Space Wolves are getting sorted.

Short post today. I've got all the marines cleaned up and sorted into their respective units. Now I just have to assemble them :)

Cheers.

It's the Wolf Time bro :)

Warning, spoilers ahead!!!

Ok, I've decided to shelve my Eldar project for the time being....along with the rest of my other half finished projects:) The reason? The wolf time scenario from the Book of the Astronomican has lured me away, that's why.

I've been  procrastinating about doing this for years. Originally I wanted to be an active player in it, so I resisted reading it for ages, hoping that one of my mates would get enthused enough to run it.....never happened :(

Fast forward a few more years, and after reading a few batreps of it on the blogosphere I gave in and read through the entire campaign in my old PDF copy. But in doing so I had knowingly marked myself as the GM to run it. That wasn't an entirely bad thing though, because it seems like it would be a lot of fun to run.

Around the same time as the batrep reading, I canvassed the Oldhammer forum for advice on conversion/proxy ideas for one of the main characters. But typically I didn't get any further than that. That was until I got my grubby little mits on an original copy a few months back, albeit in need of some serious repair. Once I'd finished that exercise I had pretty much settled on the idea of running it myself though. I carried out a bit of a stock take of what minis I had in my collection a few weeks ago. Looking for one's that were "game ready" & what I'd need to paint/convert/procure.


Here's what I have with me that's ready to go:

40 Space Ork's,
The Citi-Block tile set.


And what I'd require to fill in the gaps:

15 Space wolves (Howlers) aka tactical squads,
10 Space wolves (Snarlers) aka Devastator squads,
5 Space wolves (Tearers) aka Assault squad,
5 Space wolves on Jet cycles (Trackers),
6 Space wolf characters,
5 Ork Nobz. There's 8 needed in total, but I reckon I can do it with 5.
1 Ork character model.....I can make do with what I already have for the others I think.
A couple of set terrain pieces.....and lastly,
"Dungeon floor plans 1" & "Dungeon Rooms".

Quite a dismal start huh? What the hell have I got myself in for?!!!



Alright then, to the first order of business, the marines. I've had a bunch of these dudes in a bag for a couple of years. Bought cheap (and painted accordingly) on the bay when I was on my Space Marine conversion trip. They've come in handy quite a few times for testing paint schemes & the like, but now I've brought that malarkey to an end. Here's the proof chums:

Here's what fifty odd, poorly painted & half assembled placky marines look like.

The painting was "amazing".

'Eavy Metal, eat your heart out :D

Into the acid bath ya go ya filthy bastard's...muuhaahhhh!

Ready for the real work to begin, removing old glue and scraping off mold lines. Or as I like to call it...."mini whittling" :(

Now, I'm the first to admit that there's a shit load of work to be done, but I've got three months to get it finished by. So in all honesty I reckon that should be plenty. Why three months? That's when I'll be flying back home again for a holiday. If I ever do manage to complete this mad project, it should be "fun" trying to get it to it's destination (and back again) in one piece :DDD

Wish me luck.

RT Eldar.....on the roid's man!

Just about finished pimping up the two Eldar minis. Thought I'd show some progress shots.

Here's the first victim, originally the Las-cannon dude;

Have Plasma-cannon, will travel.....and kill lots of shit too!

I'm either gunna GS this gap or install a power pack for the cannon instead.

I'll make a beefed up shoulder pad with GS to fill this gap.

I wanted to use an original Plasma-cannon from the RT range, but I wasn't able to locate any....or more specifically, any at a reasonable price! So I had a look at Forgeworld under their 30K range & noticed that they produced a heavy weapon set that IMO looked better than the originals!

I replaced the helmeted head with a resin copy from the donor mini that I mentioned in the previous post. To fill in the big chunk I had carved out of his right arse cheek I added a helmet, also taken from the donor mini.

Next up was the Lasgun guy;

Here you can see his right shoulder pad that I repositioned ever so slightly.

It wasn't by much, but it allowed me to lay his arm across his chest in a more natural position.

So that he could wield this intimidating Chaos Renegade Grenade launcher!

If I had known which weapon I was going to give him I probably could have kept the bulk of his appendage's intact...hindsight can be a bitch when converting up minis. The Grenade launcher was kindly donated by GoblinLee. Hope you approve of my heretical use of it? Cheers buddy :)

I've still got a little bit of tidying up to do before I'll call these guys finished, but the bulk of the conversion work is done. Next up is some extensive filling & reshaping, then they'll be ready for the brush. So, what do you guys think? Do you reckon that they look better or worse than the originals?

Cheers all :)

RT Eldar.....on the butcher's slab!

With the pleasantries out of the way we can begin,

I've had a smallish Eldar force for a couple years now (about twenty?), purchased off of eBay on a midnight whim. I only used them once or twice in a game, mainly due to the paint jobs they came with being so mediocre that they made me physically ill to look at! So I decided to cleanse them with fire!!!! Not real fire! Just Industrial grade paint stripper.......well it burns like fire when you get it on your fingers!

Anyway, with their shabby skin's removed, I then set about doing absolutely nothing with them for the next couple of years, while other -more important projects- captured my attention. Fast forward to the present & I've cleaned & based them all up bar five individuals. And it is these five that are the focus of today's blog post. For they are destined for some serious surgery. "What surgery?" You ask. Let me explain......

There's two duplicates in amongst the force, two Las-cannon & two Lasgun dudes. Now, not only did I not want two of the same posed minis in my force, I also wasn't happy about the slim choice of heavy weapons I had either. The old RT Eldar really suffered in this department IMO.

Here they are, the twin twin's.

Now, as many of you may already know, GW were very good at making variant minis off of the same base sculpt. I'm not sure what the record for this was back in the day, but I think the RT Space Ork range might have had about five variants based off of the one mini? The Eldar were no different, in this particular case there were three minis based off of the one. See below for concrete proof of my assertion :)

The guy on the left will be used as the "donor" mini. From which I'll reference to repair the others from.

Can you see the similarities between these three?

So, to remedy this situation I decided to convert up two of them to carry something more befitting a mercenary i.e. a Grenade Launcher or Plasma Cannon? I began by selecting the best cast of each duplicate & marked the worst one with a "D" for dud :)

The mark of shame :(

Then I removed the offending weapon as carefully as I possibly could. I didn't want to create more sculpting/GS work than was necessary. I'm already "gifted" in that department enough as it is :)

"Aarrhhh, me arms!!!!!"

"Where'd me arms go ya bastard?!!!"

So, this is where I'm up to at this stage. I'm contemplating weather I should cast up a few sections of the minis to replace the damaged sections or if I should try my hand at sculpting? Not sure yet. I'll have to play around a bit first.

Cheers :)

Pretend tree bases.

Howdy folks,

I've been making terrain piece's intermittently for the past few months now. One type of them has been some forest sections. I thought I'd give a basic description of how I went about making them.


Ingredients:

* A cherished & much loved CD or DVD.
* Bogroll a.k.a. toilet paper.
* Expanded foam scraps
* Static grass
* Pretend Trees
* PVA
* Sand
* Basing material

Oh, and a bit of paint wouldn't go astray either :)


Method:

1/ Cover the centre hole of the CD with a bit of plastic.
2/ Stick down a couple of trees in random locations.
3/ To make some rocks, stick some Expanded foam bits to the base.
4/ Mix some PVA with water 50:50 and paint the foam with it.
5/ Tear off small sections of toilet paper and lay them all over the wet foam.
6/ Paint the PVA mix over the toilet paper to adhere it to the foam.
7/ While it's still wet, sprinkle it with sand. The rock is now done.
8/ Coat the rest of the base with straight PVA & cover it with basing material. Then let it dry.
9/ Shake off the loose basing material, then paint the rocks with black paint & drybrush white.
10/ Ink wash the basing material Dark brown & drybrush with Light brown paint....let it dry.
11/ Paint PVA all around the perimeter of the base, rocks and in sporadic locations too.
12/ Apply static grass to the base and leave to dry.
13/ Once dry, shake off the loose static grass....Job done!



Now here's some tree porn for you all to enjoy,

Here's some tree's.

And here's some more tree's.

Here's a close up of some tree's.

And here's a close up of just one tree.

Oh, and this one is a special one.....oh, no it's not! It's just a close up of some tree's too!!....sorry :(

Here's a selection of some of the tree bases on my "forever almost finished" skirmish tabletop.

All up, I made ten of these tree bases. Which should be enough to game with on most sized tabletop's I reckon. Overall, I'm pretty with how they turned out, except for the static grass colour. It could have matched my grass mat better, but I suppose that's always an issue when using this stuff.....there's just so many different shades of the stuff, trying to colour match it can be nigh impossible. Oh well, it's only a slight problem, the rest of the thing turned out fine IMHO :)

I've made up some Sci-fi terrain bases too, but they still require a bit more work before I can call them finished.

Until next time, keep breathing.