Do-it-Yourself Terrain

Astral Claws WIP

Bill — Sat, 05 May 2012 20:56:08 +0000

With the advent of another battle coming up this fall, I’ve continued to work on the Astral Claws that I have been building. Since I’m dipping most of this army sans the terminators and some characters, the paint process feels like it’s moving rather quickly. After these are done, I’ll be moving back to airbrushing and IG tanks / flyers. Also, since I’m tied up at work waiting on a lengthy data repair to take place, what better time to paint, right? I can’t believe I never thought of this before…

Special weapons - Flamer, Melta and Plasma

A mix of Devastators

Video: The War on Badab

Bill — Fri, 04 May 2012 00:22:45 +0000

So the War on Badab has taken place, the Battle in the Empyrean is shaping up for this fall. All in all, I’m happy with how this video turned out. I don’t know a lot of the fluff so I’m bad with names / factions still. In the end, I was on the winning team and the game was super fun.

Aliens Board Game

Bill — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 20:14:16 +0000

A few years back I came across a bunch of miniatures from a company called Leading Edge. The deal was worth it and I was interested in this as a friend had told me about a past gaming experience using an older Aliens board game that was long out of print. I looked into the game and became very interested in reproducing it. Well, I’ve managed to do just that and here’s all of the finished miniatures for the game.

All of the marines ready to die!

Used as a 'Grabbed' token!

Used when attacked by a Face Hugger in game

Plenty of Aliens

Did I mention plenty of Aliens?!

Hopefully I’ll get a round or two of this in at Adepticon next week and have some shots of the whole thing in action with painted miniatures this time!

Airbrushing

Bill — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 20:41:04 +0000

For a long time I’ve been thinking about getting into airbrushing, it seemed to have tons of advantages and looked like it’d be fun to do. After tons of research and digging around I decided to get an airbrush, compressor, and some paint and dive right in. The main goals I have with airbrushing have been painting tanks and terrain. While I’m not looking to do all the painting with an airbrush, I want to be able to do the basic colors / base colors of a given project. So far, I’ve been able to achieve this.

Iwata Eclipse Airbrush

There are tons of options for paint that range from taking existing lines like Citadel, Vallejo, P3, etc and thinning them for use in an airbrush. So far, I’ve managed to clog up my airbrush a few times trying this so I’m setting it aside for now while I wait for a different thinner to come in the mail, hopefully this will help. What I’ve found is that you have to keep lots of little parts clean in the airbrush to keep the paint from clogging up, this wasn’t something I was expecting, but something you totally can’t ignore when you’re thinking about getting into this. If you’re reading this and you’re thinking about getting into airbrushing, seriously, buy airbrush cleaner, it’s awesome, I cant stress this enough.

Airbrushed Hellhounds in 2 color camo

After a bunch of failed paint tests, well, not failed per se, but tests that didn’t work out like they did in my head, I settled on picking up vallejo’s Model Air line of paints. The hellhounds above were painted using those paints and I’m super pleased with the results. I will have to go back and do a second coat on some areas as these paints tend to be thinner than normal acrylic paints, but given how easy it is to do, I’m ok with that. The last thing I noticed about painting with an airbrush is the fact that it felt like learning to paint all over again, learning to control the flow of paint with air pressure is a different thing, testing is totally necessary in this case. I would not start out with a nice model or piece of terrain, I’d start small and work your way up. I have 2 vendetta’s that I’m hoping to airbrush, but not before I go through at least 10 tanks and finish those and am comfortable with the whole process.

The Road to Badab has come to an end.

Bill — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 03:42:06 +0000

So the large battle that I’ve been working on a large army for has come to an end. I painted a ton of miniatures, spent the most time on painting I ever have and accomplished more than even I thought I would. I took a lot of photo’s at this game and will be creating a video and a photo gallery here showing off some of the highlight from this game that we did. A lot of specific factions were represented, non-traditional space marine armies all around, it was fun to partake in and fun to see.

Here’s a little teaser video I put together about this game.

Final Road to Badab Update

Bill — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 14:39:34 +0000

The battle takes place this weekend and I can’t wait! I still feel like I didn’t make it and get everything painted, but at the same time, I got a lot of figures painted. Lots of basing and matte finish still need to be applied, but there are over 120 models with paint on them, that’s pretty cool to me. Unfortunately I’ve neglected lots of stuff to get to this point, namely this site, but that should change with this battle report coming up as well as an Adepticon 2012 post coming up.

Tyrants Legion

Tyrants Legion 2

Tyrants Legion 3

Astral Claws and Commodus Carnac

Road to Badab Update

Bill — Sun, 26 Feb 2012 16:55:27 +0000

I’ve been busy with just about everything but posting lately, but here’s a few of the things I’ve been working on. The large badab game is quickly approaching and is only a month or so away from now and then shortly after that there will be adepticon!

These guys are ready for transfers, dipping, and basing.

20 Astral Claws Tactical Marines

4 Captains

Road to Badab Update

Bill — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 19:36:36 +0000

I’ve been making some posts over on roadtobadab.blogspot.com, but I haven’t really done much here as a result. I’ve been actively painting and building my army to prepare for this large battle. I’ve been busy building and painting the Space Marine side of the Tyrant’s Legion list. This part of my list is 2 units of tactical marines with 4 Missile Launchers each.

Both Squads built and ready

Primed and ready to paint!

The Tyrant’s Legion list is built up of Astral Claw’s, which, after tons of reading, is a chapter of space marines that seems rather neat, I’ve ordered and will be using the Forgeworld transfers on the shoulder pads and knee pads. I’ve never really considered using Forgeworld bits/add-ons for an army, but I’m trying it out on this project.

Test paint job #1

Test Paint job #2

Since I’ve ended up with some space marines, I’ve been adding slowly to the pile. In the end, I should have a pretty sizable army to use, and with the paint scheme I’ve chose, it should all easily get painted. One thing is for sure, using Forgeworld add-ons adds up quickly, but they are specific and well done, it’s a strange toss up in the GW scheme of things and it leaves me with mixed feelings. Once I get more progress on this army / project I’ll post it. I’m also nearing completion on painting all of the IG infantry for this list, I can’t wait to finish this up.

40k Apocalypse Game

Bill — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 01:55:49 +0000

I attended an apocalypse game out in Madison this weekend as a spectator, I couldn’t commit for the whole day, but I was able to watch the majority of this game go down. It ended in a tie and seemed to be very close from what I witnessed. Either way, check out the Thunderhawk below, it’s awesome, along with many of the other figures on display.

Imperial Guard holed up behind some barricades

A little hurt being dropped on some Land Raiders

Dreadnoughts marching across the board

Overview of the board

Rough combat between Terminators and Dreadnoughts

Thunderhawk rolling in

Total clusterfuck....

Video Battle Report: Kings of War – Siege

Bill — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 15:23:35 +0000

Here’s all 7 turns of our Kings of War Siege battle! This is the longest thing I’ve edited so far, it’s also the first time I did a Voice Over, let me know what you think. Personally, I don’t like how my voice sounds, but I think that’s natural. You can also see an HD version on Youtube, just click the Youtube logo int he lower left of the video.

Here’s the errate we used for this game, it’s incomplete and not totally tested.
DIY-Terrain – Siege Errata

Siegecraft v.2 from Warseer

This is by no means a comprehensive list, there are things we still want to test and eventually I’ll rewrite all of the rules for this.