Deadzone Terrain Weathering

If you have been following my previous guides to speedy and even speedier painting of the masses of tiles that came with the Deadzone Kickstarter packages, you should now have a tonne of nicely painted two-tone grey tiles. Are yours not so nicely painted? Well, thats ok too. Its art and art is subjective.

So, that two-tone scheme is a really fast way to get paint on your tiles, but there is no reason to stop there. In fact its a good idea to add more colours to the tiles as all that grey, even with accents, can look a bit monochrome en masse.

I am going to show you here some ways I have added a bit more colour and texture to my collection of terrain. One is as easy as it can be and uses something you are guaranteed to have in your house. The second requires buying a GW paint (although there may be other substitutes out there). The third uses paints you probably already have, and the fourth requires an airbrush and some specialist consumables.

1. Pencil edging. For this, all you need is a simple graphite pencil. If you run it across the edge of your tiles and the edges of raised areas, you can give your tiles a subtle outline that will add definition and a metallic sheen. This is great when you want to fool the eye into perceiving your tiles are made of metal. Where you have salt-masked your tiles, concentrate the pencil edging on places where the darker 'base' colour shows through.

Its hard to photograph though >< In the above picture, you might just be able to pick out the thin dark line along the beveled edge of the tile. I have done it on the edge of the raised square in the tile's centre as well. 

 

2. Washes and Sponging. For my floor tiles I wanted to produce an effect that simulated the combined weight of thousands of footprints, containers and gear, and general atmospheric dust on the surfaces. I've said it before and I'll say it again, Steel Legion Drab is great for producing nondescript dust-coloured washes, particularly as a contrast to the grey colour of the tiles.

I tried not cover the entire tile in wash - I wanted some areas to look a bit closer to their 'intended' colour than others - an made sure the wash got into the recesses and corners as this is where dust and dirt would naturally accumulate. You have to be a little bit careful of pooling though. In the picture above it can look like some of the tiles have got tea stains on them. In real life its a bit more subdued than the camera makes it appear, but you want to avoid tide marks when the wash dries.

I have also sponged on some darker colours, like Scorched Brown, in a few places. I used a packing sponge, just like in the speedier guide, but I smeared rather than dabbed this time. A real industrial floor can be a patchwork of colours and spills, the trick is making yours look random. Again, its art.

3. Blood for the Blood God. GW released a handful of technical paints just before Christmas. Most of them I don't see the point of, but Blood is a good one. You can splatter it, drag it, and pool it, and it dries to a gloss and looks like fresh human blood. There were ways to simulate blood before this paint of course, but this paint just looks fantastic.

In the picture above you can see the same tiles from the previous shot, with a little BftBG dabbed on. Here's another photo of tiles from the same batch with washes and Blood.

4. Weathering powders. Weathering powders are like painting black magic. Everyone has heard of them, but few have used them. Or know how to. Its mainly beardy types that build scale models of tanks and stuff. But, I'm here to tell you, they are surprisingly easy to use, with a little care, and can produce some great effects on your terrain.

 The first thing I did with them was add some to the wash I used on the floor tiles, then reapplied it. I used a mix of earth coloured powders, although I probably used too much of the darker ones in places.

If you look closely at the gaps between the square in this tile, you can see how the powders give the wash a granular quality. Basically it makes a more muddy than dusty powder.

You can also just apply a few spots of powder to your tile and smudge them in with a sponge. This is a great way to simulate soot, scorch marks, and the general accretion of dirt you might see in a place like the Deadzone.

And finally, here are three videos demonstrating how to use weathering powders with thinners and an airbrush to dirty-up your terrain facades. The front bits.




To start with, I sprinkle weathering powders onto wet thinners I have sprayed onto the tiles.



Then I spray some more thinners onto the powders, allowing it to form a paint-like liquid and flow into the recesses of the tile.


The finishing touch is to cover the dried powders with a matt varnish to seal them in.

I reshot the last video in the sequence for two reasons. For one, I had the camera set at the wrong resolution for the first run through, which is why parts 1 and 2 are a little blurry. For the other, I went a bit heavy on the powders on the batch in the first two videos. So I have shot a different batch in the last vidoe, one that is a bit lighter, a bit more dusty than muddy.

I went in a bit lighter on the first batch I weathered too. I think the patchy dirt is more effective looking than the heavier mud for this type of terrain.

That then is how I am weathering my tiles and breaking up all that grey. As always, if this has been helpful, please click on the ad because it helps me buy more weathering powders :) And comments, questions, or suggestions are also equally welcome below.

Deadzone Terrain - Speed Painting Guide

I went in fairly heavily for the Deadzone terrain. I pledged for enough mats for a complete 6x4 table, so I wanted enough building tiles, at least when combined with my existing stock of GW stuff, to cover them. Of course, now I have to paint them all...

I want to paint them quickly so I don't just end up with a bunch of unpainted sprues and parts. But I also want them to look good. Partly out of personal pride in my work, of course, but also because I want people to see that this is quality terrain - that Mantic have made a good product. So here's my guide to getting my tiles looking good quickly, as well as some optional 'effects' stuff you can do on top of the paint job to really get it looking cool.

To start with, I sorted my tiles into two piles: one for wall pieces, barricades, and vertical connectors, the other for floor tiles. I am not going to be painting the right angle connectors here. That's partly because most of them will be invisible once the tiles are clipped together, and partly because the ones you can see won't be coloured that differently to the tiles anyway. This is a speed run. But if you want to spend hours painting all the clips, go for it ;)

Next, I blu-tacked the tiles onto sheets of cardboard. Note I only have a dozen or so tiles on each sheet. This is because this was the test run to check the colours ad techniques all worked and looked good. But you save more time the more tiles you stick up each time, so I'll be doing twice as many tiles at a time in future.

Its important to keep the vertical sections all aligned the same way. So the top of every wall is at the top of the card sheet, the bottom of every wall is at the sheet's bottom. It doesn't matter which way you line up the floor tiles.

Once the sheet is full, I took them out to the garden and primed them black. Most of the time I tell people it really doesn't matter what colour primer you use. But here, its important to use black. Any black - GW, Army Painter (which I use), or Halfords. But Black.

Check those corners

 As you do this side of the tiles, its important to make sure both sides of the bevelled edges and all the insides of windows and viewports are well covered. Thats because later, when you come to paint the other side, you don't want to be blowing paint back onto this finished side. So be thorough. Get the edges and sides.

When the primer is dry, I sprayed the tiles with Humbrol Acrylic Sea Grey. This is a dark grey, almost black.

A slightly uneven paint job will give your tiles 'character'

A smooth finish is not vital here - you can afford to be a little patchy. This may be counter-intuitive. You're always told that you need to get smooth layers of paint on models. But this is large scale terrain and a little variation in tone and texture is normal and natural and will make your tiles look better and more realistic when you're all done. I'm not saying leave parts of the tiles blank or to skimp on the paint. Just that you don't need to plaster the plastic trying to make every square millimeter of the thing a flat matte uniform shade.

I also spray the paint down onto the tiles. I don't mean just holding the can above the tiles, but firing it from the direction that is at the 'top' of each tile. This is most easily done by holding the sheet of card with my hand at the top of the sheet, and then spraying away. What this does is put a bit less paint on the bottom of any raised surfaces on the tiles. Doing it this way you get a 'drop-shadow' effect. It means you have shaded the tile without even trying and this is why you needed to make sure all the tiles were lined up the same way and primed with black paint. Again, this effect will be helped by not blasting every tile with paint until it squeals for air.

Note: this effect is probably easier to achieve with an airbrush than a spray can. But speed is more important right now.

So now we have a sheet or sheets of tiles, all primed, and all base-coated. Now its time to apply the main colour.

At this point I switch to the airbrush.

I would guess that at least one person reading this now is thinking 'airbrushes are expensive' or 'airbrushes are for expert painters' or something like that. Let me assure you, neither of those statements are correct.

My airbrush is really basic. It was a cheapo ebay purchase - £75, I think, for two (!) brushes and a compressor. For that I got a half-decent compressor and two basic airbrushes. It literally pumps air through the brushes and forces paint to go along too and thats it. No fancy gizmos, no variable apertures or trigger resistances.  It is one step up from what I would recommend anyone unable to get what I did - a GW spraygun. I think these are around £15 now and you'll need a can of compressed air too. Either of these systems will do for this, giving you the ability to spray much finer layers than a can and much smoother, more even layers than a brush.

Now its time to talk about the coolest part of the process - salt masking. Salt masking is using chunks of salt to mask areas of your model so they don't get any paint on them in the next layer. Its a fantastic technique to simulate wear and tear on painted surfaces. There are other ways to do it but salt-masking is the coolest. It looks like cookery but feels like magic when you do it right.

You will need:

• salt, proper rocky or crystallised salt, the sort that goes in a grinder, not table salt. I use Waitrose Coarse Sea Salt Crystals.
• hairspray. Get the cheapest stuff you can find. I use Tesco Value. 

You then take one of your sheets of tiles and spray the bejeezus out of it with the hairspray. I highly recommend doing this in a well ventilated room and possibly with a filter mask on. You want the hairspray to be a liquid layer on your tiles. While it is still wet, sprinkle on the salt. All over is good, particularly on the edges of raised areas, corners, and the edges of the tiles. Anywhere that looks like it might get knocked about as that tile holds up a building or gets walked over. Then you let it dry.

Ready salted.

When it is, load up your airbrush or spray gun with the main colour for the tile. I used Vallejo Model Air Pale Grey Blue as it seemed like a nice match to the Deadzone mats.

In theory Model Air paints don't need any diluting. In practice I found the Grey to be a little thick, so I did cut it with a tiny bit of Tamiya Thinners. You want a fairly even coat here, but as with the previous step, a little patchiness is quite acceptable. Take note, some of the salt will probably fall off here, so make sure you're painting on a surface you can collect it from easily afterwards. As with the base coat, spray the wall tiles from their top side to accentuate that drop shadow effect.

Once this layer has dried, you will need a pot of warm or hot water and some cotton wool. Dip the wool in the water and use it to wipe off the salt crystals from the tiles. Now check out that magic! Say to yourself, 'Boy, can I paint!'. It doesn't matter if you scratch the paint as you go, or find slightly thicker areas where the light grey paint peels or rubs off. The more damage you do to it the better really.

Boy, can I take photo's.

 So, you should now have a set of tiles that look like they've been through some wars. At this point you could just stick that stuff out on the table and enjoy playing with it.

But all that grey can be a bit overpowering though and make a table look a bit washed out. Don't get me wrong - a collection of salt masked tiles put together will make some impressive looking scenery people will love playing on. But for a little extra 'pop' I added some accent colour and used the salt mask technique again.

For my first batch of tiles I chose Vallejo's Game Colour Gold Yellow. At first glance this seems like a really strong colour. But you have to bear in mind the cold/hot colour model. That is, if you use lots of 'cold' colours - greys, some blues, some greens, - you can accent it with a contrasting 'hot' colour. In this case I have cold greys everywhere, so I am contrasting it with the warm yellow. Reds would also work, and probably some browns and purples as these also have red pigments in them.

I used Tamiya's masking tape to protect most of the tiles, then salt-masked the tiles as above before airbrushing on the yellow. Here's how they look when I wash off the salt.

You don't need to do this accent step to every single tile. I did it to every one of the first batch just so I wouldn't need to do it again. If you did do it to every tile, well, you'd lose a bit of that individuality and leave your table looking all uniform again. I'll probably do a few more of the barricade tiles, just because it seems to make narrative sense these things would be painted to stand out a bit. But not every single wall and every single door needs to be marked out the same.

Note I only did this on the vertical tiles too. For the floors I did a quick wash with GW's Steel Legion Drab and dabbed it all over the tiles. Steel Legion is great for a generic 'dusty' look and here's how the dried tiles look.

Its probably a good idea to give the tiles a coat of varnish at this point and I used Army Painter's Matt Varnish. These things are going to get a lot of wear and tear as they get put together, played on, and taken apart again.

The next step should be obvious: take the tiles off the board, turn them round, and do it all again to the other side. I might not even bother doing the floor tiles again though. One side is all you're ever likely to really see and that's done.

Take care when spraying paint on this second side though. Don't forget you have already painted the first side and you don't want paint creeping under the tile and ruining your paint job. A little stray paint won't hurt, just don't spray the tiles from extreme angles.

The most time consuming part of this whole process then is tacking the tiles onto the cardboard. Spraying the first two coats takes maybe five minutes. Spraying on hairspray and sprinkling on salt takes a bit longer, particularly as you have to wait for the hairspray to dry. Masking up areas for the accent colours is a little time consuming. But if you do a big enough sheet of tiles you only need to do it once. Get big tape. All in all, it is quite possible to paint scores of tiles, on at least one side, in an afternoon.

edit:for those put off by airbrushing or salt masking go here for a guide to similar technique that uses neither.

Hopefully then, this guide has been useful to someone and I'm always open to questions or ideas for other ways to do things so feel free to leave a comment and, if you liked the guide, please click on the ad at the top right :) And check out my guide to weathering your tiles here.

Deadzone Mercs and Wrath Guide

Mercs are the fifth, or maybe seventh, faction in Deadzone, depending on how you view production schedules. Whatever, they are a great little collection of models and come in their own confusing baggie of limbs, guns, and 'bits' for Kickstarters to pore over.

The good news is most of them are actually pretty straightforward to put together and are only two or three pieces. For those guys, please check out the gallery below to help you decide which arm or head goes with which body.

A few notes:

•  thorough clean up before gluing is highly recommended. There are one or two tabs that need to be filed down to their exact intended shape or they just won't go in right.
• make sure you put the bladed arm on Blaine and the silenced rifle on the Pathfinder. Blaine's fist weapon looks kinda Enforcery and it will go onto the Pathfinder's body.
• Freya's arms didn't even need glue on my model, the fit is that tight. I pushed the arms on almost vertically over her head before rotating the pegs down into the sockets.
• take care with Oberon's toes (easy to clip off) and the Pathfinder's combat knife (easy to snap off)

Nastanza -backpack goes with smooth pointy end up.

Simmonds - reaching right arm.

Freya - no glue necessary.

Blaine. 'nuff said.

The Survivor - backpack has shaped tab to ensure right way up

Pathfinder and Drone

Oberon - no glue needed, but some hot water for reshaping is.

Wrath - hardest model in the bag to put together.

 All of which brings us to Wrath, my favourite model from the Kickstarter fluff and least favourite from the bag.

For a start, he comes in  seven parts: a body, two arms, two kasaya straps, his cloak, and his sword. Then you can add that these parts all have tabs, but they aren't all the right shape. Then add onto all that Mantic's infuriating habit of putting the tabs next to the holes in the molds where the plastic goes in, so when the model comes out you have to trim it down and try to figure out what shape the tab is supposed to be and what is flash. Honestly, that, and putting mold lines right down the middle of faces with tiny tiny details, is the worst thing about Mantic's Deadzone minis.

Anyway. Once you've got all those parts sorted, here's how I recommend you put them together.

1. Put the kasaya strap with a small tab at one end and a larger rectangular tab near the other on Wrath's left shoulder (the top one in the picture above). The rectangular tab goes into a socket just above his groin. You'll see on Wrath's shoulders a roughly triangular arrangement of holes - the kasya tabs go in the front and lower holes.  Put the other kasaya strap on his right shoulder. I did my arms first, which made putting the straps on a lot harder.

2. Put the arms on. Long rifle on the left side, bottom and rear hole, pistol on the other side.

That deep hole in his right shoulder is for the cape.

And there's the one for the left shoulder.

3. Put the cloak on. You'll see a fairly deep and long slot on the top of each of his shoulders. This is where the cloak is designed to fit.

Mind you, he is crazy. Maybe it makes sense to him.

4. Stick his sword on. Once again a little hot water will do wonders here if yours is as bent as mine. I couldn't tell for certain from the KS pictures where this was supposed to go, but there is a small hole in the top left surface of the cloak that appears to match a little tab on the sword's scabbard, so thats where I put mine. It looks awkward as anything, but unfortunately I think this just means its not a great sculpt.
 

He took it off a dead member of the Council of Seven, who's going to tell him it looks silly?

As always, feel free to ask me any questions if you're having trouble with any of your Deadzone Mercs and, if you like the guide, please click on the ad at the top. Or if you know a better place to put that sword ;) Personally, I feel some repositioning and greenstuffing coming on.
 

Ripper Suits!

In thirty-odd years of wargaming I've never been a fan of orcs. In traditional fantasy they've always been bad guys. Usually they are technologically inept, basic brutes who stumble from one fight to another. Sometimes they're comedy relief - portrayed as being as lucky just to point their weapons the wrong way. So I was surprised to find myself really liking the concepts and sculpts for the Marauders during the Deadzone Kickstarter.

The models are of course out now and I'm actually starting to think they may be my favourite faction of them all. I can see myself collecting an army if they all look as cool as these.

My favourites within the favourites has to be the Ripper suits. These are the ultimate one-Orx heavy weapons team. An already hard as steel and just-above-psychotic genetic monstrosity strapped into a powered exo-suit with every weapon available strapped on top of that - whats not to like?

The resin kit is great. But you get two models in a bag, plus some goblins, and all the weapon options so it can be a confusing pile of parts to sort out. So here's a quick guide to what's what and where it all goes.

I've laid out all the Ripper suit pieces here. I didn't put the goblin heads out because its kind of obvious what they are and they slot straight into their bodies anyway. But you should be able to see, on the left of the picture, two arms, a two-piece weapon, a chainsaw, a las-weapon, and a grenade launcher. Then, in the middle, are three head options, a radar/scanner dish, and a missile launcher. Finally, on the right, two more arms, a multi-barrelled weapon, a close-combat weapon, a small rocket launcher, and two ammo belts.

It doesn't matter which body you put which weapon or head or arm on - they are all interchangeable. Most of the weapons are too but the gatling gun does, I think, need to go on a left arm. This is largely because the attached flame-thrower would look a bit silly on the 'inside' of a limb. If we can say anything on a 10ft tall orx with this many weapons systems attached looks silly, that is.

Edit: after gluing all my models together, I finally got round to opening the packs of cards and looking at building lists. It turns out I messed up a bit here. While the weapon systems are all interchangeable on the models, in the cards there are two distinct builds for Ripper suits. One is the clos-combat oriented Mauler, the other the more shooty Rainmaker. The two piece weapon I tend to refer to as a missile launcher is actually a Ram and should be paired with a Buzzsaw - I believe you can use either of the two saw-type weapons to represent it and make a Mauler. The las-cannon, or HEW Beamer as it should be known, should be paired with the rotary cannon. This makes the Rainmaker. The addon components are all more or less still interchangeable, although the back mounted launcher should also go on the Rainmaker.


Here's how the models look with heads, arms, and major weapons attached. The two-part missile-launcher thingy was the only one that was a little problematic at this point. It has a guide stud on one part to help align the pieces when gluing. The female receptor on the weapon head was not really drilled out deep enough on mine though. Even though I bored it out a little, I still didn't get a good fit and so my weapon is now a little wonky. My own fault though for not being thorough and I'll be fixing it before painting.

 

The trickiest part of the whole kit was the ammo belt for the gatling gun. For a start, you get two of them, in different lengths. So you need to figure out which one to use. Now, there are a couple of possible reasons for this. One is that each one is intended for use when mounting the gun on a different side of the body. The second, more likely one, is they are both for the left arm, but you get two different left arms of differing length, so you need different length ammo feeds. Whatever the truth of it is, if you mount the gun on the bent left arm, like I did, you need the longer ammo belt.

 

Moving on to the extras, you get some cool stuff, but only one of each piece. I would have liked more, but then perhaps the suits wouldn't be as cool or individual if every suit had every upgrade on it.

Each suit has two holes in the top of the chest plate, about level with the orx's head - the scanner dish will fit in any of them. 

It looks like the top-mounted rocket-launcher is also intended for use on either suit. Perhaps I got a bad cast, but ti didn't feel like it fitted perfectly on either suit. It looks like there are guides and slots in the sculpt, but none of them seemed to make the part go on just right. I ended up picking the one that seemed best.

The shoulder-mounted rockets do have well-sculpted guide rails though. You should be able to see crenelations on the underside of the piece that fir into the zig-zags on either suit's left shoulder.

The small grenade launcher for the right side also has a guide hole bored into it and it fits onto a vambrace, or wrist armour. I seem to have managed to forget to take a picture of that though, so take my word for it ;)

Once all is done and dried though, you should have two very cool and mean looking Marauders, as well as a spare head, ammo belt, and chainsaw.

I had no major issues putting these models together. Mold lines were pretty minimal too. Mantic seems to have made a habit of casting the two halves of the Orx heads right down the middle in Deadzone though, and both heads did need a little bit of slightly tricky scraping here.

The detail on the models is fantastic though. If you look closely you might be able to see the models' knuckles! And, just in case all this isn't enough to make you want a collection of Marauders too, here are some bonus pictures of Chief Radgard, a Marauder character funded through the Kickstarter and now almost completely sculpted.

I'm painting mine like he's snapped a broom in half and put the end on his head :)

Sprue Peter - Here's Some I Haven't Put Together Yet

I got back from the Mantic Open Day about an hour ago and I am, to say the least a bit tired. So tired in fact, that I could not make sense of the massive number of sprues I found in my awesomely large Deadzone Kickstarter box. Honestly, I got so much stuff I am grateful it is coming in two shipments. I could not cope with a larger injection of plastic crack at the moment.

As well as all the starter factions and mercs and whatnot, I also pledged for a large number of playmats and battlezones. Enough to put out a full 6x4 table of the stuff. This means I have literally dozens of sprues to sort and I was having trouble figuring out what sprue belonged to which battlezone and whether or not I had the right number of each.

I have figured it all out now. So, for your entertainment and edification, and possibly to help you if you're as confused as I was, here's some pics of what you get in a Core Worlds Battlezone, a Fortifications Battlezone, and a Landing Pad Battlezone. I haven't included any pictures of the Accessories or Connectors sprues though as they are pretty obvious.

Please note all the pics are poor quality as I've been up since 6am and driven for about 8 hours today. So I may get some of the numbers  mixed up but you should still be able to make out vague shapes through the gloom.

1. Core Worlds

Deadzone Core Worlds Sprues

For some reason, the Kickstarter updates refer to a single sprue when describing contents, but the actual delivery split each sprue they designed into two. So, you will get four of the top left sprue, and two of each of the other two (this is the one I may have got the count wrong on - I seem to have an extra set!). You also get a connector sprue and an accessory sprue.

2. Landing Pad Battlezone

Grrr, stairs.

 Apparently there was some controversy about this one. It was concepted as being slightly raised, like the helicopter landing pads the military deploys when it builds a base somewhere. I don't know why, but during production it got changed to being raised fairly significantly. So, you now get three each of the top left and bottom right sprues, including the bane of Daleks everywhere - stairs, plus one each of the other two. The two smaller sprues are the Defense Line sprues. These include the massive turbo-laser/AA gun mount, so you can let them land or shoot them down. Whatever you feel like.

3. Fortifications Battlezone

More Laser!

I really like this one. Partly because I saw some of it put together at the Open Day. You get three each of the top two sprues. At first glance they look the same. But if you look closer you can see some of the flat panels are smaller than their counterparts on the other sprue. This is because they are designed to clip on as extra armour. You also get another Defense Line so now you know if you play me at 40k there will be nowhere your fliers can hide from my Interceptors.

An Important Note

I've only been back a couple of hours and I've already seen forum posts where people complain the scenery is crap and Mantic deserve arson. Maybe they got a bad batch, I don't know. But there seems to be a lack of explanation in general of how to use the connectors. I don't know if this has been widely disseminated, but, just in case it hasn't, you need to push the connectors out from underneath. Don't try to prise them out of their sockets with your fingernails. This just puts stress on them, bends them, and stops them being reusable. I saw Ronnie pop them out and reapply them with a drawing pin and, frankly, I think they missed a beat by not adding in a branded pooping tool. I've copyrighted that idea by the way, so don't go stealing it.

Please do feel free to repost this page though or ask questions or whatever. No comments on my photography or flames of Mantic for not sending your stuff by courier/sending other people's stuff by courier/not sending you the dead birds. I've been awake far too long to be able to stand it ;)

Eldar Nightwing Conversion/Liquid Mask/Sun Blitz Botherhood

Every time I try to get out - they pull me back in...

One of the combinations of armies I want to try in 6th Edition 40k is Codex Eldar and Eldar Corsairs. The Corsairs army list is given in Imperial Armour Volume 11: Doom of Mymeara. It is a fast attack list. Apart from some compulsory cannon-fodder infantry, the list features lots of fast movers, from jetpack walkers and jetbikes, to fighter and bomber aircraft. Since reading the book I've had a yearning to field an army with flyers in it and, as 6th Edition features these vehicles, now's the time.

The downside of this list though is the cash cost. Both the Nightwing fighter and Phoenix bomber are Forgeworld models and quite pricey. When trying to decide if I really wanted to commit more than £100 on two models it suddenly hit me that the Edar Razorwing is very similar to the Nightwing, in shape at least. A minimal amount of kitbashing later, and we have this:

Its not a perfect match, but its good enough. The Nightwing doesn't have the central dorsal fin and does have moving wings. But my model cost half as much as Forge World's, so I'll keep the £30 and use mine, thanks very much.

It is simple enough to switch the Dark Eldar Lance's out for some surplus Eldar ones from the bits box. They require a bit more effort to secure, not having the nice little square peg the supplied parts do. The forward Shuriken Cannons are also quite simple to make from chopped down tank weapons and a couple of other spare parts.

For the paint scheme I have decided to go with the Sun Blitz Brotherhood, also found in the IA11 book.

I based the model with a black primer. On top of this I sprayed a Mechrite Red base coat, then a layer of Blood Red, and then a couple of coats of Vallejo's Game Colour Gold Yellow. I have blended up some of the more raised areas with a mix of Gold Yellow and Iyanden Darksun and edge highlighted the panels with Sunburst Yellow. Sadly, most of these paints are no longer available, but Vallejo probably do passable equivalents of the GW colours or you could just use Air colours.

The next step is to add the red spirals that marks this vehicle out as a Sun Blitz flyer.

When planning this I saw two ways to do it. Either, having sprayed the thing with the reds, mask off the spiral shapes before spraying on the yellows, or spray all the colours, mark out the spirals and then respray the reds. I went with the latter for two reasons: my airbrush is not that great (nor is my technique) and it was late at night when I started painting so there was no way to get hold of some liquid mask.

Here is how the model looks with the Liquid Mask (also by Vallejo) painted on:

I have never used the mask before so here's a couple of things I have learnt:

• It looks like a fairly watery paint on the palette
• It can be painted on to a model pretty much like a paint, having a consistency similar to thinned PVA glue.
• It dries more quickly than a paint. Beware of using your good brushes for application - it will form a gum between the bristles really quickly, so use an older brush you don't mind writing off if you can't get all the mask off.
• It takes longer to dry on the model than an acrylic paint. I'm not sure how long you're supposed to leave it until painting over, but its been on my model for about twenty minutes now and still feels a little tacky in places. That said, I've seen videos where people sprayed over it almost immediately so I'm going to go ahead and spray it now.

Thats all there is for now. When I have sprayed on the spirals I'll take some more pictures and write about removing the mask.

Building an Urban Display Base

There was a time when I thought I wanted a Grey Knights army. I kind of liked the idea of an Inquisitor-led group, rolling up heretics and xenos, then going home to toast the Emperor. Or whatever an Inquisitor army would do after a good fight. I went as far as getting a Gideon Lorr model from ebay (a £10 bargain!) and a couple of assassins, but never got round to painting them. The only models for the army I have gotten round to painting are these Terminators.

(Picture forthcoming)

Most of the time they just sit on a shelf, all lonely because noone wants to play with them. And most of the time I can't be bothered with entering my local GW's painting competition. But this month the theme is 'an infantry unit' and there may be some other good competitors so, time for these boys to see fresh air!

I am fairly happy with the paint on these models overall, but I particularly like the urban-style bases I did. I'm really proud of the salt-technique painting I did on the sergeant's base to give the impression of a shattered piece of roadway. Frankly, bases are normally my weakest area when it comes to models. Maybe I get bored easily, maybe I lack imagination, maybe I just don't see that many inspiring bases at all (not that they're not out there, just that they're not around here). But usually my basing doesn't go very far beyond sticking a bit of flock or some slate down.

I made an effort with these guys though and I figure I really don't want to lost the competition because even though my soldiers are the best painted, they lose because some other yahoo comes along with his massively over-worked base and wins because everyone goes 'oh, that's so cool', and votes for it even though most of the entry isn't even a GW product....

Didn't there used to be a rule about percentages of a submission being GW stuff?

 Well, not this time, buddy!

So, here's the start of my new project: Urban Display Base.

I'm starting out with a small piece of polystyrene foam, an offcut from another project. I have coated it with a layer of water-thinned PVA glue. This should help seal the base and make spray-paint-related melting incidents less likely further down the line. I've also started building a small collection of urban-themed scenery pieces to add on and will start sticking them on tomorrow.

Stay tuned for more urban goodness!

Building Guide: Relic Contemptor Dreadnought

The Contemptor Dreadnought has been the hot new toy for Marine players for a little while now. Being a dedicated follower of fashion, I got one for myself this past weekend and here present a guide to construction for everyone :)

It is generally a simple kit to put together as long as you have some photgraphic reference of a completed one - like at the bottom of this page :) There are a couple of pieces that must be used the right way round and the correct orientation is not always obvious. I also present a guide to constructing the CCB - this is a little more fiddly with quite a few extra pieces included in the bag and some steps that must be carried out in sequence. The kit is highly posable too - lots of ball joints and hinge joints too so it will help for you to have an idea of how you want your dread to be posed before you commit to glueing. For that same reason, the fact your dread will look how you want it too, consider this less a construction guide, than a guide to how the pieces all fit together. So, get out your glue, your clippers, and hobby knife, and lets get going!


First off we can start with the main torso and power plant. Nothing too hard about this bit, just make sure you clean all the flash off the engine and align it with the tabs on the back of the dread.


Next we can put the head in the cavity at the top of the torso. It is found on this sprue alongside the two kneeguards. The guards are, as far as I can tell, universal - you can put either on either knee - but leave them on the sprue for now.


The abdominals come next. This is a two-piece section. The piece on the left is the top part. That big plate with the grills goes towards the front. You glue the other piece underneath it with the arrow-like pointy bit pointing up. This is your dread's codpiece, if you like. Both these parts attach to others via ball joints - so make sure you;ve got them lined up with how you want your dread to be standing when you've finished the model before gluing.


Next block of resin has your dread's upper legs. At first glance these are identical but there is a right way to use them. The key is the little plastic tab you can see sticking up at the top of the pieces. Essentially this picture shows the parts upside down, as those tabs need to be orientated so the flat section faces to the front of your dread. The top of these thigh sections is ball jointed, the bottom fits into the calves by a tongue and groove joint. Bear posing in mind again before applying glue.

We're almost finished now, and its the turn of the calf-pieces. These too must be orientated the right way round. The piece at the bottom of the picture is your dread's left calf, the other goes on his right.

And last but not least, the feet. Now, for some unknown, undisclosed reason, Forge World saw fit to label these, and only these parts. And provide pretty-much identical multiples. Yes, there is a L1, L2, R1, and R2. I'm not sure there is any difference at all between the the two left or two right feet. If there is any, it is marginal. If there are two feet to help the dread pose in two different positions, well, the advantage is nothing compared to that provided by all the other definable joints in the model. But hey, I'm sure those great big beautiful feet will be useful in some other project, some day.

Now, if you've done it all right, your dread should look something like this:

I have left the kneeguards off so you can see how the tabs on the thighs should be orientated. This is highly important as the kneeguards simply will not properly fit to the other side of the knee joint. I speak from experience ><



There we go - all parts present and accounted for. I have added the shoulders in this picture as we are going to look at building the CCB's next. Note the orientation and, sadly, the damage done to the top of both pieces during removal from the frame. Each shoulder was pretty solidly attached and I recommend caution when you remove yours.

The Contemptor CCB baggie contains what may at first glance be a bewildering selection of pieces:

I have labeled them, for your convenience, starting with the first piece to attach to the shoulder piece:

Note that parts 4 and 4b are optional weapons to be contained within the fist, Iron man style. You have a choice here of plasma gun and flamer. Make sure you choose one and glue it in before adding part 5 - the 'hand'.

Bear in mind here that part 5 is designed so the 'thumb' goes opposite the three 'fingers' of the fist. that is, it will be oriented differently depending on whether this is a right hand weapon, or left. If you're not sure, try putting your own arm in the pose you want your dread's arm to end up in before attaching this, or any, parts.

On the same block as the projectile weapons are two optional power pack type pieces that attach to the underside of the fist(look for a little raised tab to site the pieces) and guard for the rear of the elbow.

Then you get two sets of digits to go in your fist - traditional stubby ones or more wicked looking claws. Being that I am building a Space Wolves Contemptor I, of course, went with the claws, leaving me a model looking a little like this:


Note that the digits are not universal - each is designed for a specific slot in the fist. You can tell which is which by checking the sides of each at the point where the digit attaches to the hand. You will see each has a drum-shape t enable it to slot into the fist and be posed anywhere from clenched shut to extended (yes, your dread can be giving the finger to his enemies!). Now look at the sides of these drums. You will see that two of them have a rivet-like detail on one side only - you want to be able to see this rivet when you glue the fingers down. One of the digits will be blank in both sides, this is that all important middle finger :)

As with most Forge World kits then, the Contemptor Dreadnought's construction relies on a large amount of dry-fitting and a little bit of flash-trimming and mold-line removal to be successful. Putting things in the right place in the right order is also vital and I hope this guide will help you do that. Please learn from my mistakes!

The versatility of the kit is really really good. No two Contemptors need ever look the same - hopefully you can see I have tried to capture some of the feral nature of Space Wolves in mine, something more or less impossible in the more traditional dreadnought models. But this too does not come without effort and forethought. Attaching all the leg joints simultaneously and achieving a naturalistic pose was not childs-play and required quite a few re-poses and reattachments of certain joints.

Its well worth the effort though to have such a unique and attractive model to the further customise and paint though and I encourage you to give it a go too. Feel free to leave any comments or questions and also check the post on greenstuffing and further customization of my Contemptor.