Tag Archives: scenery

Stylites

08 Monday Oct 2018

Posted by in Terrain, The Chapel

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Greetings Terrans, I trust you are all well. I have a bit of a different theme to this post – no fun RT Orks to share at the moment, but a more grimdark vibe from the Inq28 side of the hobby fence. The background to this is that I was lucky enough to have Mark from Heresyofus pop over on the last weekend of September, and he brought his beautiful Stylites board with him:

As you can see, the board is a stunning piece of work, but Mark and I appreciate that not everyone would be in a position to devote the time or space to such a specific piece of scenery. As a result, Mark gave me my own set of 20 Stylites, with the simple instruction of ‘go do something with them & showcase a different way of using the pillars’… No pressure!

So, me being me, I approached the task with maximum flexibility in mind. Naturally, I wanted my Stylites to look like they belonged in the caverns underneath The Chapel, but equally, I wanted them to look at home in an underhive sump, or towering over the ruins of the frozen city of Felstad…  I also wanted them to reflect the tortured reality of the battlefields of the Mortal Realms, or even provide a chaotic backdrop to the far-flung battlefields of the 41st Millennium… In short, I wanted them to work anywhere and everywhere that I like play toy soldiers.

As a result, I decided to base my pillars individually, and to integrate other scenic items into the bases to give them some utility beyond the Stylites game itself. After some thought, I went with the Shardwrack Spines for the basing detail, and I made this choice for a number of reasons. Firstly, the spines have a lot of height, and I felt this would work well with the tall columns of the Stylites. Secondly, Stylites is a truly lethal game – one slip and you’re dead, and the Shardwrack Spines look like falling on them would be believably terminal. Thirdly, they have rules in 40k (and I think in AoS?), and fourthly, they look like an interesting kit to work with! Decision made, I got to cutting and fitting the bases, and cleaning up the mould lines… this took bloody ages, but was worth doing properly, and eventually, I got to this point:

Now I just needed to decide how to paint the buggers… I had a vague notion of going for some colour, but I didn’t want to go to crazy-town like on the box art. I settled for a subdued purply-grey, with gold used to pick out the nodules and a little Nihilakh Oxide around the cracks… the idea is that these spines are mineral rather than organic, but also that they can work either way if the game demands it. The rest of the base was done in a fairly generic way, while the Stylites themselves were washed & drybrushed in an ad hoc and gunky style. I’ve managed to complete five so far – see what you think:

I have the other 15 Stylites built, basecoated and drybrushed, so I just need to add the wash & detail. My plan is to do this in and around the ongoing work on my Space Orks project, and once I’m done, I’m going to set up some photos to showcase the Stylites in a few different contexts. Happy days!

Anyway, that’s it for now – I’ll catch you all soon with more Orks and more Stylites to share! Have a good one dudes :-)

The Tower of the Dead

28 Wednesday Mar 2018

Posted by in Terrain

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Greetings all, I have a cheeky little terrain post to share with you today – I recently took delivery of a rather sexy little pre-painted tower thingy from a Kickstarter that I backed ages ago. When I first got it, it looked like this:

 

Not bad for a pre-painted piece, but I wanted to embellish it a bit & paint it up to match my Garden of Morr. A quick lick of paint, and I ended up with this:

 

Pretty cool, but ‘so far, so what’ right? I mean, it’s a nice enough tower and all that, but not really deserving of a post all to itself, is it? Well dear reader, this tower does tricks… check this out:

 

How mad is that! The tower is actually the ‘Dark Crypt fog machine’ from Real Game FX, and it houses a pump & ultrasonic transducer (a what now?!?)… The bottom of the tower is basically a reservoir, you turn on the gubbins and voila – instant cold fog comes pouring out of the door & windows. Here are a few examples of me playing around with the photographic possibilities:

 

How good is that eh?! As an added bonus, the guts of the machine come out, so with some clever modelling, I should be able to make other ‘cases’ for the worky-bitz to go in – a venting sci-fi tower, mysterious jungle ruins, whatever I fancy really! Now, I should point out that the fog is (duh) wet… Sounds obvious, but it really is very very wet, and this quickly makes everything around it wet as well. Also, the wires are a bit unsightly from anywhere other than a front-on view, so the tower will only look good around the edge of your board. Also it can be a bit splashy… The pump draws the water from the reservoir at the bottom of the tower, up an internal tube, and on to the sonic doo-dah – it is quite vigorous, and I did find that a bit of water came out of the windows & door. It’s also a pain in the arse to set up, difficult to fill once it is set up, it makes watery noises while running & makes me want to pee, and all the drying & faffing really adds to the packing away time, (I had to leave the models used in these photos out to dry after taking these pics for example). To be honest, it isn’t hugely practical for gaming… But I don’t care – it’s just so cool! I certainly won’t use it in every game, but I love this idea for marking cinematic moments in specific scenarios or for special occasions. It’s also great for the occasional photo shoot, where the impracticalities of the system are less of an issue. All in all, I’m really glad I backed the Kickstarter :-)

Anyway, that’s me for the next couple of weeks – I’m taking the kids hiking next week and I don’t plan to be on line at all while I’m away, so I’ll catch you all on the flip side. After that, I aim to add more Eru-Kin to my BOYL 2018 army, and I have a load of undead to get based & painted as well… Should be fun!

Fembruary challenge part 2 – Vasquez

19 Monday Feb 2018

Posted by in AoS Undead, Fembruary Challenge

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Greetings all, I’m very happy to be able to show off my second mini for ‘February’, but before I do that, I have a little terrain distraction to share with you… I picked up the ‘Legions of Nagash’ book for AoS last weekend – it is a great book, and gives the forces of death much more nuance and flexibility. There are a number of changes to how the armies of Nagash operate, but one of the major differences is how summoning works. Very briefly, you now get to set up four graveyards from which your summonable units can spawn – obviously, the Gardens of Morr kit is the go-to choice for the discerning modeler, so I got mine down from the loft of holding, and got the four main bits built & painted:

It is worth mentioning that the new ruling calls for a nominated ‘point’ on the battle field, so using a fairly big piece of scenery would be cheaty… the first two pieces have an obvious single point, but the second pair don’t, so I painted a gold ornament on one end of these two. I’m pretty pleased with how they came out, and they really are lovely kits that don’t take long at all – especially if you leave out the fence!

Here’s a nice atmospheric shot of Gorgo Romero raising a zombie horde, (with thanks to my wife for vaping hard to add the special effects ;-) )

 

Moving on to ‘Fembruary’, I just want to say how delighted I am with the support for this – I have been admiring and commenting on the many excellent contributions that have been popping up among my fellow bloggers and beyond – good on you all for getting involved, representing, and spreading the word. I’ll have to curate a round-up of images and do an end-of-month recap – a task I look forward to immensely.

Anyway, time to introduce my second effort – I have named her after the awesome Vasquez, (played by Jenette Goldstein), of Aliens fame. I know the mini doesn’t look particularly like the movie character, but hey, she’s never been mistaken for a man either, and the gun seals the deal for me :-)

 

And here she is with Siouxsie:

 

I had great fun painting Vas – she’s a cracking mini, and it was great to mix it up a bit with the skin tone. I think the purple/yellow/red flashes work nicely with the more utilitarian bits of uniform, but the star of the show has to be the pink dreads… They just look so damn cool! I have three more of these Ghosts of Gia in various stages of being painted – I optimistically thought I might get 10 done, but no way that is happening, so I’m going to crack on with getting five of them painted before the month is out. I also have a long-neglected character to paint as part of Azazel’s latest challenge, so plenty to keep the brush busy over the next ten days! Until next time folks :-)