Warhammer 40k Event and some Custom Boards!

Warhammer 40k Event and some Custom Boards!

Thought I'd share some photos of the event this past weekend.  I hold a 40k event every other month at Endzone Games in Clearfield Utah.  The focus on these events is leass tournament and more of an event to come out and play some friendly games.  We had 18 folks attend, some new faces and others old familiar friends.  Between entry fees and some contributions from the store, we gave out around $350 in store credit and gaming accessories as well as some custom terrain(ammo dumps and fuel reserves).  At every event i try to include as many door prizes as i can, and giving away the terrain peices seemed like a good idea and a way to explore some of the new battlefield debris that are in the new 6th edition rule set. 

Also included here in the pics are some shots of the themed tables I added for the event.  A volcanic table, a city streeets table and an updated winter table(the old one was based on a roll of white felt).  These turned out pretty well and recieved lots of compliments, so I think the effort paid off in the end.  I'm aiming to add another few themed tables for the next one a few months down the road as well.  The next ones up are an airfield table, a trench table, and a tropical islands table, so hopefully those will be interesting and well recieved next time as well!

More pics by clicking below!



On to the pics! First the themed boards:

The volcanic table:










Unfortunatly my camera had trouble focusing on the citys streets table!  WildChevy came  to the resucue though, as he snapped some pics of the boards before the event got rolling and his turned out picture perfect!  The first pic of each table above were taken by him and shared for the blog!







The winter table:







and some of the other tables with games in progress:









Oh, a little of my farm terrain(uncomplete and WIP still) but I want to theme a table around my cottege with the walls and these crops as well.  Maybe a boccage style board that could also find some use in WWII style games like DUST and others.



A WIP progress shot of the castings of the barrels for the fuel reserves terrain peices.  You can see the finished peices in many of the photos.  I primed them brown and preshaded them so that individual players that recieved them could paint them up however they wished to match thier own terrain and armies. The barrels shown are only about half of what i ended up casting ... :)



A big thanks to everyone that attended, the event went off well and it looked like everyone was having a good time.  We are currently running a league that will culminate in the next event in April, So there should be some fun days ahead!

The Fast Five! Day 2

Alright Day one I was able to pump out a really big chunk of these dudes.  The fact that they are 85% flesh helps with that tremendously!

The next few steps aren't quite as detailed as my Five Step Flesh.  But I will walk you through a few of the recipes I used as I finished up... uhhh... Yeah, I finished them :P

Armor

So with the armor I started with a VMC Flat read, and laid down a heavy wash of Citadel Badab Black wash.

This gives a really dark base point to start with.  Really allowing me to get nice shading on the armor.

Next I highlighted the armor with VMC Vermillion. Really trying to hit the higher flatter portions of the armor, being sure to leave a nice dark shadow showing.

I then added some Rackham Lahn Yellow to the VMC Vermillion... not sure on the ratio's... just got a brush full of the yellow and mixed it into the red on my pallet, until I got a nice reddish orange color... kinda like the color of trout meat, or salmon... then I added that layer of highlight to the armor.

At this point I start hitting the metallics... VMC Gunmetal for all the silver and then VMC Old Gold for the gold portions.  (Ill note that when ever painting metallics over a white base coat I will always lay down a dark grey or black base coat for anything I paint silver, and a yellow or brown basecoat for anything I paint gold).  Also in this pic I have used P3 Menoth White on all of the wrappings, and washed them with a heavy Citadel Devlan Mud wash.

After getting the metallic base coats taken care of I hit all of the silvers with a Citadel Badab Black Wash.  Then I hit all of the gold with a Citadel Gryphonne Sepia wash.

The next step I hit some of the smaller details.  All of the leathers were hit with a Citadel Foundation Calthan Brown basecoat, followed by a Citadel Devlan Mud Wash. The stone portions were hit with a Citadel Astronomicon Grey base coat followed by a wash created by heavily diluting Delta Ceramcoat Black paint.  The loin cloths were hit with varying shades of Greys, blue greys, and green greys.  All of them had a base of Citadel Foundation Astronomicon grey, the blue greys had Citadel Fenris Blue mixed in, the Green greys added VMC US Olive Drab.  They were all washed with a Citadel Badab Black at this point as well.  Then we came to the war paint... I looked at a bunch of images Pict Warriors, Native Americans, and a bit of Braveheart to boot.  I grabbed some Citadel Hawk Turquoise and began slapping on the war paint designs.  I also hit some of the stone work with the Hawk Turquoise as well.

At this stage I am nearly finished with the crew.  Here I have added highlights to the Warpaint, by adding a small amount of Andrea White Color Series number 4 to the Hawk Turquoise.  I highlighted the stone, and the loin clothes by going back with the corresponding basecoat.  I also added the hair at this stage, I used Rackham Black with an Astronomicon grey highlight followed by a Badab black wash to do the black hair.  The reddish hair was Reaper Master Series Red Brown, followed by a Citadel Ogryn Flesh wash.

I then began basing, Elmers White glue was slathered onto the bases and the figures were dipped into a bucket of sand.  After allowing them to dry for 4 hours I grabbed some MIG Track Brown Pigment and began caking the base and the feet and the loin cloths of these guys.  It was very messy.  After applying the pigment I sprayed each figure with a Krylon Matte Finish, to lock the pigment in place and give some protection to the paint job.  Finishing touches were to paint the base edges with Rackham Black, and add an Army Painter Battlefields Wilderness Tuft to the base.

And here you are, a few shots of the finished project.

I hope this write up was cohesive and understandable.  These two posts are kind of a first for me as far as really trying to explain step by step how my brain works as I paint.  Please let me know what you think.  If you like this, then I would be willing to do other similar types of tutorials.  If it is not understandable.. PLEASE LET ME KNOW.  Im really lookin for some good critiques on this.  I'd like to be able to produce helpful tutorials, so feedback is very much wanted.

Five figs in five.....errrrr two days!  Completely possible, I had my doubts, but with some really killer sculpts and a plan of attack you could be staring at a fully painted unit in just a few short days.

Thanks for watching!!

-Grim

The Fast Five! Day 1

So, my buddy over on Scotty'sworkshop.blogspot.com is currently doing a series of posts about painting up 5 Dwarven Miners in 5 days.  I loved the idea.  So much so that I grabbed 5 of my Rackham Warriors of Avaggdu (who count as Marauders of Chaos) and decided I'd try something similar.
Granted I thought trying to finish FIVE figs in five days was going to be near impossible... especially for me. :)  Anyhow I decided to give it a go.

Day 1

First things first I grabbed my figs... Luckily they were all primed... albeit not very well... but primed none the less.  (As you can see I laid a base coat down on one of these guys months ago... never got around to finishing him up though)
I started out with a thing I like to call "Five Step Flesh"

 

 

 "Five Step Flesh"

Step 1: Begin with a Citadel Foundation Tallarn Flesh base coat. (My favorite flesh base... sadly they don't make it anymore... anyone know what the new equivalent is... throw me a hint in the comments :) )













Step 2: Citadal Ogryn Flesh Wash.  Heavily apply the wash allover the flesh of the figure. 

















Step 3: Highlight with Citadel Foundation Tallarn Flesh.
Here you want to cover most of the flesh, especially any raised portions, muscles etc...

Step 4: Wash with Citadel Wash Asurmen Blue/Tallarn Flesh.  Here I grabbed a blue wash and mixed it with the base coat.  I wanted to add a bit more depth to the flesh and more of a cool tone to the figures.  Again I heavily apply this wash in order for the shadows to really darken.

Final Step 5: I come back and highlight again with Tallarn flesh.  And there you have it a simple 5 step flesh recipe that will produce a pretty nice result.  Perfect for making that unit of Marauders or Doomreavers really pop! 

 

 

Stay tuned for the next installment... (I'll give you a hint... I was really motivated to finish these guys and well... Day 2 may be the final installment :) )
Any questions, comments, critiques, anything, please feel free to drop me a line in the comments.
Thanks for Watching!!

-Grim

For the Glory of the Herd! Final

So, I was able to finish this guy up last night.  Oh, how I love holidays :)

Not sure what to think of the finished product.  I tried a few experiments with gore and the like.  Not really sure how I like the result.  However, I wanted to be true to the story of this guy.

As was mentioned in the initial For the Glory of the Herd! post.  This guy has just defeated a challenger in the ranks to retain his title as Champion of the Herd.  I wanted to make it look like he had been in a battle.  He lost his eye in the battle, so I figured there had to be a lot of blood.  Plus he slaughtered his challenger... so that meant even more blood.  Figuring there really wasn't any place for this dude to shower, I preceded to splash blood (red and brown paints mixed up with gloss varnish) all over the dude and his weapons. 

I think my favorite part is the base.  I used a baking soda, white glue, water mixture to produce the snow effect. After applying the snow mixture I dusted the still wet mixture with straight baking soda.  (A trick from my buddies basing tutorial... you can find that tutorial a few posts below this one ) After applying the dusting I took some of my blood mixture and watered it down quite a bit, then I barely tapped the snow with the brush.  Coolest little effect happened.  I was quite impressed. 

Anyhow, here is what it looks like. 

I had a blast participating in this Geek Garage Challenge.  Hopefully this is a first of many. 

And to my fellow bloggers... Time is ticking... midnight tonight deadline.  Remember your promise and the consequences of failure... GRIM SMAAAAAAAASH!!!

Haha!

Stay tuned really... we might be giving these figures away... just need to hit a milestone follower number... At 50 followers we give one of these models away to a random follower... at 75 we give another away, at 100 another... and so on every 25 until they are gone.

So stay tuned and be active!!

Thanks for watching!

-Grim

Glory to the Herd!! Part 4

Alright, I had a bit of time last night to sling a bit more paint.  Sadly I didn't slow down enough to take note of exactly what I was doing.  After reading my last paint write up... it may not matter any how... Definitely need to work on preparing a more understandable write up of what I do.

Anyway, enough with the blabbin'  Here is my progress thus far, still need to do quite a bit of work on the swords and armor, then some finishing touches to the face and base.

Here you are:

Stay tuned over the next day, we should be seeing a lot of activity on the Gor Herd.  (That is assuming my fellow bloggers don't fail :P ;) )

Thanks for watching!

-Grim

Glory to the Herd... Part 3

Alright, had a bit of time to do some more work on this crazy dude.  I have completed the flesh and started on the fur and the hair, slapped a basecoat on his axe haft as well.

With the flesh I started with Rackham Tanned Flesh, I diluted it down with water and some VMC thinner medium. It was diluted almost to wash consistency... just a smidge thicker, this only tinted the model.  I followed up with a GW Gryphonne sepia wash.  I came back and highlighted with some GW Tallarn Flesh mixed with the Rackham Tanned flesh... I really don't know the exact mixture... I just kind of plop a drop or two of each color on my wet pallette then I mix 'em together till I get about what I think I need.  (Sorry for the vagueness here :( )  I applied the highlight mix to the top portions of the muscles.  After this application I washed with a bit of GW Asurmen Blue.  After the Asurmen Blue wash dried I mixed some Rackham Ephren Blue with the highlight mixture, watered it down a bit and highlighted again with this mixture.  I then washed again with GW Gryphonne sepia.  After which I introduced some Rackham Red into the initial highlight mix.  ( A tangent here, I use a drop of this Rackham Red in every flesh tone I create in order to get the redish tint to the the faces of all of my models... very useful pot that one :) ) I applied the redish mix to the cheekbones the nose and mouth area of the figure.  Followed up with a thinned down wash of Rackham Ephren Blue, GW Tallarn Flesh, and Rackham Red, essentially a purple wash.  After which I highlighted again with the tallarn flesh mixture and a little bit of Andrea Color White Paint set pot number 2.
I really hope you understand what is going on here... I may have to do a step by step tutorial of this sometime if there is enough interest.

Here are the pics:

 

Thanks for watching and stay tuned for more!!

-Grim

Jumping into the fray!

Got the pose for my Gor all hammered out. I'm not big on the conversions and modeling, so I'm just sticking with basically a stock pose.
Have some gap filling to do, as well as a bunch of base work before the paint can start. Hopefully that doesn't take too terribly long and I can get crackin.