Display Board Started

With my Thudd Guns and Basilisk painted I started right in on the display board I had decided on.  I was pretty excited to start this project because scenery has always been a "learning on the fly" kind of thing for me.  For the first time in a long time I actually planned and drew this one out.  I knew what I needed and how big I wanted it to be.  Getting to the final stages was the fun part.

I started out with a sheet of the 1" pink insulation foam, drywall plaster, lots of varying sizes of sand, glue, water effects and glue....lots of glue.  I cut a sheet of plywood I had around the house to 2'x2' and started cutting and placing the foam to match the drawing.  I glued it all down with white PVA glue and threw a ton of books onto it to weigh it down and keep it in place.

Once it was dry I shaped the edges of the water pool and the hill.  After that I cut out the hole for the sewer drain and fixed the cup in place.  Now it was time to do some mixing.  I used some fine sand mixed with drywall plaster and glue for the "concrete" look and different sized sand with drywall plaster and glue for the dirt.  After plastering the hell out of it I added the cracked Imperial Eagle and a walkway by the sewer drain.

On to painting!  I started by priming it a dark brown then went on to dry brushing the dirt, painting the concrete and then airbrushing the water areas.

Once that was done I airbrushed the sewer water areas and started deciding on colors for the eagle and walkway.  I ended up going with a blue for the eagle.  Mainly just because it was close at hand and I like throwing brighter colors into my projects.  Wherever it is cracked I painted it to match the concrete. The walkway I painted a camo green then weathered and rusted it.  Once that was done and after running some ideas past a friend of mine that was over for a paint night I decided to do some kind of graffiti on the wall which then prompted me to add a zombie "tagger".  Along with the tagger I added a few more zombies walking through the muck and some random body parts.

Now it was on to the pour!  I've had to do about 4 pours and hopefully 4 is the magic number.  It is cloudy when it pours but drys clear to show the color underneath.

While the water effects are drying I've started a waterfall effect that, if it works out, I will add to the end of the sewer pipe.  Once thats attached I am going to swirl more brackish colored water effects where the fall hits the water.  I also have to add a bit more weathering to the wall.  The last thing I'm going to have to do is add grass tufts to the dirt areas.  

Hopefully I will have this done in the next few days.  I'll be posting up a bunch of pictures of the completed project soon.  Until then here are the completed Thudd Guns and Basilisk.

Renegades Of Vraks

I started putting together and playing a Renegade army a couple of years after Forge World introduced them.  The models are amazing and the ability to combine certain Imperial Guard and Chaos factions was just to good to pass up.  Good in a painting, modeling and fluff sense but when it came to the table they were never the be all end all of armies.

My first thoughts of how this army should be fielded from a story sense was lots of bodies being herded into the fight by master puppeteers, the Chaos Space Marines.  That is originally how I started building them and playing them.  Lots of bodies with as many heavy weapons as I could field.  We also can't forget the much feared Chemical Mortars.  These things were amazing.  My opponent would see me pull them out of my army case and always wonder as to why I could possibly have wanted to put mortars into my list.  Mortars weren't that great back then.  Little did they know that for a small points increase I could turn these terrible "hoard" killing guns into AP 3 marine killing nightmares.  Once I fired (and hit) with these babies it was game on and they were the biggest target for my opponent.  To all Renegade players dismay though the chemical mortars have been left out of the new army lists.

With the release of the Imperial Armour 13 book and subsequent re-release of Imperial Armour 5 Siege of Vraks I started re-thinking how I wanted to run my army. Horde armies are harder to play with now a days, especially in the tournament scene, and can be a bit unwieldy to play with because they take some time to move around the table.  Tank armies are fun but we all know that a tank can be taken apart with one lucky shot.  With these two things being considered, oh and I can't forget my love of Zombies, I decided to build an artillery heavy army with cheap bodies for cannon fodder.  Imperial Armour 13 kind of let me build this list and it was fun to try out for a couple of months but the introduction of "Ordnance Tyrant" in IA 5 sealed the deal.  The Demagogue Devotion "Ordnance Tyrant" allows me to field multiple Heavy Weapon choices as either Troop or Elite choices.  Couple that with The Purge Formation in IA5 I can have 8 Elite and 4 Heavy Weapon choices in one army chosen from Renegades and Chaos Space Marines.  Beautiful!  This gives me everything I've ever wanted from a renegade list.  But wait!  That's not all.  Ordnance Tyrant also allows me to target my own models when firing certain weapons!  Say it aint so!  Finally we have an army that can target it's own people and it makes bloody sense!

However, the Purge detachment isn't perfect.  There are no Fast slots and we all know that's where a lot of the CSM power tends to come from.  That means it's going to be a bit harder to get some air power in the list unless we take allies and some tournaments wont allow you to ally with yourself.

So with all of this in mind and to keep the list set to be played in any tournament that allows Forge World this is what I have come up with.  I'll look at some Pro's and Con's after.

HQ:

1. Mamon Incarnate

2. Renegade Command Squad

    - Banner of Hate

    - Command Net Vox

    - Arch-Demagogue (Warlord) Ordnance Tyrant with the Covenant of Nurgle

    - Chimera with front mounted Heavy Flamer

Elite:

1. Renegade Blight Drone

2. Renegade Heavy Ordnance Battery

    - 2 Medusa Seige Guns with 4 crew a piece

3. Renegade Artillery Battery

    - 2 Basilisks with front mounted Heavy Flamers

4. Ferrum Infernus Chaos Dreadnought with Multi-Melta, CCW, mark of Nurgle and Lord of the             Long War upgrade.

    - He's riding in a Dreadclaw Drop Pod

Troops:

1. Renegade Field Artillery

    - 3 Quad Launchers with 3 crew a piece

2. Plague Zombie Mob x 25

3. Plague Zombie Mob x 25

Heavy:

1. Renegade Leman Russ Battle Tank with Heavy Bolter side sponsons and front mounted Heavy           Flamer.

2. Renegade Leman Russ Battle Tank with front mounted Heavy Flamer.

3. 3 Renegade Rapier Laser Destroyer with 2 crew a piece and Militia Training.

Fortifications:

1. Aegis Defense Line

With this list I am dropping 12 small templates and 7 large templates with varying strengths and AP's a turn.  The Zombies are there to protect and to basically hold things in place while I shell them.  Because this list is so static I wanted to add something with a little more maneauverability so I added the Dreadnought in Drop Pod and Mamon.  Mamon because he is in the Vraks story as an integral character and his stat line is pretty great.  He's also a daemon so I can drop him in anywhere.  The Dreadnought in Drop Pod will give me a late game attack piece that I can use where needed and if he explodes I have a chance at a free Daemon Prince.  I was pretty torn between using a Dreadnought or Chosen.  I was thinking of either Melta totting Chosen or Flamers with shred.  The other thing I'm lacking is objective scoring units.  That will be an interesting one to overcome.

So what do you guys think?  Am I totally off base here or does this look as gross and fun to play as I think it is?  Is it worth taking this in a Purge Detachment?  Also, anything glaring that you can see that I should consider dropping or adding?

Family Photo!

So far this month has been mainly taken up with work, family time and .... Dragon Age Inquisition.  I have to get it finished though you see.  Why you ask?  Well because Fallout 4 won't play itself and I can't just start playing that when I still haven't finished DA.  That would be like cheating.

I've done a bit of painting and its all been focused on getting some of theses guys done.  I have been able to finish 15 out of 34 and I'll be getting the next 15 out to paint right away.  Along with painting the zombies I have also been working on a diorama layout for my nurgle/renegade army.  I think I have the plans and ideas down now so once the zombies are done (or possibly before) im going to start working on it.  I'm also waiting on a nice big order of Infinity models and more additions to my Renegades to come in the mail any day now.  I think I have finally found an 1850pt build that I want to run.  I'll post up the army list shortly.

Here is what I was able to get done over the past couple of weeks.  Comments and criticisms always welcome.

Penal Legion zombies (they look a bit more red in the picture)

Biters

Legless

Risen Guard

Extras

I've decided that I'm going to rebase my nurgle and renegade army.  Right now they are a grey dry brushed with grey and it is really boring.  After doing the Dreadclaw I knew I had to do the rest of my armies to match.  So the Zombies are the first ones to get the new bases.  All I'm missing now is some tufts of dead grass from Army Painter.  I'll be getting some of that right away to top these guys off.  Now I just have to do everyone else's base along with my other projects.  Easy right?

On top of all of these guys I also have a few other Renegade projects ready to go.  They should both go quick if I would just sit down and break out the airbrush.  More artillery for the party!

Thudd Gun (waiting on 2 more)

Basilisk #2 (This ones for you Chris.  Spikes on top of spikes makes it Chaos right?  I thought of you when I "converted" it.)

Happy Hallowee.....BRAINS!!!

Happy Halloween Nerds!!!!

With it being Halloween it was time to start painting zombies!

From The Painting Table

October has been a bit of a busy month.  We have gotten quite a bit done around the house here, and it may not be work but I've been crushing Dragon Age Inquisition this past week.  Its been hard to tear myself away and get back to painting.  I am also working on the 40K Radio Freebootaz monthly Motivational Challenge and that has pushed me to get things done.  This month I pledged to finish my Relic Predator and yesterday I did just that.  

On top of the work done on the Dreadclaw and the Pedator I've been working on some Infinity.  A friend and I decided to get into something new and Infinity is what we have chosen.  So far I'm really enjoying the game play and the models from Corvus Belli are beautiful.  I've started  a Morat Aggression Force starter set.  I'm going to throw my work on this set into this post because I don't really want to do another one right on top of this one.  Hope you guys enjoy.

I'm not entirely sure of the shade of the blue on the plasma cannon.  I feel like I maybe should have made it brighter on the rounded edges and on the edges of the metal.  Possibly even do some small white edge highlighting.  Thoughts?

Next up are the Morats.  I'm still not sure whether or not the female one is wearing underwear under those belts.

This was the first time I've made mock up urban bases for any of my miniatures.  I was going to buy some from Micro Arts Studios because they have a really amazing selection, but it really came down to not wanting to shell out the moolah.  With a bit of plasticard and spare bits I think they turned out pretty good.  Now I just have to make more!

A few of the bases while they were WIP.

Finished!  The more interesting of the bases was the Zerat (female) as she was standing on a large rock.  I left a couple of the others on the small rocks that they are standing on because I could just blend them in as a bit of rubble, but for her it would look really out of place.  I ended up using a piece of I-Beam plasticard and cut it on the same angle that she was standing.  Once the base was ready I used a hobby saw to cut her off of the rock.  It was a little finicky because there wasn't much of her foot and I didn't want to saw so much of it away that she no longer had toes.  Once it was cut off she mounted onto the base beautifully.  She is standing straight up and isn't off balance at all. Whew!

That's it for now.  I just got in one of the 3 Thudd Guns I ordered for my Renegades and primed 34 Zombies.  On top of that I dug out a second Basilisk that needs to be finished for more Renegade artillery.  November should be a busy painting month.

Please take the time to check out a friend of mine's newly minted blog "The 40K Misfit".  It's a great read and he already has few posts up.  You can find the link in the upper left corner of my blog under My Favorite Blogs.  Enjoy and comment!

Finished Nurgle Dreadclaw

DONE!!!!

It's finally done.  I finished the Dreadclaw a few days ago but had to wait for the water effects to dry.  It takes quite a while when you use so much.  Its actually still a bit wet at the edge around the outside and looks a little white in places.

I had a lot of fun working on the base.  Trying to figure out how to properly use the water effects was a challenge but I'm very happy with the turn out.  Even the splashes worked out pretty good.  Deciding on how to paint the rock was also a lot of fun.  I didn't just go with the grey with a grey drybrush boring effect.  This has actually made me want to rebase my entire Nurgle chaos army.

On top of that, painting all the nurglings was a blast!  They look awesome all dancing around on the base and a few old school ones flowing out of an engine to join their friends in all the fun.

I really hope you guys enjoyed the WIP and the finished product.  Comments and criticisms always welcome.  If you see something I did that could have been done better or in a different way please let me know because I'd like to continue trying different effects.

Without further adieu.

WIP Update!

 

 

Just a quick update on the Dreadclaw project. I've finally finished the most tedious part of the painting! Hallelujah! Painting the metals and then doing the 3 layers of rust is harsh.

 

Here is the layering of the rust and how it looks going on.

 

1st

 2nd

 

 3rd

 

You can really see the difference each layer makes as you apply it.  it really starts making the rust pop.  I also attempted one of the splashes.  I just had to know how it would look.  I've added a bit more to it since this picture but I am really pleased with how it turned out.  I'm really glad I tested this technique beforehand.

 

There you have it.  So far so good.  Tonight im working on the base and more details.