I am a leaf on the wind . . .

Or maybe a hobby butterfly is a better description. In one of my now almost patented 90 degree turns of hobby inspiration I've been painting something completely new.

Boltaction; more specifically Fallschirmjager. these are being painted to  nice TT standard so we can get some games in at the club and learn the rules.

Displacing MG42 team

Boltaction is a game that has taken off in a big way recently in the local tournament scene, and being a slave to trends i just had to jump on board. My best mate dibbs'ed the US airborne, and being fans of Band of Brothers (who isn't) I decided to do one of their early protagonists.

Prone MG42 team

Why do the rear pics always come out better than the front ones?!

The minis themselves are a really mixed bag of good and bad points: this is an initial assessment based entirely on the metals. I haven't worked with any of the plastic sets or resin tanks yet.

Good points:
Scale - everything is scaled correctly. Even if their heads and hands are slightly to big for 28mm minis they aren't the GW heroic scale.
Affordability - even paying full retail a platoon is <$60, about half the cost of the GW alternative
Poses - Each figure in the platoon box is a unique sculpt, that's 21 individuals! Something that the GW range of imperial guard regiments never had.

Bad points:
Basing - the platoon of metal minis doesn't come with any bases, leaving it open to interpretation as to what they should be based on. Seems I went the wrong way by basing them on GW bases, as the convention is to use the flat Rendara bases. The models also come cast on large plugs of metal, that are hard to remove. and if you don't, they end up on mounds like these guys.
Material - I hate HATE working with metal models. Moldlines are hard to remove, in awkward places, and obscure detail, and no matter how careful you are paint chips and wears from edges.
Sculpting - Fallschimjager are one of the earlier model ranges in the game, and it shows. some of the sculpting is very soft or muddy. The faces in particular are uninspiring, not helped by the fact that many moldlines cross them and removal can hurt the detail.

I have taken some liberties with the paint scheme of these minis, sacrificing some historical accuracy for a better Table mini. Historically the webbing and straps were a black or dark brown leather, this made the mini too dark and uninteresting, so I went for a beige.
The camouflage patterns are as accurate as I can be, whilst still maintaining my sanity, Fallschirmjager used a variety of patterns and colours during the war, and I want to be able to represent any time period with them, so I'm mixing and matching patterns and pants colours, it also keeps it interesting for me and I haven't gotten bored yet!

Finally a scale shot compared to some of my 40k minis, this is how big GW guardsman should be!

Hope you liked the start of this diversion, I'll be getting back into some 40k, terrain and gaming soon, so look out for that.

Cheers

Aaron

150 followers! And more terrain!

Wow, thanks so much guys, late last week the blog ticked over 150 followers. Thank you all so much for liking my work enough to follow me, here's to 150+ more :p

As for what I've been doing. . . well, something will remain a secret, for now.

But I can show you more of the terrain WIP that I've been doing for the tournament this weekend (damn that snuck up).

After the disaster with the chipping coating on the masks, I reapplied the finish by using a textured paint, this seemed to hold on well, and filled the gaps so that I could apply a grey undercoat, followed by Tamiya Dark Yellow spray.

This was followed by some green washes of various shades to add an aged look.

I then added a brown wash to some parts. However this ended up giving a German WW2 camo effect (no pics), a dry brush of bone, and a thin over spray of Tamiya Dark yellow sorted it out, and toned the effect down to acceptable levels.

To add some more interest to the terrain, and impart a story element to it, I clipped the fire brands from the GW flagellent kit and painted it with the airbrush to simulate fire. A rudimentary OSL effect was done in the eye sockets at the same time.

They were then stuck in the eyes of the masks, and soot was then sprayed (probably too heavily) to the eyebrows and lower lids/rims of the mask.

A while ago (18 months??) I bought a bunch of second hand terrain. In it was a whole bunch of tyranid capillary towers (24) and a bunch of CoD buildings.

These will form the basis of the next update. 

Thanks for stopping in.

Terrain post #2

A second quick post about the terrain project I've been working on with my mate in preparation for a tournament.

WIP building

Once we'd built the buildings we needed to paint them. Texture paint wash brushed on to provide a concrete look, and protect the foam, then they were primed using cheap spray paint from Bunnings.

Once that was dry an over spray of white to add some quick shading, and a thick wash of grey to bring the white back down in tone.
Then they were weathered and drybrushed with light grey to pick out the details.

The craters are just GW plastics glued to some MDF, Painted Dryad bark, drybrushed Steel legion drab, then Ushabati bone. The water effect is a polyurethane resin tinted with some serephim sepia wash.

More updates with the terrain as it happens.

Once more into the breach: Terrain

Hello everyone, long time no content, but thats par for the course with me unfortunately.

But good news everyone, I'm finished uni for the year, and back into the modelling frame of mind. Since the last post my friend and I have decided to reinvigorate the local gaming scene, to do this we will run a tournament. To run a tournament we need terrain. Hence the content of this post.

Finished water filled crater

To begin we collected materials, and ideas we'd had from previous terrain making, and new materials including:
- Foam core/board
- GW craters
- GW trees
- pre-loved vehicles
- Basing materials (MDF, glue, sand, rocks etc)
- Clear resin for water

What follows will be a bunch of images of what we made from those materials

Also the Warmaster got a primer coat . . .

See Matt, he did get to see some paint

I've also made a start on the Predator themed table for the upcoming Aliens Vs Predator miniatures game by Prodos games.

To make these hill's I used cheap halloween Predator masks and high density polystyrene.

A wood putty was then spread across them to remove the smooth look of the masks and hide the sculpted details.

But this proved troublesome, and some cracking and flaking was evident on the areas not reinforced by the polystyrene. I can only attribute this to swelling/shrinking of the mask plastic material during heating and cooling in the sun on the back verandah.

Ah bugger

Next post will be about the rescuing and painting of more terrain. 

Thanks for looking.

Long time between pics

Hi all, sorry for the lack of content, but Uni has been kicking my ass, and I'm lazy.

Enough excuses, on to the content of this post. Alternate BFG ships!

Sons of Horus milestone!

21 months I have been painting these Sons of bitches, and I can finally say it. I have a playable force!

Only 1000 points, and not very optimised, or even fluffy, but its a start. . .

I guess I'll start with the new additions, firstly, HQ's.

This is Moritat Axander, and will pretty much ruin anyones day if he gets a turn of chainfire shooting at them. I haven't seen that many of these guys around the forums and blogs, which is surprising considering the damage potential they have with 2 plasma pistols.

I used the current 40k plasma pistols because I think the 30k ones look like a hair driers . . .

Unusually for me, he is clad entirely in Mk IV armour, although I did make a couple of modifications to it. There has been an extra armoured plate sculpted onto the left greave, and a plasticard strip and rivets added to the crown of his helmet to differentiate it from rank and file, and give him a pseudo crest/mohawk.

Next in the HQ slot is a Praetor in terminator armour, because a Moritat can't lead your force.

I took the normal Terminator Praetor and converted him to have lightning claws, just a simple matter of cutting all the relevant parts at the elbows and pinning them together. I also heated (carefully) the fingers on the left hand to give him a pointing/commanding pose. Looking at the pics, I need to add some definition eye sockets to the skull on the night lords shoulder pad.

 I've never been a fan of unhelmeted marines, something about going into battle without a lid when explosive projectiles are flying around just seems dumb to me. So I squeezed a Mk II helmet in with a bit of trimming. Unfortunately some super glue got into the eye slit and destroyed the detail, but it still works as a gaming piece.

And what is a pimp, without an entourage?

Basically just stock Cataphractii terminators from Forgeworld, its hard to improve on perfection. The only thing I added was a heraldic shield from the Grey knight terminators to the Sgt.

And thats it for the new stuff. The observant among you would have noticed that the basing has changed though. The new style matches the tyranids, and will match the Ad mech, and the table I am going to make (eventually) for my collection. This meant that the rest of the 1k needed to be rebased.

 The Sgt also had a head repose so he wasn't looking at his shoes.

Unfortunately I have to lose the stomping pose on the dread due to time constraints, but I kept the marine and the base so I can redo it at a later stage with another contemptor.

And thats 1000 points (plus a rhino), my photo set up isn't big enough to get all the models into one shot, but I'll take lots of pics at the 30k tournament being run by John from The Painting Bunker called The Emperors Legions, which is set to be epic, including a group shot.

Thanks for stopping in and reading my ramblings, what do you think of the new additions and new basing style?

The "great" devourer . . . and some more WIPS

Welcome back. 

As everyone who frequents this blog knows, I play Tyranids, Have for many many years, and I have been steadily working myself up to a fever pitch for the latest codex release. . . . what a let down!

After a day of reading the codex these are my initial impressions (the caveat that I have not actually played a game with the new rules should be applied though). All of these have been covered by other bloggers alot more extensively than I will, I'm just having a bitch.

The Bad:

Things that didn't need changing were changed for no apparent reason (Tervigon buffing nearby termagants, bonesword AP, scything talons), points costs were arbitrarily increased with no benefits incurred (hive guard +5pts/ea with -1 BS, tyranid prime +45pts!), and characters and units disappeared from the roster (Doom, Parasite, Pods, Ymgral stealers), exorbitant cost of most upgrades for monstrous creatures, instictive behavior (Wtf is it with random tables? Why eat/shoot each other?), Loss of access to biomancy.

The Good:

General decrease in points of previously overcosted units (Hive tyrant, Carnifex, Tyranofex, Lictors, Warriors Shrikes etc), Venomthropes giving shrouding, General increase in the effectiveness of the tyranids codex psychic powers.

Now I'm sure the codex is still playable, and Ill try my damnedest to do well with it, but it will be a hard slog, lucky I'm Australian and have a love for the underdog.

Enough whinging. Before the codex came out I had started working on an objective marker for games of the Relic. There isn't a prescribed size (that I can find) so I took an old model by my mate "The Hoff" did for our old FLGS themed game and gave it a lick of paint. 

The guts need a coat of "blood" once I figure out what colour to do it

As you can see the varnish went spotty on it :( 

Its supposed to represent an inteligence gathering or synaptic node beast, something not real combative, but having an important role. It is a frankensteins monster of pieces with bitz from the Warriors, Carnifex, Hormogaunt, and Genestealers sprues.

Next on the work bench I have a full brood of Carnifexes and a full brood of Hormogaunts on the go too for the army, and 8 cataphracti terminators for the Sons as well.

Finally I couldnt help but notice a combination of powers, wargear and warlord traits could give a Hivetyrant a 30 inch synapse bubble (Synaptic lynch pin = 18 Norn crown +6 Dominion psychic power +6 =30).  

I have several Tyrants lying around (who doesn't?) so I figured I'd try and be the first to model a Norn crown. The fluff description basically details it as a parasite that mounts the tyrants head and feeds on his brain. This wasn't enough for me, and I decided to make an actual crown of horns as well.

The horns were cultivated from all manner of places on the tyranid sprues, the tendrils of the parasite are greenstuff rolled out, laid in the correct place and then a extra thin liquid cement run under them to glue them to the head, the testicle like parasite is 2x genestealer toxin sacs from the upgrade head.

Thanks for looking.