Hello again. (Insert funny reference to the passing of time here)

Well, hello. We meet again. Again a short recap of what I've been up to. I'm nearing completion of the 3d printed set of Gallowdark Terrain. Which means that is finished for now, until I find files for the parts from the new expansions. So, for the time being, if I do more Gallowdark terrain, it will be the official stuff (more on that later). For variation, alongside the Gallowdark set, I've also finally painted the Samurai Village I've had in storage for a couple of years:

I've been doing some painting on my Space Hulk Terminators, but ran out of steam before I could finish them. I did make some nice progress on my Space Hulk terrain set, though, spurred on by the Gallowdark frenzy:

So, that's the "tech" for doors and bulkheads sorted. Through the open door/bulkhead you can also see who I intend to approach my Space Hulk terrain in the future: No more painstakingly handcrafting repetitive items, but 3D modeling/file-bashing and printing those, and then add the additional touches and details through kitbashing and scratchbuilding.

I also found a source for larger containers of Dirty Down Rust, as I expect to use a fair bit of that in the future:

The left one is the standard 25ml one that you can find in more and more hobby stores. The right one is the 250ml one I found at a store specializing in weathering and aging products for stage and movie props. They even had Dirty Down Rust in 400ml spray cans!

And finally, the Space Hulk milestome I'm most happy about: 3D Blip markers!  The tops are adapted from an existing file, and I modeled the bases myself. The tops were printed in clear resin and then given a thorough gloss varnish. The bases simply primed black, the numbers/letters painted in white and airbrushed over with a fluor paint. Here's the results: 

Sadly, I forgot to take pics of the regular green blips before I safely stored them all away...

In the set are all the blips I need to play any edition of Space Hulk. :) 

As a sidestep, I painted two sets of Ironhead Armour for the Iron Kingdoms RPG:

One of the Ironheads was 3d printed, I modeled a boiler, firebox and chimney onto what was originally a Steel Golem model.

Since I had some leftovers of the red and green resin for the Space Hulk blip tokens, I also printed some Space Hulk fauna, just for fun and maybe some special scenarios: 

In that picture you can also see a hint of what I'm currently up to...

While I had intended to keep going on the Gallowdark and Space Hulk projects, due to having to interrupt hobbying for two weeks because of a stubborn cold I lost steam. 

Just around the time that Games Workshop had their Warhammer Fest and teased Adeptus Titanicus maybe getting infantry and non-titan vehicles... Which I personally found more exciting than 40k 10th edition. So yeah, I started figuring out how to get my own low-cost titans (see the tiny reaver) in the background of the above pic. And having Titans on the brain again, I also took the large 28mm lad out of storage. It's now fully magnetized and primed, ready to get painted over the coming sunny weeks.

As I said, I'd be coming back to Gallowdark in this post: I may not be able to get the complete set. As I said in an earlier post, Gallowdark was my last automatic must-buy from GW for the foreseeable future. And if you've seen the discussions on social media this weekend, you may have guessed why: I missed out on the woefully understocked pre-order. I may, just may have a chance with an independent game store, but I'm waiting to hear back from them whether or not they'll get the supply they ordered or if GW short-stocks them again...

More news next time!

Well, life happened at me, a lot...

Yeah, so I had a two-month stomach bug, followed by a corona scare. Luckily all is well, but I'm still rebuilding my strenght/stamina after barely holding on to nutrients during the stomach bug.

Which left little spare energy for hobby.

I did manage to squeeze these lot out: 

A Squig with a fancy hairdo: 

Naturally, I also participated in the Iron Kingdoms: Requiem Kickstarter, and this has once again urged me to do a bit more on some IKRPG character miniatures:

 

 

They're two minis for the same character, a Knight-Ironhead. As the new version of the IKRPG doesn't work off combining two archetypes, I'll have to figure out how to make him work, ruleswise.

 

Also, ofcourse I pre-ordered Cursed City. Warhammer Quest, but horror, and with a strong Eastern European vibe? Perfect.

So, not much to report. See you again next time, whenever that may be!

Fresh blood for the Iron Kingdoms, and a "Hive, Sweet Hive" digression.

The past few weekends I've been off and on painting on expansions for my Iron Kingdoms roster of heroes (or murder-hobos, depending on your point of view).
The latest addition has been this Sword Knight, finished over the weekend:

Nothing too fancy, and a close match to the "official" Sword Knight colours. One of my few undisputably bright and shining heroes for the Iron Kingdoms.

I've also received my Necromunda box early last week and have been prepping the terrain for painting some point in the near future (I also took the opportunity to assemble a few pieces of the recently released 40K Objectives models):

This weekend I finished reading the rulebook, and with perfect timing, today my copy of Gang War arrived! So far, the new rules look promising and I'm looking forward to trying them out soon.

See you next time!

And another heroine steps onto the gaslit streets of the Iron Kingdoms

I decided to focus on just a single miniature today, again for the Iron Kingdoms, a mysterious, but well-to-do lady, hidden behind her gasmask:

The mini is, if I recall correcty, a steampunk lady from Black Cat Bases/Moonfleet. The colour scheme is an homage to a dear friend of mine, who's also into Victoriana and steampunk, her favorite colour is a deep purple...

See you next time!

New heroes enter the Iron Kingdoms

Last week I (re)started on some IKRPG miniatures. Today I had some time to finish them.
Here they are:

An Ironhead in a relatively light and unmodified suit of Steam Armor, a member of the Order of Illumination and finally, an Arcane Mechanik. No names yet, as these aren't intended for specific player characters (yet...).
The Ironhead is a Hasslefree miniature, the other two are from the Privateer Press Iron Kingdoms range.

Here's a few more views:

See you next time!

A bit of catching up

Whoop, I sort of forgot to post my progress over the past weekends... I messed up my back a bit, putting a bit of a damper on several activities, including the hobby. Luckily I'm on the mend, but the involuntary hiatus has caused a bit of a lack of focus. So, hobby-wise I'm all over the place at the moment.

The last thing I could do with the airbrush (at least until I get an indoor setup organised) before the weather turned to autumn, was to do a quick test of concept/practice run for the hairspray and salt weathering I intend to do on my Necromunda scenery:

 Lessons learned from this: I need to get/make a more varied and smaller mix of salt grains, as these chips are rather large and thus crude. Plus I will need to find a way to wash off the brine without damaging the non-waterproof parts of the terrain (the Pringles can and plaster are the ones I'm most worried about....). But all in all, a good test run.

 I also received some things. First is what may be the oddest thing I've ever bought for wargaming:

Three sets of animated LED fake eyelashes. Got them for a song out of China. The intent is to integrate them into some scenery for lighting effects as they're cheaper than most model lighting sets, and quite compact, making them easy to integrate. I have two sets of blue LEDs to use for a generator wall I've been wanting to build for my Space Hulk terrain for a long time.
The other one is a yellow light that should be ideal for Necromunda.

The second is Frostgrave: Ghost Archipelago:

Haven't read it properly yet, just leafed through it, but it promises to be as much fun as it's predecessor!

So, where is the lack of focus, you ask?
Well, alongside building a tank for my DAK, I spontaneously started assembling/basing miniatures for IKRPG. None of them for characters I'm ever likely to play...

As I was down the IKRPG rabbit hole anyway, I might as well finish of some long-suffering WIP mini's. The leftmost and rightmost are official IKRPG miniatures, the central one in the steam armour is from Hasslefree Miniatures. Barely past the primer stage, these were the project for this weekend:

I'm happy with the progress I've made on these. All that's left to do is finish the metals and bases, eyes and gauges, as well as the hair on the two bareheaded ones (the central one will be redheaded, the right one a dark blonde). Hopefully I can finish them next weekend.

See you next time!

Going beyond the threshold.

As the "Birthday Project" has been wrapped up (literally!)  and I don't feel quite up to tackling the rocking chair just yet, I've pulled out the painting gear again. Hopefully I can get up my mojo again by just doing it and going from there.
I decided to start with something simple and fairly quick, to prevent myself getting discouraged by the mid-paint "hump" I often encounter when either unit-painting or going high quality on a single model. This really only left terrain and counters, neither of which I have a lot of ready to go right now. Except for the doors from the Warhammer Quest set. I had painted 4 of the 10 a while back, leaving only six to finish:

As the previous were done in a grey stone colour, I decided to do these in a warmer sandstone scheme.
Now, I hear you thinking; "He said he had already painted 4 out of 10, that should leave 6, but there are only 5 in the picture?"

Faith and Fury

Remember that WIP shield I showed when I finished my skeleton spearmen?
Well, it's done, and so is it's owner.

I present to you, Hieronymus Lightbringer, Paladin Solar:

Hieronymus, as a Paladin*, has dedicated himself to the concept of the Sun as representation and symbol of the Light Divine. Hence the sun in splendour on his shield.

The miniature was originally a Paladin of Menoth from Privateer Press' Iron Kingdoms Miniature line. I filed away all his Menoth-specific details and removed his chimney-like helmet. The latter I replaced with the top half of a bare head from the GW plastic Bretonnian knights sprue.

To prevent confusion about what he is I wanted to stay clear from the tradional Menoth colours, but still get a sense of purity and faith. To achieve this I went for clean, shining metal, blue and (off)white as a contrast colour. 
The mini really demanded I took my time highlighting and shading his armour to prevent him just looking like a lump of metal, and to really emphasize his bulk and weight.
I'm quite pleased with how he turned out. Especially when sat next to the rest of my heroes. He looks like a tank, and then there is the ludicrously heavy/large sword. He's clearly got to have more than mere human muscle and determination driving him to be even moving around, let alone fight as vigorously as he looks to be doing!

Speaking of the rest of my heroes, here is a little shot of the collection as it stands now:

As you can see, the shelf is getting somewhat crowded... And I'm not nearly finished with this!
I'll need to re-arrange my display cabinet at some point, or find a way to add extra shelves to it...

*: A little background note: In my (as yet loosely defined) personal fantasy/chivalry setting Paladins are not really a religion or Order in the strictest sense. Paladins are holy, spiritual warriors who take one concept, often an abstract or esoteric one, from their religion or the chivalric ideals and dedicate their entire being to it. They are Knight-Mystics who channel the divine in their fighting skills. Most, if not all of them are wandering ascetics. They serve no lord but their own ideals and their otherworldly patrons/inspirations. As much apart from Knights as Knights stand apart from the peasantry, they are universally considered beings of awe and wonder.

The New Faith views them with some doubt and reservation as, while their ideals are pure and wholesome and they inspire piety and good in others, their practices and beliefs are often almost shamanic, at times borderline paganistic…