Hobby Spending - November 2024.

 

A basic supplies month for spending for November, with just a couple of washes bought to replenish stocks.

The main numbers:

Hobby money spent:

1 pot of Agrax Earthshade: £4.25.

1 pot of Seraphim Sepia: £4.25.

Total for November ber: £8.50.

Budget for September: £50.

Over/Under Yearly Budget: under budget by £85.40.

I've labelled some of this month as "Hobby Money" because I did buy other products when I went to Element Games, however these were presents from people.

At the end of September I celebrated my fortieth trip around the sun, and the accompanying fanfare that birthday includes.

I was trying to get hold of the Forces of Fantasy and Ravening Hordes books for The Old World from my family, but everywhere I tried seemed to be out of stock.

Element Games had both of them in the other day, so I was sensible and picked them both up, meaning I can now put together a proper army to play games with Cardboard Fortress, as TOW is definitely his game at the moment.

Both books were £27.50 each, making the pair of them £55 in total, not too bad.

Where did I leave my Chaos Warriors?

So, until next time, have nice day...

November Motivation.

 

As Christmas approaches...

Remember this if anyone tries to say you have too many games/rulebooks.

 Until next time, have nice day...

Mechanicum Thanatar Siege Automata.

 

With the recent releases of the Adeptus Mechanicum for Horus Heresy and Legions Imperialis, I decided to finish off a model which has been languishing on the rear of my desk for far too long.

This is a Forge World resin Thanatar, the one which has just recently been replaced by the new plastic kit.

As mentioned I'd previously work on this and then stopped, this was how it looked earlier this evening.

Mostly finished, notable points are the highlighting on the yellow and black areas, and final assembly before drybrushing the base.

After those bits were done, I quite like the glowing blue of the plasma mortar.

The model was missing something, so I decided to try a technique I'd seen on YouTube about chipping the armour panels using a bit of sponge and some tweezers.

I cut off about a half-inch square from the farm and bundled it up in the tweezers end, before pulling out the Leadbelcher.

It gives a very subtle armour chipping effects, but one which I feel pulls the model all together and looks a bit more "lived in" so to speak.

The flash has wash out the plasma coils, but they are painted with the turquoise contrast.

The hazard striping are a suggestion from Fraser after talking about what the model needed, we're both fans of the 2nd/3rd edition look of the universe, where hazard striping was everywhere, even on boltguns!

Some of the turquoise has bled back into this photo, and you can see the drybrush I used to represent kicked up dust from the urban ruins*.

Speaking of the urban ruins, the tank trap pieces on the base are Forge World resin gates, suitable cut, posed and damaged to look like concrete tank traps on the base of the model.

Out from Dommwas the catalyst for this idea.

With that out of the way, and in Martian red, I looked at other colour schemes and found this example.

That looks so good in the black with the rust gathered in all the recesses. If I could go back in time and start again with this model. I probably think I would follow this guy painting my own as it looks really really nice.

Duncan has one which he wasn't happy with how he'd started to paint it...hmmm...

Until next time, have nice day...

*Fraser initially wanted all his armies to match basing wise, so an urban, destroyed city was chosen. But that 

The Solar Watch - Part 5.

 

They had burned for Mercury as soon as the last members of the watch had docked. Their sleek starship contrasting with the slab sided bulk haulers and security forces of the Imperial Navy, slid through the darkness, engines burning bright blue.

"What did Yor'Tar Dawne say exactly?" Custodian Caesarian Allux asked, striding into the huge briefing chamber, surrounded by his squad mates. Their armoured boots ringing on the polished floor.

"Greetings Allux, as gruff as usual I see" Vexilla Sanish said.

"I have no time for pleasantries when threats are in Sol!" Allux snapped, several other Custodians nodded or watches impassively at the arrival.

"Noted" Sanish replied, moving to the projector table and activating it with a sprinkling of unguents before pressing a series of buttons.

The machine flared into life, the long range auspex scans of their ship giving them a topological map of the Mercury Command Hive, a glowing eagle icon represented Yor'Tar Dawnes' current position.

"From what we were told, the heretic Herath, who translocated away from the assault of squad Maecanius. He has reappeared in the Mercury Command Hive and a hidden cult had risen up. Yor'Tar Dawne is currently combating..." Sanish trailed off staring at the pict flickering in the air.

A collective gasp rose as the Custodes watched.

"What is that?" Tristraen Gallimadean asked, pointing to a spot on the pict.

The top of the Command Hive appeared to be glowing on the 3 dimensional hologram, growing brighter with each passing second.

"Scanning for details" the servitor attached to the auspex said, "cannot comply, insufficient data".

The entire top of the hive flashed bright white for a second before disappearing and being replaced with an angry red stain on the pict.

"Holy Terra" Allux gasped.

Ominously, Sword-Champion Yor'Tar Dawnes' icon had disappeared from the pict.

"Burn the engines harder, get us into teleportation range as quickly as possible" Vexilla Sanish roared, "And get us in contact with Yor'Tar Dawne!".

*****

Another four Custodian guard have been finished for the Solar Watch force.

Not much to say about these as they follow the same paint and basing schemes as laid out in previous posts.

With these four done, it brings the total count to:

To do:

• Shield-Captain 
• 4 Custodian Guard
• 3 Allarus Terminators 
• 6 Venatari

Done:

• 2 Sword-Champions
• Vexilla
• 10 Custodian Guard 
• 3 Allarus Terminators 

So with sixteen models or the thirty now completed, I am very happy to say I'm past the halfway point of this army.

Up next is mostly the bigger specialist unit of the jump-pack equipped Venatari, who are brilliant models. Let's hope GW or FW don't bin them off like most of FWs other catalogue of models*.

Here's a couple of fully finished photo's of everything so far:

Until next time, have nice day...

*Recently nearly all FWs Imperial Guard kits have gone out of production, along with a lot of the Imperial Guard characters on the regular GW web store. My beloved Catachan's as well...but the reveal isn't too far away for what is being released next year.

Trench Warfare - part 1.

 

As I continue to drag myself forcibly out of the hobby funk I've been in for the previous could of months, I decided to make a start on some scratch-built terrain.

I've always watched terrain crafting videos on YouTube, and used to make various terrain projects with my late father. Granted these were for railway modelling, not Wargaming, but the basic skills* are all the same.

When I was building the table, I took the opportunity to rip some various size terrain bases from an extra sheet of 6mm MDF I had previously purchased.

Hills, Woods, Building bases and two sets of four foot long trench systems were planned out and ripped from the sheet. The edges being beveled to an angle with an electric sander**.

Cutting ahead in the photos here, I have already glued down the polystyrene which will form the scree of the trench, where the dirt has been thrown to create cover.

Craters were also dug into this at several points down the line.

I wasn't happy with the height of the trench compared to a model (these are game pieces after all not diorama's) and I wanted a little extra detail at the back, so I took some 5mm foamcore and added a small hollow all the way down the length of the trench. The idea is that the duckboards will be damaged or missing in places and this will give me a good way to add some limited water effects and variation to the flooring.

And the obligatory destroyed section from a direct hit.

As in the previous Crater build, it was on with the aluminium tin foil to smooth out the land forms.

And parts 1 and 2 together to see how they line up.

Then as per the previous build, it was on with the forbidden battery, of interior filler, PVA, brown paint and water mix to get a basic covering of the land down and to smooth out some areas.

Once this was dry, I did a second coat of it in. Few places, then covered the entire piece in OVA and builders sand before grabbing whatever nearly empty can of spray paint I could find (in this case Flames of War British Desert) and using that to lock in the sand layer.

I'm not entirely happy with the joins between sections,  it I can live with it, as once again, these are gaming pieces, they're going to get knocked about being out into storage and taken out for the games like.

At this point I decided to check what it was actually looking like with a few models.

I was quite happy with that, so turned my attention to the next step...

Duckboards, the wooden floorboards which stopped soldiers standing in water and mud for months on end and suffering from trenchfoot.

Not a job I was looking forward to but an essential one.

First step was to gather supplies, taking my son to our local McDonald's garnered these coffee stirrers which would be extremely useful...and cheap!

Then it was just on with the job of cutting them to length in bulk. A good podcast or film in the background helps with this immensely.

Once this was ready, with no other choice, it was down with the PVA and on with the boarding. Time consuming, but worth it.

I initially started off with water down PVA but it wasn't sticking. So I switched to neat PVA and once it had started to grab and I had the flooring done, I slapped a couple of coats of watered down PVA over the entire thing.

The same process was used with the wooded revetment (vertical) boarding which holds up the wall of the trench.

For supports I turned to a bag of BBQ skewers I had picked up at the end of the summer when everything was reduced in the supermarkets.

With some cheap superglue these were glued to every joint of the revetment boards and left to dry, leaving me with this.

The entire piece was then given another two or three coats of watered down PVA to seal and secure everything in place.

I'm working on the second section of trench and am aiming to get all four feet of this side done before I start painting it so it will match along the full length.

I'm going to go back in with some filler/paint mixture and add some built up dirt around the joins between the floor and wall, and maybe add a few crates and supplies up and down the length.

Nothing overtly period specific or 40k specific, as I have been eyeing up the Wargames Atlantic WW1 range which looks awesome and their STL additions are brilliant. So these trenches will remain generic in order to be used for multiple periods.

I'll post an update with the second part once it's at this stage.

Until next time, have nice day...

*Sadly, with the rise of plastic and pre-built terrain over the past years, these scratch-building skills seem to be dying out amongst hobbyists.

**I did so many in one go that I was joking that I would give myself vibration white finger (a disease caused by using vibrating power tools for extended periods of time over and over again, ex-miners suffer a lot with it. My father got a claim in the late 90s/early 00s when the UK government was paying out for it.

Legions Imperialis Cathedral.

 

Terrain is a massive part of not just the rules of a game, but also immersion and making a board look good.

To that end my friend Duncan, jumped on a Kickstarter for a load of urban Legions Imperialis terrain STLs to 3D print.

The collection includes a bunch of 4 inch wide terrain tiles to make a road network, a LOT of modular parts to stack to make buildings with, a set of canals and stairs/bridges.

All in all a shit load of stuff...

There are also some pre-built/supported buildings ready to print whole. 

This particular piece is one of those, and only just fit on the build plate of the Lego Saturn we were using to print with.

To start with, rather then the usual grey granite colour you normally see for urban terrain, I decided I wanted a warmer, brownstone/sandstone colour, which matches a lot of the Churches/Minsters/Cathedrals here in the UK. I began with a spray undercoat of Zandri Dust.

There is so much detail on this print, it's hard to believe that we made it at home.

So it was onto the masses of windows and supports. To give some variation, I decided to paint the large arch windows in Leadbelcher and then do the higher smaller windows with Retributor Armour for some gold gilding and to denote the richness of the church*.

At this point I wanted a different colour for the roof and having been flicking through an old "how to build terrain" blog, found a building with a darker blue roof.

Deciding to shamelessly** copy this, I went in and tidied up the roof with Zandri Dust from the pot, and then gave it a coat of Akhelian Green (which comes out in a dark turquoise colour) which is a colou: I really like.

The finials along the top were then touched up with Retributor Armour, just to give a little more baroqueness to the model.

Next, to tie the model together and make it look a bit better, I have then entire model a couple of successive drybrushes, first of Baneblade Brown and secondly, very lightly, with Flayed One Flesh.

Finally, after a discussion about the windows, I was going to leave them, Duncan suggested painting them with contrast Black Templar.

I'm glad I took the chance on his suggested, time consuming as it was, because the finished model looks so much better.

I've placed the building on a few of those terrain plates Duncan had printed previously, and a couple of his Legions Imperialis Malcador tanks for scale.

This was a nice diversion, and after visiting Fraser the other day, I returned home with his entire LI collection to build up (he has a problem with his "to-built" pile, it keeps growing).

So I am thinking of buying a bottle of resin and printing off a collection of terrain for my own games of Legions Imperialis with Fraser in the future.

Speaking of the modular nature of a lot of the STLs, I wonder if we could make an LI scale facsimile of Cologne Cathedral?

That won't be for a while though, other projects await...

Until next time, have nice day...

*Yes, I know Legions Imperialis is set in the Horus Heresy when the Imperial Church wasn't a thing, the Emperor having tried to stamp religion out for a secular scientific truth. 

But what else is this building of not a Cathedral?

Maybe it's a hold over from the previous civilization before the Imperium took over, or a former religious building turned over to the administratum for office space?

Whatever it is, it looks good.

**Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

Dreadtober 2024 - Dreadline missed.

 

So, Dreadtober has been failed this year.

This is as far as I managed to get with the Meka-Dread painting, real life just caught up with everything.

All the parts have most of their basecoat's down, I just need to add some brass detailing to the bolt heads on the legs and then I can wash everything with the brown weathering shade and then work colours up from there.

I'll get it finished soonish, but I'm just waiting for some good chunks of hobby time as work has ramped up with contracts, so my time is starved at the minute as I'm getting home and spending a couple of hours with the family in the evenings rather then just hobbying immediately when I get home.

I managed to work up the craters, as they were a quick project to finish which kept me in hobby, but anything bigger which requires more time was just not going to work for me.

Real life, always getting in the way...

Until next time, have nice day.