Sunday 30 March 2014

New projects. New plans.

I have had my customary break after a tournament, and now I am ready to get back in to building and painting again.
First here are some finished inquisitorial henchmen and assassins:




I have the other 2 types of assassin to complete and now have a pretty full retinue for one of my inquisitors.

Next up I am planning a campaign with my local Cambridge gamers. I have just bout planetary empire and a mighty empires set of hexagonal tiles. This will form a solar system for us to fight over. I am also adding in some special rules for character advancement. We hope that rather than taking special characters that we develop stories a heroic deeds for our basic characters. I think my rules have struck a good balance for bonuses from doing well and playing game, but will not lead to a major unbalance for the players who can't play lots of games.

Also I am going to be working on getting my terrain upton date an looking more like it all belongs on the same board!

And finally model wise. I have Agee things unpainted that interest me, the first being a squad of 10 sternguard.

Friday 28 March 2014

The Deadzone Expands, more w.i.p.

Hi All

So here's the latest on my Deadzone work. I've finished the tower and the first Stage 2 infected.

Here's the tower, before and after the metallic finish,






Still not decided on the finishing touches so I'll do all them at once the terrain sets all painted.
Also thought I should state the colour sequence I used to get this finish;
A mid grey spray undercoat (plasticoat), nuln oil wash over all the recesses, administratum grey base coat on all the panels, heavy dry brush celestra grey then ulthuan grey then light dry brush ceramite white over all the grey panels, next is the detail colour sections in either red, blue, green or yellow. Red is wazdakka red base then layers of mephiston red and evil suns scarlet and an edge highlight of ess mixed with a little white, finish with red glaze. Blue is the old enchanted blue with an edge highlight mixing in a little white and finished with blue glaze. Green is the VERY old snot green and an edge highlight and then green glaze. Yellow is base of averland sunset to deal with the natural translucency of yellow paint, layers of yriel yellow, flash gitz yellow and an edge highlight using a little white again and you guessed it a yellow glaze.
Next I paint all the areas which will be metallic in a mid brown, doesn't matter which you choose but I've used the old GW vermin brown, then its balthazar gold and hashut copper layers followed by a highlight of runefang steel and a wash of agrax earthshade, once that's fully dry wash with nihilakh oxide and after that's dry touch up with hashut copper to bring the copper colour back in patches, I got this method from an article in white dwarf November 2013.
All the paints are GW including the glazes which I absolutely love!

The finished Stage 2, before and after the base completion,






I feel I should also give you an idea of the colours I've used here too;
After the base and wash on all the exposed flesh and natural armour plating it's lots of drybrushing!
The armour plates are brought to a paler finish than the flesh simply by using paler yellows and white after the reds, oranges and yellows of the flesh.
The order of colours is; wazdakka red, mephiston red, evil suns scarlet, 50/50 ess/blazing orange(old GW), blazing orange, fiery orange(old GW), 50/50 fo/yriel yellow, light yriel yellow. Flesh stops here. Armour continues with flash gitz yellow, bad moon yellow(old GW), hexos pale sun(new GW drybrush) and finally a light brush of white.
Then to finish off the teeth and claws are painted in layers using the same colours from yriel yellow onwards on top of a base of averland sunset. Also any stand out veins or pustules are apinted in yellows as are the eyes.
The bases use all the same colour systems from the terrain set.

And finally the team members I've done so far in situ with the tower,




A bit more terrain to do yet and the rest of the plague team, more to post in the coming weeks.

Bluddtoof

Wednesday 26 March 2014

Deadzone Battlezone Grows.......WIP

Hi all,

In the middle of my days off between night shifts so I've been busy beavering away on my Deadzone scenery and plague models. Here's a couple of pics of my latest terrain piece w.i.p.




As you can see the grey is all done as is the red detail sections, these coloured sections will have some kind of text or symbolism on them throughout the terrain set once it's all done I just haven't decided quite what yet. The brown is the base coat for the metallic sections.

More to come, including the next team member, a plague stage 2....



This is the base wazdakka red with a wash of carroburg crimson (both GW paint range)

Bluddtoof

Sunday 23 March 2014

Tuesday 18 March 2014

Deadzone work in progress

Hi All

Here at the code we've recently invested in Mantics new skirmish game; Deadzone. We're all busy painting up strike teams and scenery for a fully painted day of deadzone we're planning in a couple of months.
I'm just over half way through my scenery set which is designed to be assembled and disassembled repeatedly so that each game is different, I tried a few test runs as soon as I'd opened the box to see how it worked and found that there were a couple of issues;
1st, the connectors are slightly variable in there dimensions due to the mould lines as are the wall/floor sections so they don't always fit and would all require work to get them to be the same and thus universally fit each other (there are hundreds of potential joints!)
2nd, the plastic is a little on the brittle side and I broke 2 of the connectors during my test runs (you don't get enough connectors in the set, but a connector sprue is only a couple of quid from mantic so no biggie)
In all this led me to decide to permanently build the scenery as I wanted it, I bought the gamers edition which contained 2 scenery sets anyway so I will have a wider range available for games and a scenery set isn't expensive at about £25 so more will be on the cards in the future too.
Here's a few piccies of the stuff I've painted so far....








As you can see I've tried for a verdigris effect on all the brass/bronze metal to simulate a corrosive element in the atmosphere of this plague infected world. The effect is duplicated on the strike teams bases too as seen here...








I'll post more in the coming weeks as it gets done.

Bluddtoof

Saturday 8 March 2014

Hobby Butterfly - The joys of being unfocussed

Good Morning All,

Today's post is a little bit of everything as the title suggests.  Today folks I'm going to talk about having way too many models and way too little focus.  So as many of you will know we at Code40k recently ran our second event Worcester War 2.  This event became my obsession for a little while and I was determined to ensure everyone had a good time.  The feedback we received was positive and I think moving forward we shall hold many more successful events.  Having run two events and built masses of terrain with Inner Mech, I really began to feel what am I doing with my own hobby here!  Answer = Not a lot.