Some more Crimson Fist WiP

Just a quick little update on the progress of my weapon upgrades for my Fists.


You can see in the close up of the marines in various stages of completion. Hopefully I will be take some photos from start to finish to share the technique (if anyone is interested). I originally saw the painting style on the WargamerAU forums by a great fellow called Stu (Fingolfin on the forums) who I recently had the pleasure of meeting at Gencon 2009.




Anyway, its not a big update but I wanted to share. :)

Crimson Fist Update

Hello everyone,

Things are moving ever so slowly on the painting front (probably best described as moving at the speed of a drunken sloth...). However, I recently took a few photos of what I have done.

Here are my 'Army' shots to date:





First Squad (Assault on Black Reach Tactical squad)


Second Squad (Battle for Macragge Tactical squad)


Sergeant's


I have decided to go with the codex style of having the red helmets for the sergeants. The red is the same dark red as the fists.

Personally I am not a fan of the bare headed sergeants so I decided to attach a painted helmet on the hip of each of the sergeants and I hope to do the same thing for all the various officers as I work my way through the figures.

Right now I am finishing off two heavy bolter marines and a melta gunner, and have a plasma gunner and two more tactical marines just waiting for their final matt varnish finish.

I will try to have more regular updates unlike the time between my previous updates.

Some new scenery

Hi guys,

I have been a bit slack with the updates for the past few weeks. Anyway, I thought I would share some of the recent scenery additions.

The first is an old rhino that I weathered and damaged. I inherited this old RT days rhino that was very badly beat up and was painted in a horrible oil based very thick paint job. Its not the best but overall I am pretty happy with it.







The second piece of scenery is another CNC Workshop kit. A friend gave me two of the kits (thanks Pauly).

Next Scenery Project - Ork Outpost

Hi guys,

Just a quick one to share. I just got two CNC Sand buildings (CNC Workshop Sand Series) to add to the start of my Ork camp (the tower was the first bit).

The two models I got are the Crows Nest....



...and the Gunner's Platform.



I am unsure on how I will go about painting them yet. I am tempted to do a dark red (think scab red)/clay-ish look to them with metal plates put on it. To be honest....not really sure yet. But it will be a Deathskull Clan Outpost so perhaps a blue is the answer. Any ideas?

Props to my mate Matt for picking these up for me. Cheers buddy. :)

Also...in case anyone was wondering you will probably see my cats in various pictures as they like to 'help' me whenever I am doing anything 40k.

New Scenery for Rynn's World - Ork Tower and Rocks

Over the past week or so I have been working on some new scenery for my table I have decided to call "Rynn's World".

The Ork Tower was originally a CNC Workshop Watchtower that I modified to be a very old water tank tower that some orks have decided to take over.

Here are some WIP pictures of the ork tower:







I ran into very few problems while putting this together. However, I was very unhappy when I found a bulk of my rivets that I spent several hours making from slicing plasicard rod fell off when they where touched. I used "plastic glue" that didn't really take. Oh well...lesson learned. I found that using PVA glue seemed to fix this problem nicely.

The "original" parts of the tower were painted to look heavily rusted. My thoughts were that the orks found the tower and proceeded to make it a "Good 'Un" by adding lots of armour plates and other gubbins like spikes and razor wire.

The plates were made from the lid of a plastic ice cream container.
The spikes were made from bits of sprue and the razor wire is actually the brass etched Forgeworld Razore Wire. Personally I loved the wire and plan on using it for more of my Ork buildings.












The rocks took no time to put together and paint. These were actually very light slate rocks that I found on my driveway. I thought they were a great size for the table top, so here they are. :)





Well that's about it for the moment.

Building a gaming table – Part Three

Hello everyone! Here we are for the last part of building your own gaming table; painting it!

This part is very straight forward but I thought I would share my experiences.

Regardless on how you wish to paint the board I would suggest making a stop at your local paint shop or hardware store to colour match your chosen scheme. You can go in with a swatch of each colour on a piece of clean white paper. However; I found out that to get the best results go in with your actual paint pots and the store will be able to scan the wet paint to match the colours correctly.

For the reddish colour of my board, I purchased sample pots matching the following colours:

2x Scab Red (base coat)
1x Blood Red (first dry brush highlight)
1x Rotting Flesh (second dry brush highlight)
1x Blazing Orange (third dry brush highlight)

I had to purchase two sample pots of the Scab Red to have the required coverage as a base coat.

Before I started on my base coat I gave the entire board a coat of black primer. In this case I used a spray for convenience.

Painting the board is just like painting a piece of scenery (just much bigger obviously), with one big difference being that the brush is bigger. After the base coat is applied and dry we can get to the dry brushing if you are happy with the coverage. In my case I had to apply two coats. Drying will take much longer with the paint from the sample pots, but this is a fair trade-off for the cost savings in paint.




For the dry brushing I found that the best brush to use was actually a cheapish makeup rouge brush. Once I had wiped off the right amount of paint off this brush; it gave me just the right coverage and great control. I thoroughly recommend using one.





I got mine with a heap of other smaller makeup (aka dry brushing) brushes for a few dollars at the local pharmacy.





Once all the dry brushing was done I gave the board a final coat of Scab Red (my base coat) around all the outside edges. I felt this just gave the board a nice clean appearance as I got a little bit of paint from dry brushing onto the sides.




To help protect the paint work on the gaming board I also bought a litre of both gloss and matt Wattyl Estapol. For all my modelling and painting projects, I try to give the item a nice coat of gloss (for longer lasting wear and tear) and a final coat of matt (to take away the glossy look).
Once the Estapol was dry I screwed in two rubber feet on both the long edges of the board to protect the edges when stored.

And that’s it!



In conclusion I am really happy I went ahead with this project (despite the nay sayer’s) as I now have a dedicated gaming board that is a little bit different and is matched exactly to my 40k armies (Crimson Fists and Orks). I really wanted to have a board that gave that Mars / Red Earth / Aussie Outback feel and I am really happy with the result.

In the event I want to play on a green battlefield….well…I have the traditional dark green sheet for this (until I build my ‘grassy table’ that is).

All that there is left to do now is finish some more scenery in the same basing scheme.

Thanks for reading the articles and I hope they were of some use for you.

Until next time….

Building a gaming table – Part Two

G’day guys and gals. Here it is as promised, part two of my three part series of building your own games table. Part one consisted of putting together the frame and table top. In this section I will go over the steps I took to texture the entire table.

Tools:
2” Brush
Drill
Sand paper
‘Bag less’ Vacuum cleaner OR Dustpan and Brush


Material:
Fine, medium & coarse ballast
Fine sand
PVA glue
Spray sealer/vanish
Large Plastic screw top container
Large ice cream container or mixing bowl
Small bucket of water


First off you will need to prepare a few items. Personally I made a mix of ballast for the overall texture from four (4) grades of materials. I used very fine beach sand (that was washed and “cooked”) and three grades (fine, medium and coarse) of ballast from Woodland Scenics.

I mixed all the ballast and sand in the ratios 4:4:4:1 of fine ballast, medium ballast, coarse ballast and fine sand in a large ice cream container. I found this mix to be fantastic in giving the entire table a more realistic variable texture.



To speed up the process of applying the ballast to the table I would suggest making a shaker (This was my wife’s idea). It will drastically speed up the whole process of texturing 32’ of table in this case, but will also greatly reduce how much ballast you will burn through.

To make the shaker I took an old (and clean) fridge fruit container (SPC Breaky Fruits) and then drilled a large number of holes into the lid. The more the merrier.
I found to get the consistency right for the shaker I had to add about twice as many holes as I did on my first attempt. Use the sand paper to clean up the holes drilled into the lid before adding your ballast to the container.

Now with the ballast and shaker ready we have all we need to get started!


1) Pour some PVA glue onto your table and spread the glue around in an area of approximately 1’x 1’. We dipped out brush into the bucket of water each time to help spread the PVA glue around. Don’t be afraid to add more PVA if required.


2) Using the shaker, liberally cover the PVA with ballast. With two people you can work as a team to minimise the amount of time the PVA has to dry before applying more PVA to another area. (Thanks Matt for helping!). Don’t get stressed about the amount of ballast you end up using as you will reclaim a significant amount back once the glue dries.




3) Work around the entire table then leave it all to dry. Personally I let my table sit for about 8 or so hours.


4) Once the glue is well and truly dry either use a dustpan and brush or, if you have one, use a ‘bag less’ vacuum cleaner to recover any excess ballast. I used a wide and soft head on the vacuum cleaner and gently worked my way around the table to reclaim all that expensive ballast mix. Personally I reclaimed about half of all my ballast.





5) You will probably have a number of thin patches or areas you missed completely on your first pass with the ballast. Just water down some PVA glue slightly and hit these areas again with the shaker. Again, leave it to dry and reclaim the excess ballast again. This will allow you to see if there are any other patches.



6) Hopefully by this stage you have got a great coverage of ballast, if not just repeat step 5 until your happy with the converge.




7) I used a spray sealer/vanish to help hold the ballast down and stop it lifting when I go to paint the table with a brush later. Leave this to dry.






Step seven isn’t critical but I tend to do this on a miniature scale with watered down PVA glue as I hate it when the ballast lifts leaving an ugly unpainted section on the base.

I also find by doing this I reduce the amount of paint wastage due to the ballast absorbing the moisture from the paint. If you do use spray, make sure you spray in a ventilated area and try to use a mask.

Here is a final close up of the texture.



We are now ready to paint!