Winning a Painting Contest, In Spite of Myself

My FLGS held a painting competition this past Saturday.  In preparation, I've spent the last two or three weeks lovingly re-converting (more on that in another post) and painting my Ragnarok pattern Leman Russ.  Finished painting it yesterday morning.


 Packed it up in a nice padded box and drove off to my FLGS.  Get to my FLGS and realize... I forgot to bring the silly box.  Well, my FLGS is about 45 minutes from home and I was playing in a small tournament at the store so driving home to get the thing wasn't really an option; great.

more after the break

3D Vehicle Icons

I really grew accustomed to 3D vehicle icons when I did the Ecclesiarch and Fortress of Arrogance conversions.  I decided to dress up my Vostroyan vehicles with 3D icons modeled after the 'V' icon on the Baneblade transfer sheet.  It's a pretty neat looking emblem with the possibility for some nice texture.

I started by applying one of the large insignia from the Baneblade sheet  to a sheet of plasticard -- this will serve as the template for the shape.  I actually want a slightly smaller version but I'm using the large transfer to get the angles right.  I then cut out a piece of clear plastic from a blister pack (Yarrick, in this case) and taped that over the transfer to use as a substrate for the emblem.

To create the heavy 'I-beam' effect of the left side of the 'V', I went with a piece of 0.060" C-Channel, the rest of the emblem is simply 1-mm rod.  I laid down the left leg on top of  the corresponding piece of the transfer.    The rest of the icon was cut from the 1-mm rod and glued down over the transfer.   The last step was to add the skull between the two legs of the 'V'; easily accomplished using the 'Winged Skull' icon from the vehicle accessory sprue.

With the master completed, I heated up some water to soften a piece of insta-mold to create the mold to cast green-stuff versions of the emblem.  Here's the first cast:

Not too shabby, though I might see what I can do about improving the depth of the eyes on the skull. I'll update on the next attempt.   I also need to see where I can obtain Blue Stuff like Ron at From the Warp uses.  I'm curious to compare that to Insta-Mold.

Old Stuff Day, 2012

Yay old stuff day!  Though as infrequently as I post it may be redundant! OK here's a repost of one of my most popular -- Great Coat Guard, combined into one easy post.

I picked up a box of the Wargames Factory Shock Troops to build

some great coated Guardsmen to use as regular troops alongside of my Vostroyan Veterans.   I built and painted up two models as a test and I think they work.  The WGF bodies combined with GW arms and the Pig Iron Winter Militia heads make for some nice unique looking models.





My first platoon of greatcoats are ready to be primed; well at least the troops are.  This platoon will be lead by Al-Rahem or at least my great-coated interpretation.  Al or Alexei Romanov as I'm calling him is still a WIP.  First up is the platoon command squad with 3 meltas.

Next we have the balance of the first squad that goes with the prototypes that appear on the top of the page

And finally the second squad.

I decided to portray these guys as a rather motley hive-militia auxiliary to the First Born Veterans  hence they get an eclectic mix of lasguns scrounged from the battlefield including Catachan and Steel Legion las-carbines.  If I build another squad, I'll throw in a few lasguns from the Necromunda weapons sprue.