part was cutting away just enough of the head to fit the array at the same level. Tik (01010100 01101001 01101011) and Tok (01010100 01101111 01101011) are now both ready for undercoating

While the basing dries, here is a sneak peek at the Elite entry of a Datasmith for this month, plus a bonus heavy support of two Kastelan to throw out lots and lots of dakka.



I've also been playing around with some leftovers and an idea...



Using the spare Ranger rifles and some spare flagellant bodies, I've managed to build 8 conscripts. These are a ragged bunch that represent tech-thralls; slaves to the AdMech, used in manufactorum to build weapons of war. I'm assuming here that whatever battles they may play in are to defend a vital AdMech factory, so it is all hands on deck. I've also pieced together an admech guard to go with them as a counts-as commissar. You'll see him and some more of these later

If anyone has any spare ranger rifles/arms and flagellant bodies kicking around that they would like to clear out, I've got plenty of bits I can swap?

To put this month's updates in a better light than the previous post, here's the full rundown of what has been achieved since the 21st of last month. Technically it is nowhere near the end of the month 2 timeframe, but I'm busy with work and out at a festival before then... so I'm finishing month 2 early and giving myself some extra time to deal with month 3 (not that I can remember what that is yet...)



So this month was supposed to be an Elite selection. I decided that would be the Datasmith, which felt like a bit of a copout, so he comes with 2 robots (Tik and Tok), 3 Rangers to finish the squad from last month, 2 Vanguard to finish the second squad of those from last month and 1 ranger Alpha if I ever want to run one.





The full force is starting to look quite nice together.

The last few weeks have been a bit of a hodgepodge of figures and themes

You saw a rough draft of an AdMech themed conscripts a few weeks back. I've now finished the first 9, plus an AdMech version of a Commissar



These are made up of bits left over from the Skitarii sets and some empire flagellants. If anyone has any spare flagellant bodies kicking around, PM me and I'll buy/trade em off you

I've got another 10 in the painting queue, but I'm getting a little tired of red at the moment, so I'm taking a break and doing a few other bits and pieces to change up the palette a bit. The Dark Imperium Death Guard are really nice models that just seem to paint themselves when they are in the vicinity of some washes and glazes. Looking forward to seeing all of them painted up, facing off agains the redness



The office has also decided to start a Blood bowl tournament at lunch in a few weeks time. I've only ever played a few games in the dim, distant past of 2nd ed against some annoying WAAC regulars in our store so memories of it are not great. Hopefully playing against a few other newbies will be a nicer experience. I've decided to go simple and start with a Human team with an Ogre. The painting so far is coming out a bit scrappy at this size. Hopefully a few glazes over the top of the colours will help tone down some of the scrappy

Resurrection alert! This thread should be renamed the Lazarus Pit it has died and been resurrected so many times!

I never did get around to finishing that blood bowl ogre. He got a bit further along in smoothing out the colours that were on him, but I then got scared of finishing him off if you can believe that? Things have been a bit quiet on the hobby front for a while and interests drifted from GW stuff, though recently it has hit again with the acquisition of a 3d printer, removing the reliance on the plastic crack masters (to a certain degree). I really need to get back into posting stuff again and try to catch up with friends long lost (Arakasi I'm lookin' at you all the way over there).

the new edition of 40k has caused a rise of interest in members of my team at work, so I may actually get my first game in about 8 years at some point soon... so much like I did with the short lived AdMech project (which was new army for new edition *last* edition... gee has it been that long since an update?!) I'm going back to the Guard project in their own dedicated thread over there, but all those other projects that have been started during lockdown need their own thread of randomness to keep them going.

The main thing that has been keeping me going these last few months has been actually building myself a gaming table to play on. Given that my main game of choice is 7TV, it has started off as a folk horror/fantasy table, but the Guard thread will hopefully start adding in big chunks of sci-fi terrain as well. You never know, this may also get me into the terrain challenges so I can keep it growing ?



The walls that you see around the graveyard? Those are my first attempt at 3d modelling and are free for anyone that wants a try. They are designed to match up to the GW graveyard set and offer a bit more flexibility for a fraction of the cost. I hope the Guard project adds some sci-fi elements to the catalogue too.

This week's additions are a bunch of hill pieces to add some 3d elements to the otherwise flat table. A couple of bits still need painting as you can seen

Hurrah for zombie thread!

Be careful, it is after everyone's brains!

 endtransmission wrote:
Be careful, it is after everyone's brains!

No worries around here then .

Bookmarked the files page for later printing. I like the ones I had found for frostgrave, but they are dainty with the wrought iron rails. These look much more practical

Cool, I'd love to see how yours come out. I've only printed them on a resin printer, so I'm curious how they work on an FDM. If there are issues, just shout and I can have a look at the files

Good to see you are still kicking around!

Still alive and kicking, just a bit too distracted to actually post anything for some reason.

Some other bits that got painted in the last month or so are the big dragon from Shadows of Brimstone: Forbidden Fortress


and some alien plants and infected people for 7TV. I need a few more killer plants to finish this cast off for an event in October



Behind them you can just about see a well and a purple meteorite. I'd been watching the Nick Cage Color from outer space that morning, which caused a massive flurry of activity/productivity the likes of which has not been seen since

Darn it . Now I’ll have to look at getting THAT dragon too .

The Kirin print came out okay, just spray primed him. Only issue came from the fact I had switched filament to an older roll that was the cause of a lot of issues when I first got the printer. But it did teach me to switch nozzles and clear clogs. I have now removed that roll again. It is just gummy/more sticky than the PLA+ I have been using. Plus it’s so glossy that it was hard to see details or what was just supports. I guess it also needs a lower temp because it was stringing more than a violin orchestra. I’ll post pics of the primed version in my thread later after the primer dries enough to handle.

Gencon has not done anything to help my hobby butterfly brain... nor has Theophony's Dragon Empire prints!

Now my gaming table is all set up, I need to finally try starting a hexcrawl campaign for Shadows of Brimstone, which. means starting to paint up some of the many many models that have been sitting around in the pile of shame for far too long. Given that I don't like some of the sculpts, or in some cases you need more than are supplied in one box, I will be look at finding alternatives to some of the figures. Thankfully there are new sculpts coming out for the oldest models in the revised edition (end of September).

While I clear up the table a bit, I had a play with lithophanes for my mum's birthday. She hates all photos of her, except one from when she was about 5, so I decided to use that as a test piece to see how well they come out. Then answer is actually pretty damn good. The background of the photo was removed to have less clutter and this one is one of the offcasts where I didn't support it enough in places, so t warped... but you get the idea. 3d printing photos seems like an odd thing to do... but it's really effective! I'm now trying to work out if 3d printing some stained glass windows for some terrain and hiding a light inside would be worth doing. Without the light behind, it is just a piece of grey resin, but put a light behind and voila!

Nice work , I'll have to give that a shot.

It would be great for some mall kiosks and the like as well.

I'm not a hobby butterfly. I'm a hungry catepillar . A big fat one that gobbles up everything I see. I'd be a butterfly if I actually got stuff printed, painted and played before flittering to the next one.

That is... true. My desk currently contains?

40 semi-painted tallarn
1 undercoated inquisitor
1 half finished zoat
3 half built ogryn
3 assembled skinwolves
7 converted claptraps
1 japanese ghost
3 built FB exclusive mordheim figures
and a bunch of assembled SoB figures...

and half a Caiman tank. That doesn't include all the stuff semi-painted on the painting table in the living room

I should really finish some of these bits...



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I forgot to mention the (at the time) unpainted Sumo character from Shadows of Brimstone. After a couple of long conference calls this afternoon, he's looking pretty good. Some tidying up on the skin to do, before finishing the leatherwork and hair.



The printer is quietly buzzing away in the background trying to print the sumo and kitsune from the Dragon Trapper August patreon set

It appears that I may need to replace some key components of my Mars... I've been having some weird failures over the last few weeks, with parts sometimes printing fine, other times... not so much as you can see from the left hand sumo with his missing right arm.



I made a test file that just covers the entire screen so I could check exposure across the plate and it looks like I have a few areas that are slowly dying. There are dead black spots in various sectors; some are ghosts, others are definite black blobs. I've not seen a consistent hole appear in those areas though, which is weird. From some of the failures, I suspect there are also areas that fail after a few hours of printing as they all seem to cut off about the same height. I don't seem to have this problem with files that take under 3 hours to print, so it feels like it's a screen time thing. I need to look at creating a new test file that is just loads of thin pillars all set to about 5 hours and see if they all come out the same height, or if some just mysteriously cut off.

Not looking forward to having to get a new screen so soon

Going back a looooong way to those robots, the head swap is utterly transformative. I love it! The conscripts are a great idea too.

Don't knock the ogre, I think it looks fantastic, especially the skin tones.

Good luck sorting out the printing.

Thanks! I really love the ogre's skin tones... I just can't bring myself to finish him in case I ruin it all

Sorry to hear about the printer issue . Still having time to time problems with the Ender, but I think it’s more of a computer problem as now I have switched to using my desktop to slice the files and not only getting better results, but less overall issues. The other thing I did was wipe my microSD card and reformat. I am not a computer person, but I remember long ago that sometimes data artifacts leeched over on floppy disks (yes, I’m THAT old). So sometimes it’s small things.

That sumo wrestler is awesome. I skipped the KS for SoB, but was really tempted by him and the dragon and a few others, but not enough to buy the whole thing.

Where are those printed sumo from?

The printed sumo are in the Dragon Trappers Lodge pattern this month. It comes with a few different options for right handed weapons. Sadly none are just a hand though, so I might need to do some cut and shunt in blender.

I'm old enough to remember having to reformat floppy disks to get rid of glitches too. Sadly this is definitely the screen. I put in a solid rectangle to print and looked at the output. There are some black or patchy areas that just won't print unless you really overexpose. Thankfully a new screen is about £20 and is expected to die. I might see if I can use the old screen with a pi or something. Who knows...

Shadows of brimstone is a fantastic game, especially if you are like me and lived the random nature of Warhammer quest but wanted wild west/samurai Vs cthulhu type vibe

Things are getting a bit crowded in my gaming room, so I'm starting to have a bit of a clearout. First up is my original Guard force that some of you will remember from yore

https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/790814.page#10890690


On a different note, An interesting ad came up on Facebook today for one of those online art course things. i keep getting Learn How To Draw, or 3D modelling courses... that sort of thing. All interesting, but all expensive. Today's was different and made me stop and think. the Model Railway academy. now I'm not going to be taking up model railways, but having happily watched one of the geekiest reality tv shows ever, the Great Model Railway Challenge, I've come to realise that the gaming community could learn a heck of a lot from them in terms of making terrain look good. At £3 for a year's subscription... if i learn a few useful tips and tricks i'm winning here

if you are in the uK and didn't see the Great Railway Challenge, it is on Channel 5's catchup platform. Each week three teams are given a couple of days to make a railway setup that fits a certain theme. Some are terrible, but given the timeframe i'm not sure i could do any better making terrain. in fact, my gaming room (or just the house in general!) proves that I'm terrible at finishing anything within a reasonable timeframe

 endtransmission wrote:
Things are getting a bit crowded in my gaming room, so I'm starting to have a bit of a clearout. First up is my original Guard force that some of you will remember from yore

https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/790814.page#10890690


On a different note, An interesting ad came up on Facebook today for one of those online art course things. i keep getting Learn How To Draw, or 3D modelling courses... that sort of thing. All interesting, but all expensive. Today's was different and made me stop and think. the Model Railway academy. now I'm not going to be taking up model railways, but having happily watched one of the geekiest reality tv shows ever, the Great Model Railway Challenge, I've come to realise that the gaming community could learn a heck of a lot from them in terms of making terrain look good. At £3 for a year's subscription... if i learn a few useful tips and tricks i'm winning here

if you are in the uK and didn't see the Great Railway Challenge, it is on Channel 5's catchup platform. Each week three teams are given a couple of days to make a railway setup that fits a certain theme. Some are terrible, but given the timeframe i'm not sure i could do any better making terrain. in fact, my gaming room (or just the house in general!) proves that I'm terrible at finishing anything within a reasonable timeframe

I’ll have to look into it when I get home. I have watched a bunch of YouTube videos for train dioramas and they all are helpful at some point. One of LukeAPS’s recent videos has him doing a waterfall with the guy in the next building over from his studio that has England’s largest train layout. I’ll link it later if I remember.