OGGG

Although I wasnt particularly happy with with the way the greens on my larger terrain pieces blended with my mat, I was determined to carry on with the momentum I'd built by finishing some more terrain.

This time it is a set of highlands-style terrain pieces which are FDM prints from The Printing Goes Ever On. They are described as hills, but even after scaling them up to 125% they arent very big.. but at that size, they fit my needs perfectly as small Rohan-style outcrops. Of course, they would need to be 2 - 3 times larger to really look like the terrain of Deer Park Heights in New Zealand but these should be perfectly adequate for a 4 foot board!

I started with a heavy application of airbrushing, but quickly hit the expected problem when I put them on my mat off cut:

I used desaturated greens in the middle of each piece, and on the high points, but the colour I used on the outer edges just isnt a good match. This is the same problem I had with the woods until I hid it under static grass, but as I'm not planning to use static grass on these pieces, I really needed to find a colour that matched better. And then it hit me - it was so obvious!

So, one quick application of OG Goblin Green, and then a mix of Goblin Green and yellow later..

Much better! Then, it was just a matter of applying a copius amount of tufts. To be honest, I ran out of green ones so I might have to come back and add some more around the outer edges.

Two posts in two days? What the what?

I can hardly believe it myself. Despite the lack of activity here, I have actually painted a model or two over the last 2 years but, as good as I am at starting projects, I am terrible and finishing them. Even when I set myself a very modest goal, it often remains unfinished and not worth posting here. 

But apparently the answer is to set smaller goals. Literally. So here are the models from a single Plague sprue from Mantic's Epic Warpath, something I got from this year's Salute. I do actually have an Enforcer core army box for the game and some reinforcements, but I wanted to test the waters with something I wouldn't be too bothered by if I ruined it.

For a job that was mostly Contrast paints, I'm pretty happy with the results.

I deliberately didnt bother filling in the gaps around the bases because I like the way it makes them look like models in a movement tray. Not sure I will do the same for my Enforcers.. if I ever paint them, that is!

The Grass Is Always Greener..

..or sometimes, yellower. But it is never quite the same, dammit!

In a classic example or a first world problem, I decided about a year ago that I would get rid of a bunch of different gaming mats and replace them with a small number of the same mat but in different sizes. The theory was that I could then finally get off my butt and start painting (or finishing, in some cases) my collection of terrain projects and get them to match the colour and texture on the mat. It probably doesn't bother most people when the hill is a different shade of green to the mat it was placed on, but it sure bothers me!

So, last year I settled on a mat (the double sided Highlands in War mat from Gamemat.eu) and got myself a 4x4 and 6x4. After a bit of cutting, I ended up with a 4x4, 3x3, 2x2 (and, er, 2x3?) mats all in the same style and pallette.

Six months and one trip to Salute 2026 later and I was suitably inspired to resume this project. I dug out my box of linear obstacles and painted them up, along with some market stalls from Victrix and Wargames Atlantic.

So far, so good. Some amount of green paint on the base of a wall will go a long way to making it 'fit' but because the base of a wall is very small, it isnt apparent that the paint.. or the flock.. or the static grass.. isnt the same shade of green as the mat. It looks fine with almost any shade.

You can't get away with that so easily once you start needing a base to mount the terrain on, so the MDF bases for the market stalls were already starting to reveal the problem. But it was when I did a test scheme for a 3D printed hill that the colour problem became really apparent.

Indoors with natural light. Not bad. The hill looks a little saturated, but it's still pretty good. It doesnt look so good once I turn the lights on.

Outdoors. Not good. I think the satin finish of the mat doesnt help, but here the texture looks a lot more desaturated than the hill. 

I tried with just paint, then with woodlands scenic flock over the top, then with some different greens airbrushed over the top of that (pictured). Nothing looked right.

This prompted me to dig out a spare MDF base and try static grass. Indoors it looked great. 

Outdoors it looked okay, still not as good as I would like, but still less jarring than the effect on the small hill. So, looking at the pile of terrain I wanted to get through, I decided to get myself a static grass applicator. It arrived, and I got to work. Not on the hill, but instead I went back to my trees which I was never really happy with. Tufts were glued down. A mix of static grasses were applied. More tufts were purchased and glued down. And while the finished trees looked better.. the static grass effect didnt look as good on the tree bases as it did on the standalone base above, despite using the same static grass on the outer part of each tree base.

Outdoors. Looks okay from this angle.. but from above? Nope. Still not doing it for me.

Back to the drawing board, I guess! Right now I'm experimenting with different paints that i can spray onto the static grass on the edges of the bases to achieve a better transition. But if that doesn't work? I may have to accept that the only way to get a good match is to create my own base boards and cover them with the same static grass, just as Chris over at Ash and Stone does.

I still have a half dozen small FDM hills that need to be done yet in the same style, plus some of the re-released GW large hills and corner hills. But once thats all done I will have a good selection of finished terrain that can be used for a variety of different games on a variety of game mat sizes..

Have Time, Will Paint

One of the many (many) projects that I have had on my desk for the last year are a set of rocks - two sets, actually - that I wanted to have painted up for use as scatter terrain. Because the sets had three different styles between them, I had the idea to paint them up for different terrain types. The desert and ice rocks came together quickly but the woodlandy rocks have been in a partially undercoated state long enough that I had to wash the dust off them before I could finish priming them.

But with the four day weekend, some good light and the right mood, things aligned so that I could finally get them finished.

..of course, I probably don't have enough icy rocks for scatter terrain for a game of Frostgrave and I certainly don't have enough rocks for Fallout or Dracula's America so I will probably have to get some more. Mind you, I forgot to write down any of the paints I used.. 

Also..

I realised that I actually painted a few other random things this year, including..

This platform from TTCombat (to go with my Mars terrain). This made it into the "hurry up and paint it" list because it is large, flat and made from MDF and thus guaranteed to warp in my cold, damp office. 

These HeroQuest orcs. The scheme is fast and simple. The cleaning up of the miniatures to paint them? Not so much.

... and Mr Spooky Mans, who I painted late last year for a MESBG Battle Companies campaign. In retrospect it would have looked better (and brighter) if I had used a single coat of a contrast paint over white instead of doing multiple washes and a drybrush highlight..

Frostgrave. How seasonal!

It is hard to believe that the first edition of Frostgrave came out over seven freaking years ago. As someone who backed the Necromunda horse when it first came out and thus couldn't afford to jump in on Mordheim when it was released a few years later, Frostgrave was the more approachable and in-print alternative that I had been waiting for.

I rushed out and purchased a dozen or so metal figures from a variety of manufacturers to make my first warband and promptly.. never painted them. I have wanted a nicely painted warband ever since but with my glacial painting speeds, it was never going to happen.

By the time 2nd edition came out a scant two years ago, I was starting to suspect that a nicely painted warband was no longer within my ability. Accepting that, I naturally.. started a brand new warband. This one featured the easier to paint and cheaper-to-replace-when-I-screw-them-up Frostgrave plastics. By July 2021, I had managed to paint.. two horses. And not only are they from an optional supplement, you can only take one! 

But fast forward a year (and a bit) later and I have actually managed to finish the rest of the models! That's like.. almost a model a month! Madness. I would like to thank my diminishing ability and eyesight for making this happen. Agonising for months over a single model and producing a B- of a paint job is no longer an option; a one month C- job is now all I can manage. So.. er.. yay? 

In the front row we have Lyra the apprentice, Ranald the Artificer and Captain Graves.

The trio on the left is an infantrywoman and two thugs, while on the right we have another thug, a thief, an infantrywoman and a crossbowman.

Finally, bringing up the rear is a low level version of Artemis (the Captain's horse), the higher level version of Artemis (featuring a mounted version of Captain Graves) and my large construct, Rowdy. If I ever find a medium construct miniature I like then I may add one to the warband.. but otherwise the Ranald's Expedition is finally ready to go! 

September Sun

September is a tricky month. The kids go back to school (or if you are reading this in the future and are currently enjoying Covid-22, maybe they don't) but you can't appreciate it because you are still paying for that time off work you had over the summer.

The days are cold in the morning but still bright and warm in the afternoon, and for about half the month you still have some daylight in the evenings to get things done. And then autumn sneaks in, the rain comes back and you are soon huddled around a fire by 6pm, waiting for the wolves to come and eat you.

When it comes to tackling projects in my hobby closest, I normally need to wait for the perfect storm of need, desire, enthusiasm, time, materials and space in order for that project to miraculously transition from "Something I will do one day" to "Holy cow it is done!". But in September, all of those things can be substituted for desperation.

And so here are some trees, designed to match the mat I will use for Fallout and Gamma Wolves. And some billboards, also for Fallout, though now that I have painted them I've decided I will put them on bases so they aren't really complete. Now that It Is Dark Again, they may not be completed until 2022!

The trees are Woodland Scenic armatures stuck to MDF bases covered in sanded polystyrene and Sculptamold. I messed that up by making too much, so while two of the tree bases are relatively smooth, the other two ended up being clumpy and difficult to work with because it was drying by the time I applied it. I will make it in smaller batches next time so hopefully I will avoid the same mistake.

Also shown is the base for one of my Gamma Wolves frames because I wanted to make sure the colours and style of the tree bases matched. The images I used on the billboards are by Charlie Wilcher and I found them at his ArtStation page here. 

Come for the art style, stay for the setting

Thats what happened to me when I picked up a few of the Heavy Gear RPG books back in my univeristy days and I have followed the progress of DP9's baby ever since. When Blitz first came out, I even dabbled in the Heavy Gear minis game but I didn't really give it a fair shake until DP9 launched their first kickstarter. 

I picked up a few of the metal minis and of course, a pledge for the new plastic kits too but since the rules (and more importantly, force lists) were in a state of flux, I didn't want to build anything until I knew how many of my favourite designs I could fit into a standard game.. and how many points a standard game would actually be!

When DP9 finally put out the force compendium for 3rd edition, I drew up three CNCS / WFP lists (50, 100 and 150 TV), one for each of the three game sizes, ordered what I didn't have from Shiny Games, then began building the models I would need. This evening, I finally finished the last of them*

Back row: Koala, Leopard, Para Strike Hunter, Leopard, Scorpion helo. 

Middle row: Hunter Gunner x2, Assault Hunter x2. 

Front row: Wildcat Pathfinder, Bobcat Flackcat x2, Weasel, Badger APC, Field Gun, Infantry squad x2

I have to say that their resin kits (the Bagder APC and Scorpion helicopter) were in the sweet spot of detail vs ease of preparation and I wouldn't mind if some of the gears switched over to that material. 

The plastics were easy to build (though they don't take polycement very well) but had stiff poses, and were noticeably skinnier and taller than their metal equivalents. 

The metals, by contrast, were nice and chunky with much better posing and the superglue worked as well as you would expect.. but everything needed a ton of cleanup; mold lines were for sure an issue but the biggest headache were the seams where one half of the mold had slipped, or otherwise did not line up with the other half. It was particularly bad on the arms and in filing down the half that was too thick, I lost quite a lot of detail. 

Even so, when I decide to get some additional gears, I will get them in metal as long as they are available, despite the price. I will technically need two more stock Hunters (the Assault Hunters will serve as a proxies until then) and I want a pair of Dingos because the weapon loadouts are a lot more interesting than the ones available to the Koalas.

In the meantime I also have a Strider to build although that's just for variety - it is easy enough to switch out the Scorpion since the points cost is similar. No rush for that, though. These need to get painted first... 

* apart from two more Hunters, which I don't have enough of. And my Wildcat Pathfinder is actually a Wildcat Riotmaster but when I decided I wanted a Wildcat with a rifle, I realised there are no medium rifles on ANY of the plastic kits, and no medium rifles in my bits box from the other metals. So I have another Wildcat to build once I've sourced a medium rifle from somewhere..

Not-cromorphs

I have wanted some necromorph models for ages and I think that started when I got my copy of Sedition Wars. I guess I was hoping that some day, a company would get the license to make an official Dead Space game and then I wouldn't have to make something myself.

However, with Quarrantine 37 due for release in a couple of weeks, I realised I was going to need some space zombies.. and while I already have a bunch of the Mantic plague zombies and the Virus-inspired Strain from Sedition Wars, I figured now was as good a time as any to cross another project off the list.

Made from a mixture of Deadzone plague zombies, Kings of War zombies and Kings of War Nightstalker Reapers, these are neither well converted nor well painted.. but in a first for me, when I sat back and looked at them, I decided "Eh, they'll do". I guess it was because I didn't plan to do anything else with the kits so it didn't feel like I was wasting or devaluing them by cutting them up and covering them with paint. 

Also included is a KoW objective marker and a Xenomoth from Zombicide Invader (boy I wish you could buy those separately). 

Now I just need to make a Bloater or two and I should have everything I need for Quarantine 37. Well, perhaps I need I new Engineer-themed crew as well.. 

Star of Alladore

Arriving just in time to make July a double blog post month, my printed copy of Star of Alladore just showed up! 

An official fanzine for Rangers of Shadow Deep, this represents the second time my work has been in print, and the fourth time I have contributed to a print product (I also helped out with Heroes of the Solar System and the Imperial book for Warzone Resurrection in a proof reading / balancing capacity and I actually wrote stuff that made it in to Warzone Resurrection 2nd edition. And then there was Kirkwood, which never saw an official release..)

Thanks for involving me in this project, Joe! 

Horses! and.. more terrain.

On the back of painting five (!!) whole miniatures last month, I managed to finish two more that have been sitting on my painting desk since January.. two horses for use in Frostgrave. Can I use two at once? Nope. But you can upgrade your horse and I wanted a model for the basic horse, as well as a model to represent the horse after a few upgrades.

And of course, who will ride this horse but a captain. Might as well put all my gold coins in one basket..

..and then since 7 models is more than I painted in the last two years, I figured it was time to get back to more terrain. First up, some 3D printed craters off ebay (because those GW moonscape craters still go for more money than I'm prepared to pay..)

They will be for one of my many planned Warzone tables, but also here is a clearer picture of them. In.. the sky? 

..and finally, my TTCombat Iron Labyrinth Ultima set. I love making MDF terrain but oh boy was this a chore to get through! Half of the set has been primed brown (and then I ran out of brown spray paint) and then sprayed green from above and I'm testing out weathering techniques on a few of the pieces to see what looks the best for the least amount of effort. 

Thank goodness for paint pens! 

Roh-butts

While I have not enjoyed painting miniatures over the last five years (coinciding with my declining ability to do the same), the recent Stargrave launch created the usual skirmish game dilemma for me; maybe this will be the game where I can get a basic roster of minis done before the first expansion drops and I fall too far behind. 

Of course, it has failed to happen dozens of times before and there was no reason to think Stargrave would really be the exception. Except.. well, this game has robots. And when a simple black primer and a heavy drybrush of GW Leadbelcher gets you 80% of the way there, I figured that even I could push a few 3D printed minis (from Anvil) over the finish line.

So here we have two Sentrabots (black primer, GW Leadbelcher drybrush, GW Agrax wash, deliberately thin coat of Vallejo Insignia White and P3 Khador Red Highlight).. 

..plus two "Gunner" droids for my actual crew, R1C0 and M0X1. Primer, drybrush, P3 Coal Black / GW Mephiston Red, GW Nuln oil wash and a single highlight. Really pushing the boat out! 

..and finally a Warbot. It gets up to three shots. This gun has three barrels. That works for me. I also went a bit crazy with this one and came dangerously close to proper painting. And then I had to have a cup of tea and a lie down.

Primer, drybrush, P3 Greatcoat Grey, nuln oil.. and then I thought I'd try out one of those Army Painter makeup style drybrushes and I was mightily impressed with the results on the big armour plates. 50% Greatcoat Grey and AP Fog Grey, then pure Fog Grey, then 50% Fog Grey and Vallejo Insignia White. The chest area got an extra helping of the off-white drybrush to prepare it for the yellow, which was just GW Iyanden Yellow contrast straight over the pale blue.

The rust effect was me painting on pure Vallejo Mahogany, panicking and dabbing on some random black and dark brown to tone down the red! 

.. and speaking of terrain

Another project finished. Some tiles for Walking Dead, Zona Alfa and Fallout. These TTCombat harbour tiles are 1x1 so six will be enough to create a harbour section on a 3x3 water mat. But in most cases I will probably only use two or three of these on an asphalt / rubble mat. The smaller, angled sections and the stairs are from TTComat's Carnevale line. There is a piece of 0.5mm plasticard on top of each tile section to hide the original texture that was there.

Mind you, you can make a good 'base' for a 2x2 table with these. This is slightly too big for Walking Dead but eh, bigger deployment zones. 

.. and a fountain. Sadly I only had Vallejo water effects on hand, so I expect to be disappointed by the water results in 2 to 3 days..

Terrain Snob

I've had some Infinity card buildings sitting in my office cupboard for the longest time. Since.. the USAriadna pack came out, which was in the heady pre-pandemic days that seem like a distant memory. I got a second set with the Ariadna vs Aleph box, though it languished alongside the first.

It's not that I hate pre-coloured scenery in general or cardboard terrain in particular (I have plenty of Battlesystems stuff and what you get in those Infinity boxes is an excellent way of getting started) but.. the lack of geometric detail, the concerns about stability, the concerns about durability.. not to mention the fact that I have dozens of 'normal' MDF and hard plastic terrain kits (some even painted) meant that I always had a "better" option. I was a terrain snob!

Until tonight.

I've been meaning to have a go at the Dead or Alive supplement for Stargrave since it came out; I have more than enough minis assembled and this evening I had the opportunity to play it.. but ferrying boxes of fragile terrain to and from storage just to try it out seemed like a chore. Besides, I didn't have enough pieces finished in a consistent style to fill a 3x3 board and I knew it would bug me if I mixed and matched the styles (plus that would mean even more boxes).

(A store photo for one of the Precinct Sigma kits from MAS. Looks perfect for Judge Dredd, Realities Edge / Hardwired.. or Infinity, of course) 

Even so, I might not have considered the cardboard Infinity stuff if it hadn't been for the recent videos I watched showing off pre-coloured MDF terrain from Micro Art Studios (I particularly like the graffiti-strewn Precinct Sigma stuff) as well as the previews from Multiverse with their upcoming pre-coloured MDF products. It had warmed up to the idea of simpler, more robust buildings and there was no denying that the finish was far more detailed that I would ever achieve in paint.

(Preview from the Multiverse FB page. I'm getting a Fallout vibe from this!) 

So I opened up both packs, filled a 3x3 with rectangular buildings and shipping containers.. and since the art style fitted the mat, it all looked really good and played well enough. I'm certainly considering the hard card terrain sets from CB now and I might even pick up a few of the pre-printed MDF kits to see how I feel about phasing out my TTCombat sci-fi terrain..

(A humble card building from the Aplekton scenery pack. Humble, but useful. And 100% more painted than the robot)