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Stevewren

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Blog Entries posted by Stevewren

  1. Stevewren
    I finished the Wood Elf Dragon today. Painting these older models has definitely been an experience - it makes you realise the difference in quality with the new CAD sculpts. There is definitely a certain charm to the older models, but I also appreciate how the new designs take paint and respond to different techniques in a way these older ones just don't. 
    I used a lot of dappling and patterning on the model - firstly this helps to tie it in with the Carmine Dragon I have so they look like they have come from a similar place, but also as a technique it works well to add interest to large flat sections like the wings. The big membranes respond well to smooth blends, but if you don't have the time or haven't mastered the technique then this method is a quick alternative. To get the circles I used an old Size 3 W&N brush that had lost its point - I cut it down slightly so it had a flat tip and then used it almost like a stamp to make the circles. The paint is just watered down. I try to use a darker colour as a lot of the circles go in the recessed parts, then build up an intermediate colour and finally I use a really bright third colour but I try to do about a third less dots as this shouldn't be too dominant. Its a fun technique to try out so if anyone gives it a go let me know how it looks. 



  2. Stevewren
    My Empire army in 8th edition was a pretty solid tournament army and I knew at some point I was going to have to rebase it all. When the Shattered Dominion bases were released from GW I decided these would be perfect as a starting point. However there were a number of things I wasn't happy about. When I got the bases I started off by sanding and texturing sections, and also obscuring a lot of the skulls as they are a bit too flat and comical looking for my liking. Instead I glued actual resin skulls over the top of the moulded ones. I then undercoated the whole sprues with GW brown spray. 
    Painting wise I just went over them fairly quickly, doing standard ground and metals. I used Blood for the Blood God mixed with nun oil in the cracks, and then added the GW tufts on the ground bits. The models themselves were just super glued in place. After this was done I had my first go at snowballing. I used the new Valhallan Blizzard paint from GW, which i just applied in scoops and brushed into piles and mounds. Its a very light paint so you can put it over the foliage and it looks like snow cover. One of the things that I have always found odd about snow on miniatures is how you apply it - do you do it all over the base, or is it just random melting clumps? I tried to do something in between, so once the whole thing had dried I got some Secret Weapon Mini crushed glass and  mixed it with water effects to create quite a runny mixture. I then painted this all over the snow and remaining base to make it sparkle and look more like a melted snow effect.
    I like how it has worked out, but I'd be interested in other peoples thoughts.  


  3. Stevewren
    With Drycha nearing completion she needs a base to stand on. Most of my basing is done in a fairly standard way now. The first thing to go down is the playback, which I am a huge fan of. It makes the best kinds of rocks. All I look for to start with is pieces that will keep the model level and these are glued down with Mitre Bond. Once these have been chosen I can then get cracking on extra parts. For this one I took a square forest base I had lying around and just glued that down. Then its a case of going to town with polyfilla to make it all blend together. I then stuck down the funny worm thing from the Branch Wych kit and also added in another piece of bark from the garden that I dried out. Once dry this was all covered with sand and gravel. This is the first stage pretty much done. I'll update later with the next step. 



     
     
     
    After the initial layers dried I added in some of the details. I raided the Glade Rider sprue for a couple of stones and a Spite, and chucked on some skulls. I  then went round and added in a lot of Black lava paste and shoved Mica Flake paste into all the crevasses and cracks. This all helps to blend the base together and get it looking as 'realistic' as possible (or at least as realistic as a fantasy base could be). Once it was all dry I undercoated it with the black and white spray painting technique. 

     
    Once everything was dry I gave it a very quick undercoat. This should be done with quite wet paint so that everything can be blended onto the base and shaded. I used Rhinox Hide mostly, plus a lot of Tallarn Sand. For the rocks I used a mixture of Skavenblight Dinge and Stormvermin Furr. Once this is dry it can all get shaded with a wash or two (use all the colours to get tone, especially on the rock). Then the dry brushing can begin, along with picking out the small details and painting the little characters. 

     
  4. Stevewren

    Kairos Arrives

    By Stevewren,

    For my South Coast Army I needed Kairos to lead my troops. Although he has lost the ability to change the turn roll he is still a good leader. Once again the model was a real joy to put together. I tried to keep the staff separate this time to make sure that the painting was a bit easier this time. I sprayed the model Macragge Blue, then used a baby blue spray paint and some white from a can to pick out the chest and heads. I used spray cans for the purple on the wings and also to do the feet. This gives some nice gradients if you are careful, and means that the base coat is quite effective strength away. All I had to then was wash areas and dry brush and then pick out all the sharp points. However the areas like the gold and the staff took a lot longer than I thought this time. I think I spent five or six hours picking these all out and finishing them off over the last week. 
    I now have two more to do for my trip to Portsmouth so I've got to keep going. The next one I think will be mostly green and purple! 
    If you have any comments or questions let me know below. 


     
     
  5. Stevewren
    Just a quick apology for not getting a post up over the last few days, but I've been busy and not had much time to complete anything! However this morning I was able to get the Hunters on to their bases. The bases are just smaller versions of the base that you can find details of how they are done in this Drycha article. One thing that might be of interest is how the flock stays on - I very rarely have any issues with the foliage falling off the models. I use Superglue Thick from GW and am quite generous with how much I apply over the branches it will be sticking too. The foliage then has to be pressed down firmly into it and this seems to give a strong bond that lasts. 
     

  6. Stevewren
    Here is a quick photo of where I'm going with the Kurnoth Hunters. I used the Airbrush to lay down some base coats and then went in with a dry brush of Underhive Ash. I then fixed the white areas which I had done in a very round about manner. I like the contrast between the White and the dark brown. The bow was done in dark reaper with the brown details picked out. Overall I am quite happy with the scheme so I'll be doing the others in the same way. 
      
  7. Stevewren

    Look back at 2017

    By Stevewren,

    This is a photo of all the models that I painted in 2017: 
    The year got off to a solid start with the Tzeentch release. At the start of the year I didn't own any Tzeentch models at all, but I was looking for a new project for the South Coast GT and I was fortunate to get some of the Acolytes to work on. I painted 20 of these, and I have another 20 that are partially done. The kit is great though, so I used them to as the base for 20 Maruders. I fleshed out the army with 6 sky fires, a Tzangor Shaman and 4 Lords of Change. This took me up to March, and it meant I had another 2000pt army completed to add to my collection. one of my goals for 2018 will be to add to this army. I'd like to run some more horrors and also have a unit or two of Enlightened on Disc to go in for a more fighty force. Later on on 2017 I started on this and have added 10 Brimstone horrors so far, as well as a unit of Blue and Pink Horrors. I also got a Gaunt Summoner which I spent a bit of time working on - I'm extremely pleased with how he came out. 
    I spent some time painting a few Nurgle models as well. These were mostly converted for an army project that I started but never finished. However it looks like the start of 2018 will give me some exciting new editions to go into this force. If the new Battletome is competitive then I may try to paint up and actual net list of Nurgle, but if it isn't then I can have some fun adding models as and when. in 2017 I have done 20 Plaguebearers, 10 Warriors, 3 Beasts of Nurgle, a Lord of Plagues, a converted Harbinger of Decay and Festus. I was a little frivolous with my spending this year so I have the remains of the Blightwar box that I can add to this force along with any new models from the upcoming release. 
    And finally, and some what randomly, there are three warhawk riders that I had sitting around for ages. I have a large Woodelf collection and I have a lot of older or unfinished models that I really want to add in and rebase, so I like to do a few of these as little projects throughout the year. The first of these for 2018 will hopefully be the Sisters of the Thorn. I have the steeds completed for these ladies, but the riders have been in an unfinished pile for over a year now. I think they have deserved to be moved  up the painting queue. 
    And of course I also did an awful lot of terrain this year. Preparing for Blood and Glory was very stressful and at times I was really down about the whole thing, but the tables and terrain I managed to complete looked spectacular. I'm not going to put the photos here as they can be found littered throughout the blog, but that was a good 4 months of hard labour and I now have 9 high quality sets of table terrain that I can pull out when friends come over as well as having it ready for next years events. Maybe I can add another table or two if I feel motivated...
    Overall I am pretty pleased with the amount of hobby that I got done this year. Lets hope next year will be just as productive. I'd love to see how everyone else thinks they have done so pop onto the 2017 retrospective thread here and/or start thinking what your 2018 goals could be and post them too. 
    Have a terrific 2018 everyone! 
  8. Stevewren

    Marauders of Tzeentch

    By Stevewren,

    For my Tzeentch force I need some foot troops. The cheapest battle line in the warriors army are Chaos Marauders at only 60 points for 10 models.
    However there are a couple of problems. Firstly, the models are really old, very poorly posed and they have a whole load of annoying mould lines. Secondly they are very much of the Old World frozen north aesthetic with the cloaks and beards. All the new Tzeentch models have a very different feel to them. So what is the solution? Clearly to do a ridiculous amount of conversion work on foot troops no one will pay any attention too! I decided that the basis of the conversion would be a box of Kairic Acolytes. I also had 15 of the silver tower Acolytes which add some variation. 

    The heads were taken from all the blood reavers that I had left over from the starter set that I haven't done anything with. I chose all the ones with helmets as I decided these guys would be trying to emulate the Acolytes by hiding their faces, but without the magic they had to settle for the normal versions. When I ran out of heads I started raising my bits box and was able to use some Maruader heads as well as taking a gamble that Space Marine heads would also look OK. 

    Weapons and shields came from the Tzangor kit as well as the Marauder kit. 

    Sticking everything together was pretty easy, but if you want to do this conversion then the neck needs some work as the acolyte heads kind of fit on the front. If you try and stick a normal head on then it looks down at the feet, so the neck area has to be cut and trimmed down, but its not overly complicated. 
    Painting was the usual Tzeentch base coat of brown, and all the armour this time is blue. As ever edging all the gold is the really time consuming stuff, but I have got 10 done so far out of the 30 that i need. 
    As always let me know what you think in the comments below.  

  9. Stevewren

    More Bonkers Basing

    By Stevewren,

    I have started working on rebasing my Empire Army now as The Freeguild. There are quite a few  things that appeal to me about the army from AoS as I can use the colour scheme to add in other models. I have already done some dwarfs in the red and white scheme and I like them a lot. However one thing I wasn't sure about was the basing for the models. In the end I decided to go for the Shattered Dominion base from GW. I can also get some of the hero bases now as well. The one thing that they don't do are big model bases though. To rectify this I decided to try and create my own.
    I used a 130mm Hardboard base that I had lying around as a starting point. On the models I have rebased so far I have used Blood for the BloodGod in all the cracks, so for the larger base I decided I wanted a blood pool on the base. I had some of the 40K pipes lying around so I glued that to the centre. I then added in some old stone walls to the side, although this isn't really visible now that the cork bark has been added. To create the bases I used Cork tiles to represent the ground levels. I'm not usually a fan, but for my purposes here its a good choice as its flat! Once these had been glued down I used cork bark to fill in all the space. To support the top layer I used some left over pink foam.  

    I glued on a lot of the Shattered Dominion basing pieces to represent the ground, along with a manhole cover. 

    Once everything was dry I then attacked the base with the Vallejo basing pastes to fit all the gaps and holes. I also used some sand and gravel to get some variation into the texture. I knew that the base was going to need a whole bunch of skulls on it so I glued some in place around the top. In the pool itself I cut a lot of plastic skulls into pieces so it will hopefully look like they are submerged in the blood pool. Normally I'd use water effects here, but the plan is to just use the Blood for the Blood God paint to create the pool and add a lot of gloss varnish over the top. The final construction stage will be to cut round the base and sand it so it is circular and then glue a plastic strip round the edge to cover the big gap. I'm looking forward to getting this one painted! 


  10. Stevewren

    New Years Resolutions!

    By Stevewren,

    Cripes! I've just noticed my last post was the 9th January. Not exactly stellar blog updating here. Anyway, lets try and get you up to speed with whats been happening. First off I have some New Years Resolutions for 2017. Lets hope one of them wasn't update the blog regularly..
    Rather than listing it all here I have done a fun little video instead which you can view. 
    Enjoy the video and let me know what you think of the resolutions I have set and how many you think I can achieve! 
  11. Stevewren
    I bought a bunch of Tzeentch models from a friend of mine a few months ago, and three of the models were Exalted Flamers. I have sprayed and undercoated the thereof them about nine times so far, and I have not been able to find a scheme or style that I like. The models have a lot of flat detail that doesn't wash well and is tricky to dry brush too. I tried fades from bottom to top of similar colours, colours that contrast, and different tones of the same colour. None of these particularly inspired me, or if they did I found it hard to get a good highlight or shade onto the model. In the end I went with a contrast from a light brown to yellow. I then used purple as the contrast colour for the flames - no particularly inspiring, but it works well. I did the flames all with washes and then quickly highlighted the tops with a white. 

    I really wanted the model finished and in the end I just called it done as I didn't want to continue working on a model I wasn't enjoying. It will look fine in my Tzeentch force, but I really didn't enjoy the sculpt or the painting experience. The pale yellow highlights were easy to bring back using the Lamentors yellow glaze, which I really like for working on yellow. Because I didn't enjoy the model I didn't spend much time picking out details like teeth and more on the flames. I'm not sure spending time on the flames would really make much difference, and I think it would be annoying to try and layer them up. 
    I wonder if I had put the model together there might have been a way to keep the flames separate which may have allowed me to do a better job. This may have made the painting experience better too. 
    I think the two spare flamers may find their way onto ebay in the near future! 

  12. Stevewren
    This was very much a fun little aside from painting models. It goes together fast and you can have a lot of fun with bright colours, washing and drybrushing. My next task is to come up with some variants on this. I played my first game with the Maggotkin Battletome yesterday and I got plenty of trees out. I'm not sure you need any more than 3 or 4, but it would be nice to have some variation. I think I can afford one more of the official model which I can convert with some Sylvaneth parts, and then use a couple of sylvaneth trees which can be put on a same size base and then modded with mouths, pustules and bells to represent a Gnarlmaw. 
  13. Stevewren

    Nurgle guy.

    By Stevewren,

    I've had a Maggoth Lord sitting on the desk for a while now and over the last few evenings I've been painting up a few armour panels at a time to try and get him completed. I'm looking at trying out different greens for all the armour plates and also use it as a good exercise for practising blending and such like. I've been using the loaded brush technique, with the greens rather than white at the moment and its kind of working, but I think it needs more practise. The blends between the shades are still looking pretty rough - you can easily pick out the boundaries between shades in places. I suspect that I need to work with my paint consistency a bit more as when Ben Kommets does it he uses a thicker white than the colour. Anyway, as I was short a blog post I thought these would do as a little WiP. 
     
     

  14. Stevewren
    I had this conversion knocking around my painting desk for a while as my Budget of Sigmar 2 Army got shelved as I worked on the Tzeentch army for the South Coast GT. I had always planned on it being the leader of the force. It is on a big 60mm base with the mystical rocks hanging around him. The conversion was done with the 40K Cult Mechanics hero and mixing it with Blight Kings parts. The most challenging part was drilling out the head to make the space for the Blightkings head. As I started painting it I was not very happy with where it was going which was why it never got finished earlier. However I was happy with how the overall scheme came out with a couple of provisos. The green rocks are probably too distracting and need to be smaller, but this is a change I am loathe to make because of the fact that they are metal and it would be a pain to do! The other is changing the colours of the tentacles under the model. The white is too bright and distracts from the rest of the model. I had some good feedback from Vince Venturella of Warhammer Weekly about changing them to a green, and I think he's right so that will be something that I will go back and sort out shortly. Otherwise I am pleased to get another Budget of Sigmar 2 model finished. 
     
  15. Stevewren
    Using Scheme Cards is an idea that has come from Malifaux, and these cards were the ones used at an event in the US run by @David Griffin. The cards were developed with help from Tom, and Vince from Warhammer Weekly and they were kind enough to send me a copy over for use at Achievements. These cards will hopefully serve two purposes. Firstly they will allow both players to score up to 3 points in each game by completing schemes from their hands of five cards. This makes up the Tertiary Objective. However it is in players interests to score as many schemes as possible across the weekend as these will be the tie breaker used at the end of the event if players are tied on Achievements.  
  16. Stevewren

    Screamers of Tzeentch

    By Stevewren,

    I was sorting out the Hobby Room last week and I came across six screamers that I had built, but never done anything else with. So as part of my #365Challenge I decided to prep and paint these as I assumed that they would be quite quick to do. the first thing I did was drill out the bottom of the screamers so that I could insert some 4mm acrylic rod that I had rather than using the usual flying stands. I then wrapped these in masking tape and drilled out some corks to support them so that I could easily hold them to spray. The undercoating did a lot of the work for me. I sprayed the top blue, then a lighter blue, and the bottom was done in Zandri Dust and Averland Sunset. I then used a white spray and a purple spray to do the tails.
    Once these were dry I washed the underside with Sepia and the tops with Druchi Violet. I drybrushed the models with Bahoroth Blue and Hexus Pale Sun after this. The sepia and area always looks a bit dull after this, but Lamentors Yellow glaze is amazing at making things look yellow as its so strong. I also pulled some of this onto the top surface to give a green tint to the edges. 
    I started off undercoating the horns and teeth brown and then using a bright bone to highlight them, but I really didn't like how it looked: 

    So after showing the photos to some of the gaming group I decided to just go dark with the whole thing so I just went for a glossy black which I highlighted with a purple and black mix. I used bright blue for the raised areas and did the eyes a bright yellow. The last thing to do was just get some nuln oil and run that all over the fins on the top to darken that area. 
    The bases were my usual recipe, although I added some little blue mushrooms to these (and I still need to put the tufts and grasses on)

  17. Stevewren
    Although I'm supposed to be painting Eternal Guard I actually spent the last few evenings finishing off my Duardin Cogsmith. I wanted to work with metals and try out some techniques to get old weathered metal and I'm pleased with the results. I still struggle to get the really bright highlights in though. 
    The base was a really fun experiment to do. It was something very different to any base I've made before, but I took a lot of inspiration from James Wappells blog where there are loads of homemade bases. 
    It's the first time I've tried to do a 'competition style' mini so if anyone has any critiques please let me know as I'd love to try a few more and get better, particularly with things like composition. Now I just need to find a competition to enter him in! 
     



  18. Stevewren

    Sky Fires

    By Stevewren,

    I had planned on taking the Sylvaneth to the South Coast GT this year and doing a display board to compete against Mat Lyons and Stev Foote for the Coolest Army award. However a couple of things have scuppered that plan. Firstly my wife gave birth to our second child and, despite us purchasing a nice little SUV for transportation, there is no way that we can get a display board, two children, an army and and a pram. Therefore I decided I could do a new army! Its February right? SCGT isn't till April! Thats loads of time....

    My list for the South Coast GT will hopefully be a Tzeentch army. I'm going to keep the exact build under wraps here for a bit (Sorry), but there were a few things I wanted to include. A lord of change is a must with the new model, and I also wanted to have some of the new Sky Fire models as everyone seems to be singing their praises. So I hopped onto the Element Games website and ordered a few boxes. 
    Now for some advice - paint the discs in pieces before gluing them together! This would have been soooooooo much easier and would have given me a better  result. I'll know for next time if I decide to add some of the Tzangor Enlightened. The Tzangors themselves, although they look complicated, actually go together pretty well and paint up fairly easily. I kept all the gold parts straight gold to save time, and I also checked out Vince Venturella's speed painting guide for doing Tzangors (relatively) quickly
    Here is the test model that I have done so far...

    You'll notice that the disc is horrendously the wrong colour. I did the discs first and get the colour tone all wrong. These should have been much paler or a completely different colour all together. The purple and blue do not work complement each other at all. Otherwise I am a fan of what I have done so far and I'm looking at the getting the next two done this week at some point so keep your eyes peeled. 
    Let me know what you think of them in the comments below. 

  19. Stevewren
    This was an older model that I had rebased but not painted, so I spent a few hours earlier this week getting him finished so that I could use him in some games. I still have a load of chariots that I need to do so they will have to get finished at some point soon as well. The conversion was not too complex - I took the wings from the High Elf Dragon kit and just stuck them onto the Slaughterbrute body. The whole model was spray painted silver and then the purple and green was airbrushed on and the mottling pattern was painted in. The model looks a lot better on the circular base as previously it looked a bit ridiculous perched on a 50mm square one!

  20. Stevewren

    Spite Revenants WiP

    By Stevewren,

    These are the final unit I am doing for the army. I've tried a little cheat for these guys - I sprayed them green then overs prayed white and then used nothing but washes for the colours. The only highlights are on the face, the claws and the tabard section. The black bark and the brown bark is just drybrushed. I like the models so I might get a few more, but it's not top of the list at the moment. 

  21. Stevewren

    Stag Do!

    By Stevewren,

    Ive had these Sisters kicking around for ages, and even though I haven't played my Wanderers for a while I spent a bit of time this weekend getting the mounts completed so i can get them off my painting table and into the 'completed' draw. As always with the Wanderers they were done fast, with a little bit of sponging and freehand to add some quick simple textures to elevate them slightly. I think I have one or two riders already completed, so I just have three left to do. 
     
  22. Stevewren
    I'd entered the Budget of Sigmar 2: Electric Boogaloo challenge a month or so ago. The challenge is to paint a small force where every model is converted. I thought my focus on Alarielle would put a fork in my hobby challenge, but I decided to try and get back on it. I've converted (barely) a unit of 10 chaos warriors and base coated them alongside finishing the test model for the army. The conversion is really simple - I just added savage Orruk spears and shields to the 10 guys. 
    The base coat is just green wash over the silver base coat and then picking out details. The top of the cloaks are white to tie in with my existing warrior army too. 
     



  23. Stevewren
    To complete my Tzeentch army I have started putting together some Tzeentch magical terrain that will go along with it. To start with I have done a couple of large line of sight blocking pieces. I wanted something warped and un natural looking and I was fortunate enough to find a couple of fish tank items that I thought would work well. I didn't do anything much too them. I cut the bases from MDF and then glued the two pieces down using Mitrebond. I then used a lot of filler to go round the edges and blend the base and the rock together. Once dry I then sanded the base. 
    To paint them I just used spray paints. I gave them a coat of macragge blue, then baby blue, then white. I tried to aim the second two sprays so they just catch the edges to try and vary the tones. 
    Once these were done I used a brown spray and sprayed the sand. I'm not bothered about the brown going on to the blue as this just helps blend the two together. Once dry I used Agrellan Earth on the base pieces where the sand had missed. I washed this with Seraphin Sepia and then dry brushed the whole thing with Terminatus stone and a little Wrack White on to the blue areas.  
  24. Stevewren
    I played my first game with the Sylvaneth recently against my friends Iron Jaws. I only took painted models for this game, so I was a little limited, but I could easily do the 2000 points we had decided on. We also played the comet scenario from the Generals Handbook. 
    My list consisted of: 
    Tree lord Ancient (Oaken Armor, an extra spell) Drycha (the spell that generates woods) Branchwych (regrowth) Branch wraith (Acorn of Ages, The Reaping Spell) Spirit of Durthu 3 x 10 Dryads 2 x 6 Kurnoth Hunters (Great Bows) Firstly the army felt small, although my opponents Ironjaws looked similar. He had: 
    Godrak Mega Boss Orc Shaman Warchanter 2 x 5 Brutes 2 x 10 Ardboyz 3 x Goregruntas Deployment: 

    Turn 1
    Pete went first and roared across the table. The move in the Hero phase that Destruction units get made the army super fast. Everything moved up and allowed Gordrak to attempt to charge, but he failed. In my turn I popped out a couple of woods and fired a few arcane bolts doing minimal damage. I ran Drycha up to attempt a turn one charge (which she failed - this was an error as you'll find out later). I moved the Kurnoth Hunters to allow them to shoot the Ardboyz on the right flank and the Spirit of Durthu moved into the Acorn of Ages Wood ready to charge Godrak. I thought that this was my chance to get him off with Durthus mighty sword. However I failed the charge (its important to note I also forgot the Spirit Paths rule that could have allowed Durthu to move and charge on the roll of a six). Still, there was the chance of the double turn....
    ...which I didn't get
    Turn 2

    When Pete measured for his spells Drycha was in range for Foot of Gork, which Pete got off due to the proximity of being near orcs and some arcane scenery. He promptly stomped Drycha three times and killed her dead. Gordrak tore into the son of Durthu, bellowed at him for 5 wounds, and then killed him easily with the attacks that multiply out to D3 on a 6 vs monsters, heroes and wizards. He also charged the Kurnoth Hunters. The comet came down in the square on my right flank which was good as it was uncontested, meaning I had a shot to get it with the dryads or the hunters if they could finish off the units they were fighting. He also charged my ancient who killed a Brute whilst taking two wounds in return.

    In my turn I found that I couldn't escape from the Brutes with the Ancient due to the rule of being 9" away from models. This has been an issue in all my games with the Sylvaneth since AoS dropped - its really hard to move around if your opponent pops a model or two in the middle of a wood. The new rules allowing up to three woods to count will help, but then it becomes very difficult to place them. Anyhow, I'm digressing from the game, which was spiralling out of control fast! The Treelord missed with all his attacks (standard fare), and the Kurnoth Hunters did minimal damage with the bows. The Dryads failed their mystical terrain test for the second turn in a row and got wiped out. The unit in the centre stood and moved to contest the comet the had landed in the middle of my lines. The Branch wraith and Branchwych took up station to try and stop Godrak charging the ancient, knowing full well they were being sacrificed for the greater good! 
    Turn 3

    I lost the dice roll for turn three, but we were still drawing at this stage. The orcs continued to pour forwards. Gordrak went into the Branchwych, killed her and then charged again into the Branchwraith and killed her too. I was pretty sure Pete could have got into the Ancient, but I think at this point he was easing off the gas and didn't do it. This didn't matter as the Ancient went down to the two units of Brutes. I had successfully failed 12 3+ armour saves over 4 rounds of combat. This is a solid effort, even by my standards. The gore gruntas finally removed  one unit of Kurnoth Hunters, and the Megaboss got into combat with the others to help out the Ardboyz. The Hunters had proved to be surprisingly resilient with the preroll on the saves, which made up for the fact they couldn't hit a barn door with their shooting! 

    Turn 4
    Turn 4 I lost the roll off again and the Gore Gruntas claimed the objective on Petes side of the board. Gordrak smashed my Dryads in the centre allowing him to claim that too. With only a Kurnoth Hunter and 10 Dryads left we called the game. The Ironjaws had been victorious! 

    Conclusions
    1. Man, I could not roll dice today! However I also forgot a lot of rules and I'm not sure I considered my army combos well enough. By my own admission I've spent a lot more time painting than I have reading the rules! 
    2. Kurnoth Hunters were very resilient, and would have been better with hand weapons in this game. Saying that I think that the bows are still a good option. 
    3. I'm not sure what I could have done against Gordrak other than run away and arcane bolt him. He was horrendously destructive. The fight with Durthu would have been better if I had remembered the rules and I think there may be ways to get him closer and make the charge more viable. I also played Drycha wrong. She would have been better being held back, although I didn't realise the potential of Foot of Gork. This meant I had lost my two best combat pieces before my second turn which really left me on the back foot. 
    Overall there are a lot of things I learnt. Hopefully we'll get a game in next week and I can try out a few more things. 
  25. Stevewren
    I've long been an admirer of the Table Top World terrain - it always appears to be excellent quality and well detailed terrain. Some of it is very expensive, but they have a few pieces that are more reasonably priced, and one of these is the Windmill. It turned up quickly and was well packaged, with all the pieces securely packaged inside the main building section. The casting quality is very good as well, and there was barely any clean up needed. 

    I had a plan for the base that I wanted for the windmill, which was to place it onto a step which was surrounded by some of the excellent ribs from Gary M on Twitter. You can see here how it would be situated. It was important that there was a lot of space around the windmill as I had a little plan for it, so raising the height seemed like a good idea. In the photo below you can also see some the other death terrain pieces in their earliest stages and showing how I generally lay out terrain at the beginning of the process. 

    Once I had cleaned up the Windmill I started on the conversion process. I ordered a very small motor from Pimroni that had a rotational speed 14 rpm. These come pre geared so all you need to do is add a battery pack to them. I ordered a 6amp circular battery holder from Ebay to power the motor and this was attached simply using a few wires and a terminal block. It didn't matter which way the batteries are connected to the motor - all this does is change the direction the motor spins, so you really can't go wrong. Mounting the motor inside the windmill was slightly more challenging. The top of the windmill is cast separately which is a good start, however I had to drill out the hole for the spindle to go through. I replaced the spindle with a small piece of wooden dowel which I drilled on a centre lathe to ensure the holes were located accurately. I drilled a small hole all the way through so that the sails could be mounted and pinned to one side and the other could be pushed on to the spindle of the motor. I then mounted the motor on some hard board and glued it into the top of the windmill. Once I'd done some testing to make sure that everything worked well I glued a ring into the top of the windmill to allow that to be rotated as well. 

    To paint the windmill I used some spray paint and gave the whole thing a few cots of dark grey, light grey and white to pick up a lot of the raised detail. I sprayed the top brown, and didn't worry too much about over spray on this as it would just add a bit of variation on the stone. 
    Once it was dry I washed the whole thing with various different colours and made sure to dry brush the whole thing. This picked up all of the great texture on the model . I was able to selectively wash various stones with blues, green and browns which just adds a nice amount of variation on the piece. I then carefully sprayed the windows with a bright acid green paint to do a glow effect. The Sails had to be painted by hand and took a bit of time, but I didn't spend a great deal of effort. 

    Once this was done I was able to finish mounting the model onto its base. Overall I was happy with the colour scheme and the overall look, and hopefully it will be well received by players at the event this weekend. 
      
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