Cities and Madness

So, two things occurred to me recently: 1) I don't post on this blog anywhere near enough; and 2) I tend to get into the flow of my hobby work when I'm working on it and forget to take progress pictures—or I may just be lazy.

Anyway, some significant advancements on the hobby front have been made sine the last post.

First up, completing all 8 tiles for my DropZone Commander board. Very satisfying. Now I just have to paint them. And the buildings. And the roads. And then get pictures of all of them together. Anyway, pictures.

 All eight tiles laid out in what turns out to be one of very few possible 2x4 configs.

 Viewed from the side.

Viewed from dropship altitude.
As I mentioned earlier, really need to get the scenery painted as well. (At least it's built.)









The next item is something being finished—or more accurately, 3/4 finished: Crawling Chaos, fully painted, from the Cthulhu Wars game. Only have Black Goat left to do.

 The entire faction, in all its glory.

 Cultists, each holding different spellbooks.

 Six Cultists, six spellbooks.

Nightguants. Not particularly strong in combat, but can steal off with cultists or unwary monsters.

 Flying Polyps. Somewhat better in combat, but it's their spellbook that makes them great—they get to stop an enemy monster from fighting at all by sacrificing their own attacks.

 Hunting Horrors. Good in combat. Even better with their spellbook which allows them to fly into any battle you have to fight.

 The great blue gribbly himself, Nyarlathotep. Weak in the early game, but late game he can be the most destructive Great Old One on the board.


















And Nyarlathotep from behind. Enjoy all those gribbly tentacles and other appendages.


















And last but not least, we have the start of the Black Goat faction, which I was airbrushing just this afternoon.

 Cultists and lesser monsters (Fungi and Ghouls).

Shub-Niggurath and her Dark Young.

10mm Terrain & Lasercut boards

So, about a week ago I got two things. First was my laser-etched road boards for dropzone. The other was another pack of small buildings from Blotz. Said buildings were assembled… creatively. This actually pretty nice, because it gives me some different footprints to play with when organising terrain.

So, have some of said buildings on one of the road tiles.

3 Industrial units and a warehouse to make small work district.

 The same layout from above.

And a model's eye view from the western edge of the board.

 More buildings laid out across 2 tiles. In all I have 8 tile designs that work together in at least 30 different configurations.

The same setup, viewed from the eastern side.

PHR ready to drop

So, I'm finally putting up another post on my criminally underutilized blog. I finished the first 750 points of my PHR force for Dropzone Commander. Hex camo is once again done with the Anarchy model stencils.

Everything is magnetized in this force, allowing WYSIWYG dropships.

Closer view of an Ares (front) and Phobos (rear) slung underneath a Neptune medium dropship. The core of this force is 2 of these squads.

Tried using flash with this shot to better show off the contrast between the various colours.

All forces on the ground. On the outer flanks are Ares and Phobos walkers, and towards the centre are Janus scout walkers. In the foreground are Triton A1 infantry dropships, and their accompanying infantry squads.

Ares and Phobos. The bases are just 1.5mm circles from Litko. Got 100 of them for a very reasonable price, should be all I ever need.

Another view, trying to show the iridescent effect I used on the rail weaponry for the walkers.

Close up of the Janus scouts. I may trim the bases slightly for better balance when on the dropship.

The first squad of Immortals. Infantry play a pivotal role in Dropzone Commander, being the only units capable of searching buildings and extracting objectives from within.

Second squad of Immortals. These were a lot faster to paint than UCM Legionnaires, though that may be because these guys are block colour, and Legionnaires have a fair amount of fine detail on them.

The PHR Advance

So, I've been painting a bit more this last week—actually a fair bit more than usual. Probably something to do with my Xbox being out for repairs… anyway, this is my second 'Skirmish' sized force for DzC, the Post Human Republic. Their shtick is battle walkers (mechs) and cybernetic enhancements for everyone.

Neptune class dropship. Underslung is an Ares class AT walker.

 Another view of the Neptune + Ares. Normally the Neptune can carry walker, back to back, but I only have 1 painted.

 Closer view of the Ares. I painted some iridescent blue pigment into the vents along the top, but I'm not sure how well it shows up in the pictures.

 Rear view of the Ares, showing off the powerplant (dark metal) and radiators(?) (dark bronze). The silver on the legs is Vallejo Model Air Gungrey, washed with Secret Weapon Heavy Body Black. It actually creates a really nice dark metal look for me.

 Attempts at heat discoloration on the Neptune's drive nacelles. The base colour is GW Tin Bitz (the new Warpstone Bronze is about 2 shades darker), washed to about the 3/4 mark on each plate with GW Leviathan Purple and then up to the 1/2 mark with GW Baal Red. (And I will never understand GW discontinued their matte drying range of washes.)

 And now we have my attempts at OSL on the inside of the Neptune's drives. I think it actually looks better in the photo than in person.

 Triton A1 light dropship, armed with optional missile pods. While these are kind of underwhelming in the game vs armour, they do give the Triton surprising capability for building demolition.

 Rather smaller than the Neptune (though their wingspan is approximately the same), it's still packed with detail, most of it brought out with a simple targeted wash using Secret Weapon's Dark Sepia (this stuff is like the old GW Devlan Mud for me, even if it does dry gloss).

 The underside of the Triton, once more showing off some OSL inside the drives. Rather easier to do than the Neptune due to how small they are.

I should note that there are technically only two colours down here: VMA Sand, and VMA Gungrey. The former is hit with a targeted wash of Dark Sepia, and the later with simple wash of Heavy Body Black.

 This is the Triton A1 carrying its charges, a pair of currently base painted Janus scout walkers.

 Trying something different with the infantry. They were primed white, then hit with a shading wash of Heavy Body black. The front left soldier has a layer of VMC Transparent Yellow beneath VMC Pale Sand. The front right soldier has only the VMC Pale Sand coat.

I'm not actually sure which one I like best.

The back of the infantry base.

Dropzone UCM [Done!]

So, it's been a while, and longer since I posted anything about any kind of progress. Had a painting day with Mark on Monday; that was fun. Anyway, This evening I finished off the first 750 points of my UCM army for Dropzone Commander. I've put up progress pics here before, but now they're actually finished. It's a nice feeling.

The completed force. This is a fully air-mobile group, with infantry mounted in Bear APC's that share the central Condor. The Sabre MBTs on the left own the left hand Condor, while the Rapier AA Tanks on the right have the right hand Condor to call their own. The two smaller craft in the middle of the aerial formation are Falcon gunships, designed to provide top cover for tanks and infantry as they deploy.

The Sabre MBT squad, A7X. The guns are poseable thanks to magnets and some very careful effort in pinning key components.

The Rapier AA squad, S2Y. The guns are poseable for the same reasons as the Sabres'.

Two full Legionnaire squads (3 bases) along with their Bear APCs. Squad II (left) uses Bear 53. Squad V (right) uses Bear 51.

Yes, all those squad markings are hand painted.

 The Condor dropship for Sabre squad A7X.

 The Condor dropship for Rapier squad S2Y.

 Transport formation.

 Another angle on the transports. You can see the underslung vehicles better here.

 Looking at those underslung vehicles from below.

 A base from Legionnaire squad V.

  Bases from Legionnaire squad II.

Legionnaire squad II again, this time with flash. I need to think of a better lighting setup to use with infantry bases.

 Next up on my painting desk: PHR. These are the guys that will serve as opponents for the UCM above.

A slightly closer look at the initial stage of painting on a Neptune dropship.