Wednesday, January 22, 2014

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.









Tuesday, January 21, 2014

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.










Thursday, January 9, 2014

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..



Friday, September 27, 2013


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.





Wednesday, September 4, 2013

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.




Saturday, August 24, 2013

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)