28 August 2021

1942 Ww2 Canadian Regulars (Dieppe Landing project compete!)



 Today’s post brings my Dieppe Landing project officially to a close. I’m very pleased to see these boys finished as it’s been a bit since I’ve actually completed a project! 

*Please note the terms “finished and completed” are loosely used here are already I have additions to this army on the plastic & lead mountain…. It never ends, right? 

This ten man Section represent Canada’s finest army regulars, very well trained and poorly prepared for the landings August 19th 1942. 




The sculpts are older Commonwealth infantry plastic kits by Warlord Games. I think the uniforms and helmets are a little more suitable for later war actions but for their price point I felt they’d make do. Not the biggest fan of this kit as they were dead fiddly to put together but they look decent enough painted up and I have a second section primed along with a PIAT team for paint to be done at a later date.

Next up is my last entry for Dave Stone’s Summer of Scenery challenge, a resin Humvee from Warlord Games (no longer supported) Project Z zombie survival game. It’s an okay sculpt but is seriously small for a 28mm game - more like 1:60 really. Regardless, it’ll be fine for the tabletop and hopefully offer a fun gaming option. Left the painting to a passable tabletop effort, the colour scheme was taken from a National Guard Humvees that we’re parked outside my workplace summer 2020 when the riots were going on all over the country. 



As alway, stay safe and healthy out there!

- Dai

09 August 2021

Green Meanie

Sunday saw the end of my 7-day break from work. Most of that time was taken up dog sitting for 5 raucous and annoying dogs, so not at all restful. But! As my previous 3 or so posts have shown, I've had a bit of time to work on my unpainted mountain, so not all bad, eh?

So to the subject of this post's title, after seeing Dave's own painted Space Ork on his Blog, I was suddenly inspired to (finally, I've only had this mini for almost 20 years or something) get this big bugger off my unpainted mountain as a palette cleanser type effort. He's an older metal Games Workshop Space Ork Nob (A larger, leader variant of the violent alien species). I'd originally picked him up to join as a mercenary-type character for one of my Rogue Trader teams for an old INQ28 project. Now, strictly speaking, the typical merc within the Ork faction are of the honourless Blood Axes Clan, but this fellow didn't fit the "Blood Axes" aesthetic, nor (My personal favs) from the Evil Sunz, so I painted him up to be from the Goff Clan. So black with black and white chequers. He had a lot of detail, so it took a LONG time to get him done, but looking at the finished result, I'm pretty happy how he turned out. No idea when or if he'll ever see time on the game table, but I'm glad he's finished.


Ridiculously huge weapons make for a comical figure. I decided that the little pet (A Squigg) on his banner pole should be a garish colour to contrast well with the otherwise dull rusty metals and dark skin and black clothing. The sculpt does have eyes under that helmet, but they were so damned small I felt that if you were peering that close to look at them then you can paint the flippin things in.

                                                 


Curious place for piercings.

Not the back banner he was supplied with (No idea where that went.), luckily had a selection of plastic options as a replacement and this one was the most fun I think.


I cheated a bit with the chequers, using a very fine Micron pen to draw the lines, then filled with paint. End result after a quick gunmetal sponge are some "good enough" pauldrons!


Those big arms should have been pinned, but I had to paint him in pieces, so I hope the Gorilla Glue holds!

Lastly, I also got this simple resin effort off the table - named a "Water Container" and from the now OOP Warlord Games "Project Z" range. I've seen these things in real life on the farms where my in laws live, but they are used for chemicals and not water, but whatever. I based it's colour scheme off one of those though, with a little murky looking wash in the recesses as though it's been left out and alone for a while. It'll feature as a small scatter terrain piece for my Zombie Outbreak project game.



Not sure what'll be next as I feel a small break from the paint desk is required. (My back says "THANK YOU!".)

Hope all are continuing to stay safe out there,

- Dai

04 August 2021

More scenic pieces


 Finding a little more time to myself in the last few evenings has allowed me to work on some more terrain pieces in my unpainted mountain for the Season of Scenery challenge.

The first of these are a pair of wrecked vehicles from the Waling Dead minis game. The car kinda looks like a Mercedes and the truck a Chevy in my mind. 

Painting was simple base/drybrush/multiple-washes. Tried to make them look like they’d been left out for a bit too. The sculpts are good enough for gaming and their price point and the box comes with duplicates too which is nice. 

These will find use in my (ever so slow cooking) zombie survival game project.


Joe’s Tows. No tow hook tho. Joe isn’t that smart. Neither is my freehand lol

Third piece to show is a statue I put together. 40mm base with a Gatorade bottle lid and an old metal Reaper miniatures kneeling Paladin on a curved lipped 25mm base. With a little dry brushing some washes and some basing elements to age it I think it came out looking better than where it started, which honestly wasn’t very encouraging! Lol

I think it’ll be usable for both fantasy games but also historical at a push? We’ll see. 


This post was put together exclusively on my iPhone so I hope it and the pics comes out okay, feel free to let me know.

Have moved onto something very different now these are drying after being varnished. Hope to have pics posted up soon.

As always, stay safe out there.

- Dai


02 August 2021

All Praise the Three-Armed Goddess!!!

 Today is my second entry for a fun little challenge that Dave over at Wargamesculptors Blog has run during Summers called "Season of Scenery" - an effort to help motivate hobby bloggers to get some of their backlog of terrain pieces done during these hot and sweaty (At least it's hot and nasty where I live in the world) Summer months. 

My last post featured my first entry as vehicles are allowed and this one will be completely different from that!

Nice Statue of Saint Celestine, patron saint of white chocolate and skulls.

Earlier this year, Games Workshop released a new range of plastic miniatures for their Adeptus Sororitas range (Battle Sisters/Nuns to the older Warhammer 40K gamers reading this). Lovely sculpts that like much of what they design these days command a high msrp. A terrain model was part of the release which included this statue as part of their "Battle Sanctum" kit. I didn't want to shell out for the whole model as I have plenty of 40K buildings in my unpainted mountain waiting to be assembled and painted, but I saw that statue and thought.... "That would make for a cool terrain centerpiece for my Genestealer Cult project (That has sat long neglected *cough cough*)...." So I hopped on Ebay and found a seller selling just that part of the kit and for an affordable price. 

Now, although the stock sculpt is a very nicely designed piece, my image in my mouldy ol' head of the statue for my army was a different image. So once the kit arrived, I pulled out my Greenstuff and got to sculpting!

And.... enough waffling on! Here's the pics:

Pre-primer. I wanted her to pretty much look as if the Cult members took a treasured statue
 of the Imperium and corrupted and changed it to represent their own hero/idol. I changed the sword with some spare Genestealer claws instead of the standard winged crossguard, snipped off and replaced the Sisters of Battle Fleurs de Lis here and there with little skulls and added a spare Genestealer skull on the base of the statue where you're supposed to glue the little candles. I thought it would make for a nice little altar to a fallen family member.
The head and arm were sculpted from scratch. Now, I'm not going to say I'm ever going to be producing miniatures professionally as from this pic is all looks like turd. But I wanted them both to be a bit rough looking, rough hewn sculpting- my Cult are not known for their artistic talent! 

For the scheme I went with something similar to the Studio scheme, but wanted the "added" parts to look as though they DEFINITELY do not look like they belong there.  

This is a rather large model and I am sure I could've painted it to a higher standard, but oof.... that's a lot of alabaster/bone and I got bored quick! So tabletop standard is good enough for me.

Have to say, those wings are lovely.

Her 3rd arm was based off of a Genestealer fan art I found online. Didn't want it to be all splayed out to show the claws as I didn't feel that it looked natural. Gave me a small task to try to make a 3-finger-fist which I think I did well enough.

Close up of the face all painted and pretty.

The sword is the standard sculpt with a couple changes. I like it. 

Close up of the base. Red candles for some spot colour and the nice white skull of ol' Aunty Bess the 1st 'Stealer to land on the planet and start the Cult "all those years ago"...

I have another piece to post up on probably later this week and maybe some more. Has been a nice excuse to get some long unloved terrain off the unpainted pile.

Forgive also if I haven't commented on your blogs of late. For some reason my Reading List isn't populating with ANYTHING and I don't know why. Waiting to see if it fixes itself, but if not in the next few days, then I'll reach out to Blogger to see what can be done.

Stay safe out there through Covid Delta folks!

- Dai