Gardening World

William was convinced that the cacti had not been there when he had parked last night.

Four Great Escape Games Dead Man's Hand Cacti box in an Empress Technical.

The cacti are supplied five to a pack on 25mm diameter integral bases about twice the thickness of a Renedra 25mm plastic base. For these four, I removed the bases and glued them to Renedra ones.

The cacti were sprayed with Humbrol Matt Light Olive 86, dry brushed with Vallejo Uniform Green mixed with Vallejo Desrt Yellow.

Base colouring is Vallejo Desert Yellow, washed with Citadel Gryphonne Sepia then dry brushed Humbrol 93 acrylic with a final dry brush of Citadel Dheneb Stone.

Now all I need is some desert terrain to go with them.

In the meantime, here is a comparison shot of the large cacti on its original base and a rebased one.

I might use a 40mm Renedra base for this one.

The containers in the background are the new Ainsty ones.

Some Assembly required (part one)

At Warfare I bought three Crossover Miniatures figures from (I think) Pendraken. The first figure completed (nearly) is their Super Soldier.

 The Patriot was an attempt by a British television company to produce a Costumed Hero series for the American market. Utilising a mixture of Canadian and American actors (and some dodgy accented British actors).

The patriot was the story of an American covert military unit, lead by the titular "Patriot" in his not very covert costume, in their operations against all manner of enemies.

By reusing story lines, locations and in some cases parallel filming, the series was produced cheaply even though there was a lot of European location work. Unfortunately it was not very successful, being shown only once in the US.

Last Minute Shopping...

Abbi and her trusty Diemaco C7 face the hordes on the Last Day.

A Wargames factory The Survivors: The Women figure.

M113 Work In Progress

One of the key features of this blog is the glacial progress I make with these projects.

At Colours I bought an Empress Miniatures M113 APC.

There will be a full build item, but due to the jolly British weather it is on hold until I can get it undercoated.

The kit comes with optional rear fuel tanks and a TOW launcher.

However, at Warfare in Reading I picked up Crooked Dice's Villains' Programme Guide. One of the villainous organisations (United Radionics' FEDSEC) have an option for an APC. If I had read that before leaving the show, I would have bought another M113 for my FEDSEC troops to be configured with a converted Minion HMG in the cupola.

In the meantime, here is the unpainted M113 and a FEDSEC trooper.

As with all previous Empress/Imprint models, the kit goes together easily, but care needs to be taken as the resins used for the major mouldings bonds swiftly and strongly with superglue.

Reach out and touch them, part two

Having made a bit of an epic out of finishing the excellent Crooked Dice Heavy Machine Gun team, here are two pictures of them in action.

The figures are supplied with Fritz style helmets, but to fit in with my UNIT, I used the Fighting Men heads.

I have another two to finish, probably one with Westwind British heads in steel helmets.

It is only a sniffle...

Having fought with the finishing of a Crooked Dice Heavy Machine Gun support team (my problem, not the figures'), I thought that finishing off one of the Demons of Nurgle would be a simple victory of sorts.

So here is the first of Legion.

The figures are multi part plastic kits with minimum flash and moulding marks.

So after a spray undercoat of GW Chaos black, I used GW Nurgling Green for the body. The gory bits were then filled in with GW Mechrite Red. The sword was cleaned up with Vallejo Black.

The whole thing (gory bits and all) were then washed with GW Drakenhof Nightshade. This provided a grubby shading for the whole figure and dark shading for the gory bits.

The large blister/internal organ area on the stomach was then lightened with Army Painter Skeleton bone. All the gory bits were then washed with GW Baal Red. Vallejo Dark sand was then used to highlight the icky blisters. The horn started out with Vallejo Leateher brown lightened with Vallejo Dark Sand (which looks the same as the Army Painter Bone) with a final highlight of Vallejo Buff.

Dark sand and Buff were used for the claws. The eye was filled out with Buff, and when dry Vallejo Red. a White highlight was added at the bottom of the eye.

The sword was dry brushed with Vallejo Black Grey.

This colour scheme looks okay to me, and should not be a problem to finish the rest of the squad, plus the herald.

For The Greater Good - part four

There has been a conjunction between my camera and the two Crisis suits (there was also an unfortunate conjunction between the Monat suit and the floor which snapped both ankles of the suit).

So after pinning (0.7mm brass rod) the ankles back together here are the pictures.

First up is a Fireknife-7 configuration suit (suit configuration names are from The Guide To Mech Tau)

Next up is a Monat suit.

In the original Codex, it was not made clear that if you had two identical weapons, that they had to be twin linked, so when I built this suit it was designed to have two (not twin linked) fusion blasters.

Now I am undecided between continuing with the original design (Sunforge - TL Fusion Blaster and shield) or a Helios with Plasma Rifle and Fusion Blaster (and shield)

As this suit was designed to have the weapons mounted on the shoulders, there was no room to add the multi tracker allowing shooting with two weapons. Though the multitracker was hardwired (previous Codexes) I wanted a representation on the figure.

Looking at the accessory normally used to represent the multi tracker, I noted that it would also work as a head, so I drilled a hole for a central eye and used plastic rod to make the lens and added the usual two aerials from a standard head to the side.

I also added an unfolded hand, the fingers again made from plastic rod.

I used the same painting technique as the fire warriors.

Next up a Stealth Team and a Piranha.