Dusting the Cases Part 2

Okay, so now here are some models that have never appeared on the blog. I have a very small Ork force that really needs some more painting love. I've only completed 4 or 5 models for this army in the last 3 years, which is pretty pathetic.

Here are a couple of random models on display - both from a Marienberg themed Empire army that honestly, doesn't get any love at all.
I'm going to save the Angels of Absolution for a separate post. I think the photos came out great.

Time to Dust the Cases!

So my frantic attempts to get my 1000 point Team Tournament army ready for Adepticon were all in vain. It was one of the poorest showings I've made the last couple years in terms of proportion of fully painted to partially painted models and there were a couple of WYSIWYG atrocities in effect as well. My apologies to my team mates and to my opponents.

Anyway, the dust has settled (literally) and Adepticon is over so it was time to put my Angels of Absolution back in the display case. Spring is in the air and cleaning is at the forefront of my mind so as I was eyeing up my display cases and noticing a layer of dust developing I decided to pull my armies out in order to clean and dust them.

I figured, while I was at it now would be a great time to take some photos and show off some of the armies you've never seen. Today I'm posting pics of my Redemptors of Golinar Imperial Guard and of my Tomb Kings of Khemri, along with a silly conversion I did back when there were vehicle design rules in 3rd Edition:

Redemptors of Golinar:

The Redemptors are based upon the Cawdor Necromunda models and the Divine Army of Lastratii - an army that pushes the Imperial Creed to such limits that no Imperial citizen can live up to their standards of faith and purity. Left to right are a Culexus Assassin, Brother Khalinar (Priest) - notice the head swap with a Cawdor Gang Leader model, and the Servo-Orator - made from Epic Sentinel Legs, 2 different backpacks, and assortment of bitz, plastic, etc. The skulls, stakes, and placards on the bases are themed from the 2nd Edition Sisters of Battle Codex cover art.
You'll notice the Sergeant has Cawdor legs with a plastic Cadian chest, topped off with the head from a Cawdor Heavy. Once I started re-using the same Cawdor models over and over again it became necessary to try and vary the squads up a bit with more elaborate conversions. The Heavy Bolter model is a Necromunda Ash Wastes Nomad.
Each of my 40K armies now has a matching crater to be placed when a vehicle explodes.

All told, this isn't exactly a legal army but if I put in a few hours could probably finish up one of my other squads that is started and get it into the case. This was the first year that this force did not take part in the Team Tournament at Adepticon out of the 3 or 4 years I've gone.

VDR - Scout Titan/Adeptus Mechanicus Construct:
This model is pretty silly though I love how the headlights came out. Back when I worked for GW this model took part in a few mega-battles and it always drew so much fire that it would last on the table for no more than a turn and a half. One day I might trick it out a little more. It did get used in my one and only Apocalypse game so far.

Tomb Kings of Khemri:

The Undead were my first army back in 1994 or 1995. Back then "wet" and "dry" Undead elements were all part of one army book. When GW chose to split them into 2 armies I decided that my army of mostly Skeletons, Chariots, and Skull Catapults would get re-based for the desert wastes and my Vampire Counts would be put aside for a later date. I've fielded this army only 1 or 2 times since I moved to Chicago since none of my friends really play Fantasy. There are a whole lot more models in this army that are sitting in hard cases because they are too inferior to display. One day I'd like to sit down and flesh it out to 2000 points. Since its all dry brushed I could probably do it in a night or two.

So that's the 1st display case. In a couple of days I'll post pics from the 2nd display case which includes my Angels of Absolution and my Orks.

Panic Journal 3

Okay, so yesterday I got in like 20 minutes of painting due to a 5 hour dentist appointment, one of my team mates arriving into town, and going to a punk show. Pretty much my whole day got wiped out. Here are some pics of the point I had reached at the end of Wednesday and where I started today:

The bike bases are done aside from needing some static grass. Consider these DONE!

This bike is almost entirely basecoated. The other two are almost fully basecoated as well. Highlights have started to be applied as well. I have to complete two sergeants with power fist. He's almost all highlighted and read for arm and backpack attachment. Those are in various states of progress as well.

Painting playlist: Murder City Devils s/t

Panic Journal Part 2

So a couple hours have passed since my first entry. In that time I made breakfast, ate, checked some e-mail, etc. I also did a bunch more basecoating on my bikes, primed the brand new bases they are going to go on, and I went into my "fully painted AoA bitz" drawer and picked out a couple things I'm going to need to switch my Vindicator into a Razorback. Here are some quick pics:

Paint Session Playlist: Dag Nasty 'Can I Say?' (side B), Suicidal Tendencies s/t.

PANIC JOURNAL!!!

I have 3 days left to prepare for Adepticon's Team Tournament and I'm totally not prepared and it's panic time. I figured I'd document my panicked preparations for all of you between working on painting (which I can only do for limited spans before I need to recharge by doing something else. I'm on one of those breaks right now.

So my Team Tournament list needs to be finalized by this evening. My intended list requires that I paint a number of models. I need to complete my Master of the Ravenwing, Predator, and my 3 man Bike Squad. I need to prepare a Razorback and paint it, and I need 2 Multi-melta Marines and 2 Power Fist wielding sergeants. As a point of reference usually one Angel of Absolution takes me about 8 hours, so this is obviously an impossible task. Here's what my painting table looks like:

The bikes right now are my primary concern. I need to finish base coating them to at least 3 colors today. In the back right corner of the 1st picture you can see a Vindicator. Most of it is not glued together at this juncture and the sides are fairly complete. I can pull the Vindicator bits off and turn it into a Razorback in seconds, so I need to start prepping the bits if I intend to roll with that plan. As you can see the Master of the Ravenwing is in the same state of base coating as the Bikes are. This isn't going to receive the same level of focus just because I don't know if this model will be the Master in the long run. It will be painted up to the minimum standard unfortunately.

A bunch of the infantry models you see behind the bikes in the first photo just had all of their arms broken off last night so that I could replace Heavy Bolters or whatever with the needed Multi-melta's and Power Fists.

Okay, that's enough for the moment. More later.

Cities of Death - Chicago Style

One of the things that I feel traditional Cities of Death terrain lacks is the truly claustrophobic feel of a city. There aren't actual streets with buildings in blocks, with back alleys to exploit. So a while back I got the idea that I wanted to make movement trays for my buildings. This would allow for neater storage (clean up on Nerd Nights is a complex game of Tetris), and would allow for the terrain to be set up in blocks.

Now the above building was the first one I completed for this project. I had originally tried to get my existing scenery to fit on the trays, but they are so random in sizing that it would just be too much work as is. I'll need to adapt them some other way than how I was initially trying. So I scrapped that approach and built the above as a test for my Chicago inspired city block.

The first thing you'll notice is that the above building is long and narrow. This is very traditional of Chicago City neighborhoods. Most of the buildings are either 2 flats or 3 flats. They will have a door adjacent to a picture window and then 2 sets of windows as you work your way up. On the corners of streets will be larger apartment establishments - sometimes with retail (bodegas) below. In my particular neighborhood there are a lot of vacant lots that will be roughly fenced in. The buildings are really close together with narrow breezeways between them. I tried to capture that with the following buildings.

Vacant lot:
Corner ruins:

Opposing corner ruins:

All of them side by side:
The top-down angle shows the movement tray:

You'll notice the brown square in the lower left hand corner. Spaced around the tray are removable squares where I can put signs, street lights, detritus, etc. All of the buildings are removable and are either on 5" or 6" wide bases currently. I already have a 2nd movement tray and the buildings can be swapped around however I like. The vacant lots allow for less obstructed views of tanks and infantry while targeting through breezeways, etc will allow for those nasty sniping shots.

These are still in the rough stages but I'm really excited by the idea. I think it will make for a really visually stunning game. Hopefully the end result isn't too difficult to play. I think with enough low ruins, parks, and vacant lots it will totally work.

Random Stuff...

Its been a while since I updated the blog. I've been focusing in on other stuff as of late (some productive and some not) but I never completely stop work on my projects. They just get pushed aside. Here's some random crap I've worked on lately:

#1: This is what I SHOULD be working on every day. Adepticon is coming and I haven't put more than a half hour into my tournament army in the last 45 days. As you can see I have a long long way to go - and this is 1 of 3 I absolutely need to complete.

#2: I'm really in more of an Ork mood lately anyway. If it wasn't for Adepticon I'd just work on Orks right now but I'll never get enough points done in time. This Trukk is mostly complete. I've probably got another 8-10 hours to go in order to get the driver and gunner done, and to battle damage and dirty it up a bit.

#3 Scott always complains about this one piece of city scenery I built that is beautiful but extremely difficult to put models in. This is a companion building that I started years ago and just finally put on a base. I deliberately left it more open for Scott.

#4 Here are some CoD plastics being put to use with the combination of some scratch built elements. My friend Christian had talked to me a while back about how he was measuring out bits of foam core to the size of the CoD panels so that he could make his own custom panels. I now have a sheet of foam core that has the lines drawn to turn it entirely into CoD tiles for insertion into whatever project I want. In this case, I didn't do anything fancy - just stuck some CoD bits onto the blank slabs and then added a little gable roof on the top.

#5 One of the terrain elements that gets commented upon when Scott posts pics on his blog is the walkway system often looming in the background (you can see a section of it in the above photo - as usual - looming in the background). Whenever we use the walkway it looks dumb if it doesn't begin and end at a table edge. I need some ruined sections as well as entrance and exit points. After months of contemplation I finally made a ramp a couple of days ago. You can't hide from my bikes up there anymore!

#6 Another Scott Kroll inspiration... We talk about my city terrain pretty frequently and one of the things we agree upon is that it doesn't feel city like enough. The building shapes are too random to make streets and everything is too square. The next piece of scenery is on a base that is deliberately angled to encourage more variety in building placement.

Who knows when any of these projects will be completed. Still, I wanted the world to know I'd still trudging along. Enjoy!