Monday, December 4, 2017

How To: Grass Fields base




It's base time again!  This time we will be looking at a basic grass field basing scheme and using the magical secret weapon: Mod Podge.  For this basing scheme you will need a base, Some Coarse scatter rocks, sand)if you aren't using a pre textured base as I did), Mod Podge matte, and three different types of grassy flock as well as paint.

My base will start with the good old Kings of War plastic bases but you can use plasticard or anything else!



After you have a basic sandy texture to your base you can lay down a path for a little variety.  Use a line of super glue to outline the path then scatter some small rocks over it and suddenly a path appears!


Next spray paint the whole thing black and while it is drying spray it with a dark brown so you end up with a little bit of mixing between the two.


Next liberally dry brush brown all over the base.  You don't have to clean at all as most of this will be covered later on by the grass flock.


Before cleaning your brown brush off just dip it in some grey or white and drybrush the path in a nice light contrasting color.  Again don't worry if you go 'outside' the path most of that area will be covered in grass.


Now we get to our secret weapon.  Open up that Mod Podge and spread it all over the brown areas.  Be sure to be fairly thick on this as it will dry matte clear and the flock will adhere to it much better if you have enough mod podge on there for it.  Don't worry it really does dry clear!


Now don't wait for it to dry you need to get grass on that ASAP!  I've used a dirt flock (dark brownish green) from Gale Force 9 first.  Just sprinkle it around the base leaving some area for other colors to go on.  We want to use multiple types of flock in order to add some natural variation.


Without removing the excess flock start sprinkling on your second color.  for me I used a basic woodland scenics green grass flock.


Again without tapping off the excess I've sprinkled some dried yellow grass as I'm going for an early fall look eventually.


Finally shake off the excess flock into a nice neat pile and sprinkle it all over the base to add that last bit of varience.


Finally Wait for the whole thing to dry and add your last details.  I've added some piles of lovely fall colors though you can always use rocks, trees or whatever strikes your fancy.  Either way you should have a happy little base by the end!

Saturday, December 2, 2017

Gnomes and Dead Space Elves!

In an attempt to clear out the painters block I thought I'd paint up a few eldar models lying around.



As a result I never want to finish this army.  There are about 70 gems on each stupid model and they take FOREVER to paint up....

I did get a wee little package of wee little people a few days ago though.  As soon as it arrived the eldar were instantly shelved again.  GNOMES!!!!!:


These came through Old School Miniatures alpine gnomes kickstarter and they are AWESOME!  I've been wanting some halflings for my League of Rhordia army but when I saw these coming up I knew that shorter was better!  Why just have half sized guys when you can go full gnome?!?!

Friday, November 24, 2017

Slow Cooked Brotherhood

The nice part of not being a commissioned painter is not having to work with deadlines and being able to just 'not paint' when you no longer feel like painting.  Yes the evil burnout demon has reared it's ugly head after completing the gigantic Abyssal Dwarf Army.  I have gotten a few things done though.  First of all I've expanded my campaign tile sets and am using them as part of a 40k campaign:


And as time/ambition permits I've been toiling away on a Brotherhood army based off the old Bretonnian style Warhammer armies.


I do want my peasants to strike their lord's colors however they will be heavily muted and rather 'dirty' to represent their much lower standing on the power rungs...


In order to have a 'proxy' army up and running I though it would be good to just do a single model on each multi-base to start out with. The above is the start of the abyssal hunt regiment.


So far there is a lot of the army that isn't done but I can at least try out a few combinations as I slowly paint up the minis.  Each knight especially has wildly varying heraldry and I really can't do an assembly method like I'm used to for speeding it up.

I'm starting to get back on track so hopefully I can get some more crazy stuff painted up soon!  I'll have decent pics of the Brotherhood up as the units are finished as well.

Thursday, October 26, 2017

Spoopy Table!

Been on a bit of a break since the Abyssal Dwarves were finished so I might as well take care of some back log!  For October I made a spooky swamp board complete with terrain.



Standard 4x8 table with a line to bring it down to a 6 footer.  As usual the board is MDF board primed black and this time plenty of colors put down with a final coat of grey texture paint.  The swampy pools are simple colors with a layer of vallejo water.



The buildings are all Halloween village decorations with a fresh sepia wash to make them look a little older and more realistic.


The Skull-zeebo was an instant must have for this board.


The hills came from the same company who did the buildings and after a few coats of spray cans fit in well.


The new obsidian crypt from reaper is a great buy if you're looking for a cheap and durable piece of terrain.  Paints up pretty fast too!

Obviously there are still armies to paint so here's a teaser for the next project:  Brotherhood!



Wednesday, October 18, 2017

The Finish Line!

And with two new units the Abyssal Dwarves are done!


 I had to finish out one more regiment of Immortal Guard which were rather boring but it's nice to have two of them now!


Finally in order to end on a high note I did the Berzerkers.  They are doused in blood and standing over their fallen enemies.


and on top of that they have sweet tats and apparently drink lava!


If you want to check out the whole army at once head on over to the complete projects!

Monday, October 2, 2017

Nearing the Finish Line

It's been over two years (obviously off and on) since I started the old chaos dwarf army for the King of the Mountain GT.  Those were my very last warhammer fantasy games (which was an awesome send off) before switching to Kings of War which I happily did.  Those little guys took home not only best chaos dwarf (sure there were only two of us!) but best painted as well and have been near and dear to me ever since.

Now though they are nearing a completed and nearly 5000 point Abyssal dwarf army.  Plenty of mixed models as well as some home brew conversions have made this an insane but fun project.  Anywho here are a few more units to add to the legion:



Had to do another troop of gargoyles since they really are just amazing chaff units.  My only real complaint for these models has been that they tend to be confusing as a tall model that just happens to be height 1.  Of course when they look sweet on the table who cares if it confuses both yourself and the opponent right?


These little beutes came from a friend.  Neither he or I have a clue as to where these guys came from.  Some kind of world war I/II crossover dwarves.  They were super sinister and as much as I would like to use the mantic ones I couldn't resist using these as my dragon fire teams.


Another troop of Half Breeds are finished which means I can do two full regiments of the beasts.


Finally the last horde of Black Souls.  Despite some of them having shields I tend to use them as the two handed weapons version since they have big weapons and HUGE hats!  This was deffinately one of the hardest set of models to get ahold of and since the prices just keep rising on the old big hats I put in a unit filler made of the old metal Deff Dread with a happily maniacal dwarf driving it.

Only another regiment of Immortals and a regiment of berserkers to go now before I stick a fork in it...

Sunday, September 24, 2017

More Yu-Jing

I finally have enough for an infinity army of mine own!  I guess I should do some playing of the game now...


Also more terrain has made it's way to the tables:


And yes I'm sticking to some very unrealistic color schemes with lots of wear and tear.



Thursday, September 21, 2017

New Army Eats Brains

When I was a wee young lad getting into Warhammer I settled on the undead army as my first army book (yes back when they were a unified book).  That army was long since sold away to someone on Ebay whom I'm sure stripped it and started over (not that I blame them).  Finally though I have a new army with a super fun swamp theme though!


The most time consuming portion of the army was getting more water effects in for the swamp bases because all the ones in the local store were dried up!  I guess I'm the only crazy person doing water effects around here...


The wights mantic came up with are really an amazing model set.  Wasn't sure how they would pull off a large infantry wight but they really hit it out of the park.


I decided to differentiate the revenants from the regular skeleton rank and file I would just make them Scooby Doo style ghosts.  You can really paint up a good 2000 points of these guys in no time since it's a simple set of dry brushing and you're done!


The skeleton archers are a lot better looking than most out there.  Really the only complaint I have about Mantic's skeletons is that they have so much more detail than the old GW ones I was used to back in the way way before time and thus require more time.  Those old skeletons were literally just a wash and a drybrush then pick out the weapons!


The zombies painted up mostly in a single night so it won't be too hard to up them to a legion or even just another horde.


Finally we come to the only two non Mantic models a reaper lich and an old armored skeleton from GW as a revenant King.

Thursday, September 14, 2017

Terrain Extravaganza!

Lots of random today!  First up a pile of Infinity terrain.



Outside of the weathering effects all of the painting was done with spray paint making the paint jobs quick and easy.


This giant warsenal cosmica was a major pain to put together but its a super sweet piece to have on the table!



Yes everything is in obnoxious 80s flavor!


Gotta have some walls right?


We now call this the disco room.

Next up is a new board: The Enchanted Rainbow Forest!


Why did I do this?  I really don't know but rainbow river?


 and candy mountain.

And finally I painted up the new Artackle super fast for a friend's salamander army:


The undead are nearly done but I'm still waiting on more water effects to come in as the two I had have dried up.  So soon a new army!