Titans on the hunt

Not much of an update today as I've got a cold. Grrr. Finished some woods for Epic and other small scale battles. They're just small trees from Noch on hardboard and some static grass.

A platoon of Imperial Guard begin exiting their Chimeras to array for battle

The planet of Rynn's World lies on the edge of human space, within easy striking range of countless Ork Warlords that rule the neighboring systems. Orks are loathsome and disorganized aliens, creatures with little intelligence and no sense of pity. Until now, Rynn's World has been left in peace. The main reason for this is almost certainly that it is home fo the Crimson Fists Chapter of Space marines - who's fortress/monastery has stood on the rocky soil of Rynn's World for over a thousand years. However, last week the planet was invaded by a force from the Ork Empire of Charadon. The insane Ork Warlord, one Snagrod the Arch-arsonist, has already conquered the human world of Badlanding, not to mention several minor Ork Empires. Rynn's World is only sparsely populated, but (prior to the invasion) had a complete and effective missile-defense system designed to deter would be invaders. Confident in the power of their defenses (and forgetting the irrational behavior of Orks) no-one anticipated the invasion. Even so, all would have been well were it not for the freak accident that caused a defense missile to glance off-course and plunge down right on top of the Space Marine Arsenal. The Marine base and its complement of fighting men and machines was completely destroyed. The only survivors were the Chapter leader Commander Pedro Cantor and fifteen Marines. Without the Marines the human settlers were quickly slain and their townships overrun. Now only the Planet's capital, New Rynn City, remains in human hands. 

The Crimson Fists (painted by Bulldog Lopez) man the ruins of an old farmstead and await the Orks...

Ah, 'tis the season of year-end review blog posts! Much like last year, I am going to continue to focus on what I did not finish, versus what I did finish. After all, if you want to see what I painted, it's all (mostly) up on the blog.

First things, first, I did finish a few of the projects from last years list: the Lord of Worms, the dark future car, and the Magewraith Throne.

Unfortunately, there are still a few projects that I didn't touch during the entire year! You may recognize these two as being in exactly the same state as last year:

Okay, I think I said no more terrain for a little bit, but I lied. I had originally intended to build an outhouse because I thought that would be fun. But then I decided I wanted to test out some Liquitex Stucco gel. And who has ever heard of a stuccoed outhouse? So instead I grabbed the gatehouse that came with the old (sadly, out of production) Citadel Watchtower. I slathered the stucco over the model and after it was try, set to painting it. The it was painted off-white and initially washed with some heavily thinned Bronzed Flesh. I then applied various washes and dry brushes. I'm reasonably happy with it, but Blue in Vermont has achieved much better results than I did!

Okay, so this is the last of my terrain posts for a while. I promise! I finished up the Zombies of Karr-Keel commission, so there will be several blog posts directed towards zombies in the near future. But, for now, I've got some more terrain that I finally finished. Although, to be honest, after looking at these pictures,  I want to make some changes.

First is the Sigmarite Chapel. I bought this as part of the large fantasy terrain set GW released sometime around 2006-2007. Most of it was painted around 2009. I don't remember how I did most of it, to be honest, but I use quite a bit of brown and ochre oils to weather the stucco. I also attempted to paint the "medallion" over the front door to resemble the friezes of ancient Greece. If you look closely, you can also see some of the old GW flock (the same thing I use on my epic models) used to simulate moss growing on the sides of the stones at the foundation.






So with those done, I've yet to even open the Manor House. I'm not really sure what I want to do with it. I'd love to put it on a large base with a courtyard like was shown in the US White Dwarf at the time, but I don't have anywhere to store such a monstrous piece of terrain, nor would it allow much use on the table since it would have such a large footprint. I'm sure I'll think of something eventually!

Another classic piece of terrain I've always been fond of is the classic bunkers that used to always appear in the 2nd ed. 40k battle reports. This is, unfortunately, not one of those bunkers. But it isn't a bad bunker by any means.

I painted it with my airbrush, applying various grays at zenithaly higher angles. I applied streaks of grime with some oil paints. The steels were painted with GW iron breaker and had various dirty washes, both acrylic and enamel, applied. Same with the brass, only I believe I drybrushed a few highlights, going through the the range of current GW colors. Black pigments were applied around the damaged portions.

The only parts I'm not happy with are the green armor pieces on the corpses. I feel like I could have gotten those better as they look way too rough.

Also, I know the background isn't very sci-fi, but I was trying out my new backdrop for terrain :D

So I don't know why I go on the terrain binges. I never use any of it; largely because I never play. An I sure don't have a good place to store it! But, nonetheless, I do. I also love the old style trees from White Dwarf. At one point, I know they were manufactured by K&M, since I ordered some from GW and they arrived still in the K&M boxes. However, someone recently suggested on the Oldhammer Facebook group that they also used Javis trees. I can't vouch that all of these are K&M either, since some of them came from a batch in GW packaging.

So I've seen a lot of other bloggers doing an end of the year review for 2016 and I wanted to get in on that action. However, I wanted to do something a bit different. Where a lot of other bloggers have shown everything they painted or focused on stuff that was painted but did not feature on their blog, I wanted to showcase the stuff I started but didn't finish, since virtually everything I painted in 2016 has been shown off here (or it will be over the course of my next few blog posts!).

First up, is a Chaos Lord for my modern-hammer chaos army. I've named this chap the Lord of Worms and he's born aloft by a horde of Nurglings. As you can see, the Nurglings are pretty much done and the bulk of the lord is converted. He needs some more work though, as I have a lot planned for him.


The fact that this model isn't finished yet makes me sad. I converted it as a test model for Dark Future about two or three years ago. This year, I put the base coat down. Next I have to apply chipping medium and then the paint. Part of the problem is I can't decide what color I want the top coat to be!
Although this is a GW kit, it's intended for use in Frostgrave. The throne and platform are finished and I've done the gap filling on the two gargoyles on the side, but haven't sanded them flat yet. Once that is done, it's ready for paint!

So with the Kingdom Death Kickstarter this year, it reminded me that I still haven't touched my stuff from the original Kingdom Death Kickstarter! So I decided to start working on the Adam model that with my pledge. At this point he's mostly built. I've got a slight gap on one of the wrists to finish and I need to prep his spear and shield and he'll be ready for paint as well.

And finally (and I apologize for the lighting, resin is hard to photograph with my crappy phone), a townhouse from Table Top World. As you can see, the bottom level is complete. I want to add some stucco textures to the upper levels and I have to figure out how best to attach the porch piece so that I can use the inside of the building.

So there you go, hopefully I'll finish these projects in 2017!