Big Robot and Interior Design

Hi,

Apologies for the week long break, but I was bed bound for most of the time with a killer flu. Now I am back and will tell and show you some small things I have been working on during the weekend.

A few days ago I received my orders from Waylands Games with a lot of Tau goodies including Piranhas, stealth suits and some more secret weapons. Most important of all were the bag of magnets. With the 3 mm and 5 mm magnets I can now continue the MWi (i.e. Modular Weapon Initiative) and save hundreds of bucks in the process. 

Here is what I magnetized at the moment:

Devilfish/Hammerhead/Skyray - You can choose the turrets and weapons you want, click, click and it transforms to your heart’s desire. (I'll post a tutorial during next week)

2 x Broadsides with weapons - The new Broadsides models are awesome, but unfortunately the street retail price is 40 EUR/model so these babies cry for magnetizing. To be honest they are a bit tricky to get right. I spent 3 hours with the first one and 1 hour with the second one. The problem is that the High yield missile launcher and heavy rail rifle arms attach at different angels to the arm ball. The different angles means that the magnet placing inside the arm socket is a bit tricky. I solved it by carving the arm socket and then using some green stuff and placing the magnet inside it while it was sticky and held the whole model in place in the position I wanted. It is still a bit of trial and error. The shoulder mounts are also magnetized for the option of twin linked plasma/smart missile system

Riptide - I had this sucker since Christmas but without the correct size magnets I did not want to work on him. Now all the parts are put together and all weapon options are magnetized. The model is just huge and looking cool, what the small head looks a bit odd. 

Riptide parts, Firewarrior included for size comparison

As I put together the hull for the Devilfish/Hammerhead/Skyray i was inspired to do some fun interior design and went on painting the transport compartment. I had this vision of a very bright interior and to save time I went with white. I sprayed and painted all the parts separately before gluing them together. I also added a few transfers to the interior to spice it up. Here is the result and enjoy it before it is sealed up! Next updates will probably either be painting the Hammerhead or riptide. Until next time!

Interior

Interior

Interior with back hatch closed

Interior

Aspiring for greatness

Hi,

The week is at an end. I had a great game of WH40k with Space Marines & Tau vs. Astra Militarum (aka Imperial Guard). It was the first game I won since we started playing so that was nice. I will post a mini report on that game in a separate post.

Today I spent half a day painting a Chosen Chaos Space Marine that will be an Aspiring Champion for my CMS squad.

I wanted to push my boundaries of my paintig skills with this one as the sculpt deserves a great paint job. A few challenges I set out for this one;

-Power Axe effect with Object Source Lightning (or OSL)
This is aa first time for me painting a power weapon effect and I wanted to make it look that the gem in the blade looks like it lights up the rest of the blade
-A smooth gradient from dark to light on the shoulderpad. 
I wanted that neat almost gemlike gradient for the shoulderpad from dark to light
-Neat edge high lightas
I tried to be as neat as possible with the edge highlights and tried to avoid large blobs.

I am quite pleased with the end-restult, the axe took me a few retries and experimentig before I had an end result I was pleased with. Even if it took me about 5 hours to complete I had tons of fun and learned a lot in the process. Here some pictures, enjoy!

Front

Side with Power axe

Back, note tenctacles on bolter. 

Alternate front pic

Complete squad

All Your Bases belongs to the Pathfinders

Greetings follower of the Greater Good!

Yesterday evening I started a small project of basing my XV8 Crisis Suits and my 5 Pathfinders I almost got ready.

I had just acquired some cement rubble and coarse grain from the hobby store (brand is Gale Force 9 and costs about 4.5 euro) so I put my skills to the test. My goal was to make it look that the bases would belong into a ruined cityscape. Here follows the work steps:

Step 1 

In Step 1 I glued on the empty bases the white cement pieces and the grains with PVA glue. I also glued fine grain sand after the larger pieces had dried a while.  I let everything dry completely overnight

Step 2 - base coat and drybrush

  In Step 2 I first base coated the bases with brush and watered down black. The fine grain sand soaks in the watered paint much better than thick one. After the undercoat had dried I dry brushed all the bases with a darker and lighter grey. It is really easy and the end results look really good. I could have ended here, but I decided to go one step further. 

Step 3 - Finished bases

  In Step 3 I watered down a dark brown and brushed over the bases, not at every spot, but here and there to add some dirt colour to the base for a warmer tint. After it had dried I glued on some Citadel dead grass. I really liked the end result, but maybe for the ruin feeling I would have better stopped at Step 2. The finished bases have more natural rock formation look than ruins and rubble.

Crisis Suits with their new bases. 

Pathfinders leading the way. Sergeant is in the middle with binoculars and radio

Pathfinders from other view. I added some small details like gun holster and knifes to the models. 

Bigg and Small

Hi,

Last time I promised you that I would revisit Super Dungeon Explore. Here you go. New painted miniatures are the Druid and the transformed Bear/wolf  (this topic is up for heated debate amongs SDE scholars), and the kobold Ogres Rex Mini and Rex Max.

Here is a small photo cartoon introducing our new heroes. "Big and Small" -Enjoy!

The Druid encounters some kobolds while searching for mushrooms for his stew. It does look a bit bad for our hero!

Rooargh. The kobolds are suprised when the druid tansforms to a gigantic monster!

The poor kobolds run for their life, pursued by the druid. 

Oh Dear, the Kobolds ran to their big brother Rex Mini for help. 

How will this end, as also Rex Maxi have come to his brothers aid?

Below are som more details of the minis. The transformed Druid is painted by my friend, all credits to him for the awesome painjob.

Rex Mini and Max

Ready for Battle

Hi there, 

Last time we visited the vehicle factory, this time we take a look at the finished product, namely the Tau Devilfish. The whole project took about one week calendar time. One Sunday and several evenings to finish. 

I must say I am quite pleased with the end result, this being my first painted vehicle and even with a camouflage pattern. I think that next time I maybe skip the pattern stencils altogether and do the pattern with a brush directly on the model itself. 

But enough with the text, here are some picture and video of the thing. 

In my next update I will re-visit Super Dungeon Explore and I promise you it will be very cool! Until next time. The Devilfish will also get some more love in an upcoming update when my next project with the Pathfinders are done. 

Fire Warriors taking postions after exiting the vechile

Front

Side

Back

Top

WH40K Forward for the Greater Good

Hi,

I am already breaking my SDE theme, but it is still not November :)

This weekend I painted a Warhammer 40k  Tau Fire Warrior squad I probably had for almost 6-7 years. I really hope I get a chance to play with them.

I went with a gray/blue colour scheme, These guys are urban fighters, perhaps participating in a "liberation" campaign of an Imperial hive world.

In my next update I hope I have some SDE Kobolds painted.

Have a nice late autumn week!

A complete Fire Warrior Squad

"Live and Die for the Greater Good!"

Theme for November - Super Dungeon Explore

Hi Dear Readers,

It´s been a while since last, but what I have hope will make up for any brake in updates. I acquired a couple of weeks ago Super Dungeon Explore shipped from Amazon UK. The game is themed like an 8 and 16-bit console JRPG dungeon bash and comes with about 50 minis in anime chibi style (i.e. super deformed). This post will start my theme month. I have project for the whole November to paint all the minis and will keep updating along the comig weeks my progress and maybe a review of the game also.

So I will start with the unboxing video I recorded immediately after receiving the box.

First Impressions:

Last Saturday I had a chance to assemble all the miniatures and play a short test game with my friends. The miniatures themself look really cool, but there are issues with the quality of the models.There are lot of mold lines and weird holes in places. One of the poor dragon priest fella's right arm was just a stump. Also the miniatures are perhaps in more pieces than I would prefer. I noticed the plastic cement does not work very well with these miniatures. Perhaps the plastic is different from the usual plastics in e.g GW miniatures. The assembly guide recommends super glue and this is also my recommendation. Gluing everything together without cleaning the models took about 2.5 hours and with proper cleaning double that.

The rulebook that comes with the boxed game is a very colourful and includes art that hold the theme of the game very well. Unfortunately the usabilty of the rules are not the best and you need to jump back and forth to find what you are looking for. Fortunately Soda Pop Miniatures have released a new rulebook as a download v.1.5 that is much better than the one that comes with the box. We played a 16-bit game with 3 heroes and three spawnpoints, one miniboss and dungeon boss. Once we got the hang of the rules it played quite smoothly and was really fun in my opinion, albeit playing as the consul (the bad guy) I felt I had a bit too much to keep track of. We decided to end the game when my miniboss killed one of the players and they had not made much progress. I really see forward to play again with a better understanding rules and flow of the game, so I wont give my final judgment yet.


Here are some pictures of all the assembled
miniatures.

The Heroes there are 8 playable ones and one Angry Bear (to the far left)

The baddies - Here is shown the two set of Kobold hordes, the big ones in the back row are Kobold Ogres (a new acquaintance for me)

The Dragons - Front line shows the different growth stages of a dragon from Hatchling to grand old bad ass dragion

REX(es) - These are my personal favorites. How cool are not thes massive minis with giant clubs. This dude won me the first game with Rex Smash!!

The Consul's minions ready for some mischief 

To not let the Kobolds get all the love here is my first painted Heroes the Ember Mage and the Dwarf. Hope you have enjoyed this mega update and please come back shortly to see more painted miniatures.

The Ember Mage - The orb in the staff is not an apple but a fiery globe!

The Dwarf - I call him Blue beard. 

Closeup of the axe showing my attempt to paint metal reflections

Sorceress - WIP

Today I wanted to start working on something happier and brighter than previous grim and serious projects. When looking trough my box of miniatures I choose the freebooters miniatures sorceress. She had a hint of manga style in the sculpt that suited my desire for something fun.

I quickly primed the miniature white and the base black. While waiting for the undrcoat to dry I scetched on my ipad the cloak and tried out different bright colour options. My choise was a pink coat.

The miniature has long legs and I decided to paint some blue tights. I will try to paint the tights so that i would look like fabric streched thighty over skin, showing the flesh underneat. 

Kildrak The Barbarian Dwarf - finished

I had time to finish Kildrak. Not in mood for much text but I will give credit to VoltRon for the snow effect go check out his blog.
http://miniarmyhugetimesink.wordpress.com/2011/12/08/how-to-make-snow-bases/

This is also the first time I had to paint jewels. I tried my hands on some Glaze technique for the jewels.

But here is the main course:

Front

Right side

Left Side

Kildrak meets two Orcs