Archaica Schola Wargaming shop opens in the Undertown!

 I'm so excited to show you Archaica Schola Wargaming a new 28mm MDF kit from Antenocitis Workshop!

This is the stock kit plus the upgrade pack with a few additional decals added but otherwise straight out of the box.  No painting or weathering was done.  I expect I'll dirty up the outside of it eventually but I'm trying to decide where it fits into my building group.

 I've assigned it for the moment to the Undertown.. which is where all real wargames shops reside... but the building looks a little upscale for the neighborhood so it may be relocated to Midtown or the Mall... I'll probably do weathering at that point to make it blend better.

I added LED light to the ground floor but left the upper level without illumination while I think of an unobtrusive way to accomplish that.

 The kit is pretty spectacular and features a large clear acrylic roof so you can see the game room while playing... of course that is waaaaay tooo much sun for your average gamer to endure so I think it'll be an evening hotspot and mostly empty by the light of day.

Still... it does a great job of advertising that the buildings have live spaces inside.... which is awesome!

I ended up gluing in the game tables and the advertising walls instead of magnetizing them this time because they are easy to maneuver models around or on.  There are no resin parts in this kit and everything is MDF or clear acrylic.

The cute anime girl is from a Guilty Crown radio control car decal set.  I also got a girl in a wheelchair to mark a handicap parking space and some block text for another outside wall from the same sheet.  Everything else comes with the kit.

 Stocked snack shelves of snacks, hobby supplies, paints and washes, and an assortment of tabletop miniature game products as well as three display cases for painted miniatures... lots of fun to be had in here!

 This place will probably serve as the group hangout for the RPG I'm brewing up around the Kingdom Death: Death High mini line... I'm thinking a kind of Sci-Fi Knights of the Dinner Table meets Haganai and Angel Beats feel with a group of friends who rotate through playing different RPGs as well as dealing with life in a "Sci-Fi Supernatural Martial Arts Comedy" setting.  Might be fun... might be a mess... we'll see!

 A view of the Handicap parking space which is usually under an overhang.

Archaica Schola in situ.

Data Trust interior details

 The interior resin details are done for the Data Trust.

I replaced the little searchlight that I had scratch built to use as a grip for removing the roof with a resin and metal drone control and coms array.  The dish antennas may prove tricky in the long run and complicate storage so I may, at some point, add magnets to these... I'm not certain of the benefit vs the risk of damage as the dishes are metal and there is some weight stress on the connection points that might not be great for magnets... we'll see I suppose.

The control point was painted over a black primer with Orange Heat (Secret Weapon) which is a really interesting technical paint I highlighted with Orange Rust (Secret Weapon) and glazed with Orange Wash (Secret Weapon) lining was Rust Shadow (Secret Weapon) which is fast becoming my favorite liner.

The dishes are metal primed black dry brushed with Silver (Vallejo) washed with Armor Wash (Secret Weapon) red panels are Blood Red (Reaper) glaze of Orange Heat, glaze of Orange Rust liner with Rust Shadow. 

Grey Panels Stormy Grey (Reaper) Brush up with Sky Grey (Reaper)

  I love that you can see details through the open windows and that is my motivation to eventually add LED lighting... once I find the bits!

Raging Heroes Void Elf for scale today.

Exterior Weathering is mostly Forge World Weathering Powders, primarily Medium Earth.

Ground Floor interior details: Food Vending Machine, Large TV, Coffee Station, Interactive Table and two Bench Seats. Details glued to the walls except the table and seats which are magnetized and can be removed as required.

I had already constructed the doors before I looked at the contents of the resin upgrade pack.  The upgrade pack includes replacement door frames and doors that are armored. 

I decided to keep the office style doors that I had already installed and use the armored door elements later... maybe when building a NERVE (Neon Genesis Evangelion) outpost or SD-6 (Alias)style hidden facility.

Moral of the story... always check the upgrade sets before building the base structure!

Data Trust Upstairs interior features four Data Walls and a master interface terminal.  The Data Walls are glued in and the Interface Terminal is magnetized so it can be reoriented or removed.





There is still a lot more of the Undertown to do including an awesome Game Shop! but... its pretty playable at the moment so I think I'll veer into the Post Apocalypse buildings for a bit and get a baseline of buildings set up.  Since we're running Fallout:Wasteland Warfare from time to time I'd better get something more suitable for that built.

Back to the desk!

Reaper Bones II Cargo Container and Star Saga Techies

 The Bones Kickstarters have been getting steadily better.  They have always been good value for money but the quality of the first Bones KS was very low.  The sculpts were good but the Bones Material itself was poor.  It was floppy, hydrophobic, and barely usable.

Bones II saw a large upgrade in quality.  The hydrophobic properties of the material were well understood by this time and there seems to have been some change in the formula that both gave stiffness to the models and improve paint adhesion. Also structurally important sections of models, especially larger ones, were further stiffened with a type of hard plastic.


This shipping container is from the Bones II Kickstarter and in made of a hard plastic.  Unlike the softer materials found in the furniture of products like Mantic's Star Saga this had zero warping and holds its shape.  It required no clean up other than a wash.

 I used blue masking tape to create some white spaces and sprayed the unprimed model with Krylon Camoflage Green. The Green area was then washed with Sewer Water (Secret Weapon).

Tape was removed and the White areas were painted directly with Graveyard Bone (Reaper) and the whole thing sealed with Krylon Clear  Satin finish.

I then used some extra decals from Atenociti's Workshop's Fast Panda to create a supply chain for my favorite Undertown Fast Food Franchise!
 

 After the decals were applied and solvaset into the textures I weathered the container with areas of Brown Rust (Secret Weapon), Engine Metal (Secret Weapon) and some targeted washes of  Seraphim Sepia (GW).  A few details were hand painted in and the thing sealed with Krylon Clear Satin.

 The Techies from Star Saga wrapped up at the same time.  The Star Saga miniatures have been surprisingly fun to paint.  I think I like the classic sci-fi look of them... as contrasted with the Grimdark stuff I so frequently paint.  Don't get me wrong! I loves me some Grimdark... but its really been fun stepping outside of it and still being firmly in sci-fi territory.  I think Undertown will be seeing a lot of traffic from the miniatures of this range in future!

 Some size comparisons.  The container is pretty large so it can give full cover to some monsters and vehicles.  As you can see this container has been vandalized by the Free Bruxx Network!

The Bruxx are a complex race of Uplifted Rats from the Serene Dawn RPG setting that I work on sporadically.  I'll have to source some sci-fi Ratmen soon.  I *may* have some here somewhere... but I'm always on the lookout for more great sculpts!

 The container can fit a 5 model squad inside.  I love models that have usable interior spaces.  Too bad this one is full of Plague victims! 

Here is the container flipped onto its side... ya never know right?  So I weathered it a bit further to simulate forklift incidental damage, wear and tear from dragging etc...

Hopefully tomorrow will see the completion of some more Dark Souls minis and construction started on some ADMech, a peddlar to fleece the Jailbirds, and some Twisted Dickensians.

Build it!
Paint it!
Play it!

Cheers,

Swelter

Undertown Dumpsters and Mortarion

Arriving hot on the heels of the Fast Panda Sci-Fi Food Truck is "Undertown".  I couldn't wait to hop into Undertown!  Where "Forward Base" was was about getting established on raw frontier worlds Undertown is a seedy city zone filled with lots of Sci-Fi icons.  You can still see the legacy prefab architecture that clearly identify it as an evolution of Forward Base. The working outpost becomes the center of a town... that prospers and then gets sidelined as the new elites prefer to build their residences and service areas in more desirable, and exclusive, areas.

The easiest place to start was in the scatter.  The first bits to attract my attention in the scatter pack were these basic dumpsters.  Completely at home in any modern or futuristic environment they are a great addition to any urban tabletop.

Atenociti's Workshop did their usual amazing job with the details, quality casting, and a great resin mix that takes paint readily.

They learned a lot about Kickstarters from their Forward Base project and this one was less ambitious in scope and options, which resulted in  an easier delivery all round,  and greatly improved packaging helps keep the project comprehensible which I find to be a HUGE win!

 Back to the dumpsters!  There are 4 in the 4x4 scatter set and I elected to do to each as "Regular Trash" and "Recycling" the yellow lids are the recycling bins and I'll be adding recycling logos and a white stencil style company tag... probably something like CWM for Central Waste Management. I'll have to add them to the list of corporate sponsors for my Serene Dawn proving teams.

 The graffiti was fun to putter about with and I learned a few things about doing graffiti to boot! Hopefully this will improve the quality of the graffiti going forward!  I'll use a mix of decals from various sources and and freehand tags.

You can see here a nod to my friend Che Webster whose complex race of rat men are known as the Bruxx.  I've added them to the theme of Undertown with the creation of the FBN "Free Bruxx Network" which will double as an underground railroad type organization dedicated to the rescue and resettling of Bruxx, who are technically corporate property, and the underground Comm Station whose mission is to raise awareness of the plight of the Bruxx and work towards legal and political freedoms for this created race.

 The next bits from the 4x4 scatter pack are some pallets of various goods.  Its a nice touch that there are two version of two pallets... covered and uncovered. They are shown here with the dumpsters and the stubbornly unfinished Canonness Veridyan for scale.










Finally a guest painter! Wolfheart from the new Wolfheart Painting cranked out this awesome Mortarion! He's just getting set up but I expect to see more cool stuff from him soon!

I especially like the base and shudder tho think how much Nurgle's Rot was poured on it to get that "Infected Snot" effect!  The many skulls used to contain the vile goo should attract any minions of Khorne that are hardy enough to brave the contagion!

The brassy metals are also delightfully tarnished and the wing texture reminds me of a wet lung!  ewwwww! ... and I mean that in the most complementary way!

Legacy Servitors, Sanctioned Psykers, and a Heroquest Ogre

 These were a pile of minis that I found in a box of WiP stuff that I got as part of a bulk buy of Imperial Guard way back in the day.. either 2nd or 2.5 edition 40k ... I think... anyway it was a very long time ago!

I rediscovered them while unpacking random boxes during a recent move of house (Not sure which one... the one that I am currently preparing for will be the fourth move of house in three years... )

Anyway as these were a salvage project I wanted to get them tabletop ready but also wanted to limit how much work would be put into them.

 I decided to keep some elements of the work the original owner did and just update them to fit in with some of my current armies.

The Ogre was a bit different,  I believe I got it as part of a promotional give away at Gencon.  I did a quick assembly and slapped some paint on it to demo speed painting to someone... it then got tossed in a box and went unseen for a couple of decades...

It was in a frightful state when I rediscovered it in a bag of bits...  so I treated it to a little repair, changed the color of his shirt from blue to green, added some chevrons etc...

 
The servitors are some of the most disturbing minis that GW ever produced for a variety of reasons... from the leering face of the human male, to the dead man stare of the Squat, and capped by the clinically efficient arrangement of the clothing ... particularly the female model... this is the stuff cyborg nightmares are made of.

 The original paint scheme had each model in a different, loud, color... they were quite blinding to look at.  I could feel the cataracts forming in real time!  So I decided to make two color coded teams (red and green) with one team getting the extra servitor.

 The Sanctioned Psykers were a fun batch that got a complete repaint except for the great purple cloaks... I love the color and it stayed with just some touch ups and a few highlights.

The lead Psyker, Frank Primul, is leaking energy which is clearly visible on his face, The effect was created using Algae Wash from Secret Weapon.

I'll hopefully get one more batch of figures done before pack-out day and then I'll switch from models to books and try to get familiar with 8th ed.  Return to working on the Serene Dawn Project, and write some fluff while waiting for the models to catch up with us...

Of course Bones III is drifting around the the mail system... it may, or may not land before the pack-out!

Its Life Jim! Forward Base KS terrain

 This was a fun project and might not be completed!

the "Its Life Jim" add on to the Forward Base Kickstarter from Antenocitis Workshop is cast in clear resin.

The colors are intended to underscore the Science Fiction feel of the models so are in an unusual spectrum.

 Where possible I wanted to leverage the material to create effects so there would be a lot of translucency to the models.

To get this effect I relied on a lot of washes. heavily pigmented washes from Secret Weapon and The Army Painter for the bases coats and mid washes while turning to Games Workshop for less pigmented washes.

 Highlights and hard details were painted using the usual suspects, mostly Reaper and Vallejo.

I dropped in a Mantis Warrior Standard/Icon bearer from Raging Heroes for scale.  She's actually a little tall in retrospect because she's mounted on a base that is more elevated than most of my models are on... but you should get the idea.

 One of the goals was to make the fan structures and berry-like bulbs, the blister-like masses, and the cylindrical rolled flowers to be very translucent... almost clear.  In the case of the smaller berries and all of the flowers I gave them a light wash to tint them and later removed the wash from large areas of them with an eraser.  The larger berries and the fans retained the tints.  the berries have an orange glaze and are then detailed with a Reaper orange triad.

 A shot of the whole set!  It should provide plenty of alien life accents to whatever system I'm using... they'll make fine Chaos Flora, or Feywild stuffs... even Malifaux comes to mind... when not performing the usual Sci-Fi duties.

 A look at the orange berries and the purple fallen trees.  I had a hard time with the trees because I really wanted to leave the wood cores clear... like the trees were glowing in their decay... but... and I said I might not be done yet... I think I would have to put actual little lights under them to make the glows do what I was imagining. In the end I tinted the cores ... but I really should have done that first....

  I'm going to do a lot of Illuminated buildings for the Undertown Kickstarter, and for the rest of Forward Base, so I'll look at these again when I'm doing that and see if I really want glowing terrain!

  A look at the barrel blossoms.  These were tricksey little devils! Tinted inside and out edge layered and then outer tint erased... whew!

 This material is very flexible and really feels like rubber when so a lot of the smaller bits are moveable... like leaves etc... I've painted straight onto the surface after a good scrub and a couple of ultrasonic baths. the material takes paint reasonably well although it remains to be seen what the durability will be after they get a few games under their belts

Next up.. a push to finish up some GW legacy minis that are on the desk and hopefully the Space Pope from Raging Heroes.

Claptrap, Dreadtober, and the Avatar of Vengeance.

 Minion!  WAKE UP MINION!

You may be here to see the INCREDIBLY handsome CL4PTRP but I'm here to help spread the word about DREADTOBER!

Its this very cool event where Bloggers around the verse build a Dreadnought in October!  

Sounds like a lot of fun and we get to see a lot of folks building and modding, and distressing big model war-machines.





 So if you are a Dread Head then head on over to Greggles Tabletop at Feed Your Nerd
and get in on ....








 While not really a Dreadnought class model... these little dreadfuls are clearing the path!  I'll be working on some kind of Dread class thing starting next week.

 Looka me I'm dancin' I'm dancin'!











These guys came from Armorcast and are pretty rough casts.  Fortunately the Claptrap is a pretty rough character anyway!  They capture the essence of the manic little bot that everyone loves to hate.











  Here are the little guys alongside some Reaper minis that I'm using as Solar Marines in a Sci Fi adventure setting.

And harassing Punky!  Better watch that robot! The Jailbirds won't put up with your shenanigans!

Actually I think I'll work these little bots into my Jailbird Army list... They have a junkyard scavenger tech thing going so it should fit right in.

... and some green-stuff work on the base for Kirai Avatar of Vengeance.  This is a 1e mini and metal... given the nature of the kit the hard plastic version is probably a huge improvement!

Kirai will be sprawled across the carpet as the Avatar of Vengeance rises out of her.

Spooky stuff!

Ok...  off to find a Dreadnought to build!