Undertown Flats, signs, scatter, a table in progress

With all the COVID-19 stuff flying around I thought it might be time to set a Mantic themed table with some Plague vs. GCPS (Galactic Co-Prosperity Sphere) vignettes.

I'm really digging into the backlog of cool Sci-Fi scenics from Antenociti's Workshop

With my wife home a lot lately I've not been able to work at the painting desk for long but its been relatively easy to sit in the living room, or kitchen, and assemble pre-painted MDF buildings.  Its surprising how quickly a viable table comes together with this stuff!

 GCPS troopers in 3 man teams containing a Plague outbreak in the Undertown while the news boards report.

The quality of the photo print components supplied with these kits is amazing and for the 'small signs' set pictured above you get a set of two triangular signs each face having a different graphic... and there are 9 to choose from in the kit so you have options right out of the box.  With a little effort you can make signs from practically anything so the possibilities are pretty cool.

The Flats are a 3 level structure with a single, full floor, elevator serviced, apartment on each level.  I've not yet done interiors for these so what you see is the kit with no additions.

The rooftop is also accessible via elevator which is shown above.  I've made the top most roof removable and may retrofit lighting to this area... and many others... the better to show the cool acrylic doors and interior graphic details that so many of these buildings sport.

 More views of the sign scatter... large enough to obscure most models and fun to look at.

The acrylic tops and rods are meant to be held in place by pressure lugs but these quickly get knocked off and go missing so I've put a tiny dab of glue on the lower part of the lug to convince them to remain in place.

Likewise the acrylic rods are meant to fit tightly into the base without glue but just slide right through so I glued some of the very good paper left from trimming the photo-prints to the bottom of the sign so the acrylic rods have a floor to rest on.  The acrylic needs careful handling during construction to avoid getting glue on it and ruining the effect.

 The benches are resin components that require a little paint which was as simple as spraying them with Rustoleum Hammered Metal, giving them a wash of Secret Weapon Armor Wash and a quick drybrush of any silvery metallic.

 The Undertown starting to take shape on a small table we usually use for card games.

Lots of scatter elements like street lights, info kiosks, adverts of various sized, vending machines, mail boxes, dumpsters and recycling bins.

The Plague erupted at lunch time with a move on the Spicy Pupniks food cart parked outside the Neo-Tiki Motel Office.

 A GCPS team clears the main building of the Neo-Tiki Motel and moves to assist the situation developing at the office.

Red Oni Sake has a location right next door to the Neo-Tiki Motel and also provides vending machines and mail drops.

 A view across the plaza.  The Game Mat is the small Undertown Mat from Antenociti's Workshop and is printed on mouse-pad material.  There is also a large version of this mat that joins nicely with the small mat for an even larger set up.

Plague taking cover behind the various bins. 

 The Undertown is relatively free of graffiti at the moment but will get tagged up... possibly during games!  I think it would be fun to put a blue tack marker on a spot to be tagged and do the actual application between games.  I mean what gang war themed game would be complete without turf and tags?

 I just managed to finish up the set of Large signs.  These are tall enough to obscure Knight Class vehicles or even low level flyers.

 A set of two, triangular, signs with 6 different graphics in the box.  You don't get the extra couple of choices that came with the "small" signs but they are really large prints with great, high quality, art so I'm not complaining.

 They even have a Sci-Fi Nun on this one!  On my table they are chronicling the adventures of the Sisters of Eternal Mercy! Although any Space Nuns would fit in.

I'm working on the Stepped Tenements today and whatever else pops out of the big box-o-MDF!

Arthenya VI the Archpapess and Bruegleburg a day at the fair

 Arthenya VI the Archpapess is another great model from Raging Heroes.  I have a couple of iterations of her because I want to use her in some dioramas as well as a plying piece.  This is the playing piece version.

She is escorted by some cherubs to protect her and hold some of her ceremonial gear. 

The model is resin and the details are very sharp making her a bit easier to paint than you might imagine.  Fuscha craft ink, Reaper Bone triad, Gory Red triad, and solid white, Secret Weapon washes (Storm Cloud, Armor, and Flesh) Secret weapon Engine metal, Vallejo mediums, GW Necron Compund and Shining Gold.

 Bruegleburg: A day at the Fair was a kickstarter by Lead Adventurers that featured a lot of colorful townsfolk for festive settings.  There were some options to add a more military flair to it but I was really drawn to the Slice of Life feel of the whole thing.

Here are a pair of looters in the colors of my Stirland Fantasy army. 

 This batch of models has more military or local officials in it than I've done so far so there is the recurring theme of the local livery in green and yellow on most of these.

 Country Nobles sporting their colors for the fair.

Greens were worked up from Vallejo Emerald, Secret Weapon Washes and Verdigris weathering, and Reaper solid White.

These are metal models and are sculpted traditionally so they sit really well with the older style citadel models that I used to build most of my Sylvanian army.  The scale is well suited to that era as well.


Yellows are Reaper Yellow triad.










I've based this batch on 25mm rounds for use with some of the newer skirmish games but I've also done a lot of the previous models on 20mm squares to better fit with my existing terrain sets.  I'm a bit torn on this but even old reliable Tabletop World is moving to a larger Heroic scale and the 25mm really does support these big metal models better...
A wandering mercenary and his henchman.  Since he's not a local and is a veteran of the Chaos Wars he is in red.










These two are still WiPs but I'm out of time to finish them until I locate them again after the big move.  I'll do some patterning on his red coat which will reduce the Santa effect a but and the shield devices are just roughed in at present... more to come on these two.







That wraps it up until after the move.  See you again in Late August or Early September!

The Order of Vampire Hunters scenery pack and From the 3D printer: Rampage Gothic Pulpit

 From the 3D printer is the Rampage Gothic Pulpit.  Its a two part model with independent stairs so the exact layout of them is very flexible.  It's currently occupied by one of the insidious Lust Elves from Raging Heroes and Sister Veridyan looks set to shift the errant elf.

The Pulpit is intended for one of the Space Papess models but she's currently unprepared to assume her spot... Honestly the one I have mostly constructed is already on a large scenic base so I'll have to build a second mounted on a 25mm base so she'll fit in it!

 I've gotten some questions about print times for various models and, I confess, I hadn't made any notes about that.  In future I'll be sure to include print times as part of the basic description on the 3D printed items.

That said... I *think it took about 3 hours for each section for a total of six hours.  I'll make another one eventually and verify that.

 Some of the fine detail was a challenge for the Snapmaker and, while it painted up reasonably well, there was a lot of detail... particularly on the pulpit tower... that was just a but too shallow or indistinct for my liking.  The design elements on the stairs were larger and, generally speaking, more coarse so they printed up cleanly with no issues.

I knocked out the scenery pack for The Order of Vampire Hunters... only to discover moments later that many of these scenery elements, as well as some of the Vampire "Trash Mobs" also occur in the Kickstarter Exclusives box.

/facepalm

I usually try to paint all models of a similar type as a set so I don't have to try to match them later.  It just helps to make all the models look like they belong together.  Oh well... next workbench KS Exclusives .... yay!

 A view of the various terrain parts with an unpainted Vampire Hunter for scale.

The full contents of the scenery pack.  The Kickstarter exclusives pack has a couple of extra box/barrel stacks and a couple of collapsed ceiling markers so it'll add a fair bit of terrain to this package.

3D Printed Sci-Fi wheeled APC and wheeled ARV

 The Jailbirds got a couple of new vehicles this week but they, themselves, were out of reach for photos!  We'll make do with some of their potential adversaries like trusty Canoness Veridyan (GW).

The vehicles were 3D printed on a Snapmaker at high quality.  The files came from a Duncan "Shadow" Louca vehicle Kickstarter.

These continue the badlands nomad theme that is basically a Flesh Wash (Secret Weapon) over the standard Khaki workup.

 The wheels were painted Rubber (Secret Weapon) and the weathering was done with Secret Weapon technical paints.  Old Mud, Caked Dirt, Engine Metal, and Rust Shadow.

Rust Shadow makes an excellent liner and gives a "Borderlands" style shadow.  I think it will look really great with some other vehicles colors which I'll get into when I'm doing some of the civilian vehicles pressed into service by the caravan.

 Repo-Man! is a very vital vehicle for the Jailbirds.  Their gear is mostly second tier except for their bikes which are cutting edge.  The Jailbirds basically drag anything they can get off the field although they tend to focus on wheeled vehicles since they are easier to operate and maintain in their caravan lifestyle.

 The Jailbirds are much more organized and uniform that the typical "Mad Max-esque" Badlanders as they also form semi-regular military formations.  Basically they wear uniforms of a sort and their vehicles are identifiable as part of a regular, if somewhat eclectic, military unit.

 "Tailgater" with Mantic Star Saga marines and Forgeworld ripper swarms for scale.  I used magnets for the turret and for the hatches with the idea to optionally use Raging Heroes Ash, Tank Gunner as a vehicle commander.

 Repo-Man shown with Travelling merchant (Anvil Industries) or Trader Joe as he is known to the Jailbirds.

I saw some construction cranes the other day that had all the moving surfaces finished in a rubbery black color and thought that would be better than a shiny metal, attention attracting, surface.

A last look at Repo-Man with Raging Heroes Void Elves for scale.





















Last, I did basing and prep for a couple of Reaper minis for an RPG character.  A halfling Ranger, a couple of big dogs, and a triad of pups.  One of the dogs to be a Saint Bernard the other probably a Rottweiler or something similar to make the dogs easy to identify.

Raging Heroes Kinghts of the Chalice (SF)

 Back to painting after an unanticipated emergency tooth extraction!  The Knights of the Chalice are Raging Heroes Science Fiction Super Heavy (Terminator Style) Militant Nuns.

The models went together very well and were a blast to paint.  There is a crazy amount of detail and they remind me of a more baroque version of the Gray Knights.

I started these as Retinue for the Mother Superor or the Space Papess... but as I was painting I kept thinking of them as "Knights of the Chalice: Order of the Oracle Doralys"  after the amazing model by the same company.

 What was significant about that thought in painting terms was that I started thinking about the oracle as a more ethereal, or even ghostly figure and that encouraged me to include some very cool colors in what was otherwise a very warm paint scheme.  You see it in the greenish flames of the chalice and the gems and in other details.  When I get to painting Doralys herself I'll have to include some of these hues.

 I wanted the armor to resemble a nun's habit but the overall scheme was very black indeed... so I reprised the tabard on the mother superior that I had painted several weeks ago complete with the modified skull rune border.  That helped a lot but the real topper was the ethereal green (Secret Weapon Verdigris, Secret Weapon Green Wash, Reaper Splintered Bone).

I'll want to create a symbol for the oracle and incorporate it into these models probably via the, currently blank, two tone red heraldic shields on the hips of the models.

 The unit champion really displays the yellow metal well especially on the shield's chalice.

The bases are 40mm and are all 3D printed.  The PLA material takes paint well and it was great to be able to print a themed set when I discovered that I had round lipped bases with these models instead of the beveled edge I ordered for the rest of the army.... DoH!

Next up should be some 3D printed accessories, terrain, a building a vehicle, and maybe a wrecked building... its been a fun learning process. Oh and I think there might be some Star Saga almost finished as well!

Back to the painting desk!

New Camera test drive, Kingdom Death Surprise Hunt, Augusta and the Void Elves

 Taking a new camera for a test drive.  I'm still having trouble with lighting and focus but, overall, a big improvement.  Next week I'm slated to go get some hands on help with getting the results I want from the photography side of things.

Today was just messing around with the camera and some lights.  I'm still figuring out what all the settings do... or even most of them!

I think I'm going to have to run the steamer on this backdrop to de-wrinkle it.

 I've been taking some more pictures of Augusta, Mother Superior (Raging Heroes) because I wand to get a good read on the yellow metal.  It seems to have survived the sealer reasonable intact. Sealing metallics often damages the final result and I sometimes end up retouching them afterwards.  I could, of course, not seal them... but these are primarily for tabletop use and not dedicated display pieces so I tend to want them sealed against frequent handling.

 Some experiments with wider focus areas as the Mother Superior faces down a pack of Void Elf Hunters.

 A size comparison for the current batch of Kingdom Death Monsters that our settlement is hunting... or being hunted by...

 In anticipation of this weekend's game I quickly painted up the Screaming Antelope and laminated some character and settlement record sheets.  The tactical board getting set up... I'm going to do some 3D terrain elements for the board soon as the card terrain just doesn't show well alongside the miniatures.

 A party of inexperienced survivors set out to hunt the Screaming Antelope led by "Lucky" Amelia.  Amelia at least had one hunt under her belt and performed so well during it that she earned her moniker "Lucky"

The rest of the party were novice hunters although two of them, Yang and Herc were born in the settlement and had some skill/stat upgrades based on that.  One, Flayh, was a survivor that had previously managed to avoid encountering the malicious wildlife of the area and was a straight up newb..

 During the first Hunt event the group stumbled upon the corpse of a Screaming Antelope... did a little scavenging.. and were then interrupted by the monster that had killed it in the first place... a Mature (level 2) White Lion.

This party had been hunting a juvenile Screaming Antelope and was not at all prepared for a Mature White Lion... perhaps Amelia's famous luck had run out?

A couple of pictures of the Screaming Antelope that did not make an appearance in this week's session....

The fight was pretty epic however with Flayh... our group goldbricker getting immediately knocked down and drug off by the Lion, who seemed to be enraged by the group's looting of it's kill... DoH!

Yang managed to sooth the mood of the beast by playing her cat-whisker harp. Yang later proved to be more than just a budding musician when she sliced the lower jaw of the beast clean off!  This early crit helped the party to survive what would otherwise have been a nightmare encounter.

Amelia's famous luck returned almost as quickly as it had abandoned them and she scored a crit on the Lion's brow... damaging it's eye and reducing its accuracy.

The big cat had been charging around the area to either drag Flayh off for a private snack or to escape the incessant rescue attempts by the rest of the group. Yang finally put a stop to this with a precision attack that hamstrung the lion leaving and it nearly dead.

Herc finished the monster off from a safe distance with a well aimed arrow.

All in all a great reinforcement of Lucky Amelia's reputation as the group returned with a pile of resources well in excess of those anticipated. 

Yang turned out to be a competent bard and a very strong combatant to boot.  Some members of the settlement are calling her Yang the Lion Tamer.

Herc calmly wielded his bow throughout the fight and took a couple of opportunities to land big hits with a Zanbato which really sped up the fight. He's taken to referring to himself as "The Tactician" which has not been as well received by the rest of the settlement as he had imagined...

As for poor Flayh... He was grabbed so often by the Lion during the fight... and subsequently rescued by his companions at great risk to themselves... that he's being referred to as "Catnip"

Time to go paint some stuff! The Phoenix has been added to the Quarry list.... and the Knights of the Chalice just came out of the sonic cleaner!