End of year update

Hobby time has been scarce recently (busy time at work, but I won't deny the Witcher on Netflix is also partly to blame)... Luckily some things can progress without me actively working on them. Thanks to the glory that is my private little manufactorum, aka the 3D printer. :D

I've been printing a batch of parts for building and detailing Necromunda terrain, in preparation for the return of hobby hours once the busy period at work is past.
But more importantly, I've been printing this beast:

And with Brother Forscale on his head, to show the size of this beast:

I'm just waiting on the arrival of some materials I need to smooth out the print lines, and then I can move forward to assembling and painting this Warhound Titan.  I'm also awaiting some files for other weapons to be fine-tuned and then I'll print those as well.
If the smoothing of the print lines and subsequent painting goes well, this may not be the last one...
I'm currently deciding on  a colour scheme, at the moment I'm leaning towards doing an emerald green colourscheme, and painting my Knights to match. Another option would be Legio Astorum, as they have fought alongside the Howling Griffons, but it's a fairly common colour scheme (with reason though, it looks good).  "Luckily" I have plenty of time to decide, as I still have a lot of cleanup and assembly to do.

Finally, I bought the White Dwarf Mechanicus model, spurring me to spend this afternoon building him and a few of his Mechanicus buddies. Hopefully I can prime and start painting them tomorrow.

See you all next year!

Aaaand, done!

Hello again my dear readers,

Today I want to share the completion of the terrain and markers for the Necromunda: Underhive boxed set. Took me a bit, but I finally got there. (Just in time for GW to drop the next set, it turns out.... 😆) Here's the complete set:

(In the background you can see some Multiverse Gaming Terrain walls, as well as some 3D printed Zone Mortalis ones.)

And with a few extras finished in the same style:

(For those interested, the floor tiles are MDF from Multiverse Gaming Terrain, part of their Vault Builder Megaton set.)

Some close-ups of the walls and barricades (junky workdesk pic, viewer beware! ;)  )

Recently I've become enthusiastic about building Necromunda terrain again. Unfortunately, we're coming up on the busiest time of year at work, so I won't actually be able to do anything with the current mojo. Hopefully it will last until after the holiday season.

See you all next time!

The future is 3D...

Hmmm, I've gone quiet for a bit again, haven't I?
Stuff happened (family stuff, a case of the flu, just general real-life nuisances).
But a little over a week ago, I received my newest toy/tool: An Ender 5 3d printer.
I've been debating if/how badly I need/want one for the past year or so.
In the end it came down to the realisation that I don't have the swathes of time and energy my younger me used to have.  And that to actually have a chance of finishing some of the more, ahem, megalomaniacal projects I started in the past, I need to work more efficiently. Handcrafting a repetetive item "x" times for a scenery project may have been fine in the past. But now I can design/download it once, and print several of them, while I get a good night's sleep at the same time. :)
As I had the past week off, I took some time to get to know the machine and calibrate it.
I'm already through half a kilo spool of filament, and the other half is going fast as wel...
 Here's some of the stuff I printed:

The first two prints, after the little cartoon piggy provided by the manufacturor:

I also printed some upgrade bits for the printer itself:  A bracket to take strain of a cable that is known to be damage prone. And a set of supports for the semi-freefloating print bed, to reduce layer lines a bit more.

After using most of the white PLA provided by the manufacturor of the printer, I switched to the dark grey PLA I bought.  And print quality immediately went up.
Even more when I got some tweaking in:

 The base on this thing is 40mm in diameter, to give a sense of scale...

Ofcourse I had to see how certain items looked painted:
A Sister of Battle ( a somewhat rough print, being done in low-grade PLA and before any calibrating) in 54mm aka Inquisitor scale:

And to celebrate upcoming Halloween (as well as try a larger print) I printed Cthulhu:

Oh, and this is what half a kilo of plastic filament got me:

Some wall pieces for Necromunda/zone Mortalis. Detail bits for my Space Hulk/Multiverse gaming terrain projects. A set of terminals for Cyberpunk gaming, a set of (too large) BFG escorts, a set of 25mm diameter bases/battery holders,  a Necromunda token, a dead Fallout person and an icon of an ancient evil.... Not bad. Missing from this overview is a couple of calibration prints, a handfull of support structures, and one of the printer's bed support arms.

Oh, and as I have a spool of translucent PETG as well, I had to give this a try:

 A virtual entity for use in cyberpunk skirmish games. It's a translucent print glued atop a 25mm diameter base/battery-and-led-holder.

See you next time!

Ranging ahead

An unexpected step forward for my Blackstone Fortress set.
Didn't feel like tackling a new warband for Kill Team or Reality's Edge, so I looked over my stash of WIP paintjobs and found this pointy eared lady staring daggers at me. So, she has found herself on my painting table...


The Eldar Ranger from Blackstone Fortress:

Next weekend I may possibly have some more time on my hands, not sure what I'll be doing then.

See you next time!

From the deep they come... Scenting blood...

Yeah, I should be working on my Multiverse Gaming terrain, but yeah, random muse is random.
I needed something enjoyable and self-contained to deal with a stressfull weekend.
A Kill Team would be ideal. I had hoped to finish building my Cardinal Archivists, but for those I need some female heads from Statuesque Miniatures, which are still in transit.
So it was an another Kill Team that got to be the centre of attention.

Cue the music...

A few weeks ago, on a whim, I bid on some small, cheap batches of Primaris Intercessors and Reivers. Not bothering to strip them as the paint already on them was thin and even, I quickly set about converting them:

After that, the airbrush was fired up, for the primer and basecoat, and soon, things were progressing nicely:

Once painting was done I applied acrylic water paste, to simulate the effects of water lapping on a shore:

M40.3955564/1 Carcharodons Astra Task Force "Mako", preparing to deploy on one of the embarkation decks of Hive-Crawler Sarcomand Secundus. -Stripped by pict-thief from one of the deck internal security picters-

Intercessor sergeant Ropata gives the order to advance, as Reiver Sergeant Hunapo instructs his Reivers to seek high ground. 

Same pict-thief 37:32 Terran hours later. Exactly what transpired is unknown, but somewhere in the intervening time, the Lomar Township, presumed to be the seat of the rebellion, has gone completely, utterly silent. The Carcharodons Task Force departed as quickly as they arrived, leaving no explanation or debriefing for the local Imperial Command.

They were fun to paint, especially the Exile Markings on their helmets and armour were an entertaining challenge.



See you next time!

Daily life in a capitalist dystopia.

This weekend I finished the cyberpunk food stalls. And I couldn't resist dusting off (literally! what mini's and terrain I already had that could be used for cyberpunk skirmishes.
And I couldn't resist setting up a little scene:

Another day in the Snafu Estates food market. Celene was among the crowds of sprawlers, seeing who was being sloppy with their gear or cred sticks, as her twin sister Lunae stood at the edge of the square, eyeing up a mark. Lothar was working his side gig as guard for "Sloppy" Joseph's Cajun Ramen stand, and Bruiser was at the local CAT terminal, shooing sprawlers off as it was downloading whatever VR-anime he was was into this week.  Boss Rogan was about to order a can of "Chemisty" powerjuice from Bunny's stand when "Cheshire" his shadowbacker's avatar popped up beside him: "Look lively, trouble's here" it said, a moment before the twin doors to the plaza slid open...

Boss Rogan receiving warning from Cheshire, his shadowbacker's AR avatar, as Lunae and Bruiser (their decker) can be seen in the background.

Lunae (just at the left edge of the image), Bruiser and Lothar. "Sloppy", with his sixth sense for trouble, has already ducked behind the counter of his food stall...

 Celene was just about to grab a fistful of creds from a sleepy salaryman's open tote when, just in time, Rogans warning came in her earpiece. A split second after, a CorpoSec squad walked in. "Citizens, please remain calm, this is a routine patrol. Please be ready to present your idents!"  "Routine patrol my ass!" Lothar thought, seeing them in full combat gear and on guard.


As I had them all out, I thought I might as well take a pic of the whole collection:

 The whole lot (Not all are suitable for Reality's Edge though... The back rows especially fall outside the scope of the rules.)

The sprawlers/operatives and a Gov.Mil heavy combat section in powered armour behind them. At the  top right you can just see "Cheshire" an avatar of one of the many Shadowbackers operating in the Sprawl.

At the rear a trio of Exo-Frames, two Police riot suits flanking a military grade special ops unit.
To the front:  a pair of special ops operatives, considered to be loose cannons by many, and a 10 man SWAT unit. I've also got a crew of mini's and a second crew of CorpoSec troopers, especially to build and paint for Reality's Edge.

I'm currently reading through Reality's Edge rules, and so far I'm liking what I'm seeing. The way the rules are written are rather inspiring, so I'm looking forward to seeing how they perform in an actual game!

Seen you next time!

The faceless crowds

Yesterday a bag of 1/50 scale railroad  passengers arrived at my home.
Today, they are finished... It must have been the fastest turnaround I ever had for mini's!
Well, mini's, tokens rather.
I've been looking forward to getting my hands on Reality's Edge, a cyberpunk skirmish wargame from Osprey. For certain scenarios in the game you need up to 3 "mobs" of bystanders on a 4" diameter base and up to 6 separate ones on 1" bases.

 Yesterday I set to work with some plasticard and a circle cutter. Luckily the figures are styrene, which means I can glue them to the base with regular plastic glue.
Today I had a quick session with the airbrush, to get them finished. I wanted them to represent the "faceless, grey masses of humanity" that often feature in cyberpunk fiction. So, I decided to do them monotone grey, a simple zenithal shading job, up from black primer, followed by two tones of grey. The base I painted with the darker tone of grey, followed by a rough pass with a ivory sand paint, to get a bit of contrast between the cold grey of the figures, and a slightly warmer tone for the base.

Cleaning mold lines and attaching them to the bases (The Space Marines are there to ensure I leave space for a miniature in the base: the rules allow for certain figures to hide in crowds):

All assembled, ready for primer:

 Painting done. Monochrome and anonymous, so the terrain and operatives can shine:

 And with two of the food stalls I'm also still working on.

Maybe, just maybe, at some point in the future, IF the monotone does turn out to clash with the painted terrain too much, I may add some muted colours with washes here and there. But at this point, I'm considering them finished.

Can't wait go get my hands on the rules themselves and dig in!

See you next time!

High-tech lowlifes street food.

I had a long weekend this weekend, which gave me a bit more time to do hobby stuff. As a result the airbrushing stage of my three Cyberpunk food stalls has been finished. They are made by Micro Art Studio for Infinity. But they will work for any cyberpunk setting. Mine aren't quite as gaudy as the originals, though I did add some decoration. What is left now is adding some washes, detail painting and weathering/chipping/grime by more "traditional" painting. As I was at it, I also did a set of data terminals and an info hub. Because you do need something to hack at some point. ;)

Here are the WIP pictures:

The info hub is a first attempt at airbrush OSL, but I'm not as neat/skilled as I would want to be with it. I think it's acceptable for a scatter terrain piece, though. 

Roofs and doors are kept separate, so mini's may make use of the cover they provide. 

I may add some bits and pieces to the stalls in the future. To show they are food/tech/whatever vendors. Perhaps as loose inserts, so I can get more functionality from them. Now to find a source of tiny sauce bottles, takeway cartons/bowls, etc...

See you next time!

Post vacation update.

Well, that took me a while now...

Lots of stuff took my attention away from the hobby for a bit:
-Studying for a qualification that would net me a "permanent" contract at my workplace. (I succeeded on the exam, so now I'm once more in permanent employment. Yay for financial security!)
-Work was busy, so often in the evenings my batteries were drained.
-The efforts to get my mother into the necessary psycho-geriatric care are still ongoing. But there seems to progress.

But I've now arrived at the last day of my three week summer leave, and have remedied the lack of hobby progress...  I had to spend the first week of it studying for the qualification exam. After that was done I could get down to serious relaxing.  I had brought my painting kit along on vacation, plus a squad of my Word Bearers and a squad of Chaos Cultists I'd paint for a friend. I figured I'd finish one or the other this vacation. That's not exactly how it went.....

I finished both! As well as a second squad of Word Bearers, when we went home for a day in-between!

Here they all are:

The gunnery squad. Both the unit champion and the specialist have been partially magnetized, to give them a measure of flexibility in their loadouts.

The assault squad. Here only the specialist is magnetized.

The cultists are un-based, as my friend will handle the basing himself.

Part of the reason they all went so fast is because I had a clearly set out goal to paint these to a tabletop standard and not lavish too much time on them (I will be taking more time for centrepiece models, but rank-and-file I'll be focussing on speed and looks en-masse.)
I had taken a headstart on the basecoat a while back with the airbrush, giving them a zenithal primer and airbrushing on the red of their armour. After that it was mostly just basecoating the details, giving the models an all-over wash and adding some selective drybrushed highlights here and there. Basing was done equally quickly with a GW basing mix (Agrellan badlands, I believe) followed by a wash and a drybrush.
I've currently got an Aspiring Champion, a (Finecast) Dark Apostle and a Master of Possessions ready for primer. Those I'll spend some more time on painting. And I'm building a unit of 10 possessed and a Hellbrute to be the second batch of rank-and-file models to speedpaint.
That should get me the core of a Word Bearers army in a relatively short amount of time.

My goals for this project are to:
A. Get an army done within a (for me) reasonable amount of time spent. (Not counting the occasional hiatus. Like the one the past few months, between doing the basecoat and actually finishing the models this month....)
B. Finally do something with the stockpile of Chaos models I've had since 4th/5th Edition 40K.
C. Actually, finally, own a fully painted, functional army, other than my Orks, which are now 3-4 editions behind the times. (They still work, but I lack all the fancy gear from the Post-Stompa era...)

Ofcourse, this throws a spanner in my plans to work on preparations for the release of Reality's Edge, the Cyberpunk skirmish game from Osprey... But eh, the muse flies where she flies.

See you next time!

A Derelict Citiplex, continued (aka part 6)

Still awaiting suitable battery holders for the food stalls, so why not get going on the Multiverse Vault Builder terrain set? It's been a while since progress were made, and seeing how I intend it to form the backbone of both my Necromunda and Cyberpunk gaming indoor terrain, I'd best get on it!

 A while back I built a double-length wall, as a test of concept (I don't remember if I showed that one at the time?). It was meant to prepare myself for the second lit feature of this terrain set:  A wall with two malfunctioning lighting units. Well, this weekend, that one got completed:

The modification involved a fair bit of hacking the wall system, as you can see above. First to make the wall double length, and then to drill the holes for the leds (below) as well as saw out the recess for the battery pack (above).

 Here you can see the leds, with their transparent resin hoods glued in place:

 

I mustn't forget to mask these before primering!

Additionally, I also built a regular wall section, and using the left over parts from one of the double-length sections, I made a connector wall with two "male" ends:

Great for keeping doors in place, relative to pillars, or connecting larger sections of walls together.

Here are the non-lit walls, all together:

The pieces of mdf you see there are offcuts from the "sprue" the walls and floor connectors came from, cut to size and fitted with a strip of magnetic sheet, so they can attach to the steel strip some wall sections have. I will paint these as signage.

See you next time!