Base-stravaganza! Swamp edition

  Now that the first batch of gremlins are assembled, it's time to talk bases.  Personally, I was rather proud of how well my lava bases look on my 40k army, so I wanted these to be even better than that.  Especially with a few models as you need in Malifaux, why not go hog wild(and yes that was an intentional pun).

  I would love to say that I came up with all this myself, but I didn't.  This is basically a compilation of every swamp basing tutorial I could find online and me picking out the things that I thought I had a chance of pulling off. Normally I would give credit when using someone else's guide, but in this case, that would require me listing sooooo many things. So if you're reading this and you think I was inspired by something you did.  Thank you.  I probably was.

So to begin with, I went about modifying the bases that came with my original models so they would be sunken in and water tight.  Step 1 was to cut out the top part of the base

Now that I'm left with just the ring of the base, I had to give it a bottom.  To do this, I grabbed the top of a "to go" container from the sushi place I normally go to.  I put a bead of glue all around the bottom of the ring, and placed it on top of the clear plastic.  Then allowed it to dry fully.

Look mom.. I'm recycling!

Using my exacto knife, I simply cut the ring off of the plastic.  

This is a view of the base upside down.

I had a couple idea's for bases.  1 using corkboard as rocks/ground.  The other to make sort of raft/dock looking base on top of the water.  The dock was made in the exact same way that my outhouse was made from one of my previous projects, just some superglue, popcicle sticks, and brown wash.

I glued the corkboard in place in the new bottom of the base before taking them out to be primed black.  

I've seen some people actually put sand in the bottom to provide some texture, but I hastily globbed brown paint in the bottom.  (sorry no picture) and it was good enough for me.  

Then I drybrushed it with a brown and puke green.  

After a quick trip to the hobby store, I bought some "savanna grass" and "plants"  These were glued to the bottom of the base.  I also threw in a spare skull I had laying around.  

Note to self, maybe saying you have extra skulls laying around your basement isn't a good idea.  

Now for the step "that really tied the room together Dude."  Woodlands Scenic Realistic Water.  This is why we made our bases water tight.  I mixed a few drops of brown wash into the realistic water mix and poured it into the bottom of the base.  

I did the empty base that will be under the raft first.  I figured if I didn't like how it turned out, it would be an easy one to "do over."

And here's the final product with my first finished Malifaux model, my warpig.

For me and my skill level, I feel pretty good about how it all turned out.  Hopefully the bases will draw peoples attention more than the models do and my mistakes are more easily overlooked.  

More Malifaux to come soon.  It nice to be excited about painting again.  I was getting a little worn out of the space marine sameness.  

And now for something completely different....

  I think part of the reason I've not been painting is because I'm sort of burnt out on warhammer/40k.  So I think it's time to change things up ever so slightly.

  Ok so maybe it's not something COMPLETELY different.  Malifaux is a weird, steampunky, magical, Victorian era, alternate world of craziness.   The fluff and background story are nothing really mindblowingly new, but it's well written and does draw you in.  There has been a bit of a swell of support here locally so now is as good of time as any to jump.  (There is actually a league to go along with this new influx of interest that I'm hoping to join in on, but we'll have to see.)

I've decided to play Gremlins, so I bought myself the So'mer Teeth Jones starter box.  New plastic versions are coming out VERY soon, but the metal ones were on sale, plus this will let me get a variety of different sculpts and looks as I will probably end up buying the new plastic version when they come out.  The gremlins play style is to summon more models in during the game, so for example, you might pay for 4 Bayou Gremlins to start the game, but you could end the game with more than that.  (Think Tomb Kings or Vampire Counts in WFB)  

I took some pictures of the assembled models, but well.. they're a bit blurry.  

yup.. it's in bags.  

I have some really neat basing planned out for these guys using "realistic water" and some modified sunken bases, but that's for another article, another time.  

Where have you been?

  Been a loooooooooooong time since I put anything up here and there's a really simple answer to that.  I haven't had anything to put up, but since I've gotten a few email/messages recently asking where I went, I thought I would put something up.

  All my free painting time, has been eaten up by games (Binding of Issac and Spelunky are addictive as hell), and on top of been having to work a lot more.  That's not to say that I haven't done anything.

  Santa was very nice to me, I got a drop pod, and 5 more Dark Angel Veterans (who I plan on turning into Sternguard)  plus some more battlefoam.  The days of my miniatures rattling around in a cardboard box are gone (well at least my 40k stuff, next I need to invest in some ogre sized pieces of foam)

  Now on to picture time.

Yes that says "to radio Hawaii" on my monitor,I was watching The Final Countdown

Also, the Final Countdown is now stuck in your head. 

  I can't remember who/where I got the idea from because I would love to give credit, but I decided this would be the best chance to try painting with a sharpie!  Normally I would go in with my black ink wash and do all the tiny little areas, and the process would take forever(especially with all the dark areas on this drop pod)  but instead I took an ultra fine tip sharpie and VOILA!

  I definitely think I could do a better job of it with more practice, but I think on the whole it was a successful go.  I'll spend less time cleaning up my mistakes from doing it this way, then I would using black wash on it.  Plus sharpies are much cheaper than a pot black GW wash.  

  More to come later for sure, and thanks to everyone who still comes around/cares even after my long hiatus.   

Airbrushing my Phoenix/Vendetta

So I got an airbrush about a year ago or so and have only been using it to paint large areas very quickly.  I wanted to finally start using it to its fullest potential and what better what to do that, than to work on my Phoenix. 

  This has been a blast doing, and while I did make a few mistakes.  It's still waay better than the stuff I normally crank out. I've learned that I do need to invest in a smaller nozzle for my airbrush.  Even using the smallest one I have, there were times when I wished I could have had a smaller spray.  

  Gonna have to order a proper flying base from Games-Workshop.  For the time being I'm using a makeshift base that I carved out of hard foam just so it would support the stick to make him the correct height.  

League Results, Imperial Guard, and a Massive Photo Dump

Things have been busy as hell as of late with work so I've not posted in weeks, so rather than giving each subject it's own posting I'm just gonna lay it all out in one go.

LEAGUE

  I ended the league 1-4-1 which is a win and a tie better than I expected to do.  It's been so long since I played those game, it wouldn't be fair to try and do battle reports on any of them.  I would mostly be talking out my ass and probably misrepresenting the ass kicking I got, however, here's some photos of my trouncing in action.

SHIELDS UP!

In my last post I showed that I had received my shields.  Well I got them attached and painted.

They deserve some more cleanup and maybe another coat of paint on them, but for the time being, they're on.  

TRIBESMEN(aka Imperial Guard)

I've decided that what my army really needs is some Imperial Guard.  Keeping with the native american theme, I decided to go with figures from Conquest Miniatures.  They're a little cheaper than buying Games Workshop IG troops. (about 40 dollars for 19 guys) whereas if I went with normal IG, I would have to pay 30 bucks for 10 troopers, and then buy heads for them.  The other benefit to using the Conquest minis is that I can make my guard more like savages instead of just another guard army.  

 I started with a box of their Woodland Indian War Party. I wanted to make sure that the scale of the models held up against GW models as well check out the quality of the miniatures in person.  

These did not fail to impress.  Quiet a few different poses in the box, single piece miniatures, took me very little work to make them work for me.  

I'm actually REALLY pleased with how these turned out.  I've since ordered another box of the Woodland War Party(giving me ~40 Infantry), a pack of Commanche Warriors(who will be my PCS) and the Buffalo Hump and His-oo-san-chees pack (Buffalo Hump is either going to be my Primaris Psycher or Guardsman Marbo)

That covers my HQ, and Troop choice for my allied contingent, now comes the fun part.

FIREBIRD / VENDETTA

With the recent release of the new High Elf army, came one of the coolest looking GW models I've seen in a while.  The Phoenix.

This model is a godsend.  It was going to be tough to say that my IG were primitive savages when they had aircraft at their disposal... however, by using the phoenix model I can keep the theme going.  

Newest addition to the fleet

I decided to take a break from assembling/painting Stormtalons (one more to go)  and bought myself a Stormraven.  This is by far the biggest(and most expensive) model I've ever built. Took me a day to get it assembled.  Lots of glue and beer.

PHOTO DUMP!

You might notice the dremel in that picture.  Well it's not just there because I feel like showing it off.  Thanks to GW's infinite wisdom, the stormraven is a bitch to get onto the flying base stand unless you are willing to glue it down.  Anyone that has ever seen the underbelly of a Stormtalon knows that the flying base hole extends into the model itself, so you don't have to glue it in and that makes transport SOO much easier.  Well the Stormraven doesn't have that.... unless you do what I did.

Painting the Stormraven would be pretty easy, just time consuming.  I'm going go transfer the color scheme from the Stormtalons over to it so the only thing is just doing the work... which I admit is slow going.

That's where I am as of today.  Getting closer, but I still feel like I'm weeks away.