On the Workbench [August] - More Horus Heresy Dark Angels!

 

 

Greeting and welcome back! It has been a bit of a hiatus here on the blog, but the hobby has been going strong here.  I'm on a bit of a painting break while deeply enjoying all the new Horus Hersey models recently released. I do enjoy painting and I very much look forward to getting back to improving my skills there with a veritable smorgasbord of available projects to choose from. But wow, do I really love building plastic soldiers! 😅

 I decided to try something new, since the Rapiers come with bases.  I wanted there to be some evidence on the ground that the machines were actually trundling along on their tracks and didn't just get set down on the bases via a hoist or some such. For the first attempt, I masked off where I wanted the tracks and applied my normal coat of wood glue.

 Then I applied my basing material as standard practice. After this had dried, I removed the masking putty.

 

So far so good.  I was planning to lay down some devlyn mud or other texture paint and stamp the tracks into it. But this rarely achieves the effect of heavy tracks sinking in an leaving an impression in the mud - at least not at this small scale.  I get the tracks clogged with texture paint and a somewhat gloppy impression on the base, rarely resembling track marks.  So...I thought what if I used green stuff and "molded" the track marks into it?

 

This approach products the look I wanted, although we'll see how things come out in the end with paint on the base.  I think I will be challenged to convince the eye that this gravel would break down to squishy track marks under the weight of the Rapiers, but we'll see.  I think it'll still look better than perching the machines in the middle of the pristine gravel.  There will be no doubt that track marks are coming out from under the backs of the rapiers.

The process seemed unnecessarily complicated, so I revised the approach to skip masking and simply applied the green stuff directly to the base prior to painting on the glue. 

I could then press the rapiers into the green stuff to make the impression before finishing things off with the glue and ground cover. Not shown here is the process of spreading the glue out before ultimately applying the model railroad ballast mix I use for ground cover.

And there we have it.  The ground cover really wants to stick to the green stuff here because I was too impetuous to wait until it had cured. However I actually hope the irregularity will help sell the final effect under paint. We'll have to wait and see! Regardless, there are two ways to got about getting some track imprints on a base using Greens stuff and other basing material.

Here are the Rapier Laser Destroyers with their new bases.  The Graviton Cannon battery received the same treatment though I failed to capture a pick of the final results. and here's a pick before the base work with the assembled crew:

I used the last of the MkVI Dark Angels heads I had and one unique resin head I had in the bits box. The new heads with the rapier kits do look cool, but I am out of MkVI bodies and I had six heads to spread across the team.  MkVI armor was known to have improved optics and such, so why would the legion specific helmets for the same mark not have the same improvements, right? :) Anyway, it's rule of cool here mostly in any case (I admit I do like my fluff too...).

Next up I built the new tarantula missile battery and sentry guns.   
 

The sentry gun options are basically push fit at this point so I assembled all the options and didn't bother with magnets.  We'll see how this continues when the paint starts sloshing on. With only the two gun mounts, I like the notion of being able to swap in appropriate weapons for a given game.

 Then I finally broke into the new Saturnine box to build the Centurion and Saturnine armored Praetor.

I love the Praetor details and weapons, but I'm a bit meh on the pose.  It'll grow on me, no doubt.  The Centurion sure is fancy.

I also built a ten man Veteran Assault squad with disintegrator pistols, but apparently didn't take any pics yet.  So I'll share that another time. I'm building the Saturnine Terminators soon, but otherwise waiting on the rest, I think.  I need to start the new hobby season soon with a painting project - well, probably completing the DKoK siege gun platform I was working on...a couple months ago?  LOL.

 

 

 

DKoK Artillary WIP - the Base

 

Greetings and welcome back!  I've been absent with the posts of late...and 2025 trend that I hope to reverse.  As usual, I have not been idle at the workbench, just at the computer. I thought I'd talk a bit about the base for the Death Korps of Krieg artillery piece I've had on the painting table for a while since completing the heavy stubber team.

After gluing down the scenic bits for a base, I like to use a good quality wood glue to apply ground cover as I did here. In my experience, wood glue holds better to the plastic than PVA or white glue. Sometimes I'll use a product like Vallejo's Black Lava or similar.  But for 40K, I have for years used a simple mix of fine and medium coarse model railroad ballast. In the case of this artillery base, I considered that during a siege, this artillery piece might be in place for some time, so the ground around it might become beat down and muddy where the crew congregate to manage the equipment. I've used poster putty (blue tac, etc.) to mask the areas I wanted to appear well trodden then glued down the ballast/gravel.

After allowing the glue to dry, I removed the putty and applied GW Agrellan Earth technical paint. A note on removing the putty, this had to be done carefully because glue had been spashed and dried on the putty, so pulling the putty up did start to lift the glue in spots. Had I been more careful with the application of glue, i could have avoided this bit. But back to the Agrellan Earth, as this paint dries, it cracks and makes a nice dried mud texture. In hind sight, it might have been fun to take a troopers foot and make a tone of overlapping foot prints as this dried - but I'm not sure if that would have really helped or not in the end, at least at this scale.

Anyway, this looked pretty decent prior to painting.  clearly some dried muddy areas amid the rough ground texture. with the gun in place, you can see the well trodden areas as they appear around the field piece. 

 

At this stage I paused and finished the Heavy Stubber team.  When finally coming back to paint, I laid down the base colors, the washed everything with GW Agrax Earthshade.

I then added some GW Athonian Camoshade to the muddy bits and all around the edge of the base, though honestly, it ended up leaving only a very subtle dark green to the shading. Probably could have skipped that step, or gone in hard with a couple more coats.

Then it was time to dry brush the ground and sandbags, tidy up the details and add highlights.  The final results are above in the title pic and in this pic from another angle.

Now we're ready to glue the field piece down once it is complete enough to do so.  I'm currently working on it, and in my next post I'll share the process and the progress for painting the gun and crew.  I batch painted the crew to a point while painting the heavy stubber team, but did not bring them to completion at that time. The gun has sat before now waiting in the queue with only an initial prime and grey base coat.
 

We'll see if I can get back to my old posting rhythm, so expect another post later this week.

Cheers and Happy Gaming! 
 

On the Workbench [February] - Death Korps of Krieg!

 

Greetings and welcome back.  So I said to myself when the DKoK box released that I have all the resin Krieg I need and even some plastic thanks to Kill Team.  But then there was a little crack in my armor, in the form of one teensy squad of five engineers and their updated "cyclops" mobile demolition platform. Well the set only lets you build one of two options for every model (except the "cyclops") and a full squad can be ten soldiers, so yeah, a second batch of 5 were required. OK, I'm good.  It's just 12 more models.

They look real slick! I then realized I'd need the new rules and heck, this fella on eBay is offering the paper material from the box AND Lord Marshall Dreir in the bargain for a reasonable price - and of course I want the luachbox DKooK art on my codex! So yep, picked that up.

But this is the famed Death Korps of Krieg, right?  So the big guns really never do tire...so toss in an artillery piece - I mean what's the point of the rest without THAT? Yeah, you can see where this is going...

At this point you sorta HAVE to have the Death Riders too (and why didn't I just buy the damn launch box in the first place...I'm saving nothing by picking this stuff up piece meal on eBay...).  The models are pretty fantastic in plastic; never mind that I already have 9 or 10 in resin...nope, gotta have 'em. I couldn't sleep at night if I didn't pick them up.

What, only five?  Cheapskate...

Oh, and then what's that? A new DKoK themed command squad?  Seriously?! Well Lord Marshal Dreir isn't going to push this lot about by himself, now is he?! SO, yeah, put that in the cart...

OK, we're good. It's a lot, but it's Krieg and that's good stuff. Wait, no, no we're not good.  There's the new heavy weapons set and at this point we can't have all of this and leave just that one box on the shelf.  I mean I have 13 or 14 DKoK heavy weapon teams in resin, so I don't NEED three more (and a dude...?).  But at this point we all know this hobby isn't really about needs...

Wait...where's the spotter dude?

And that's how I ended up with 29ish new DKoK models in plastic, all assembled this month. I have no regrets; they really are well designed and great fun to stare at.  They might even be good in a game. But whether they are or not, this blog was inspired by the DKoK and I figured it's about time some more Krieg got painted.

The keen eyed veteran may recognize all the resin bases from the Secret Weapon Miniatures that was. I have a silly large collection of resin Krieg, and I bought many trench work bases early on to be sure I could mount the whole collection on them. So I dug out what was left to use while building these new models.  The heavy weapon bases are larger than the new bases, but the rule of cool, right? Besides, all the other teams are mounted on these bases and these new models fit like they were made for them.

As for the rest, there's a lot of scenic bits on the new models, so I'm leaving those on the plastic bases. I can add gravel and what have you to blend the plastic in to fit the rest of the look here.  And while I'm on that subject, I thought I'd share my process for building out the artillery gun base... 

I went ahead and glued down the plastic base components that came with the kit in a fairly obvious but pleasing configuration. Then I figured I'd vary the ground cover a bit.  Where the troopers stand and move about, the ground should get a bit trampled and packed down. Probably water collects there too when it rains. So I decided to use poster tac to mask off those areas when I applied my typical mix of basing gravel.

 

Then I pulled up the poster tac after the glue had dried.  Some of the putty is stuck in the glue around the edges, but this is taken care of during later stages. I chose GW Agrellan Earth texture paint to be my packed down, and now parched earth. But first, I needed some gloss coat to insure the Agrellan Earth cracked well.

 

Once that dried I went over all those areas with the Agrellan Earth. You lay this stuff on good and thick to get a good result.

 

Then I headed off to bed, so the magic could happen.  Watched earth never cracks, so they say...

And voila'! Some parched earth. I guess it's not as trampled looking as I might have liked...and I'm killing myself inside for not thinking to use a trooper boot to stamp a ton of foot prints into the earth prior to the crackling...but it's not bad at all for a homemade scenic base.  Should fit in with the resin stuff just fine once painted. You can see the fully assembled model in the title pic above.

With that, February draws to a close. I'll prime this batch and then see what I get paint on next.  With MonsterMarch looming large, I might have to go back to The Lion (cheating?  he is a beast...in combat...). Or perhaps tackle my first Tyranid since 3rd edition. I did promise a new faction before becoming obsessed with tiny troops and tanks. I dunno...but I think the Krieg probably wait for April.

Check back next week to see where the Changer of Ways points my brush. Until then...

Cheers and Happy Gaming!

 

 

Aeronautica Imperialis Skies of Fire Bases - To DONE

 

Greetings and welcome back.  After completing two Predator tanks for the Horus Heresy game, I decided to turn back to my Aeronautica Imperialis collection.  Last season, I completed the contents of the original boxed set, Aeronautica Imperialis: Wings of Vengeance.  So this time, I'm working on the second boxed set to be released, Aeronautica Imperialis: Skies of Fire.  It the second boxed set, we are introduced to T'au and Imperial Army aircraft along with a few new rules.

 

To kick things off, I base coated all the planes and then got busy with the bases.  The bases are pretty easy to get done, so they make for a quick win. Also, the completion adds incentive to get on with the aircraft.  The base tops can be carefully separated from the bottoms with a screw driver or other prying tool. They clip on three sides; use care when forcing the clips open or you'll bend and/or crack the bases, or possibly mangle the dials in the process.  If things go well, you'll have a bunch of base dials and bottoms as shown above.  Don't get the dials mixed up.  There are two different dials and they need to be on the correct side to function as designed. 

A short time later I had the base colors applied, using an airbrush. When gluing the stems in before painting, as I have done, some masking tape helps keep the stems clear, if that's what you're aiming for.  There are many examples out on the web to draw from.  I originally planned to do themed bases for each force.  However, in the end I felt the game would look less chaotic if all the planes used the same bases.  This is a pretty easy scheme to reproduce (that's important because there are a lot of bases to paint if you run a large collection!), and look striking on the table.

Next, I painted in the details on the backs of the bases. Bright contrast draws the eye and makes it easy to pick out the flight details during a game. It's quite easy to paint these raised details, but you want to go slow and take care to avoid getting paint on air brushed transitions like this. It's frustrating to touch up later.  I keep a stiff, damp brush handy to quickly remove any mistakes while painting.

Next I painted in all the metallic trim, including the triangle at the front of the base.  You could do something more interesting there, but it's not a game aid (other than sorta pointing forward) and so I didn't want to draw attention to it.

Last up was a solid coat of varnish to seal the paintwork and add durability for game play.  Not sown here, I did paint the two thin rails on the back plate of each base that run under each dial when the bases are assembled.  This can be brush painted after assembly, but I didn't want to have to seal it by brush, nor spray lacquer all over the dials.  So I did a quick paint and seal on those portions of the back plates before reassembling the bases.  As shown, they are ready for action.  Now on to the planes.  I'll save my big ol' seal of DONE for the finished boxed set...hard to take credit for a handful of bases while the planes languish on the shelf with nought but primer on them! 

Probably no posts until next week while I celebrate the US Thanksgiving holiday with family. Happy Thanksgiving to all those out there that celebrate. And even if you don't, you might find some time for reflection on what there is to be thankful for in this life.  

Like a healthy hobby backlog to look forward to! 😂

Cheers and Happy Gaming!!

 

Dark Angels Redemptor Dreanought WIP - Part 2

 

Greetings all.  The Redemptor project continues on a piece. I'm almost done blocking in all the base colors so I can begin shading. So far, so good.  I like how this dreadnought is taking shape.

The model is still in sub assemblies for painting.  I'll be gluing some things into their final positions once the base colors are laid down.  I plan to shade and highlight with the model in its final pose so I don't end up putting highlights on something that is in shadows, etc.  The right arm weapons are magnetized and will be the only bits not glued down in the end.

I built a custom base with pieces of cork board to give the model a little extra height and presence within the collection.  I use wood glue to fix everything down and a mix of model railroad scale ballast to fill in blank areas on the base and provide additional ground texture.

I used pencil to trace around the feet when adding texture to the surface of the cork. You want your model to sink into the terrain, not float over it.  The effect lends weight to the model and helps trick the eye a bit, perhaps.

Here is how the base looks with the dreadnought standing on it.  I decided on some Ork skulls for interest. If I can locate some other Ork stuff in my bin of xenos bits I might add more.

I'll leave you with a peek at the interior detail so far.  Still a lot to do in there. Over all, the project is going well and should accelerate now that I've stopped building 30K stuff. 😂 I *really* like building models and sometimes I just can't stop myself to make room for painting in my limited hobby time. But it's all hobby right?

So that's that for now.  Check back next week for more on this project.

Cheers and Happy Gaming!

Warbringer Nemesis Titan for Adeptus Titanicus - WIP

 

Greetings.  I thought I'd share a little bit about my process for basing these tiny titans.  While much smaller than their 28mm cousins, these 8mm titans are still large enough to play with the bases.  No need to simply glue them down to the supplied plastic base and leave it go.  Have some fun! 

For my collection, I have chosen Legios that all hail from Mars.  I pictured the titans striding across a broken martian landscape, rather than in amongst the many Mechanicum facilities, if for no other reason that they'd be constantly crushing stuff. I use cork board to represent broken ground, selecting boards with cork pieces that are not too coarse. You can get cork board on Amazon.com easy enough, and in various thicknesses.

It's super easy to break these up and I encourage the avid hobbyist to experiment with different shapes, and even stack pieces for elevation, though that requires planning ahead when building the model. Here, I've settled on a simple bit of cracked ground, maybe carved by an ancient martian river.  Adding a few bits of Titanicus terrain (or something similarly scaled to 8mm), give a bit of narrative to the base and will provide some visual interest that helps communicate the towering scale of the titans.

I like to keep the legs around for a reference while I'm modelling a base to be sure everything will fit and look good when I'm done gluing things down.  For cork, I generally use wood glue which I feel has a bit better grip and longevity over standard white (PVA) glue.  I don't like super glue for this as I often move things around a bit and the longer setting time of a white or wood glue doesn't get in the way there. Also, while the glue is still not set, I sprinkle some of my mixed railroad ballast on it to give texture to exposed bits of the plastic base not covered by cork.

My last step is to use Vallejo Black Lava to texture the flat surfaces of the cork, and cover up its obvious texture and "corkiness".  I hold the titan's feet in place and paint the gloppy black lava around the feet, trying to not get much on the model.  It wipes off before dry with some water on a wet paper towel, though, so no worries.  This approach leaves a good smooth surface to glue the titan to once the project is finished.  We want these huge engines to appear sunk into the ground, not floating over it, after all. 

On other bases, I have also used GW texture paints that crack when dry so simulate dry river beds and other parched ground that isn't so rocky. And that's that!  You can really go free and crazy with your imagination here. Search the web to find many many examples.  I hope this simple base sparks your own creativity for your projects.  Hopefully we'll see some paint on this Warbringer before too long.

Stay safe out there.

Cheers and Happy Gaming!

Custom Nameplates for Tiny Titans - TO DONE

 Greetings, and welcome to another post on custom name plates. These fantastic mini-titans for Adeptus Titanicus cry out to be named and what better way to display those names, than with some shiny plaques on the bases! To that end, I reached out once again to Versatile Terrain with a list of my Titan's names to be cast into custom name plates.

I got them back pretty quick, which is a credit to the team at Versatile Terrain.  Seems they are taking a break currently, so I got in just under the wire.  The quality of the names plates is great and they fit the various base sizes they were targeted at quite well.  I chose a gothic look to match the Warhammer 30K/40K universe.

Here is what the plates look like glued to Warhound Titan bases.  These are the next two Warhounds in the Manufactorum for Legio Ignatum.  Since I hadn't begun painting these, I glued the plates on directly.  The rest were painted prior to being attached so I wouldn't mess up my painted Mars terrain bases.

I started by priming the plates with Vallejo Surface Primer Black, then layered on a coat of Pro-Acryl Bronze with an airbrush.  I did not remove the plates from the sprue at this point; this gave me something to hold on to while painting.  

Back at the painting desk, I shaded the plates with GW Agrax Earthshade.  Once that had thoroughly dried, I came back in and highlighted the text and sharp edges of the plates with Pro-Acryl Light Bronze.  I felt the bronze look lent some age and weight to the titans.  The light bronze really helps the text pop a bit, making it easier to read at a glance.  The plates were given a coat of varnish and left to dry over night before being removed from their sprue and attached to the various titans in my Adeptus Titanicus collection.

The Legio Tempestus Axiom Maniple is shown above sporting their new name plates. Click through to the original images if you want to get a better close up.  The plates stand out without drawing too much attention from the titans themselves.

Last up is a family shot with the Loyalists of Legio Ignatum and the Ordo Sinister.  This final touch to the titans really polishes the project and should add some fun narrative to my games. Also, there is less chance of confusing which titans go with which terminals and players can more easily refer to them during games, especially with the more plentiful Warhounds.  And finally, I could never recall the correct names for all of the titans anyway, so that is now no longer an issue.

So I'll indulge in a stamp of DONE for that little side project.  That is for 14 truly completed titans now.

Not sure what to pick up next.  I have a bunch of terrain for Adeptus Titanicus calling out for attention; however I owe some time to other projects too and I've sunk a bunch into AT so far this year.  Maybe some characters for Blackstone Fortress?  That's overdue...or perhaps I'll return to the Dark Angels.  I have a primarch waiting for assembly and a host of other units for both 30K and 40K...

Check back later to see where the hobby butterfly takes me.

Stay safe out there.

Cheers and Happy Gaming!