Months back, I built my cavern table, and it’s held up really well.  With the addition of some of my 40K terrain, it’s seen a lot of use in the 41st Millennium.  It’s lacked a watchtower for the watchtower scenario, though.

Now, I’ve had a lot of very clever ideas for building a defiled dwarven outpost… and not a blessed one of them has really panned out.  Efforts have ranged from “not very good” to “that looks like a very uncomfortable foam dildo.”  So, I gave up and decided to just use a Dreadstone Blight: not perfect, but close enough.

I asked for, and received one for Christmas.  Earlier this week, I threw it together and painted it up.  I’ve got some thoughts about the kit and then some pictures of the finished product.

For starters: test fit everything.  The pieces curve, right, and lock together in a way that is both ingenious and fairly unforgiving.  In my box, one of the pieces (the one with the skulls on the outside) was warped: not badly, but enough that the entire kit won’t go together.

When assembling it: do not glue the levels together.  Just don’t do it.  If you do, details that are fairly easily seen from outside of the piece will be nearly unreachable.  Glue the walls to their respective floors… but do not glue the floors together until you’re done painting.  I recommend using blu-tack to cover the areas where the pieces will glue together while priming: it’ll keep paint from getting where you need to put glue.

The floors themselves are not sturdy.  The second floor comes in two pieces with something like two contact points between the two.  I ended up gluing some thing plasticard between the two to hold them together better.

While the second floor has enough contact with the wall to hold itself up, the third floor… not as much.    There’s maybe four inches of wall that it touches, on one side.  I ended up using some greenstuff to try to reinforce where the floor contacts the wall…. and I’ve already broken and re-glued it.

It’s a great looking kit, but: be careful, remember you’re going to have to paint it, and do whatever you can to help hold the damn thing together.  You’re going to need it.

Anyway, here’s the finished product.

The stone is my  usual recipe for terrain-quality stone: Ceramcoat Charcoal Grey basecoat followed by a heavy, heavy overbrush of Ceramcoat Hippo Grey and a light drybrush of Ceramcoat Quaker Grey.  It’s stupidly easy and looks beautiful.

The wood is my new go-to recipe for awesome looking wood: GW Khemri Brown with P3 Hammerfall Khaki drybrushed over it, then washed with GW Devlan Mud.

I’m pleased with how the brass came out.  I did what I’ve been doing with brass all this time: GW Bestial Brown basecoat, totally covered with GW Shining Gold, extreme highlighted with GW Burnished Gold and washed with GW Devlan Mud.

Then I weathered it.  I started out working with what I came up with for my Honored Imperium: the same colors as before, but with a bit more GW Hawk Turquoise and GW Ice Blue in it.  Overbrushed around, from top-down.  Then, I added a ton of water, a little matte medium and some rubbing alcohol and washed it in.  Again, trying to get it to work from top-down.  In several places, I’d just wash it heavily and then wipe over it with a tissue.  I’m happy with how it came out.

I didn’t put much effort into the skulls.  P3 Menoth White Base, a drybrush of P3 Morrow White (my preferred white) and a wash: 2:2:2:1 of GW Devlan Mud, matte medium, water and GW Ogryn Flesh applied heavily.

The  metal here is GW Tin Bitz, followed by GW Boltgun Metal and then GW Mithril Silver highlights.  The whole thing is then messily washed with a mix of P3 Armor Wash, matte medium, rubbing alcohol and GW Blazing Orange.  No clue on the proportions here: just fiddled with until it looked right.  I was untidy with the wash’s application.  Clearly, though, I have a lot to learn about weathering.

Overall, I’m quite happy with the piece.  I’m looking forward to putting it on the table.