400th Post: Retconning is a virtue

I'm a day tardy getting this post up, but i'm not opposed to post-dating! :P This an important milestone to recognize... 400 posts!!! What an achievement!

These last 8 years have been a journey. Real Life™ has kicked my butt a number of times over the last 14 years and I have had to back burner this blog. At the pace I try to maintain, I would have hit 400 posts in only 4 years. That said, I am very proud of this accomplishment. Heck, averaging 50 posts a year ain't bad.

But wait, there's more! I have a small showcase to share--A group of  WHFB Wood Elves Glade Guard Winged Fey Forest Creatures, given to me by Lord Grimskull. Whew, what a mouthful.

I don't have a WHFB/AoS Wood Elves army but I figured they could see the battlefield as Dark Heresy alien creatures, Necromunda mutated animals, or even as a stand-in for a small flying creature in D&D. With that in mind, I chose blue-green colors on the figure and a complimentary neutral base color. The figures are based on 20mm MDF round bases.

Thanks for the journey. Hope to see you in 400 more posts!

Large Gothic Church Ruin WIP

Pics of the behemoth ruined church that has been in progress for years!

I think I started this project about 4 years ago. It is comprised of parts from Pegasus Hobbies Gothic City Large Set and Gothic City Ruins 1.

This will be a multi purpose building--Able to be used in WH40K, WHFB, D&D, and Dark Heresy.

At the time, my OCD was strong and I felt the need to make the building fit on a 12" x 24" MDF board. I was also working on various other buildings and ruined buildings that would all fit on a 12" x 12" city grid. 

However, I no longer feel that it is important--Especially if a building will look better mounted on a 10" x 22" board.

I had made some sketches of how I wanted to make a partial roof (over the front third of the building, but couldn't find them.

The building is siting on a pink foam foundation so that I can have a raised altar/platform.

Deathbot is anxious to battle somewhere else besides the hilly grasslands. The wastelands of our last was a nice change of pace, but he is dying to play in city and/or Necromunda terrain.

Cast Molding with Super Sculpty

Some background first... I have these metal chaos shields I bought is Vancouver, BC from an *actual* GW store, roughly around 1990. That trip was a big deal for me. You see I live in Portland, Oregon and we just got our FIRST GW store in the area. In 1990, Vancouver, BC was the closest store to us (about 320 miles). We have always had plenty of FLGS near by (well over 10 in a 20 mile radius) but at the time they only ever stocked the GW basics.

A friend of mind and I rented a car and drove up north for some big event (a sale I think). We arrived at the GW storefront about an hour before it opened and got in line with heavy anticipation. The most amazing to me at the time was that they sold bitz and sprues out of jars!! (Kids, it wasn't like today where you could hop on the interwebs and type your way to your precious treasures) I am not sure I bought anything else but a variety of metal shield (all chaos themed) and weapon sprues (IG, Eldar, Ork and SM). 

Fast forward to about five years ago, where I tried my one and only attempt at casting. I had 8 Chaos Warriors that were sporting this one style of shield and decided to add another 8 Warriors (a mixture of old and new figures).  I only had 9 of the shields. At the time I was using shields to distinguish different units, so I needed 4 more shields to fill out the bigger unit.

Since I couldn't find more shields, I went about casting them. I had never made a mold before. Instead of investing money into all the equipment needed to do resin casting I tried a novel (IMO) and cheap approach--Super Sculpty molds using 2-part epoxy as the medium.

I took a large movement tray and filled it with Super Sculpty. Then I greased the shields with olive oil and pressed them down into the putty creating 4 negatives. Lastly I mixed up some 2-part epoxy and poured it into the molds. I could see a few bubbles develop, so I tapped on the table to get them out.

The next day I pulled out the pieces and scrubbed them with a toothbrush under the faucet.

Overall they turned out really well. The copies wont have wood grain texture on the back, but that is fairly easy to paint on. I applied an ink wash to one of them to show the detail. I didn't get out all the bubbles, but the damage is not too bad and easily fixable.

I will likely continue to (re)build my chaos army using the same notion with shields. I realize that is not very "chaosy", but I like the look.

Ork Boar Riders WIP

Here is a project I started probably about 6-8 years ago. No big surprise--Typical around here!! These are counts-as Orc Boar Riders. While my first foray into the world of GW was WHFB 1st edition, the game never took off with our group. There were a few of us that played on the rare occasion, but that became less and less over the years. I like FB, but my group's gaming time is limited and falls to about 90% RPGs and 9% board/card games. The one percent typically would be Blood Bowl or Necromunda. So not much chance of a FB game!! Directly because of that, the most current FB books I only own the 6th edition Core Rules and the 4th edition Orc Armies book!

Because I rarely play FB, any models I build/paint *must* pull double duty in an RPG function--Weather PC, NPC, Mob, or Boss. Because I have a ton of orcs from other sources, the orcs in the Orc Warriors Regiment box could be put to alternate uses. So, they were used in this project.

The "boars" are a Marvel Heroclix Lockjaw. For awhile I ran an eBay store selling Heroclix, D&D, Star Wars, and Axis and Allies Miniatures. I ended up with a ton of these guys in inventory!  

I believe I have used a mix of Space Ork and Orc Warrior parts. In hind sight I wish I new about magnetizing when I started building these models--Maybe I could have also made alt bodies for counts-as Warbikes? Eh, it would have required different bases too.

Most of the legs were cut apart and then I added greenstuff to fill in the gaps and missing areas. I chose not to sculpt saddles as I was not confidant with my sculpting skills, but in hind sight this would have been a perfect project to build those skills up!

I think this unit will look great when completed!

Retro Models - Khorne

I am starting (another) new series showcasing my vintage figures. These are from my Khorne army. All were purchased during WH40K 2ed era except for the unpainted Juggernaut which was a "more recent" eBay find. Some of them are painted, some are not. Of the painted ones, most have more than one coat of paint on them. One hurdle I have for painting full armies (besides continuously jumping to new projects) is repainting already painted figures to current standards. 

I can't tell you how many times I'd get 20 models into an army before going to something else. Then 5 years later when I get back to the project, my style and technique is improved. More often than not, I would repaint the 20 before working on other models...

Old Skool Juggernaughts

I never glued down the riders on these juggers, so they could pull double duty in 40K and FB. In fact two of them originally came with FB riders while the other two came with a 40K rider. Back in the day I mostly used them as steeds for commanders and heroes. But now, they are so much smaller than the modern juggernaut  I'm not sure. One thought is to use one as the steed for a Chaos Knight champion, but I also thought they would look cool pulling a chaos chariot! Maybe in a 40K army, they could be counts as bikers?

Repainted to be part of the same unit and brighter colors.

Another 4 Havocs

These eight Devastator, er Havocs are some of my ancient metal chaos marines. I used to indicate different squads by painting the backpacks differently.

L: Original Chaos Dreadnought; R: From Space Crusade 

L: One of my "newer" Chaos Marines; R The Original (?)

Some newer arms added to older models

Back in the day, I thought Terminators were pretty cool. I don't have as many of the chaos variety (you will see my ridiculous pile of Aquamarine Terminators in an upcoming post), but I do have one more so I can make two 8-man units like all good and obedient Khorne generals should field!

The inset in the upper right is to better show off the hand painted World Eaters symbol on about half of the termies.

Buildings WIP (pic heavy)

Here is a rundown of some buildings that I have in progress and nearing completion. 

First up is a medium sized (3x3) church. All of the walls (and some of the exterior elements) are from the Pegasus Gothic City Building sets. I have one of each set and made this building another building below, and a large (3x5) ruin that I will discuss in another post.

Here is a rundown of the primary components used in the build:

1. The roof "cap" is made from cedar doll house roof shingles.
2. A Cornice Piece from Litko Game Accessories.
3. The column toppers are pen needle caps.
4. The roof framing is made from balsa wood and styrene strips.
5. The roof is sheet styrene with ridges.
6. The top adornment are fencing from the Chaos Vehicle Upgrade sprue.

I built a framework for the roof panels to allow them to be easily removed. The roof panels have a lip at the bottom and straddle the lower ridge and then fit snugly into the framing.

This building turned out great--especially the roof. I still have some detail bits to add to the exterior and I have a rough plan to detail the interior, but want it to be modular.

Next up is another building made primarily of Pegasus Gothic City Building sets. This small (2x2) building can be used as a church or almost any gothic building.

The roof railings on both levels are from one of the GW building kits as are the small buttresses surrounding the building. I only needed to do some minor filing for the buttresses to fit, but there was a fair amount of sawing and filing to get the railings to perfectly span the distance without any posts.

I designed the building to be modular. The large buttresses are easily removed from the top level, and the two floors can be used separately.

The roofs are also removable allowing interior action to commence!

This building was a complete afterthought! I originally made the top floor to be used as a mausoleum in my huge graveyard project and needed a last minute larger building for a Dark Heresy encounter. 

Now this piece is a little strange, and it falls into found objects category! It isn't really a building either--It's a base to put a building on. I found this at a local thrift store. It is one half of the case for the movie version of the game Battleship (a game based on a movie based on a game... hrm!)

Taken from interwebs without permission

I removed a large panel that was cardboard and replaced it with a floor made from Pegasus Hobbies Syberclicks Set. There were some areas that had to be covered with plasticard where the handle was removed.

This was a really quick and simple piece that has a variety of uses. Up first, this will be used as an island in our Dark Heresy campaign. We are in a Imperial City that has more canals than roads!

Here is another building/mausoleum for use in my graveyard project. I used GW Imperial Building components as the core of this model. On two sides I skimped and only used one wall tile, filling the remaining wall with plasticard. The roof railing is from Pegasus Hobbies Hexagon Construction Set

That's about all I have to show for now, hope you like these!

Orc boar rider / Ork warbiker

Well a while ago I started working on a unit of orc boar boyz. The "boars" are actually HeroClix Lockheed figures. However, WHFB has been off my radar for a very long time. Here is a shot of the Boss.


I am considering removing the arms and magnetizing them. In addition, making a magnetized 40K version and using the unit as a counts as warbiker squad.