Vessel of Judgement Commission - Part 1

So James, one of the guys at my LGS who plays Menoth, Retribution, and now also Khador, got a Vessel of Judgement and wanted me to paint it for him. He magnetized it up so that it wouldn't be such a pain to transport.

So here are all the pieces minus the priesty dude. I might have knocked his head off, so I'll have to go back and pin that so it can't happen again.

Now, with the magnetization, it should be easier to paint since I can just pull the people out of the way. It turns out that the magnets hold okay together, but not really strong enough to be able to move the base just by holding the top of the Vessel. To fix that and to keep the chains onto the buff dude, I put in some pins for this thing. I pinned the chains to the Vessel, and they'll also glue in to the buff dude. I put two little pins into the back wheel section so that the magnets holds the piece close, and the pins keep the pieces aligned. This way, a little sheering force won't knock the piece off. I also put in a big pin that runs from the bottom of the base, through the large wheel section to the pipes section. It's fairly snug, so now just holding the top of the Vessel can pick everything up.

As you can see, I have tile on the base, just done by using a lot of GS, some water, and a piece of screen. The rest of the base will hopefully be suitably deserty.

So when it's put together, it'll look something like this:

As for the actual painting, James wanted something like the studio paint scheme. Seeing as I've never actually painted anything Menoth before, and how large this model is, I opted for using the Army Painter Skeleton Bone Primer to get everything in the right shade. This is where I'm at so far after a thin layer of bleached bone on top of the primer (plus a couple washes on the base and buff dude).

It looks like the white color shouldn't be too hard to build up from this, which is nice. I'm going to try and finish a quick basecoat of the bleached bone all over the white sections of this model before busting out the metals on this bad boy.

SDE Denizens, Round 1

I was able to get some more painting done last night and decided to crank out some denizens. These guys are brutal in the game, as long as you still have your egg clutch on the board I don't know why you would want to spawn kobolds unless you had no denizens left to spawn.

Charmeleon...err I mean a whelp.

Wyrmling

Hatchlings

My favorite model so far, the egg clutch spawning point

The entirety of my painted SDE set

I'm finding that I can keep to my painting goals fairly well. There were some gaps in the Whelp and the base of the Wyrmling that I would have liked to fill but I told myself this is a board game, get over it and paint them! So far the minis are quick and fun to paint so I don't see myself losing interest any time soon. Queue 3 months of silence about painting SDE...

SDE Paladin WIP

I started working on my first SDE mini last night. I'm coming at these minis differently than usual. Basically the look of the overall set is more important than the individual minis. Meaning, I'd rather have a fully painted set than a few really stellar models. With that in mind I'm trying to keep the paint techniques and style simple. For example:

1) I'm only doing a basecoat and rough highlights. This will allow me to move quickly but I think it will also add to the pixelated 8-bit feel.

2) I'm not doing NMM but I'm not using metallic paints either. Metallic paints take a long time for me and I think they'll stand out oddly against the cartoony feel of the minis. In Legend of Zelda Link's sword doesn't shimmer and shine. It's a brown stick but you still know it's a sword. So my steels will be grey and my golds will be yellow but I think you'll still be able to tell that it's a sword, not a grey stick.

3) Paint the heroes, dip the mobs. Yes that's right this will be my first foray into dipping. I plan on painting the heroes, drakes, mini-bosses and boss by hand but all the kobolds are getting dipped. I just need to decide what color their skin will be so I can get that color primer for Christmas. At this point I'm thinking blue.

With all that said here's my Paladin. I'm calling him a WIP because there's some touchups I'd like to do (stray paint etc)but in the interest of getting everything painted I'm moving on.

Super Dungeon Explore Boxing

There are plenty of Super Dungeon Explore unboxing videos and reviews out there so I thought I'd just do a boxing post in which we all admire the box that SDE comes in. Sounds like fun right!

Here is the box in all of its glory. The first thing I noticed about the box was how big and heavy it is. Quite the impressive product based on girth alone. If you squint you can see a fully grown man standing to the side of the box, engulfed in its shadow as the sheer awesomeness of SDE overshadows him. I have to say the cardboard is a little thin, if you run you hand across the box you can feel the corrugation. But in the less than 24 hours that I've had it the box has held up admirably.

Like many boxes this one has 4 sides. Here are some pictures of those sides (with bonus uncropped knees if you're into that sort of thing).

The box also has a back which details the contents of the box and gives a description of the game. For those of you who like to read the last page of a book first you may be tempted to skip right to the back of the box, but don't let that distract you from savoring the box in its entirety.

A unique feature of this box is that it opens to reveal objects stored inside of it. Here we can see what awaits us when we fold up the lid of the box:

So there you have it, a complete box review of Super Dungeon Explore. What's that you say? You want me to press on further into the labyrinth mysteries of this box? Well the people have spoken!

The first things that will greet you upon opening the box is the rulebook and two (count them two!) sheets of double sided counters:

After that we have the 5 double sided dungeon tiles and the adventure tracker:

And below that we have a plastic tray with dice, cards and a big ol' bag of minis:

And a short while later the Heroes are assembled:

And there you have it. My Super Dungeon Explore experiences to date.

Super Dungeon Explore Board

Jon was kind enough to hook me up with some pink foam so I could make a Super Dungeon Explore board. This is my first time working with pink foam so many mistakes have been made so far. Hopefully it will be at least playable by the time we get together to give the game a spin, but this is what I have done at this point.

Janissa- Test Model

I'm not a huge fan of Janissa's model, her head reminds me of a Jelly Bean. With that said I painted her up in a few hours to test my Trollblood scheme. It's quick and dirty and her skin is more grey in person but here she is.

Terminus Update!

So I've gotten a bit more work done on Terminus. Now that he's finally attached to his base for real, I can actually put him in my case and play some games with him.









I also have been making a soul cage using my dremel (as shown to make cannons in the privateer insider here).





There are a few tricks that I'm still trying to work it out with how to make it all look good, but it's fun to figure out.

C&C always welcome.

Harlen Versh!

So I've had a hard time finding Harlen Versh. He's just never in stock in most stores, much like epic Eiryss. However, Game Empire in Pasadena just got in a new shipment of privateer models, including Harlan Versh and the last blister of Kayazy that I needed. Granted, the only reason I knew about that was showing up for a 2-list character limited 50 pt Steamroller last weekend. Tournament went okay, but I made game-ending mistakes in my last 2 games, walking forward for no good reason and dieing and stuff. *shrug* I really have to get into practice with my Cryx again because I don't have the Merc collection to run what I want with the character restrictions.

Anyways, enough with the rambling. I managed to get Versh painted up in about 2 or 3 hours or so, which is pretty fast for me. I used the zenithal priming technique on him, and pretty happy with how it's helped.

I'm not too happy with the face, but I'm usually not, so that could be worse. This is after all the varnishing, but I'm not sure why he's still so shiny since I put on 2 coats of matte varnish after the gloss varnish. Hopefully it gets better as time goes on.

Finally, an update/scale picture on one of the Wraith Engines. Harlen Versh is going to have a hard time killing that monster of a model by himself.

I should hopefully have some good progress on Terminus to post later this week. I think I'm finally satisfied with his armor, so I just have to finish up everything on his lower body before gluing him to the base.

Yes, I'm "that guy"

So it's been a while since I've updated. Been a bit busy, but I've still been painting up my Mercs and such, but just too lazy to take pictures. But this post isn't about Mercs, it's about Cryx. I've been trying to focus on Mercs, but it's hard to stay away from Cryx. So I randomly was checking out ebay for Wraith Engines after reading some of Zerosoul's thoughts on them over on Focus and Fury. Lo and behold, I found 2 for $53 each. So yeah, bought both and have assembled one. I'll be proxying the second until I decide if I really want it or not. If not, I can still sell it for cheap :p.

Anyways, here are pics of what I've got on my assembled Wraith Engine. He still needs some cleaning up and gap filling. This was probably the worst PP model I've ever dealt with in terms of the amount of cleanup and such I had to do. Probably another reason why I won't be assembling the second anytime soon.









So if I can get a decent paint job on this guy, he'll be partially incorporeal from where he's going through the "rocks". I'll probably try and put some other interesting stuff on the base as well, so who knows.

Thoughts on alternate wings for Terminus?

So in order to look more like the art, I'm considering scratch building my own wings for Terminus, or buying a set and cutting out a lot of the inner material so that they look more tattered.

Here are some of the ones that I've found. Right now I'm leaning towards right now.

GW Winged Nightmare Wings



GW Dragon Wings (which are also similar to this set of "Demon Prince Wings" from Bitz Barn)


Or this set of GW Bloodthirster Wings


Any suggestions?

Terminus Again?

So in case anybody didn't realize, I've done a Terminus conversion before, with this as the final product.



The work in progress pictures are on the PP forums as well as here on the blog, if I recall correctly. Anyways, at one point about a year ago, I had an accident and dropped a whole tray of my Cryx all over the tile floor. Everything got put back together, but Terminus was never the same. So when he lost a wing yet again, I decided that it was time to have another go at him. Especially since I feel so much more comfortable with my sculpting (plus how awesome RabidBunny's Terminus WIP is).

Now, the reason for all these conversions is that I really don't like the model in comparison to the art. So I'm going to use some of that art as the basis for this next conversion.

Here's a pic of Terminus from the Forces of Warmachine: Cryx book:



One of the reasons that I love this over the actual model is that it just looks so much more dynamic and active (and also happens to look less like he's about to drop a deuce). The other goal beyond making the model look closer to the art is to make it easier to work around him. When I've played Terminus in timed tournaments, I had a problem with catching other models on his wings while trying to move in close to him to take advantage of Sac Pawn.

Here are some pics of the general pose that I've got so far.





The big deviation from the art is that 1) I put the wrong leg forward (which is what I get for going off of memory), 2) gonna be casting a hellfire with his right hand, 3) no more pirate sleeves and 4) the reverse grip on the sword. It just doesn't make any sense to me why the one sword you have, you hold in the way that shortens your reach, strength, and stabbitiness. When you have two, sure, defense, whatever. Anyways, rants aside I managed to get a bit of sculpting done last night too.



I'll probably change the angle of the head (since I've already done that a half dozen times), but I'm really happy with how the armor plates have come out so far. I need to sculpt in the cloth details (which may have been smarter to do first, but whatevs), but that shouldn't be too bad I don't think. Just needs lots of tatters.

So that's where I'm at right now. Next on my plate is finishing sculpting the clothes on his lower half, then putting in chains and soul cages. After that, probably the head then the arms.

Ordinary Wizarding Levels

I've got a baby due in October and I thought I would paint a model for her to keep in her room as she grows up. Just a little something so she knows her dad was thinking about her while she was cooking in the old womb. Anyway I decided on this sweet giant owl from CMON.

Parts

Assembled

Primed

Night One

Night Two

Night Three

Scale

I've still got a few areas to finish up/touch up but it's about 90% done. Next I need to get some snow on the base and figure out what I'm going to do as far as a display case.