Showcase; The Cypra Incident, Watchtowers and Fencing.

Hi All

I've now completed the Watchtower and Fencing project for our upcoming campaign; The Cypra Incident, which will see Space Orks and Imperial Guard battling it out in a swamp initially. I'll go back at a later date and add a few more pieces to the set, such as 2 more intact towers, a ruined tower and some barbed wire once my order arrives.

I'm pleased with the finish, very rusty and aged, just what I'd aimed for. Also tried sponge weathering for the first time and I'm very pleased with that, I'll be using it again for sure.

Here's some pics...

As you can see the set is a decent size (that's a 4 x 4 board) and has plenty of scope for variation of lay-out. Overall I'm very happy, the project turned out better than I'd hoped and the modular system is ideal.

As ever c & c welcome. Hope you like it. Next up I'm going to build and paint something for my Marine army, the Thunderbolts, more to come on that soon.

Bluddtoof.

The Cypra Incident, more terrain WIP.

Hi All

Bluddtoof here with some more WIP on my current project; the fencing terrain for our upcoming narrative campaign; The Cypra Incident.

I'd planned a post over the weekend and even took photos but didn't get round to it so this post contains photos from a couple of stages in the process.

First some photos of the tower after I'd added some plasticard sheeting to give a smooth metallic finish and started adding rivets to this panelling....

Then I moved on to painting, all the pieces got a solid black base coat sprayed on followed by a coat of silver; I used a spray by Plasti-kote, I've used this before and found that it covers exceptionally well but has a glossy finish which doesn't like to accept further painting. I tried a single small piece of scrap plasticard first and tried out a new method for applying rust effects, namely sponge weathering.
It worked really well; using successive coats of Dryad Bark, Dark Flesh, Khorne Red and Troll Slayer Orange I built up a heavily rusted effect, a final light sponging of Caledor Sky gives an impression of flakes of the original blue paint still clinging to the heavily weathered metal.
To finish off the effect and to smooth it all together I washed all the pieces with Reikland Flesh, followed by dabs of Seraphim Sepia and finally Agrax Earthshade whilst the 1st wash was still wet, this has the effect of randomly blending the 3 shades giving a really dirty finish, I use this method on my Orks too.
On the uprights I wasn't quite happy and wanted an even more rusty look so I tried an orange wash all over them.
This pic was taken after I'd finished the sponge work...

Here's a few pics of the set as it stands now...

So not much left to do now, all the uprights need their bases doing, this will involve mud and some swampy plant life. I plan to have vines and creepers climbing the uprights and some of the panels too. I'll probably leave the tower, however I've got some barbed wire on the way which will be formed into coils to sit on top of the fence and form a protective "shelf" around the tower below the parapet.

Then of course I need to build and paint at least 1 more tower, eventually there'll be 4 intact towers and a couple of collapsed ruined towers as well.

That's it for now, more soon....

Bluddtoof.

Swamp Thing! A new Terrain set for The Code 40k

Hi All

Bluddtoof here with my latest project (with help from Doc!).
For quite a while now the Code boys have been bemoaning the inevitable wear and tear on our scenery brought on by the quite heavy use it's been getting in recent years, what with running several events as well as our own regular games.
So we've started to invest in a few new sets, (hopefully there'll be many future posts about the other sets in progress), I'd suggested the idea of a tank graveyard and had originally envisioned it in a desert theme. However I couldn't decide on a way to easily make realistic sand dunes that would not only look good but also be hard wearing and usable; models would need to balance on them. So I went back to the drawing board and had the idea of a swamp theme; I've been wanting to have another go at water effects since my disastrous attempt on the Eldar Hornet base; see here .
The plan was to make a series of swampy pools with the wrecks of various tanks partially submerged and crashed in them, that way I could cut up whatever vehicles I ended up using and get multiple pieces from each kit.
Doc found the ideal solution to what vehicles to use in the form of a box full of broken old Space Marine tanks covered in lots of paint and with all their bits ripped off; all unusable as gaming miniatures even with the best will in the world. These came from Andy at Worcester Wargames, a big thanks to him!
So I set about stripping the years of paint from these bad boys; and what a task that was! One landraider had no less than 6 layers of different colour paint on it. Several bottles of Dettol and a very smelly house (Thankfully my better half is very understanding) later, I had 4 landraiders, 6 rhinos and 4 landspeeders ready for the hacksaw!!
I ended up with 12 pieces of terrain.....

The base is cut from 6mm Dutch Grey Board and the rim built up with the off cuts and plaster skim (a really useful ready mixed plaster designed for repairing plastered walls), the tank parts and random bodies and bits glued to the base. Then they were given a solid spray undercoat of grey (Tamiya).

Next step was a mega paint session with Doc in which we got all the pieces to a point where we were happy to just have the addition of weeds and plantlife and some extra weathering and detailing left, and of course the all important water effects.

So I set about this over the next couple of weeks, the plants are modelling Lichen, I put all these in place and then poured the water effects (Woodland Scenics Realistic Water). This took about 2 days to cure fully however there was some almost random reaction between the Lichen and the resin which left some areas slightly cloudy even after another day. I seem to be a little cursed with water effects! Unperturbed I decided to camouflage these areas with a muddy swampy effect, achieved by gluing green flock, washing with Athonian Camoshade, adding Nurgles Rot and a variety of rust effect liquids and powders whilst still wet and then once it was fully dry (with a very matte finish) applying a coat of gloss varnish to the areas to bring back the wet look.

Here's lots of piccies......

Overall I'm happy with the look, slightly annoyed with the clouding of the water effects, it was a brand new bottle. It hasn't come out as I'd originally intended or as I anticipated as it went along. It's definitely evolved as it's progressed. I'm pleased with how close the edges matche the cloth, we have a pre printed swamp mat on order for use with this set, so that should look even better.
Hope you all like this, as ever c and c are very welcome.
Do you think it's enough scenery for a game? How would you define the pools in a game?

Bluddtoof