Glottkin Lamprey Maulerfiend Conversion Painted!

TJ here with another insane conversion monster painted and ready for battle. Today I am showing off the panther (or lamprey) Maulerfiend conversion I made from the Glottkin arms. Let's take a look:

Making a Portable Snow Table: Out With the Old, In With the New!

CVinton's New Table for the Wolves

I love to have a table at my house.  Though it doesn't get much use, I feel its my home field as completes my hobby side of the game.  Evolution has, at best, game store quality terrain (funny enough, I made most of it). I feel like if I invite someone to my house for a game, I'm hosting their game experience and just as a host offers a guest the best amenities they can, I too feel this is the attitude for the 'Home Game'.

Thus I present:

Fenris 

(to go)

Product Review: Elmer's multi-purpose spray adhesive

I was walking around Micheal's the other day browsing for inspiration when I saw this stuff. I've used spray adhesives in the past for applying flock to terrain and game tables and have never be impressed and always go with the standard woodglue mixed with water and paint rollered out. Times have changed.

Some words on Army Theme

Let me start out by saying this is my painting desk. It lives in my livingroom right next to the tv and directly across from the front door. My wife hates it. I put it up here so that everyone can get an idea of who I usually am. I'm a very disorganized person in almost all aspects of my life...except army theme. When it comes to army theme and the appearance of my army. My 40k vanity knows no limits.

So I got the start of my guard army from an old friend who doesn't play anymore. He just gave them too me, free. I tried them out and never looked back. The problem was when I wanted to expand the army because the figs he gave me are the 2nd edition metal ones and didn't fit with the new plastics. Because of my 40k vanity I had to basically shelf 60-70% of what he gave me to have a fully playable army.

The theme I wanted was that of a city fight theme. I stopped playing 40k when the city fight codex came out and for me, making a city fight themed army was fulfilling something I couldn't do when I was young and broke. So, they're mostly dark colors, black and gray mostly. Here are my vets:

When I thought of the Cadians I thought of them as the ultramarine equivalent of the Imperial Guard. They sit on the gateway to chaos relms, Cadia is kind of a big deal. The have new stuff, they're disciplined, they're top of the line. Now, as far as fluff, they're no praetorian guard, but I think of them as the USMC. I bet there is a Cadia somewhere cheering SEPMER FI! With that in mind, I thought of the detail of all their stuff is new, no rusty old tanks for my guard! Genestealer scratch the paint? Burn it, get a new one. Someone opened their rear hatch door and hit your Lemen? Give to to the Catachans, we're getting a new one. As far as discipline, I picture that with chin straps. Chin straps secure boys, no Saving Private Ryan head shots because you took your helmet off. You're cheap but that las gun and bayonet you have aren't. And with that, I also took the time to make sure that if there is a bayonet on the gun, there wasn't one in they're belt gear and vice versa.

I numbered my tanks for two reasons, one, it fits my theme of discipline, and two it makes it easy to remember what unit is in what chimera. I used the armored company fist on the tanks too and placed them in the same position on each tank and numbered in the same spots.


The core of my army strictly adhers to the doctrine of this theme. The excepts start coming in with specialty units which to me make sense they don't fit in. In the imperial guard, if it isn't a commander, veteran of infantry men, it's almost like a mercinary that doesn't fit into the regular rank and file guardsmen. Battle psykers, rattlings, marbo, ogryn. All of these are very different than a normal guardsmen and shouldn't look like them. However, you have to keep your color theme together. My colors are grey and black so I encorporated them into the army on these specialty units.


The next consideration I had was for my vendetta. I picture the vendetta as a cross over from a different branch of the Imperial forces, like the airforce providing airsupport to the marines. (I know the navy would do this, calm down CO and OST). I wanted to keep the colors similar but make it not look like it was a normal unit in this division of the IG.
Lastly is the Inquisitor. He's not even an imperial guardsmen so he needs to look completely different. Also, I wanted him as a center piece model so he needed to be a bright color that stands out from the rest but still fits into the army. I achieved this by using yellows, reds, and whites to make him stand out, and then using the lasgun with the guard helmet painted in the theme of my guard army to tie him in.

I feel like there are many ways besides army composition that you can theme an army. It can be a simple paint job, an over all idea for the army (such as "Discipline") or even something as simple as snow basing. Its up to you to bring your who army together and I don't think people should think of theme as a limiting thing but instead think of it as a creative challenge to let you play the army you want and still fit a theme you like. Make the theme fit your army, not your army fit the theme.

Green Stuff Sandbags!

Just a quick little tutorial on making some easy sandbags. I'm getting my army around for the paint and play at the local hobby shop and I have to finally paint my weapon teams since the point cost is so low AND there is no armor 14 allowed. Time for bullets!

Fix off, just as a warning, these eats up your green stuff. I did three teams and went through about a half to a quart of each color. A friend from the store pointed out that there are world war II kits of sand bags but they don't get the dynamic look I like. Plus, if green stuff is 20$ and that kit is 10$ish then its not really too much more. I'm ok with the more expensive yet more customized method. Here we go!

First off, mix your green stuff. Its not too important for this to let it sit since you're not doing much, if any, fine detail. Just mix and glob. Secondly, gloves, wear your gloves for this because you'll end up leaving big finger prints that you'll have to smooth out and remember our focus; Quick!

I grabbed up enough to roll it into a ball about half the size of a dime. Roll it up into a ball then squish it down into a rectangular pancake. This is going to be your basic form. To get a good idea of what scale you should come out to mine up up about the size of a guardsmen torso. I've never built a sandbag wall to hide behind while shooting lasguns at people, but I feel like that's a good size.

Next you'll select your location of your model to put the base of the wall and lay it down.

Side note: For my bases I use floor tiles from lowes. You can buy 12"x12" squares for .66$ I just break it up with a pair of pliers into random chunks then just glue it down. If you saw my bikes the effect comes out like that. After that I use a product that I found from when I first bought my Bearded Dragon called 'Lizard Liter." It's crushed walnut shells and looks really great as a rocky/sandy/fine rubble.

So, after you place your rounded rectangular chunk down press it into any rubble or any other sandbags you might have down and make it look sort of droopy like its been there for a while and the sand has settled in to make it look more realisting. After that, run your needle tool around the end to create a crease all the way around to look like a seem. Once you're done there go back to the top and push the droops back down that the seem might have pushed back up. This does two things: makes the seem irregular and thinner in areas and makes the top look evenly effected by gravity.

Then make tiny lines int he top portion to make it look like folds in the material. Over exaggerate them, it'll look good when you paint it and give some great dark/light contrast areas when you use washes or dry brush. I start out by making using the needle tool. Keep in mind that material bunches at where its being pulled so it'll form little V's with the point at the edge and the creases spidering towards the center.

After using the needle tool I then push the droops down with the larger silcon smoothing tool. Remember to go back through afterward, repeating your steps until you get it to look like its been hanging there. If you get any sharp edges in the the GS don't worry too much because it has a tendency to 'settle' out and smooth out the edges naturally.

After you get one just rinse and repeat, stuffing them into each other, over weird edges, ect. Heres this team, one bag at a time:




Ok, so there is the first layer. Pretty easy. I stopped here and add an all new technique for this tutorial as an experiment.
I was sitting around in class, day dreaming about 40k instead of focusing on how not to kill people via mixing certain IV meds and thought, how can I make my sand bags look even more real? Texture. To get it I decided the best thing to use was a cloth bandaid.

After you make your first row of bags, just wrap it around your finger and press the texture randomly into the bags. the GS doesn't generally stick to the bandaid but you can still get it wet just to make sure.

Continue stacking your bags until you get the look, stopping each row to texture them then continuing.
More stacking:



There's the first team finished and here are the other two. Too bad I don't get to have cover saves for the terrain on my base! I'd put sandbags on my whole army's bases its so easy!!


Thanks! As always, message me with any questions.

Nurgle Daemon Prince Basing complete!

I finished the base for my Nurgle Daemon Prince and I think it turned out rather well. I was worries that everything would be hard to get at with the brush and that it would be complicated, but it was actually very easy, especially coming from painting the model.

.

The camera flash took away some of the darkness from the mud and grit. It actually is pretty dark, which was why I opted for the glowing slime to add a little flash to the base without taking away from the model or going over the top. Let me know what you guys think!