2016 Year in Review

This was an exciting year for me with a lot of completion on a lot of projects. Very productive. So here is a wrap-up for the year, as well as an update on my many projects.

Zone Mortalis Tiles
I spent countless hours casting the bits, gluing them together, and painting these tiles. It's a total of 18 tiles with doodads, and they have gotten some play time. Our local game store had an event where my tiles handled about 4,000 points between 4 players. I am surprised at how well they handled the punishment, and the players were all impressed with the table. They are a little brittle, but that is due to the material used, where I went a little cheap. A lofty goal in the future will be to create a fantasy themed set of tiles, but I may splurge for the good dental plaster if I can find out where to get a hold of some nearby.

The Coven of Verminlord Skrax (Warhammer 40,000 - Dark Eldar Haemonculus Covens)
This was quite a project that yielded a proud achievement for me. A lot of effort when into the modeling and painting and display board, not to mention the wonderful comic illustrated by my brother. It was all paid off when I won Best in Appearance at the 40k GT Harvester of Souls. A trophy which is still proudly displayed in our living room.

Jarom's Orks Commission Here and Here
The undertaking for illustrating my comic was no small feat, so I gladly paid in painting small portion of Jarom's Orks in exchange. Jarom also took Best in Orks at the same tournament.

Gorkamorka
My brother and I haven't really acted on our plans to run a little Gorkamorka campaign yet. Both of us live a distance from each other, and he has been busy with a job enough as it is. So Gogmagog's Questing Knights (Mutiez) and Da 'ard 'eads (Gorkers) will remain unpainted for now. I am looking forward to fielding Da Hukka Trukka on the table sometime in the near future.

Heavy Gear Blitz!
My Heavy Gear plastics kickstarter delivered this year. I now have a lot of plastic sprues of tiny mecha. I have been a very long fan of Heavy Gear's setting, but never got a chance to play it in any form. This game seems pretty solid, and my brother has expressed a desire to give it a shot. I look forward to that sometime next year.

Deadzone
My addiction to small skirmish games continues even still. Deadzone is an example of my enthusiasm that builds in a game in intense bursts. Then it dies out. I am still up for playing games with it though. So I have several small armies built for this game, but the beauty of most small skirmish games I own, a lot of the figures can be used interchangeably. So even when I am not playing Deadzone, I can still use the terrain and minis for something; like Rogue Stars... but that's another post for another day.

Warhammer Quest: Silver Tower
The three of us (Jarom, Timo, and I) have been slowly working our way through the trials of the Silver Tower, and watching the story unfold and our characters progress. Jarom is playing an Orruk Warchanter, Timo is playing a Chaos Lord, and I am controlling the Order side with a Cogsmith and Lord-Relictor. What's even sweeter about this is how little money I have invested in this game and we are getting a lot out of it.

Censers and Tocsins (Warhammer: Age of Sigmar - Nurgle Rotbringers and Clan Pestilens)
This project will likely be set on the back burner. I love the idea of a Nurgle themed fantasy army, but until I get that burst of inspiration for it going again, I won't be doing much with it for now. I do believe I have some good ideas for the Nurgle Rotbringers at least. The Skaven, however, I can only think to make everything as-is. Which is fine for most, but I become passionate about something when I can think of a unique angle to take with it.

Forgesworn Eternals (Warhammer: Age of Sigmar - Stormcast Eternals)
I am proud to say my entire Forgesworn Eternal army is completely painted (barring some basing I still have left to do). Not something I can say much of for my big armies. I really don't plan on adding anything to this. I feel I have gotten all the minis I am interested in. I was considering some Dracoth Cavalry to make more dire bear riders, but the problem is finding variations of suitable bear heads, of which I have only really found the one. But for now I'm good.

Forthammer Clan Throng (Warhammer: Age of Sigmar - Dispossessed and Ironweld Arsenal)
Not all of my Warhammer Duardin are among the ranks of the painted, but a good portion of them are. I experimented with a unique paint scheme for dwarfs that I think has paid off to a color that complements my Forgesworn Eternals. All I have left for this LVO army is some basing, and maybe a display board. Carry-on luggage restrictions are becoming an issue.

That sums up this very awesome year. In the new year I will outline my goals for 2017.

Deadzone - Item Counters

When I put in my original pledge to the Deadzone Infestation kickstarter, I went ahead and added one of these as an extra.

These are for Dreadball Xtreme, but I saw a lot of potentially useful bits for terrain or whatever. When I got to them, all the small crates had little lids on them, with symbols underneath. I gathered they were some sort of scoring system for Dreadbal Xtreme, so I had an idea. With Deadzone 2.0 there are 16 item counters. On one side is a standard crate symbol, and on the other is one of the random items you are supposed to be able to pick up in game. There are 16 of those little crates with lids in that Xtreme Scenery pack.

Lids on

Lids off

So I took the old Dremel tool, ground out the original symbols under the lids, made little item tokens on my computer, printed them onto label paper, cut them out, and stuck them inside the lids. Perfect for a more scenic random items option.

Deadzone - Enforcers, Rebs, and Plague Oh my!

I am pretty sure this is going to be the last new miniatures I am buying for Deadzone for a while.

First off I bought off of Ebay a Pathfinder expansion set. They are the scouts of the Enforcers. One of the models comes with this neat little monowheel scout bike. In the new rules, this bike is treated as an item that you can equip on just about any model, no restrictions. So as far as I can tell this model usually comes with a Pathfinder riding it, but it doesn't need to be that way. I put one of my Assault Enforcers on it, with the plans of having a melee guy zip up and punch something in the opponent's force. So as far as I can tell this conversion is legal, unless they FAQ it or something.

With that conversion I am left with 2 Pathfinders on foot (the one on the right was mounted on the bike, but I have her propped up on some debris).

Then I started looking through that big lot of Reaper Bones I got a while back, and realized I had some good minis to represent Rebs. I didn't know what game I would use these for, and this turned out to be perfect.

According to Reaper, these are the Nova Corp, but in Deadzone they will be Rebel Troopers. Cheap human models with rifles. They can be the backbone of my Human-centric strike force.

To Reaper these are IMEF troopers, and in Deadzone they will be my Rebel Grogan. While in the setting, Grogan are an alien race, a little more monstrous and tougher than humans, that will be represented by their heavier armour. The guy on the far left will be equipped with the Onsought Cannon, and the rest just have rifles.

Then some of my other Chronoscope minis will be the other parts of my Rebs. The far left is a Rebel Commander with Blaster, then a Rebel Commander with Rifle, then a Rebel Specialist with Sniper Rifle, and the big ape dude will count as the Rebel Teraton. The nice thing about all these is they already have textured bases which I think fit pretty close with the rest of my Deadzone minis. So no need to rebase them.

With the power of Ebay, I was able to score my next, and LAST, faction starter for Deadzone. The Plague.

Not much of a conversion effort going on here. Just my leader Stage 1A in the front and some leaping Stage 2A's in the back. With my plague force basings, I cut back on the concrete slabs and went with more gravel and dirt. This is to show the state of ruin things become when a Plague infestation occurs.

Here are the Stage 3A's and specialists. The only converting here is one of the Stage 3A's was converted to carrying a grenade launcher from a bit I had. There was also another Stage 3A model that I converted into something else, which you will see. And of course the hounds. As you can see the concrete gets more sparse.

And the real reason I started collecting a Plague force. These are some of the zombies I used in our Zone Mortalis campaign my brother, Jarom, and I did a couple months ago. They acted as the native denizens of the space hulk that the kill-teams had to occasionally encounter. It was a fun campaign and it only worked out that these are made from a Mantic zombies kit, and Plague forces can take Zombies as well, which a Zombie themed force actually turns out to be pretty competitive.

This is the last part of my Plague force. One of the Leader options for plague is a Stage 3 general. I took one of the regular Stage 3A models and added a Tempestus Scion character coat, and a beret from one of the heads. This gives him a very 'general' look. I can't wait to get this guy painted, one day.

Well that should be it for my Deadzone forces. I currently have 4, which is enough to give demos and give players options.

Deadzone - Thor Pattern Iron Ancestor - How I did it

In the Forgefathers list for Deadzone, a unit they have is the Thor Pattern Iron Ancestor, unfortunately there is no official model for it yet. Well the idea of them intrigued me, a melee oriented Dwarf dreadnought. The Thor Pattern Iron Ancestors are like the regular Iron Ancestor, but a little faster (actually can do a run move) and replaces any possible guns with 2 forge hammers. The additional bonus of wielding 2 hammers is better chance of hitting in melee.

Time will tell if this unit is even worth it as it is THE most expensive model (points wise) you can get for the game, and Forgefather models are already all generally more expensive. One of the challenges of playing Forgefathers I've found is you are usually outnumbered. These will have the infamous Iron Ancestor toughness to take down, but will it be worth it?

I really don't care. I wanted to make a big melee dwarf dreadnought and set about finding some ways to go about it. I saw a simple conversion another guy did with just taking a regular Iron Ancestor and giving it 2 hammers. Well I really didn't like the look of that and wanted to go for something a little more unique. So I stumbled upon Mantic's Dreadball Giant Iron Ancestor, and I got an idea. I liked the different look of the Dreadball one (like the neat little head wings) and the fact that it had 2 fists. Two fists that could be gripping something. Well I am a sucker for big 2 handed great hammers so I got the idea finalized in my head and ordered the model.

The model came pre-assembled like this, but luckily it is made of a softer pvc material, so cutting this up shouldn't be too hard. I am just grateful it's not metal.

Like a lot of my big conversions and reposing, it starts with cutting it up a bunch. This is no exception. The arms are going to need to be reposed to double grip a great forge hammer.

The big hands will be reposed as well. So they needed to be cut off.

Starting with the left hand, I cut off the cable and pins, and thumb. The thumb will be repositioned to grip the hammer. The other 2 digits I left intact because they will be holding the hammer from underneath and didn't need to be enclosed around it.

On the right hand, luckily the fingers are turned inward some, so they will be gripping the haft. The thumb was removed as well to create a more realistic hold.

The first thing I reassembled was the right hand gripping the hammer's bar. For the bar I am using a pole from an Ogor standard bearer. It seemed to be just the right thickness for what I needed. As you can see the fingers were already turned inward to wrap around the pole, and I glued the thumb back on, but in a better gripping position. With this now held, I can start posing the rest of the model around it.

Pinning will be used a lot in the reposing of this model, but I was careful to not glue any of the pins in place so I could finalize the positioning first. The right hand with pole is to be pinned on the right shoulder unit.

With pinning (again, no glue) I could get an idea how this guy was to hold the hammer. I wanted the hammer head to be slightly elevated to create a realistic pose.

I pinned the left arm and hand into place and finalized the overall pose. Notice I have not glued the left thumb in yet because I didn't want it to get in the way of gluing the pieces one at a time as this was going to need to be reassembled during gluing.

Using the above pose I could finally see what pose the right arm and hand needed to be in. So after gluing the pins in place, I had to create the cable and pins for that arm. Due to the angle being more extreme than before, the original pin and cable pieces were not long enough, so I made some new ones out of plasticard tubes you can get from Gale Force Nine. I got the variety pack a while ago at a game shop and it is being used on several of my projects.

I didn't get a shot of it, but I glued in place the right arm and hand holding the pole, so all I had to do with the left was glue it in place to where it rested under the pole. Now I was able to glue on the left thumb. The place it mounted on the hand was a little awkward so I cut out a tiny piece of plasticard to blend it with the hand. Everything so far has been glued in place.

Now that the hard part is over (getting the hold position complete), I am able to get to the embellishments. Like with the left arm, the right arm needed a new cable piece that I made out of plastic tubing.

With the pole and pose glued in final position, I noticed it was a little too bland, so I blinged it up slightly with some spare bits I had from an old Warpath Steel Warriors kit and some plasticard. Also on the right hand, the green stuff is filling in the hole on the back of the hand. I am pretty sure that was designed for this model being a dreadball figure so it could catch the ball, but this guy won't be playing dreadball on the battlefield. Now all that is left to be done is add the hammerhead! I was a little nervous at this point because I didn't actually have the head I was going to use in yet. I was still waiting for it to be delivered from Ebay.

After a week the hammer head finally arrived. It is an actual iron ancestor hammer head. It's just stuck in place with sticky tac to see if the look would work, and I got the feeling that it was a little too small. The hammer head was meant to be wielded one handed, so I will be bulking it up to look the part of a 2 handed weapon.

I started off by chopping it up into 3 separate pieces as shown, being careful to keep the cutting clean and inside the seems.

Then I measured out and cut out of thick plasticard some blocks. These are each 2 pieces thick of the plasticard.

It is then glued together and sanded even. I then bored a hole right through the center of it so it can mount strong on the pole.

Now this is more like it. I marked off on the pole where it stuck through and cut it down.

To cover the pole's end, I put on a small shield piece from some of my fantasy dwarf bits.

I pinned it on a 50mm base decorated to the street rubble theme and it's done! The only thing I didn't cover was a simple little dwarf face symbol I stuck in a hole in its back from my fantasy dwarf bits.

So I present to you Dunhill the Indomitable. I am super proud of this conversion and think it came together really nicely. I would love to get to painting all my Forgefathers and Enforcers, but I do have deadlines for my Zone Mortalis Tiles and Haemonculus Covens army right now.

Deadzone - Enforcers and Forgefathers

I bought an Enforcercers starter kit off of Ebay for a really good price. It is nice to have 2 basic armies for introducing new players. Coupled with the scratch built terrain, I can get to demo-ing.

Nothing really fancy was done about these guys, just some minor kitbashes so I could make a medic out of one of the Assault Enforcers, and the Peacekeeper Captain has a Grey Knights helmet in place of the original. I just liked the look of it.

Something to notice was I decided to try creating my own street-rubble bases, instead of just sand and rocks I am so used to doing. These are made entirely with plasticard and sand.

I also put them (using the same theme) on my Forgefathers as well, in an effort to make it look like they are all fighting on the same battlefield. I really like the way the basing turned out and will continue to use it as I expand my collection of Deadzone miniatures. Speaking of expanding, you will notice the new big guy on the far right there. That is my Thor Pattern Iron Ancestor, a pretty ambitious conversion project, and I will be doing a How-I-Did-It post on it soon.

Deadzone - Game Board, Terrain, and Game Aid

My brother is coming over this weekend to try a game of Deadzone together. The game utilizes a 3"x3"x3" cube grid system which allows for ease and quick gameplay, as well as VERY dense terrain. Nothing I had already really fit the bill. Fortunately Mantic makes their Battlezones terrain system designed specifically for this, and it looks excellent. Unfortunately I do not have any, yet. So for this demo game, I figured I would make it all myself.

Typical Deadzone terrain density.

It was all fairly easy since the whole system works on that 3" cube measurements, so I took a sheet of foam core, cut it in 3" squares (or groups of 3" squares for stability) and began constructing. When you google 'battlezones terrain' you find plenty of inspiration for what to build.

All made over the course of a couple afternoons.

Then the game mat itself is 2'x2', with the 3" grid on it, as per a standard game for Deadzone. Unfortunately I didn't have a nice print mat that I wanted to draw the 3" grid on with sharpies, so I am using a cut of 1" gridded paper.

In the galactic spanse, Elmer's Corp is one of the major contributors of prefab buildings for new colonies. This was all made with Elmer's Wood Glue as well. I'm sensing a theme here.

A quick note on foam core (also known as foam board). It's a great construction material, but there are 2 types generally on the market. You may be tempted to get the cheap dollar store stuff, but DON'T. You get what you pay for. It is so cheap and fragile. The foam in the middle is that light pearly foam that makes a big mess when you cut it, and the paper sandwiching it is really just paper. Unlike Elmer's brand, for example, uses a sturdier foam and sandwiched with harder cardstock. It's a little more expensive (not by much) but totally worth it.

Open these in a new window and save them for better resolution.

Also on the subject of Deadzone, I made some blank stat cards for your minis. The fields in them are designed for regular games and campaign play. When printed and cut out, each card measures about 5"x3.5"

This is another useful sheet for command dice. When the game gets released, they will provide printed command dice, but in the meantime I made a quick reference card for when rolling your command dice. This works nice because as you roll the dice, you can set them on the proper field for ease. The Special area is intentionally left blank so you can write in your team leader's unique ability.