Epicast Stompa revisited

While unpacking the workshop I rediscovered an old friend from 40K 2nd Edition... Its from Epicast back in the bad old days when GW licensed a few outside companies Like Epicast, and, later, Armorcast to produce stuff that occurred in the fluff but GW itself was not producing.  Eventually all of those licenses were withdrawn and consolidated back into what we now know as Forge World.

These early models came with rules in the form of Data Sheets so they could be played, with the consent of your opponent, without any new rule books being required.

Second edition was the high water mark of the cartoon style for 40k and my Orks were as cartoon-y as they come. These first couple of pictures are of the Stompa appear (with the addition of the beginnings of some lining that I started before remembering to snap a photo) as I played it for decades.  Bright primary colors and almost zero weathering, highlighting, or shading.  The roof tiles over the rear assualt doors were perhaps the only attempt at weathering.  

This was not entirely a sacrifice on the altar of speed.  The cartoon style really relied on mass color coding with a very small number of spot details as focal points... much like Anime does even now. I wanted to update this old can a bit so it didn"t look super incongruous with my current Orks but retained its 2 ed. roots.

Below is the result.

As you can see I chose not to start over from scratch and just continued on over the old paint.

I started with a lot of Brown Rust (Secret Weapon(SW)) to move the nearly monochrome green into a two color scheme, jazz up the freehand chevrons, and to make the iron jaws of the skull a bit more fearsome. This was all large brush stippling.

Following the Brown Rust I did a full model Drybrush with Silver (Vallejo(V)) followed by a full model wash with Armor Wash (SW) and then wiped away the excess wash with a paper towel.  

Orange Rust (SW) was stippled in the central areas of any Brown Rust areas, Phoenix Red (V) stippled over red areas. 

Brass Casing (SW) was used to touch up and shade gold areas and Engine Metal (SW) touched up and highlighted all metal areas. The battlecannon barrel mouth got some thin coats of Orange Heat (SW) fading into Purple Heat (SW) fading into the base green.  The entire model then was lined with Rust Shadow (SW) with extra effort directed at establishing a more detailed impression of a blade track for the chainsword.

The model has always been unsteady on its feet and prone to falling over so in a final omage to 2nd ed., and to play with my newly rediscovered static grass applicator, I  grabbed a big oval bass and loaded it up with 2mm static grass.  In 2nd. ed almost all the armies I encountered, including my own, were straight up flocked unlike the more significant efforts expended on modern bases.

Here is the completed model with some Ork Burna Boyz making their wicked way into the Undertown... gonna be a bad day for someone!

 Back to the desk!

Cheers

Joan of Arc 15mm Core Game, GW Forest Goblin Spider Riders, an Epicast Stomper Tune-up in progress and fun with static grass!

The Joan of Arc game is so ambitious!  Its a board game, a Tanletop Mini Game, its a Historical Game, its a Fantasy Game. It has an RPG and its almost an action RPG right out of the box... It even has aerial combat because.... Angels and Dragons... whew!  Its gonna be a fun ride!

From the core box: The Tarasque, The Unicorn, The Archangel Gabriel, 4 Angels, 2 Bullock Wagons.

As you can see you can go full on fantasy right out of the starter box... I think one of the scenarios is a werewolf hunt even... or you can stay with the historical scenarios. Its a great transitional game.

These were all sprayed a dark camo green primer (Rustoleum), damp-brushed with white craft paint and washed with Secret Weapon (SW) Washes.  The wagons then got a dry-brush of Sunny Flesh (Vallejo(V)) to make the wood pop.

Below is the tray ready for re-interment in the game box... In this Golden Era of Mega-Games I'm going to have to put some thought into how to condense the numerous expansions.

The angels got sky themed bases to go with the sky tiles in the aerial combat portion of the game.  Sky Blue (Warpaints) Stipple with white, wash with Blue (SW).  White robes are layered Graveyard Bone and Splintered Bone from the (Reaper) Bone Triad.   Gold is Brass Casings (SW) Flesh Wash (SW) dry-brush Silver (V).

 Being easily distracted by shiny things... I was unable to simply put the static grass applicator back into its box and decided to fix a long standing problem... namely my ancient 40K second edition Epicast Stompa!  Its never stood well on its own and is heavy enough to take out models it happen to fall on...doh! So I thought I'll just slap a base on it and its "problem solved!" ... 

...then I noticed that the old second edition paint-job looked really, really, dated so... doing something I very rarely do... I decided to do a bit of an update.  These are the pictures of its original state except for some black lining I started to do before remembering to snap a photo.  I'm going to preserve some elements of the original and bring it up to date without starting from scratch.  Well, that's the plan anyway!

The completed Forest Goblin Spider Riders. Ready for an Oldhammer rumble!

Speaking of a rumble I literally hate this new Blogger interface!  Its more primitive than its predecessor and seems specifically designed to be rigid and unwieldy.  For example I'd like to put this sentence at the bottom of the page... but I can't do that without actually removing the picture below... fabulous improvement... This update would normally have taken be about 15 minutes to compose on the fly but I've been at this now for three hours and still can't get the words and the pictures to go where I want them.

MADE
  OF

 FAIL  

Iron Empire Mecha Lance goes operational

 The last of the Iron Empire Mecha comes online completing the Ushabti Honor Guard for my Necrontyr.

These great models took a bit of getting used to but I'm more confident in the construction method now and the other faction Mecha should be a lot easier to assemble. The models have complete freedom of pose so can be a very dynamic element on the tabletop.

 Here with Mortaria and Vera the Ushabti prepare to enter the fray.

The kit comes with three different heads so no two are alike in this unit.  The heads are really elaborate funerary masks so identical heads could just as convincingly be used if you prefer... or really have a big pile of Mecha!

I'll have to name these individually as I imagine them to be notables of the Empire serving in a near death state... possibly even former Yagas or, perhaps, their loyal parents.

I've relocated the the army lists I was working on for these so that's another thing to get up to speed.

Back to work on Dwarfs, Papa Kurganova, and the rest of the Yaga coven.

Iron Empire Mecha 2 and Mantic Musings

What's better than an Iron Empire Mecha?

Why two Iron Empire Mechas!  The second of three rolled off the line today after some major construction mishaps.... I managed to drop the thing during assembly and accidentally batted it across the room while trying to catch it.... making a small drop into a long journey.











The beast broke apart as expected but the bad impact angle caused half of the Halo to snap off and those tine little resin support struts were a booger to reconstruct.  Its together now so I'll try not to repeat that particular bit of drama in future!

Number 3 is coming along which will finish up the unit.











Here you see the pair escorting Hilda.










 I'm leaning towards calling these mummy driven mecha "Ushabti" in keeping with my Necrontyr theme.  These are great Tomb Guardians and life support systems animated by the will of Necrontyr nobles who have aged well beyond their normal span of years.  These heroes are trapped within the life-giving shells and have been maintained for centuries in the twilight land between life and death.

 Over the Holiday... and really a bit before that... I got involved in a ton of Mantic Kickstarters.  I've always been attracted to Mantic because of the price point but had been afraid to get much from them because I'd heard horror stories about the tremendous amount of clean up they required.

I bit the bullet and went in for Abyssal Dwarfs and then Regular Dwarfs and then.... Warpath and Deadzone... DoH!

 Anyway after looking over the minis I was very pleasantly surprised!  The minis were great quality, the casting was relatively clean, and certainly no worse than average... the material is solid and dry to the touch.  It took primer very well so I'm not anticipating any problems with paint adhesion..  all in all I gotta say these are ace models and a great value for money as well.








I got in about a dozen games of Kings of War second edition over the holiday and now feel like I've got a grasp of it.  The rules are very fast playing and easy to learn.  I think they are a bit too streamlined for my preference, but not a lot so and I think a few house rules would make them just the right amount of fiddly... for example there are no formation changes in KoW.  It would be pretty easy to add that to the game and bring the complexity level up to my comfort zone.  Also there are only about six spells in the magic system... its a very tight system and that would be harder to mess with in terms of balance.  I approve!  Mind you I'm a 3rd Edition WHFB player at heart so all of my fantasy armies are built with the idea that they'll be used in that game as well.

Finally... Our friend Ed let us know that we'd missed out on a pile of expansions for Firefly the Board Game!  For Christmas we got ourselves that big pile and are busily working our way through them!  Zoom Zoom! 

See it set up on a 6x4 table... lots of board and just enough room for all the card decks.


All is shiny in the verse!

The first Iron Empire Mecha strides into action!

 I'm back from an extended vacation with the family.  It was a blast, and I even got to play a lot of games, but I've been itching to get back to painting so... here we go!

Before I took off I'd almost finished the first of three Iron Empire Mecha.  Its shown here with I.E. Army standard Vera Kreabbenhoft for scale.  She's wasn't stable on her base so has been weighted with a metal washer.... nothing bothers her now!  But it does make her base slightly taller than usual.

 I use these for Necrontyr (precursors to the Necron) in my own little pocket universe... although I hope to one day use them for actual Iron Empire when Raging Heroes gets the game ready.

I continued the Purple and Cream color scheme here and most of the army will be in a similar scheme... with the exception of cyber zombies and maybe some shock troops/assault specialists.

The other two mecha are also pretty far along so I expect to have them up soon.  These models are completely ball joint in construction which gives a very wide range of posing options... but makes them just a tiny bit tricky to assemble!  I wouldn't have it any other way of course and I learned a lot about assembly from this lead model.

Reaper Frost Giant Royals a Tardis and the Hammer MK 2

 I've wandered back into RPG figures with this pair of Frost Giants from the Reaper Bones Kickstarter.   Boerogg Blackrime, Frost Giant Jarl and Svetlana, Frost Giant Princess.

Like the other minis from the first Bones KS these are made of a material that is just a bit too flexible.  I primed them black and had no paint adhesion problems. 

The bases came from the bones 2 KS and I should have gotten a few more bags of these larger ones.  I also learned that I should use them 'upside down' that would give a very smooth bottom that slid well across most surfaces and provided a retaining wall to help keep the base scenics in place and help to hide the molded on base.  Lessons learned!

 Speaking of bases I went with a frozen rapid theme using some slate, woodland scenics snow, and woodland scenics liquid water.  This water requires no heat to use and seems to cure better than the GW Water Effects, which sometimes remains tacky for months.

The main complaint I have with the Jarl is the downward cast of his head.  It looks convincing when fighting a normal human size model... which is good... but it obfuscates the face from the regular viewer.  The model as a whole is more viewable than the Fire Giant Warrior though so I'm not all that concerned.

 I went very cliche with these because RPG centric minis are representative of their generic class.  The huge bases on these two, and the Fire Giant Warrior I did previously, also help setting the mood of the scene they are used in.

Svetlana is one of my favorites from the first Bones KS just because she captures the whole Edgar Rice Burroughs 'Savage Princess' vibe.  I always think of his book covers when I see her although I'm sure she owes more to Frazetta!~

The Jailbirds got some love with the Hammer MK2 which will be the low budget Hydra equivalent.  I had some trouble with the gun barrels warp.  I straightened them with hot water prior to painting but the seem to be slowly returning to their warped condition.  Has anyone tried to fix warped resin after painting? I'll give it a go sometime later this week and see what happens with it.  I'll likely have to replace the barrels with something more rigid.  They are magnetized so popping them off to address it later won't be a big issue.

Finally, a couple of Iron Empire folks hanging out near a Tardis from Reaper Bones 2.  I'm thinking I'll replace the Police Box lettering with something from the printer to make it look more official.  The wobbly hand drawn characters on the Jailbird vehicles is by design... to make it look like their crews did it themselves in the field.  The Police Call Box though needs to look more mass produced.  I'll have to play with the printer and see what I can come up with.

Warchimera Hammer MK I APC Joins the Jailbird Division

A huge box arrived from Warchimera which contained the much anticipated APC and AA sections for the Jailbird Division and a very cool Bunker. 

Here you see the weapon options, Autocannon (from the vehicle accessories kit) a heavy flamer, a Heavy Bolter, er Machine gun, and a Las Cannon.









The goodies as they appeared right out of the box... a plethora of zip-lock bags.  These were loose packed in the shipping box with no padding or wrap other than the ziplocks themselves.  There was a fair amount of damage in the form of several cracked pieces but the shipment was generally intact.  Good enough for resin models anyway and certainly nothing a little glue won't fix.


You can catch the unboxing video here if you like.

To be fair these were relatively inexpensive as original 28mm resin vehicle kits go so no frills packaging was not a surprise.

 The Bunker looks very cool.  Almost no flash and the parts fit together very well.  Shown here with an Iron Empire for scale... shhh.

This will get fast tracked since its in such great shape.

Warchimera's resin is very hard, slightly brittle, and very dry.  Often resin has an oiliness to it that interferes with glue and paint adhesion even after washing.  This is not the case with Warchimera's material which almost instantly bonds with superglue, takes paint readily, and dries rapidly.  We'll have to see how it holds up over time.

The Hammer itself is not in as good a condition as the Bunker but this was primarily due to irregular quality control in the casting process.  The example that got painted up was in the best initial condition.  It required a lot of cleanup in terms of flash but the parts all lined up and fit snugly wit zero warping.

Between the Hammer MK I APC and the Hammer MK II AA version I ended up with eight vehicles which gave me a good look at Quality Control.  Most of them are reasonably well cast although there is a lot of cast on debris but several of the pieces were misaligned.    The most egregious of these involves the top half of a hull completely missing the mark at the rear doors.  This will have to be split and straightened.  Not impossible to work around but a bit of a pain.  Many of the fenders and even some of the rear door panels are significantly warped.  The fenders are an easy fix but the rear door panels are thicker and are warped in a transverse direction that will bit tricky to sort.

On to the worst bit.. the wheels.  OMG these suck!  They are difficult to separate from their sprue given how much of the tire is covered by the pouring block.  The brittleness of the material comes into play here as undue stress on the tab frequently damages the actual tire.  But the worst thing about these tires is that the tabs don't fit together.  all of the tabs are longer than the slot they are intended to mate with resulting in some minor surgery to shorten the tabs when assembling the tire.  The firse tire took me about 40 minutes to remove from the sprue and assemble.





Eight vehicles with six tires each..48 ties or 36 hours of work....erm... no!  After the first wheel I was much less careful separating the tires from the sprue and just accepted that there would be a bit of damage and that it was faster to back-fill the resulting gaps with greenstuff and re-sculpt the tread... not that the original tread sculpt was in great shape.  Using this method I was able to knock out the remaining five tires in about an hour.... much more acceptable.





Here are the parts all laid out for view. You can see the flash is typical of kits of this type although the center bench seat for the crew compartment is a hot mess the rest of the set looks pretty good.


 Here you can see the Hammer MK I with the Secret Weapon Rapid Assault Vehicle (RAV).  The Hammer is a bit larger and more boxy looking as I'd expect from a dedicated APC while the sleeker and more deadly RAV looks the part of dedicated fighting vehicle.

I got some barriers in the Bones II kickstarter.  These are from expansion set 3 and are already marked by the Cult of the Harbinger.  Mimi is calling it in.  The Expansion 3 has a pile of shipping containers, dumpsters, telephone booths, etc... more on them in future.

 Yoko the Psycho leaves the Hammer to check out the area.  The flagstone space is a Tabletop World Town Square.

 I added the vehicle accessories set to this model as well. That includes a female commander, an autocannon, and two stowage boxes that fit in the wheel wells between the front wheel and the middle wheel.  The clearances in the wheel wells for the stowage boxes is very tight but it looks pretty good when done.  the Autocannon is a great addition and the female commander is very in keeping with the Jailbird theme, although the quality of the commander's sculpt is a little crude when presented in the company of the RH Jailbirds.... shhhhh!

 Side by sides with the Hammer and the RAV.

 Bernadette getting ready to go to work!

 The Hammer deploying some Jailbird Division Veterans.

 Free Will... a good name for a Jailbird Division Vehicle!