Hive, Sweet Hive, part 8: The Slag Barons starting lineup.

Well, I just finished assembling the starting lineup of my Goliath gang, the Slag Barons:

   Boss: Maximus Beefcake

Champions: "Shredder" Jonns & Rogi "the Riveter"

Gangers: "Gunner" Bran, "the Gimp" and "Growler" Lugos

A rather small starting gang, but maybe, if I can find suitable miniatures in time, I will swap out "Shredder" Jonns for a Juve and a lightly equipped Ganger to get some more bodies in the lineup. But for now, this is it.

See you on the other end of the holidays!

Hive, Sweet Hive, part 7, Introducing the Slag Barons

Hi folks,

Over the past weekends I've been experimenting with the Airbrush a bit (nothing picture-worthy) and I've assembled and cleaned all the doors, barricades and various doodads from the new Necromunda box (Basically anything that isn't a Goliath or Escher miniature) with the intention of making some headway with them over the winter.

Today I've also started on the Goliaths. Initially because I wanted to get a feel for the new kits and build some minis. The Goliaths seemed a good start because I didn't care overly much about them.
Boy, has building them made me change my mind! The kit is great, lots of character. I'm liking the Goliaths more and more.
I wonder if I will have the same response to the Escher once I start building them? (With the great exception that I already like the Escher a lot, as the old Escher have been my most beloved sculpts of the Old Necromunda.)
Anyway, enough pre-amble, let me introduce the Slag Barons (warning, less-than serious/PC naming conventions ahead!):

  

Maximus Beefcake, the leader of the Slag Barons, this is in an relatively early stage of WIP.
He is based on the AoS Slaughterpriest that was a WD freebie, with a chestplate from a Khorne Blood-something, Goliath powerhammer, combi-pistol and head. The head has the largest Escher mohawk carefully shaved down and spliced into the Goliath noggin. I was originally planning to call him something along the lines of Lugos Ironbreaker or Facemauler, but while working on him, his insane size prompted me to jokingly call him " Maximus Beefcake" and that sort of stuck...

The core of the gang, from left to right "Shredder" Jonns, Boss Maximus Beefcake (now complete, save drilling of the gunbarrels) and Rogi " The Riveter".

The last figure I built tonight, still undecided on what weapons to give him (leaning towards Grenade launcher, brute cleaver/axe and maybe a stimm slug stash), all I know for certain is that they call him..." The Gimp":

I'm looking forwards to building more roided-up nutjobs soon...

See you next time!

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!

Hive, Sweet Hive, part 6: Feeling salty...

Well, it's the Necromunda release weekend, but mine hasn't arrived yet. :(

Still, not one to miss out on the fun, and having had a trial run of indoor airbrushing at a friends place yesterday, I decided to get some work done. I set up my own little ghetto spraypainting booth and set to.
Hence the saltiness:

The first of my Necromunda buildings, after receiving hairspray, salt and the first layer of colour.
This was shortly after a (late) lunch and I finished a bit after dinner, here are the results, as things are drying:

From here on, more traditional painting techniques will take over.

Lessons learned today:
-Vallejo Game Air Red Primer is a vicious nozzle-clogger...
-I need to find a darker, deeper yellow with good airbrush coverage. The one I used is a bit too pale to my tastes.
-Masking over salt is no fun... And I need tape what sticks a bit better, for this particular situation.
-I tried to cram too much work into one day, causing me to rush things, lose focus,  not enjoy myself and make errors. (The worst of which was spilling half a pot of airbrush cleaner. That really put a damper on my mood, as it wasn't my own, and kind of ruined the vibe of the work for me.)
Next time I should divide the work over an entire weekend.
-My airbrush area needs to be re-thought and rearranged, at this moment it is too cramped and uncomfortable to get into a work flow. Either the workbench is too high, or my chair too low. I need more table space to lay things out as well. Part of the cause for the spillage was that everything was crammed together and I was constantly moving things around to be able to work.
-I should have varnished after painting the base rust effects, here and there the salt didn't just take away the last layers of paint, but stripped right back to the bare surface. Touch-ups are needed.
-Airbrushing is actually rather quick (and fun, as long as I don't let myself get rushed and/or foolish).

I'll have a look at the scenery piece again in a few days, see what I think of it one  the fatigue and frustration of a monster airbrushing session (by my novice standards, as it's all a new proces, everything seems to take more thought, concentration and effort) have had time to fade away.
Then smack on some varnish to prevent the hairspray from lifting off as I continue painting this monster.

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!