Scenic September: WarCry Terrain

Finally getting around to posting the pics for the other half of Azazel's September challenge. Again, mostly just a pic dump, as there isn't a whole lot to say about these. Sprayed black, then just heavily overbrushed, using a half-inch brush for the grey first, then a quarter-inch for most of the rest. The seasoned and cut timber is XV-88, while the fresher logs are Rhinox Hide (I think. Might have been Dryad Bark) for the bark, and Ushabti bone for the still-green inner wood. Some Typhus Corrosion and Skrag Brown for rust on the steel parts, the always wonderful Nihilakh Oxide on the bronze gratings, and then a bit of drybrushing to bring both of those back up.

Starting off with the bell tower, the coolest piece in the set. Again, these were shot before I switched back to my dark background again, and the high contrast made it hard to get great pics, but if you open the bigger versions, they should be a bit better. The stairs fit really nicely, staying in place well, but still easily removable to use elsewhere.

In retrospect, I probably should have done a "breakdown" pic of this one, too. It's actually four separate parts, each usable on their own in combination with various other parts of the set: The fallen statue, the stairs, the platform, and the "gate" on the end of the platform. Again, stays together very nicely during game play despite how easy it is to take apart and move around.

The various smaller pieces of the set. I don't have enough room in my lightbox to show the bridges actually in use. The log barricades really didn't photograph well here; the bronze sections are much clearer in person. If you look at the end parts of the little ruin, you'll see there are two different broken grating pieces. If you put them together facing each other, they're both distorted in the same direction, so you can set up a spot where something just busted right through and the broken parts all look right for it, like it really was one section originally.

The first of the larger buildings. It takes a lot of angles to show everything that's going on here.

The second larger section of ruins. I really like how that joining piece between the two halves works. It's just the right degree of broken down for the gap there. There's a third pic of this, but it's not uploading for some reason.

The final, and largest, section of ruins. I don't really have a good shot of the whole bunch of it together, but here's one from a game a while back. This was actually before I'd got it to the point it is in the rest of the pics, but it still looked pretty good at tabletop distance:

I'd like to do a little more with it, maybe do a super light drybrush with an off-white over everything, and there's a ton of sloppy spots that could use some touch-up, but it's more than good enough for casual use. As usual, I have a few more things currently going on, and hopefully I'll get some of them done and ready to post soon, but who knows how long it will actually be. Until then, y'all have a good one, y'hear!

Rome Wasn't Built in a Day

But Carngrad (or at least this section of it) actually was.*

One of my gaming buddies came over on Saturday, and we finally got around to actually playing Warcry. The weekend before, I'd seen some people playing, and one of them said that he thought it might be just barely possible to build all the scenery in a single day. Obviously, that's the kind of thing I take as a challenge, but after finishing, either he builds extremely slowly, or he also meant all the dudes from the set as well, or something else, I don't know. Even taking more care with cleanup and such than I usually do, and consulting the guide that Waywalker Studios did on making sure your Terrain can actually be used for all the Battlefield cards, it still didn't take anywhere near a full day.

Speaking of that guide, as you may or may not have noticed, the assembly instructions in the box only show how to build two Ruins, and leave the remainder up to you. Which would be all well and good except that the game is built around specific Terrain set-ups on the included cards, and if you do just randomly build something cool with the rest, you won't necessarily actually be able to set all of those up. Furthermore, there are a couple of places where it's important to not follow the directions, as they tell you to glue on the stairs and a couple of other parts that the cards call for using in different configurations. The Waywalker Studios guide is good, but they relied on the pictures from the set, which don't have very good angles for the ruins that don't have directions. So hopefully, as well as being a build showcase, this will also have some useful reference images of those ruins from different angles.

Some of these barely fit in my light box. It got a bit sketchy at points.

These are some different angles on the ruin that doesn't have a good pic in the instructions. Hopefully, along with the parts list in the Waywalker guide, they'll make it easier for someone else to build than it was for me.

The other ruin that doesn't have directions. This one is pretty simple, tho.

One of the two that do have directions. Where they did them (and didn't tell you to glue things that should remain loose), the directions are really very good, with the different types of parts categorized and colour-coded.

The last of the ruins. Together, they really do offer a pretty impressive range of options. OK, technically, I think the next one is a ruin as well, but I think of it as The Bell Tower instead. It doesn't really have the same range of options and potential for mixing with the other parts, but is still really cool.

Again, as noted before, don't glue the stairs in. They pressure-fit just fine. I chose to leave the skeletons off of this one because A) the overall concentration of them was getting a bit high for my taste after doing the barricades, B) they'll be cool for other projects, and C) they all have the same pose, and collectively, it makes them look like they were sentenced to The Hell of Infinite Coffee and No Toilets. One big thing to note is that none of the stone framework is damaged except the very top. Chop off those shattered column tops and this could work great as part of an intact structure, make an actual bell tower or something. Also, you could put all kinds of things in the niches instead of the skeletons. A bit skinny for most actual minis, but there re definitely things that could make cool statuary or whatever in there.

The last major piece of terrain from the set. Again, don't glue the stairs in, and ideally don't glue the platform to the statue head (it actually stays on surprisingly solidly), or the barricade at the end either. I did that before I looked up advice on building these, and really wish I hadn't.

See. If that bit hadn't been there, this would be great for extending the platform area available. But it's stuck, so that's always going to be blocked off. Don't make my mistake. Leave it unglued. It sits on there just fine. I thought I also had a pic showing how well the stairs fit with the other ruins, but apparently not. You can see it in the big pic at the top, but it's not as nice as it would have been if I'd done it in the light box.

I really want more of this Terrain. It's built to be pretty compatible with the other AoS Terrain from the Azyrite Ruins on, and there's so much more potential than what I felt constrained to by the limitations of the Game.  A lot of this stuff (particularly the bell tower and statue head) could even fit in with 40K Sector Imperialis sets pretty nicely with a bit of work.

I've also got a bunch of shots of the Death Guard stuff that I've done this month, just need to get those ready to post. Until then, y'all have a good one, y'hear!

*Don't ask me about how long it's going to take to get it painted.

Bits and Pieces

Between a bit of post-Squaduary burnout and getting ready to move, I haven't got much finished this month, hobby-wise. I've been working on stuff here and there, doing at least a little every day, and it is making progress, but not completing things right now, for the most part.

I did knock out the chests from the Rogue Trader box, tho. They were pretty fun to paint, with some cool detail, but it's not too fine, so I could work on them even when my hands were kind of shaky.

I also got around to another project that I've been thinking of for almost a year, since my brother got me back into MtG, and I picked up a couple of Battle Decks from Card Kingdom. One of them was their Dino-Might deck, which uses a bunch of Dinosaur Tokens. I've always felt that the word "token" implied something a bit more substantial than a card, so I wanted to make a few actual ones. At some point last summer, I got a cheap tub of plastic dinos from the hardware store's toy shelf, and finally got around to gluing them on to bases and getting some paint on there. I'm going to go back and do a bit more, clean up the bases a little, and mark on them that they're 3/3 with Trample, but I'm really happy with them. I took them to the Lady Planeswalkers' Society Battle Deck night last week, and everyone thought they were super cool.

I got my hands on some Atalan Jackals as well, and got them built. I'm trying to figure out what I want to do to kick the bases up a notch, since the diamond plate plasticard starts looking a bit bare at this base size, but they're really cool Models. If you look closely, you can maybe see that the plasticard doesn't actually cover all of the Leader's base. I'm trying to find a tube of the right size, and then I'm going to have her coming out of some big abandoned pipe, since the fact that GSC Bikers can use the Underground Tunnels to Ambush from leads to some really awesome imagery. I do sort of wish the kit came with a few more options for stowage and arms, because I want a bunch of them, and I feel like they're going to get a bit same-y pretty quickly, but they're still awesome. Looking forward to getting some paint on them, but that may not happen until sometime next month or in May, after the move.

Last night I finished the build on the main part of something using the Tectonic Fragdrill kit that I think is going to be super awesome. Need to make some space to set up enough of the other terrain to show it off right. Until next time, y'all have a good one, y'hear!

Ryza Pattern Ruins: Detail Shots

So, apparently, back when I made the post with my Ryza Pattern Ruins, I took a whole bunch more pics that I then completely forgot about, and just found a little while ago while processing pics for another post. There's not really a whole lot to talk about that I didn't say in the previous post, but you can see better what I was talking about in that post, in terms of the colour contrast, the weathering/corrosion, and the sloppiness, so I'm just going to jump right to the pics:

So, not a whole lot there, but hopefully at least some of it looks cool enough that it was worth your time. I've got a couple more posts in the works that are taking longer to write up, the next part of the  Genestealer Cult Codex Review and the last post about the Gellerpox Infected. Until I get one of those finished, y'all have a good one, y'hear!