A New Home for Saga (Part 2)

So, in the second part of this tutorial/build guide, I finish building the thatched house for my Anglo-Saxons.

Step 6

The next step was to add the thatch to the cottage.  This was done using a fake fur, which was cut to the same size as the cereal card roof before it was attached.

Step 7

Once the fur was glued on and stuck, I then proceeded to add the planking to the front and back walls.  At this stage, I realised that I had made a mistake, and that the door was going to be more difficult to produce than I needed to have made it.  Nevertheless I pressed on

Step 8

Once the planking was on, the next step was to try and make the thatch look less like teddybear fur.  This was done by painting it with watered down 50:50 PVA glue, working all of the strokes from the top to the bottom so the fur laid flat.  Once this was dry, it was given a neaten up with a craft knife and scissors.

Step 9

A door was added.  A little more planning and this wouldn't have been as tricky as it was, but it's done now.  If you plan ahead, you could skip this step.

Step 10

Painting the wood.  This can be done in any way that you wish.  I went for Rhinox Hide, washed with Nuln Oil and then drybrushed Tyrant Skull, but there are probably better ways of painting wood out there.

Step 11

The thatch was given a watered down coat of brown.  At this stage it was then drybrushed with Terminatus Stone so that we got a good colour.  It was also stuck to the base, which in this case was an old CD.

Step 12

Finally, the house was based to match the rest of my models and terrain for SAGA

A new home for SAGA (pt 1)

So, I have recently become rather excited by SAGA.  I tried it out at the Oxford Outriders, when I went up there for family reasons and found myself at a loose end.  A more friendly bunch of people you couldn't hope to find in a games club, and I was made very welcome playing SAGA.
Obviously, being me, I then decided that nothing would do but that I had to own this rather fun game myself.  A quick trip to Entoyment and I found myself with a copy of Crescent and Cross, and the start of a 4 point Milties Christi Warband.  Which was fine, except that locally, almost everyone else plays Dark Ages.  Cue a return trip, to acquire the appropriate supplement, and a force of Anglo-Saxons.  These are approaching 6 points now, and I am working on the extra bits (Priests, banners) for them.
And some terrain.  I've been looking online for ideas for building Anglo-Saxon buildings, and found that they are mostly wood (Good, I can make wooden buildings), mostly thatched (I can make thatched buildings too, still good), and either sit low to the ground and are dug down or are single story.  This should be achievable.

So, I decided to try a step by step terrain walk through.  It may be rubbish.  It may never get finished, but let's give it a go.

Step 1.
Having sketched up some plans on graph paper, and then transferred them to foam core (and I am indebted to this blog whose plans inspired me) I cut the shapes out with a knife.  Nothing too exciting so far.

Step 2
Having cut out all of the shapes, I then proceeded to glue them up.  Learning from cereal card roofs before, I put the third upright to support the middle of the roof in place.  Simple PVA glue was used at this point.

Step 3

The next step was to cut out the roof underside.  This is about 15mm longer than the sides of the house, and has a little decorative bit added.  It was size by directly measuring it against the building.

Step 4

Fake fur, the saviour of model thatchers everywhere, was cut out to the same size.  At this stage, it was simply cut out and not stuck to the card (I find this easier, but you could as easily stick the fur to the card now.

Step 5
The card roof was then glued into place on the Building

Once this was dry, the fake fur was glued onto the card roof.

That's as far as I have made it so far.  Next steps will be the planking, and tidying the fake fur.

Back to the Beginning

I'm not normally a nostalgic person.  But, to make sense of this, a little history is in order.

25 or so years ago, I wanted to play warhammer 40k.  I'd heard of it from other people, and I was already playing a LOT of dungeons and dragons.  But I wanted to play 40k.  On holiday in Derbyshire, we had gone to Nottingham for the day, and I had finally got the Rogue Trader rulebook.  This was not long after the Compedium and Compilation had come out, but I knew nothing about them.  I just knew that I had now got the 40K rules.  I wanted to play Squats.  With Melta Guns.  Exclusively.  I was 13 or 14, these things happened.
When I got to school, I was soundly mocked for my goals.  There were army lists, and none of them had a force of just Squats with guns.  The rulebook sat on the shelf, and I was deflated.
Eventually, a birthday came around (or some other reason to have some cash), and my long suffering father took me on the underground to Tottenham Court Road, where I got to buy some of these toy soldiers.  Harlequins and Eldar Guardians as they were.  These were duly brought home, and painted (very very badly.  No survivng examples exist).  Finally, someone lent me the Yellow book, and I saw the original Eldar Craftworld army list.  I was hooked.  I wanted these.  These were what I was destined to play.... I never got that army.  I did get the red book, and the harlequin army list, and 3000 points of Harlequins (the contents of the box I had) regularly got cheesed (creamed, but goes on for longer to steal Pratchett's joke) by 3000pts of craftworld Eldar, playing lengthwise along the table.
I played these for several years, until, eventually, 2nd edition happened.  The eldar were shelved, and an Ork army was made from the contents of 2 starter boxes and A LOT of imagination.  These were awful too.  3rd edition saw me stop playing.  Forever, or so I thought.
Age has led to many other tabletop games, including lots of Fantasy Battle, and now some small amount of Age of Sigmar.  I moved away from GW games.  I had a few Eldar models that I had picked up, and even a couple of squads of Harlequins painted for old times sake.

Then I got a demo of 8th.  It wasn't bad.  In fact, it was fun, and seemed to have fixed a lot of the problems with 40K that had kept me away.  A bright idea goes off in the head, and I wonder if I could make a very small Harlequin army with what I had, but hadn't painted.....A quick trip to the big pile of boxes yielded, in addition to my 2 squads of Harlequins, a Void Weaver, A Shadow Seer, and 2 bikes (painted)
1 Box Dire Avengers
1 Box Fire Dragons
1 Box Shining Spears
1 Death Jester
1 Box Old Finecast Harlequins
1 Shadow Seer
1 Painted set of Striking Scorpions.....

Which feels like, with me wanting a new project, the start of a mixed Eldar/Harlequin Force.

I've started with the Dire Avengers.  Troop Choice - Check.  Small Model Count - Check.  Not enough models in the box to make a unit of 5 plus an Exarch - Oh, very very yes (Damn you GW).
So far, I've discovered how unforgiving Eldar Models can be, how bad the mold lines are on old GW model kits, and how sloppy I have got in my painting.  Still, mostly for my memory, here are the steps to painting Dire Avengers

Blue Armour - Caledor Blue - Teclis Blue - Hoeth Blue
Helmet - White.   Lots of Coats of White
Details - Black.  Any Black
Weapons and Other "hard" decoration - Bone washed Agrax Earthshade.

The final Avengers look like this.

What's In Your Head...

So, in order to break up the painting of all of the Neverborn for Malifaux that I have been doing recently, I decided to paint up the Walking Dead, All Out War set that I have had sitting on the shelf for a while.
I played the game as part of my birthday celebrations with Dom of Nothing But 1s.  He is mainly a Batman player, but we both seem to think that this game was pretty good.
I started with the Walkers, as they were the easiest of the models, and I stole the Monochrome paint scheme that I saw in the Walking Dead group on facebook.  Despite this, I think that they have come out reasonably well for a quick job.

Step 1 - Paint the white undercoated models with Khorne Red

Step 2 - Drybrush the model with Tyrant Skull Dry paint

Step 3 - Wash the model with Agrax Earthshade

Step 4 - Paint the base Black

They aren't the prettiest paint jobs, and they might get touched up or fiddled with at some point in the future, but for now, in groups, they look pretty effective.

Crocodile Rock

So, it has been a couple of months since my last post, but I can assure you that I have not been idle.  I've got nearly all of the Neverborn faction finished now.  Most particularly I have been working on finishing the "Type" models from the faction.  So far, I have completed Woe, Nightmare, Nephilim, Mimic, Puppet, Illuminated and am working on the last few of the Swampfiends.

Particularly, I am currently painting the Gators.  3 Bayou Gators, and McTavish.

Painting Recipe (With some photos)

Step 1 - Undercoat white
Step 2 - Paint all of the under scales Ogryn Camo
Step 3 - Wash Underside Athonian Camoshade
Step 4 - Paint upper scales Castellan Green
Step 5 - Wash whole thing Agrax Earthshade

Step 6 - Drybrush Top scales Sylvaneth Bark

Step 7 - Drybrush underside Tyrant Skull

Step 8 - Inside of Mouth Pink Horror

Step 9 - Wash Mouch Carroburg Crimson
Step 10 - Paint Gremlins......
Step 11 - Teeth in an appropriate bone colour
Step 12 - At this point, paint the rest of the details, and any other figures on the model (Such as McTavish)
Step 13 - Base in your choice of style.

So, some the finished McTavish and Bayou Gators..

Dream a little Dream of Me!

So, I have now painted almost all of the Nightmares to replace my Dreamer crew, and begun the process of rebasing them.  The only models that are left to assemble and paint are the Twins and Insidious Madness.  The Madness I shall do as part of the Woes, and the Twins will be part of the next project, the Nephilim.  So far, I have Puppets, and now Nightmares completed.  The plan going forward is to move on next to Nephilim, and then Swampfiends, followed by Woes, and then Darkened (Who are mostly already painted)

So, pictures of the finished models.

All of these have been painted in a quick and dirty manner in order to get them back on the table, and then photographed using a phone camera.  More to come once I have them varnished and rebased.

Keeping the Peace

So I have finished painting the last of my Constructs for my Hoffman crew.  To that end, I present to you, the Peacekeeper.
Simple paint job, with a very limited pallete, but I think it looks good.

Looking forward to trying him out with my new Guild Crew

Sign on for the Guild

So, i have done it, and I have started playing a new faction (As opposed to hoarding said faction for when I get round to it).  I already had Sonnia, Lady J, and Perdita painted along with their crew boxes, but I was determined to diversify, since that plus the Governor's Proxy does not a good guild selection make.
So, with some trepidation, I dug out the C.Hoffman box, along with the box of Wardens I got with him, and started building and painting.

The man himself.  Simple paint job, but I think it looks OK.  I messed up the attaching of his legs to the frame rather badly, but it hides fairly well from tabletop distances, and I'm not going to tear him apart to start again.  I do have the old metal model that may get recruited as an alternative if it really bugs me.

His totem, the mechanical assistant.  VERY simple paint scheme here of Silver/wash/drybrush/done.  Looks ok on the table, and gets me a force painted very quickly (The main goal)

Guardian.  Simple job again

Hunters.  Harpoons were broken before they even got off the sprue.  Reattached about 4 times now.  I don't hold out hope of them lasting. Also, random tubes hanging underneath were left off on the grounds of WTF why?

Watcher.  Without silly difficult to attach and unlikely to survive aerial.

And finally the Wardens.  So thats all of the mechanical Guild folks I have, painted up and ready for me to start trying to learn to actually use them.

I'm back.