Since the back half of the board is entirely rocks and gravel, I used a good amount of Oxid Paste over it. I mixed this with some small stones to create more texture, but otherwise this half is pretty barren.
The front half I glued down a bunch of cobblestone plasticard and then filled the gaps with a combination of the Vallejo Black Lava and Oxid Paste.
Patrick came over this afternoon and we set to work!
We effectively carved foam all afternoon. I took a few pieces and carved up a long stone fence. He built a castle thing. I don’t have any photos of the castle thing, because he keeps taking it with him when he leaves, but trust me, it’s pretty badass! We were both impressed with how easy the foam was to carve and create useful shapes out of.
At the end, we glued our base foam to a piece of MDF hardboard and put a bunch of heavy things on top of it.
I don’t even know what’s going on with this model anymore. I think it’s going to be cool when I’m done, but right now I’m torn between thinking it’s the worst thing I’ve ever painted, and loving the shit out of it because it’s the worst thing I’ve ever painted. It’s not done. It’s still ok.
I started with Boltgun Metal over just about everything. After the Rail Golem skin, I wanted to start darker so I didn’t have to bring it down as much. I did a layer of Guilliman Blue along the bottom edges of things, and crevasses, Lamenters Yellow at the top of edges and…well…it looked like ass. So I went and did some edges with the Boltgun, and Bloodletter in the middle of things and Soft Body Black in crevasses and…well…it’s a mess. But from a distance, it might be a good looking mess. A little purple. Or blue. Or…red. Only Tzeentch knows. Or Khorne. Maybe sleep will help it out. My sleep. Of course.
The gun is obviously a giant fleshy thing. If I’m lucky, when all is said and done, no one will look to closely at the metal. Giant fleshy gun calls to you…
This is my priority this week. Get this done, and the rest of life is easy sailing.
Patrick and I got together again and made a pact to focus on getting this display board done. We leave for AdeptiCon in 4 weeks, and that’s much to close for my tastes! (At least it isn’t 3 weeks…which is what I thought it was until I looked just now!) (Also, this post was written on the 6th :))
Our last work on this thing has been sitting around for many weeks, while we both prepared for other things and I think I went to Mexico in the mean time as well.
We each got to work building the “tall thing” on our respective sides of the board. We had decided last year that “tallness” was a property we wanted, as tall things stand out and are looked at in more depth. A tall thing says “Come over” and it says “look closer”. It is a form of advertising that short things do not have.
Patrick is building a tower/castle/gatehouse thing with pink foam. I’m building the entrance to Tzeentchs’ crystal labyrinth, a part of the fluff that I’ve always though was super cool. Like Tzeentch has a Fortress of Solitude. I stole the pencil idea of Mark/Mach_5’s Rasputina crew, and apparently he stole it from someone else.
Board in progress.
PENCILS FOR THE PENCIL GOD
This is going to be amazing.
The taller elements are removable, for both ease of transport and also re-usability. We’ll be getting together again soon to continue, as we have a lot of work to go!
(This message has been pre-recorded for your reading pleasure, but I’m probably back in town by now…)
The last thing I built was…
Well, not this. Patrick built this for me. When we dreamed up our Adepticon team army, he was going to do Tomb Kings and I was doing Daemons. We had an elaborate conversion of a necrosphinx planned, which was going to be absolutely brilliant and gorgeous. As the plan continued, Patrick decided that “Chaos Empire” or, potentially, just “Chaos Warriors” would be his team army. The conversion was going to be for a Skull Cannon, and I still needed one, so he built me a Dark Elf Cauldron of Blood with a giant fucking Tyranid gun in the middle.
I built some bases for it. The Cauldron is on a giant base that’s huge, and the Skull Cannon is a chariot base, so I built up from a chariot base to something that this conversion would sit on.
(This message has been pre-recorded for your reading pleasure!)
I painted this guy many years ago when I first did a “Warriors of Chaos” Tzeentch army. That’s in “air quotes” because it had a several units of Horrors, Flamers, a Gor Herd, as well as two units of Tzeentch Warriors…and a lot of other stuff. You can tell it was a long time ago because this mishmash of units was a legal army…
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This guy has been sitting on my “best of” army shelf for a while, because I’m generally really pleased with how he turned out, especially at the time. That shelf is now in cases because I don’t have space at my apartment anymore, but I pulled him out to maybe use him as a back-up Herald in cases where I roll “turn your wizard into a Herald” on the Winds of Magic table.
I fixed up his plumage a bit, as it was definitely a bit ratty and showing it’s age. I put him on a new base to go with the rest of the army, and left everything else as-is. He won’t see a lot of use, but I’m happy that he has a place in the army regardless.
(This message has been pre-recorded for your reading pleasure!)
As I said last time, I was in a painting frenzy and just wanted to get some things done. These guys had been basecoated last I wrote about them, and now they’re done.
The manes are pretty simple – Ushapti Bone, Gryponne Sepia and then drybrush up Ushapti Bone and Skull White. I haven’t drybrushed for a while, but I think it works out really well for this sort of thing.
The skin is blue, similar to the horrors from a while back. (Actually, it seems I didn’t post a final photo of the horrors…oops). But I didn’t want just plain blue daemon cat things, so I painted some faint lines of Warpstone Green in the middle. Not really strong, but strong enough to be a little green tinge.
Last, I used Bloodletter GW glaze along the edges where the metal and skin meets…because that doesn’t look comfortable at all, and red is the colour of uncomfortable skin? Sure. Here’s some photos.
Final?! I was to involved in painting to take photos, just wanted to get ‘er dun, so I skipped all the middle posts. The skin and sword was identical to the plaguebearer unit, but with more care taken and more layers.
Unfortunately, I’m still a little disappointed with the paint job. I was hoping to enter this model into Crystal Brush in April, but he missed the mark by a bit. The freehand isn’t good enough, the cape is supposed to be “fire lighting”, but it doesn’t work at all and the base is really plain. The paint job is competent and looks great, but it isn’t my best work.
That’s ok though, as I have a back-up entry for Crystal Brush…you’ve seen it here already, and you can guess if you like, but I’m going to keep it to myself until I get back.
I had a hard time figuring out what I wanted to paint for the back of the cloak. I knew I wanted something to “obscure” the fire-lit part of it, but nothing else. I pulled out my tablet and Sensu brush/stylus (totally a product placement, because it’s fun) and doodled a bit until something came together.
When I translated it to the cape though, it still wasn’t what I wanted. It doesn’t cover enough, and it isn’t “intricate” enough to cover enough.
Lastly, some basic OSL. 🙂 This is pretty easy – paint the fire, paint the skull and hand and then apply a layer or two of that Lamenter’s Yellow. Done!
Derrick asked recently if I would post some photos of a single plaguebearer from the unit I painted. I told him I’d do it that weekend…it is no longer “that weekend”, but it isa weekend, so that counts, right?
I did this part on my own – getting together can be difficult, and there wasn’t much that needed doing aside from filling in all of the cracks in the pink foam.
I picked up a product called Model Lite from Magic Box Hobbies. It’s an interesting product with a texture a little like grainy CoolWhip. I tried to apply it using some sort of tool, but in the end just used my fingers. It dries and hardens in less than 10 minutes, creating a plaster layer on my fingers, but it washed off with soap and water no problem.
Patrick is planning to put a sloped cobblestone road on his section, so I carefully carved a piece of foam out so it would fit.
On Patrick’s and mine drive back from AdeptiCon last year, we had the most amazing conversation, planning and scheming about what we would do next year. That’s…this year. April 3rd-6th, specifically. I’m a planner. I love to plan things, it gives me a little thrill to have my little schedule in mind and to check items off of it. The biggest and riskiest item still on that list is the display board we had planned out. I called him up, and we got together to get some work done on this thing!
Our original plan was that he would be playing Tomb Kings, partnered with my new Daemons and the TK would be sacrificing things to Chaos, and we’d have this 300-like pit in the middle of the board, with men being thrown into it and come out the other side and have both sides of the board be reflections of each other.
He changed his mind a few times, and is now working on a Chaos-themed Empire army. Like Traitor Guard. Or maybe he’ll revert back to Warriors of Chaos. But he’s still thumbing through the TK book…either way, I’m bringing Daemons and we’re building this thing!
He’s been keeping a mini sketch book, which is pretty awesome to flip through, and has done a dozen drawings of what this board would look like. I wanted to put some foam on the table, put some models on the foam and really set down what we would do.
Measuring is good. You can see The Notebook (not related to the movie) just above the foam.
We’ve got a 3/4 inch piece of pink foam and a bunch of models. Took a sharpie to the foam and marked a bunch of things down.
I drew a slope up and some parts to cut out. Patrick drew unit placements, a side slope and a little ruin.
Many many many years ago, a good friend of mine and I built a ton of Necromunda terrain. We built a bunch of tall boards and a few short boards, and I ended up keeping the foam mountains we’d built for one of the short boards. It’s crap terrain, in hindsight, so I was super glad to be able to re-use it for this project. We cut it up and glued it down.
One of the things we learned from last year was that tall terrain catches more eyes. We’re flying down, so we can’t build a 6 foot tall Chaos Dwarf cave with an idyllic fishing village on top of it…but we can build some stuff that lies flat, or can be packed into a suitcase or similar and get the height through modularity.
We’ve got some height to build.
Stay tuned, I’ll be posting on this incredible project regularly, and this hobby duo is going to produce something absolutely amazing!
