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!