Weekly Progress Report 04/12/2022

Hi all

We have been busy!

Son_of_xana is currently taking a break from his blood bowl team and is building a knight atrapos for his house malinax force ready to join his vulturum engines in February. As some of you may realise that this is isn't the atrapos model but  a simple weapon swap with one of the knight cerastus kits.

The Gory Crow has made a right mess of things this week.

Finally managed to get all Kill Team terrain done, ready for use in Necromunda or Horus Heresy.

After that, fell down the rabbit hole of getting a load of Necromunda/Kill team models on the painting table.

here we have an Escher Gunner who needs touching up and a wonderfully blue Navy Breacher.

Eyecon74 has been working away at the Tau Manta, also did some more on an Arvus Lighter

Hector finished the fortress build for his necromunda board. Built as modular components (including the towers being multiple parts), it easily packs back into the original stronghold boxes; neat!

Hector has resumed painting his Tritonis titans and should have a more tangible update on these soon!

No hobby updates from Kiral. He's been decorating recently so a very different painting scale.

Honey the Destroyer has completed Athera, Blade of the Matriarch this week as part of a review item.





Alongside this, Honey the Destroyer has also been working on the Winged Hive Tyrant for her son’s Tyranid army



She is now going back to the Aeldari Corsairs to add to her army. 

Necromunda: Athera Blade of the Matriarch review

Welcome back to another Necromunda review

This one is of the new Athera model that we have been sent through to review from Games Workshop. 

She is a beautifully detailed model and definitely well equipped. I particularly like the axe toed stilettos. Haven’t had a game with her yet, but we are looking at starting a Gang War in January in the Battle Bunnies, so hopefully I can petition her to join my gang then!

I decided to paint her red to to match Britney Spear's Red catsuit in one of her music videos. Mainly because she needs to accompany my Spice Girls Escher Gang, and I already have a Cher! 

I wanted the little Carayatid to glow, so I painted him in some very luminous blues. Painting the swirls were surprisingly difficult as the cuts are really shallow. 

Now to get my paws on the new Escher Cutters!

Honey the Destroyer. 

Battle Bunnies

Step by step Resin Water base Tutorial. It’s nice and easy!

Waterbase Tutorial with plenty of pics !

I like to do resin water bases, and many people ask me if it is difficult, or are put off by working with Resin, it is honestly a lot easier than it looks !

Today we'll go through how I did this base.

First off, build and paint your model and base, most of the effect for the water colour comes from the base, so if you want a bright blue base go with blue, I tend to go with a turquoise/green colour.

Base:

This is the base I used for the warlord (it will be for display and not gaming, hence it being on a round base), in this instance I used Perspex, I added some cork, covered the whole model in Vallejo Earth Texture and already added in the wave bit of where I want the wave to be, in the finished product you can barely see it, but I have always done this and if you keep the top layer more clear, then it adds some movement.

I also like to add some point of reference to convey the scale of the Titan, in this case a small defense laser from the Titanicus objectives sprue.

I painted it black, then heavy drybrush Ahriman Blue, Temple Guard Blue, and Corax White, I then went over the edges around the "rocks" with some Agrax, and some Seraphim Sepia, I also added a few splashes of Plaguebearer Flesh which acts as seaweed and adds a bit of colour to an otherwise quite stale base.

I also decided to add some brown, I believe this is Skragg brown around the feet to show the sediment thrown up by the Titan walking.

So now that the base is about ready for Resin, you have to make sure none of your resin will leak out, Normally I would use 1mm clear plasticard, cut a strip and tape it to the base, but I used an old Coke Bottle, wash and dry:

Glue the model to the base and make sure the glue is fully cured, if you apply resin with superglue which is still wet it may react to the resin.

Now I have a rough mould, I used 2 layers of masking tape to hold it in place:

Resin:

Now for the fun stuff, I have had a few incidents where I lost my resin due to a tiny leak in the mould, it literally only needs a pinprick to lose it all, so make sure your mould is properly sealed.

I tend to use a little UV resin around the edges and cure it while I go:

I use standard cheap Amazon UV Jewellery resin, and I tint it with a single drop of P3 Turquise ink:

I also mixed a little of the UV resin with some Skragg Brown and poured it around the feet, use a wooden stir stick to blend it roughly into the other resin before using the UV light to cure it.

You can do the entire base using this method, and works just as well, but I had some 2 part Epoxy Resin I needed to use, so for the purposes of this tutorial I may as well use all the different methods that I know :P

2 Part Epoxy is a bit more fiddly, you have to ensure you mix is correctly, and not all epoxies are the same, some are a few parts to a part of hardener, I used a 50:50 one, just mix equal parts of both, stir for about 10 minutes and pour.

If you choose a different Epoxy please read the instructions.  It is generally better to use Epoxy Resins on larger bases as you will have to mix up a fair bit and I had quite a bit of waste.

For colour I used alcohol based inks, Epoxy Resin can react negatively to water based inks/paints, and can cause curing issues.

Again, only use 1 single drop, it goes a very long way !  You only want the hint of colour to the resin, the base itself does a lot of the colouring already.

If in doubt if you have not stirred it long enough, just stir it a bit more, make sure it is clear, do not worry about airbubbles, we can deal with them in a bit.

Now it is just a case of pouring it, resin is self levelling, so make sure you work on a flat surface, leave it all to settle for a few minutes, work it round with the wooden stirring stick.

Any air bubbles will rise to the surface, you can simply blow on them to pop them, or a quick blast from a heatgun will do the same (literally a 3 second blast, do not melt your model)

.

Now just wait for 24 hours (or however long the resin takes to cure if you used different resin), leave the model in a ventilated, dust free area.

I tend to put mine on a little paper party plate, just in case there is a leak !

Once fully cured, remove the tape and plastic mould, you can now tidy up any edges.

For waves and splashes I use Golden Extra Heavy Gel, this is a transparent, heavy gel which will cure over 24-36 hours and will dry completely clear.

I also tried out some Vallejo Acryllic Foam Texture, but cannot recommend the product, it was very watery and did not perform as well as I had hoped, it will probabyl work better to just use some white paint to paint the tops of the waves.

This is the result after the Golden Heavy Gel has cured, and the Vallejo Water Texture has been added to the tops of the waves, leave to cure (again) for another 24 hours minimum, all that remains to be done now is to apply a thin coat of Vallejo Still Water to give everything a gloss finish.

That is really all there is to it, it sounds like a lot, but it is really pretty easy to do, just a lot waiting time between using resin.

Please feel free to put any questions on the comments, and thanks for reading

Cheers

Eyecon74

Militarum Monday: Contemplating Crusade

Hi All,

As you may have seen from my previous post, I’ve been passed the Cadia Stands boxed set which was sent to the Battle Bunnies as a review item. Needless to say, I was incredibly excited to get my hands on this box and had all the best intentions to smash through the painting in short order... but alas... disaster struck, and work has taken up a lot more of my time than expected recently!

So where does this leave me? Well, I’m looking at how to grow from the boxed set into a small Astra Militarum army over time; I’ve had a look at the Crusade rules, and they intrigue me. The system seems a little complex at first glance, but I’m hoping it shouldn’t be too much to wrap my head around.

The Cadia Stands box nets you a total of 19 power level, and I’ve managed to lay my grubby mitts on some Kasrkin and a Chimera to bulk the army out a bit, giving me an extra 10 power level. Removing either the Kasrkin or the Chimera means I can squeeze the army into 25 power level or 500 points.

But where am I at in terms of building the models?! Not as far as I’d hoped would be the honest answer! I’ve assembled the Command Squad and one of the Infantry Squads, the Field Ordnance Batteries (FOB) and the Armoured Sentinel. I’m keeping the heads separate from the rest of the kits to assist with painting, and I’ll be spraying up the FOB crew separately to the guns themselves.

The Field Ordnance Batteries are great kits... just ignore the disembodied hands on the controls!

My totally-normal-and-definitely-not-creepy method of painting heads

The Command Squad along with one of the Infantry Squads doing their best Ferrus Manus impression

So, what’s next? Well, honestly – I'm just going to try and eke out the time I can between shifts and being on call to finish building the infantry and start chucking paint at these chaps to get them to the table and start throwing dice in anger with them!

Weekly Progress Report 27/11/2022

Hi all

Hector managed to build the second gang stronghold box this week - got some odds and sods to do to finish the complete fort but the brushes will be back out this week to continue painting his titans once that's all done.

Eyecon74 has completed a commission piece, a Solaria Titanicus Warlord.  He has also made a start on another commission,  a Tau Manta and the entire army which comes with it!

Son_Of_Xana has been busy working on his Dwaven Blood Bowl team just the weathering and base to do then they are ready for the big leagues. You may have notice the recent name change from the_simple_painter the reason for that will be revealed in the coming months. FOR XANA

Drake has had to take a break from a review item due to issues with getting hold of Transfers (postal strike), so has started some Legio Custodes Venatari. 

The Gory Crow has been messing around with what is possibly his new favourite paint, “Dirty Down Rust”.

A water soluble pot of wonder that gives absolutely amazing results especially through and airbrush but works just fine with a traditional brush.

Many pots of this stuff will be used to get the Into the Dark terrain looking like a truly ancient spacehulk

Dungeon Bowl: Death Match review and game

Hi all

We luckily received the new Dungeon Bowl Gaming Supplement: Death Match from Games Workshop. 

You can see our first game in action below, where you even see the Wandering Werewolf in action, and the other cool new tiles. 

Any of you who have played Dungeon Bowl in the past will likely be very happy with some additional corridors, rooms and doors! Especially with all new tile specific rules (and double sided!). 

This is a legendary pitch arrangement that we had a game on. 

The Wondering Werewolf was great. He blitzes and then returns to his dog house at the end of every player turn. 

I hope we see more of these tiles with either character models which can be activated. Maybe a sprue of other similar activated items too?! Could be really fun and cool. 

This tile enables you to move another 1 square if you start your turn on it. 

The tiles are double sided. This side is the Death side. The other side is the life side! Hope this is a running theme with more College themed tiles coming out in the future. A brilliant way of keeping the game fresh and fun. 

Great supplement for a brilliant Beer and Pizza game. Still can’t imagine playing it as a League. 

Battle Bunnies.