Where I am with Space Hulk...

I had planned on completing everything for Space Hulk as of New Years Eve 2011 - sadly, this did not come to pass. I did manage to get the vast majority of the miniatures in the boxed set completed, but I still have the Librarian and Broodlord to finish, plus the bases of the Genestealers to go back over and bring up to the level of muck and grime of the Terminators. To be honest, there's probably a million different things I could go back and alter. And I probably will.

Long-time readers of my blog may remember the magnetised bases I put together for all of the Terminators shortly after receiving the box as a Christmas gift from my parents - the bases are all now painted up nicely!

Although all of the integral bases on the Terminators are different shapes, it was still slightly awkward to pair the correct Astartes to the correct 40mm gaming base. A set of transfers kindly solved this issue for me! Each integral base bottom now has a corresponding number on it's particular base. Perfect!

Hopefully I'll be able to get the Broodlord and Librarian finished soon and put an end to the project - it's been a labour of love - time to start gaming with them!

Terrain Crusade - Games Mat

Well, it's been quite a while since I've managed an update! The various terrain projects over the past couple of months wore me out somewhat, but I'm finally back! In the past few weeks I've finished a squad of 10 Imperial Guardsmen and a Commissar, 5 Dark Eldar Wyches, 3 fantasy sorcerers familliars, a zombie-huntin' granny, a Mordheim/Empire in Flames Halfling Thief and 3 Space Hulk Terminators - a few touch-ups here and there, some blood and gore on the Terminators and I'll have some tasty content-filled posts up!


For now though, I have my shiny new gaming mat! When I recently got my games board out to put together my board/terrain setup, I decided that it was a little large and unwieldy for my plans - I had thought it'd fit comfortably on the breakfast bar in my kitchen area, but sadly not! I've had my eye on a Zuzzy mat for a good while now, and finally got around to ordering one.

I went for their Wounded City mat - Zuzzy mats are made out of a thin latex rubber, textured rather nicely and readily accept paint. This one is 3ft by 3ft, supplied in a nice sturdy box along with a small sample piece for you to test your paint scheme on. 

The Wounded City mat's theme is of a desolate ruined cityscape, with broken blacktop/tarmac, with bricks showing through here and there where they have been uncovered by whatever cataclysm has befallen the city.

I've started painting the mat by basecoating with acryllics that are approximately the same as the slightly-darkened Scorched Brown I use for my bases. I've then watered down some black and painted it into the cracks and exposed brickwork.

Following this, I used some sponge-y packing material from an eBay delivery to take off the excess paint and blend in the watered-down black.


The mat was shipped from the USA and worked out at around £30 including shipping. If I'd had more space in the flat I'd have gone for a larger mat, but this is just about perfect for my needs - it is currently drying awaiting the various washes and drybrushes...

Space Hulk Termie

The picture showed a few things I'll be altering, and he still needs some rust adding to the base, but another Terminator down, 6 and the Broodlord left to go!


I never seem to have any energy for painting at the moment - I am planning a lazy day on Sunday when I'll be attempting to finish off a bunch of different almost-complete miniatures that I currently have on my desk!

First 5 Space Hulk Terminators complete!

 I finally completed the first 5 Blood Angel Terminators for Mission 1: Suicide Mission.

 Sergeant Lorenzo

 Brother Zael

Brother Noctis


Rather happy with this lot - at least it's a decent chunk of the Terminators in the set complete!

The Savage Boys - completed!

Well, the "sacred vow" made in my previous post has been somewhat broken, but at least it's not something brand new that I've started working on...

I present to you, the Savage Boys, a gang of sadist, masochist and various other varieties of 'ists.

The full gang - three of these guys were painted previously, meaning I've painted 10 miniatures from undercoat to completion in a week. I really can't remember the last time I got even close to completing that much in a week, so please allow me a small amount of chuffed-ness..

Boris Savage, escaped Pit Fighter and leader of the Savage Boys, a bunch of raidin' good fer nothings, who ain't welcome in any of the settlements of the wastes, on account of murderin' more than their fair share of peace officers over the years..

 Pyro Pete, a madman with a spray nozzle and a tank of flammable liquid strapped to his back. Rumour has it that he joined the gang after he torched the rest of his settlement down to the foundations of their shacks.

 Jawbone, who is a key example of the kind of dental surgery one can find in the wastes.

 Cuss, another fire-addicted eejit, with his custom built flamer built into the remains of a military rifle. It's rumoured that he actually volunteered to have that brace attached to his face when the rotjaw hit him - said it made him look "meaner".

 Uzi Dave, I dare you to ask this little bugger why he's called that?

 Jimbo, generic ganger/gunfodder...

 Marv, with his homemade blunderbus.

Steroid Bob, right-hand man and second-in-command of the Boys. May have a slight addiction to Buffout, and no, it don't shrink your junk! Probably best if you don't ask that again... (this guy seriously reminds me of a local bloke who used to go to the gym I used to frequent...)

Whiplash, who is a little too heavily into sadism considering his young age. He'll be more than happy to spank you.

The Sissy - kind of the odd man out, this guy just tagged along after one of the gang's more infamous raids. He was the mayor of a settlement, claimed to want to join the gang for protection after they slaughtered almost everyone in the town. Forced to wear a tutu, he's yet to prove his worth. Kept in line by Whiplash. (this guy would also double as a zombapoc "psycho")

As mentioned, I'm very happy with these! I also just returned to the "vow", having worked on a few of the Terminators tonight for a while - hopefully there'll be more progress with them tomorrow..

Brother Deino

The first of my Space Hulk Blood Angel Terminators - Brother Deino.

I'm also giving all the Terminators from the game magnetised 40mm bases, in case I ever manage to have a 40k game...

More on the way!

...and looking forward...

Well, this is another post that I've been meaning to write for a few days now, with real-life intervening in various ways to delay the post - I actually started writing it a week ago now, but I'm always too tired to finish it off!

Happy New Year to anyone reading - it's been a bit turbulent in the Miniature Woes' household, with various family gatherings, neighbours having heart attacks etc. etc.

What have I got planned for the year ahead?


Possibly my favourite present from Christmas, I really can't gush enough about how fantastic this is. The whole format is rather opulent, with fantastic sculpts, great accessories, great art...the whole package. In this new year I intend to get everything from the box assembled and painted for gaming with a non-wargaming friend. He's already said that he'd like to try it out and I'm rather looking forward to it! I'd also like to play it with some of my other friends, who might want to use their own forces in it (I also like the idea of using it as a "dungeon" for Dark Heresy/Rogue Trader) and I will be putting together a few variant forces for it. Namely, a Chaos Space Marine force and a force of Marines in Power Armour. They should be rather fun to do, and will be mounted on plasticard bases instead of the normal GW round ones.

2010 is going to be the year of Chaos - I currently have 3 Chaos armies that are work-in-progress, in varying degrees of completion. My Fantasy Warriors of Chaos, for example, have barely been started, whilst my Chaos Marines and Chaos Daemons have sizeable portions completed.


Another of my main projects will be the Wasteland setting - a skirmish game with miniatures from various different companies. The plan for 2010 is to take the bits and pieces of background material I have noted down/is whizzing around my head and formulate a cohesive background for at least a portion of the game world. The best way I can think to explain it is that it's something like Fallout3 meets Firefly. It's a sci-fi Earth-like world that was racked by civil war, which left the world irradiated and humanity almost thrown back to the stone age. The rest of humanity, in the stars, blockaded the world, leaving the space around the planet mined and a small fleet to keep out the scavengers. The war did not rid the world of all it's humans - pockets survived in underground bunkers and in the wilderness, where the bombs did not fall, others were mutated or stripped of their humanity by the radiation. In the aftermath of the war, settlements arose, maps were re-written, leaders arose. From time to time, ships land, smuggling various items to the surface, taking refugees at exorbitant prices...
That's about it! I have ideas for a number of towns and characters, with 5 gangs and counting, with another 3 or 4 in work-in-progress form.
To begin with, the setting was created to fit into the GW background, but since then I've decided to keep it as it's own setting. Hopefully I'll be able to have some games over the next year!

Other projects will include completing the Space Marines I currently have work in progress, and eventually starting my Imperial Guard army properly and a selection of Battlefleet Gothic miniatures and other space ships.

On the gaming front, I'd just love to be able to game more often. I need to find a decent local wargames club, as well as getting in touch with some of my old gaming mates. I have forces for a number of different games now - it'd be awesome to have a little Blood Bowl tournament, or a Mordheim campaign. A 40k campaign could also be on the cards.

In real life, I want to use 2010 to sort my knees out. I've had problems with my right knee for 4 years now, and varying degrees of problems with the both of them over the past 10 years. It's about time I had something done about it and I would be more capable of living my life.

On that note, you have my regards if you've read through all of this!

Exterminatus

Well, I had another post planned as a sort of New Years Resolutions/looking ahead blog, but that will be coming later in the week. For now, we have a small update with some of the miniatures I'm working on.

I'm still chiselling away at the Terminator Horde I have work-in-progress. These are two that I've got to somewhere near 80% - the next step will be to gloss coat the black portions of their armour, then add chipped metal on edges and other areas that would likely get worn easily. Then markings, weathering and basing. Slowly getting there! I now remember why I limited my batch painting of the other squad of Terminators to blocks of 2 or 3 - they can really drag on and on...


As a semi-distraction I decided to start the "busy work" of the Space Hulk box - the door/portal holders. I began by spray undercoating them (black, on the reverse of this piece of cardboard). I then mixed up a watered down version of BG metal with some blue and purple in it. It was a nice dark metal, and I hope to have enough left in the pot to do all of the bases for the game with it.


I then created a wash with some Blue Ink, Chaos Black, Johnsons Klear (it's a floor product, but is used in washes and the like to aid the flow...or something) and water, and applied it to all of the door holders, now attached to the reverse of the cardboard with blu-tak. Once this had dried I watered down some Vermin Brown and used it to add a few patches of rust here and there. After that dried, I used some Tamiya Clear Red and added some spilt blood on some of them. Turned out nicely I think!

The doors altogether, with card inserts.


I cleaned up and spray undercoated the objectives - first black and then a light coat of white spray. Not sure how to paint the CAT yet, but I have schemes for the dead marine and chalice worked out in my head.


Something else I'm on with - stripping a bunch of random miniatures for various projects. A cheap eBay lot got me various Marines from Space Crusade - they will be used to make a nice retro squad for Space Hulk, as well as a squad of Chaos Space Marines and a squad of Plague Marines for a bit of variety with the forces involved!

Welcome to my followers, it was quite exciting to see that I have 4 of you guys! Thanks!

Looking back...

Well, I have been meaning to write this since somewhere near Christmas day, in anticipation of the new year and obligatory "resolutions" post :)

This is a look back over some of my projects of the last year, all the miniatures and terrain shown are examples of the work I got finished in 2009 and should give some nice indicators as to the direction of my projects in 2010. Click any of the photos for higher resolution photos - if anyone wants to see any of the minis in more detail, ask in the comments section and I'll post up some nicer pictures...

These are my Imperial Space Marines, a custom Chapter - the Shadow Wraiths. These are my largest army - I currently have something near a Battle company of Marines for these and have a number of squads to finish off - the 15 Terminators shown earlier in my blog, a Tactical squad, an Assault squad, a Sternguard squad also shown work-in-progress earlier in the blog, various Chaplains and Librarians and plans for a dual Thunder Mace-wielding Chapter Master.


My Chaos forces are a project that started sometime in the past year or so - I've had a bunch of stuff work-in-progress for a while now. It's actually two armies - a mixed force of Chaos Daemons and an army of Chaos Renegades named the Vulture Legion, who are a piratical warband drawn from various Chaos Legions and Renegade Chapters, who ceremonially strip their power armour back to the ceramite in vats of chemicals, then repainting half blood red in dedication to the overlord of the Vulture Legion. They also take on Mercenaries and Cult Troops - for example, the Tzeentchian Vorpal Brotherhood shown in the picture. In the next year both armies will be gaining reinforcements, with a squad of Plaguemarines, a squad of Havocs and a large murder-squad of Beserkers on the way for the Marines, and Fiends, Beasts and more Flamers on the way for the daemons.


This really began as a side project this year - a skirmish game combining elements of Necromunda and Gorkamorka, with a distinctly post-apocalyptic feel. Yeah, I was playing a lot of Fallout3! I have a number of ideas for this buzzing around my head, with a Fallout-like not-Earth planet combined with a Firefly-esque universe. I think I'll have completed somewhere in the region of 100 miniatures for this project this year alone, with another 60 or so miniatures rebased to fit with it. At the moment I have 5 full gangs/warbands for this, with more planned. I also have the zombies shown above, then 40 "rad-ghouls" made from the GW Fantasy plastic ghouls. I recently added some scavengers to my collection from em4 Miniatures and Copplestone Castings, so these will be seen in the new year, as well as even more...

Wasteland Terrain! Note the landmines around the playground. I love this project, and it works just as nicely with Warhammer 40k as it does with the Wasteland games. In this next year I intend to add a scavenger fortress to this collection, as well as even more car wrecks, more barricades, roads and a collapsed overpass, maybes some dead giant beasts (just skeletons remaining), crashed ships, more piles of scrap - all sorts! More about this in the near future...

Thanks for reading!
Chris

Magnetic Personalities...

Well, I've had another night without sleep, thanks to my shoddy knees. On the plus side, I have managed to get some more work done on the Space Hulk Terminators. I've finished magnetising the above 6 and I am now beginning to model their bases with scraps of plasticard. I'll probably end up adding a little bit more detail to their standard inbuilt bases, so they'll look nicer on the game board and on their 40mm gaming bases.


To show how I'm magnetising them - a magnet in each foot/each side and then corresponding magnets in the bases. They're flush on both sides, so they fit nicely onto their bases.

Showing the progress so far. I am very tempted to undercoat them, but I'll hold back for now. Perhaps once I have their bases finished and the gun barrels drilled, but I may wait until I have the whole of the Blood Angels Terminators magnetised. The only one that presents a problem is the Librarian, due to his hollow base, but I'll solve that with some creative plasticard and greenstuff work!

Stay tuned, more to come soon. Although today will probably be low in output due to the lack of sleep and drowsiness thanks to painkillers...


Oh, and the other reason my progress might be glacial - I picked up Dead Rising, a game I've wanted to play since the release of the Xbox360 a couple of years ago. I adore zombie films, and that seemed the most close to the Romero classics. On my first play it seems really rather good, but a lot more melee-oriented than shooting. In fact, the shooting controls are bloody horrible. Urk.

Terminatorfest

Well, here is the progress update that I've been meaning to do for a few days now - now with added Space Hulk!

Prior to Christmas I'd wanted to finish off the 15 Space Marine Terminators that I had undercoated and work-in-progress for main 40k army, the Shadow Wraith Chapter. Sadly, with one distraction after another and real-life stuff, I didn't manage this. Boo hiss to that! I got them all basecoated and I've done quite a bit on 6 of them:

These are 5 normal Terminators plus a stand in for the special character Lysander (the one in the middle of the top row, with the Ork skull). They've been basecoated and had the first wash (of Graveyard Earth) over the bone part of their armour. The vents on their backs have also been painted BG Metal and been washed with Badab Black, and the skulls on have been painted a lighter bone and washed with Devlan Mud. Still quite a lot to do on them, but it's a decent start - I've decided to finish these before painting any of the Space Hulk stuff.

The arms for these guys had their metal parts painted with BG Metal and their storm shields painted in a brassy mix.

These are my WIP Sternguard - I'd originally bought a box of the Dark Angel veterans to be a Command Squad under the last edition Marine Codex, only to change my mind when the current one was released. There are another 5 of these also work in progress, but I decided to break them down into two batches. There are two of the metal robed Dark Angels in there - they were actually a Christmas gift about 8 or 9 years ago, but I've only just gotten around to using them - such is this hobby, eh?


I couldn't resist starting on Space Hulk, so I took everything off the sprues with a pair of clippers and sorted them into these boxes:


As with the above miniatures, I'll be painting them in batches:


I'm beginning with 6 of the Terminators, who are being magnetised for use in 40k.


I began by marking on their bases where the best points to drill would be. Using a pin vice/hobby drill and a bit that is normally used in an electric screwdriver, I carefully drilled holes big enough and just-say deep enough for the magnets I have bought. I'm numbering their bases on both sides so I can tell which fits where.


I have a bunch of 40mm GW bases I bought from eBay - they had mostly been used before, so some needed stripping and cleaning up, but they were well worth the money. This will have holes drilled where the magnets are needed. I'll then build up the base with scrap plasticard once I figure out where it's needed.

More to come soon...