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A Chance To Get A Game In The Shed Planned

One of the main reasons I purchased an airbrush was to help me when painting larger models.  Tanks specifically.  Weathering on larger models is often far from satisfying when applied with a brush using inks etc…

I have played a bit with my airbrush recently and its not doing as well as I would like.  I suspect my needle is slightly bent or my nozzle might be blocked.  Either way its getting a bit of splatter when it sprays…

I have a game of Dust Tactics planned for a few days time so decoded to give it one more go.  Cleaned and ready to go I started on this light walker.  Still splatter but good enough for some random camo stripes on this model.

After painting just the camo I dry fit the thing back together and he looks good enough for a first try…

Not quite up to the Dust Premium standard of my other light walkers but good enough for a game piece!

When I don’t compare it to any other models it looks even better 🙂

It also happens to be the last Dust Allied model I own………………

Yes, that means I have completed a whole army…………..

Well, until I buy something to add to it……….

All setup and ready for the arrival of Coronasan’s Axis Zombie hordes!

A Break In The Weather And A Day To Spray

Its not often that we get a day to consider undercoating something in the UK, especially in mid February.  Moisture and temperature can play havoc with spray cans.

This week we did get the window to spray for one afternoon and I took it while I could.

Silver for robots…

Lots of robots…

Silver for some of Coronasan’s MDF Gaslands gates.

(and silver for the Martian underground base entrances…  but I forgot to photograph them in the mad rush to get so many batches out on the BBQ)

And, just to mix things up, black and grey for the MDF house that I started a few weeks ago…

Lets hope I can get some real painting done soon.

A Moment To Myself, Then Back To The Grind

Well, another few weeks have passed and I’ve not been too active in the shed.  Part of that is my own depleted motivation, part is the weather being slightly colder and part is the fact that 6 new internal doors won’t paint themselves.

I have had a slight boost to my motivation due to the almost summer like few days we have just had in the UK and the fact that the end is in sight when it comes to this batch of DIY.

I gave myself an evening of mooching about in the shed recently and came across this chap. I actually came across a bag of small bits and had no idea what it was until I trimmed and glued most of it together and found he was a Mantic Games Deadzone Strider model.

That prompted me to dig out an even older, this time completed, model of the Rebel variant of this figure.  It had an open, shattered, cockpit which would not go well with my slowly expanding Mechanical Steam Wars Army. (Yes, my Martian force is likely to be having a mutiny on its hands as their robotic slaves break free of their programming and forge themselves an small empire of their own).

Anyway, the cockpit needed filling so, as I am not a gifted sculptor, I have bunged in enough green stuff to fill the hole and plan to trim and file back any that has my fingerprints in it when its dry…

This beast is more hands on than the first with a weapon that I can profile up as some sort of flamer and a meaty chain saw.

I can see a third recruit for the mechanical force in the background, but more on that later.

For now though, back to the grind…

A Terrain Day On A Rain Day

Coronasan does not only design Industrial Terrain in MDF.  He has also done a number of other styles for the interested gamer.  One terrain style I don’t have very much of is the Fantasy Medieval type of setting.

That is soon to be remedied as he had donated two new houses to the shed that I have promised to build and paint.

To anyone new to MDF kits these might look quite complex.  In truth they are fairly simple to build.  Lots of pieces, yes, but as you work through them it is often easy to work out where they go without referring to any instructions.

A good job really, as these are pretty much prototypes, so didn’t have any instructions with them.  I only had to make one phone call to the designer when putting the first together.

Two storied and fully usable inside on each floor.

A simple, paint it while building it, approach saved me lots of time and effort. Artists inks, I find, are the easiest things to use on MDF kits. In this case I used a flesh ink a red brick and a cream.  Wood work was subtly darkened using some of GWs Sepia Shade ink.

The roof is yet to be painted as I wanted to darken the underside and also to try out a grey tiles effect on the top.

One down (almost)…  One to go…

Warhammer 40,000 – Kill Team Game

After a few games of Kill Team over at Coronasans on his new MDF industrial terrain it was time for me to host a game in the shed.

I went for a forest outpost as the games setting, and we used some old and new figures for the armies in the game.

Coronasan brought his freshly repainted Tyranids along.  These are truly ‘old hammer’ in my opinion and lovely models to boot.  Freshened up and deployed for the first time in many, many years, they were hungry from the start.

My Space Orks were there to defend the base and were desperately trying to stop the Tyranids from getting close enough to eat them.

Lets just say that I fed all the Grots to these giant aliens and it didn’t even give them indigestion…  A good number of larger Ork dinners later, they seemed a lot more settled…

Warhammer 40,000 – Harlequins Colour Fade

The Harlequins have been back out as I wanted to see if I could get some undercoating done with the airbrush while the weather is so cold.  No rattle can will work at the moment so a bit of primer on a few figures might give me something to do in the next weeks.

My cheap Chinese airbrushes are not brilliant, but after having to clean them quite so vigorously last time, due to paint caking at the nozzle, I do wonder if they have are now slightly worse.  While undercoating the paint dried up in the nozzle quite quickly and they were slightly spluttery when working as well.

When the airbrush was last used, it was back in the summertime so it might be just me or to do with the weather, but I didn’t pursue things today any longer than it took to try some slight colour fades on these six figures.

As I will NOT be trying any fancy paint techniques on these boys and girls, I thought some brighter colours and slow transitions might be a good start.

Red to Orange.  Green to Yellow.  Red to Yellow.  Playing around more than painting really. It should give me a head start towards these guys being a bit more interesting than just a regular brush paint job.

Steam Wars – More Maddening Martian Mechanical Men

Remember the 60 part unit that made up the last 5 mechanical men?  Well I just completed another, smaller scale, 10 man unit from Privateer Press.

I thought 60 tiny pieces was a pain.  Each of the figures in the next unit consists of 9 parts (the leader is 11 parts as it has different shoulders from the remainder of the unit), and there are 10 of them…

Thats a finger tip stripping, eye straining, back aching, 101 parts (not counting their bases).  All trimmed, cleaned and glued in one sitting in the shed…  I don’t know if I am proud to have managed it or worried that I tried…

To top it all off they are not even made of standard plastic, so its a case of: Super Glue, try to hold the buggers together with one hand, spray the Activator with the other hand and hope they don’t move while you do it…  Done?  Good, repeat that another 100 times…

Joy unbound…

Steam Wars – More Martian Mechanical Marvels

Privateer Press have an ever increasing range of interesting and very individual models.  The Warmachine game held our interests for a week or so but didn’t quite hit the mark.  That said, I have found their model range to be one I return to quite frequently, as the figures are very often ones that are well suited to some of the more obscure games that we play.

Steam Wars is one game that often opens its doors to these varied and interesting steam punk ranges.  The only down side I find to the Privateer Press range of miniatures, is that they do insist on making a simple humanoid miniature out of about 10 pieces of plastic.

These five miniatures are constructed from a frankly obscene 60 parts…

The amount of effort expended in prepping these figures, and cleaning up mould lines on so many tiny pieces, is infuriating compared to the majority of other companies that I know.

The finished miniatures are very effective though, and are likely to look good even with my basic painting skills.  I have a number of completed figures from this range now, and have to admit that I have foolishly purchased another 10 of their multipart figures, which are likely to be next up on the painting and building table..

Warhammer 40,000 – Death Guard

Ebay seems awash with these at the moment, and as so many are out there, they are at an almost reasonable price in most cases…

The Myphitic Blight-hauler was available with a recent Conquest 40K Magazine, and as lots of the magazine collectors are selling off these figures, it is now easily found for much less than GWs retail price of £15.  I picked up these three recently for about £8-10 each.

Three you say?  Oh yes, three is the magic number, as with three you get all the benefits from the “tri-lobe” rule in the Death Guard Codex.  Now, if you are into, or even vaguely understand, Warhammer 40K it might sound wonderful when I say this sort of thing but in all honesty they just looked lonesome by themselves…

More unpainted miniatures for the ‘To Do’ pile…  And I thought I was doing so well…

Warhammer 40,000 – The Last Of The Undercoated Kill Team Figures

Even though I have just built two completely new Kill Teams I should really finish what I started. That would mean doing something with the last of the undercoated members of the Space Marine and Space Ork Kill Teams.

The two sergeants from the small Intercessor and Reiver sets I got seem easy enough to get on with.  Wash, weapons and heads, the odd bit of trim. I could also call one them my commander (A Primaries Lieutenant).

Two Ork Boys.  Regular sculpts, less than thrilling to paint, but they should be quick to paint up and an easy way to add some more clout to the kill team for when those sneaky Gretchin aren’t needed.

Now, these might prove more fun to paint…  Two random old lead figures with arms gathered from various other Ork kits…  They do not fit any existing profiles for Kill Team, but they look great, so what the heck!

And another batch of five Gretchin, let’s hope that a future expansion adds a little more use for these ankle biters.

Time to get myself back into the shed while I await some better undercoating weather (unlikely to happen too soon as snow is forecast for the UK at present…)