The Sneakiest Carp

I’m toying around with the idea of doing a pre heresy army and these guys were my test run at a world eaters scheme.  I’m still stuck on if I want to do a pure world eaters or a conglomeration of loyalist remnants from Istvan III.  I like the loyalist idea because it allows me to paint many different chapter colors while retaining a nice theme.  I’m just not sure how the different legion rules work.  They’re not entirely clear on how you make your army a specific legion.  Do you just declare it in the creation of the army list?  If anyone knows for sure please let me know.  I’m probably just missing it somewhere in the text.

As for the painting of these guys, I pretty much followed the forgeworld paint scheme for them.  I primed them with the vallejo surface primer white and then washed them all with a mix of Drakenhof Nightshade, Nuln Oil, Lahmian Medium and Water (even parts of each).  After that dries, sponge on ceramite white.  The blue was Kantor blue highlighted with teclis blue with a bit of the wash from earlier.  The brass was done with a base coat of some old tin bits and then sycorax bronze.  To get the best results always base the metals with black first.  I then washed this with secret weapons armor wash and gave it one more highlight with the sycorax brass.  I used weathering powders on the base and lightly brushed them up onto the armor to give it a dirty worn look.  I tried using some vallejo hull red to add armor chips but it didn’t quite turn out right.  I’m not sure if I need more practice at painting them or just a new technique.  I’ll try doing some research.

Anyways, thats that.  Now its time to test up a few other color schemes.  I have one I really want to try for the Emperors children involving runefang steel and tamiya clear purple .

Enjoy!

HA!  Were back!  Today I’ve got some finished photos of two fun sets of models.  The first is the Forgeworld Carmine Dragon.  This model was fairly straight forward to build and paint.  The green of the skin was done by basecoating it with the German yellow surface primer and then washed using Gamesworkshops green wash (can’t remember the exact name).  The base was made using the same techniques I used to make the base for the Pounder.  The ground material is secret weapon miniatures leaves and leaf litter, which I’m starting to think is actually just catnip.  Anyways, its attached using white glue that I watered down, covered the base with and then added the litter and mix it together with a brush.  Same with the leaves, sprinkle them on then put the watered down glue over them.  It really helps hold them in place.

Next is FichtenFoo’s Fantastical Fish Shaped Submersible.  Like the Remora you can find this on Industria Mechanika’s website.  For all the etched brass involved it goes together easily enough.  Actually if you have never done brass etching work before, I recommend this as a good starting point.  It’s fairly straight forward and the instructions are pretty clear.  The inside is painted, though I can’t find the shot’s I took of that on my computer.  If I find them I’ll post them.

Sorry if the descriptions are kinda uninspired today, I’m in a bit of a hurry and I really wanted to post these.

Enjoy the photos!

As you may or may not have noticed, in the last couple of weeks I haven’t been posting as frequently as I would like.  This is because I was made full time at my job.  This is a good thing as it means that I can do things like pay my student loan bills every month.  The downside is it means less hobbying time.  With that in mind I have decided to clear out a few models that I know I will not be getting to.

Right now it’s only two but, stay tuned as I know I have some other kit’s I’ll probably be putting up for sale.

The first is a resin kit of a Skipjack class submarine at dock.  I bought this in a tiny hobby shop in champaign urbana and when I got it home and opened it I found that the upper rudder was broke and not in the box, and the kit was missing the diving panes for the conning tower.  I’m sure with a little time and effort this could be fixed I just don’t currently have either.  So if you have those two things, and want this model kit, please contact me.  25 dollars gets you the kit and shipping anywhere in the contiguous united states!

Next is a perfect grade RX-178 Gundam MK II Titans variant.  There was a time where I built gundams.  Now is not that time.  As you can see I’ve started the build process.  In the time when I built gundams I was not a painter yet.  I just liked Gundams so all of this is just base plastic.  As far as I can tell, everything is still in the box.  I even have batteries in there.  I’m sure for any experienced gundam builder out there this would be a fun kit to finish up.  95 Dollars gets you the model and shipping to anywhere in the united states.  Send me an email if you’re interested.

So I got this kit in May for my birthday, and after two straight weeks of work I put it down and basically wasn’t sure how to finish it.  I had done the main painting but I didn’t know what I wanted to do for decals and weathering or what to put on the deck.  Thankfuly a painting contest at a local hobby store, Al’s Hobby Shop, inspired me to finally get this kit finished.

The downside is in that time I apparently stopped taking pictures of the work in progress.  So it goes basically from being basecoated to done in the pictures I have.  So I’m not going to go into too much detail on the painting.

What I do want to say is what a breeze this kit was to put together.  Clean up was minimal and none of the parts had any warping.  I really like the resin that Industria Mechanika uses, it doesn’t seem to ever have a lot of mold release and it smells lightly of vanilla when drilling it out.  The main body is a solid piece of resin which is nice cause it gives the model a great sense of weight.  All the other pieces fit together fantastically.

Once assembly was complete I fashioned a jig out of a board and some old coat hangars to set the model on while painting.  I decided to paint it in a color scheme similar to the old Elgin Joliet & Eastern railway company.  So orange and green.  I airbrushed the body orange after a black primer (don’t ask me why I went from black to orange and didn’t prime white, it seems kinda stupid of me in hindsight).  I masked off the lower portions of the model and airbrushed on the green.

I sponged on the chipping mixing a bit of hull red and panzer grey and then went right to the AK interactive paints for weathering.  These are becoming my favorite tools for this process.

The Gas containers, or whatever those are supposed to be were made from an old HO scale tank car that I cut in half.  I gave them a gritty spray coat and added some decals I had lying around and then weathered the heck out of them.

I did up the lights as green and red for starboard and port and that was pretty much the extent of the painting process.

The most tense moment of the project was drilling out the body of the kit for the half inch acrylic rod.  I had to make another jig out of soft foam blocks and some plywood to prevent anything from breaking but, it worked without damaging anything.

All in all I’m incredibly happy with this kit, and I can’t wait to build up more stuff from this growing company.

To add a plug, check their page out at, http://industriamechanika.com/blog/.

Enjoy!

I know I have what, like 4 or more other projects I should probably finish but, I started a new game none the less.  I picked up the starter box of FSA and The French Republique for Dystopian Wars.  First off, if you can get past how poorly the rule book is layed out, the rules are actually really good.  Second, the models are amazing.  I’ve been passing these in my local game store for quite a while trying to find an excuse to buy some and finally I decided I didn’t need an excuse these are just to nice not to get.  That led to me deciding I was going to give this game a try while I was waiting for Dropzone commander to catch up on its miniature orders since I’m still waiting on that.

Anyways, on to the models.  I love the fact that for 50 bucks you get a ton of models.  Honestly this is one of the best deals around.  There is little cleanup require only one or two mold lines at best and the resin is easily washed.  Sometimes some mold release agent just doesn’t want to come off, not the case with these.

I have decided I wanted to mount these on bases so I can add water effects around the ships so I used Games Workshop movement trays for the job.  These work great cause they’re easy to cut and I stocked up on a few before the price hike.  Otherwise just make a template and cut out some plasticard for this.

I primed these ships in Vallejo surface primer Panzer Grey as per usual these days.  I highlighted up by adding GW Ironbreaker to the primer.  This gave them a metallic grey finish that I darkened with secret weapons armor wash.  My hope was to get the look of the old civil war ironclads that were mostly black metal but, with out that flat look that straight black would give.  The decks have been based with Vallejo air Light brown.  Not sure exactly what I plan on doing for the rest of the decks as I’m still looking up ideas on how to paint them.  I want to give them a lighter red wood look.  I have some ideas involving oil paints I’m just not sure what color to lighted the wood with first.

I’ll let you know how that all goes.  Until then enjoy a few pictures.

Just a quick little update from my iPad tonight. I’m working on these phr models for a friend of mine.
The base coat was a mix of uk bronze green and dark angels green. These models are really nice, just make sure you wash them well. It doesn’t look like there is any mold release agent but trust me there is. I found out the hard way on one of the drops hips.

I can’t wait to give this games try. I’ve read the rules something like twenty times over. I placed an order for my UCM army but those seem to be sold out so it may take a little while. Oh well, something for me to look forward to.

Enjoy

So in my posting absences I have still been working on modeling.  Namely some painting for my dust tatactics stuff that I plan on getting rid of.  I know that for whatever reason the Dust Warfare rules have been getting good reception in the online community but, I for one have not found them all that great.  Which is disheartening because I absolutely love the look of the models and 1/48th scale makes for great modeling opportunities.

That out of the way, I’ll start with the pounder.  Like all the models that come in the box sets, they are pre assembled and have a base coat of paint.  Make sure you take the time to go through and clean off mold lines (these can be tricky and surprisingly hidden).  I liked the stars already on the side of this model so I used a masking fluid to mask them off and save them for later.

I wanted to keep this model simple so I base coated it with Vallejo U.K. Bronze Green, and slowly highlighted up with German Dark Yellow.  Once this was done I used pure German Dark Yellow and Panzer Grey, to add the chipping effect using a sponge.

After sealing this I sprayed the whole thing with hairspray and then airbrushed the whitewash on.  This was just watered down Vallejo white surface primer.  Then taking an old brush (I’m sure you all know this technique by now) I scrapped off excess whitewash to make it look warn.

The weathering was done using a series of different oil paints and streaking them on the sides and blending them in on the top flat surfaces.  The guns were picked out with the Panzer Grey and given a light coat of graphite for a shine.  The metallic pistons were given a coat of AK Interactive’s Engine oil.

The base was made by adding Forgeworld weathering powders directly to Rough Grey Pumice.  While this was still wet, I sprinkled on Secret Weapons Leaf litter, and some of their leaves as well.

Once dry I sealed the whole thing one more time.  The snow was done by mixing up glue and water, about a 1:1 ratio, and then adding Woodland Scenics snow into it.  This was about a 2:1 mix of glue to snow so it was still fairly soupy.  This way I could brush on the snow slowly in layers allowing the base below to still be seen.  Pro tip: Make sure you’re using a super clean brush.  I thought I was and I was wrong.  So some discoloration came through a bit.  A little of the white wash mix from earlier whitened it up and I added a second layer of snow to thicken it up (this time with an actually clean brush) along with adding the snow on the vehicle.

Next is the Ludwig.  This one I painted up in a “what if” octopus color scheme I found in an old model magazine I had.  I had painted up a 1/48th scale Jagdpanther in this scheme as well cause I was planning on making my own rules for real vehicles in Dust Warfare.  I won’t go into the painting details on this one, as honestly I can’t remember them all and I didn’t photograph it as extensively as the pounder.

Hope you enjoy!

Here we have a little break from the standard warhammer painting. A Warmachine renegade war jack. I’ve always liked the Mercenaries colors in that game and may think about starting up an army of them. That will be some point after I get a drop zone commander army cause that game looks cool.
I’m deliberately avoiding a painting guide of this for right now. I’m planning on doing a more in depth one later in the next month or so along with a series of other painting guides.
Until then enjoy!

So while I was at gamesday I was going to let the universe decide which I should purchase, the Stormeagle or the Assault Ram.  I figured I’d see which one they had in stock, and which ever one it was would be the one I bought.   I wasn’t expecting for them to have neither.  So I went ahead and ordered the Stormeagle.

Flash forward a week and a half later (not actually that long of a wait for a FW order) and behold my new shiny stormeagle in the mail.  Except it wasn’t all that shiny.  The thing was in pretty rough shape.  One of the cowlings for the engines was damaged beyond use and the other was incredibly flimsy.  My model had damaged the mold it was made in pretty bad as I was pulling out chunks of blue rubber and quite a few pieces were majorly off set during the casting process.  I know that there is a certain amount of work expected to go into a model but I always found it to be a little much to expect your customer to re sculpt parts of your products.

Anyways, I contacted forgeworld hoping to at least get a new left side panel and some lascannons, cause oh yeah, they sent me two of the same sides.  Its been quite a few days, and I still haven’t heard back.  Considering they have Gamesday Germany this weekend and GenCon in Indy next weekend, I don’t anticipate hearing from them any time soon.  So I decided to fix the problems myself!

Out came the ol’ bone saw as it’s affectionately known and I lopped off the problem cowling and carefully constructed a new one with plasticard.  It’s not perfect but it was good enough for me.  I also used Tamiya modeling putty to strengthen the other cowling.

Once that was finished it was on to assembling the rest of the model.  Now I’m going to chalk it up to how poor the mold of this individual model was but, this was a pain in the ass to assemble.  It took about 6 hours from start to finish to get it to where it is.  I’ll probably spend another 2 hours green stuffing it.  I’m not saying this is a bad kit, I’m just saying this was a bad batch.  I’d like to purchase a second one at some point and see if it is any better.

I assembled the floor to one side panel and the roof to the other and glued on the front ramp as well.  I decided from the moment I first dry fit the pieces that I wasn’t going to be painting up the interior because of the poor fit of things so I just glued the assault ramps closed.  Once this was all dry I mounted the two halves together with a series of rubber bands and a large clamp.

The rear ramp was tricky as I had to sand the sides and the bottom to fit.  I actually had to cut off the little mounting brackets on the back to get it to fit right.  This was disappointing but, it didn’t look too bad.  I decided to go with hell strike missiles if for no other reason than I couldn’t use the lascannons and figured while I was at it I would make it a missile boat and add the typhoon missile launcher in the nose.  I have the canopy glued up without the glass so I can paint it without having to mask the glass parts off.  Also the landing gear is all magnetized for ease of transport when I get this thing a case.

Currently it’s ready for green stuff and I can’t tell you how happy I am to have all the construction of this thing out of the way.  Oh, and I think from now on I’m going to have to start taking detailed notes when building a model for a wip.  I swear I had a lot more to say about this things construction while building it.  That could have been the frustration talking.