More views of the chariots...

OK!  The packing process begins for Adepticon.  Quite a truckload!

I am dusting off the Tomb Kings army board now, so that I can wrap it up in plastic.  Typical spring weather for Adepticon is 40 degrees and 50 MPH winds.  That means making what you are carrying extra tough.

The Fantasy minis are a bit easier to pack up, since the movement trays are magnetized on both sides, meaning I just have to plop them in the magnetized box.  The 40k stuff is also magnetized, but it is obviously more free flowing :-)

As I mentioned last night, it is very likely that I won't be able to process the images of the events while we are away.  So, I will be posting pictures of the Dark Eldar in the meantime.  I have dozens of images of the army board as it was being built and painted, as well as finished views of the jetbikes and other vehicles.

I will try to keep you all updated as to what is going on.  I am only anticipating being in the 40k Champs for Thursday.  Fantasy Champs will take up Saturday and Sunday.  

I hope that you folks have gotten some enjoyment and ideas from all the Dark Eldar and Tomb Kings stuff I have been posting.  It may not seem like it, but all these tasks have been practice runs for the painting videos.

The basing, terrain, freehand, bones, blood, etc., will benefit immensely from all these projects.  I have learned all new techniques and discovered new materials which I can now include in those videos.

I don't hold out a lot of hope for winning games in the tournaments.  I have had little or no time to practice, which is never good.  There are also a ton of brand new armies out there, so if I face them, I will have absolutely no idea of their abilities.  Oh well. :-)

So, I think there will be one post tomorrow.  Probably some jetbikes!

The finished chariot unit ready to roll!

Here are the first images I was able to shoot of the chariot unit.  Lots of hard work to get the horses and crew unified, since they were painted many months apart.

In some ways, 'resurrecting' partially finished minis is more difficult than simply starting from scratch.  There was a bit of 'undoing' of the old to make it more compatible with the new.

Plus, my techniques tend to change weekly given the volume of work that I do every day, so it was a bit like trying to build a modern day hybrid vehicle using production techniques on an SUV from the 90's :-)

Anyway, this version of the unit is now complete!

I have some other views that I will post as well.  I am taking more pictures of finished Dark Eldar figures, and of the painting of the army board.  With the restrictions of time and other circumstances, it is very likely that I will not be able to process the images I take while I am at Adepticon.  So, I will be making blog posts during the weekend that have images which I am working on now.

I did this last November during Bilbo's Bash.  I know many folks got confused by seeing images of the army board under construction one day into the tourney! :-)

In the end it worked out well, since I got a chance to make better game reports post Adepticon as opposed to rushing into them each night of the con.

Every ride needs a crew... and horsies.

As I was working on the bases and movement tray for the chariots, I needed to work on the chariots themselves.  

One of the chariots was originally intended for a Tomb Prince, so I needed to paint up a whole new crew for that one.  Also, a second chariot had a partially painted crew.  

The first chariot unit that I wanted to make had 8 chariots.  I realized right away that it was not going to work at all, so I abandoned it.  I even took some of the chariots that were going to be used for this unit and converted them into my Khandish Axles of Evil (you can see the blog posts on how that was done in the LOTR section).

Anyway, I also needed to paint up some of the horses.  You can see that they were converted quite a bit.  I sculpted all the blankets out of green stuff with tin foil backing.  Here is a post from last year on the chariots, when it was a unit of six: http://wappellious.blogspot.com/2012/07/rolling-on-chariots-work-in-progress.html

Here's one of the chariots and the horses just about finished...

Now to get into the crew.  There was another chariot crew that needed a lot of painting as well.

This image shows the crew that is replacing the Tomb Prince...

Some more work in progress shots...

I'll post the images of the finished chariot unit tomorrow!!  Stay tuned.

Lest we forget...

When I reworked the WFB tournament list for the millionth time, I realized that I was going to have to go back to the chariots, and not the massed horsemen units I had originally planned.  Time and other life circumstances got in the way.

So, I substituted a unit of chariots instead.  Then I realized that not only was there no movement tray, the unit was not even completely painted!  I had abandoned the unit when I saw that it had no chance of being effective.

So, this was the state of the unit and the movement tray when I began:

First things first.  Finish the bases!  This is not so horrible, as it is one of the designs that will be featured in the "Painting Demon Marble" video.  It was my intent to get back into these to practice, so here we go!

I started out by taking the Vallejo Dark Sea Blue and Emerald to establish the light and dark areas.  I had to go back to some of the other bases as well, just to tie everything in a little better.

You can see those colors out on the palette.  I used the Emerald (with a touch of dark color) to lay out where the skulls and demon faces would be.

I began to lighten those skulls a little bit...

And then some more...

Almost there.  

Now they are ready to have the eyes and other dark colors established.  

I mixed the Dark Sea Blue with some dark purple, and marked out the eyes on the skulls, did a little definition of the demon faces (the mouths, etc.), wth some more definition on the darker skulls as well.

With the bases painted, it was time to do the movement tray.  The inscriptions describe what will happen to all those who violate the Tainted Pharaoh's Tomb cities...

You can see numerous posts with the story of the army, how the display board was made, the various units which were scratch sculpted, and even how these movement trays were done in the Tomb Kings army section of the blog!  Go check that out if you have not seen it yet. :-)

Here's an updated link to the finished unit! 

http://wappellious.blogspot.com/2013/04/the-finished-chariot-unit-ready-to-roll.html

One more time...

OK, the last of the Sci-Fi Vestals!  I will be very interested to see all these gals running around on the army board. :-)  I have a few set places for them to hang out, although the board itself is also designed to be a playable terrain piece.  This is my policy for all the army boards, since so much work goes into them!

Playing the campaign on the Lizardman Temple of Blood army board was a blast, and this thing will be perfect to reprise one of our very first home made scenarios.

It was called "Defend the Factorum".  An 8 turn game that featured hidden anti personnel and ant vehicle mines, deployment zones that changed as each turn progressed, and so on.

What was needed for that was a giant, continuous piece of terrain with all sorts of nooks and crannies for action packed vignettes.  It's also tall enough to be that dominant piece of terrain, as we had for the first two times we did that battle.

Back then (4th edition), we used 3-4 individual pieces of terrain placed together to create the Factorum.  Now we have a massive structure on a 2 x 2 board.  It should be open enough to allow all sorts of crazy combats (even transports to drive or fly inside it), but yet offer some very serious cover.

What I really wanted was to have the possibility of various parts of this piece being a stronghold for both sides at the same time.  Should be fun!!

Death from the skies!

Here is the nearly completed 'duel' between the Character and the Razorwing!

It took a while to get things positioned, made even more difficult by the fact that I wanted to magnetize the character.  He can go on his own base if I ever wanted to play a game with him.

There was a lot of trial and error to get him to aim at the Razorwing, but ultimately I was successful. :-)

I still hope to do some weathering powder stuff on this, as in a bit of scorch marks and such.

As I mentioned in the previous post, this Cyberwolf is from Raging Heroes, who do such incredible work with their figures.

This is going to have a very interesting place of prominence on the display board.  It is very heavily magnetized.  So strong, in fact, that I have to make sure I don't rip the sheet metal away with the base!

I got a bead on it... come on... just one shot!

So, upwards and onwards!!!!  Stay tuned for more. 

You can't run away from me!

OK!  Back to the Sci Fi Blood Vestals.  I am looking forward to getting a few of these onto the Venoms and other transports after Adepticon.  Poses like this one should be great for showing the girls leaping off the transports! :-)

In the meantime, I will just have to enjoy how they look running around on the army board!

By the way, we have some new concept art from Raging Heroes!  These represent the Grunts of the Toughest Girls of the Galaxy.  The Kickstarter is closer and closer...