Can You Guess What This Is For?

I started this Land Raider using what has become my standard black undercoat followed by grey pre-shading. I used regal blue once that was done. I am starting this project way behind schedule, so I thought I should post up my progress.

Anyone care go guess what this tank is for? ;)

Tutorial: Easy Press Mold For Basing

I have been eyeing all kinds of resin bases made by any number of people or small companies online for a while now, and decided I would give resin casting a shot. If we ignore 5 days of horrible partially cured resin mess, then I think I have finally it on something that is easy to do, looks good, and is accessible to most gamers. Basically I have been sculpting parched desert bases for my Blood angels army for some time, but doing it one at a time was just horrible. With the BA release and my whole army being redone, I needed a quick way to get them based so I could get them on the table.

Materials:

• Green Stuff or whatever sculpting material you use
• plastic rod
• water

STAGE 1: Making the mold
Step 1: cut the plastic rod into lots of little oddly sized pieces. You can see the design I came up with in the first image.

Step 2: Glue the rods into a negative image of the cracks you want to produce. It is not necessary to overfill the design, since you can press a base twice for more irregular designs.

STAGE 2: Pressing a base

Step 1: create an even layer of green stuff on the top of the base

Step 2: cover the top of the base with water

Step 3: Press the mold into the base and then remove it.

Step 4: If you want to get fancy, remove the mold and then repress the base. This will produce all kinds of intricate cracks.

Step 5: Wait until the green stuff is dry and then cut away the edge that overhangs the edge of the base. I got excited here and did not wait long enough, so I have some mushy looking bases.

Step 6: Sand the top of each base slightly

Using this technique I was able to make 35 bases in a couple of hours. The most tedious part of this was cutting off the green stuff overspill!

Flesh Tearers, Blood Angels, Vindicators, and holy cow I played a game!

Lots of photos for you today. I've spend most of this long weekend working at the office, but I managed to get some painting done in between contractors showing up and construction. The good news is that the vindicator is ready to go. I dusted it using an air brush, which I like less than just using weathering powders. After I finished the vindi, I did more work on my BA and flesh tearers. I really love the how the FT are coming out, even thou field gh they take infinitely less time than the BA.

So you'd think that with all of this BA painting I would BA at the local GW. Nope, I pulled out my fabulous death wing and got solidly stomped by tyranids. The came was not even close. Drop podding tyranids and 3 of those giant burrowing things surrounded my tri-colored force and proceeded to destroy them. Two inner circle masters died that day. My opponent gave me a lot of good advice, like having a librarian to deal with the three zoanthropes and 'doom of whatever' that were eating me alive. The MVPS of the game were the mycetic spores, that kept dropping pie plates of doom on my troops. In true epic fashion, my troops huddled in a crater surrounded by the growing tide of death. (The birthing critter kept popping out loads of spawn as well) In the end on lone cyclone thunder hammer armed terminator held the tide long enough for two bikes to escape the carnage. My strategy next time I hear the tyranids are coming..... exterminatus!

BA Vindicator

I got the itch to play a game tomorrow and decided to get my vindicator game ready. It does not have the dust like my other tanks yet and it is pre-battle damaged, but I really like the way it is turning out. I know it is basically a big red tank without a lot of other colors, but the red has a lot of subtlety when seen up close. My orange hard lining is far far less subtle, but who knows, maybe that will improve over time. I still need to finish up the other tanks. Maybe next up will be a LR Crusader. I kind of like the idea of deep striking land raiders.

Now I need to figure out a list that will let me field all of these tanks.

BA & Flesh Tearers WIP 2

More progress on the two units. Anyone know why I decided to paint two different units at the same time? I don't know either! In an case, I am having a lot of fun with the details on these guys, even though I am painting very quickly. There is a lot of touch up to do, and the models do have some weird casting mushiness around the details. I doubt I will paint all of the details on the flesh tearers, since that might be a bit too much ornamentation, though they will get some pale yellow details to match Seths PA better. I need to figure out a good formula for a flesh tears rhino now!

Any games/events going on in DC this memorial day weekend?

BA & Flesh Tearers Air Brushed

I decided that I should paint up some new troops choices with the new models, and gave air brushing a try. I used the airbrush to lay down the base coat unevenly as I have done with my pre-shaded vehicles, and then washed the models with baal red. I am not sure about the wash at this point, since pre-wash the models looked really cool with the shading. The red wash really tones it down. The goal is to heavily weather the FT, so they will have battle damage all over them. The BA will be kept relatively clean.

These are just base colors, with pre-shading and washes, however it is the most important step to me, since this determines how clean a model will look, and lays the foundation for any fun detail work the follows.

I used tiny magnets in the backpacks so I could decide to change these guys out for jump troops at a late point in time. Sadly, I completely forgot to magnetize the BA, or even add magnets, so I will have to do those after the fact. Hopefully I can match the red!

What Not To Do When Pre Shading A Tank

Rather than show you what to do today, I am going to show you what not to do. If you look back a few blog posts you'll see my first experiment with pre-shading my Blood Angles tanks. I painted a LR and two Baals this way and had a great time doing it. If you look at those posts, and then look at the pre-shading in this post, it is clear that I pre-shaded too much. Basically by not leaving enough black I removed much of the interesting shading. I think I will soldier on with this tank as it is, but I was hoping to go two steps forward rather than two steps back.

Oh, those are my finger prints on the tank as well. I mixed my paint too thin this time as well! I should have listened to the spluttering of the air brush and known to back off and re-asses.

oh, one more thing totally not 40k related. I am running in a 10k tomorrow. Wish me luck!

Why That's a WWI Tank!

I showed my 72 year old father my red blood angles land raider, and the first thing he said was that it was a neat WW1 tank. I identify guard with WW1, but haven't really thought of space marines as futuristic antiques as well.