Journey to the Silver Tower

I finally got a chance to pick up my copy of Warhammer Quest Silver Tower last weekend and have started work putting together the figures. I decided yo start with the Questor as I had some ideas on how I wanted to paint him to avoid the golden statue look of the official paint job.

The first thing I noticed about the miniatures is how well they go together. These are probably the first of this new generation of plastics from GW that I've worked with and I'll be honest they really blew me away. All of the parts go together perfectly and layer over each other to hide seams and mold lines. They remind me more of a Japanese model kits than the clunky models that GW used to put out 10 years ago. The downside is that there is really only one way to easily assemble the models which is going to make the second half of the monsters a bit harder to make unique.

My plan on the Questor was to make him a literal white knight. So I went with a cool white for the armor and a warm white for the cloak. I kept to some gold to break it up a bit. I also wanted to give the impression that he's been out fighting evil for a while so I scuffed up the paint on the armor and gave him a bit of wear with some weathering powders.

I'm still undecided on how I want to do the bases. I want to have them all match so I decided to hold off on his till I figure it out. Making it more difficult is that rooms in the game are pretty random ( as befits a Tzeentch chaos tower) and I really haven't figured out a good choice that might blend in to all of them. I'm considering a tile or mosaic looking but I might just fall back on simple stone slabs too.

Next for Silver tower will be some of the cultists.

More Stone Heads

Two more Big Giant Stone Heads for the collection. Both of these are modelled after later generation hybrids and represent nobles, viziers or something like that. Anyways they're a bit more human looking overall. I really wanted them to give them that beatific smiling Buddha face that a lot of Khmer statues have but I just couldn't get a smile to work with the genestealer look. Of course GW art was no help I don't think they have a single picture of a smiling Genestealer Hybrid. In the grim future there is only scowls and people shouting. I settled for more of a frowning face and maybe a kinda disappointed guy?

For the first one I took some inspiration from a video game I played recently ( Torchlight II -  I'm about 4 years behind on my gaming) which had a ruined temple with a stone face sticking up out of the ground. So after sculpting the face I cut the back off at an angle so it would look like it mysteriously sank into the earth.

The second head is a bit more massive as I wanted it be be free standing. I wanted to give it a design that mimicked both the cowl that the genestealer Magus always seem to wear and the border that surrounds a lot of the Khmer statues. The teardrop design was pressed in using a plastic straw that was creased into the right shape and then I went back over it to firm up the lines. The back got a lot more DAS clay added to it to round out the shape of the cowl.

The rest of the build went as normal adding the flexible base. For the paint job I took some inspiration from the red rock formations from our trip to Colorado. In particular a rock face in Waterton Canyon that had some great weathering and color to it.

I started painting them a dark brown then mixed in orange and green into it for more color. Then worked my way into the grays. When doing rocks I always stipple on the paint as it tends to give a more natural textured look. They ended up much grayer than the actual rocks back at the canyon but I like how they came out. With a much richer tone then my first stone head.

I have plans for at least 3 more heads but I might do even more as they are really fun to make.

Place Keeper Post

Things have been busy with being out of town last weekend and heading out to vacation in Colorado this week ( actually due to the magic of automation I should be in the mountains as this goes up.) So I haven't managed to finish any projects yet but I added some pictures below of in progress work.

Two more Big Stone Heads under construction and a few roughed out flagstones for a road.

Little plastic gemstones direct from the factory in China. I'm hoping these are going to be a major component of stage two of my terrain building. 

In other news I'm really excited about the new GW Warhammer Quest game coming out. It has evil birdmen in it! Along with a ton of nice looking sculpts. I'll be picking it up after vacation to try to play with the wife.

Unlike a lot of people I really wasn't bothered by the switch to Age of Sigmar but at the same time it didn't provoke much interest either. I think the Old World setting really made much more sense as a role-playing setting then for a mass battle one. So Silver Tower will be my first real look at it. I know many people can't get behind the stylistic change to the figures but I like the new look to the Orcs  ( or Orukks or whatever they renamed them)  As far as I can tell they seem to be pushing a kinda modern video game aesthetic to the models which actually comes across pretty well. League of Legends on the tabletop. Grognard grumbling aside it has a very striking visual appeal. I'm less into the Sigmarites but I think that has to do with the gold paint scheme something I want to avoid. Not sure I'll go all the way into AoS but it at least has my attention now.

Big Giant Stone Head

With a new set of terrain I'm once again indulging one of my pet fascinations. I got a chance to make some gabions which I had been trying to do for years and now the Big Giant Stone Head.

Why massive stone heads? Not sure. Partially I've always liked the mysterious look of the statues at Angkor Wat and other Khmer sites. Or it could a weird hold over from the resin stone heads that were put out by Dreampod 9 for Heavy Gear. (which of course indulged my other long time fascination of giant robots.) I've made some previous attempts at making stone heads before but they never really came out right.  I was never satisfied with the faces that I was able to make for them.

This time I decided to draw on my recent experience with polymer clay and sculpt the face from scratch. I wrapped a chunk of foam with aluminum foil so that I could separate the face, bake it, and then glue it back on.

At this point I'm sure the question arises "Why a screaming face with pointy teeth?" Well I like my terrain to tell a story. It might be subtle and probably a lot of people wouldn't see it if you don't point it out but it's usually in there. In this case I wanted to create some history for the planet we would be fighting over. In the distant past it was once colonized by humans on the edge of Imperial space. At some point the civilization was taken over by a powerful religious movement causing a regression in technology and the eventual fall of the planet. The statues were erected to honor the new "demigods" that now controlled the planet. In reality this new religion was controlled by a Genestealer Cult and in this case the stone head is of a 1st or 2nd generation hybrid who I would imagine would of been seen as a semi divine warleader or protector. That's also why this head is built into a defensive wall. Maybe a bit much back story for a piece of terrain but when you are spending a couple of hours making a giant stone head you have time to think of these things.

Back to the actual construction, after sculpting the face I carved blocks into the foam and added two pieces to make the remnants of the wall. After gluing the face on I blended it together using some DAS air drying clay.

Next it got a coating of wood putty mixed with gesso to hide all of the different materials. It them got a flexible caulking base which is gonna be a standard for all of this terrain.

The base was painted the same as the mat. For the head I went with a simple grey. Although I stippled it on mixed with browns, greens, and purples. I might try a more brown coloration in the future but I wanted something that would contrast with the red colored earth. I also got in some yellow turf that I mixed in with my previous turf and added to the head to finish it off.

Finally a couple more shots of my Tau hanging out with the Big Giant Stone Head.

Field Fortications

In between working on 40k related projects I've finished up two more sections of gabions. I had done all of the construction for each of these previously and just needed to base and paint them.

I packed the sand mix from the inside this time which was much easier. 

I put a shorter gabion on the end of each one. This way I can put them together a couple of different configurations with either firing positions for shot or as a larger position for a regimental gun.  I'll need a few more to make any real trench line but this group will do for a small revetment.

Detour to the 40th Millenia

There has been a bit of a delay since my last post. I had been working to get some more gabions and a few pikeman painted when my wife suggested she'd like to paint up and play some 40k again. This was an opportunity not to be passed up. She decided that she would play with her Tyranids again and look into adding some new figures. I looked over the armies I had stored away and choose my Tau to once again see the light of day.

One hurdle facing the project is that I really don't have much terrain for 40k anymore. I have a few Imperial buildings that I kept and an old 4 x 8 board but it needs some serious refurbishment. So the first step would be making something to play on. While I really like big set boards whether modular or not I don't have the storage space for them and they take too long to build. Instead I'm going to make a flexible mat borrowing techniques from the flexible pieces I've been making recently.

Since I've never made a play mat before I decided to make a sample piece first to work out any kinks. I purchased a canvas drop cloth to form the base. For this piece I cut down a piece from a 4 x 5 cloth. I also got a 6 x 9 to use for my final mat.

There's a mix of different colored and size sand and fine gravel applied to the caulk. 

Next it got a coating of caulking. I worked this into the cloth using a drywall tool to get a fairly thin even coat. Then the sand went on for texture and was pressed into the caulk. This was left to dry overnight.

It was painted a red brown with a dark brown wash and then i picked out the larger stones with black and a grey dry brush. Everything then got dry brushed up through a brick red to tan. After that Earth tone fine turf was applied. I think the turf is a bit too green overall so I ordered some yellow grass to use with it on the actual mat.

With this sample piece done I'm ready to move onto the main event. I'm also working on some terrain and trying to figure out how I want to paint my additions to my Tau forces.

The mat is very flexible and easy to roll up for storage. 

Some of my Tau scout out the new terrain.

One of the nice attributes of the mat is its easy to make rolling terrain by simply sticking objects underneath.

Future projects: A test paint for my Tau reinforcements and some more terrain.

Imperial Shotte

My first unit is completed for my Imperialist forces. Well its really half a unit as it seems most infantry are in units of 12 in the rules.

I'm using the 1, 2, 3 basing method invented by Dalauppror. I think it's a really clever system that makes for nice looking unit. Still organized but not with the parade ground look you get from square bases.

 I wanted the whole force to match so instead of scraping together the various sized bases from what I had on hand I ordered a set of laser cut ones from Litko. I didn't get the bases until after they were mostly painted so there was a bit of a puzzle getting them to fit on the bases. I had planned out how they would fit together but didn't quite realize how tight they would be. I'm considering upping the diameter of the group bases to make it easier for them to fit but I also like the tight grouping.