Skulltaker

So, as some of you know, I enjoy building more than painting, and actually don't play though I do enjoy watching a game now and again. Getting a solid block of time where I could play would be a challenge. I build and paint an hour or two at a time, mainly in the evenings and never without interruption. My oldest son does like to play though, so most of my work does get time on the table. His birthday was a couple weeks ago, and there was food and fun for all. He and three of his friends were joined by my youngest and one of his friends for a 2v2v2 game. I don't think they finished the game, but the party was a success.

So now there are at least three birthday parties following his, one of which was yesterday, and all of them have or will involve playing Warhammer 40K. My son wanted to give one of his friends a painted figure, and asked me if I would paint one up. I said I would, providing I got to pick the figure. He agreed, and I chose Skulltaker.

For the base, I borrowed the idea given by Ron over at ++ From the Warp ++. In his post on Bloodthirster base painting, step by step, he showed how he makes bases so they look like they have marble tile. I liked this, and decided to try it out for myself. About the only thing different I did was to not thin the washes as much as he recommended, and I followed up with a thin wash of Gryphonne Sepia toward the end of the painting to tie it all together. Also, painting Skulltaker was not completely done when I attached him to the base. I needed him attached to the base because I used the base to hold the model while I finished painting. You can see in this picture the rubbed-off primer on the sword, which is what I had been holding on to most to this point.

Not having a lot of time to get it painted before the party, and not having much experience with painting red, I also decided to borrow the ideas of another blogger. In this case, I followed pretty closely the Painted Skulltaker tutorial posted by Master Darksol. I like the way he lays out his tutorials, which include a picture a most every step, including the paint used.

The main difference in my effort was that I used light grey primer instead of black. Can't really tell in the finished product. Some other differences are from not having the recommended colors, so I substituted. I also combined a couple of the Heavy Devlan Mud wash steps. There was a point where my way of painting would have painted over a wash, then reapplied the same color wash, so I combined the two wash steps after painting the two areas. When I took these pictures, I noticed I had not done the eyes or teeth yet, and I forgot to take a picture of the finished piece.

Two great tutorials helped a lot here, with a resulting success. He received it yesterday, and was very happy with it.

Vets WIP

Over the last couple months, I've kind of haphazardly been putting things together. One thing I did was to take the "roads" I showed in my Holiday Basing Ideas Post and use them with another vet squad I'm putting together. You can see the WIP here. One odd thing about using these Christmas Village roads is they are very pliable, not rigid like plasticard. While I could cut them with scissors, filing them smooth with the base edge wasn't as easy as I expected.

The squad was put together using SM scout legs, cadian torsos, and a mix of scout, cadian and catachan arms. The flamer is intended to be a heavy flamer version, and connected the new flamer with the back back using red wire from what's inside interior telephone wire. You may also notice there are 10 heads missing here. Once these are painted up, I'll be using the heads I showed in my review of the Games Workshop Head Sprue.

Holiday Basing Deals

Way back in May, Col. Corbane over at Corbania Prime gave great tutorial about Plasticard bases. I've yet to try the technique yet, but I do remember trying to find a ready source of stone patterned plasticard. I couldn't find it in my local stores, and never got around to searching out online sources. I was looking through the local arts and crafts store the other day and found a great deal where I wasn't looking. Sometimes I get lucky. What I found was roads you can buy for the little Christmas villages. Normally selling for four dollars (US), they were on clearance for half off. So, I bought the last set. They also had snow, but I don't have plans to use snow on my bases (yet).

You get two in a pack. For some reason, this company packaged two different roads together. Seems to me, even in a Christmas village, you'd want your roads to be the same, but that wasn't an option. I plan to base at least my vet squads on the cobble stone pattern. And will probably use the brick version for heavy weapon squads or other mini using 60 mm bases. The pattern is a bit wider than I would like to have, but with a little extra debris rolled in, it should look just fine. I rolled these out and put a ruler on them so you can see the size. They are each 18 inches long by 2.5 inches wide. That's a lot of plastic base material for two dollars. I placed some bases down to get an idea as to coverage. They are wide enough for 60 mm bases. With good planning, they can pump out quite a few 25 mm bases as well.

My next vet squad is waiting for me to finish vehicles I'm currently working on. It's busy this time of year, so it will probably be after the holidays before I can actually try these out. Just wanted to get the word out about keeping your eyes open for good basing holiday deals.

Again, a how to on basing with these can be found at Corbania Prime: Tutorial : Plasticard bases.

Terrain: Dragons Teeth Tank Traps

Back in June, FoxPhoenix provided a great tutorial about making Tank Traps using an ice tray. Now, I'd heard of the idea before, but could never find a good sized tray to use. Before I had a chance to go find one one, one found me. I had bought a mini fridge for the basement and a mini ice tray came with it.

Being the cheap bugger that I am, I searched my home improvement leftovers cabinets for a good plaster alternative. I found I had some a bit of concrete patch mix and tried that. It was a bit brittle, and I didn't want to chance that with something that was going to get tossed around a bit. So, instead of using water to mix it, I used leftover white latex paint. Worked like a charm. They're actually very sturdy to blunt force, but they can easily be holed with a sharp point and 'fractured' out from that.

I still had a bit of backer board from an old kitchen cabinet, so I cut a odd piece and glued some of my new Dragons Teeth down and added debris in the form of sprue pieces, bitz, and some pieces from the GW Basing Kit. Quick paint work in my standard basing style and it's done!

Imperial Guard Heavy Bolter

Here's another Imperial Guard Heavy Weapon Team that's been waiting out my Paint Pot Procrastinating. An experiment in miniature diorama making that's been done for quite some time. One advantage to basing like this is the built in protection it provides. It's going to take a bit of effort to break the pieces off the base. It could become a problem though if I'm trying to put the piece inside a building or other tight spot. Hasn't been an issue yet.

Unfortunately, there is another form of "protection" that could raise concern on the playing field. I had built it for a fun look. It had slipped my mind when I started it that an opponent could protest about my piece having its own built in cover. This is something Dverning recently, and conveniently, brought up in his blog about Playing Fair with Conversions. Luckily, over half of the base is open on one side. If there is any concern, we can expose the side without cover toward the opposing force.

Terrain - Power Plant or Shield Generator

It's been a while since I last posted. Between work and other hobbies, blogging took a back seat. My regrets for that. For a while, I felt I hadn't really been up to much. Then I got the camera out and realized I had done quite a bit. It seems there's still a lot waiting out my Paint Pot Procrastinating, so I hope to make it up to you with a flurry of posting. This is the first of four unrelated posts in four days. Enjoy!

First up is a bit of terrain, shown above. The second picture here shows the basic material; a piece of masonite (from the back of an old cabinet) and the plastic from a box of cookies. I'm always about flexibility, so chose to make three pieces instead of one. This lets us adjust the terrain for small or large games.

After cutting the individual parts into three equal parts, add a bit of basing material, prime paint and voila, three pieces of terrain that fit together to make one if needed. Given a wider choice of material, I would have preferred a taller piece. So, now I'm on the lookout for a box of really big cookies!

Mortar Squad

So, after sitting in various stages of completion, I finally cracked down and finished this mortar squad. One of my biggest distractions with 60mm bases is the urge to make a complex little scene out of them. I hope to grow out of this urge before too long. It takes far to long to get them on the table this way. I can remember commenting when reading Hal'jin's series, I Hate Right Hands, that the mortar holding right hand was another alternative. Out of this whole squad, the guy holding binos is the only one that does not use the mortar holding right hand from the heavy weapons sprue. While I didn't start these to show how this right hand could be used in other ways, here's some examples.

In the picture above, the one on the left has been just shy of being done for over a year. The problem with paint pot procrastinating on this team was a change in my army colors. Originally painted in standard Cadian 8th colors, I later decided I preferred grey armor over green, so I repainted the crew. The basing also didn't match my newer style, so I gave it a wash and a new drybrush, but is still a ways off. The brick wall is made from spackle (the all purpose basing material) with a bit of other basing experiments mixed in. The crew has some mods, the most notable being hand swaps for both, and a new leg job on the guy holding the binos. The left leg is from a kneeling figure, and is now propped up on the wall. One thing I don't like about the mortar holding hand is that it is designed for a kneeling figure, and doesn't allow for a two handed hold on the round. A quick hand swap here fixes that issue.

The next featured team is on the base I showed in my earlier article about using latex paint chips as basing material. It's since had a wash made from GW terracotta, and the figures added of course. This one is intended to show one of the crew re-aiming the mortar, and the other impatiently waiting to load the next round. The aiming mortarman's hand is the standard mortar holding hand, with the mortar drilled out. I did play with the idea of simply removing the adjusting wheel on the mortar itself and having the remaining mortar body serve as proxy. Either way works, though the proxy would have been easier. The right mortarman still holds the mortar, but with the hand swapped to a different arm. He, like the last crew, likes to keep two hands on the round.

This little mini-diorama has one mortarman continuing to annoy the enemy while the other prepares new rounds for the next volley. This crew took a little more effort in the form of scratch building the boxes. Heavy weapons sprues come with a spare mortar round, and I wanted to do something with the few I've collected. I'm not comfortable leaving mortar rounds lying about on the ground, so I built boxes to hold them. Actually, I cheated a bit; the bottom box is empty. I got lazy and used the standard mortar holding right arm on the standing guardsman. The kneeling one's right hand has the mortar drilled out, which makes an excellent lid holding hand. I hadn't really noticed before, but their left hands are the same also. I had built a little crow bar for the crew to use opening the boxes, but I seem to have misplaced it. Hoping I can find that before it's time to vacuum under my chair.

Playing with my camera for these shots, I discovered it has a "vivid" setting (right next to Sepia) in its "My Colors" menu. Although it tends to point out my painting faults, I'll continue to make use of that in the future.

More free basing ...

Last March, Ron Saikowski published a basing article about using free basing material you can find just about anywhere. While I was always using ordinary sand, I now keep my eyes open for anything else that may work. Nothing I've found so far is very different from what Ron used in that article. Some of the best stuff I'd found so far was very rocky sand from a local river beach; great for rubble-strewn city terrain.

A few weeks ago, I was doing a little home improvement in the way of painting a ceiling. I had started late and left a thin layer of paint to dry overnight in the disposable roller tray. In the process of cleaning this up the next day, I noticed the paint had cracked and some had separated from the tray. Disposable trays are very thin plastic and the paint, being less flexible, didn't stick very well. I saw some potential in this, separated as much as I could, and broke it into manageable pieces for later use.

The beauty of this stuff is, you can leave it in big chunks for large terrain pieces, or break it up even further for basing your smaller pieces. Another bonus is that its latex paint. You don't really even need to prime it, and if you do, it won't melt like foam. A disadvantage is you can only make it so thick, so it won't readily work if you're looking for thick-walled rubble.

My first test was on a mortar team. I needed to break it up a bit into smaller pieces, but it breaks apart very easily into random shapes. I just grabbed the biggest piece and broke off small chunks till I ran out, then grabbed the next biggest piece until I had a decent pile. Gluing it to the base required applying it in layers, so involves a little more time than plain sand/gravel, but came out looking fairly decent. I added a topping of sand to the pile and remaining open area, then primed, and finished. In the top picture, you can see the final product, minus the team itself (currently WIP).

This has made me pick up a bad habit though. I painted a wall in that same room the other day, and purposely left some extra paint in the tray in order to have more "rubble" for the next project.