MDF Power Stations from Sarissa and Wargame-Model-Mods

You know how it's so easy to let hobby projects languish when something new and shiny comes along? Well, I'm here to tell you that sometimes it comes back around... when it turns out that new and shiny thing is actually related to an old hobby project, and this creates some incentive to drag out the old project and finish it off!

In this case, Conscript Mike had given me an MDF building he'd acquired that was surplus to his requirements. This is the "Blasted Power Station" from Wargame-Model-Mods (sic). It was a pretty straightforward model to assemble and covers a reasonably large area of table. Unfortunately, though, the roof is not removable so that limits playability in a wargame.

As the "new shiny" I referred to earlier was my current obsession with Judge Dredd and Warlord's eponymous wargame, I'll be putting on a Dredd game this week, and wanted to get this model cranked out, so I put the world's fastest paintjob on this one over the weekend.

After assembly, I sprayed the model with flat black primer, then followed this with a mist of grey primer. Normally my next step would be to Nuln Oil the sh!t out of it, but unfortunately the magic Oil just beaded up and rolled off the primer like water off a duck's back! So I had to do the weathering old-school with drybrushed craft black and sponge chipping.

It turned out "OK" but not amazing, and I might do some further work in putting some graffitti on the walss - that might look cool, and the Dredd game came with a sheet of decals for that purpose. One thing I really liked, though, was that the roof vents and radiator stack are separate, so they can be positioned in different spots on the roof, or left off altogether.

The Blasted Power Station retails for 14.99GBP.

OVERALL RATING: 7.5/10

Along with the Dredd order, I picked up the "Factory Power Room" from Sarissa Precision. I also put it together last weekend and slapped on a pretty basic paintjob, ready for this week's game.

The latticed windows and detailed door are "greyboard" attached to the back of the wall. The models I've used for scale are from Wargames Foundry's "Street Violence" range - SVO14 Mercenary Fire Team. The roof is removable, giving some playability to the interior of the building, which I like. However the tolerances are so fine with the way the roof goes on, the MDF is easily broken... which I did.

The model went up very easily and in only a few pieces, which is great. Again I did a pretty basic paintjob which I'll likely revisit... that ladder is looking particularly clean and that should be addressed.

The model will pretty much work in any setting from WW1 to sci-fi - I just love the flexibility. As noted, the roof attachment is a bit fragile and might have been designed a bit better. It was super-easy to assemble, although a narrow file is a useful tool to have on hand. I reckon I'll go over the railings in dark grey and weather up the ladder a bit as well, and that should do it.

The Factory Power Room retails for 12.50GBP.

OVERALL RATING: 8.5/10

Sedition Wars Cthonian - Boss Fight!

This is the latest addition to my Sedition Wars Project: the Cthonian, a large, tough Strain monster used in the final scenario in the Outbreak Campaign rules included in the Battle for Alabaster boxed set. In the above photo, the Cthonian is shown next to a 28mm Hasslefree figure, that I painted in the same colours of the Samaritan infantry that oppose the Strain.

From Studio McVey:

"Phase 5 Exo-form – Cthonian: A massive conglomeration of evolved bio-mass combined with a powered armour carapace. The outer shell is a fully functional exoskeleton wrapped around a squid-like body composed of extremely resilient tissue. Capable of regenerating damage with dark matter conversion, this creature is nearly impossible to kill without the use of high output energy weapons. In addition to its defensive capabilities, the creature is armed with a gravitic beam weapon and a lethal nano-weapon capable of mutating a living target almost instantly."

Again, cleaning up this resin/plastic model  had its problems, which I outlined when first starting this project some years ago. You can't file it, you can't scrape it easily; you have to cut off mould lines with a fresh, sharp X-acto knife. It took hours with a zirconium nitride blade, and I am still not fully happy with my cleanup job.  I posed the figure lifting one foot, and cocked the head off a little to its left, to add some visual interest. There's a thick piece of wire pinning the right foot to the 50mm diameter plastic base.

I used many very thin layers for the zenithal highlights. Only 6 drops of colour (5 drops Vallejo white and one drop Golden sepia airbrush paints) in the small metal cup in the airbrush, 5 drops of thinner, and the rest water. This was airbrushed downwards at a 45-degree angle all around the model. Then, switching the pigment portion of the mix to 6 drops of only Vallejo white, I airbrushed downwards at about a 60 degree angle from above and in front of the head of the model, giving a spotlight effect on the front of the figure. As I have described before, with such thin coats you don't see the spray pattern of dots of pigment, just smooth transition from light to dark.

The various exposed tubular bits and the flower-like protuberance of the left "arm" (the nano-weapon) were highlighted and shaded with various purples, reds, and pinks from the Army Painter Zombicide Warpaints Sets (Crusted Sore, Toxic Boils, glazed with Zombie Shade).

The chitinous armour plates got several glazes of Citadel Seraphim Sepia shade. The upper portions of the carapace and the armoured face got some punched up highlights with various Vallejo acrylics and artists' oils. I also did some dot filters using oil paints to break up the surface of the plates a bit.









The rear of the figure falls into shadow, but details of its major structures can still be seen.



The gravitic beam weapon on the right arm was worked up from Winsor Blue to Titanium White.



The base was airbrushed with Secret Weapon Stone wash, then finished off with weathering powder and some oils.

After the whole figure got a coat of Tamiya Semi-gloss spray (TS-79), I went back with some Citadel Blood for the Blood God, to add some fresh blood effects. This was used judiciously around the fleshy tubes, the flowery nano-weapon, and seeping from between some of the chitin plates and between the tentacles.

After painting up the figure, I actually like how it looks. It seems to radiate menace, and is a good implementation of the original Studio McVey concept art:

With the 55 figures I have painted up, I can now run all the games in the Outbreak Campaign provided in the basic box, with some extra Strain models to boot.

I recently received some pre-production Strain models, cast in a very crisp resin; easy to work with, and will paint up nicely! I look forward to adding more to this project. With those plus all the extra boxes' contents and some Kickstarter exclusives, I am spoiled for choice

Sedition Wars - Commodore Grist

(Click on photos to enlarge.)

I have mentioned before the cool heavy armour of the Sedition Wars universe, the Gnosis Battlesuits. In-game, such equipment is issued to the elite of the Vanguard. These suits are like little tanks; they're immune to nasty things like acid and fire, and when finally wrecked the pilot can climb out to continue the fight!

Back in 2013, Studio McVey released a high quality resin sculpt for Salute 2013, Commodore Grist. I managed to find one over the summer online, and just finished painting it up.

I used many very thin layers for the zenithal highlights. Only 5 drops of colour (4 white and one green) in the small metal cup in the airbrush, 5 drops of thinner, and the rest water. You don't see the "dots" of the spray as much, just a smooth transition from dark to light. See the shoulder pads and gun in the photo below.





I did most of the head/face in Vallejo acrylics, with some oil paints to smooth out transitions.

I augmented the usual glazes of Coelia Greenshade (the green parts of the armour) and Fuegan Orange (shoulder pads) with actual painted colour layers in acrylics. The armour and shoulders used the Vallejo Yu Jing paint set. However, Seraphim Sepia continued to work well on the gun and the "plumbing" of the suit. I used artists' oils for blending, point highlights, and special effects such as chips, scrapes and impact damage. Vallejo powder went on the lower part of the boots. I airbrushed the base separately with Secret Weapon Stone, and weathered it with oils.





Below, the nominal light source for painting highlights and shadows was above and in front of the figure's forehead.





The rear parts of the figure fall into slight shadow.




I also debated painting Vanguard insignia on the shoulders using freehand techniques. Decided against it. The Vanguard don't seem to use insignia on their Gnosis armour. Maybe their connection to the Tac-Net precludes the need for visual identification? I can always go back and add some markings.



I debated using OSL to make the muzzle of the plasma gun glow, but decided against it.




Below, details of the power fist and its damage.




Comparing this to previous Vanguard figures, the armour colouring  is deeper and richer, I think because I am not just relying on glazes over white for the highlights.

Just one more figure, the big boss Cthonian, to complete phase one (the Battle for Alabaster boxed set) of the Sedition Wars project.


Kara Black's sword in NMM

Back in September, I attended a great painting seminar put on by Polish master modeler Michal Pisarski, winner of both the Crystal Paintbrush and GW Slayer Sword. The seminar was all about skin tones and non-metallic metallics. The figure we used was a large scale bust of a vampire. At the end of the seminar weekend, he shared some tips on painting wargame scaled figures.

He completely repainted the blade of my Kara Black figure from Sedition Wars. From Michal's POV, at this scale less is more. He painted the blade flat black. The hottest highlight is at the tip of the blade, in pure white. IIRC, he added blue to the mix as he worked down the blade toward the hilt. Note also the very fine scratches and irregularities along the blade's length. Michal's brush control is superb; this was all done in about 10 minutes with watered down acrylics.

Sedition Wars Project Revisited

(Click on pictures to embiggen.)

Sedition Wars is very fun, but is currently a relatively unknown board game. Very much like playing Resident Evil, as the hi-tech Vanguard are pitted against the nano-virus-fueled zombies ("Revenants" in Sedition Wars parlance), and other (d)-evolved creatures of the Strain. Always lots of cinematic events.

A little while ago Conscript Byron and his lovely wife Kim shared side-by-side cabins with Jen and I near Clear Lake. With no WiFi, we hiked and stuff in the daytime, and played board games at night. I had originally wanted to bring out a table of terrain and some minis to do skirmish gaming. With the car already full of luggage and provisions for a week away, I decided to bring Sedition Wars as my figure gaming fix. We had fun playing a couple of scenarios with Byron's friend, Thomas.

(Below) I really like the Vanguard miniatures; the Grenadier is a crisp, resin version from Studio McVey, the other two are restic models from the Sedition Wars boxed set.

Below are three types of undead Revenants (the most horrific is the one with the deflated human head in the middle), and a couple of "evolved" Strain, a Stalker and an acid-firing Quasimodo.

We usually play the game on fully terrained tables, but the cardboard map elements from the game are colourful, and much more portable!

Don't roll low when fighting evil from the depths of space!

Our recent games prompted me to turn back to my (fairly large) collection of Sedition Wars models. I have the contents of at least three basic game boxes, plus some KickStarter exclusives I picked up online, and some very nice resin pieces from Studio McVey before they stopped trading. I decided to tackle the second-toughest Strain model in the entire game, an awesome Grendlr.

ETA: Here's Studio McVey's post about the design and sculpting of the figure: 
https://studiomcvey.blogspot.com/2012/06/sculpting-grendlr.html

To start off with, there were some severe gaps on the restic model, which I filled with epoxy putty . Restic has its own problems, which I outlined when first staring this project some years ago. You can't file it, you can't scrape it easily; you have to cut off mould lines with a fresh, sharp X-acto knife.

The creature has the in-game ability to swallow a human-sized figure whole, and convert it into something else. Bleah!

I pinned the tongue to the mouth, and the feet to the base, with brass wire. I drilled extra-deep locating holes for the tentacles.

Studio McVey also provided their own tutorial on the assembly of this model: https://studiomcvey.blogspot.com/2013/01/grendlr-assembly.html

Below on the right is the assembled figure; alongside for scale is a resin alternate sculpt of Kara Black (in the game, she's a clone of the Vanguard commander, actually).

After initially priming the figure with Chaos Black, I started zenithal highlighting with flat white using an airbrush. Partway through the session, the paint started to spatter. I finished the high highlights with a quick dusting of Citadel Wraith Bone (which is an off-white spray can paint used as a base for GW's new line of Contrast Paints). Project saved!

I started from the inside out, as it were. The various exposed muscle striations, inner mouth, tongue, and tubular bits were highlighted and shaded with various purples, reds, and pinks from the Army Painter Zombicide Warpaints Sets (with apt names like "Crusted Sore" and "Toxic Boils"). I used Citadel's new Technical Contrast Medium to add to the paints and washes, which helped with wetness and flow.

The skin areas around the lower mouths and torso were glazed with Citadel's old Ogryn Flesh wash, then painted with tones from the Vallejo Face Painting Set. The chitinous armour plates got several glazes of Citadel Seraphim Sepia shade. The claws and teeth were highlighted with various P3 and Vallejo cream and off-white colours, then glazed with Army Painter Zombie Shade. The upper face (with the guns) got some NMM work.

The base was glazed with Secret Weapon Stone wash, then finished off with weathering powders and oils.

After the whole figure got a coat of Tamiya Semi-gloss spray, I went back with some trusty Citadel Blood for the Blood God, which provides a suitably viscous, fresh blood effect. This was used judiciously where skin was tearing, and dripping from a couple of claws.

The gaping maw is truly disturbing, as Jen opined.

With this figure I can now run 8 of the 9 scenarios in the included Outbreak Campaign setting.

The only model left to do is the Cthonian, a large, tough model used in the final Boss Fight. I actually find the model to be a little underwhelming, not having the bulk of the Grendlr. I have at least three of these, so I could paint up one as stock for play, and convert another with some GW Juggernaut parts I already have.

Keeping Track of the Strain

I had previously labelled the various identical Vanguard models with etched brass numbers, to keep track of the similarly-armoured and -equipped models during play. From our recent games, it occurred to me to do the same for the Strain. So, I used etched brass letters from Hasslefree Miniatures to label the Revenants, Stalkers, and Quasimodos from, literally, A-Z. The remaining, larger Strain have no dupes, so there's no need at this time to label them (likewise there's no labels on the individual, named heroes on the Vanguard side). I affixed the brass letters with Micro Krystal Kleer, and washed them with a bit of GW Nuln Oil to help pick them out.

Project Progress

So far, it's 53 models (plus a bunch of terrain) for this ongoing project. For immediate carry and play, I got a foam insert from Battle Foam which fits in the original game box. It holds the figures I have completed, plus dice, counters, rules, and the cardboard map boards. It doesn't hold the models' printed stat cards, which I have sleeved to use dry-erase markers on, to track wounds.

With another 30+ Vanguard, including some awesome heavy powered-armour resin figs, and a horde of Strain, I could be painting SW stuff for years to come!

Below, a full squad of Vanguard wearing Gnosis heavy powered armour; resin figs by Studio McVey, painted by Angel Giraldez:

And Now for Something Completely Different... Superheroes!

Marvel's Alpha Flight: Back row: Shaman, Snowbird, Sasquatch, Vindicator/Guardian, Aurora. Front row: Northstar, Puck, Marrina.

One of the more "fringe" genres in tabletop wargaming has to be superheroes. Sure, you see the odd WW2 game with Captain America playing some minor role, but for the most part, superhero gaming just isn't done - by either the traditional "historical" community or even by the more adventurous sci-fi/fantasy bunch.

Omega Flight: Wild Child, Smart Alec, Box, Flashback with his "future men", Diamond Lil

For me, "peak comic book" was in the mid-1980s. I followed the Marvel titles almost exclusively, and the Uncanny X-Men with particular fervor. My favorite artist and creative person was the British-Canadian polymath, John Byrne. Together with scripter and co-plotter Chris Claremont, he created some of the best superhero stories of all time, including the "Dark Phoenix Saga" and "Days of Future Past" storylines in the Uncanny X-Men.

The Brotherhood of Evil Mutants: Avalanche, Mystique, Magneto, Pyro, Blob, Destiny

Byrne was also tapped by Marvel to create Canada's superhero team: Alpha Flight. Originally created (according to Byrne) "just to survive a battle with the X-Men," Alpha Flight proved to be so popular that they were spun off into their own title, written and drawn by Byrne. The prime adversary group for Alpha was Omega Flight. Like the Alphans, Omega Flight was created by "Department H" of the Canadian government as an officially sanctioned team of supers. While Alpha Flight were the prime team, Omega and Gamma Flights consisted of supers-in-training... and when Department H was disbanded due to budgetary considerations, the lower-tier supers took the easier rout of using their powers for selfish purposes. This allowed them to be manipulated by Delphine Courtney, a humanoid robot and agent of Jerry Jaxxon, an aggrieved former boss of James Hudson (Vindicator) who sought revenge against Hudson for "stealing" the battlesuit designed by Hudson for the company they both worked for, when Hudson discovered that the company was to turn over his invention to the US military. This resulted in a downward spiral for Jaxxon, who was fired and subsequently rendered paraplegic after a suicide attempt... Dark stuff for kids' comic books eh!
 

The Uncanny X-Men: Phoenix, Nightcrawler, Colossus, Professor X, Storm, Cyclops, Wolverine

So as a side project some years ago I started buying and rebasing (and sometimes repainting and converting) Wizkids' "Heroclix" figures to create the supers of my youth. Heroclix figures can be hit and miss in terms of sculpting quality but they're usually cheap, and the variety of them is really monstrous. Pretty much every super you can think of has been made into a Heroclix figure (sometimes multiple versions), but having said that, I've still had to do conversion work on figures like Omega Flight's Box, Smart Alec, and Flashback, as well as on the "future" Colossus and Storm, before their specific models came out. For the most part, though, I just applied a black or brown wash to the models as-is and rebased them. Easy. The other great thing about Heroclix is that they're approximately 28mm scale so all of my modern 28mm models can be used with them. Great for those games set in the mid-'80s with our Eureka Soviets and US Army models!
 

The X-Men (Days of Future Past): Colossus, Storm, Logan, Kate Pryde, Franklin Richards

Sentinels

Wizkids also made Sentinels in their range - these are the giant mutant-hunting robots that have featured from time to time in the X-Men and other Marvel books. I've got two versions - the original (left) from the initial "Infinity Challenge" range and the "Alpha" at right which came later. I really prefer the sculpt on the Alpha version, and it also has exchangeable arms, torso and head to create a "damaged" version - cool. However in the Days of Future Past setting I can use both versions; the larger ones can represent the "triad patrols" combing the ruins of New York City circa 2013, while the smaller more detailed models represent the "Omega series executive cadre" that eventually kill the remaining X-Men (spoiler alert!)

Sentinel with Logan and Kate

The tricky part, of course, is actually playing games with the models. What rules to use? Well, we once played a "Days of Future Past" game years ago, I think using a modified version of GW's Lord of the Rings skirmish system. That was OK. But recently I picked up a trove of old TSR Marvel Superheroes RPG stuff so we may give that a try. MSH is pretty simple and might be suitable for skirmish gaming. There's only one way to find out, right!

Crystalline Winter Terrain Project

The one thing I find kind of odd about most sci-fi games is that they take place on terrain that looks JUST. LIKE. EARTH. Even back in the RT days the lads used to spiff up their (admittedly rudimentary by today's standards) tables with at least some odd-coloured lichen, to give a minimal impression that we weren't battling over Kansas anymore; but nowadays it seems like green grass and leafy trees are pretty much the norm.

I admit that I am a prime offender! Our tables generally look very good indeed (if I do say so myself) but they mostly look like temperate Earth. Fine if you're playing an historical wargame (great even!) but when you're in a galaxy far, far away or out among the Ghoul Stars and the like, is the terrain you're battling over really gonna look like, say, rural France?

The original idea was to pick up some crystalline shard terrain to spiff up my winter terrain mat for Horus Heresy duty. Gale Force 9 made a good-looking set for their Battlefield in a Box range, but sadly these appear to be out of production and unavailable even on the secondary market.

However, poking around on eBay, I found numerous vendors in China selling real quartz crystal shards, for use in jewelry, magic wands (!) and the like. And they are CHEAP - like about $4 shipped for a handful. Once they arrived, execution was straightforward - cut plasticard bases to the desired shape, superglue crystals to the base, apply texture gel, paint it your desired earth colour, paint the snowy bits white, apply snow flakes, static grass and tufts, and DONE.

Here are the crystal bases with some Games Workshop Genestealers for scale. Scary!

I purchased three 100g packs of crystals and used pretty much all of them in this project.

The terrain works great for 15mm too - maybe even better than 28mm. I reckon they would look pretty cool in a 6mm game as well.

It's not as if I don't have figures to paint, oh no. So the time and energy spent on this terrain mini-project certainly could have been put to use in painting a couple more Iron Warriors, or Adeptus Mechanicus guys, or WW2 Germans, or Indian braves, or... or... but the simple fact is that sometimes when I get an idea, I just want to run with it. Can't wait to get these out in an actual game!