drop-pod

Drop-Pod is moving

2011-01-13T21:34:00.002Z

Just a quick post to say Drop-Pod is moving to a new location. Although I have really found Blogger simple to use, I have recently been introduced to WordPress and have found it to be a lot more what I was looking for in both a future blog and a potential replacement for the Dropship website overall.

You can find the new blog at:

dropshipstudio.wordpress.com

I will keep the blogger site up for a few more months, but as I will be posting solely to the new site on WordPress as well as migrating the Dropship content onto it, I will not be making any further posts here directly (although it will still pick up the Twitter feed)

I hope some of you can continue to join me at the new location, but if not, may you always roll sixes and happy painting.

Best regards
Carl Woodrow - www.dropship.org.uk

Blue is the new black

2010-10-25T20:32:00.002+01:00

View on flickr

Before I really make a start on any new army I like to test the colour palette out first. This is more to get the basics down so I don't get half way through a force and suddenly decide I dont like the colourscheme.
It also gives me chance to test out any mixes first, such as with the metallics.
What has finally drawn me into collecting a force of Ultramarines is the deeper blue they have been gravitating towards the past few editions. Recently I have seen this put to good effect and in particular I thought there was a real standout example on the Games Workshop UK website by Grant Peacey ('Whats New Today' 15th October). What struck me about Grant's version was how rich the blue was without being overpowering and his interesting use of Asurman Blue wash instead of water to thin his mid tone. I have never seen GW's washes used this way before and was quite keen to experiment with it. I have to say I was also pleasantly surprised by the result.
The test miniature was also used to test my patience with the transfers and that it did, although I feel the end result was worth all the effort (and swearing!). I stopped short of weathering at this stage, but it is something I do want to return to. When I decided to start this army I had two thoughts in the forefront of my mind; firstly that it should feature a limited palette, basically blue, gold and white with either red or yellow as a point colour. Secondly that I would include light weathering on the infantry and more substantial weathering on the vehicles. The combination of chipping back, pastels, oils and washes on the Jackals Vindicator has definately warmed me to the idea of more 'battle weary' Space Marines. Spotless armour just doesn't do it for me anymore.
Anyway, I have probably rambled on enough for now. Next to hit the painting station will be the first of the Dreadnoughts while I mix and match a few choice pieces of heresy armour into the first Tactical squad.
Have a great week.

Sons of Macragge

2010-10-24T21:55:00.002+01:00

View on flickr

It has been a while, quite a while actually since I last did an update which does make me feel a bit guilty. Strangely enough this wasn't down so much to hobby malaise, quite the opposite as I have been beavering away on various Lord of the Rings models for some time. Now that I have a reasonable number of Dwarves more or less completed, and have given myself enough evil minions and Nazgul to select from, I felt is was time for a bit of a change.
I have neglected 40K for most of the year but the sudden slew of new releases for the Dark Eldar has got my Imperial juices flowing again. Although stunning models in their own right, I simply have no wish to start a Dark Eldar force. What has strangely got me inspired however is the Ultramarines. In over twenty-five years of the hobby I have never had any inclination to paint Guilliman's finest, often viewing them as rather dull compared to other chapters. Over the past few revisions however a certain 'look' has been working its way into the Ultramarines which I really like. The palette of blue and gold has got richer and deeper, the detailing more 'Centurian' and best of all they are starting to show character and individualism.
If you follow any of my Twitter updates at the top of the blog you would have seen I tried out a tester last week. Being happy with the result, I decided to have a go and make a start on what will now be my fourth Space Marine army. The photo above is what I pulled out to make a start on and consists of a few boxes I had already that were originally ear-marked for my Jackals, a couple of new kits to fill the gaps and a selection of Forgeworld bits including doors, icons, weapons and a few of the new Heresy era armour kits to help add a bit of character.
Along with a few vehicle kits (not shown) that should provide enough of a challenge to see off those dark winter nights I reckon. Now, where did I put my clippers?

The fall of Gondor

2010-08-06T18:38:00.004+01:00

View on flickr

Bar some final touches with weathering powders and a little extra ground clutter to fill the base in a little more, the Gondorian ruins set is pretty much ready for gaming. I think adding the stone paving was the right way to go as it gave the building a defined 'footprint' and added weight to the piece both visually and literally (it doesn't slide around the board one bit, thats for sure!)
Cast in herculite the base should be more than capable of standing up to quite a few years of gaming. I had toyed around with making the building two storey to fit in more with the tower the Studio did and may yet create a second piece from the parts left over.

Slightly more frustrating however, is all this scenery I have been producing this year is beginning to leave me with little storage space on the workshop shelving for anything else. I may have to start considering some alternative options for storing stuff, although quite what at this stage I have no idea.
Still on the painting station for this weekend are the first batch of Dwarves, which although fully base painted and washed back still require a lot of basic highlighting and detailing yet.
Until next time, happy gaming.

Shades of Angmar

2010-07-22T18:35:00.002+01:00

View on flickr

Happy days as my my DigPro mini studio soft light box arrived. Only briefly set it up to check everything worked, but used the Army of Dead I am working on at the moment as a way of testing it out.
Avoiding the usual ghostly greens of the 'Oathbreakers', I decided to try a number of sepia and brown washes over a base of pale ghostly colours and bronzed armour. Now that I have viewed them again however I am wondering if a light verdigris weathering on the bronzed armour plates might work well.

The Gondor ruins I started earlier in the week are also almost complete now and just require a little time this evening to fully dry before I add the final weathering pastels and varnish. Just in time to set up another game with Kev me thinks.

Ruins of Gondor Stage Two

2010-07-20T21:29:00.006+01:00

See more on flickr

In order to give Kev and I a bit of variety of terrain to battle over and to stop the Gondorian tower looking so odd on its own, I have been working on a second more permanent set of ruins. Based around the recently released Osgiliath Ruins set from GW. Unlike the scatter pieces I quickly painted up for our last skirmish, these are more permanently based on a combination of heavy mounting card and foamcore. To add a little more detail I also added a layer of stone paving cast in Herculite from Hirst Arts moulds. These also add a fair bit of weight to the piece ensuring it doesn't slide around on the gaming table inappropriately.

The first two stages here show where I got to over the past couple of evenings as I waited for various grades of talus and rock to set in place before adding the final layer of texture.
There are two additional platform sections to be added once painting and weathering is well underway. For the moment I have left them off in order to easier access the detailing under them.
I know they are rather dismally photographed against a wooden floor, but hopefully this is soon to be a thing of the past as I have just ordered a DigPro soft lighting box after procrastinating about getting one for years.
In the meantime however I ought to press on with the base painting of the ruins so I can start working up the stonework tommorow.
Until next time,
Carl

Ghosts and Goblins

2010-07-17T13:09:00.004+01:00

Well, Uruks actually. Just a quick post to show whats in the cabinet to be worked on during July including finishing the detailing on Lurtz and his scouts. The first wave of Angmar spectres to counter Kev's oathbreakers and the very early stages of a Cave Troll lurking in the background.

Coming clean, this was also an excuse to test the new layout of the blog, which does seem to be working a lot better now and as I am now driving all of this out of flickr, it is also an awful lot quicker which is an added bonus.

View on flickr

Trapped

2010-07-14T18:23:00.003+01:00

Game Two.

Firstly apologies for yet another long gap in blog entries, it be holiday season and I have only just returned from sunny pursuits in Italy to what is literally a biblical downpour in the UK as I sit writing this.
The game above is from my second introductory battle with Kev for Lord of the Rings. A 'cornered' scenario with Lurtz and a mob of Uruk scouts attempting to break out from Kev's combined force of Elves led by Elrond and a company of Gondorians. To be honest it wasn't the best game ever and although Lurtz managed to escape as quite literally the last minion standing (the rest of his forces were slaughtered), my tactics were less than impressive and I feel I have an awful lot to learn still about Lord of the Rings.

Still, enough of that and what about the future?

The sharp eyed will have noticed I have shifted formats slightly from using the free Picasa image storage that came with Blogger to a flickr account (after a recommendation from my good friend Ben). There are a number of reasons for this, not least amongst them an intention to try to once and for all pull all my content and updates under a single easy to mange process. That includes not only this blog but Dropship as well.
I haven't really worked out all the details yet, but the basic intention is to use flickr more or less as the single repository for not only storing my images, but also where I will drive the blog updates from. Equally the blog will be integrated much more closely with the Dropship site and my twitter feed to (hopefully) give me just one place to host the entire lot.
It will also mean a significant jump in the size and quality of the images now space is no longer an issue; something some of my longer term friends have been requesting for a long time. Obviously this will take some time and effort to put in place, but at least it should give me something to do and keep me out of trouble!

On the modelling and painting side Middle Earth has not entirely taken over my workshop (just most of it). I will be returning to the Space Hulk corridor and 40K terrain projects in the near future fear not. I will also be kickstarting a couple of 'Epic' scale terrain projects as well as beefing up my Mordor armies and terrain so Kev and I can start gaming on something a bit larger than the green acres cloth.

Oh, and if that wasn't enough, I quite fancy starting to paint a Dwarves of Erebor force as well just to give me a rest from Orcs.

Have a great week, more coming soon once I have got the hang of this flickr uploading malarky.

Let battle commence

2010-06-02T22:56:00.005+01:00

Today I thought I would share a couple of photos of the intro game I set up for Kev and myself over the weekend.

Ok, so it isn't the greatest battlefield I have ever produced in all my years in the hobby. But you know what, secretly I was actually really quite pleased with just what can be thrown together in such a short space of time. Space saving wise it takes up a darn sight less space than a standard 4' x 4' and with the exception of the tower and a selection of trees from the ones I posted about a few days back, it is all stock Games Workshop terrain. It was also just about the right size for a quick (or in our case, not so quick!) introductory 500 point game of Lord of the Rings.

I already have a few extra pieces of scatter terrain on the workbench to help add a bit more character to the table and I will share these over the weekend along with the Orc and Goblin force I selected for the battle. One of the things that has really struck me about the Lord of the Rings range is just how quickly an army can be assembled and painted effectively. I am still used to spending six months painstakingly working my way through a 1500 point Tournament force for 40K so am finding the whole experience of being able to quickly field a fully painted army for LotR/WotR somewhat liberating. So much so, a set of Angmar Shades and some earlier 'twittered' Uruk Scouts have already found their way into the cabinet ready for the next scrap.
Oh, and the battle result? Rather fittingly a draw. Despite some early losses and Sauron's minions being completely inept with bows, a nifty 'compel' by the Shadowlord on Elrond kept the hero of Rivendell out of the fight long enough for me to not make a complete mess of it and turn the tide.

Have a great week.

Their roots go deep

2010-05-28T19:50:00.004+01:00

I put my hands up, it has been a long, dark, cold several months without any updates to this blog. I am often pretty idle hobby wise over the winter months, but this year has been particularly slow to start. I won’t go into the details, but suffice to say I am back creating much mess in my workshop now the evenings are lighter. What has currently been occupying my thoughts is the subject of trees. Many trees in fact.
I have been itching to branch out a bit (yes, first pun of the year!) and try my hand at Lord of the Rings. Those that know me well are probably already aware that I am a huge fan of Tolkien and what’s probably more of a mystery is why I haven’t done this earlier. Being completely new to the game I thought it would also be a good idea to get a friend involved and effectively produce armies and learn the game together. I already hinted at this in the previous post a while back mentioning Kev had selected Elrond’s Elves as his army of choice, which more of less left me with the ‘evil’ list to choose from; a position that suited me just fine as it would involve a lot less fiddling around.
None of this of course explains the obsession with trees.
We have tentatively planned our first foray into Middle Earth for the coming weekend, which has meant from my side a great deal of activity on two fronts. Firstly to assemble and paint 500 points of Sauron’s minions and secondly to create some terrain to fight over. Having selected Elrond and a cohort of High Elves of Rivendell for his introductory force, I thought it only fair to at least offer a few trees on my otherwise arid styled boards to help Kev ‘feel at home’. As I mostly play 40K or Epic, what trees I had were either far too small scale wise, or just too few as in the case of the Citadel woods. Browsing through the rulebook a few times I decided to try some of the tree kits produced by Woodland Scenics for model railway layouts. I am a big fan of Woodland Scenics products, especially their flocks and ground cover which I use all the time on my bases. This was the first time however I had tried any of their tree armature kits and I have to say I absolutely love them!

Simple to use and paint, the only downside I really see is they are a lot more fragile than the ‘bog brush’ variety and almost certainly will shed some of the clumping foliage over time. Not an insurmountable issue, it just means they will need a little maintenance from time to time to cover any bald spots.
Painting wise I kept things simple and after twisting the branches into shape I gave each of them a very light coat of white primer. I then thinned down some GW Khemri Brown to the consistency of a thin basecoat and applied this over the trunk and branches. Once dry a thinned wash of 50/50 Badab Black and Devlan Mud was applied generously. Finally a very light dry-brush of Deneb Stone helped lighten the trunk and draw out the grain of the bark detailing.
Initially I experimented on a dozen 5” to 7” deciduous trees to see how they came out and now I am happy with the result the plan is to produce another two or three batches of smaller versions which I can then mix up and base in groups to give me a variety of small woods and single trees.

Also bulking out the borders of my fledgling forest are a couple of sets of Citadel Woods which also got the ‘clumping’ treatment. I have to confess these turned out a lot better than I expected them to as well, so I shall be using them also.
The final piece of terrain I will probably make use of is the Gondor style tower the Studio made for me as a prize for the gameboard competition. As this was to be my first game of LotR it seemed fitting to use it.
That is all for now. Next update will be some Mordor Orcs and a few Goblin allies.

Until then, have a great weekend.

Purging the scrap code

2010-02-08T11:21:00.000Z

One of the less enjoyable aspects of a blog or website is sooner or later your email gets picked up by the chaos scrap-shunts and you become inundated by scrap code spam offerings for nefarious activities and enhancements. It's not that I just grow weary of their mindless drone filth, but that it becomes difficult to extract genuine mail from the background of gibbering. Such has become the case once more, so I have been forced to purge the current email address from the site and replace it with a new one. No doubt it will be compromised again in the future and the cycle will repeat, but for now at least the purity seals have been reapplied and tranquility restored.
Tonight is also my semi regular painting night round at Kev's so will probably spend it helping with his Galadhrim for Lord of the Rings as opposed to my Hormagaunts. They are not far off finished anyway requiring only a few point details and the carapaces completing to get them 'game ready'. Hopefully I should get them done this week and have some pictures up shortly.
Until then, happy gaming.
Carl

Defrost slowly

2010-02-04T14:28:00.002Z

The winter period is never a productive period for the hobby for me. The light has gone by the time I get home, there are so many other activities demanding my attention and there is no heating in my workshop. Actually the latter is not strictly true as there is just so much stuff piled up in front it would be inneffective even if it was and would probably constitute a fire risk!
As is often the case it has unfortunately meant I have let permafrost find a home on the blog due to my torpor.
So in an effort to thaw it out gently I thought I had better post at least a short catch up.

The past two months have been very quiet hobby wise, but not totally unproductive. Although I have still been focusing a lot on 40k gaming terrain, such as the snow and ice boards and an even bigger 'bastion', I have also been making a start on some new armies including a slew of Tyranids to go with the ice world boards and a host of Mordor Orcs for Lord of the Rings. The latter being used as a way to jointly introduce a mate into the hobby as well as kickstart my own painting back into a regular cycle. At the moment this is a semi-regular Monday evening deal and so far it is working quite well as it is forcing both of us to try to keep to some kind of progress. More on that later.
Just to wrap things up for now the picture is of a Space Wolf Leman Russ conversion I began quite a few years back and am re-visiting. I wanted to give it more of a 'Astartes' feel to set it apart from the regular pattern Russ so built it around the Mars 'Alpha' hull and gave it recessed sponsons from the Predator. Still a lot if weathering to do to it yet before I will be happy but so far I am content with the direction it is heading.
More soon (hopefully)

Addendum: Graeme P, apologies chap. I saw you sent me a mail a while back but it got 'auto-purged' by the rather over enthusiastic servitors as I was trying to reply (in other words I pressed the wrong button!). Give us a shout and I'll get back to you ... promise fella.

The month that wasn't

2009-11-06T17:35:00.001Z

Firstly an apology for the complete lack of updates throughout October, the past month has been a bit of a ‘down’ period with regards to hobby activities. Plenty going on behind the scenes, but not a lot to show for it. Work is progressing slowly, but steadily on the Space Hulk terrain front. Probably a bit too slowly for my tastes, but a lot of the preparatory work I am doing now is all designed to make it much easier and quicker to produce the parts in the future; in particular a couple more custom molds for completed corner sections and one final part that I am finding I am needing in considerable volumes. My current focus is on the subject of doors; their shape, which direction they open in and most importantly of all what colour they should be?

Back on the 40K track, the new Space Wolf Codex and models released last month were particularly pleasing for me as I am an absolutely rabid (sorry!) collector of the ‘Sons of Russ’ in case you didn’t know. I have been looking for an excuse to redo my ’99 Tournament Wolves for literally a decade now and the new plastics in particular have really got the creative juices flowing again. One job I have been meaning to get out of the way was to paint and texture the remaining four hill sections of the spare Realm of Battle set.

Originally I had planned to just paint them up as a 4’ x 4’ Lord of the Rings board, however I had a change of heart and decided to texture them as an icy wasteland instead using a combination of painting and Woodlands Scenics snow effect scatter.

The pits of skulls were filled with several thin layers of water effects and dusted with white spray to simulate and ice crust, the idea copied straight from last months White Dwarf.

Dave additionally had a nice surprise for me last week as well in the form of a Ragnar Blackmane conversion he started many years ago and never quite finished.

I had forgotten completely about this until he brought the completed version around to leave with me along with a copy of the original to compare the difference. The first thing I will do is mount it onto a more heroic base size and add Ragnar’s famous Fenrisian wolves; I have exactly the two models in mind which would work very nicely.
I must resist these distractions however as I still have a lot of pieces to cast this week and have already been distracted enough by the arrival in the post of the Forgeworld weathering powders set and a sheet of brass etched Imperial Aquilla for the corridor sections. Hopefully next update I will have a few more sections assembled as the pile of tiny bricks is looking healthy once more.

Until then, happy gaming.

Opposites do attract

2009-09-14T19:58:00.006+01:00

After a couple of minor set-backs last week involving some elderly RTV silicon, I am now back on track having salvaged and cleaned up the errant parts from their gooey fate. All of the masters were recovered without needing to be reproduced and aside from needing to wait out the week in order to let the white spirit fully evaporate they were no worse for wear. All have now been re-molded over the weekend with fresh silicon and I am just waiting a few days now for the molds to fully cure and firm up ready for use.

Planning ahead there are a few ‘sub-components’ that would also make assembly of rooms and corridors a lot quicker, such as a generic corner section and the door frames. These are candidates for further molds, so I ordered more from Tiranti’s over the weekend.
The two test sections are now complete and mounted on 1” foam sheets. These may initially appear a little excessive as they add a lot of height to the sections, but there is a method to my madness as the extra height gives me another dimension to play with; depth and ‘under floor details’. More on that at a later date. I also tweaked the palette slightly for the junction to add more green into the mix and it is probably this mix that I will carry forward into the rest of the set. I am pleased to say the magnets have performed excellently holding the sections together perfectly without being overly aggressive. I have tested the joins across different combinations and the opposing corner sections marry up every time. This was a small worry for me as, although it should all work in theory on paper, until you actually test it out a little doubt always creeps in that you have aligned something up incorrectly.

With the first two sections successfully finished and the molds curing nicely on the shelf, this week will be spent mostly continuing with the existing casting as well as starting on some new panel pieces which I will require in volume for the rooms. In between I will make a start on some more corridor sections also. Not sure how much of that plan will actually get done though as I am out a couple of evenings and would also like to go see District 9 as I have heard some good reviews about it.

Until next time,

Carl

Second section meets sticky silicon

2009-09-07T22:04:00.004+01:00

Work is steadily proceeding on my 3D Space Hulk terrain with the second section now constructed. This is the first of several ‘T-Junctions’ in the set and makes use of some additional components to those used in the corridor section. I built on what I had learned from the corridor and this time instead of trying to assemble the section all in one go, I instead broke it down into a number of sub-assemblies, which were pulled together at the end. This ensured each section had set completely and was not disturbed or misaligned from trying to add too many pieces at once. Another useful tip is to use a template to ensure sections are lined up correctly before the glue sets. For this purpose I use a small corner wall made out of Lego which I line flooring and walls up against to keep them straight and true. This is critical in this particular build as the sections must line up with one another very precisely otherwise any small deviation will end up being magnified.
It hasn’t all gone to plan however, as I have been making some custom silicon molds to allow me to more efficiently produce some of the high volume parts. The first mold came out fine and is currently curing for a few days before I use it. The second however I foolishly made using some silicon and catalyst I had left over in the workshop which was probably too old. I should have trusted my gut and bought fresh as it looks like the catalyst has gone over and isn’t reacting with the silicon leaving the mold pretty much liquid still. A rookie mistake and serves me right for trying to cut corners instead of buying fresh. Not a disaster though as I can easily make new masters, but a messy operation to clean up to recover my molding box. Lesson learned.

Akozz asked about which paints I used on the corridor section, which I have included below. It is a bit of an eclectic mix, but it gave me the finish I was looking for which mirrored the cold dark look of the card tiles as closely as possible without looking dull.

Stage 1: Both walls and deck were primed in white GW spray primer. The walls were basecoated in Adeptus Battlegrey and the deck a 50/50 mix of Charadon Granite and Boltgun Metal.
Stage 2: Both walls and deck were given a coat of Johnson’s Klear to prepare the surface for the next stage and left to dry. A stain wash of undiluted water based Kiwi black liquid shoe polish was worked into the detailing using a brush. This was done in small sections at a time and wiped off using kitchen roll to leave only the darker recesses and shading. It is then left to dry overnight.
Stage 3: The walls were dry-brushed with a 3:1 mix of Graveyard Earth and Shadow Grey and followed with a second lighter dry-brush of 4:3:1 mix of Rotting Flesh, Graveyard Earth and Shadow Grey. A final very light dry-brush of Fortress Grey helped tie all the sections together.
For the decking a dry brush of pure boltgun metal was followed with a wash of watered down Badab Black. A final light dry-brush of Chainmail Silver helped pick out the texture. The pipe work was a mix of Boltgun and Tin Bitz dry brushing followed by a Devlan Mud wash, a Chainmail Silver light dry-brush and some stippling in Gryphonne Sepia wash.
Stage 4: The entire section was given a coat of gloss varnish to protect the acrylic paint from wear and tear as much as possible as well as the final weathering stage.
Stage 5: weathering powders from ground earth and rust coloured pastels was painted onto piping and into corners and fixed with mineral turpentine. Streaks and staining was added before the turpentine had fully evaporated by drawing the pigments down with an old brush.
Stage 6: (not shown). The entire section is given a coat of matt varnish to neutralise the gloss and homogenise all the effects.

Painting the T-Junction is next and I fully expect that to keep me busy the whole of this week while I also get back to casting more parts and replenishing the component bins. Now I know what a Forge feels like!

Have a great week
Carl

Mission One: Corridor One

2009-09-05T20:45:00.010+01:00

If I have been distracted this week it is because my copy of Space Hulk arrived and I just had to rummage through all the goodies in the box, especially the de-bossed heavy card corridors and room sections. There is very little I can add that hasn’t been covered to death already. Yes, the models are fantastic, yes the overall look and feel of the boxed set oozes quality, yes, it really does weigh over 4Kg (Quite how this has become some weird measure of quality I shall never know?)
With the exception of the miniatures, it is the gaming board that most interests me at the moment as it is that which I am looking to replace. Having had a proper chance to examine the board sections in detail, I have decided to use them as a kind of template for the painting as well as they really are beautifully themed, each one unique in its own right to one degree or another. With that in mind I have revised my plans slightly to produce each section independently as the project progresses and where possible base any detailing on its card tile counterpart. I am aiming to come up with a compromise between the original Project Hulk floor plans which are all identical but ultimately quite neutral and a set of completely unique sections which may visually clash when put together. The key I think to this will be keeping the extra detailing subtle; a hatch in the flooring where a grate is on the card version, hazard stripes in certain doorway or a few paint effect details like leaking pipes, blood or oil stains.
The other decision I made was to base the order of construction on the sequence of missions in the book. That will hopefully keep it manageable as I will gradually build the hulk layout up one mission at a time, adding in the missing sections as I go.

So, to get the ball rolling this weekend I started assembly on the tiles for Mission One: Suicide Mission beginning with the Space Marines entry point and a T-Junction. These two pieces were used as a kind of ‘prototype’ to check a number of things such as the resilience of the casting, how well the magnetic sections worked and how well they went together and reacted with the paint. Very quickly I discovered a few ‘issues’ which will need to be corrected for future builds, but nothing too serious. The first was that the PVA glue I was using for gluing the plaster blocks was really not up to the task. I replaced it with ‘Tacky Glue’ instead and just in case that didn’t perform any better as a fallback plan some seriously strong eurethane wood glue used in the building trade. I figured if it could be used to glue the front of a house on, it was probably strong enough for my somewhat smaller needs.
The second was the power of the magnets and the Herculite 2 plaster. I have noticed already some worrying ‘chipping’ around the edges of the magnetised blocks due to the strength of the magnets pulling the sections sharply together. I plan on trying out the Crystacal R next as it is supposed to be an even harder casting plaster, but if that doesn’t work I will switch to a more impact forgiving resin for the magnetic blocks instead.

Straight corridor wall section (outside) with ducting.

straight corridor wall section (inside)

Corridor opposite wall (outside) with ducting.

Corridor opposite wall (inside). Note blood spatter up the far right hand panel. This is to tie in with a large stain on the flooring which featured on the card version, so I thought it would be nice to include it.

The photos show the first corridor piece after the initial coat of gloss varnish for protection. At this stage it is roughly ninety percent complete and the only remaining tasks are to give it a final coat of matt varnish to neutralise the reflection, add a few last detail touches and mount it onto protective 1" styrofoam basing.

That’s all for now as I have just realised all this casting has resulted in a number of tiny white footprints leading from the workshop into the house and having a modicum of survival instinct some cleaning/vacuuming would probably be wise at this stage before CSI Wife links the evidence back to me!

Have a great weekend

Carl

How many bricks does it take to make a Hulk?

2009-09-02T22:20:00.010+01:00

Well, by my calculations, roughly 4,500 apparently. Or to put it another way:

97 0.5" Diamond pattern deck tiles
201 1" Bevelled corridor edging sections
434 Half cylinder vertical wall modules
320 0.5" x 0.5" Lower door track frame
80 2" Bulkhead panels
64 2" Extruded vertical beam terminals
524 1" Recessed wall corner edging
150 1.5" x 1.0" Recessed rivetted wall panels
374 1.5" x 1.5" Pipe Conduit panels
193 1.5" x 1.5" Metal deck plates (diamond pattern)

... And the list goes on to cover 21 other individual components. All of this, as the title eludes to, is to produce a proper three-dimensional 'Space Hulk' board to game on. Now I cannot even remotely claim credit for the idea, or even the design as all the hard work and clever gubbins was done back in 2006 by the guys who produced Project Hulk. There have been any number of really cool Space Hulk terrain projects over the years, all worthy of praise, but for me, this was the daddy. The sheer amount of planning and thought that has gone in to the design, as well as the exterior detail and clever integration of magnets is what sets it apart for me and as soon as I saw it I knew I had to have a go at reproducing it myself.

I have to confess I have become somewhat obsessed with popping all those tiny porcelain like panels and floor tiles out of the Hirst Arts molds. Its a little bit addictive, which is probably just as well considering the list above. They have somewhat taken over a wing of the workshop, not to mention a lot of shelf space for all the tiny pots to sort all the parts into. The breakdown of parts needed has also required a bit of a re-think as some of the molds would require over 500 casting runs, which is just not practical. I am almost certainly now looking at creating a number of ‘masters’ for the high volume components like the skirting panels in addition to the magnetic components from which to create temporary Silicon RTV molds. After a bit of re-planning, I have managed to reduce this to just 7 specific components out of a required list of 31. These ‘high volume’ 7 should fit into a maximum of three new molds for the duration of the project. Even with these ‘volume’ molds added to the schedule two of the Hirst molds will still need to be used over 160 times! At a steady 2 runs per evening, that will still take a hefty 80 days just to produce all the parts needed.

To try to make the project bearable and stave off ‘casting fatigue’, I plan on assembling and painting some of the sections as I go once my parts inventory starts to stock up. This way I can build the set up as the project progresses and keep it interesting. I am also going to need quite a bit more plaster as well as I have consumed close to 5Kg of Herculite 2 already (the molds that is, not me personally!).

So, the little pile of bricks continues to grow, but that hasn’t stopped me painting totally, just slowed it down a bit. The three Necron Destroyers are almost finished and I have moved onto making some bases for them. I really dislike flying bases as a general rule, only using them for stuff like Epic aircraft or Gothic/Babylon 5 ships. For the Destroyers I have ditched them altogether in favour of standard 40mm round bases and a length of brass rod. These are more than adequate support and also match with the bases the Wraiths and Scarabs use.
Next up for the army will be three Wraiths and the Necron Lord, but before I do those I have a few more bricks to pop out of their molds. I am not addicted … honest!

A quick shout-out before I sign off also to ‘Slobberblood’ as it was his Birthday I believe over the weekend. Congrats!

Carl

All going to plan

2009-08-29T21:52:00.009+01:00

This week has been one of those truly great weeks where everything just seemed to fall into place. Having sterilised the teeth marks left by UPS and Customs after they extracted their pound of flesh, my other packages arrived in short order unmolested. These included some excellent Tech Deck and Wasteland bases from Dragonforge Designs as well as a few items for future projects, a number of Bruce Hirst's superb 'Castlemolds' and some materials I couldn't source locally.
Starting off new projects is always exciting and although I didn't get as much painting done due to two of my evenings being spent drawing up component casting requirements, I did manage to press on further with the Necrons.

The remaining two blocks that made up the thirty or so warriors were finished and I have now started on three Destroyers and the rest of the Scarabs. The Destroyers are about half complete and similar to the warriors I have gone for a darker more tarnished finish to the living metal, but still with the gleaming white skull mask. I also made use of the Necron transfers this time both on the chassis and pauldrons. These were applied early on in the painting, straight after the basecoat in fact as it allowed me to slowly weather them into the model during subsequent stages. These should be finished by the end of the weekend as they just require the final highlight layers now and the finishing weathering, which I can do in between casting runs.

On the subject of casting, I spent most of yesterday evening and today testing out the new molds and mix ratio/timings. Normally I work with resin which is easy as it is always 1:1 ratio, but this particular project requires literally hundreds of components and resin would dehydrate and degrade the molds far too quickly for the volumes I require. For that reason I have been using a fine casting plaster; Herculite 2 in this instance as it can be de-molded in around 25 minutes and is highly resilient. The first few casts came out pretty much exactly as I wanted them and the molds performed spectacularly well, far in excess of my expectations and admiration really must go to Bruce Hirst for his phenominally great molds.

The next stage is to produce ten key master components with the magnets mentioned earlier cast inside them. These will then be used to produce a custom silicon mold specifically to act as a harness for holding the rest of the magents in place making casting the other three-hundred odd blocks a more manageable affair. Effectively the wear and tear will then be on this expendable temporary mold instead of the original and more importantly it will allow me to cast ten at a time instead of just one.
These are pretty much the key components for the whole project, not to mention the most expensive, so it is critical I get this stage right first time. If you have figured out what it is I am making, kudos to you (the clues are all on this blog, honest!). If not, don't worry, all will be revealed soon once I get the first couple of test sections fully assembled.

Until then, have a great weekend!

Carl

A pox on HM Customs and UPS

2009-08-24T20:40:00.007+01:00

Why oh why is the excitement of receiving a parcel always tempered by the knowledge that before you can get your sweaty palms on its shiny contents (in this instance 1000 Neodymium magnets) you are effectively robbed at virtual gunpoint by the foetid spawn of Chaos; HM Customs and Excise and it's henchman UPS? Such was my ill-deserved fate this morning when I spied the dreaded yellow 'Cash on Delivery' label stuck to the outside of the box leering at me like some kind of festering boil!
I don't really object to paying duty on the things I order from the US, I mean, I do get some things an awful lot cheaper than I do in the UK. Thats a fair trade off in my book. What really gets my back up though is the 'brokerage fee' of an additional 11.00 pounds sterling (approximately 18 US Dollars) that UPS feel the need to tag on to the bill like they have done something really clever on my behalf and should be rewarded with a treat. God bless the US Postal Service and the Royal Mail I say, at least they don't demand more than their fair share of human flesh.

I didn't let that sour my day totally though and even though the rain stopped me from spraying anything new terrain wise, I did find some time this evening to continue with the first wave of Necron warriors and Scarabs.

I should point out also that the War of the Ring movement trays are purely for show and ease of moving them around, not as a recommendation for how they should be fielded. Although that said, I do find I quite like how they look lined up all neat like that, it seems very Necron 'Phallanx' to me. Only the first couple of rows are finished, the second block at the back still need the detailing completing.
The high gloss finish on the faces only is a conscious decision and is one of the key visual themes for the army as a whole. I purposely wanted to contrast between the slightly darker, duller and weathered appearance of the living metal and a very pure, clean and almost flawless perfection of their faces. By only doing the top half of the face this way and leaving the lower jaw as metal, I felt it gave them an almost sinister skull mask visage. If I find that the overall appearance of the army is a bit too stark with all the white faces as I add more units in, I may well look to 'chip back' some of the faces with charadon granite, or add a little weathering. But I will leave that as a fall back plan only in case the overall theme doesn't pan out the way I envisaged.
I also haven't added any other detailing to the bases such as flock or static grasses. These I prefer to do at the very end to the army as a whole all at the same time.

Hopefully I can get a few more done throughout the week in-between bursts of terrain painting. Until then, have a great week.

PS: In case I didn't mention - A pox on UPS and their warp-tainted ways!

Carl

Temple of the Necrons

2009-08-23T10:38:00.001+01:00

This weekend has mostly been about Necrons. No particular reason, I just fancied a change and the Necrons are an army that I have had at the back of my mind to do for several years now. I actually purchased most of the models quite a while back but couldn't work up the enthusiasm to paint up more than one or two samples to try out different colour palettes. I thought I would have a stab at revisiting them again with a view to trying to knock most of the army out in a couple of sittings. After experimenting with a couple of different approaches, I settled on a very basic army list consisting of primarily Warriors (plenty of!), Tomb Spiders, Wraiths, a small cohort of Destroyers and a Monolith. I am not going to go into huge details over what exactly it looks like as it is a pretty vanilla Necron force and unconverted, so nothing that hasn't been seen a hundred times before. Once the first wave has been painted I will include a picture or two, but as at this stage they are just plain old naked grey plastic there isn't really anything worth looking at.

What I have been working on however, is some themed terrain to go with them and that is where the GW Temple of Skulls comes in that I mentioned earlier in the week. When I saw this released for Warhammer I didn't really pay it much attention. It is a nice and surprisingly weighty piece of terrain, but I didn't really see much of a role for it in my collection. That was until a friend pointed out how well it would go if I thought of it more as an ancient shrine to the Necrons. Thus ensued a lengthy debate along the lines of "But what about the obvious Chaos marks in the stone?" vs "That's just the sort of mis-direction the 'Deceiver' would find amusing".
This went on for some time, but eventually, the more I thought about it, the more the idea started to appeal to me. The goal I set myself was to paint the Temple of Skulls as normal so it appeared a pretty clear cut corrupt ruin of chaos, but with a little closer inspection a few cryptic (or not?) clues could be found revealing its true origins.

In other words I stuck on some Necron transfers!

I'd actually like to think it isn't quite so tacky as that as I did go to some effort to try to make the marking as subtle as possible and blend them into the pillars so that they 'just' caught the light. Finding the right balance between making them too difficult to see or being too obvious took a little trial and error. In the end the best approach I found was hand painted gloss varnish as the base and Klear as the medium for mounting and sealing the transfers. This kept 'silvering' of the transfer down to a minimum and once nearly dry Klear was again used to chase out any remaining air bubbles. A couple of light coats of hand painted matt varnish killed the light and the transfer were then weathered in with some light dry brushing of fortress grey and bone white. Two very light coats of purity seal then helped tie it all together light wise.

I did hide another clue in the painting of the two standing pillars which unfortunately really doesn't come out in the photos at all sadly (maybe a little too subtle!), which is the rusting. Prior to the final weathering I painted the pillars in the same base palette I plan on using on the Monolith, which is a 50/50 mix of Charadon Granite and Boltgun Metal. This was then weathered over in the stone and bone white to leave just a hint of it in a few places and the rust helps to emphasise the effect. To be honest, the same effect can be achieved by hand painting and then washing out the symbols, but this provided a nice exercise in blending decals onto a tricky textured surface.

More terrain to come this week while I still have the motivation to get it completed, although I might just have to paint one or two Necrons first to try out the palette as it would be a shame to finsih the temple and have nothing to show it with.

Have a great week.
Carl

Crash and Burn

2009-08-20T22:24:00.004+01:00

Just a quick update today as the weather has turned out sunny and a cold beer (or three!) is looking attractive right now. I completed the majority of the main weathering on the escape pod last night while waiting for some other terrain to finish curing. It is still not a patch finish wise on what was clearly a resin pre-production version shown on GW’s website, although to be fair they have since removed those versions from the main order page now and replaced them with far more realistic painted versions of the actual production models. As far as I am concerned that’s the end of the matter now and everyone’s expectations should be pretty clear what they are getting when, or if they purchase the blastscape set.
Either way, I am reasonably pleased with the end result despite the soft detail level considering how little time and effort I invested overall into disguising the finish. A few quick rust touch ups with gryphonne sepia wash and a little chipping back with charadon granite applied with a scrap of sponge was all it really needed.

Space Hulk continues to dominate the chat around the water cooler as it were and having taken a closer look at the contents I feel I may have been unfairly harsh in my initial judgement about the use of card stock again for the board pieces. Sometimes it is very easy to get stuck in my ways viewing everything as a modeler, as opposed to as a gamer and in Space Hulks case I was assessing it for its ‘modeling’ potential and forgot what it was designed to be; a self contained board game. Although I would have dearly loved to have seen 3D plastic terrain, the pragmatist in me now says that was probably unrealistic.
That’s not to say, not possible though and it has got the inspiration cogs turning again to maybe explore something along those lines later in the year. Watch this space!

A welcome return from the warp

2009-08-19T19:58:00.002+01:00

So Games Workshop’s worst kept secret is finally revealed and the widely tipped re-release of Space Hulk is the ‘mystery game’ for September. In the main I am excited to see this venerable game in the spotlight again and hopefully it will win over a whole new audience, just as the original did with me all those years ago. However, a small part of me is also a little disappointed that GW wasn’t a little bolder and didn’t seem to do much in the way of improving on the original. I have yet to read through the rules and to be honest, there is very little that needs to change from the original as it was one of the most taut and excitingly fast paced games they ever produced. No, where I am disappointed is in the choice once again to go with card stock gaming pieces for the corridors and rooms. I have nothing personal against card flooring sections and in fact the original pieces were pretty good quality. It is more the fact that they chose not to go with something more modular in plastic and genuinely introduce something ‘new’ to the product that they didn’t, or couldn’t do the first time around.

Possibly I will change my mind when I actually get a chance to handle the models themselves later in the week, and they certainly do look pretty decent from the photos on GW’s website. But for now though all it has done has piqued my interest again in what I still think is one of the most fondly remembered games from GW’s heritage. Welcome home brothers!

A weekend of wading through more terrain was reasonably productive as I added another set of citadel woods and the impressively detailed ‘Battlescape’ to the stockpile. The latter in particular is worthy of mention and almost makes amends for the disappointment that was the ‘Blastscape’. Like a lot of people though I wasn’t overly fond of the symmetrically blasted and chaos warped trees, but the addition of a couple of spare branches from the wood set helped randomise the overall look in my opinion and tie the two pieces together better. I left the eyes on a few of the trees nevertheless though as it was still a cool feature (no pun intended), I just didn’t want the whole darned forest staring at me!

I probably went a bit overboard with the rusting on the Rhino but it fitted my preference of it looking like the scene of a previous battle ages in the past, hence all the grass and moss growing around it.

On the subject of blastscapes, the crashed shuttle/escape pod is the next one sat in the workshop after my surprising success with the craters. Similar to the debris and shamelessly copying Games Workshop’s version, I have added a few extra parts and details to lift the overall blandness of the model and have started weathering it up. I am taking a slightly different approach this time and using a tried and tested diorama approach known as ‘salting’ as I wanted it to look different to the debris and Rhino so I had some variety in the terrain, but still appear like it had been lying there for years as opposed to fell out of the sky just that morning! The photo below is very much in the early stages as it is after I have airbrushed the base coat and removed the salt. Hopefully I will get some time towards the end of the week to start tidying up the dry brushing and adding the weathering and details.

After the escape pod I still have a short list left of terrain I would like to finish in this wave, including:

Skyshield Landing Pad

Meteorite bombardment (blastscape)

Laser Scar (blastscape)

Temple of Skulls

Another set of woods

A set of Forgeworld roads

The list is actually quite a lot longer than this, but as I am beginning to getting ‘dry-brush elbow’ and terrain fatigue I think I will look to get back to working on some of my Imperial armies in the not too distant future. Unfortunately lots of meetings and a few late finishes at work this week, so I doubt I will get much painting done the next couple of days. Probably just as well as my workshop could do with a bit of a tidy up anyway after all the terrain lately. It is getting difficult to see where the terrain finishes and my painting station starts!

Have fun.

Carl

Taming troublesome terrain

2009-08-13T17:35:00.000+01:00

What can I say about Games Workshop's 'Blastscape' set that hasn't been said already? There is no denying the quality of the vac-form pieces are pretty disappointing when compared to the examples shown on their site, but I really don't want to rake over the coals of that particular debate again to be honest. The irony is terrain wise GW have been releasing some pretty good stuff of late. In particular the 'Battlescape' that is about to be released this week is a stand-out example, nicely textured and well detailed it was far more impressive than I was expecting.
But what is done is done and rather than making my blastscape pieces go and reside in the 'naughty corner' where all the other bits of embarassing terrain go, I thought I would see if I could at least salvage them first.
The first step was to increase their resilience and see if I could add a bit more texture to the edging to help blend them into my gaming boards better. As they are incredibly thin and light they tend to move around and flex more than I would like. To address this I fixed them onto a sheet of artist heavy mounting card and then cut them out with enough of a sloped edge to allow me to add some more texture and weight.

The filler was applied next and this was a mix of lightweight hydrocal casting plaster, water and PVA glue. Into this I mixed a couple of different grades of sand and gravel and applied it quickly along the edges to create a more natural boundary. This was in turn given a dusting of extra sand in a few areas before the plaster dried to break up the uniformity even more.

I figured the key to getting the best out of them would be to try to disguise the lack of sharp edge detail with a few paint effects. basically anything that will kill the light and reflection of the curved surfaces. For the craters I did this by working charadon granite into the gaps between some of the larger rocks to enhance the shadows before giving the crater edges an extreme highlight of astronomicon grey. The insides of the craters also needed a bit of help as dry-brushing alone won't give enough contrast. A wash of 'very' old snakebite leather mixed with dark flesh was painted into the cracks and a light dry-brush of bleached bone helped set them off. To mask the shift in textures a bit more and distract the eye I also added a few patches of mixed flock and harvest coloured static grasses.

For the crashed ship parts I took the approach again that paint effect would hide a multitude of sins; in this case a complete lack of any detail. I added a few strips of plastic beam and card to try to break up the blandness of the surface as well as a few rivets made from plastic rod. The rusting debris was achieved through a mix of stippled oranges over an earthy brown and a generous wash of devlan mud wash. A few sections of bare metal were then stippled on in boltgun and rust weathering powders carefully brushed over the top and sealed with fixative and finally a coat of GW purity seal.

The oil effects were added at the end and were a mix of black and brown ink mixed with about the same quantity of Klear. Again, some flock and a couple of patches of bleached grasses helped add extra distractions.

I have to be honest and say the final result was actually a lot better than I was expecting when I started. When I first examined the blastscape pieces I had pretty low expectations of what finish I could get out of them, but the crashed ship debris in particular stands up pretty well even to close scrutiny. Perhaps I shouldn't have been so hasty to pre-judge and feel a bit more enthusiastic now about getting some use out of the remaining pieces.

As 'corrosion' seems to be the theme for the day, I have the urge to carry on with the Battlescape next as that wrecked Rhino is just screaming out for rust effects and I have thought of a way to tone down those weird looking tree stumps.

Have fun.
Carl

Otherworldly distractions

2009-08-11T21:00:00.006+01:00

It has been a bit of a terrain year for me so far, what with replacing my old gaming boards with the GW Realm of Battle sets and the more recent influx of Planetstrike kits that I have shown on here and on dropship. It hasn't just been restricted to those though as I have been endevouring to pretty much overhaul a good part, if not most of my terrain collection as a whole. There have been sets of woods, barricades, bunkers, ancient ruins, ammo dumps, fuel dumps, craters, more craters, roads, monoliths and factories passing over my painting table pretty relentlessly the past few months. Did I mention craters?

Partly because I do like making and painting terrain (although mostly the painting if I am honest), but mainly because I am absolutely determined to get more gaming in. I know this is the oft heard lament of the painter/collector and I am sure I am not alone in this plight, but it is depressingly true. Every year I seem to do less and less gaming by comparisson with the volume of painting and I think it is mainly down to not having a specific goal in mind.

A good few years back I used to attend the UK Grand Tournament's pretty regularly, mostly teamed up with Dave and each round we would work to create a new army. This gave us both a very specific focus as well as an outlet for the creative juices and it worked pretty well. That's not to say we didn't still have a few late nights burning the midnight oil putting finishing touches to the odd squad or two the evening before the tournament, but thats because I am a terrible procrastinator and dreadful undiciplined at project planning my painting schedule. Nevertheless it gave me the focus and motivation I needed to keep turning out new armies.

Unfortunately, now that I am not attending the tournaments much anymore (and I will save that tale for another day), my painting and worse, gaming, has become a lot more erratic. So I need a new goal to focus on and that is where all the terrain and the new gaming boards come in; I need to start another campaign.

I don't just want to make it a straight forward 40K campaign though that I can get Dave and a few other friends involved in, but rather one that we can keep casual, but easily adapt for say the odd game of Epic, or Armageddon, or even something entirely different alltogether. A campaign of course needs a map to fight over and territories to be won (or lost in my case). As I still had a Mighty Empires box floating around that I had never really made much use out of I thought it would be fun to combine it with the newly released Planetary Empires set and spend the weekend making a campaign map.

After an entertaining afternoon deciding what it should look like and fitting all the tiles together I gave it the first few base colours and dry brushes to get it to the stage it is at now. The frame was a rather lucky spot whilst I was in Homebase over the weekend and is a notice board. As soon as I saw it I thought it would work well with the colours of the map which are predominately industrial greys and arid desert yellows and browns. It is now at that fun stage of adding all the detailing such as the river, areas of life and volcanoes. Yes, you read that right. I have a goal in mind for this as the driver for the campaign terrain I will be producing later in the year so bear with me.
I am aiming to get the map finished bar a few details by the weekend, however I do have another couple of small projects on the go at the same time this week including the much maligned Blastscape set, the Skyshield to go with the Imperial Bastions and more trees as you can never have enough in my opinion.
Thats enough terraforming for one night though. More in a day or two.
Carl

Imperial Bastion - Part Two

2009-08-06T21:10:00.012+01:00

I was in the mood for a bit more terrain yesterday evening, so I decided to make the most of the momentum and make a start on the second Imperial Bastion. Technically I still have quite a bit of detailing to finish on the first one, along with a lot more weathering. However, as I mentioned in an earlier post, the weather here has been somewhat unpredictable (unless your a Duck!) meaning it has been far too damp or humid to get a decent finish out of the 'purity seal'
Rather than just repeat what I had done with the first Bastion, I thought I would try to come up with something different and in particular something I could combine with the Skyshield landing pad kit. GW's Mark Jones came up with a great idea by combining some of the Cities of Death building parts with the Skyshield so I thought I would do something similar, only making use of a Bastion also to create a small outpost.

What I settled on in the end was a lower tier that extended out under the pad giving it a bit more support. Mounted onto the lower structure was the bastion, pretty much as was straight out of the box. To ensure the two sections joined together seamlessly with the Skyshield decking, I raised the Bastion and extension up a few millimetres using plastic beam, but left a gap into which one side of the pad could precisely slot into and allowing the bastion bunker to overlap the decking slightly. The raised support was then masked with sections of beam from the Cities of Death kit.

It was at this point that I had the idea of making the building a little more flexible so that if I didn't want to use the Skyshield, I could still make use of the bastion. Using some of the flooring and parapet pieces of the city frames I build a balcony section which fitted over the lower tier extension and slid into the gap under the bastion locking in place the same way that the Skyshield did. By making this piece removable I could choose the building configuration I wanted to use.

At this stage the Skyshield has only just been primed and the first couple of coats of metals added so there is a long way to go yet! Similar to the first building, I made very few changes to the bastion itself, restricting myself to adding a ventilation stack, searchlight over the landing pad exit and a couple of weapon swaps to the automated defences. I didn't really want to add yet another four Heavy Bolters so instead rifled through the extra weapons from the new Russ Demolisher frame. After deciding a couple of plasma cannons might be a little excessive, I chose a Lascannon for the main entrance and a Heavy Flamer for the landing pad exit (well, you wouldn't really want a Lascannon blasting holes through the decking!). Obviously the flamer option isn't a valid option in the Planetstrike rulebook. However, as I don't plan on taking this building to a tournament any time soon, it stays on.

Both buildings are now at a roughly equal stage having their base colours and first shade weathering completed. Now I can finally relax a bit into the more enjoyble part of adding all the detail bits and pastels as well as painting that massive landing pad. But that will do for today I think, so I will leave you with a picture of the two Bastions together sans Skyshield.

Here be weathering

2009-08-04T18:35:00.011+01:00

Returned from work today to find the postman had left me a cryptic note explaining where he had hidden a parcel for me. I am sure back in the day there used to be maps with a note on them that said "Here be Dragons!", but in this instance it was just an envelope with a map drawn on the back with an arrow pointing to behind the wheelie bin along with the explanation "Here be package!"

No dragons sadly, but almost as good as it was the MIG pigments I ordered last week. I have been using ground up chalk artists pastels for years now on all manner of weathering tricks, but this was the first time I had used any of MIG Productions products and can now see why they are so popular.

As usual the damp UK summer is making any kind of spraying other than by airbrush limited, so it's another evening working on the Icarus instead. Not much left to do now other than picking out the details such as the targetters and lenses and a final weathering to dust up the base. I spotted a really nice heat damaged effect in Forgeworld's Masterclass book which I decided to try to duplicate for the Lascannon muzzle. Consisting of bands of thinned red, purple, blue and black inks mixed with Johnson's Klear I really liked the effect and thought it gave the gun a nice focal point.

Other projects I am tinkering with at the moment are of course the aforementioned Imperial Bastion which I would really like to finish by the end of the week (weather and work permitting). I also have a second Bastion and a Skyshield which I have combined into a sort of modular arrangement to give me a bit more variety of terrain, as well as more interceptor guns!
Terrain aside for the moment, I am also keen to put my new weathering pigments to the test and have lined up a range of Imperial Guard tanks as 'guinea pigs' to experiment on. These were ones I painted many years back as part of my fledgeling 'Van Zans' guard army, but never really finished to my satisfaction.

It sort of brings up the question of just how far you take your painting for general gaming use? I mean, I suspect the greater majority of collectors paint to what is popularly referred to as a 'gaming' standard, which is all about getting a great looking model painted up and into an army ready for war. Then there is display and competition standard. The only problem with that is it is at the other extreme and 'generally' isn't really that practical for creating a whole army in or for day to day gaming. In fact I would go as far as to say they would be entirely unsuitable to game with, not because they would be too precious, but just because they are designed for display and would frankly look out of place on a gaming table.
I personally believe there is also a third style, a middle-ground if you like and that is 'tournament standard'. Most tournament's I have attended over the years consist of two elements; the generalship and the best painted army award. Because of the latter I am constantly amazed at the time and effort some painters will put in to produce their armies. Quite often this is not far short of true display quality, but cleverly they still don't look incongruous or out of place of the battlefield and that is no mean feat in my humble opinion.
This is a topic I will probably return to in the future as it is close to my heart personally, however have digressed somewhat and rambled on.

So I have several tanks I painted to various finished stages and pretty much all are good to go gaming wise. However, it seems to me with a little more effort I could weather them up a bit more, maybe add a few more effects and try to make them look a little more 'cohesive' as part of an army as well as bring their overall appearance up a notch. With the new guard codex now having a lot more tank options available, what started as a disparate collection of kits I happened to individually like at the time, has suddenly (in the main) become 'legal' gaming wise leading me to rethink about using them again.

To give you an idea what I am talking about, the Mars-Alpha Leman Russ is pretty much the standard they are all currently at and the Leman Russ 'Destroyer' is after a evenings fun and games with a few additional oil washes and some pastels. It is a bit of an experiment so I am not really being too neat and tidy about it, but just trying to get a feel whether its worth doing some additional ...err, weathering?

Icarus interlude

2009-08-02T17:31:00.007+01:00

I had hoped to have a nice relaxing weekend continuing with the Bastion, but the weather has been most uncooperative making it difficult to do any spraying. So much for the spate of sun we were promised. I should have guessed really as my mate had gone camping and he is a pretty sure thing as a rain magnet.
With the bastion temporarily shelved until I can get it sealed for the next stage, I picked over the other frames in the set which included the comms array and Icarus pattern Las-Cannon. One of the things I really like about the new Planetstrike kits is their versatility (I may have already mentioned that now I think about it!). In particular though the different ways in which you can assemble and use the upgrades. After cleaning up and assembling the Icarus, I delberatately didn't attach it to a base so I could keep my options open and use it both on the bastion as an automated interceptor gun, or as a standalone defensive piece in its own right.
I thought it might also be quite interesting to paint it quite heavily weathered, partially because it wasn't something I had tried on anything other than vehicles before, but also because it was in keeping with the theme of my terrain which I liked quite weather beaten.

To give myself a simple base palette to start with I airbrushed both the gun and separate stand in Adeptus Battle Grey. I then very lightly dry brushed both in Fortress Grey and finally a 50/50 mix of Fortress Grey and Pale Flesh. After applying a couple of decals from the Cadian Imperial Guard set I then chipped back the paint with Charadon Granite.
To give a good surface for the weathering to work on I applied a couple of coats of gloss varnish and then worked thinned burnt umber into the areas around the joints and rivets.
A light coat of purity seal pulled it all together and that was pretty much where I called it a day for now. The next step will be to paint in the detailing, piping, lenses and the scorching on the main gun barrel before adding some more weathering using inks and pastels.
Hopefully by the time I get to that stage I will have some new colours to play with as my chalk pastels are looking a bit tired now and I finally sourced some nice looking rust pigments from Mig on EBay which are apparently in the mail as I write this.

Imperial Bastion - Part One

2009-07-29T21:59:00.006+01:00

This year has been something of a terrain making year for me so far. Partly this was down to looking to replace all of my somewhat tired gaming boards for Epic and 40K, but it was also because I just needed to do something different for a change. The past few months have been somewhat frenetic at work and this has had an impact on both my painting time and, if I am honest my health to a degree.
So, as they say, a change is as good as a rest hence I have been focusing on building back up my selection of scatter terrain for my various favourite games and specifically updating what I could salvage to go with the new boards.
The new Planetstrike terrain kits have also gone a long way towards keeping me occupied, in particular the Imperial Bastion. Most gamers I have spoken to all seem to agree the same thing about the Bastion kit funnily enough, which is on its own its a bit "meh". When you combine two or three of them together however it suddenly commands a far more impressive presence of the gaming table.
One design in particular seems to have become almost 'de-rigueur' from the get go it would appear judging by how many I have seen online in less than a week and that is the 'double-height tower with additional bunker.
Made by simply combining two Bastion kits together, it just go to show how versatile the new GW terrain kits are starting to become.

In producing my version of the Bastion, I changed very little other than to add a couple of extra details in the form of some additional exterior lighting over the doors and Imperial Aquila at the top of the main tower. Both of these were taken from bits left over in the 'Cities of Death' kits.
The Bastion as seen here is after it has been given its base coat and three stages of highlights. At this point I have started to add the base weathering using chalk pastels in and around the recesses in the building and joints. These were then 'fixed' in place with a couple of very light coats of matt varnish.

The next stage will be to paint the detailing such as the doors, lamps and automated weapons. I will also add any additional markings or notices at this stage prior to the final weathering stages. this allows me the opportunity to then blend in the detailing to help reinforce the look of a fortification that has been standing against scorching sun and acid rain for decades.

Abyssa - Daemon prince of Slaanesh

2009-07-27T22:04:00.020+01:00

Just to get the ball rolling, I thought I would share a couple of pictures of a favourite of mine, sculpted by my long term gaming buddy and ideas factory Dave Stone. Not that long ago he sculpted 'Mortarion' for me to lead my Death Guard army (more of which I will show at a later date).

At the same time he also produced for himself the Slaanesh Daemon prince Abyssa, which he kindly brought around to show me while it was still in the conversion stage. Based on Wayne England's stunning artwork for the Horus Heresy CCG, I absolutely loved what he has produced.

At this stage Dave still had a few more details to add, including the sword and further detailing to the armour. Nevertheless, even at this point I could see it was shaping up nicely. To give you an idea of scale, Abyssa's backpack is taken from a 58mm Inquisitor scale marine and the legs from the old Greater Daemon of Khorne.

The bulk of Abyssa's armour has been built up using plastic card, over which Dave has then layered up green-stuff. Normally Dave works solely in green-stuff, however in this instance due to the size of Abyssa and the straight edges to the upper armour, it was impractical to build up solely in modelling putty.

The detailing in Abyssa's horns and face were build up in several layers, as was the detail work around the armour carapace. Once Dave has finished the conversion work and got it painted I will be sure to take some further photos, along with the rest of his Emperor's Children army to add to the site.

Watch this space!

Commence the drop

2009-07-27T19:55:00.001+01:00

Yes, I know it isn't the most original or inspiring title for the first post. Yes, I know it is pretty corny too. The thing is I have been staring at this editor for fifteen minutes now and my coffee has gone cold while I tried (in vain) to come up with a deep and meaningful title for my all important first post.
Of course, it isn't really my first post either as I have been writing and publishing on the Dropship site for over a decade now, so I should have gotten the hang of it by now you would have thought?
In addition to that, it has just occured to me if you are reading this it is most likely because you have navigated your way here following the link I put on aforementioned site, so it isn't like any of this is going to come as a huge surprise now is it?

Ok, now that has gone so swimmingly well I suppose I should really fill you in on why all of a sudden I have switched from dropship to what I have affectionately decided to call 'Drop-Pod' on Blogger.com?

The simple answer is, I haven't. This is in no way supposed to replace the Dropship site. The reality is Dropship can quite often be a bit of a pain to update from time to time, mainly because I really like to have finished a project before I add it to the site in the form of a new article.

Couple that with the fact I often don't have as much free time as I used to means that often several months will go by without an update, which lets be honest is far from ideal and no fun for either of us. So, with that in mind I decided to ditch the rather ill-conceived 'not-a-blog' section on the site and instead link out to something designed for exactly that purpose. Thus Drop-Pod is born, everybody say "ahhh!"

Generally speaking, this means I should now be able to share some of the things I am working on at a far earlier stage and with a lot less effort from me, which can't be bad. Never fear though, this doesn't mean the end of updates to Dropship, not by a long shot. As new models get completed they will still get added to the respective sections of the site along with full details about how they were completed, just as they were before. The only real difference is, should you be following this blog, you will know about them a lot longer in advance.

Of course that also means no surprises, but you can't have it all now can you?
Happy gaming.
Carl