Azyrite Ruins

This week its back to scenery for my AoS woodland board in the form of some Azyrite Ruins.

I wanted to experiment with mounting the Ruins pieces into a base so I could add details such as a textured floor. So, to begin with, I arranged the ruins into 2 sets and glued them to some MDF.

Next, I rolled patches of DAS air-drying modelling clay onto the MDF and used the Temple texture roller from Greenstuff World. The DAS adhered to the MDF with PVA - which turned out to be a mistake as it contributed to the MDF warping.

Once the DAS clay had dried, I mixed up some texture paint from sand, PVA and polyfiller. This was then applied to the bases, taking care not to cover the template floor areas. I then primed the plastic ruins and the temple floor.

To paint the ruins I used the colour scheme detailed in the below WHTV video. The template floor sections were painted Rakarth Flesh > Pallid Wych Flesh > White Scar. In preparation for flocking, the earth parts of the base were painted with Hobbycraft dark brown paint.

And for the flocking, I essentially followed the below video from Lukes APS.

And this is how they turned out! To finish off the pieces I added some aquatic foliage with a hot glue gun and a couple of pieces of twig, glued down with PVA.

And these are the pieces on the board. I'm reasonably happy with how they turned out. I'm a bit annoyed with how much the MDF warped as a result of the PVA glue contracting. Since making these pieces I have switched over to using Extruded Polystyrene as this doesn't warp. It's much more expensive but, in my opinion, that's a worthy trade-off.

Next up I'll be working on Sprinewrack Talons!

Imperial Knight Re-basing

A few months back I managed to accidentally separate my Imperial Knight from its base!

As I didnt really like the base as it was, I pulled all the texture away from the base and started again... and here we have the final result!

I did a WIP post here which included some more photos.

Nerd Day 2018 Battlescape

Last year I hosted a gaming weekend for myself and 3 buddies. I posted about that event here.

This year, the event will be held at the end of August and will focus entirely on the fantasy side of the hobby... Blood Bowl, Age of Sigmar & Shadespire. To help us play Age of Sigmar to its full potential, we will need a suitably awesome board to play on!

The board aesthetic will be themed along the lines of a Ghyran (Realm of Life) forest which has remnants of its Nurgle corruption.

I have already purchased the mat. I went for the PWork Wargames Terrain Mat - Woodland. It's a great mat and is the perfect tone I was after! (e.g. not too dark or bright)

To populate the board I will be adding various pieces of terrain and scenery... e.g. fallen trees, Azyrite Ruins, temple columns and Nurgle trees. I will cover each piece in detail when they are complete. For now, here is some early work in progress pictures of the pieces I've started working on.

Nurgle Daemons Great Unclean One

Nurgle Daemons Nurglings

As expected, it didn't take long to bash through these guys and get them finished.

Along with the Plague Bearers, these were a pleasure to paint. I followed the Nurgle scheme covered here but used the colours described for the wounds on some of the Nurglings. I wanted to see how they would look as an alternative colour scheme to the normal green tones. I think it worked very well.

Nurgle Daemons Nurglings Work In Progress

Next up, following on from the Plague Bearers is a unit of cheeky Nurglings.

The Nurgle clour scheme I'm following worked so well on the Plague Bearers that I wanted to continue using it. However, I wanted to introduce an alternative colour scheme to some of the Nurglings so there was a bit of variety. In the end, I settled on following the same process, however, when it came to applying Bestigor Flesh >Ungor Flesh around the wounds, I airbrushed random Nurglings entirely in these colours. I think it works quite well!

These Nurgle Daemons are proving very quick to paint so hopefully I'll be able to complete these in the next couple of days.

Nurgle Daemons Plague Bearers

Here we have my first fully painted Nurgle unit! And I had an absolute blast painting them.

I used the colour scheme described here

The process and colours work well, however, I did screw up the base a bit so had to tweak the process and paints used for them on my future Nurgle Daemons. Anyway, I hope you like them!

Nurgle Daemons Plague Bearers Work In Progress

Quick WIP post covering the unit of Plague Bearers I've been working on... they're coming along nicely!

These photos were taken after I'd finished applying Blood For The Blood God to the wounds/boils... so nearly at the end of the process.

Nurgle Daemons Colour Scheme

Now my Sylvaneth force is 'finished' (for now) and my trip to Warhammer World is done, its time to turn my attention to preparing for Nerd Day 2018. Part of this preparation is to paint up 1000 points of Nurgle Daemons... and, obviously, I need a colour scheme to do that!

Whilst searching for inspiration on Youtube, I found the rather awesome video below.

Using the colours, techniques and process covered in this video I distilled my own process (described below) which I plan to use... and will test our on a unit of Plaguebearers in the coming days.

For now, here's the process:

STAGE 1 - BASE COLOURS

Skin
Basecoats

• Loren Forest - all over airbrush
• Zamesi Desert  - 45% zenithal
• Nurgling Green - 90% zenithal

Nurglings2

Basecoat

• Rakarth Flesh
• Pallid Wych Flesh

Shade

• Druchii Violet/Drakenhoff Nightshade

Wounds/Boils/Inside Mouth
Basecoats

• Bestigor Flesh - airbrush
• Ungor Flesh - airbrush/brush as needed

Steel/Silver Metallics

Basecoats

• Black
• Leadbelcher - drybrush

Gold/Bronze Metallics

Basecoats

• Warplock Bronze
• Brass Scorpion

Horns/Claws/Toe Nails

• Black - from the top down to green skin colour already applied

Heads and other Trophies of dead Flesh

Basecoats

• Ogryn Camo
• Rakarth Flesh/Slaanesh Grey

Shade

• Druchii Violet/Drakenhoff Nightshade - random washes of the two colours on the skin

Cloth

Basecoat

• White Scar or other appropriate base colour (e.g. Khorne Red)

Weather

• Brown pigment - into areas of shade
• Rust pigments - patchy all over 
• Black/Dark brown pigments - into recesses
• Wipe off from highlight areas with a cotton wool bud
• Seal with pigment fixer.

STAGE 2 - SHADING

• Vallejo gloss varnish
• all over shade with Dark ToneStrong Tone/wash mixing medium *do not wash any cloth* - instead, matte down the cloth with Army Painter wash mixing medium
• randomly apply wash mix to areas of the base to matte them down

STAGE 3 - DETAILS AND EFFECTS

Skin
Highlights

• Nurgling Green - drybrush
• Nurgling Green/White Scar 50/50 mix - drybrush

Targeted wash

• Athonian Camodshde - into recesses
• Athonian Camoshade/Nuln Oil 50/50 - wash into recesses already painted with Athonian Camoshade
• Druchi Violet/Drakenhoff Nightshade - wash randomly around the model in the creases 

Wounds/Boils/Inside Mouth
Shade/effects

• Reikland Fleshade - generous into boils/wounds!
• Baneblade Brown/White Scar 50/50 mix - apply to teeth
• Chaos Black/Evil Sun Scarlet - diluted so like a wash. apply to the lower areas of the founds/boils and drag down (leakage!). Also, apply in mouth
• Blood for the Blood God (slightly diluted with water) into lower parts of the wounds/boils. Also, apply to the mouth.
• Nurgle's Rot - applied around boils/wounds like above step

Eyes

• Nurgle's Rot
• Ungor Flesh

Heads and other Trophies of dead Flesh

Highlight

• Slaanesh Grey
• Ulthuan Grey
• Dark Reaper - highlight any hair on dead heads.

Steel/Silver Metallics

Shade/effects

• Rhinox Hide/Black - sponge over metallic areas
• Agrax Earthshade Gloss - applied only to any mechanical parts (to simulate oily parts) 
• Typhus Corrosion/Ryza Rust - in patches (to simulate rust)
• Stormhost Silver - drybrush (edge highlight for character models)

Gold/Bronze Metallics
Shade/effects

• Rhinox Hide/Black - sponge over 
• Agrax Earthshade Gloss - applied to any mechanical parts to simulate oily parts 
• Stormhost Silver - drybrush 
• Nihilakh Oxide - slightly diluted applied to some recesses (less is more!)

Horns/Claws/Toe Nails

• Gloss varnish - towards the top of the horns

STAGE 4 - BASE

In terms of the base, I'll be going with something like the below. Black/brown colours and some rusty weathering powders along with some black glossy areas.

Base colours

• Mechanicus Standard Grey - airbrushed over the whole base
• Dryad Bark - airbrushed around the outer edge of the base
• Abaddon Black - Airbrushed around the rim and at various spots on the base to create a shadow.
• Soot/Dark Brown pigment heavily diluted and applied to the base

Weathering Powder/Effects

• Rust pigment weathering powder - selectively dabbed on to the base.
• Seal pigments with Isopropanol alcohol
• 'Ardcoat - selectively applied to areas of the base
• Abaddon Black - paint the rim of the base.

A Weekend of Gaming at Warhammer World

At the end of April 2018 I spent the weekend gaming at Warhammer World. During my time there I played my first games of Age of Sigmar, Shadespire, 8th edition 40k and Warhammer Quest: Silver Tower! What a weekend it was!! 👍😁

This trip acted as a deadline for completion of my Sylvaneth army and, with a matter of days to spare, I successfully completed my final model, Alarielle!

My gaming partner and I focused on AoS first. We kicked things off with a 500 point game on Friday evening. I didn't do very well... and was tabled on turn 3 (or 4 - I can't quite remember!) A combination of having a poor grip on Sylvaneth special rules and picking a poor selection of units contributed to my treefolk getting swiftly chopped down by my friends Ironjawz! Never the less, it was great to finally play AoS.

Following the practice AoS game, we relocated to Bugmans for some Shadespire! I rocked out my Sepulchral Guard against my friend's Orcs. Once again, I didn't do very well! Poor preparation on my part led to another spanking! It was still great to finally play Shadespire and I'll use the experience to help rebuild my desk now that I have a game under my belt!

On Saturday we had a 40k feature table, Shrine World Boralis IV, booked. This board, I recently noticed, featured in the April edition of White Dwarf! We managed 2 games, the first being a small 50 power level 'warm up', followed by a larger 150 power level battle. We used the open war cards to determine the deployment, objectives and special rules. As I'd been working on my Sylvaneth since last September, I rolled out my old faithful Light Knights Space Marine chapter to face off against my friends Chaos Space Marines. I had aimed to paint up a Primaris Blood Angels army but apparently, there are only 24 hours in a day...

We didn't finish the first game but my friend took the honours in the subsequent battle. I can't remember the exact objective in play during that battle but I think we had to advance and take 3 objectives placed in the enemy players deployment zone. I played a little too conservatively early on as I kept many of my units in the backfield to deny deepstriking... so essentially ran out of turns to push the small advantage I had in the later turns. It was great to finally play 8th edition and we both found it much more streamlined compared to 7th! I also found (generic) Space Marines to be a little too nebulous in terms of the Stratagems available. I'm very much looking forward to fielding my Blood Angels... whenever I get them painted up... as they feel much more thematic/interesting!

On to Sunday! We had the truly wonderful Ruins of Dras’Shiel AoS table booked. I write 'wonderful'... it is a truly beautiful board, however, for a Sylvaneth army wanting to place Wyldwoods, it's a pain as there's very limited room to put them down!

After the spanking I took in our first AoS practice game, I spent Saturday evening creating a cheat sheet to help me learn the special rules I had access to. This helped immeasurably! We played a battleplan which tasked us with capturing objectives which came down as comet fragments throughout turns 1, 2 and 3. It wasn't looking great for me during the early/middle game but I pulled it back to win in the final turn. I thoroughly enjoyed playing a bigger game of AoS and my Sylvaneth did me proud. Alarielle kicked ass!! I can foresee a few purchases to enhance my army capabilities - another unit of Tree-Revenants and a unit of Scythe wielding Kurnoth Hunters will most likely find their way into my collection at some point later in the year.

Finally, as the weekend came to a close on Sunday afternoon, we once again descended on Bugmans- this time for lunch and a quick game of Warhammer Quest: Silver Tower. Again, it was great to finally play a game I'd been interested in since launch. We didn't do too well though, getting killed in the 3rd room. It was still great fun and we can't wait to play again with a bigger group later in the year.

With Silver Tower done, we headed home. This was the 3rd or 4th Warhammer World gaming weekend me and my friend have organised. It was another great weekend and provided lots of hobby motivation for my upcoming projects - 1000 points of Nurgle Deamons and a Ghyhran board, both to be ready for Nerd Day in August 2018!!