The Deacon - Post 300!

Far beneath the ruins there are the remains of a church. Here the broken, the twisted, and the forgotten come to worship. They are called to services by The Deacon. Its wails and the clattering of the bone on wood lets all the dwellers of the Underhollow know that time of the Preacher is come.

This started as a little doodle for AOS28 but it very quickly became apparent it would fit quite easily into the Inq28 setting I've developed.

Construction was very easy; a skeleton torso with zombie arms greenstuffed on (I turned the board so the face pointed out). The head was a Genestealer leftover with the tongue cut out and a new mouth and tongue sculpted. The eyes were also blanked out because I'd just watched Alien Covenant. The lower body was made from greenstuff. Painting was just various glazes over grey.

I also, at the behest of my son, knocked him a Space Marine together out of bits and painted it to his specifications:

Shadowserpent

The ratmen had found us; we'd been on a long expedition to the eastern shadowcap fields. Four days without sight of the sun. There were occasional drifts of snow that had blown down there somehow, and our breath billowed in front of us. We were cold and tired and that's why we probably didn't hear the ratmen before they burst out of the sewers. We've all heard the stories, we knew what would happen, we all know how many of us are lost to ratmen raiders. We were, you know, going to make a fight of it, but we were in no doubt what would happen to us.

Then, there was this noise. Rasping breath, like a horse that's been run too hard, but hissing too. Something moved; massive, light glinting off old armour and hard scales. And eyes that burned like coals. And this thing was fast, I mean really fast, like those black snakes you see in the ruins of the temple district. In seconds the ratmen were down or running. And then this massive thing, it turned those red eyes on us. And that big bastard... he winked. And then he he turned, the armour on his tail striking sparks off the wall, and he walked away.

But it's not the wink I remember. It was his shield. His shield was scale. That's like me carrying a shield covered in human skin. And I remember thinking, yeah he let us go. This time. But if he's carrying a shield like that... what if next time he's not in a good mood? 

*****                        *****

This is the first character created specifically to match the new setting of Stonehollow 
As I say, the Skald and the Faceless are being transplanted into the setting with no difficulty but this is the first one created with the setting in mind. As you can see, I'm started noodling about with ideas about how to do the shadowcap fungus on the base.

The construction was very simple; it's a pushfit Stormcast who I removed the sigmar iconography from and then hands, arms and head from leftover lizardmen I bought my son. A few other bits helped disguise the overall outline. I suppose I should have rejointed the legs to reverse the knees but I think the general shape works without that.

I'm also bringing over another character I created earlier because there frankly aren't enough AoS28-ified lizards out there.

Next up will, I think, be the remains of one of the noble houses that didn't leave the White City On The Hill when it fell. I wonder what became of them...?

Stonehollow

The great city of Stonehaven was once a major trading post of the Realms; but the realm of Shadows is not a place conducive to healthy living. And so the great city started to be avoided; with no trade or goods and with all roads in covered in swirling mists and shadows, haunted by strange beasts, there was no reasons for people to visit the White City. And as areas of the White City On The Hill fell into ruin, the shadowcaps spread.

It was the Kharadron Overlords who discovered that the shadowcap fungus could be a valuable commodity; the healing and mutagenic powers of it made it sought after by all races of the Realms. Slowly and surely the new trade started to bring the City back to life.

But Stonehollow – as the shell of the city now is – is a place of the faint of heart. The Sylvaneth haunt the groves that overran the  white ruins; the Underhollow - the habitable spaces under the snowswept streets and courts - are haunted by Skaven who war with the shadowserpents, fallen Seraphon adapted to life underground. Degenerate barbarians hunt fungus farmers through the ruins and the bone orchards while the Kharadron Overlords load their ships from the spire they have erected over the city. 

Deep in the mists of the shadows, strange creatures spawn; warped and changed by exposure to the Shadowcaps these peculiar beasts are hunted down by the Stalker’s Guild – men and women of all races who capture the things spawned by the shadowfungus and sell them on to circuses, pit fights, carnivals and the bonesmiths of the Flesheater Courts.  

I was looking for a fantasy setting to play around with and Games Workshop provided with this rather fabulous little tool: Free City Generator 

The setting you see above was created based on the rolls made on those charts. So we shall see where this little experiment takes us. Stay tuned!

"Deserve's got nothin' to do with it."

Work has been a touch hectic recently but I have managed to plug away at a few bits and pieces.

The town of Ratwater is growing:

And we have a new posse in town.

Again, fab Artizan figures with great faces and oodles of character.

Up next will be some fantasy, I think. I feel the urge to do some more conversions...

Space Hulk

The big victory over the summer was the completion of the new Space Hulk Set. A really lovely set of miniatures to construct and paint and the whole shebang looks lovely when it's together. Expect this to hit the table soon.

I even painted the door bases...

There are two kinds of people in this world...

...those who keep up with their blogs and those who don't. It turns out, I'm the latter.

I have managed to keep with with various bits and pieces of building and painting, but family time, results day and then preparing for the new year got in the way of keeping this old thing up to date.

I finished one major project - which I'll blog about this week - but then I've dabbled a bit before starting on something new. Or rather, old.

Here is the start of the new project:

Yes, my return to Ratwater and Old West gaming. These are the Artizan versions of Angel Eyes, Blondie and Tuco from Leone's masterpiece*. They're fabulous sculpts but alas the Lee Van Cleef was marred by a horrible miscast on one side of the face that I simply didn't see until after priming and basing. As long as you don't look too closely, it's fine. Certainly not enough to put me off buying more.

I am actually rather proud of these; they're pretty screen accurate - matching the green/brown of Clint's poncho was a cast iron sod.

I've also treated myself to some more scenery to expand the town of Ratwater so watch out for those in the near future.



*Yes, I know everyone is supposed to think Once Upon a Time In The West is the best; it self evidently isn't and it's my blog, so suck on it.

Hive Karhonnen

I have the usual green flock mats for games on lush worlds, but I was missing some sort of base area for SF gaming. This started out as work for Shadow Wars: Armageddon, but given the news about Necromunda, it's going to serve double duty.

The tiles were bought from http://www.wargame-model-mods.co.uk/  It's a very clever magnetised system which I didn't bother with as I'll be using my own terrain. The colour scheme follows the Harkonnen palette I used before.


Once assembled, they were primed black and the silver was done with some Halfords car paint (a slight warning here, this seems to include some laquer in the mix and so it was quite resistant to washes: weathering of this paint had to be done with powders and pigments). The green was airbrushed on, fairly neatly using masking tape on 3 of the boards and then freehand on the fourth to provide some variety (and disguise that I had two the same).

Weathering was done with a variety of washes and pigments to get it down and dirty like the underhive should be.

Finally, I attached the provided lights. Simple little LED circuits which just needed fastening in place.

I'm really happy with these and I think they'll lift the look of any SF game immeasurably.