Just a very quick update on the old paint job. Pretty much done the torso, head and holo fins: next up is those chunky engine thingies: this weekend I hope. ...
Thursday, 28 February 2013
Monday, 25 February 2013
PROPER Retro 40k Pt 2
Done a bit more work on the old 80s Space Marines. Some of the models will definitely need another wash in fairy liquid, and I seem to have stuck some of them together with evo stick. I'm pretty sure I wasn't supposed to have that; must have pinched it from out of the garage. Sorry parents. They are also going to need some trimming. I'm not sure I understood the concept of removing flash or mold lines when I was 15. Ho hum.
I have enough minis for 3 tactical squads I think, complete with (awesome old school) missile launchers, and (not so awesome old school) flamers and googly eyed sergeants. Some I think will end up being a 5 man havoc squad. If I can get all the bits together right.
And finally the first of the Furioso Destroyer Class Dreadnaught Armours are stripped. I really am fond of these guys. Used to win me many a battle I recall....
Gaming table: Mancunia in the Albion System
So I wanted a proper, good looking gaming table for 40K. We have a pretty good fantasy one, but with the arrival of 6th, and a renewed interest in sci-fi space elf vs. fishmen gaming amongst our gaming group of 2, I thought it was about time that we stopped playing futuristic shooting in a medieval landscape.
I wanted:
I decided that very rusty metal buildings on a concrete base would be a good look (and pretty easy to paint too), so that is what I went for. The one thing that I was unsure of was how I was going to tie the edges of the tiles together in a way that made them all completely interchangeable...
Roads! That was the answer. If I edged all sides of each tile with half a road, I would create a sort of city-grid system. Which I thought would be pretty Imperial really. That's how I'd do it if I was Albion's Planetary Governor anyway.
So I used 3mm fibreboard (for the tile bases), self adhesive flooring tiles (for the road sections), and lots of builders' sand and pva glue. I didn't glue the buildings to the board for storage purposes, but I did try and paint rusty stains (as 'twere) on the baseboards to tie the buildings into the base. I think it worked: you can judge for yourself in the photos. Incidentally, on the subject of painting, I bought a GW spray gun to do this lot. Effing useless. I wouldn't bother. I reverted to decorating brushes and saved myself a whole lot of faffing.
The buildings were painted brown, stippled with orange, and then drybrushed with gunmental colour. I used black spray and grey paint on the rest, and found some yellow spray paint to do my road markings...
And here are some WIP's and a final finished shot. Plus an in-game pic of my Killer Space Elves being beaten by Mark's Fishboyz. Bloomin 6th edition shooting. grrr..
Actually, it is probably worth saying that the play experience is MASSIVELY enhanced by having a good bit of scenery. I reckon anyway.
I wanted:
- Something that looked really cool. As far as a wargaming table can ever be cool. But power to the geek and all that.
- Something that was modular, not necessarily for transportation, more for the ability to vary layout.
- Something that could be easily expanded to apocalypse size.
I decided that very rusty metal buildings on a concrete base would be a good look (and pretty easy to paint too), so that is what I went for. The one thing that I was unsure of was how I was going to tie the edges of the tiles together in a way that made them all completely interchangeable...
Roads! That was the answer. If I edged all sides of each tile with half a road, I would create a sort of city-grid system. Which I thought would be pretty Imperial really. That's how I'd do it if I was Albion's Planetary Governor anyway.
So I used 3mm fibreboard (for the tile bases), self adhesive flooring tiles (for the road sections), and lots of builders' sand and pva glue. I didn't glue the buildings to the board for storage purposes, but I did try and paint rusty stains (as 'twere) on the baseboards to tie the buildings into the base. I think it worked: you can judge for yourself in the photos. Incidentally, on the subject of painting, I bought a GW spray gun to do this lot. Effing useless. I wouldn't bother. I reverted to decorating brushes and saved myself a whole lot of faffing.
The buildings were painted brown, stippled with orange, and then drybrushed with gunmental colour. I used black spray and grey paint on the rest, and found some yellow spray paint to do my road markings...
And here are some WIP's and a final finished shot. Plus an in-game pic of my Killer Space Elves being beaten by Mark's Fishboyz. Bloomin 6th edition shooting. grrr..
Actually, it is probably worth saying that the play experience is MASSIVELY enhanced by having a good bit of scenery. I reckon anyway.
PROPER retro 40K
Once upon a time, back in 1988 in fact, a very excitable chap opened up a box of the first plastic WH40K miniatures ever released. He had got them for his birthday.
25 years later, that same boy (but older, fatter and balder. A lot of all three to be fair) was idly looking through a box of old minis with his mate Mark after getting a good thrashing from Mark's Tau, and came across those very same minis from his yoof, and both he and Mark agreed that they were pretty cool. Then he remembered another of his friends, Rich, had told him that dettol removes paint from plastic minis without affecting the plastic. An idea was born.
These guys were coooool. Rocket launchers looked awesome back then, and the Marines were definitely harder. I know because quite a few of them wore their beaky helments at a jaunty angle on their belts, leaving their oculum-enhanced heads exposed to the elements. And they had knives. Proper combat knives with none of your new fangled chain blade gubbins. That said, they did have weird chain-bayonet thingies on their slightly anemic-by-today's-standards bolters. And their dreadnoughts were, well, a bit odd-looking. But still cool in a misty-eyed-I-remember-when-all-this-were-fields sort of way. What with all this Horus Heresy stuff being a la mode at the moment, I thought that it was time for a true retro-revival: I want to make my quarter century old Marine army useable again. Hoorah.
Here are two of The Bloodblades' (I was 15, don't judge me) finest, pre-dip:
In they go....
They look at bit nurgley when they've been in there 24 hours...
Tune in soon for a proper retro 40K update, where I will be figuring out whose arms belong to whom.
25 years later, that same boy (but older, fatter and balder. A lot of all three to be fair) was idly looking through a box of old minis with his mate Mark after getting a good thrashing from Mark's Tau, and came across those very same minis from his yoof, and both he and Mark agreed that they were pretty cool. Then he remembered another of his friends, Rich, had told him that dettol removes paint from plastic minis without affecting the plastic. An idea was born.
These guys were coooool. Rocket launchers looked awesome back then, and the Marines were definitely harder. I know because quite a few of them wore their beaky helments at a jaunty angle on their belts, leaving their oculum-enhanced heads exposed to the elements. And they had knives. Proper combat knives with none of your new fangled chain blade gubbins. That said, they did have weird chain-bayonet thingies on their slightly anemic-by-today's-standards bolters. And their dreadnoughts were, well, a bit odd-looking. But still cool in a misty-eyed-I-remember-when-all-this-were-fields sort of way. What with all this Horus Heresy stuff being a la mode at the moment, I thought that it was time for a true retro-revival: I want to make my quarter century old Marine army useable again. Hoorah.
Here are two of The Bloodblades' (I was 15, don't judge me) finest, pre-dip:
Giant Space Elf War Robot
So I went and did it. When nobody was looking, I blew £200 on a big model of a space elf war robot with mahoosive guns. But I NEEDED one so it had to be done.
I have, as you can well imagine, browsed the internets at length as to how to build and paint one of these monsters, and became increasingly more and more apprehensive. There was lots of stuff about pinning and drilling and airbrushing and posing and working with resin and other things that seemed very scary indeed.
But fear not, intrepid reader, because, actually, it's really not that scary. To give you some background:
Anyway. Despite the initial panic at potentially ruining a pretty expensive model, I cracked on with it.
Here are the bits after scrubbing and scraping:
An attractive tea towel and no mistake.
Some stuff I read is definitely true. You need a plan. Definitely need an idea of how you want the thing posing, and, first off, how you're going to base it. I made up some spurious excuse at work to a tech in the technology department about me needing a 5" roundel of 3/4" mdf. He made one for me, and I managed it without revealing my Warhammer secret. Though I suspect he may have once dabbled at least, because he looks like a cross between a viking and Bugman. Anyway, that's what I used.
I bought brass rods from the internet too, you definitely need them otherwise I reckon bits will snap and fall over once the model starts getting tall. But pinning is pretty easy: I put the pose together using blu tack and then marked out angles and things on the joints, drilled and glued bits of brass rod in the holes. Seemed to work pretty well.
Because I wanted to paint all the parts before assembly (I've never used an airbrush before, remember), I didn't glue any bits together yet. Which was a bit frustrating, because I really really wanted to see what it was going to look like in all its tall, prancy, shooty glory. But I was very restrained.
Then, after spraying the black undercoat, (both on the model and on my flat wall, rather stupidly), it was time to mask. After watching lots of airbrushing videos on youtube, I was getting a bit bored, and decided it was time to take the plunge. Now don't get me wrong, airbrushing is an artform. But for getting simple gradients, I reckon its pretty easy. I mixed and thinned my different paints first (I used GW ones, and all but the bone colour seemed fine once I had watered them down), and then just sort of went for it.
Blu tack was my friend here. It's really good for masking. I treated it like green stuff and used a wet sculpting tool to push it into place. Here are the leg bits with undercoat and mask:
And here are the leg bits on the base with paint on. I quite like how they turned out really. Still needs the gemstones finishing off, but looks alright.
Still no glue because I needed to paint the base. Which I did. It matches my table (which I will post on another day). I did the torso and head next, which took a LOT of careful blu tack masking shennanegans, but got there in the end:
And then did the brushwork on the head and torso:
And that's where I'm at to date. I'll try and learn to take better pictures. because some of these are ropy.
But I guess my message of the day is; don't be scared of similar projects like I was. It's not as hard as you might think. Here endeth the first lesson.
I have, as you can well imagine, browsed the internets at length as to how to build and paint one of these monsters, and became increasingly more and more apprehensive. There was lots of stuff about pinning and drilling and airbrushing and posing and working with resin and other things that seemed very scary indeed.
But fear not, intrepid reader, because, actually, it's really not that scary. To give you some background:
- I have painted quite a lot of minis in my time. I'm going to post about my first original space marine minis another day. That was in 1988.
- I have never wielded an airbrush, or even seen one in real life until I started this
- I have never wielded a dremel / other mini rotary tool, or even seen one in real life until I started this
- I have never built a resin model (unless you count superglueing the heads on some Finecast wraithguards last month)
- I have never done pinning. Except in textiles classes at school. But don't judge me.
Anyway. Despite the initial panic at potentially ruining a pretty expensive model, I cracked on with it.
Here are the bits after scrubbing and scraping:
Some stuff I read is definitely true. You need a plan. Definitely need an idea of how you want the thing posing, and, first off, how you're going to base it. I made up some spurious excuse at work to a tech in the technology department about me needing a 5" roundel of 3/4" mdf. He made one for me, and I managed it without revealing my Warhammer secret. Though I suspect he may have once dabbled at least, because he looks like a cross between a viking and Bugman. Anyway, that's what I used.
I bought brass rods from the internet too, you definitely need them otherwise I reckon bits will snap and fall over once the model starts getting tall. But pinning is pretty easy: I put the pose together using blu tack and then marked out angles and things on the joints, drilled and glued bits of brass rod in the holes. Seemed to work pretty well.
Because I wanted to paint all the parts before assembly (I've never used an airbrush before, remember), I didn't glue any bits together yet. Which was a bit frustrating, because I really really wanted to see what it was going to look like in all its tall, prancy, shooty glory. But I was very restrained.
Then, after spraying the black undercoat, (both on the model and on my flat wall, rather stupidly), it was time to mask. After watching lots of airbrushing videos on youtube, I was getting a bit bored, and decided it was time to take the plunge. Now don't get me wrong, airbrushing is an artform. But for getting simple gradients, I reckon its pretty easy. I mixed and thinned my different paints first (I used GW ones, and all but the bone colour seemed fine once I had watered them down), and then just sort of went for it.
Blu tack was my friend here. It's really good for masking. I treated it like green stuff and used a wet sculpting tool to push it into place. Here are the leg bits with undercoat and mask:
But I guess my message of the day is; don't be scared of similar projects like I was. It's not as hard as you might think. Here endeth the first lesson.
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