More Terrain

During this holiday period I managed to get some time to make a whole bunch of woodland terrain I've been planning to make for ages.

There are ten marines in this picture, can you find them all?

The main catalyst for getting it done was The CNC Workshop releasing their terrain basing series. These are pre-cut (though on a sprue of sorts) MDF templates of various sizes for mounting terrain on. Saves using the jigsaw for such small pieces.

The trees and basing material are all from SiSt model trees, the tree stumps from Zuzzy, and the runestones by Fenris, purchased through Hasslefree.


Speaking of Hasslefree, I used thier Tiriel as a statue, standing in the base of Gen's Altar, wrapped in etched brass ivy, and backed by brass reeds. She's standing on a small plinth, and the water is just the heat and melt stuff for model railways.

Closeup of a Zuzzy tree stump - it was simply painted Khemri Brown, washed with Devlan Mud, and the non-bark areas drybrushed with Khemri again.
The rock is styrofoam covered in plaster, painted Charadon Granite, drybrushed Adeptus Battlegrey, then again with Fortress Grey and washed black (same for all the stones save the fountain, which I did a light white drybrush to make it stand out more).


Some of the SiSt trees, with rocks picked up from the bush behind the house.


Zuzzy tree with Fenris marker. I sunk the marker into the foam to make it appear more ancient. This tree was painted Astronomicon Grey, washed with Devlan Mud, then drybrushed with Dheneb stone on the exposed areas.


Rainbow Warriors on patrol (with some of my larger SiSt trees)! I've designed the terrain so that it gives a fair amount of LoS blockage and made sure that there is enough room for minis to stand on the hills and between the stumps and rocks.
It's also kept not too 40kish so I can use it for LoTR and go with my Argonath and Amon Sul pieces.

More de-Blood Angeled Hulk terminators

First up are the three dudes I've finished:

1st Lieutenant Aubin "Outlaw" Hawkins, Company Sgt Gunnvar "Gunner" Vadiz and Trooper Veteran Teng "Target" Takis (click for larger).

I finished Takis tonight (his base still needs blacking), and added helmet stripes to the other two. I had been unable to think of a way to represent the stripes on a terminator helmet, but it needed doing as without they tended to look like Ultramarines a bit too much.
I was inspired by the helmet stripes on the terminators in Siege of Vraks III, and altered to suit.

Trooper Veteran Jurgen "Curly" Ratna, Trooper Veteran Coeus "Eggs" Hellad.

These guys have had their base coulours layed down, giving a good idea of how they look de-Blood Angeled. Hellad has a blood drop icon on his belt, and Ratna has one on his right shoulder, but I'll be using them to represent the Medallion Crimson.

Why worry about medals and such?



As part of the Cradle of Despair campaign I've named 30 individual troopers and detailed their squad assignment - for many of them I've given them detailed bios like the one above. Their serial numbers are all sequential to their reruitment dates, and the numbers of purity seals match those on the minis (this is part of the reason it's taking so long to do).

'tis the season...

for cheap scenery!


This is a piece I made a few years ago, around this time of the year. It is simply an angel statue purchased from a department store, stuck to a art store nameplate with a Reaper mini (The Praying Paladin) kneeling before it. Finding the right one can be hard - there were others in this line playing harps and such, but holding the book seemed to fit the Imperial motif well enough.



The whole thing was sprayed grey, then I sprayed black from a fair distance to give a slight spatter effect. After that I sprayed it closer up from above to give an acid rain effect. Lastly I got an old toothbrush and flicked black paint up closer in spots and scrubbed to give some more texture.


Here's the paladin up close showing the mottled effect.

A very simple project, taking about an hour all up for assembly and painting, but one that turned out rather well I think.

Vilhanna the Victorious

Vilhanna the Victorious from Red Box Games. I quite enjoyed painting her, and am rather pleased with how she turned out (her hair especially).

The model itself had a few minor issues - there was a large air bubble behind her right knee that had warped her stance slightly, but it was easily remedied.

for colour her hair is Vermin Brown drybrushed with Marcharius Orange and washed with Gryphonne Sepia. Her skin is a mix of Elf & Dwarf Flesh, and Skull White, washed with Gryphonne Sepia and Devlan Mud. I may go back over it to highlight her musculature some more (it's nice to paint a muscular female warrior - too often they seem overly scrawny for professional fighters).
It's not really evident in the photo but she has freckles, being a red head and all.

A couple of Space Hulk pics

Company Sergeant Yadiz

I finished painting the terrrain pieces necessary to add some "illustrations" to the Cradle of Despair campaign book.

1st Lieutenant Hawkins

I may need to paint more than just these two guys though ;)

The painting of the corridors (from Old Crow, originally by Ainsty, their Tech Tunnel line) was dead simple - spray skull white, badab black wash, drybrush white and call it a day! Not quite true as details such as computer monitors and such still need to be done, but I got a rather sizable chunk done very quickly.

I won't be doing a full tileset though - I own over four complete Hulk sets already!

FTW collaborative post: From the pit of despair it came

You want bad do you Ron? Well I have dared to open the draw of forbidden and terrible (not in the onimous sense, the crap sense) miniatures and unleashed them upon the blogosphere!

Behold my creations most foul, and despair!

(click all pics for larger - if you dare!)

Chaos Predator, c1997 - Includes 1 standard Predator Mk2 kit, various 40k/Tamia and other bits, Space Crusade Dreadnought weapons, Transformers missile launcher, Ultra Marines (game) scout, Zoids parts, Epic Dreadnoughts (ork and Imperial) and terminators, Adeptus Titanicus parts, string, toothpicks.


Here you can make out the scout impaled upon a toothpick, and the extra main gun (Mirage's spring loaded launcher - counts as heavy plasma gun) attached to the autocannon with string. Note the the extra bolter and heavy flamer.

The Epic dreadnoughts were used as techno-Nurgling like things.


My lettering has since improved.

This belonged to my Chaos warband the Brass Sons, who were somewhat Khornate, but into the mad building and war engine side of things over the skulltaking.


Note the other extra bolter, heavy bolter on the side of the turret, and the Space Crusade missile launcher sponson. The boxes the mini dread are standing upon are shell cases for a 1/35th Tamia Flak 88 cannon.


Titan head morphing out of the hull, as well as a bolt pistol to discourage any tailgaters the heavy plasma gun (from Space Crusade) doesn't remove. Extra armour plating courtesy a Rhino front hull plate. You can just make out the rear firing lasgun behind the antenna on the right of the picture.


The best part of this insane thing - the lasgun through the Genestealer head on pintal mount.
The launcher in the foreground is a 1/72nd 21cm Nebelwerfer 42 cut down (counts as missile launcher).

All up this machine has:

One autocannon
Two heavy plasma guns
Two heavy bolters
Two missile launchers
Two bolters
One heavy flamer
One bolt pistol
Two lasguns
A knife (not pictured)

As for bad painting I give you the Apothacary:


Who is he treating?


Why it's Commisar Gutwound!


And to finish off I give you the first model I ever painted (back in 89) next to his more recent (though incomplete) doppelganger:

(the new one's on the left)

Well that was quick...

I got a package from Forge World this morning - my ruined watchtower of Amon Sul (Weathertop). You know, the one that was being dispatched November 30th.

So I got a Forge World item before it was even dispatched. It must be some sort of Christmas Miracle.

Or more likely that as the postage indicated it came from GW customer service in Nottingham it's was produced some time ago and due to licencing it had to be sent via GW not Forge World. Still, a rather nice suprise.


Also finished the last quest in the main book for Hero Quest, moving on to Kellar's Keep next week. Additionally I'll hopefully be off of all nights soon (though probably not until the new year) so I'll have much more time and energy for painting and gaming.