Atlantis Miniatures Wood Elves WiP

 

I'm really excited about these Wood Elf minis from Atlantis Minatures. They are part of a Kickstarter fullfillment so might not be up in the shop yet but they historically move pretty quickly from Kickstarter to regular product.  Very nice and kinda rare!

The models came with an assortment of bases. Some are fully detailed resin some are beveled plastic rounds. There was a good supply of basing bling to add details like forest critters, mushrooms, vines, big stones, and the like. This really inspired me to dive into the greenstuff and get to sculpting!

There are four different types of mounts in the set. A giant elk for the Male Warlord, a big panther for the Female Warlord, large Stags, and smaller Deer.

There are male and female versions of all the elves so this will make for a very thematic, and very scary, wood elf Kinband Warparty. You'll be seeing more of these soon but I wanted to say these are not your kinder, gentler type of "Wood Elf"... they are more like "Feral Elf"... many have horns themselves... they look like the sort of merciless forest guardians that might even eat any trespassers they find! They are gonna be fun! 

Forward Base: Habitat 5 WiP part 3

 

A quickie today as the resin/MDF hybrid vents get installed en masse.

Lots of clamps!

I think there were 9 small vents and 8 Large ones.

These were fussy to paint even though the scheme is simple.

The end result however was very cool.  The vents show well on both sides and the final glue up went without a hitch.  In the bottom picture the MDF inside vents are visible as well as the resin outer pieces.

The important part is to assemble the vents so that the smaller MDF portion is precisely centered on the larger resin bit and the overhang is even all the way round.  This has the effect of lining everything up nicely with no adjustment required during the clamping.

The White Formula is: Graveyard Bone (Reaper (R)) x2 over Black Primer, Dry-Brush Splintered Bone (R) edge with Storm Shadow wash (Secret Weapon) wash interior areas of vent grilles with Storm Shadow on both large and small vents.

Next up for Hab 5 are the ramps to the vehicle doors and the resin upgrades to that same area.  After the ramps we'll be moving beyond the "Rough Guide" to do the remaining interior details, access ladders, additional air handlers, figure out what to do about the area around the side door that looks unfinished and out of place... and finally... add the acrylic light fixtures to the outside.  That should finish the build except for any weathering that I decide to do later.  That will be done as a batch of buildings to help me keep the effects consistent. 

Mixed Stone Ruin Process

 After working for a long time in the Greystone Village format I started thinking that I needed some other complimentary stone colors to liven the place up!

This is a step by step of the process used to get to the end state you see on the left.  

This is a very fast process but gave a solid result.

The model is a ruined doorway from the Reaper Bones 4 Kickstarter Fantasy Scenics set.

I undercoated this with Krylon Camo Brown paint/primer.

Picked out some areas of color with 4 basic colors.

Stormy Grey (Reaper(R)), Grey Mist (R), Handle Wood (R), and Krylon Camo Brown. (This is the undercoat color and was not re-applied... just left "bare")

 Stormy Grey is a very dark grey, Grey Mist is a lighter grey with a fair bit of blue added. Handle Wood is a very light brown that is almost tan and the Krylon Camo Brown is a very dark bark brown.

Base coats of the greys were brushed on damp while the handle wood was wet stippled on to give the uneven coverage an irregular rocky texture instead of weak brush strokes.

First highlight layer:

Sky Gray (R) Drybrush over all grays.

Sunny Skin Tone (Vallejo (V)) Drybrush over all browns except the "ground" part of the base.

This starts tying the different colors together so they will look like they've been standing in a pile together for a long time.  The underlying color differences are reduced a little but still have a variegated appearance.

Lining:

Sewer Water Wash (Secret Weapon (SW))

Line all rocks and cracks edge the divots. This is fast and easy and uses a mid size brush with a decent tip just wipe off any excess that looks like a brush stroke.

Damp brush Saddle Brown (R) over the "Ground"

Of course more could be done with the ground but this is a generic game piece that to look at home in a dungeon, a jungle, or in the frozen wilds so it remains neutral here.

Final Step before sealer!

Lightly drybrush the whole model with Splintered Bone (R) focus a little extra coverage on the tops, edges, and broken stone to make them pop.

Splintered Bone is a bright off-white color.

Reaper Dwarf for scale.

Forward Base: Habitat 5 WiP part 2

Today sees the construction of the main structure. But first a little more painting of panels and resin bits.

A few of the vent panels were not laser cut so were painted in while painting the punched out vents and their resin replacements/additions. All the vents, windows, doors, etc. were punched out prior to assembling anything and dry fitted to see if they could be easily installed after assembly. This turned out to be true for the vents and garage bay doors but not for the acrylic windows and doors which fit very tightly and were installed prior to general construction.

The MDF vents were glued to the resin parts and painted both sides. You can see the left side are the painted MDF and the right are the painted resin. The white is Graveyard Bone (Reaper(R)) and Splintered Bone (R) over black primer on the resin and clear sealer on the MDF.  On the MDF side the vent cavities are Glowing Mist (R). For the resin Cavities Soft Body Black (Secret Weapon( SW)) wash to clean up the dry brush bleed.

On the interior rear wall of the building the rollup doors for the toolboxes got a thinned  Phoenix Red (R) and the clear acrylic door was placed.  

 This was a tight fit and, in retrospect, I might have positioned it a little differently because this wall gets doubled by the outside wall which leaves this door recessed vis-à-vis the outer wall. Its not a big deal just something to add to my lessons learned when doing future builds.

Now construction can commence in earnest!

Before attempting to slot things together I carefully trim one side of the coating off the tiny tabs.  This coating helps give these kits a smooth finish but it often seems to bunch up when going into slots and the excess has to be cut away afterwards. Cutting off just one side retains the strengthening effect of the coating while reducing the bunching and occurrence of too tight fits to practically zero.

"The Rough Guide to building habitat 5" on the Antenocitis Workshop site notes that this kit is a little complicated and should be approached in a certain way. Believe it!

The first assembly is the Lattice with Beam, Support Struts, Top Side Panels and Roof Guides for the rear part of the building.

 True to its name the guide is a little quirky. As is the usual case with these kits all of the components of the model have very specific names but the parts are not labeled so have to be carefully selected and test fitting is essential. Some of the parts have names that imply the existence of other parts for example "Beam 1" seems to be the only part named "Beam" in the kit so I spent some extra time trying to located the other "Beams" to make sure the one I had selected was actually "Beam 1"

Next up come the first aid stations.  Volgren Troller has very generously supplied a full First Aid Station and sink for each vehicle bay. The Rough Guide was a little fuzzy here. It details about half of building the most complicated side without mentioning the small positional markings on the struts or how the First Aid stations are constructed... and do the same for the other side... which I mistook for a comment about installing the other side wall when it really specifically was referring to the First Aid Stations.  The kit is very well designed so once I started dry fits it became immediately obvious how things were meant to go.

The inner framework, complete with matching First Aid Stations and side catwalks. The catwalks are not only great places for miniatures to lurk but help a lot with giving the tool boxes and other etched features an illusion of depth.

Now comes the Interior Rear Wall.  Once this wall is in position the whole framework can be slotted into the floor.

Floor installed. For as many slots as the floor part has this went together very easily.  The precision of the laser cutting is really great. The Rough Guide helpfully mentions that the floor should be worked starting from the rear wall. The front wall is not yet on and the side walls are still a bit flexible at this point making them a lot easier to deal with in the fitting.

Time for the Front Wall.  This slots into the floor and relies on the flexibility of the Top Side Panels to be lifted enough to get the wall into position.

Next comes the Exterior Rear Wall which completes the main structure.  There ae still a lot of things remaining to do but this was the tricky bit.

Remember those resin vent panels? Add them in here as they get painted. The printed side is reversed to show the etched detail on the other side of the wall panel and the slightly larger resin side allows for the whole thing to be glued in flush.

First picture shows the resin side.

Second picture shows the painted MDF side.

These slide in very easily and add some extra detail. 

Back to the desk to work on the ramps, doors, ladders, interior details etc...

 

Forward Base: Habitat 5 - The Workshop WiP

Forward Base: Habitat 5 - The Workshop

Habitat 5 is a workshop with two vehicle bays that should be an early structure for a new outpost.

The kit is from the Forward Base Kickstarter by Antenocitis' Workshop and this one includes the resin upgrade as well as the other additional rewards from that campaign.

I sprayed all the MDF with a dead-flat sealer and began painting the details.  These kits are pre-painted which does not mean that no painting needs to be done but rather that they have a single color per sheet paintable coating which allows for the painted surface to look a lot less like painted MDF.

You can see here the ramps are on a yellow colored sheet and I've painted in details like safety markings, logos, tools, etc... The floors and walls are grey and roof panels white. 

These are weathered panels which means the laser cutter was turned up to do some light scorching. It makes for a nice effect on the large areas that I leave unpainted like the grey floor of the vehicle bays.

I still have tool boxes and some cabinets to paint in before assembly.

Then came cleaning and priming the resin components and familiarizing myself with the types of parts that might be included. I learned from some earlier builds that the resin parts need to be considered from the very beginning as they sometimes completely replace structures early in the build process.

For vents and doors the MDF is pre-cut so the etched part can be removed and replaced with a resin upgrade. I have removed the parts to be replaced, turned them round, and glued them to the back side of the resin replacements. Now I'm in the process of painting both sides. In this way I get detailed vents and garage doors on both sides.

 

More on Hab 5 next installment... I also got a little work done on the body bags and am starting the ice vending machines and porta-loos for the Post Apocalypse table.

Last, but far from least, The massive Etherfields boardgame arrived just as I was coming up to post!

With a 17.5 kg mailing weight this thing is a real beast.  I'll be taking a look inside after my wife gets home so she can enjoy it too.

Cheers

RoC Chaos Dwarf Whirlwind

This guy accompanied many a Chaos Horde into battle in the 80s. The model was showing its age and I thought I'd do some touch ups, rebase it and generally do some long neglected maintenance.  Lets call him Hagar.

First things first... Hagar needed to be removed from his old cardboard base. Typical of the 80s the base was flocked, had a couple of raw pebbles glued to it, and... unusually... a hob-goblin child (Grenadier iirc) added for scenic context.  The little Hob isn't visible here but will show up later as I'll recycle it onto the new base.

Having divested Hagar of his old base it was time to give him a new one. This base was from Reaper (R) and was layered with White Pumice (V). Grooves and hoof tramples were made before the pumice dried also a couple of Citadel (GW) skulls, and the Hob-Child... which is still hidden behind fat old Hagar!

The base was given a coat of Flesh Wash (Secret Weapon (SW) and brushed with Sunny Flesh (Vallejo (V) brushed with Sand (V), and a final top dust of Splintered Bone (R).

I used Wet Mud Weathering Powder (Forge World (FW) set with Glaze Medium (V) to get the churned mud beneath the machine that tracks out the rear of the model.  This dried very flat so I used Satin Varnish (V) to give it a wet look.

Static Grass (mud) was the final bit on the base.

The Hob-Child can be seen sitting in the tattered remains of an orange shift crying as Hagar drives obliviously past her.  Fortunately she was spared the mowing doled out to everyone else!

For Hagar and his machine I retouched rather than re-imagined.  The metal parts of the machine were treated to my usual yellow or white metal work ups and the skin was painted Sunny Flesh (V), Flesh Wash (SW) and Basic Flesh (V).

The shield was updated from a faded gold to a more solid color with Brass Casings (SW), Flesh Wash (SW) and Silver (V) highlights. Baby Poop (SW) was spot washed to add color to the shading. Fresh Blood (R) highlighted with Phoenix Red (V) was used to accent the eyes and color the gums. Teeth were changed from base metal to off-white using Graveyard Bone (R) highlight with Splintered Bone (R).

Wood was Flesh Wash (SW) and Sunny Flesh dry-brush to reinforce the old wood color and make the grains pop.

Hagar's horns were redone as they had faded to a nondescript gray over the past 3+ decades.  Handle Wood (R), Flesh Wash (SW) brushed out with Graveyard Bone (R) and Splintered Bone (R).

Some lining with Soft Body Black (SW) wrapped up the project.

Its great to have Hagar ready to renew his assault on the tabletop! The modern oval base should make a good fit with newer games and not be to much trouble when he returns to the fight Oldhammer style!

Back to the desk!

 

Common Goblins

In spite of the name the common goblin is the scourge of many a fantasy realm.  I though it was fitting to muse about the GW version which may be the most common goblin of all!

After painting the horde of Night Goblins from The Battle of Skull Pass I found some loose sprues of the goblins that were included in the WFB 4th edition starter set.

These goblins were produced in huge numbers and the game shop I owned at that time ended up buying these goblins back from some of the more frugal customers so they could get the rules at a better price. I then sold these as loose sprues for a dollar per sprue or about 25 cents a gobbo alongside the candy bars and chips at the checkout. Everybody won and this pile of gobbos... 12 archers and a block of 48 spear... represent all that is left from those broken up starter boxes.  Pretty good rate of resale!

I think of these as "Common Goblins" not only because they don't have all the special effects that make the Night Goblins or Forest Goblins so dangerous but also, in no small part, because this whole pile consists of exactly 2 sculpts... one archer and one spear... and an assortment of shield designs.

These goblins represented the worst of what the hard plastic revolution had to offer.  Monoblock and conventionally sculpted for regular metal casting they took no advantage of the many features that have made hard plastics so popular in the decades since these gobbos made their appearance in 1992. I know, I know, my backlog is a little bit ridiculous but hey! I AM getting round to it!

 They have very sharp spears... and were very inexpensive to produce but otherwise could have been cast in metal.  Now days the hard plastics deliver sculpts that are simply impossible to do in metal... the weight to strength ratio makes models that really appear to fly a regular item... and so much more!

 These stalwarts though will continue to serve.  I've painted them as part of a marauding horde dressed largely in the tunics of the places they have visited... and looted!  The archers I'm calling Redcaps... and harken back to my favorite edition of WHFB which is to say 3rd edition... where its very possible to build elite troop types even for the lowly Common Goblin... The Redcaps will make fine missile elites for the horde. 

Next on the desk is an old Chaos Dwarf Whirlwind that I'm reviving. Some repairs to make and a change of base from a cardboard rectangle that is coming up at the edges to a plastic oval. Of course other new stuff will be added as well.

Back to the desk!