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.

 

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)).

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: More Merchant Vessels

I mentioned I had another 6 of the old Might Empire Ships without masts. Here they are ... with homemade masts! Once more, they will be used as merchant vessels to be captured. I probably have too many of these...

I was thinking a good scenario would be to give each player 3-6 vessels and require they escape off the opposite end of the seascape for victory points. You can get points by capturing opponents vessels and sailing them off the seascape as well. Sort of a dual escort mission.

These have the cool new water effect bases. I think I mentioned how I "messed" them up by not leveling the bases before I let the glue dry. I think it gives them a storm-tossed look.

 

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:

 

WHFB: Minotaurs

Some more old-style minotaurs.

Added the horn from the Gor kit to make a musician. Added a large standard from <no idea where> to make a standard bearer. The rams skull is freehand. And the other old-style champion.

I tried picturing them individually, which I think works a bit better.

WHFB: Old Style Minotaurs

A unit of 3 minotaurs. These are the old style ones from GW. I found a bunch of Minotaur Standard Bearers in a bargain bin, and converted them into several different poses. The one in the middle is carrying a gong. He can be used as either a musician or a standard bearer (or both!). The one on the right I added a horn from the Gor kit. Left is the unit champion.

WHFB: More Centigor

Some more Centigor. This time some of these are the Glade Centigor (so named since they are based on the Wood Elf Glade Rider horses).

From Left to Right: a Glade Centigor (w/ Throwing Axe), a Musician Glade Centigor, a Medieval Centigor (Spear and Shield), a Musician Medieval Centigor, a Champion Marauder Centigor, and a Medieval Centigor (whom you can barely see, tossing a spear).

WHFB: Ghoros and Centigors

When the last version of the Beastman book was about to release, there were a slew of rumors that Centigors would become a more viable unit choice. A Centigor is a cross between a Gor (A Satyr/Goatman) and a Centaur. Since I also wanted to try some of the more popular conversions for Centigors, I proceeded to convert up around 15 of them. Needless to say, the new book came out and Centigors got worse. But I had fun making them.

There were 3 types of Centigors I converted. The short squat Centigor are Gor bodies on the Medieval horse (greenstuff used to sculpt fur at the joint and the reigns and harness filed off with an xacto knife). The taller lithe Centigors (not pictured in this post) are Gor bodies on the Wood Elf horses (once more Greenstuff used at the joint). The heavy armored Centigor are Chaos Maurader horsemen with Gor heads, Marauder bodies, and Marauder horses (and greenstuff fur blanket to hide the saddles and joins).

From Left to right: 1 Marauder Centigor, 1 Musician Marauder Centigor, 1 Ghoros Warhoof, 1 Standard Bearer Marauder Centigor, 1 Medieval Centigor.

WHFB: The Doombull

This was the general for my beastman army during previous army book. If I were to field a beastman army now, I'd use a beastlord,  since they have better leadership now. He used to allow core minotaurs, which was a pretty neat; now he gains attacks for each round he wins, which is also pretty neat.

The conversions on this guy consist of: cut off one of the axes and replaced it with a shield. The shield is supposed to be a door from some unlucky peasant's cottage. The door is sized appropriately for a 28mm miniature (to give you some idea how big this minotaur is). The second conversion consists of lengthening the axe so I could validly claim it's a great weapon. I added chains wrapped around the haft to give it some more detail.

For some reason the first picture did some sort of odd strobe effect with the lighting.

WHFB: The Ghorgon

Don't know if I've ever mentioned it, but I have a large Beastman army for WHFB. The centerpiece of the army is a Giant that has been converted into a Ghorgon. Originally he was just a Beastman Chaos Giant, but when the new rules dropped (5+ years ago) there was a few years before the official Ghorgon model was produced, and I didn't want to do what would amount to almost the exact same conversion to get a Ghorgon. So I added two more arms on the big buy. If I were to buy a "real" Ghorgon, he'd actually be a little on the short side in comparison.

This is the largest/most detailed conversion I've done to date.

WHFB: High Elf Flamespyre Phoenix WIP

Awhile back I decided to assemble all of the High Elf miniatures I've picked up through the years. As part of that project, I also picked up a High Elf Phoenix. After building the Frostheart Phoenix from the pieces in the box, I still had the Flamespyre parts left over. I also had a spare Gryphon from the Island of Blood boxed set, I decided to try making a second Phoenix from all of these spare bits.

This will probably be the most involved conversion that I've ever attempted. As you can see from the pictures, I've already come a fair way and mostly just have greenstuff work left. Sculpting the feathers should a challenge, but I've done some huge swathes of fur (on Ghorgons and Razorgors) and hope it's not too dissimilar.

Originally the plan had been to do as little as possible, but after looking at how far back the wings attach on the Gryphon, I decided I didn't think it looked "natural" enough. So I moved the attachment point for the wings forward and glued the phoenix head to the end of the gryphon's beak (instead of just doing a headswap). Then I cut off more of the lion body than I had originally planned. To make it all flow together, I'll have to add more greenstuff, but it should look much more avian than if I had left the wings where they would have originally attached.

Top down view

Side View

Close-up of the Body