Mario Kart Trophy (WIP)

I never got any pictures of the finished trophies (before they were awarded), but I did find some work in progress (WIP) shots I took of the Gold trophy. This doesn't include any highlighting (just the blocking of colors). I ended up doing a wide edge highlighting of light gold/silver/bronze around the edge of the star, which made it look like it was "glowing" slightly. Once I hit these with gloss overcoat they also looked much shinier.

Warmaster: Complete Wood Elf Army

This is what I've been working on the past few months. A 2,500 pt Warmaster Wood Elf Army (or thereabouts). It can be divided into two 1,250 pt armies (one forest spirit/Sylvaneth and one elf/Asrai) fairly easily, so I can use it for games with my kids, where I need to supply both sides. It includes a small Wood Elf village.

I don't really want to go into how most of this was painted here ... a lot of different things were tried and there are better guides out there. Most of the heavy lifting on this project was done with Contrast paints. Aggros Dunes followed by spots of Aggrax Earthshade works surprisingly well.

I tried something a bit different, by adding some scenery, with the pictures. Now onto the pictures:

 

Warmaster: Waywatcher Rangers

The sneaky guerrilla fighters of the Wood Elfs. The Waywatchers come in smaller units (2 stands instead of three) and have special deployment rules that let them ambush other units. Technically I had 2 units worth, but I split them amongst three. I only realized after the fact that you can only have 2 units in a standard 2000 pt sized army. So I have enough for 3000 pts. Oh well.

 

Warmaster: Wood Elf Eternal Guard

More warmaster units. These are the Eternal Guards. Painted with either blue cloaks or white cloaks so it's easy to tell the two units apart. Mostly these were painted with contrast, which works pretty well at this scale. The key to getting the light blue on the cloaks was too thin the Contrast paints down. These were fun to paint. In game, they aren't necessarily the best choice.

 

Warmaster: Wood Elf Dragon

 I need some Warmaster miniatures to go with all of this Warmaster terrain I've been making/painting. So I bought a Wood Elf army for my birthday a few months ago. I got these from Warprunner Games in San Diego. Looking at pictures online, I think Excellent Miniatures are a bit more crisper, but given my painting skills at this scale ... I don't think it matters much.

The first piece I finished is the centerpiece of the army. The "general" on dragon.

I had a lot of fun painting this guy. I tried for an autumnal leaf look for the wings (it was either that or make them look like monarch butterfly wings).

My eyesight isn't as good as it used to be, so 10mm is proving to be a challenge. It doesn't help that my brushes are bit worn and due to Covid I haven't been able to get new ones. Overall I like him though, he looks suitably woodsy!

Graveyard

A Spooky Graveyard!

When I printed the Warmaster Graveyard (see previous post), I also printed all of the elements at their normal 25mm scale (sometimes multiple times). I was always a bit disappointed that my Gardens of Morr WHFB/AoS set never had many gravestones (there are a few along some of the wall sections). Now I have a bunch to add to that kit to make even larger graveyards!

I had originally printed a single weeping statue, but after I finished printing the Warmaster city, the printer wasn't doing anything (and I had the filament), so I cranked out a few more. Mainly these could be used in scenarios that require multiple statues, some of the Frostgrave scenarios require a bunch. I recollect thinking "who has that many statues?!?!" ... now I do!

• 8 Weeping Statues
• 8 Single Gravestones
• 15 Based/Double Gravestones

 

Warmaster: City and Graveyard

I'm calling this project complete. I think my family thought I'd gone a little mad with this one (well ... more so than usual).

It's a modular 3d printed Warmaster city (i.e. 10mm scale), complete with graveyard and city walls. I don't even own an army yet that would call this thing home ... although the Skaven would probably like invading it. So at some point I should probably get a Empire or Bretonnian army (or Vampire Counts).

The pictures show one possible layout. There's not enough walkways for all of the walls, but there are enough for 6+ Warmaster infantry units worth, which seemed like plenty for a reasonable army. Not everything is pictured here (there were a number of bits I didn't setup in this photoshoot ... mostly extra ruins, barrels, and fieldstone walls). I could also set this up on one side of a table to imply a much larger city off screen.

Only the graveyard pieces were painted this month.

• 17 Gravestone Bases
• 3 Small Mausoleums
• 2 Large Mausoleums

I ran my 3d printer until it finally broke down. So that makes me sad. I was trying to print rivers and bridges to add to the city. I'm still trying to troubleshoot it, but this seems like a bad break. It's not heating either the print bed or the filament and the reason isn't obvious, the fact that 2 parts seem to have broken at the same time suggest to me it might be software related (although it happened when I was trying to print a river piece that had a particularly bad scaling down attempt).

Now onto the pictures:

 

Warmaster: City & Ruins Work in Progress

This is primarily what my 3d printer has been doing for the last few months. Printing a small walled city for Warmaster.

This entire project came about when I was looking at some 25mm field walls I'd bought a couple decades ago. Some were resin from a company call Armorcraft (iirc) and some were from Pegasus (I think you can still purchase these). The Pegasus ones were pre-painted. I use these mostly for skirmish games, but also as a quick way to setup dungeon rooms when playing D&D. At the time, I was thinking they might work as an old city wall for Epic games since there wasn't anything about them that defined their scale.

Fast forward to a few months ago. I was looking for themed terrain for my Warmaster Skaven army and found some ruins I could 3d print. Along with those, the modeller had made some non-ruined houses. I started printing, found more stl files that would work, printed more. Then I remembered my 25mm field walls and the idea that they'd work well as city walls. The scope kept increasing, I kept printing. Printed and assembled guard towers for the wall, and walk-ways for the walls (not pictured since they aren't painted yet). I'm about 1/2 way done with painting and about 90% done with printing. At some point I need to call it and move on to other things.

 

Man O' War Sea Forts & Castle

I printed these at the same time I printed the other Man O' War fleets. They aren't quite as nice as the ships, and the rules for forts and castles aren't as fun as the ship rules. My printer particularly failed at printing the cannons. They look a bit lumpy. I've seen some well printed ones and they look pretty good ... so it might be more an issue with my printer and less with the stl models.

Dead simple to paint though. Start with a Grey Seer undercoat. Then Basilicum Grey (1:1 with Contrast Medium) with Admin Grey drybrushes and Agrax washes (around the base and any "floors") does most of the work. Then snakebite for any wood and runesteel for the cannons (with some washes of Nuln Oil) for finishing touches.

 

Blackstone Fortress: Terrain & Objective Markers

 

Might as well start off 2021 with a bang! After finishing Hammerhal, I picked up Blackstone Fortress to play with the kids. I poked around on Thingiverse looking for ways to spice it up and found some 3d print files for walls and objectives and gateways. My print bed was too small for some of them, but using a bit of ingenuity (cutting up and gluing together smaller shapes to make the bigger shapes), I have enough for a full table. There are 34 pieces here (14 "crystaline" walls, 6 stalagmite walls, 3 techno walls, 4 objectives, 3 cube like things, 4 gateways (1 with a removable door)).

Warmaster: Skaven Army

Now for something a bit different. This is all the Skaven Infantry I have for Warmaster. It's the bulk of the Warmaster miniatures I own, which comes to about a 1200 pt army. I still need to paint heroes, the screaming bell, and 2 warp lightning cannons. At some point, I plan on picking another 1200 pts, which should make for a truly epic army.

Warmaster miniatures are fairly easy to paint. Contrast makes them even easier. 12 of the stands I painted 15+ years ago, and just touched them up (did another layer of highlights, redid the bases with a darker edge color). Another 15 stands I had undercoated dark brown and followed my previous plan to just do drybrushes and highlights to finish them off. The last 9 (the Rats & Rat Ogres), I started with Wraithbone primer and used contrasts (and Agrax) to darken them, followed by highlights to bring them back up. The contrast does a great job of capturing the miniatures details. You can see the fur on the Rats and Rat Ogres. The last 9 came out significantly better IMO. Stylistically you can somewhat see the difference. Moving forward, I'll use the contrast method.

There's a ruin I also printed on the 3d printer and test printed. I've since printed a few more. The rats need to live somewhere.

From front to back: Giant Rat Swarms, Jezzails, Rat Ogres (left), Clanrats (right), More Jezzails (left), More Clanrats (right), Plague Monks, Gutter Runners, and the lone ruin.

 

 

Man O' War: Khorne Deathgalleys

It's Khorne Deathgalleys today. These are the final 6 ships needed for my Khorne fleet. I kept the color palette dark since it hides some 3d printing anomalies. But overall I think they came out pretty good for the the cheapo printer I have. Contrast paints also do an excellent job shading the various bits that do matter (i.e. the decking and the oars in particular stand out). I wouldn't be embarrassed putting these on a table. As with all my 3d prints, I ended up making the masts separately.

Paint wise, the hull is contrast black with a light drybrush of Dawnstone grey. The oars and masts are just Basilicum Grey.  The deck is Darkoath Flesh followed by spot washes of Agrax (on the 3d print anomalies to further darken them). The skull is my standard skull recipe. Skeleton Horde contrast followed by Ushabti Bone and Screaming Skull highlights (and IIRC some spot washes of Agrax to darken the eyes and horns).

 A shot of the entire Khorne Fleet. The Te(a)rrors of the high seas! A smidge over a 1,000 pts worth of ships.

 

Man O' War: Khorne Fleet

Blood for the blood god! Skulls for the skull throne!

It's the first 1/2 of a Khorne fleet for Man O' War. The next 1/2 is still being painted. Like the Skaven before, these were 3d printed using Nathan Hunt's files on Thingiverse. I still only have a PLC printer (not resin), so there were some minor issues printing. These didn't come out quite as "clean" as the Skaven. I tried to overcome some of the print issues by keeping to a dark color pallet during painting on the areas that were particular deformed.

These have home made masts and yard arms too. It turns out I have a truly massive number of the flag poles. Man O'War used the same flag poles as the old Space Marine/Epic stands ... and I have several hundred of those. The masts are 1.6mm (1/16") polystyrene rods with notches filed so they kinda inset together (between the mast and the yard arm). Then thread tied/wrapped around the cross section and looped until the end of the yard arm (using a bit of white glue to keep the "rope" in place), where I wrapped it around the rod to make another thicker rope section. Last but not least, I flattened the top and glued an epic flag pole to the top the best I could.

I tried the same ocean bases as the last batch of pirate ships, but I messed up on them slightly. In particular, I made the seas too rough and let them dry in that shape before test fitting the ships. The ships are not flush with the sea. It's not too noticeable from 3 feet away, but it's not perfect. If I did it again, I'd do the bases before painting the ships, and use a ship to press into the ocean while the glue was still wet (to get a good indentation and mostly flat glue spot) and then let it dry. I think that'd work way better.

Painting wise, it's mostly contrast paints with some highlights. Contrast red for the hull, Contrast Darkoath flesh for the planks, Contrast Basilicum Grey for the Oars and Mast, Contrast Black for the flag pole and rudders. Then appropriate highlights/drybrushing. Onto some pictures:

 

Man O' War: Skaven Fleet

Hide the round pastries! The Pie-Rats are coming!

It's a Skaven fleet for Man O'War. These are all (except the dead fish thingy) 3d printed using files found on Thingiverse (credit to Nathan Hunt at https://www.thingiverse.com/barnebiss2/designs).

I have a PLC extrusion printer (~ $100), which is not the ideal type for printing things at this scale. I hear resin printers are better (and more expensive and slightly more difficult to operate). I hit some consistent flaws in the prints. Namely the bells on the Doombringers and the wrecking balls on the Deathburners. Anything with significant overhang. This is more due to my incompetence than the designs, but where my 3d printing inexperience failed me, my conversion experience came to the rescue. They were not too difficult to fix. I used some left-over morning star bits from my Chaos Beastmen (for the wrecking balls) and/or greenstuff (for the bells). I also never got a good print of a mast, so I made my own using thread and some polystyrene rods. As with the Dwarves from before, I still don't have access to a color printer to print out the sails/banners, so these are currently banner-less. Overall, it's about 1200 pts (not including the dead fish ship from Dreadfleet ... which should probably be about a 300 pt ship ... so 1500 total).

Color-wise I put the base colors down and hit the whole thing with an agrax wash (i.e. liquid skill), then hit each areas with specific highlights. The colors: Wyldwood Contrast sides (highlighted with Deathclaw), Blood Angel Red Contrast roofs (highlighted with dragon fire red), Guillamen Flesh Contrast light wood/ropes (w/spot highlights of ushabti bone), Runefang Steel metal (highlighted back up to Runefang Steel), Retributor Armor gold (w/spot highlights of Mithril Silver). I based them all using Flames of War Medium Bases spray painted with a satin blue (Cornflower).

I think they came out pretty good for 3d prints, and should look even better once I add the banners.