Making scenery

I have been working on building more than on painting my scenery, but now I've come to the part where I can start to work on the painting.

I started with Skullvane Manse, and that got primed yesterday and I hope to start to paint it in just a few days.

I have completed the Deathknell Watch but I need to go over it with a mix of Greenstuff and Liquid Greenstuff to fill the cracks. That is also the status on the big Witchfate Tor and the ruin called the  Dreadstone Blight. I will begin this process after breakfast tomorrow, and when that has dried I need a day with fair weather so that I can do my priming.

I had to do some slight modifications to the Witchfate Tor to get it to stay together as all the floors were just sliding on top of each other like a hockeypuck on ice, so I installed some support struts inside to keep it together. This make the floors look weird when they are unassembled and the third floor can't sit flat on the table, but hopefully everything keeps together when the tower is standing tall.  

I have also finished the Witchfate Tor ruin, known as The Dredstone Blight. I did a few small modifictions to it from the drawings, but I think I made it look quite nice. When it is painted up I plan to add some vines to it to make it look a little overgrown and deserted, but I think I should paint the tower and the vines separately.

One of the employees at my local Games Workshop store told me about a way I could paint one or more of my towers, and I plan to give it a try with the biggest of them all. I plan to prime the inside of Witchfate Tor as I always had planned to with the light primer, then assemble the tower and seal off the windows before spraying the outside with the gray paint that is supposed to be Mechanicus Standard Gray and then use a light coat of the light gray primer on top when it has dried. Apparently I should be able to get quite a nice look on the tower with washes after that. It sounds like an interesting way of painting the stonework and I am sure it will make the tower look a little different than the Deathknell Watch.

I thought I had three Deathknell Watch towers, and had some nice plans to make one twice as tall as the original, but one box only had a few parts for the tower, and another was full of old Dwarf sprues. I still might have most of the parts for one more tower stacked away somewhere with the cupola for the Skullvane Manse, and just as I write this I think I might know when to look next time I go to check that everything is ok at the cabin. I seem to remember having built at least some of it before, and that might explain the few parts in the one box I found. So I might have a built tower in a box to take home and fix with Greenstuff and then prime and paint to add to the colection.

I have also assembled my first Mega-Gargant for my Sons of Behemat army, and it will also be used as part of my Gloomspite Gitz army from time to time. I plan to build at lest one more Mega-Gargant, and then to start with three regular Gargants and then I will have to read the rules to see how many Gargants I need to make a complete Sons of Behemat army.

Status update

My haunted forest is done, I will take pictures as soon as I get a day with good lighting and then post it here. I used the same way of painting the trees and making the bases as I do with my Sylvaneth, but I gave the wood a drybrush of XV-88 after and I think I will try that on some of my Sylvaneth figures as well as I liked the result a lot.

In the middle of the forest there is a temple, and that is from the Garden of Morr set. I have built the remaining set, but need to prime it when the weather allows for it. This was in a box that had gotten some water damage at my cabin, so it was very good to get it built so I could throw away the box that was beginning to get moldy. There is an open space on one of the bases where the temple used to be, so I have added a stone that can either be a tombstone or a stone with an inscription telling who is in the sarcophagus that used to be inside the temple. At the moment everything is separate so that I can paint inside the buildings before I glue them to the bases. This is important as all the buildings have gates that allow you to look inside. I am also thinking on assembling the entire set on a thin base so that I can glue everything together to one solid piece of scenery with the wall around it, but if I don't do that strait away at least I can glue some of the fences together even though the instructions say not to do this. I guess they say that because it should be easy to store and move around, but I plan to store my scenery in plastic bins after it is built and painted, so I won't have that problem. My only problem might be to find a place to store the bins and a system that is stackable enough, but we'll get to that sometime in the future.

I also have a completely unopened box of the same set, that was re-released after Warhammer Fantasy was re-branded to Age of Sigmar, but the content is exactly the same so I can build that with the temple some time in the future.

I just assembled the Skullvane Manse, and that was in the same water damaged cardboard box in the basement, but this box was not damaged. Sometime many years ago I decided I wanted to build the Skullvane Manse without the telescope globe in the tower, I wanted that cupola on a different tower instead, and since it is the exact same tower as the Deathknell Watch that shouldn't be any problem at all. During a move some years ago I packed up everything I was working with in boxes and they were not always placed with the models, so I have to look for it when I can go back and stay at my cabin for a while. I would love to make the tower twice as tall as the original, as it really is quite small. So that it is higher up towards the stars. I think I have at least two more towers so that should not be a problem as long as I find the cupola.

The Skullvane Manse is the first of the old big sets I have built, and I must say that Games Workshop have gotten a lot better at producing scenery. There are a lot of cracks that need to be filled with Greenstuff, so I have gone over much of the joints with liquid Greenstuff and a sculpting tool and then smoothed it out with my finger (wearing a latex glove) after. I think it looks quite nice now, and I have some specific ideas about how to paint it all, and look forward to getting it primed so I can start.

I also assembled a Deathknell Watch, and that is why I say it is so small. But I think it also will look quite nice once it is primed and painted, and I would like to use the same colors on it as on Skullvane Manse so that it appears to be built with rocks from the same region. I will probably need to give it a round with the same liquid green stuff routine as the Skullvane Manse, but it is not so many different joints so it should be handled quite easily with enough liquid green stuff.

Tomorrow I also plan to at lest start to assemble Witchfate Tor - The Tower of Sorcery. This is yet another tower from Warhammer Fantasy, and the biggest of the lot. I look forward to  getting this together. It is supposed to be modular so that you can take it apart and look inside (and even play with minis standing on the different floors). It seems to be four floors tall so it will be exiting to see how much green stuff I need to make it look good...

I also hope to get some more painting done on my Goblin Loonshrine (I know they are called Gloomspite Gitz now, but to me they are Goblins still). I have started to put on the basic colors on the mountainside and the big moon, but I need to give the moon another thin coat of yellow and then there will be a lot of drybrushing, especially on the mountain to get it to look good.
I am not sure what colors to use on all the fungus and mushrooms yet, but I think there will be a lot of purples and reds for the hats, and some sort of off-white for the stems.

General update

There has not been as much time for building and painting as I had wished for in November, but I have managed to get some stuff done. I've been a little low on energy because of new meds, but they seem to work better now so I feel I have a little more energy. Also with the Covid-19 situation all my afternoon activites (playing and conducting Big Bands) has shut down, so I have every night off now (except when I have to sit at my home office with my back to my workstation and work overtime with my day job).

I've had a Citadel forest in my bins for ages (turns out I built it way back in 2014 and just stuck it in a box with other things I wanted to paint soon) that I haven't gotten around to painting, but I finally grabbed myself by the neck, dug it out, primed it white (the darkest of the two primers made for the Contrast paints) and started painting.

This forest is meant to be a scary place, and it was originally built in store at Games Worskhop Oslo as part of a terrain masterclass. I used a chapel from the Garden of Morr set, cut it so it is a little crooked and glued it in the middle. Then I found some tombstones and a few zombies and added them too.

Since I have a Sylvaneth army I wanted the forest ground to match my Sylvaneth bases, but I also wanted it to look like Nurgle had been there, as the storyline says the Sylvaneth fights against the forces of Nurgle who destroy the forests of their realm. So I added some Nurgle Rot in puddles. 

The trees are painted with contrast paints like the Sylvaneth miniatures, but these trees don't have any leaves. They do have a few chaosy bits in them though, like bells and skeleton pieces.

I am working on the final details of the trees now, and will take pictures and show on the blog, and also tell a bit about how things are done in a blogpost when that is done.

But I found this to be rather fun, so I found my other painted forest where I only had some details left to paint and re-primed that as well, and I will paint that up like the one that is almost done. This forest is more normal and does not have any added things to it. I do think the trees have gotten some of the spare leaves from the first forest though, as the coverage look rather solid. I was quite happy with how I had done things several years ago on the base, but seeing the base on the scary forest made me see that I could do so much better, and also the colors I had used before didn't match my Sylvaneth at all.So I will redo it and get it to work with the Sylvaneth army. 

In the box with the forest from 2014 I also found two realm portals and I have started to paint them as well. I have an idea how I want them to look, but I don't have a good solution on how to achieve that look yet. But I am working on it and hope to get an okay result eventually. The main issue I have is with the magic "flames" that is inside the portal as I want them to look a certain way. But I will see what I can do, I think I have a little idea on how I can do it. The rest of the portal is basically stone and metals, so I know how to do that.  

While checking that everything was ok at the cabin last week I also had a look in my Warhammer boxes (I have lots of cardboard boxes with unbuilt models and terrain and two boxes of 40K terrain that is built but not primed or painted) and I saw I have at least a few more of the old forests still to build, so I will bring them home over time and work with them. But I don't want to have too many sets just standing around (I already have way too many as it is). But I found that one cardboard box had gotten moldy because it had been standing towards a wall that is moist so I emptied that box and brought the sets home. That was the remains of the Garden of Morr set (think I have one more that is complete in another box) the old Skulvane Manse house and one big and one not so big tower. I think I have found a nice way to paint stones, so I am not as scared to paint them now as I was when I bought them. I still have a few of the small towers left in other boxes. Only thing is that I need to find the top of the small tower and the tower in the Skulvane Manse set as I planned to swap the globe on the Skulvane Manse with a regular tower and vice versa. I started to paint the globe so they are in a box with partially painted stuff and not with the unbuilt sets. I will have to look for that next time I go to the cabin, but I will build and paint the rest in the mean time.

I have also put together the Loonshrine for the Gloomspite Gitz and primed that. And that will be my next big painting project. I like to take some time to make sure I get everything looking as good as possible with these things that will be like center pieces on the tabletop so I will do some figure painting in the meantime. 

I hope to finish some of the figures that are standing partially painted in boxes on my shelves, and I would love to finish some of my Chaos Warriors. There is a new Chaos Warrior warband coming out for Underworlds (I think) with a female warrior, and I would love to get that (hasn't been released yet, just teased) and I would love to have some warriors painted up by then.  I decided I wanted some silver Chaos Warriors just to experiement a bit with glazes (that was a thing way back when I started those) and I think the warriors themselves are almost done, but their arms with weapons and shields are not attached and not primed so I need to prime them with a brush and paint them up. I am debating with myself on how to do that, to make them cool but also make them tie in with the rest of the Chaos warriors in my army. Now these are the old warriors, but I also have one unit of the new ones to build and paint.

And I have lots of Goblins (or Gloomspite Gitz as I guess they are called now) built. The ones sitting on Squigs and dressed up a bit like knights that I would love to paint up and get tabletop ready. They will probably be the next batch I prime up.

Also I plan to build some 40K models as I try to get some big boxes away from my shelves. I will take some pictures of my stash and show off in a future post just to show why I need to get boxes done.

Another building made

Monday was another productive afternoon. Managed to build a one storey Manufactorum building from the sprues I had from my already opened boxes.
I also made one more ruined corner, like the ones I put out a few pictures of in my last post, with only two ruined wall pieces. And I made one more lamp post.

But that's not all...
I also built three bullgryns, and armed them with battle mauls and suppression shields. They also got the quite scary heads with gas masks. They will be a part of a unit of five, who will serve both as provosts under the direct command of their Commissar, and in regular combat they will be close combat troops.
These miniatures comes in boxes with 3 figures in each box, so the sixth figure will be a bodyguard built as Nork Deaddog. Not sure what his name will be yet, I'll come back to that at a later time.

From my bits box I will build the remaining four troopers of the command squadron for the Abhuman Auxilia. I have some spare torsos and it will look ok for this command squad to look a little different from each other. They have all done something to deserve the posting they are given. Almost like a penal legion.
I haven't worked out all the details yet, but I know I will make some solid fluff for each human in this unit. What I do know is that the commander (captain?) was one of the poorer graduates from his class in Officer training, and he was sent to the Abhuman Auxilia because High Command did not wish to sacrifice human troops to his poor leadership. But he have proved the High Command wrong, and leads his unit well. They don't like to be wrong, so as a punishment they send him offisers that they dislike for one reason or another.
The commissar was sent to the unit because he was badly hurt in a fight with Ogres of another unit, so they sent him there because they were sure he hated Ogres by now, and that one of them would eventually kill him. Instead he found a unit where all the troopers followed his every order. In his time there, no one has been shot for disobeying orders or for cowardise in battle, and everyone obeys his orders without questions. He also have the five bullgryns mentioned earlier to help him stop riots, brawls or other problems in the camps where they serve.

My plan is that the Abhuman Auxilia will have five bullgryns with mauls and suppression shields, nine bullgryns with grenadier gauntlets and slabshields (one of theese will be a Bone'ead), and then I'll see how many I will assemble as ogryns with Ripper guns. I will also add all the ratlings I have (will not buy more unless there are new models being released) and I will use my old metal ogres as planned earlier. They look rather different from the new plastic ones, but after all there are at least seven different races of them (my army will have three of them).

And now for some pictures...

Here is the new Manufactorum building. This time I glued the pipe bend first, and added the two chimney elements after it had dried.

The new corner, exactly like the one I made last time. Thought about adding a plain wall segment to it, but I didn't want to waste a good door element.

No doubt this will look really cool when it is painted up and put on the table.

Had to to the same with a lamp post. This is not the new one from yesterday though.

I just had to give this officer a big chainsword. He is from the tank corps or artillery train, and is ordering his units to roll out.

And here is a pic of the commander of the Abhuman Auxilia, as mantioned above. He was also visible in the background in one of the pics in the last post, but I thought he deserved a better picture.
What I like here is his head. I think it makes him look a bit like a miniature ogre, and you can see battle scars.

...and it actually ended up as a productive weekend after all...

The weekend is now officially over, and I managed to finish my forrest (didn't use all the leaves I thought I would though so I have some left for future woods), I have a Hydra almost complete (still missing 2nd crewman and some paint), and I have two new buildings for my 40K town.

Below is a small description of each new project and some pictures taken on my workbench last night. 

I promise to add much better pictures once everything is painted, as the pics look quite messy with the weird things in the background.

Here are two pictures of my Manufactorum building. This looks pretty much like the building at the back of the Manufactorm box, but there is a modification... The building is one piece longer so it is 3x4 instead of 3x3 (if you count whole panels).
The chimney was a pain in the butt to glue on, so next time I will only glue the bend and add the rest of it when everything is glued solid.

The forrest seen from different angles to try and show the different trees. I might add just a little more leaves on them when I look over them tonight, but if I do it will just be small leaves to hide naked branches.

This is a conversion I think there will be some of in the ruined town. I try to get as many "whole" buildings as I can, and that means that these parts often ends in the bitbox. So why not use them?

This is the frst pic of the Hydra. The black panels on the side will be similar on all Chimera-based chassies, and I will try to think up something similar for the Leman Russ chassies. The rest of the tank will be Administratum Standard Gray. Gunbarrels and tracks and details will get their appropriate colours... In the back by the waterpot you can see the commander of the Abhuman Auxilia, where he commands Ratling, Ogryns and Bullgryns. He will have a command squad consisting of humans, an Ogryn Bodyguard and the unit will have their own commisar.

Here is a look inside the drivers compartment of the Hydra. If you look closely you'll see a little red field by the drivers left arm. That is a tank of some sorts, probably a fuel tank or something. On the platform behind the gunner/driver there will be another crewman, and I am painting him up now.

The second building is a pumping station. I will go over it with greenstuff today and fix some holes that are around the pump units (above the pipes comming in) and some cracks between the roof tiles. 

I really like these streetlights, and want to add as many of them as I possibly can to my city. That means I will build several of these small corners. This weeekend I made two. Both of them have battle damaged floors, and I think most of them will have that, as those tiles are the ones most often being left for the bitbox after assembly of a building.

The second one got a little more battle damage. Looking at these pics now it seems like I really wanted to take a pic of my plastic watercup, but that just happened to be standing there.

More scenery for 40K

I did some more scenery work this afternoon. First of all I did some details on my Sanctum Imperialis. I still haven't added the final pieces in the back of the building, and I decided as I worked today that I don't want to destroy the gate. I will find some other rubble to add.

Here is a picture of the Sancum Imperialis seen from above. As you can see, there is a whole roof on the top of the first floor, and then I made one stripe of roof on the second floor as the front wall is intact.

I added some eagle pillars to the corners and one on each side of the gates. I love these eagle pillers...

The balcony looked ok when I left it after I had glued it together, but unfortionately it got crooked while drying, so it's a good thing the second floor is mostly in ruins...

Here you see the entire front of the building. I think it came out quite alright, and I am sure it will look nice after priming and painting.

Then I also built a Basilica Administratum. I only have one of these buildings, so I decided to build it so it looks like the box art. I knew I wanted the chance to have one figure all the way at the top of the bulding as it is quite tall, so I added a floor tile (or roof tile) over the structure and added some wall in front of it. Becaue the building is so battle damaged, I added two Imperial eagle things (same as on the balcony on the Sanctum Imperialis) but decided to give them serious battle damage, One in the back of the picture is cut nearly in half, while the one in the front of the picture is almost completely gone.

This is how the building look from the inside. I have added floorboards from other boxes as I had some left that was already cut to the correct length. I added what floor panels I could to the walls, to get the maximum space available to put minis on at a later time.

The building has two sides, and they are absolutely identical, so here is one side. As you can see I have added some lamps to the sides of the door, and some eagle heads to the second floor. Since it is an Administratum building, I feel it is important that is is decorated.

Here's the best shot of the building. The original building have some nice looking pillars, but I think it is hard to add it in a good way to the panels, so I am considering maybe just adding two eagle pillars from the Sanctum Imperialis box I have left to the corner of the building, and then I will use the beautiful pillars on another building I plan to build.

Sanctum Imperialis done

I have all but finished my Sanctum Imperialis plan.
The buidling ended up four sections wide and three sections deep.
The first floor has a full roof, and then the second floor is ruins. The front wall is intact, but the other walls are built from wallsections that all have some battle damage.
The building has a balcony over the front gate, and the doors of the gate on the second floor are open.
To open the doors I had to cut them open with a hobby knife, but that worked fairly well. Only problem is that when I added a floor the area behind the doors was heightended a few millimeters and that is just enough to make it impossible to put the open doors in to the doorframe.
Still, I think it will look ok, and go unnoticed when the building is done.

I have one more thing to do, and that is to add the back door, but I plan to do this after I have done my greenstuff training, as I think I will need to do some tricks to make this door and door frame look like a ruin.

More ruined buildings and an update

When I built my modified Skyshield I used wallsections from three boxes of Manifactoum buildings. I only used sections that were impossible to see through, so I have several spare wallplates, some are whole and some are just partial wallsections.
When I was at Games Workshop today, I had a look at how they had solved the issue with spare wallsections, and decided to have a go at something similar.
I have always said that I would like to build several buildngs from my own mind instead of from the Citadel instructions that comes with the boxes, but seeing how several wall picees could be set up to become a totally ruined house was really someting I hadn't thought too much about. So today I sat down and assembled some wallsections with no other purpose but to be one wall.

I made one really small building, with two wallsections and two ruined walls, so that it looks like one corner of the building has taken a direct hit from a big gun. Not sure what kind of building it has been originally. Had it been a 1980's building I would have called it a phone booth, but I doubt they have that in 40K... I might add details to it later to clarify what it is, but for now it is a great place to hide a sniper.

I made a small ruined wall where the floor is almost intact but with no roof at all, and one building where one wall is intact and with roof. I will probably go back to this building and add another floor if I can get it to fit. Not sure how that will work inside manifactorum wallsections, as there are things sticking out here and there, but I might just do some more cutting...

I've also planned how to buid one Sanctum Imperialis. I will make the entire first floor, intact and with a roof. Then I will build a second floor that is in ruins like on the original building, but maybe with a few more ruined corners. This depends a little bit on how many ruined corners there are in the original box. But I have three or four  boxes, so I am sure I can manage.
Then the rest of the tiles will be used for different smaller ruins.

I have one Basilica Administratum, and I plan to build this fairly like the design on the box, but when I start to assemble it I might get some ideas...

One unopened Manifactorum box will be used to bild one manifactorum building, but I haven't decided how it will be except that it will have a big chimney.

Next Saturday I will take part in a greenstuff class at Games Workshop where we will learn different techniques for greenstuffing. We will use a Nurgle Chaos Lord for the purpose, and a whole lot of greenstuff. Hopefully this will give me some tricks to use for converting other minis as well, as that is one thing I don't do that well as of now. Every time I use greenstuff on a model it looks as it has gotten a plaster cast because of a broken limb.

some pics of the special Skyshield Landing Pad

Please bear in mind that this is pictures of something still under construction. I might have to fix some gaps with liquid greenstuff still.

Here is the wide end og the building. At this end the building is just one floor with the landing pad on top. The doors in the middle and the wall section on the far right are from the Sanctum Imperialis set. That is also the fact with the eagle figures placed at both ends of the building, as well as where the building goes from four wide to two wide.

This is the building seen from a high view. From this angle it looks a little bit like an aircraft carrier from our times. The tower in the background with all the big sculls is the modified Deathknell Watch.

A little better view of the front part of the tower. The thing standing on top of the tower is the gun from the Aegis Defence line. The little thing on the left is a communications array from the Aegis Defence line box. There is a lightpost to give light if needed, and a ladder up to the roof so that the quadgun can get its maintenance and extra firepower can be added if that should be needed.

And here we have the building as seen from the opposite side of picture number one. The doors on the ground floor are the same doors as on the first picture. Actually this picture is taken before the last upgrades, as the eagle pieces mentioned in the commens of the first picture is missing on this one. There are eagle figures on both the corners in the front of the picture and on the corners that is visible under the landing pad almost in the middle of the picture.

Got some more scenery done today, and also the Inquisition has appeared...

I feel that I am on the roll now with the miniature assembly. That is one step closer to having more finished miniatures, and it feels quite good to be back. The next step is to start painting it up, and I hope to start doing that sometime in the comming week.

Today I have assembled two boxes.

First I did the Honoured Imperium set, with a statue of a Space Marine, a small ruin that looks like it has come of a Shrine of the Aquila, and a huge broken Imperial Eagle in stone (on the box they call it an aquila).

The ruin will be located near the ruined side wall of my original shrine, as the shrine I have modified is too big and too compact to have any huge chunks blown off it.
The ruined stone Impeial Eagle will be in front of the modified Shrine of the Aqiula, as it is logical that is has been a part of a square or something similar, and it is natural to have had something like that in front of this big Shrine.
The Statue will probably be close to that as well, but it can really be used anywhere I feel like having it.
I have one more set like this on the shelves, and I think I will try to make the other statue an integrated part of a future building.

The other set I assembled was a Wall of Martyrs Vengeance Weapon Battery.

I think Citadel had some problems with their moulds on this one, as the set had the most mouldlines I have ever seen on a Citadel plastic set. It was quite easy (but time consuming) to clean though, and all in all I think the two batteries will be a good addition to the Wall of Martyrs.
For this box Citatel had removed all parts from the sprue in order to get the pieces in to a smaller box (probably), and this also gave me some extra work cleaning off all the points where the parts were clipped from the sprues. Still, it was very tidy with everything packed so that one bag was for one cannon (was two bags in total), and every part was ok. Just took some extra time cleaning and preparing for assembly. When that was done the assembly in it self was rather simple.

The weapon batteries comes in two different types, one battlecanon and one punisher gatling cannon, so I built one of each. I am quite sure I have one more box of these on my shelves, so the plan is to do the same with that box in order to get two of each.

I also started to repair an old version of the Ork Trukk that I bought on Ebay a while back. It was not damaged in the picture, but it was a "what you see is what you get" auction so it might have been me not looking closely enough before I bought it or it might have been damaged in the mail. Seeing how it was packed both answers are highly possible. It will take some time repiring it, as I need to make each part set before I can glue on the next broken part, but I think it will be ok after repairs and a good orky paintjob.
My plan is to use this as a warbuggy as I don't intend to buy any of those. It mightt work, since the old trukk is a lot smaller and a totally different shape than the ones that are made now and that I have a few of (and will field as trukks).

I also assembled a finecast model of an inquisitor with a powersword and a special gun that looks a bit like it could have been from the Warhammer Fantasy sets and not 40K. The entire Inquisitor looks like he could belong there come to think of it, except for the powersword and some pieces of modern armour. But that was the entire reason I bought him (it's an online only miniature). I don't plan to field an Inquisition army, but I thought he might look good alongside my Space Marines or Imperial Guard on some occations. And he might get a retinue of Sisters of Battle, as I have a handful or two of those as well and have no plans to field a Sisters army (unless Games Workshop finally releases them all in plastic in the future).

Productive trip to Games Workshop this week

Had two very nice trips to Games Workshop in Oslo this week.
First a trip on Monday, where I picked up Skullvane Manse, some paint that I needed to restock, and the remaining books from the Horus Heresy series. I managed to get one book that I had already, so on Tuesday I was back to swap it with another book and also to pick up some glue and liquid green stuff they didn't have on Monday. I got the rules for Apocalypse, so now I have the datasheet for my Baneblade so I can use it in games. I also picked up Deathknell Watch.

My plan is to build Skullvane Manse as the home of one of the greatest witchhunters the Empire has ever seen. He will not need an observatory, so I will take the observatory dome and place it on top of the Deathknell Watch tower to make that into an observatory. If I can get it to work, I might place this tower on a hill of some sort to make it higher (it is an observatory after all). Then I will take the skeleton that is placed on top of Deathknell Watch and use that on Witchfate Tor or another regular watchtower placed on a ridge. Not sure if I have a spare watchtower at home, but that is not a major cost from Games Workshop anyway.
On Monday I also picked up a can of black primer, so I will use that to prime my buildings before assembly. I don't really bother doing that when painting miniatures as the style I paint would mean I had to prime lots of small parts. If the miniature is fully assembled and then painted, then priming would be a must, but when I paint as I assemble I get to cover all the areas where one would usually need primer to get to with a good coat of paint.

The plan is to paint the Temple of Skulls first. Hopefully I can prime this big set this weekend. Then I can start painting it little by little in between projects. I got some good hints from the guys at the Games Workshop about what might look very good, so I will try their suggestions (that is usually a good idea) and see how it turns out. If it ends up like I hope, then I will use the same technique for the basic colorscheme for my towers and houses, and just add a few other gray-scales on some of the bricks.
I will like to have all the towers and buildings look like they have been built with rocks from the same region, as I plan to use the terrain together as some sort of town or township.
There will be a few watchtowers, a chapel, a graveyard (probably based around the Garden of Morr with some specially made statues that I bought on Ebay from a Polish dentist), the Fortified Manor, Skullvane Manse, Witchfate Tor and Deathknell Watch. Then I hope to add a few more buildings that I either scratch build (yeah, right!) or modify from other buildings.

Then on the outskirts of town, Dreadstone Blight and the Temple of Skulls will be located, and there will also be some trees as I have two forrest sets from Citadel.

The pledge...

These last two years I have taken a pledge to paint more miniatures than I buy.
Two years ago I was way off, but last year I think I almost made the pledge. Only thing that tipped me over I think was the new towers, as they are much larger than a regular miniature.

For 2011 I will not take a pledge, as I see how slow I am with painting, and I know there are a lot of nice miniatures out there and more to come...

Just read yesterday that Grey Knights are comming in April, both a new codex and new miniatures. The existing ones are pretty cool, but all metal. Now they will be released in plastic, so I am quite sure that some Grey Knights will find their way to my basement worktable this spring.

Also, there seem to be some new goblin stuff on the way if rumors are right, and even though I have plenty of Goblins to paint, it is always nice to have a wide varitey of minis for the army as an all Goblin army can look rather dull if you have mostly the same minis. When you need units 40-60 strong it is nice to have something to break up the monotony.

Dwafs will probably also get some new minis, if the picures in the rulebook for 8th ed. is something to go by, and I like to think so...

Also, I saw a great post on the Warhammer Forum the other day, where a guy had built an entire town based on the scenery sets from Games Workshop. He had done a lot with the buildings, but it seemed to me that most materials were from the different GW scenery sets. That looked über-cool, and I have decided that I will try to get toghether a smal village during 2011 and take it from there. I have some buildings laying around, so why not assemble and paint them in such a way that they might belong to the same area... 

New week, new chances...

Didn't get to do much last night. When I finally got home at midninght I had to remove over 20cms of powdered snow from the driveways. First time in a long time I got to use my Volvo as a snowplow...

 

Before I went to work this morning I found the time to catch a quick look on the new chaos warriors, and I really like their look so far, and I don't belive the unit will stop at 12 warriors. I will do some calculations to see how many warriros that gives the best effect, and add up. So far I am thinking either 4 rows of 6 warriors (total of 24) or 4 rows of 5 warriors (total of 20). If I go for the last option, I will have 4 "spare" warriors to use for another unit as they come in boxes of 12. I will have to do some math to see how it all adds up in numbers and points. 

I do know I want a chaos army with as much warriors as possible as I love the models, but it is important to make sure that it can also perform on the gaming table and it's not much help in having lots of units that never gets used. Then it is better to spend the time and money on units for other armies so that they can be used as well... At the moment I'm thinking of going for a 3000 points army, and I think I will get several units of warriors in there, along with knights, a General of some sort, a unit of chosen (maybe more than one), hounds and marauders. Might add some magic in here as well, depending on points. 

I have been thinking a bit on how to build a blimp. Building the basket hanging under it should be no problem, plenty of materials that can be used there. The challaenge as I see it will be the air container (balloon) and the ropes attaching the two pieces together. One idea I have is to use a balloon, fill it with some air and put plaster around it. As a kid I remember we did this in scool to make an Easter egg. The chalenge is to find a shape that makes it look "blimpy" while still maintaining the feel and smoth surface of an airship. Will think some more and try to make a sample as the weeks go along. The blimp won't be my first project anyway. I also started to think about doing some buildings, as I feel I have very little scenery. I have a temple and a guard tower that is painted, two Citadel woods (one halfway assembled, one still in the box) and a Temple of Sculls (assembled, not painted). Would be nice to have some more buildings. Some not straight out of the box if possible. Then again, some of the boxes makes pretty nice buildings as they are. Also it would be nice to have some buldings for the dwarf clan that is on it's way (so far it is King Alrik with shieldbearers, an old version (I believe) of Josef Bugman and a unit of miners...). A brewery and a blacksmith of some sort would be nice. I am already thinking of how to make a mineshaft. But first I have to build and paint some minis...

The Low King is comming...

I feel a little like the White Dwarf magazine now, speaking of something to come in the future...

But I re-discovered dwarfs these last few days, and I have already decided my next project in the Warhammer genre (after I finish 24 chaos warriors) will be dwarfs, dwarfs and even more dwarfs.

As I told in an earlier post, I bought some new dwarf boxed sets on a trip to Sweden to shop for food and beverages.
I have used some time trying to think if I would like to have Thunderers or Quarrelers built from the box. For the cannon I have already decided on an organ gun (as I have a cannon and crew already). This means I will have a spare cannon that can be used for other purposes.

I seem to buy every number of White Dwarf Magazine that comes out, as there is always at least one interesting article in it (usually a lot more), and have for this reason decided to buy a subscription for 2011. Since the 2011 subscription miniature is a dwarf fighter pilot or engineer, I have decided to build an attack-blimp for him. How I will do this, I do not know at the moment, but several ideas are running through my head. Some of these involving thin metal sheeting and balsa wood...

I also thought it would be very cool to design a large stronghold for my dwarfs, and these last few days I have started to think how this can be done. A stronghold complete with a brewery, big mountain gates, a watch tower and not to forget a landing pad and service area for the attack-blimp and gyrocopters. This will have to be quite large, so I don't see me building it in the near future, but then the planning is a lot of the fun anyway and the building mostly a pain in the behind to get it to look as good in real life as it does in ones own mind. I should probably start small and build a few buildings or terrain pieces. One thing I plan to build to get some experience is the entrance to a dwarf mine for my grudge pony and miners.

The Dwarf fluff always mention the High King of the Dwarfs, but I like to go against the grain, so I have decided that I will have a Low King. He might answer to the High King, I see no problems with that, but my idea is that the Low King lives in the deepest caves of a dwarf stronghold, and thus has the title Low King. I haven't yet worked out the details around it, as the title really is borrowed from Terry Pratchett and his magnificent books about the Disc World.
If you haven't read these books yet I would certainly recommend you to check them out at once. There is no need to start at book 1 and read all the way through, just find a book with a story line that intersts you, and take it from there. Some of these books tell a lot about dwarfs, and others don't mention them at all... Some very funny characters like Officer Carrot of the police department, who was adopted by dwarfs as a kid and thus see himself as a dwarf while he really is a giant of a man. Not at all like Warhammer, but several of the races are there, and the books are really hillarious at times.

Progress and future plans

I managed to get a good finish on sunday, and finished the fur on 9 hounds, bringing the total up to 10. When all 10 hounds are done, I will start on the last 10.
I also took a look at the hound painted when the light was a little too low, and found I missed a few spots, so I fixed that. Tonight I hope to paint the hide on the hounds, and then I will have to fix some spots on the one that was used as a test scheme as well.
The test actually looked quite good, and I am looking forward to seeing vast numbers of Chaos Warriors with those kind of capes. If I hadn't coated my old warriors, I would have gone back and redone their capes to the new scheme.

When the hounds are done I will start on my warriors. From the new rules it seems good to have larger units. I had originally thought each unit to consist of 12 warriors, but I might re-think and go for 24 instead. But I don't have to decide before I start on the next batch of 12 warriors, and knowing me that might take a while.

I have also started to think about building some scenery to use with the miniatures.
I have assembled my Temple of Skulls (really not much to assemble as most of it comes in one big piece) and I think it is so big it will need a layer of black basecoat. Then I will see how it is best to proceed with the painting, but I'm guessing a combination of techniques. Also I think some work with flock or sand might be needed.

When the new Warhammer Rulebook was released the GW store in Oslo had a very cool tower with a building on top of it, and in the rulebook there is a picture of a tower with a ship on top.
This combined with the book I'm reading (Nation by Terry Pratchett) made me want to scratch build my own scenery. The idea with a boat being somewhere it's not expected to got to me, and I would love to build a house or fortress and put a boat on top of it. Then for fluff I can say it belongs to a Bretonnian sea captain. After all, I think I will paint my Bretonnian army eventually. I relly like some of the miniatures, and I have enough sets on the shelves to make a small army.
But knowing how fast I am, it will probably be a long time yet...

About the buildings

I had some problems with the photo publishing tool, so I had to split the pics into three posts.
All the buildings are painted after the same pattern.
The bricks (especially the gaps in between) and all the cracks in the walls were first primed chaos black, then the walls were painted Codex Grey before the bricks and some other parts were drybrushed Fortress Grey. The rooftiles are all painted in Terracotta and washed with Chestnut ink. The blue on all buildings are Enchanted Blue. The wood is Scorched brown, and the wooden platform and the pillars of the watchtower are drybrushed with Vermin brown.
The details on the walls and the roof figures are Shining Gold and the metal is Boltgun metal.
The yellow figures on the blue part of the chapel walls are Bronzed flesh.

The clock on the chapel wall has the mechanics and the spiked rim around it painted Boltgun metal. Again the yellow is Bronzed flesh. For the roman numbers and the handles I wanted to use gold, but gold on a yellow background was very hard to see, so I used Dwarf Bronze instead.

This is a closeup of the tower door. The smudges of Dwarf Bronze under the door ring has been removed now.
The shields over the door is painted in Shining Gold.
Again like the temple, the guard tower is not ment to belong to any specific area of the world, but it is built on the same standard as the towers in the Empire.

In the novels of Terry Pratchett there are mentions of communication towers called Clacks. I have an idea to build some clacks from scratch, and then use them as signal towers and these GW towers as guard towers where troops can be posted.

The tower (pics)

Here's the watchtower (at last).  I am quite happy with the way it turned out.

The shack (pics)

finally, here are the buidlings

Finally, the pics of the chapel, the tower and the shack. These are all GW buildings, but now that I have finished these I have plans to build some from scratch. They will probably be wooden buildings to begin with.

The Chapel is probably an Empire chapel origianally, but I've decided that this chapel is somewhere in the wilderness in a far away part of the world. I bought a warrior priest to be the minister until I can find a miniature of a munk or something like it to give it a more peaceful look. The idea is to place it on a base with grass, a small pond, and a nice little graveyard. I hope to begin making this as soon as I have finished some of my other miniature projects.

The watchtower and the guardshack will be mounted on a base as well, but I haven't yet decided just what it's going to look like. At the moment I'm thinking something with a rocky hill or a mountainside.

Another general update

Felt it was time for another general update.
My buildings are now completed, and I hope to publish some pictures of them very soon. I just got to set up the light in a way that don't make the pics too dark. Perhaps I should bring in another lamp for photographic purposes. Would be nice to see the details in the pictures...

My Goblin fanatics are finished (as you can see from my last post), and I hope to be able to give them the final protective coating this weekend.

While working on the first batch of core units I came up with another look for the night goblins, so I did some re-painting on my Goblin Big Boss (shown originally in the "my first goblin" post from july 5th). A little earlier I re-painted his scythe from yellow to boltgun metal (as I decided it was a weapon and not a relic or standard), and the latest update on him is painting his hood brown. I did the brown hoods on a group of my night goblins with spear and shield, and I think that looked a little better than all black night goblins. Also I decided that if I should paint en entire army all black it would look dull and I would use a whole lot of black paint... I plan to give the archers black hoods, and the rest of the night goblins will get brown hoods. Will have to see what I do with Skarsnik though...
The plan is to finish one unit at the time, and when I have finished the units on my desk now, I will start on Skarsnik and Gobbla. Pictures will follow as soon as the first unit (or the command group at least) is finished.