'nids part 111 - Scratchbuilt Tyranid Capillary Towers pt6.

A bit of a 2fer today as you will notice my four tier tower has all four plates done.

 I forgot to take pictures of the bigger ones after I'd done the 3rd tiers, oops. Anyway you may just be able to make out I managed to fix that odd looking first plate on the largest tower. It doesn't cut in on the left randomly anymore - DAS can be very forgiving.

   

And they're all starting to come together now, definitely consistent with my existing Tyranid scenery elements.

I haven't started feeling uncomfortable sculpting yet as my 'time at bat' is still only about an hour per sitting.

I also started some of the fleshy fibres. Again I thought to use Milliput but went ahead with DAS. Speed is the overwhelming factor and not having to mix the epoxy putty does save time.

However, using water to manipulate the clay means when you cut the lines in the clay can break up completely towards the ends so you do have to be careful.

   

And some more close ups of the plates. I cut down on the amount of grooves too.

The turquoise striations all have to be painted and the more there are the more tedious it becomes, hopefully reducing the grooves will alleviate this and also it means the shape of the plate is held more. Every time you cut a groove it pushes the clay left and right, you cut another one close by and it will push the groove you've just carved shut. Once again it's a fine line but you get used to it.

11 hours 10, plus another hour for the 3rd tier and 35 minutes for the 4th tier and some of the fleshy fibres brings us to 12 hours 45 minutes on the project so far

Tyranid Capillary Towers | part 1. | part 2. | part 3. | part 4. | part 5. |

'nids part 110 - Scratchbuilt Tyranid Capillary Towers pt5.

Another day another tier of Chitin plates.

I think I've gone a bit weird on the tallest one, the plate looks a bit odd, hopefully I can fix it.

The difference with these compare to the Bastion ones is that they stand alone whereas all these differences in the sculpted plates got 'hidden' when they joined up to the main Bastion walls.

Still, there's plenty more sculpting to be added to these so it's a bit early to make judgements.

Oops forgot to add the times, 10hrs 25 so far plus another 45 minutes takes us to 11 hours 10 minutes.

Next stop - tier 3 tomorrow!

'nids part 109 - Scratchbuilt Tyranid Capillary Towers pt4.

What can I say, there's no way I can defend these pics as they stand. It would seem a lot of people are seeing something altogether more, erm, Slaaneshi with my Capillary Towers. I admit I'm seeing an excited dog now but you guys started it!

DAS air drying clay was my weapon of choice. I'd intended to try and sculpt an entire set of 3 Chitin plates in one sitting just to see how the DAS coped but realised [what I already knew] one plate at a time is the way to go to ensure you don't smoosh your perfectly sculpted plates as you try and add another one on.

The DAS performed really well, in some respects, even though too much water will separate all the paper fibres in the clay, the clay leaves sharper grooves than the Milliput. You can see some 'tearing' at the edges but they're easier to smooth and then carve back in and the tearing is reduced considerably.

There is a concern with it's adhesion to the grouted plates though. I wet the underlying plates beforehand so that when I pressed on the clay it moisten the surface and act like an adhesive. These are now dry [24 hours] and I don't imagine they'll fall off but a small part of me is still worried about their durability. This is really just an exercise in creating them and having some more varied terrain so I probably should worry too much about their 'indestructability'

We were on 9 hours 40 on the last update, these took a further 45 minutes to sculpt the 6 plates which takes us to 10 hours 25. The great thing is that this is well within my patience threshold, 45 minutes is nothing and once finished I still get to watch a couple of episodes of what whatever TV series is gumming up the Sky+ It also helps plan ahead, with 21 plates in total [15 remianing] that's another 112.5 minutes on the plates, although it'll probably be more like 2 hours.

A simpler equation is that each level of plates takes a night so the 3 tier ones will be done in 3 days and then on the 4th I can start on their spikes and fleshy muscular interior and finish the 4 tier. Day 5 will be some more overlapping of flesh and complete the 5 tier. Then the next few days will see me finish them off before I look at basing and sculpting the craters they're bursting from. I may also add some of my lava ball sacs and tendril vines on the base of the bigger ones just for a bit more variety. It'll take a little longer but all in all I can see the construction complete in no more than 3 weeks max [that's done it].

Anyway, given I'll be making progress on this nightly there may well be a post tomorrow to show the next tier of progress, lets keep the momentum going!

Tyranid Capillary Towers | part 1. | part 2. | part 3. |

EPIC! Battle Report - Horus Heresy Skirmish

PeteB went and pickedup the bargain set of Space Marine 1st Edition about a month ago now. Following his 'epic' purchase we decided to have a battle. I thought I had more pictures but it seems I didn't take as many as I first thought. Really we were just struggling to come to terms with the rules as I also had the 2nd edition rule set and Pete had the current Epic Armageddon ones. Having looked at the new rules one thing jumped out at me - the fact you have to roll off to see if your unit actually follows through on it's orders [am I wrong in this?] I hate that dynamic so we went with 2nd edition and mixed in some of the stuff we liked from 1st.

I got to roll out some of my old Ultramarines and PeteB had his force of traitors ;). I really need the 2nd Edition Warlord Titan datasheet, so if anyone has it or a link to it I'd appreciate it. Instead we used the Adeptus Titanicus rules that make it incredibly difficult to kill with non-titan units. Anyway, this was our set up at the beginning of the game, we put down orders and PeteB won the initiative and moved first.

And we suddenly realised that putting everything on Charge orders was quite an issue as some of our faster units - bikes, speeders etc. were suddenly on the other side of the board. 2nd edition rules I think stated you couldn't fire either, compared with 1st edition where it was at a -1 modifier. Therefore I tried to position to capitalise on the next turn, making sure I'd got everything in place to rain fire down on the traitorous scum.

I did manage to get into assault with his Dreadnoughts though [robot proxies] and killed a few.

My Dark Angel allies - Ravenwing and Land Raiders, together with my Ultramarine Predators and Dreadnoughts tried to outflank the Land Raiders on the hill.

My Tarantula battery set up on the hill but I'd bigged them up too much before the game and the next turn they were assaulted and wiped out. My Titan spent most of the game untouched, firing with impunity but not doing a whole lot of damage. 2nd edition doesn't state you get +1 to hit on First fire orders, it's only advantage being you 'fire first'! Given most to hit rolls are on 5+ I'm not sure we liked this. When only a third of your hits do anything it can be a pretty unrewarding experience.

Sadly this is the last pic and so much happened after this. I tried to blow up buildings but again 2nd edition works by only barrage being able to damage them. My Thunderhawk came on, managed to do practically nothing and then put itself in a position in PeteB's deployment zone where it was just riddled with fire and shot out of the sky. Pete also created a Land Raider sandwich attack - my four Land Raiders in the centre of the board [three by the time this event took place] were assaulted by 2 units of three Rhinos with a higher Close Assault Factor the Raiders easily dispatched the first Rhino but the second Rhino gets an additional d6 as a secondary attacker and he was able to ram the Raiders into oblivion.

Once again it was getting late and we called it a night. I'm not even sure who won, we didn't even bother to work up which units had broken [and therefore we gain their VPs] and to be honest I didn't care. This was a game full of fun, attack and counter attack, periods were nothing seemed to happen and then suddenly entire units were vaporised. The great thing was there was no emotional attachment to the forces, these aren't my nids I've been using for years so it didn't matter if I won or lost it was the 'cinematic' journey along the way.

We had a 40k battle the next time we met up, as that was in preparation for Blog Wars but I look forward to our next Epic confrontation. We still need to iron out some of the rules we want to play with, being happy with a system that works for us. I think if we have the correct edition datasheets for Warlords, Reavers and Warhounds that would help too. I was devastated with their rules in 2nd edition, they became so much easier to kill but if we play them like Adeptus Titanicus rules they're overpowered so that has to change.

Following on from my battle I wanted to paint up a Reaver Titan for PeteB to use in battles. I wanted to do a red one with all brass fittings [very Khorne] I started with a Red Oxide primer and then blacked in all the metal areas.

Shoulder pads, missile launcher, and head are all pinned to be secure. I've tried to do a similar metal effect as on my drop pod [do you remember that? G.O.D. that's so long ago now and still so unfinished!] Anyway, I'll add some more highlights and then probably a 'devlan mud' wash and then work on the red bits. I can't decide to go basic highlights on the red or try and do a mottled blotchy pattern of highlights...

'nids part 108 - Scratchbuilt Tyranid Capillary Towers pt3.

And I've iced the cake! At this stage I'm running out of grout from the pot that served to cover my Bastion. It probably could have covered all of the towers but I wanted to get some extra just in case.
 

I went to my local £1 shop but they were' all out of the tubs of grout, but Home & Bargain had a tube of grout for 89p. I ended up using that exclusively on the three remaining towers purely for the perceived ease of application - piping it in place. It's actually a nightmare to squeeze out of the tube but it all got done.

I had a plastic knife to smooth things over, a spoon or sculpting tool would work equally well.

   

The second set of towers after they've been 'piped'

   

Even with some water to smooth things over we're still going to need to sand these babies down. The first 3 took about 10-15 minutes each and then these three probably another 15 minutes per tower. We'll say it's another 1.5 hours of work taking us to 8 hours 20 minutes construction time so far.

And here's where the sanding begins. I have an old Black & Decker Quattro - a 4in1 drill, electric screwdriver, jigsaw and sander. I bought it with my first ever Christmas bonus but at some point it broke only ever running anti-clockwise - thus rendering the drill and the ability to tighten screws impossible. The sander works fine though so I dug it out to speed things up. It seems that 4 or 5 years of inactivity has cleared the problem though!

Anyway, these 3 were sanded until the batteries ran down, another 10 minutes each of smoothing, with help of some sanding pads too. it doesn't have to be perfect but so long as there aren't any sharp ridges this finish is sufficient.

The next three were sanded both with my Quattro and the Dremel-alike. I was covered head to toe in grouting powder, not sure it speeded things up  but I definitely ended up with a smoother finish, especially after a quick sand with my sanding pads.

Another rough estimate for time, about 45-50 minutes taking us to 9 hours 40, which looks like a long time but honestly hasn't felt like it so far. I've got the chitin plates next. I've got myself 5 packets of Milliput but I think I'm going to go DAS air drying clay. I certainly want to try at least one tower in clay alone. I don't think these have to be as durable as the Bastion, they are only terrain pieces after all so clay should be fine.

Additionally the mixing of the Milliput can take just as long as sculpting so I think this may speed up the process. The only other difference I can see is that the Milliput plates on the Bastion are smoother than the two DAS clay ones, only by a fraction. They're all getting painted though so it shouldn't matter.

Tyranid Capillary Towers | part 1. | part 2. |

'nids part 107 - Scratchbuilt Tyranid Capillary Towers pt2.

Mojo is beginning to flow now, I'm actually pushing myself to do bits that I know are tedious. I know that once they're complete it will be a clear route to progress that will actually be worth looking at for you, the avid viewer.

 This update is just padding - literally. I needed to pad out the insides of the Chitin plates. I suppose I could have just used clay but that would have made the towers heavier, would have taken longer to dry and cost a bit more. I used strips of damp tissue paper and a judicious coating of PVA. This was layered and squished until I'd filled out the cavity behind the pop bottle plastic and the foam spine.

   

The PVA still took a few days to dry properly. Alternatively you could use tin foil and hot melt-glue but having experienced the hot melt glue melting the pop bottle plastic last time I wasn't about to see my chitin plates melt.

   

An alternative solution would be some other type of all purpose adhesive but I'm comfortable with tissue paper and PVA, it's cheap and does the job

  

The next step will be to add some form of spikes down the inside of the spine. In the Bastion I used Spinefists to match up [a bit] with the old Forgeworld Capillary Towers but this time I wanted to use freely available bits [and I was also short of Spinefists]. I'd been thinking of what plastic spikes I could use, cocktail sticks immediately sprang to mind and then the wife was re-hanging some curtains and she had a bag of curtain hooks - 30 for about 60p - perfect.

Each hook was cut down to a spike [save the bits you never know what they may be useful for].

I masking taped the spine edge and inserted the first spine 30mm up from the base and every other spine 20mm thereafter [or near enough]. There's going to be a crater on the base so you need that extra 10mm on the first spine. Each was then PVA'd, it doesn't have to be super secure as further sculpting materials will be added so make them stronger.

   

And there's 3 of them ready to start the icing - next up will be tile adhesive and grout.

Once again this whole process is based on the process of construction for the Bastion. There's nothing new here technique-wise but it is useful to reacquaint myself with the skills and process. I've got another rough estimate of how much time this all took. Unfortunately the numbers aren't to hand but I'll update them later.

We're on 5 hours so far, the PVA padding took a further hour and a half and the talon spikes were just another 20 minutes. So we're around 6 hours 50, give or take.

Tyranid Capillary Towers | part 1. |