Warmachine: Black Souls

As if I did't have enough on my plate I've been bitten by the Warmachine bug again. I last played in 2006 (before Hordes was even released) if I recall correctly and I've done my best to avoid the game ever since. But now it's grabbed my attention again, so I've raided my bits box and re-assembled as many of my old mini's as I could AND I've dropped £70 quid or so on Mercenary units and Warcasters.

Now, I'm not a fan of using traditional faction colour schemes or even using "in-game characters" so while I'll be building a  force using the Highborn Covenant mercenary list, it will actually represent a Thamar dedicated mercenary unit called the "Black Souls".

I've already created a miniature to represent the Companies main war-caster from the Hayley warcaster model plus some bits from Legend of the Five Rings and Diablo II miniatures but she (Lady-Captain Errin Taine) will be played primarily using the rules for Ashlynn, with occasional forays into using the stats for Primer Magnus (although Magnus can't actually be used in a Highborn covenant list, I expect to have enough units that will work for Cryx to be able to put together a Four-Star Syndicate list when I want to use her as Magnus)

The idea is that she is a former lover/companion of Magnus who learned her trade as one of his flunkies before nicking some of his designs and effing off to start her own company of Thamarites. Once I have a large enough force under my belt, I'll be adding Fiona the Black as my second caster. Appropriate, as she is the only Thamarite Warcaster in the game.

In the meantime, I've decided to go with a Thamar themed colour scheme: Black armour with silver details and black cloth with bone and/or red detailing.

I've already painted a test miniature using the one and only Devil Dog miniature I could find all the parts for and I'm quite happy with how he turned out. Note the base is unfinished: I've been trying out a number of basing style with the test model. I like this one best though, so I'll be gluing him down and filling up the gaps in the base shortly.

Devil Dog Test Miniature

Ironically, fielding the Highborn Covenant means I'll be able to take Morrowan units who hate Thamarites and can't be used in the same army. Not to worry, I'll paint them up as Thamarites and call them Thamarites. I just won't be able to use them in the same list as any actual Thamarite models.

Terrain Tutorial: Industrial Style Fencing

Another bit of relatively easy utility terrain. Great for blocking lines of advance (in some systems), creating storage areas, supply depots and even basketball courts.

You will need:
Superglue
Good Pair of Scissors
Sand
Milli-put
Fine Metal Mesh (I got my mine from the paper mache section of an art store. Car body mesh also works well).
Small, thin wooden sticks - toothpicks, coffee stirrers, anything like that.
Basing Materials - in my case I like to use cake trays, because they're good and thick and the foil-treated surface helps prevent the cardboard from warping.

Some of what you will need.

 Step One: Eat the cake. Yum Yum.
Cut the basing material into long thin strips about an inch wide. I've cut mine into 8 inch long strips because my mesh comes in eight inch sections, to save a bit of measuring. Once you've done that, place three blobs of milliput on the strip. One at each end and one in the middle. If you're using the cake tray, you'll need to superglue these down, otherwise the milliput won't take. Then cut you're wooden sticks to size (I like 75mm) and stick them into the milliput. Build up more milliput around the stick to help secure it in place. The sticks don't all have to be exactly the right length (or even straight) because the fence posts would subside over time.

After the first few steps you'll have something like this.

 Next, cut the wire-mesh. You want each strip to be as long as the base and as tall as the fence posts. In my case, that mean's 8inches long by 75mm high. Yes I'm mixing my measures here. I'm a child of the metric-changeover period. I work with both systems. Place more milliput lobs between the posts (remember that if you're using the cake tray you will need to glue them in place. Push the mesh down into all five blobs and use superglue to stick the mesh to the posts. You may find you need to use more miliput or blue tac to keep the wire stuck to the sticks long enough for the glue to dry.

More milli-put blobs added and mesh fence in place.

 Now you need to frame the mesh in place between the original posts and a second set of three posts. Again, secure them to the base using milli-put (and super-glue if using the cake tray). You'll often find the posts don't want to stay together and will branch out to form a V shape. Use milli-put and superglue to fix the top's of the two posts together.

Stick the two posts together with milli-put and super-glue.

 Remember to make a set of gates using two sets of four fence posts. I tend to make one gate base for every two or three bases of normal fencing.

Gates

Once you've assembled your fences, let the milli-put set over night before doing anything else.

Silo Build Part II -Painting

Part two of the silo terrain building article.

Taking a very old, stiff-bristled brush I half-stipled, half painted long streaks of Model Air Rust paint down the sides of the Silo and around the spot wields. If you don't have Model Air Rust, any dark brown/umber paint mixed with a metallic will do.

I did the same on the upper surface of the silo and around the rim, careful to make sure I applied the rust coloured paint anywhere water might collect in pools.

Taking Mig Light Rust Effects and using the same stiff brush I painted orange streaks over the rust-brown, being careful to leave the rust brown showing a the edges. If you don't have Mig Light Rust, then any bright orange paint will do the same trick. Just make sure to water it down to the consistency of ink first.

And again on the upper surface of the silo

At this point I did something stupid: I forgot to take a photo of the next stage. All I did was take some Games Workshop Armageddon Dust and, using my fingers, smudged it all the "clean", silver bits of the silo to represent years of dust storms and the like.

After adding the Armaggeddon dust, I overloaded my stiff-bristled, old brush with ink and, using painting down from the top of the silo to the bottom, applied it all over the silo, been careful to leave as many streaks and making the coverage as uneven as possible. 

With the Silo now looking like a rusty, abandoned piece of junk, I painted the base Vellejo Model Colour English Uniform and dryrbished with Vellajo Model Colour Green Ochre.

All Done. About 2 man-hours of work.

Silo Build Part I

It's been a while since I knocked together any terrain to add to my collection. Inspired by a champagne truffle box, I decided it was time to add a storage silo my collection of 28mm Bad Landing/Post-Apocalypse scenery. I have a good number of storage silo's already, but they're better suited to 15mm scale or less. So it's time for me to fill this gaping hole in my scenery collection:

Parts: Sturdy round box, CD, Old Ink Pot Lid, Bottle Top, Old Spru's, Staples.

I first cut th sprus to length then glued them together, using the round "spacer" on the sprue as a spacer between the two "pipes".

Like this.

I super-glued the pipes to the side of the box, then glued the box to the CD.

I then super-glued the bottle top and ink pot lids in place to make a hatch. I made sure that the spru-pipes were flush with the bottle lid.

I used groups of three staples to make ladder rungs and super-flued them place. I used milli-put to make "spot weld" marks. The flock was glued to the base with PVA glue.

After spraying with a black undercoat, I lightly sprayed over the top with Army Painter Plate Mail Spray-Paint.