'nids part 19 - DiY Mycetic Spore pt1.

So, in my discussion on trees I mentioned using pot pourri for alien vegetation, still not done anything on that front yet. But I did buy a bag and in it was a curious little object that looked like a coconut, although it's very light and not much bigger than a tennis ball. Of course my first thought was Mycetic Spore, 15 months on and still no sign of a GW model. I've got two Plasma Hatchers to convert/paint but I still wanted a proper scratchbuild due to the way the perfectly serviceable but universally derided child's toy is perceived by other gamers. Not that that would happen at my local GW, it's full of kids, they'd probably be OK with a Pokéball.

Anyway I thought this fella would make a nice vehicle for a Zoanthrope, it's not quite as big as a Plasma Hatcher so I could see a Zoan' popping out of one. Here's my plan of what to do with some other sketches of items from my bag of Pot Pourri and what I may do with them...

Eventually I got round to putting the tentacles/lash whips on the spore. Flower decorators wire in two thicknesses with some PVA glued string where hot melt glued to the base and spare Trygon spikes/claws were hot melt glued to the ends. Have to add the Chitinous plates on the bottom, like a hazelnut the Spore has a hardened bottom for orbital re-entry [ooer missus!] Anyway can't decide whether to do that with some DAS air-drying clay, which I have but have heard it's adhesive properties aren't great so I fear it won't stick to the pod. Or, purchase some Milliput, which I know will stick to this but hope one pack is sufficient to get the job done and I hate the mixing of it as your hands get hot and it collects in the grooves of your fingers, urgh!

I've prepped a Trygon base with a crater shaped edge out of stacked pizza base foam, to look like the spore has ploughed it's way into the ground. Got to coat it in air-drying clay to make it more 'cratery' but it should do the trick.

Deathwing update

Just a quick one, I got round to putting the Gryphonne Sepia Wash on my Assault on Black Reach Deathwing Terminators. Two night shots, one with flash one without but auto-levelled in Photoshop which kind of makes them more brooding than the washed out first pic.

Still have to sort out a pin vice and drill out those barrels, none of this 1mm mullarky though. I hate tiny bored barrels, the bigger the barrel the bigger them ammo and Terminators use big ammo. If you're going to go to the trouble of drilling them out you should do a decent job. Of course I'll max the barrels and only go and split them no doubt...

Anyway, just marking some progress, things are moving if ever so slowly.

WFB - More Empire swordsmen

Here we have another Magnificent 7 Swordsmen again it was the Blood Bowl starting model on 25mm bases. WFB 4th Edition High Elf spear heads glued to the front of the hand and the cone on the back as the pommel of the sword. The left arm was snapped above the elbow and glued twisted downwards. The High Elf shields were then glued on the hand and due to their size and gaps in the snapped arm were hidden from view.

My Heroquest Conan wannabe was their low-level Champion leader. Notice he's got a frost blade while the previous Swordsman leader had a heat blade, Fire & Ice baby! The unit was painted up in the Nordland colours and I think these look a lot better than my first attempt. I was really getting into the comic book highlighting at this stage, a lot of fun that gave quick and decent results. Sure they don't stand scrutiny but I was happy to have found a style that produced gaming ready figures and not lots of WiPs!

Here's a close up of my starting line-up, 'HUT, HUT, HUT!'

And another gratuitous shot of the Elector Count of Nordland - Rainier Wolfcastle ;) Cos we all love the Heroquest, right guys?

Better off Dread - Dark Angel AoBR Dreadnought Update

I've made a bit of progress on the Dreadnought. Keeping specifically to the metals as I'm comfortable with those. It's still the endless debate re: Dark Angels Green - do I want to:

• go through a few coats to get the green I want,
• one coat and hope the successive highlights cover the poor opacity [I could get away with that on the Tyranids as they are 'naturally' coloured, but Marine armour is painted so has a man-made finish], or
• or start with a base coat of Orkhide Foundation paint and find a way to make it the green I want

I'm thinking the latter may be my solution, of course it requires a purchase, and I also need some more Badab Black and Devlan Mud Wash [I've just enough Gryphonne Sepia but not much] and my favourite sounding colour of all time - Macharius Solar Orange Foundation. I only need the orange for one thing, the drop pod is usually painted with hazard stripes down the edges of the doors. I was going to replace that with an orange strip much like the Aston Martin's Le Mans Racing colours. It should still look industrial but also different.

Anyway as you can see the stippled gold effect has also worked well here and instead of shelling out for a back banner I went for one of my Dark Angel elements from the Ravenwing Upgrade sprue which seemed a sensible choice until I heat welded it in place and realised that it has the same silhouette as a Fez! On the one hand I want to rip it off, on the other I think it's amusing and as much as I want to believe that 'Fez's are cool' the Doctor is wrong, they're funny and I want one but they're not cool.

Sand on the base too and more importantly the daylight photography does show up the Dark Angel bits on the shoulder and the right leg.

Terrain is everything - So what's the deal with trees?

If you recall from my post about gaming crews we used to spend most of our time gaming at my friend Chris's house. That meant a lot of our terrain was stored there, from the building and hills I'd made to my collection of model trees. At the time GW did a nice line in lead [pb] trunk and root pieces [pictured below] which you could add to any common or garden model tree to make it look a bit more GW.

Obviously those halcyon days where we had all the terrain we need are gone, and so are my collection of trees. I like vegetation, I used to like it even more when you had anti-plant grenades that you could use to deny soft cover from your opponent. Now of course 'true line of sight' means half a dozen trees interspersed with lichen to represent the borders of a wood doesn't cut it. If you want a proper forest you need a lot of wood ;)

But what's the deal with them being so expensive? I don't recall them costing so much, not specifically at GW but everywhere model trees seem to be like gold dust, even on ebay. I did see a set of model fir trees at my local garden centre [and craft shop] that were quite cool, £15 for a decent amount and all came with snow mound bases. I think they were for setting up Christmas scenes. Of course I foolishly didn't pick them up.

Alternatively there is GW's 3 tree wood for £17, I mean really? That's pathetic I want proper foliage. Or what about 4 sprues of jungle plants of course you'll need to sell a kidney - they cost £25.50 for the set. If you're that way inclined you're much better off scoping out your local pet shop and checking out the aquarium supplies. They usually have nearly exactly the same sort of foliage for cheap, cheap and more of it to boot!

On a side note hedges get a bad rep nowadays because of their lack of real 'purpose' on the battlefield. A nice bag of Lichen always looks impressive on the battlefield, in my opinion. I have a nice yellow set to show up on my red planet, as seen below.

Of course you can make them, with wire armatures and a lot of flock/lichen but that sort of scratchbuild just doesn't appeal to me. The only other real option is to stop thinking of trees as trees and to start thinking of them as 'alien trees' and the best thing for that is a bag of pot pourri, which I'll discuss when I've actually made some plants with it, so much to do so little time...

Reduce Reuse Recycle

A while back I noticed the large amount of sprue I'd collected after putting together all my son's 'nids and my Black Reach box set. I'd also stumbled across GW's Annual Report that mentioned their increased concerns about being 'green' [well everyone has to be nowadays]. So I suddenly had an idea that GW should set up some recycling boxes to take back unwanted sprue. I was sure it could be regranulated and used again, my Dad used to work for Dunlops making Wellington Boots so the reuse of PVC from bad molds was part of the production process.

So I mocked up a typical recycling box for the Imperium and sent it off to the What's New Today? address on GW's website but never actually got a response. I figured even if it cost GW to return the sprue to their factory the cost was good environmental PR for the company to show at least they're committed to tackling the issue of plastic waste going into landfill. I went on to post the same story on one of the facebook groups for GW fans and some slightly more knowledgeable folks had opinions on the subject and one person said that the plastic could be reused in the formation of poly-cement.

Anyway in preparation for telling my tale and sharing my pic I thought I'd do another search and lo-and-behold I found two interesting threads that said GW already take back sprue, they just don't advertise it so blatantly and there were plenty of other cool ideas for using it in modelling projects, not just as rubble. So check them out I may even try a few myself.

http://www.warseer.com/forums/showthread.php?t=255237

http://www.scale-models.co.uk/chit-chat/6299-recycling-sprues.html

Terrain is everything - Honoured Imperium pt5.

Here we are with a little update on the Honoured Imperium, mainly focusing on the Aquila which has had some Bonewhite drybrushing to get the sandstone colours I'm after. Hopefully when I get round to completing my Cathedral Tower which is built of Red Planet rockcrete and rarer sandstone for such an auspicious building

Below you can see it in situ with my son's Tervigon for scale. Still got to paint all the little skulls Bonewhite but I like how the Red Sand scattered on top of the Aquila doesn't look totally faked, just marginally ;)