Scattered

 Did a few pieces of scatter terrain. Rows of gravestones will likely become small walls, while the others will function nicely as Sz 1 destructible terrain for Malifaux.

A Shrubbery

 Before it gets past a full year since last painting update, here's a few Malifaux models as well as shrubberies, crates and barrels. 

Shrubberies are supposed to go on some sort of zone to act as some sort of tall grass area same way trees often do. Crates and barrels will be much needed scatter terrain for my terrain collection.

I added some shrubbery to Tunnel Rats too in a fit of fancy. Kari Zotiko also received nothing but water texture for her base so that was a bit of an exception for me. 

Fumigator is has nothing special going on for it, but The Ferryman was envisioned as a 100% figurehead of the ghost ship, no mermaid corpses included. Some water texture was added to the base, as I had to somehow rationalize to myself how a ghost ship would move around on dry land with a weird water splash under.

Terrain update

 It's been a longest while since I did some terrain all by myself. I'm not counting these Streets of Venice buildings for this particular category - they were just build and paint, simple like that.

I made a hazardous terrain marker from some odd toy piece that had human-like figure bursting out from wall or something, and it looks rather nice. If you keep your eyes open in the flea markets, you can get wonderful material for terrain projects.

Additionally, since I bought some stretto bridges, I thought I needed a river so they wouldn't serve only as decorative bridges. Three river pieces were milliputty on the river banks, plasticard as river base and translucent acrylic mass on top of layers of paint. 

Also, since they were finished, I placed some Giant Stone Face terrain pieces for Kingdom Death to the picture.

January Update

 I haven't had time for too many games lately, because of reasons. And probably won't for a little while.

However, now and then I've been able to snatch some time to paint.

Two quick models were both Hanged models for Resurrectionists in Malifaux. Nothing big there.

But it's been a while since I've done any terrain for my game table. I've expanded choices with a total of eight wooden walkways, two stretto bridges and villetta alessandra, a pretty much 3"x3" building. All of them are by TTCombat. 

Price tag for these terrain pieces isn't wasn't that high for EU customers, but then Brexit changed everything. There were some issues with stretto bridges and villetta balcone zaira (not shown in picture), but nothing that a proper file and clippers couldn't take care of. 

There we go.

The Harbinger of Talisman

As I usually do, I make a separate post once I've finished an expansionful of Talisman miniatures. This time here are the figures from latest expansion; The Harbinger.

So here they are. Possessed, Celestial, Ascendant Divine and The Harbinger himself.

I went the lazy way and just dipped them to Army Painter Quickshade.

I put a few scenery pieces in the picture that were finished with the Talisman figures. The fountain gets an honourable mention. That has been sitting on my shelf for, what, five or six years. It became an oppressive symbol that was quietly judging me and everything I ever did.

Deadzone walls were probably the reason I finally finished this phantom that was slowly draining the life out of me. Ha.

Victory.

Goat on Fire

I've usually posted a picture here if I have magnetised a Privateer Press heavy warbeast/warjack kit. And I'm continuing that trend.

This time I've magnetised Shadowhorn Satyr and Riphorn Satyr. Kit was easy to magnetise and barely required any work at all. Every part, however, definitely needs a magnet unlike Warpwolf kit, which was every magnetiser's wet daydream.

Also included are three smoke pillars I've made over the last few months.

My terrain collection has a serious lack of trees and forest. This has bothered me a bit, since they are important area terrains in Warmachine. Nowadays I have a green grass mat, but before I got that I wanted some kind of terrain that could act as a forest on a grey surface. Bright green foliage would have looked a little out of place there.

So here you can see three "trees" from a smoldering "forest". They look nice, but they were a pain to work with.

They're made of some sort of insulation silicone which I heard are good for projects like this. Well, this particular brand, while probably perfect for intended purposes, was terrible for making miniature terrain. Fumes gave headache and shaping it was difficult. On top of that it was resistant to paint. Resistant. To. Paint. My choice of materials had clearly been a success.

I spent months coating them with extra layers of primer sprays and varnishes. Finally they felt sturdy enough to actually touch and paint. Paint no longer chips when you just look at them with a mental image of a paint brush glowing in your eyes. You can move them around safely, but I am a little afraid of what will happen if one of them falls on a floor.

They've all been sculpted on a heavy bolt's nut to balance it correctly.

A little painting update

Pictures in the last gaming write-up are so atrocious in quality that I needed to quickly make a new blog entry with better photos to push the horror down.

Well, not really.

Rather, I'm trying to motivate myself to paint just a little bit more actively now. I finished painting two gaming pieces, well, technically yesterday.

They're Sara the Bright Witch and Jack Fellows the Privateer for A Touch of Evil.

This time, though picture is sharp enough, it didn't focus right. But I guess it still shows the most important thing: these gaming pieces are finished from toe to hair.

Now, there is something else in the picture.

Years ago (almost ten years, actually. Damn time flies!) I bought Games Workshop walls for terrain. They've been in extensive use during various times in my career as a wargamer.

However, when I got my filthy little hands upon the plastic walls & fences terrain set, these wall pieces dropped out entirely from gaming boards.

First, they're BIG. For linear obstacles at least. Linear obstacles you can get from "new" plastic set are so much better for Warmachine/Hordes, because there is next to no attempt to balance models on the scenery pieces base. And that is good, it's clear to everyone that "no, you can't stand on top of this fence". These old walls are all clumsy and awkward.

Second, they're a bit out of place. Most of these old walls have either something iconic (imperial eagles on ammo crates) or too science fictionish elements going on. For a reason it bugs me.

Third, they're "ugly". By ugly I mean that they have a dull palette, and because there is pre-glued grass in there it creates the feeling that they're "ready to use". And as such they're a bore.

Some unknown impulse struck me a while ago, and I picked up the two wall pieces from this particular set that had no problems mentioned in second pointer. Then I painted them to break the monotoneous colors, removing much of problems mentioned in third pointer.

By making some of the reinforcements to appear wooden (though their texture looks very much metallic, but hey... it's what you paint it to be, not what it looks like to be without paint) I attempted to make the walls fit a little bit better to Iron Kingdoms. At least I find it unlikely that there would be SO much refined scrap metal pieces around to construct improvised full-metal walls.

Ah well.

Oh, and the third wall piece in picture is a non-retouched wall piece from same terrain set, just for comparison.

PVA glue pond, or an excuse for an update

Been playing less, and been painting less, but somehow I had a short spree at easy terrain... err... painting and even a little bit constructing?

I got the craters as freebies from a small trade some time ago. I think they were from manufacturer called "pegasus" or something like that. Anyway, I messed them up with a little bit of sand and a few ruined statue pieces. I think they look nice enough on table, though matt varnish still shines a bit too much.

Anyway, the terrain piece I can tell more about is the PVA glue ponds.

I cut a little pond from some sort of plasticard and slowly build up the banks with milliputty that had been left in excess in other projects.

Then I glued some sand to the banks and painted the bottom of the water dark blue.

There are two layers of PVA glue there, both of which were colored a little. I tried to make some swirlywhirly out of the paint mixed with PVA to create even some illusion of water.

It doesn't look too fancy, but that is a fine example what you can do pretty easily with not too much materials involved. Surely beats a blue scrap paper?