Happy New Year

Year has passed again! Thanks for your comments and for fellow bloggers inspiring postings and great ideas..! I had a quite busy year in painting field... and I noticed, that I have made my own record this year, painting just over one hundred minis!!! Can´t believe it. Two orders from Pan-Vision sure helped... in form of Dawn of War and Space Marine projects (later project fell down with some THQ corporate employee changes or sumthin...) But I sure got my own projects going on too... WHFB, WH40K, Descent, and some Rune Quest minis too. This blogging stuff has been the fuel for my miniature hobbying. And, once more, you fellow bloggers have been an inspiration to me and given me the enthusiasm to paint, paint, paint... all year :) Thanks for that! Here´s few pics from this years projects! HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYBODY!!!

Serpents of Hellfire Dreadnought WIP

Hello! As I wrote in the earlier postings... I´m trying to pull 1500pts WH40K army together from my miniature cupboard... I counted that have all the minis I need for it, but there´s quite a job to assemble all of the marines to playable form. Now I got my old Dreadnought project back to the table again, and continued to build it for a battle to come. It´s the Dread that came inside the brilliant Assault on Black Reach box. So far I have cutted off the multi-melta and replaced it with home made Autocannon. How I made the Autocannon can be seen here.

 I got some bitz from Tactical Marines box (the gear/ammo belts), and from Assault marines I took the ammo box.

I cutted the rivets and lids off the gear belts and did some shaping on the ammo box.

Next I glued the belt  bitz together to a long autocannon ammobelt...

I made an ammunition hopper out of the Assault Marine ammo box, and attached the belt to it. I also cutted of the tank out of multi-melta, and added one armour plate in the back.

Here´s how it came out...

While checking the bitz box for some ideas, I got one Servo Skull in my hand... and tried it on. I think it looked nice... Like the old veteran inside was taking a peek... "Coming out of the sarcophagus."

I refined the idea with some green stuff...

Here´s how it looks like at the moment... I think it came out pretty nice.

I think I´ll start the painting next... Will be back with this one soon... Bye now!

Christmas stuff

Hello! Two hobby things from christmas time... First thing is that SC Warhammer give away arrived just before christmas, and it was just great. I had never heard about this "Space Marine Assault" box before I red about it from the SC Warhammer blog...  And suddenly, out of the blue I was the lucky one to win they´re "perfect Starter kit"... that included the Space Marine Assault and lots of extra hobby stuff. 

In the box was some flock, basing sand, hobby knife, plastic glue, measure, some scenery for 40K, the Space Marine Assault box, Terminator including rules for Assault game, how to make wargame scenery turorials, paint brush and some super glue... Amazing.

And here´s what´s inside the Assault box. Eight Genestealers, five Space Marines, some paints, paint brush, dice and the Game Rules book. After reading the rulebook, I felt that the game seemed very much alike with the Space Hulk or Space Crusade... Meaning very simple rules with fun scenarios. I will try it out with my son. Big thanks for the guys at the Santa Cruz Warhammer!!!

Second thingy is the greatest present of  the Christmas... that I bought for  my six year old son. (My wife says that I bought it for my self... And she´s 75% right)

Ladies and Gentleman, The one and only... Millenium Falcon!!!
I was lucky to find it in sale, where all Legos were half price. Other wise I never would have bought it, in full price of 180€. That´s a bit salty price for a toy I think... (unless it has something to do with my miniature hobby :)

We were abit surprised by the amount of Lego pieces in the box... "Wow Dad..! That´s a alot of lego bitz!" -"That´s right my son... You´re just gonna have to use the Force to assembly it!"

I think the Lego characters in the box were great! No need to introduce them... I guess.

Nice details were the Darth Vaders face without the helmet... And when you flip the head of Luke Skywalker and put on the helmet, you have the Jedi practice theme going on... How cool is that!

I took lots of WIP pics of the assembly, but I think I just go straight to the finished Millenium Falcon. There you have it... It also has laser turret in the bottom. And you can put Lego dudes sit inside the gun turrets, just like in the movie. Awesome Dude..!

And ofcourse, you can open up the top, so you can get a peek inside the Falcon... There are some guys sitting around the Derijak Game table. "Just let the Wookie win...ok?!"

"Use the Force Luke"

Star Wars geek saying... Bye now!

WH40K Christmas Scenario

Defence of the Gingerbread House:

Defender can have unlimited forces of Space Marines.They try to defend the Gingerbread House from hungry kids, who have waited Christmas for three (or more) months now... Kids have Feel no Pain, Furious Charge, Stubborn and Hit and Run special rules. Game lasts for six rounds or ends when the objective has been "destroyed".

Here´s turn three... I´m not doing too well... Merry Christmas everybody :)

Descent Miniatures: Deep Elf Assasins

These silent assasins came out quite nicely... Only three of them in the game, so it was pretty fast job :) I tried to paint the Assasins colors as they are in the Descent books. Nice color theme, I think !

Base colors: Codex Grey to the hair, Astronomican Grey to the skin, cloak with Knarloc Green, and the leather parts with Bestial Brown. I washed with DevMud and highlighted with base colors adding white. There you have it... Bye now!

Serpents of Hellfire: Call to Arms

Old friend came by last week. As we were talking about hobby stuff (40K mostly), it turned out that he had grown he´s Tyranid army up to respectable 1500 points. I also have some Space Marines laying around, but I have never put them together in a proper army form. I like to paint and convert them, and even have my own successor chapter of Dark Angels called "Serpents of Hellfire" (check out the older postings), but it´s been kind of a background project for a long time now. I´ve allways been more of a WHFB player... but maybe this is gonna change now :). We decided to arrange a game for 1500 points armies in a near future, so every now and then I´ll be posting about what I´ve put together for the Marines.

In inspiration of this, I kitbashed together a Vanguard unit from pieces of Dark Angel veterans, Space Marine Tactical Squad, and Space Wolfs...

Mini in the middle is very old stuff... It was in the "Chapter Master" competition early 2000(ish)... And after that I´ve  painted my Marines and Terminators with almost the same manner. Now I took a whole new angle to the painting. First of all, I left the dry brushing off. I painted a very dark under coat and made high lighting pretty stong... to the level of blazing orange. Finally I added some flame patterns to the minis armours and cloaks. First I was afraid to make them look like Hot Rod cars... but I think that didn´t happen here :D I´m happy with the new "Hellfires", and they were pretty fast to paint this way.

Here´s a pic of what I got together so far from my mini cupboard... Still lots of stuff in there to glue together :)

Some of the HQ personnel, two tactical squads of ten, 5 Vanguards, 5 Sternguards, 5Terminators (gonna skip the Cyclone I think), 5 Devastators and the Dread... I hope Santa´s gonna get me some heavy support in form of vehicles... And bikers would be nice :) Bye for now!

Descent Miniatures: Hell Hounds bases done

Hi! Not much to say  in this posting... The base job´s done on these flamer dogs. I think it took me longer than to paint the actual minis :D

Coming up next are the Deep Elf assasins and the Dark Priests... Primers done :) Bye now!

Lunar Officer painted

Here´s another painted soldier to my slowly growing Lunar army :) Well... I´m not really aiming for "army", just skirmish amount of Lunars for RPG use. I really like the skulpting and posing of this lunar officer. I think it looks very threatening and fearless with his sword hanging down, walking decisively towards the enemy line... It has very clear details, so it was easy and fun to paint.

All the metal parts are painted bronze, except the sword and dagger. They are painted to iron, one of the rare and valuable rune metals of Glorantha...

How to make a Cyborg... part 2

Hello! Another posting about "What´s going on at my work place"... Earlier I wrote about the Sci-fi themed theater play at our City Theatre (Where I work as a metal and wood artesan), that I was making scenery for. One scenery piece was this Cyborg. I haven´t found the time to take any pics of it before this, and these pics suck ass, for the lighting was poor in the scenery storage. I finished the paint job for the Premier over month ago :). It´s basically a human sized Cyborg marionette, made out of metal. If you like to see how I made it, just click here for the earlier posting... On with the pics!

That flashy thing in the chest is a light bulb, that flashes in the same rythm the cyborg speaks :) (It doesn´t actually speak.  It´s a playback...Ok?!  If I could make it speak, I´d work at NASA :D

Close up of the legs... I personally like the toe nails. They´re funny looking :)

In the background you can see tables made out of old TV-screens. The screens are turned upward, and they actually turn on during the play, showing only snow screen... I liked that "effect" when I went to see the show.

So, these were the only pics that were even little bit decent... sorry. But we have next show on thursday, so I try to sneek up to the stage and take some better pics. I´ll get back with this if I get some shots done :) Bye now!

Open Quest arrived

Hello! I´m taking a little break from Descent project... which is good for me and the blog, that has come too Descent related. One reason for the break is that I´m very excited about my Open Quest book that arrived from D101 Games.

I´m an old Rune Quest fan and GM, and have played it for years. All the twenty+ Rune Quest/Glorantha related releases (Rule Books and expansions) I own, have quite different and unclear descriptions of some of the rules... For example how the different methods of magic works. So we have made quite many house rules over the years for magic, combat and character creation / improvement. When I stumbled upon this book in the internet, I immediatly new that I just had to have it... and I did. I´m happy now:)  Not gonna make a review out of it, but I quote shortly from the D101 Games home page, so you know what I´m talking about: "Open Quest is based on the Mongoose RuneQuest SRD (MRQ SRD), with ideas from previous editions of Chaosium’s RuneQuest and Stormbringer 5th, mixed in with some common sense house rulings from the author’s twenty years of experience with the D100 system" So if you´re RQ (or any other D100 system) player, I recommend this book... if you don´t already have it.

Little bit about my miniature hobby too... Inspired by the Open Quest, I dusted my Lunar Empire soldiers (Roman Auxiliaries and Praetorian Guard). I assembled and painted one of the Praetorians...

WIP... Bronze and red parts painted... washing with Devmud.

Here´s the finished mini, standing on a 12 years old crappy piece of self-made scenery, that I also dusted from the mini cupboard :)

It felt really good to paint something else for a change than Descent minis. Maybe I´ll do another... That´s all for now. Bye!

Descent Miniatures: Hell Hounds WIP

Hello! I got the Hell Hounds on my painting table last night, and almost got them finished in one session... When I started, I had no plan on how to paint them, except I would keep it fast and simple. And that´s what I did. Here´s some pics of what happened...

Primer was made with Army Painters Leather Brown.

Then one layer of Red Gore to the parts where I planned to have some fire effect...

Heavy wash of Badab Black over everything.

Here I have made some over/dry brushing on the fire parts, starting whith Blood Red then Blazing Orange. Finally I added some little dots of Golden Yellow with a detail brush...

I made similar effects around the eyes and in to the mouth, and painted the eyes with Skull White.

I painted the noses black and high lighted them with Codex Grey. The claws were painted first with  Red Gore, high light with Blood Red, and finally little white dots were added.

Finnally I high lighted  the fur with 2:1 Graveyard Earth and Bleached Bone, and painted the teeth.

And that´s it for now... I think they´re ready, except what comes to basing job.

One more pic from different angle. They´re not my finest job, but I´m pretty happy with the painting, considering the speed and very simple palette.  I´ll be back when I get the basings done. Bye now!

More Descent Scenery

Hello! Quick update to what I did last week before our Descent gaming session. Here´s some pics...

I just had to make few more rubble props quick before our gaming night. So first I went through some old bits and minis... and found this old wood elf, that had an honour to become a statue. Then, back to carving urethane again. I made some writings to the stand by stabbing little dots in to it, and I think it turned out Ok. After that I glued little bit sand in random places.

Here it is painted, and some Army painter Dead Grass on it.

From behind...

And here´s some stuff I had bought from the local petshop last summer. I think they cost 6€ a piece. Not bad I think... Now it seemed like a good time to make something out of them.

After I gave them the base color, I decided to base the statue and make some floor tiles out of urethane. Sand was also added at this point.

After the high lighting and "grassing" they looked pretty decent (for 6€ a piece).

Here´s the other rubble markers "in action". I think the 3D markers really made a difference to the dungeon mood, and they made the action easier to perceive. I recommend this to all dungeon dwellers :) Bye now!