Birth of The Beast - The Cypra Incident................The story so far.......

Hi All

Bluddtoof here with an update on our narrative campaign; The Cypra Incident, which sees Docs Astra Militarum force; The 19th Dicers defending their world from my Ork invasion by Waaaggh! Bluddtoof.

The story started with Imperial forces on "The Forgotten Hole", a gloomy deathworld covered by murky swamps and thick forested highlands and the home world of The 19th Dicers, detecting strange energy readings deep in the swamps outside normal patrol range. A patrol was sent to investigate and found a small band of Orks using arcane technology to teleport rusted imperial wrecks out of the swamp! The following engagement was short and brutal with the Orks managing to hold off the Dicers long enough to teleport sufficient wrecks away.
The battle report for this mission can be found here

Following this the Imperials stepped up their patrols and scanning of the swampy hinterlands; revealing some very powerful energy surges in an out of the way valley, they put together a recon force and deployed to the area, the fast, light mechanised force infiltrated what is clearly a rapidly growing Ork territory and a small recon group went in on foot into the edges of an Ork camp, there they snuck about under the noses of Ork sentries too busy watching a bike race and gathered several pieces of crucial intel on the Orks activities here. With this intel secured they snuck back into the swamp but were spotted at the last moment! The alarms sound and the Orks mobilise for pursuit!
The battle report for this mission can be found here

So what now? I hear you ask...

Our approach to this whole campaign is one of "rule of cool", we had a long chat about how we thought the story should progress after the events so far and decided that we needed to add another bit in before we moved to the next tier in the campaign tree. After all the Orks are in close pursuit, there's no guarantee the Dicers will get back to base at all so no guarantee the Space Wolves will be called.
So we decided that the next mission should tell the story of the Dicers recon force escaping Ork territory with the intel, or not!

Our next mission will be "Running the Gorklet!" and will see the recon force all mounted in light vehicles running a gauntlet of Ork defensive positions and pursuers as they flee down the valley back to Imperial territory.

Stay tuned for more....

Bluddtoof

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.

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