Thursday, August 4, 2022

Season of Scenery 2022 Part 1

    We reach the halfway point to the Season of Scenery. Summer is slow for painting for me, we have been camping in Kenosee with my family for a couple of days and trying out tenting with our 15 month old daughter at Echo lake. It was only one night, and it went well with our dark room tent that we purchased, hoping to use it regularly in the summers to come. 


    To start off the challenge. I actually made a purchase off of Thunder Games & Gifts. On Canada Day, they have a 15% off their Used and New GW produces. I focused on getting miniatures for Warcry, and Space Hulk. Warpfire Thrower and a Warplock Jezzrail to add some range to my rats. This will go nicely with the 40 some clanrats, a Clawlord and Warlock Engineer that I picked up a few months ago. I also picked up some Bestigors, mostly enjoy these models, and 10 of them would be a solid start for a warband. This is the same reason I picked up the Shadow Warrrors/ Sisters of the Watch, great models, good start for Warcry. I could also assemble it 5 of each unit. The Contorted Epitome can fit in with AOS or Warycry. A Chaplain and Grey Knight Terminator for Space Hulk, hope to use them as auxiliary units to Imperial Guard or Sisters of Battle squads. And finally, a piece of Cities of Death terrain. I originally wanted to dismantle it and use it for bits, now that I have my hands on it, I really like this terrain. Tight corridor on the bottom, nice walk way on top and of course loads of skulls!

    Alright, so that's what I bought, what did I actually paint? The first thing I painted was the 3D printed modular dungeon tiles I ordered from the library in October of last year. 

32 Cavern Tiles

Descent miniature to test scale

    The tiles work best with 25mm or smaller bases, the dead ends and hallways get a bit tricky to see which "square" the miniatures are in. I painted it up with underwater theme in mind, I would add more details to the tiles, but as you can see, space is pretty limited.



    I am a frequent patron of second hand stores, usually wandering down toy to find inspiration for terrain. On a recent journey, I found these two Japanese statuettes which seemed like they would fit in nicely as cover in a game of Ronin. Being the rash painter, I didn't actually snap some quick pictures before slapping paint on them. They were a pale white, one idea was to make them look like ancient stone, instead I went with a more worn red wood look. 



    I still need to spray some glue/ water mixture on the growth to keep it in place. Digging a bit deeper, I found out that they are two of the Seven Lucky Gods.

Hotei, the god of contentment and happiness

Bishamonten, God of Warriors

    After finishing this piece, I finished painting some Rising Sun's Koi Clan Bushi (Samurai) to show off the scale of the statues, formerly on the heap of abandonment. September might turn into a board game miniature painting month, just need to come up with a catchier title that will inspire me to start. I picked up Dragon Tides and Zpocalypse from Amazing Stories in June on their dinged and dented sale. Zpocalypse comes with a boat load of zombies and Dragon Tides has Bruce Lee and Brandon Lee figures.


    That's not all I have been working on, just what I have finished. I have a couple WIPs to show off too. 


    Using a computer hard drive mounting bracket as it's base, with several items that I have "saved" from the recycling bin, I have started on a Space Hulk passageway. Printing off a few of these Zone Mortalis style tiles, I have found that they all are different scales, and the two on here are the best size for 40mm bases. 
    The second piece of terrain I have in progress, is a tree I made with cloth mach back in 2018 when I made my homemade Feculent Gnarlmaw. This was the first time I dabbled with Plaster of Paris on a model, it looks fine, beside the fact that I wasn't sure on which way to orient my tree at the time. The plaster makes the tree quite top heavy, to the point that simply gluing it down might not hold it very well. Remembering I had some twine... somewhere, I thought it might be a cool idea to tie the tree down to the foam rocks. As if the tree was a site to hold some evil beneath the ground. Now to just find where the heck I placed that twine!


Next on the Hobby Desk

    I don't have a running theme with the terrain, but I do have a butt load of recycling to pick through for the next/ current projects. The pentium 3 that I dismantled also has a lot of fun pieces to use up. So probably more Sci-fi terrain? The Reaper Bones Kickstarter pledge I bought was Japanese inspired miniatures. Anyone up for dinosaur and undead samurai?