The board’s done! The banners are done! The sign is done. BEHOLD!
Here’s everything arranged! (I might have a few more slaves and monks on there than I actually intend to field today, and I need to repair the furnace, but whatevs).
Now, I’ve got to figure out something I should have thought about a week ago: what models to enter for the painting and conversion judging.
Man, I really hope Irene doesn’t mess with the tournament. (Mostly because it means a lot of dangerous weather for everyone, not just an interferance with my ability to play toy soldiers.)
Right now, they’re talking 100 mph winds in the region on Sunday morning, and hurricane force winds specifically in the area the tournament is being held in.
Done painting and varnishing. All that should be left are water effects (though I’m considering putting some blood effects down or something to break things up a bit; we’ll see once I’ve put everything down on the board).
This is it. I’m… not entirely happy with it. What’s there looks good, but it feels kinda bland to me. I wish I’d had more inspiration for terrain to put on it. Water and units might help that out, though. We’ll see.
The stalagmites are done as well. I’m ambivalent about them. They look alright. Better than the styrofoam ones, for sure… but in painting them, I was reminded that I wanted to use those colors (Cryx Bane Base, Cryx Bane Highlight) to paint the Space Hulk Genestealers. Between that and the Alien-esque way they kinda look, I can’t help but feel that they’d be better suited as Tyranid terrain.
After the board’s done, I’ve got to wrap up these freaking banners.
I’m waiting on the glue to dry on the board; I’ll go back over everything thoroughly with some watered-down wood glue to fix everything in place. I’ve found that this does miracles for adding durability to ballast (and pretty much everything else).
I’ve finished “sculpting” the stalamites. Each is a 6″ nail run through a 50mm base with successive layers of joint compound slathered on. Not really sure when I decided to use joint compound, but the results look (to me, at least) considerably more natural and believable than the styrofoam stalagmites I’ve made before.
The joint compound’s considerably flakier, however, so I’m reinforcing everything with several coats of, again, watered-down wood glue. After enough of these, the outside will be extremely durable.
Once all of that’s done (hopefully tonight) and dried (hopefully tomorrow AM), I’ll start painting it. That should go pretty quickly: airbrush on the basecoat then a couple of layers of drybrush. Varnish that, then water effects and done.
I’ve stretched my non-existent photoshop skills to the limit to pull together a clever, attention-getting sign to place by my display board. I’m going to keep that close to my chest until the tournament, though: more because I keep dicking around with it than from any coyness.
Finally, I’ve loaded up most of the display case: my Daemons on one shelf and my Dark Angels spilling off of another. The top shelf’s being saved for my Skaven (who are, understandably, a bit too busy psyching themselves up for the NoVA to spend time in the display case) and assorted one-off models that I’ve done.
Did anyone else see my Khornate Daemons on GW’s What’s New Today yesterday?
I’m in the final stretch!
I just slapped some varnish on the rat swarms and the last model that needed rebasing.
This is the same Poisoned Wind Mortar I built back at the end of ’09; it just needed rebasing to tie it in to the rest of the army.
The Rat Swarms weren’t exactly necessary. They’re there in case the Hellpit dies (likely) and explodes into d3 Rat Swarms (unlikely). Might as well cover all of my bases, right?
That means all I have left to do is:
The end, that’s it! The board I’m going to work on this weekend. I’m going to procrastinate the banners until next week.
You might have heard about Borders closing down and being liquidated. As it’s where the lovely and tolerant Mrs. Rushputin likes to buy her smut shōjo manga, she’s been cruising through our local store regularly as it goes through its liquidation. While scanning around to fill gaps in her run of Mixed Vegetables, she noticed that they had begun liquidating furniture and fixtures.
They’ve got a number of very, very large tables that would make excellent gaming tables: if we had a basement, it’s the sort of thing that would definitely go there.
More significantly: they’ve got several glass-fronted display cases. IIRC, these were where the overpriced CD/DVD collections lived. Getting a display case for my minis is something that’s been on our to-do list for a long, long time: with as much time and money I’ve invested in my hobby, we’d like to pull its fruits out of plastic drawers in the closet and put them on display. So, when she noticed these, she gave me a call.
We did some measuring and thinking and, after sleeping on it, headed out to buy one.
We had to do a tiny bit of demo to get it: all four of their cases were fixed to each other: an end piece on one side, another display case on the other, and a strip along the top holding it to the case behind it. It took all of five minutes to sort that out, though.
It stands 4’8″ tall, 13″ deep and 3′ wide. It’s pretty big, but not too big. The shelves are space apart enough that their future contents should be well-lit enough, but it shouldn’t be difficult to install lighting if it becomes necessary.
If you’re in a similar spot, and have been looking for a display case: consider one of these (or, maybe, waiting for the liquidators to get more desperate and then consider one of these). This one’s in pretty good shape: some of the others are a bit rougher.
I’m really surprised to not see much discussion of the amazing new Forgeworld Skaven kits.
