Scenery Warhammer 40.000

For my Warhammer 40.000 armies, there are also a few scenery plans, but not at all as many as for the Fantasy part.
I would like to make some ruined buildings to make out a small settlement that has been bombed and burned, as some of my Imperial Guard units are specialists in urban warfare (according to their fluff).
This will also work very well with my Space Marines, as they fight under all contitions.
My idea is to make the bases quite similar for the marines and Guard units, so that they blend in when used together for games of Apocalypse.
This means they will have dark bases with some flock or lighter stones appearing somewhere. For the first Space Marine bases I used black aquarium gravel, but I am almost out of this now, and will try a little experiments to see if I can use coal crushed up for brewing wine/beer. I will also use the Warhammer scenery set for some of the bases.

Ideally I can make a building with four walls in the middle of the town, and have different ruined buildings going outwards from this. But the exact set-up will vary from time to time, and this isn't really something I will plan too much until I start to build.

I would also like to have some other terrain, like barricades to use in the city, and an Imperial Bastion, and/or a Fortress of Redemption, and some Skyshield Landing pads. I will also make some terrain outside of the city itself, like the Battlescape set, some craters and hopefully some self made bunkers or other small scenry pieces.

My plans for scenery for Warhammer Fantasy Battles

Following the blog post from yesterday, I thought I would write a little bit more about my plans for scenery, as the blogpost yesterday got very "shady" regarding this.

My plans for the scenery is to start with getting my first forrest (Citadel Wood) finished. So far I have assembled the stems of my trees. Next step is to paint the bark, then paint and add leaves. Also I need to paint the forrest floor with its roots, stones and earth.

Then the plan is to build a ruined tower (Dreadstone Blight) to help me perfect my stone wall painting technique before I build my big tower (Witchfate Tor). The plan for Witchfate Tor is to build it as a complete tower, without any wall damage. Because of this I might create another small ruined tower alongside the Dreadstone Blight, or I might add some height to Dreadstone Blight (whatever looks the best).

My Temple of Skulls is assembled and ready for priming. And hopefully I can spend some time on this as well, in between all other projects. It will be a lot of painting rocks, and I don't think I will manage to do that in one continous action.

Other plans include getting the Garden of Morr, a Fortified Manor House and Skullvane Manse.

I also plan to build myself some scenery for my Dwarfs, but this will have to be scratch built as I don't know any providers that make what I like to make. The Idea is to make an entrance to a mine, and I have an idea on how to do it.
The second idea is to make a brewery for my Dwarfs, but here I am still trying to find possible solutions. I know what I would like to make, but not how to do it.
I won't make too much scenerey for my Dwarfs, as they mostly live deep under the mountains, but I figure they got to have some entrances from the ground down in their mountains, and I would love to make a small valley with a few buildings, and with entrances down to the deep mountain halls. The valley opening should be guarded by some heavy walls, like the ones used for fortresses and city walls. Apart from that, there should be some nice mountainsides and hopefully everything could be modular so that the different pieces fits together. But how I can make this happen is at the moment a little unclear as I need storage space to keep such an item. Might have to make a deal with the wife again...

thoughts about what to do next in the armies

Just a little blog post to let my mind wander, and to get some drive for the different armies that I have.
The post is a sort of "what to come" in the future for my armies:

Imperial Guard:
Finishing the Baneblade is first priority. Then it is time to finish the 10 veterans I have on my desk (Bastions Bastards), and then the old metal Cadian command squad (6 figures) and 5 Cadian troopers (ment to finish off a unit together with the 5 troopers who started off my army). It is also high time to finish the details on the orgyns  standing on the table, and I really need some heavy weapon teams. Also it would be nice to assemble and paint the second Baneblade and the Shadowsword, and some other vehicles to get the boxes away from the shelves.

Space Marines:
Finishing the bike and attackbike standing on the workbench, and also paining up the comand squad and the terminators I have started on are the first tasks here. Then the next step will be to paint terminators I have bought on Ebay, and painting the marines standing on my workbench. It would also be nice to finish the dreadnoughts I have cut from their spues, and build some of the different vehicles I have to get some more boxes away from the shelves.

Sisters of Battle:
A temporary codex came out with the latest issues of White Dwarf, but as far as I have understood there will be no new models at this time. So my only task here will be to paint up nicely the models I have on my workbench. When the new codex comes, and models are re-made in plastic or resin, I might take this further.

Warriors of Chaos:
First item on the agenda here is to assemble and paint up my warriors of Khorne, and doing the same with the remaining 3 knights of my unit of 5. Then it is a matter of making units and single figures from the shelves and get them ready for the battlefield. I have no special priority on any of the units, just a general wish to get a playable army painted up.

Bretonnian:
No really big plans for this army. They will stay on the shelves for a while longer, but when I get some of my scenery done, I might paint up at least the foot soldiers to get some people to stand among the buildings for picture purposes.

Dwarfs:
I look forward to getting back into assembly and painting of my dwarfs. The first units that will get attention here are a unit of thunderers. I will also make quarrelers and rangers, but I will see what order I make them in. Also I have a resin Gyrocopter and two very nice White Dwarf subscription minis that I would love to build and paint. I also have several other dwarf units to build and paint up to get a playable army from the boxes on the shelves.

Goblins:
My "all Goblin" army have several large and small units that I would like to see ready for use on the table. Everything from the Arachnarok spider throught the doom diver and down to the Squig Hoppers or normal units of Goblins, night goblins or forrest goblins (spider riders). But the first thing I will make here, are 6 River Trolls (2x3). I think the trolls will be the next item to build.

Ogres:
My first plan with the Ogres is to finish the unit of 6 "regular" Ogres that I have started. After that I might go for a unit of Leadbelchers or Ironguts, before adding more "regular" Ogres and some of the larger sets in the army at a later time.

Scenery:
First thing to make here is a forrest, a dark and a quite scary one. The next thing should be to make a ruined tower...

progress has been slow

Finally got to do some painting again. It has been way too long since the last time I sat down to paint.
This afternoon I have done the rest of the laser cannons and the heavy bolters on the Baneblade. I have also done all the grey on the back panel, and painted the barrels on the back Dark Angels green.
Most of the tracks are now painted, but I need to go over them with a smaller brush to cover some of the details. I still need to do the inside, between the driving wheels, and the sides of the tracks. This is quite easy painting and is done in a short time, as long as I don't need to wait for paint to dry before I can finish.

What remains now (apart from finishing the tracks) are the details on the back panel, and this will take several sessions I am sure, as there are so many details that needs to be taken care of. Still, I have a pretty good idea of the colors I would like to use, so hopefully it won't take too many sessions.
There are also the details on the turret, with the heavy stubber and the arms of the officers, and some minor details on the main body of the tank.

The Baneblade will come out very nice in the end, I am convinced of that. Still I have already decided that both the other Baneblade and the Shadowsword will be painted during assembly. There are just too many small pieces that is hard to reach with a paintbrush, and if you reach it you are guaranteed to hit something else that should not have that color.

Hopefully another progress report will follow shortly.

Got some more painting done...

I seem to be on the roll these days. Painting several days in a row is a good habit that I will do my best to keep up. I know there will be little if any painting on Wednesdays and Thursdays as I conduct a school windband on Wednesdays and on Thursdays I play in a bigband. Because of this I am home late, and that means less time to paint. But if I could get in to a habit of painting at least 2 weekdays and at least one of the two days of the weekend, I would get a lot done in a short time. I have so much I would love to paint up, so I could really gain a lot from getting this to work.

Todays painting session was used to paint both my Baneblade and the new Ogre unit I have been talking about the last few days.
On the Baneblade I did the last of the black painting, painting the track guards and the drivewheels for the tracks, and also the end of the exhaust pipes. I also painted the last lascannon, and the twin heavy bolters on the right side.
Remaining before completion: Painting the back of the tank (several colors will be needed here), painting and glueing the remaining pieces to the gunner and the commander, painting and adding the heavy stubber in the turret and painting and adding tools and spare parts on the tank.

The Ogres got all the leather painted, so they now have Beastial Brown belts and boots. I know Games Workshop painters usually paint boots black, but it is one of my peculiarities that boots shall be brown. I started this on my Chaos warriors after the first batch got all black, and have decided to do this as one of my "things" for all the armies from Warhammer Fantasy. The next step for the Orges will be to paint hair and skin.
Remaining before completion: Hair, skin, weapons, banner, shields on the bellies, and also to paint the Gnoblars I choose to add to the unit.
For the hair I have decided to paint it in a red-brown color for the entire army (perhaps with a few exceptions, but not many), and that color will probably be Terracotta.

I have a good feeling both for the Baneblade and the Ogres now, even though I know it will take some days until they are done. 

Ogre update

Just a small update on the Ogre progress before I go to bed at midnight...
I have now painted the pants of my ogres, and as an experiment I tried to use three different colors for my six big Ogre warriors.
Two Ogres for each color: Shadow Gray (sort of blueish gray), Astronomican Gray (a light gray color) and Dark Angels Green (a dark, bright green, and the same color as the capes and hoods of my elite Space Marines).
From looking at the colors while they are drying, I think I will end up with most Ogres having bright pants. the dark green color looks very nice, and I think when I add the brown leather boots it will be a nice match.
There are two reasons for me trying out different colors within the unit:
1: Most pictures I see of Ogres have different colored pants within the unit, so it sort of goes with the flow
2: I wanted to test out what works and what doesn't work, if I'll start a bigger production of Ogres in the future (and let's face it, when one unit is in the house, it is most likely that others will follow at a later time).

So far the only thing that has disappointed me slightly is that even though the Gnoblars are high in numbers (6+1 to be exact), there are only two poses (well, three if you add the Gnoblar intended to be atop the banner). Still, I figure if there are other poses on the Gnoblars in other units one can still mix and match, and the poses in this box can fit in any kind of unit.

So far the Ogres have been a pleasure to assemble, and I look forward to working more with them after work tomorrow (or rather today...).

and in came the Ogres

It is official!

Once again I have failed to finish one project before starting another.

This time it is my Baneblade that is standing 92% painted on the dining room table, and on my worktable there are a unit of six regular ogres. 

Right now they are standing placed on their bases, with their bodies attatched to their heads and both arms. In front of them are the belly shields and their hands lined up for each ogre.

The plan now is to paint one color on the Baneblade, and then while that is drying I will paint some ogres, and so on, until at least one thing is finished.

I also have a lot of Marines that needs to be painted, and I would love to start painting and assembling some river trolls for my goblin army.

Speaking of Marines, I started to count how many terminators I can field, and have found that I can field my entire first company in terminator armor if necessary. That will look mighty fine for games of Apocalypse, and also it will give me several options to assemble the force I need at all times.

The rest of my marine units are falling behind though, so for now a force of terminators and dreadnoughts are my solution if a force should be called upon to fight.

When it comes to the Goblin army I have 6 river trolls (2 boxes of 3 trolls) that I would love to see painted up and ready for the table. I even bought a special yellow-brown paint for them, as I figure them being yellow-brown and green, with perhaps some other colors as details. Also it would be nice to get some more goblins painted up, as they are a horde army.

While I visited my local Games Workshop store this Friday, I also bouth myself the 2012 subscription for White Dwarf (remembering that it took a few issues before I started getting it in the mail the last time), so with a few issues this time, I would get my first issue for 2012 in January and that works out perfect.

This year the miniature that came with the subscription was the Dwarf dressed up as a pitate, complete with a parrot and a treasure chest. For about a year I have been thinking of making my own airship, using the 2011 White Dwarf figure as the pilot, so this year I might have to consider also making a boat or at least something maritime for him to be added to the army.