Starting to rev up the assembly line

Finally made myself prep the actual Praetorian Foot and Horse Units for my army. Primed and base coated them last weekend and I'm starting the assembly painting line, after setting up 2 rough color palette figures.

Here's the basic color palette I set up for the ground pounders, detail colors will be worked out later

Here's the 2 squads, there's also a lascannon team not in the picture

Here's the basic palette for the Rough Riders.

I'm hoping with a few hours to dedicate to it I can get these guys close to done.

Comparing Dust Tactics Models to WH40K Models

I was looking for alternatives for my Imperial Guard since that's kind of what I'm doing with this force as an experiment in frugality. I had come across a Fantasy Flight tank model that looked like it could be a good substitute for a Hydra, (infamously tough to get outside of kit bashing or overpriced Forge World purchase). I found the IS-5 Heavy Tank on Amazon for about $20. Not too steep a price I figured I would take a chance and if I didn't like the look. quality or scale I would use it for conversion or scrap.
It came this weekend just 2 days after I ordered it (thanks Prime) and I was blown away by what I found in the box. A decent sized tank, ready to use with just a couple of pieces of plastic to snap on. Decals already applies, but easy enough to paint yourself if you wanted to.

Here's some photos of the size comparison between a Chimera based Basilisk and Hell Hound.

So the IS-5 is more of a Colossus Siege Mortar in look, environmentally sealed.

The little detals blew me away, the hand holds. The antenna is for the anti-aircraft version, I forgot to take it off. 

Every wargamers dream, buy one model and to be able to easily swap out the main weapon.

So the body of the IS-5 is a little bit longer than the Basilisk, but they are the same width, so the Fantasy Flight pice does have a bit more of a side profile.

I think it would make an acceptable Hydra.

Against the Chimera base that the Hydra would use though the IS-5 is a quite a bit longer, almost 1.5 times the length.

I'm just impressed with the accessibility Fantasy Flight is giving to new players, some would argue that this is a dumbing down of the hobby, the equivalent of snap-together models compared to "real" models. But the price is less and you're ready to play as soon as you open the box.

Griffon For My Wife's late Holiday Present or early Birthday Present

I've been working on a large based diorama where I can put any 25mm round base figures and one 50mm based monster. The first "monster" is a griffon from Reaper's Bones collection.

Here's a couple of shots of the base.

Dang it, Stock Connery keeps getting in these things.

Fun in the snow

Taking advantage of the abundance of white stuff laying around, I braved the cold this morning to capture these shots. I used a battery operated tea light to give the warm yellow glow inside the hut.

Weathering the Quonset Huts

I have added some weathering to the huts and tried giving them some personality with decals. I'm still perfecting the art of decal application.

The 57th starts setting up base camp

Bit of  hiatus there. Life's gotten a little crazy, plus the holidays, plus new years, plus my friends and I trying to develop and eventually self-publish a game. (www.moverate20.com) Whew.

Anyways, I got the Quonset huts from Dust Tactics for the Holidays and I'm starting to work on them so they can become part of Fort Appalactic. The pictures are of the base coat and camo, details to come later.

3 of the 6 buildings with a subtle 3 color camo

Here we have the commanders hut (far left) and the communications hut (far right)

Close up of the camo. I used the chit board from another holiday gift "Relic" as a mask to add a subtle dimention to the camo pattern.

If those look like "Influence" markers there's a good reason.

Security cameras, picked up Stock Connery snooping around..

I just finished up a couple of figures for a Pathfinder game my wife and I are in. I'm a sorcerer and she's a druid, both half-elves. So I went through my Vampire Box from the Reaper Kickstarter and found 2 appropriate minis. I gave the plastic figures a light wash in warm soapy water to clean off any release agent that may be on them and primed them black.

I noticed a couple of spots where the primer didn't take hold, so in the future I'll wash them a little more aggressively. I started with my character because the figure was revealing it's personality to as I looked it over to see the details on the little guy.

Other than the spots where the primer didn't take, painting the mini's was a breeze, pretty much like any other figure, with the exception being that the lighter material made balancing the mini taped on top of a cork, so I could better paint them without touching, better since they weren't as top heavy.

Here are the finished pieces, still awaiting a clear coat . I was going to use flat, but my wife think a semi-gloss would make them "pop" more.

New location of my hobby table

After putting up with the ever encroaching army of miniatures in our living room for years, my wife asked if I could move my painting station to another room. I actually was excited to make the transition as the TV tray I used forced me to lean over so much I couldn't paint much without getting a really sore back, so I 'm using an old drafting table with a new "task" chair and the work surface is the perfect hieght.

Plus I have a lot more room to speread out now.

Col. Gravis' Steampunk Heavy Weapon unit gets magnetized

Got my Steampunk Praetorian/Victorian IG heavy weapon from Col. Gravis' Curious Construct's Kickstarter. After moving my painting station to a more out of the way room in the house (since my wife really wanted the living room back) I decided to take a look at this little treasure and see if I can magnetize it.

Praetoria's answer to Guardsman Marbo

Meet Stock Connery. Dashing, daring and mysterious describe this officer and last survivor of the 700th Regiment of Foot based out of the Port Elizabeth Hive. Rumors around his history abound, some say he was an ordinary "ground pounder" who stole an officer identity, other say he was trained by the Inquisition as an assassin, but let that behind when his home world needed him. The prevailing rumor is that he was a specially trained member of Praetoria’s PDF elite brought in to put down worker uprisings and deal with mutant threats in the lower levels of the hive, always by himself and he never failed to return.

Regardless of how he managed to get on to the field, he is a master of infiltration and creating havoc behind enemy lines. Armed with a special pistol and a strange power glove, rumored to be Xeno tech, that has virulent, needle like claws, he will appear amongst the enemy's support and command units, disrupt them and melt back into the fog of war.

(Basically, I use Marbo's stats with this more victorian looking figure. No he's not GW, but then again my IG army is never going to qualify for an offical tournement)

Pathfinder ship

My Pathfinder campaign is one of steampunky, piratey goodness. My group just got their first big ship and so my wife and I made this for the campaign.

I found the PDFs for these ships on Drive-Thru RPG from Zero-Hour.

Printed them out and glued them to foam-core and my wife cut them out.

So now we have appropriate deck plans for fights.

I'll post a link to the pdfs below through the Paizo website. There are 3 ships/boats total in the document a dingy, a 50ft small ship and this bad boy.  The gun deck as an optional overlay.

Zero-Hour Sailing Ships