I laid out the rest of the scatter terrain I envisioned, and used some stand-in miniatures to approximate how I wanted the army itself to be displayed. All in all, I’m pretty pleased with how things are looking. Now I’ve just got to finish everything! But at least I have a plan to work to…
I’ve finally filled in the missing corner. Everything has been cut, glued, clamped, and filled… I’ve just got to sand everything down to size.
Last, but not least, the main building feature is 99% complete. I might add a couple more bits of broken columns, and there’ll be some rubble added to the floor on the board, but otherwise its ready for the next stage.
It’s bigger than I realised during assembly, running nearly the full width of the board, even when set at a diagonal. It’s almost amazing how the scale seems to change as soon as it’s placed on the board. Suddenly it becomes this huge, looming, monster towering over the battlefield.
I’ll be adding rubble and scatter terrain to break up the rest of the board, and make it look more “lived in”. Everything will be integrated using texture paint and extra grit and sand for variation. That’s the next task.
44 days to go.
I’ve been slowly chipping away at my Armies on Parade board over the last few days (when I’ve resisted the siren song of Warcraft…). The army itself is another matter, but that’s for another day.
Basic construction of the base has been finished, apart from that one empty corner. I’ve got a couple of ideas of how to fill it, I just haven’t settled on an option yet.
I started off by gluing the section cut from the Realm of Battle board to the plywood, and clamping everything together. Once the glue dried, I covered the sides and holes in the board with a hefty amount of Polyfilla.
After leaving everything overnight to cure, I used an electric sander to smooth everything off and trim off the excess plastic. A new floor for the main building area was created out of textured plasticard.
Time to check everything would fit into the case, and to see how tall I could make the buildings. It turned out I had 11.5 inches in height I could use, which was plenty. The new Sector Imperialis buildings are ~5 inches per level, so I could comfortably fit a two-story building into the case.
Now it’s on to the fun stuff – the buildings! I started by laying out a rough floor-plan, to see how many sections I needed per side. I ended up not using all of the sections on the left side.
With two sides built, things are starting to take shape. I removed the door built into one of the wall sections, to give another “access point” to the building.
Here I’m test fitting the upper floor, to make sure everything is square. As I’d been using a spare floor section to try line-up the wall sections throughout, things were pretty good.
By this point I was starting to think about the walls on the upper floor, but it was time to pack everything away for the night. Shortly after taking this picture, I realised I had to rip the column tops from the right-side wall as I remembered I was going to extend the floor out that way.
This is the mess from just from scraping off mould-lines in one sitting. Time to get the vacuum out…
My plan is to finish construction of the buildings and ruins this evening. Providing I get the missing corner filled with something, I might manage to get the first layers of paint on the board by the start of next week. I really need to get the board finished soon, so I can move on to painting the army. There are only 45 days to go until Parade Day!
I’ve been granted some WoW in-game time as a resolution to an old support ticket, so I’m able to jump onto my higher-level characters again. I’m comparing the experience to the one I had with the new character I started earlier, and… hooo-boy the experience on my 110 Paladin was confusing. I stopped playing pretty early in Legion’s lifecycle, so when I logged in I was prompted to do the Legionfall scenario straight away, then after 1 quest or so, I was immediately whisked off to start Argus. While I’m on my way to Argus, I’m prompted to start the Siege of Lordaeron, leaving me wondering what content is actually worth playing through. Playing the Siege would net me a shiny new weapon, but no way to follow up on that storyline until I drop £40-£53 on Battle for Azeroth.
On top of the questing confusion, all my talents were reset and my abilities changed. These were expected, but it adds to the sense of unfamiliarity. I’m not a fan of the GCD change and how it affects Paladin rotation, but that might just be a symptom of generally feeling lost. Right now I feel like I’m just mashing random buttons whenever I get in combat, in the hope something fires off. On a character I’ve played on-and-off for 11ish years, feeling lost is very uncomfortable and frustrating!
I guess I’m in an odd position in that I’m coming back after a new expansion is released, but I haven’t unlocked the new content yet. In general the experience seems to be that while new characters get guided to where they need to be, returning characters need to figure out for themselves what they’re meant to be playing through, with the implication that you will just drop anything “old” from your Quest Log immediately. But there’s nothing to tell you in-game what is out-dated. In my case, for this character, the path forward is pretty much “buy BFA and forget about anything Legion-related,” but if I’d been returning at some point around the pre-patch, with no clue as to what had been released since I stopped playing, I would have been completely disorientated.
In celebration of turning 50(!), Tony Hawk released a lovely video of him performing 50 skateboard tricks he either invented or helped pioneer.
Mum and Dad were having a clear out, and came across this miniature, which is now the only known surviving model I painted back when I was a kid. I vaguely remember painting this, probably some time around 1996/97 as I appear to have base-coated it using the old Ultramarines Blue spray, likely to help Young Me with the white. I must have run out of Chainmail Silver, as all the metals are painted gold, except the sword, which is still blue!
I’ve no idea where this model actually came from, and I’m pretty certain it’s not by Citadel. I think it might’ve been randomly found at a car boot sale, and given to me as I was going through my “Bretonnian Period,” so people knew I was painting knights.
I should put it somewhere safe, as a bit of nostalgia. It’s the closest I’ll come to “my first miniature.” Part of me is tempted to strip the paint off it and repaint it though… hmm, decisions, decisions!
Warhammer Conquest was a big topic of conversation this week. Knotley has two excellent posts breaking down the cost and value. I’ve subscribed, at least for now. £32 per month, to have something delivered regularly might actually help me cut down on impulse purchases. Plus, more Marine bodies and paints are always welcome. And there’s an exclusive Primaris Lieutenant/Sergeant with issue 5 that I really want to get.
Warboss Kurgan had some excellent Endless Spell conversions to show off, to fit his “Blanchitsu” style Age of Sigmar creations.
Meanwhile, Bear was showing off his lovely Stardrake and Celestant Prime.
Over at The Aaronorium, theactualcolin posted his Lord of Contagion, which he hopes will do better in games, now it finally has some paint on it.
Iron Sleet have the first two battle reports from their amazing looking “Thorn Moons Crusade” collaborative narrative campaign. The conversions, painting, and story-telling are all first class, so I highly recommend you check out the reports from the 7th Moon and 15th Moon. Then read everything in the archive. Also at Iron Sleet, Migs talks about what’s coming next from him.
Dave at Quietly Raging is making some real-world inspired, very Imperial looking Church Tanks. Yes, churches on tanks. He’s only posted the inspiration on his blog for now, but if you follow him on social media, you’ll probably have seen WIP pictures of a very gothic looking Baneblade.
Mordian 7th has finished an Orlock gang and some characters, for Necromunda.
Curis has posted some more of his Classic Citadel miniatures, this time some excellently painted “Blandford Warriors” from 1988. I was 5 when these were released. The Lions Rampant on the shield/tabard of Owen of Wales are probably my favourite bit of the 3 miniatures.
Tyler Mengal has some words on using Cheat Sheets to keep you right. These are something I should definitely make more use of.
Sprews & Brews ponder on what they’d like to see from the rumoured Battletome covering the various “The Lost and The Damned” factions in Age of Sigmar, i.e. Beastmen, Darkoath, Slaves to Darkness, and a host of other minor Chaos factions. Also over there is part 2 of Dave’s Legion of Nagash vlogs.
Part 4 of CadianShock’s guide to getting started with Astra Militarum has been posted. Fall in, Guardsman.
Pike’s Miniature Painting and Bolter & Brush both posted some good “How To” videos, on Mortarion and the Lord Celestant, respectively.
Frontline Gaming have an article from (the world’s only?) professional Warhammer 40,000 player, Nick Nanavati, about studying smarter, not harder, to avoid “gotcha” moments in games.
Finally, Forge World rolled out some big changes to pricing and shipping. In the UK, this generally means cheaper, faster, shipping. The reaction from those outside of the UK has been far from happy though, as the faster shipping has been offset by 15-40% price increases in some cases.
That’s all for this week. Did you find this round-up useful? Should I make them a regular thing? Let me know in the comments, and share this post with your friends ?
