Based Up

After a week of staring sullenly at figures laid gently onto their armor, I spent Thursday happily gluing Terminators back onto their bases.

Pre-painted resin casts.

Detail shot with both varieties of floor.

I built the master copies of each 40mm base from the inside of a bunch of Rhino doors.  Each of the sides is made from the edge portion of a Fantasy movement tray.  I was trying to communicate the idea of a hallway in a space hulk without blocking off much of the model.  The edges create just enough of an illusion that when someone cares enough to look closely, I believe that they'll infer what they're supposed to.

Once the masters were built, I turned them over to a friend of mine to be cast.  The turnaround time was just about a week, and I have to say, I'm pleased with the result.  On a few of them, you can see where the mold started to degrade a little bit after several casts, but he managed to get more than enough quality bases finished to complete the project.  As an added bonus, even the miscasts will be usable because of the simplicity of the design.  A little puddle of superglue can become a fluid leak.  I can also add pipes, hoses, and dead Tyranid bits to further accentuate the bases, while also providing splashes of color to add to the visual interest, and confusing you into thinking they're not all essentially the same.  And all this out of a bunch of people's random scraps!

Vargheist bases all painted up.

Group shot.

Painting was simple enough.  I primed black, then airbrushed with Blackened Steel from the Reaper Master Series paints.  I exercised just enough patience to allow that to dry, then set about trying to pose them.  I ran into much more trouble than I expected for a couple different reasons.  First, Terminator stances tend to be extremely wide.  I suppose there's a reason why they're on 40mm bases.  This leads immediately to problem two.  If you try to put Terminators facing into what would be a wall to make them fit easily, it spoils the illusion.  It ended up taking a little bit of finagling, but I got each model in a position that works.  There's a little more work to do as far as getting them all flush, but they're definitely fieldable again.

Try to pick the master from the copies.

Now try it double-blind style.

Fear the Coryphaus!

What am I supposed to be working on?  A Land Raider and 3 Vargheists for Saturday. 

What am I actually working on?  Finishing a Word Bearers Daemon Prince.  He'll serve as the military strategist to the Dark Apostle.  I find him suitably intimidating.

Who wants a hug?

He's been Mechrite Red for an extended period of time, but I finally got around to putting a basecoat of 1:1 Red Gore and Scab Red on him while I was taking a break from working on some other things.  Then I got sucked in and put on the next layer of straight up Red Gore, followed by highlights with 2:1 Red Gore and Blood Red.  This is the standard procedure that I am using for my Word Bearers marines, though obviously on a smaller scale.  It produces a very robust, deep red that I'm quite fond of.  The interesting part with this model was doing the highlighting for much larger areas of illumination.  He's so similar in structure to a space marine in power armor, that while the highlight areas felt familiar, they were larger, so trying to do them so they looked smooth felt more difficult.

Additionally, I rebased my Fantasy Daemon Prince, so we have this family portrait:

You and me...  and me and you...

I share this "ohbytheway" because I built both from a single kit.  When the new kit came out several years ago, I picked one up.  Being a huge cheapskate, I counted up the bits and realized that it was short only a back and a set of legs to be twice as efficient. 

Never one to pass up a chance to do a little hobby and save a few bucks, I used some old Legos to build a crucible and made a mold out of greenstuff.  I let the mold sit overnight, then coated it in Vaseline, and put an ample amount of putty into it.  In a rare spell of patience, I let that sit long enough to harden, then pulled it out via the twist-tie that you can see embedded in the inside of the piece.  It turned out quite well.  I can't remember which Prince has the false back and can't tell by looking at them.

I would recommend the same procedure to anyone looking to save a few bucks or looking for a hobby project.  There are lots of great bits in the kit, and even if you don't have an extra set of legs laying around, you can really get creative with options for the lower half.

Finally, I'm headed to Dundracon with some friends this weekend.  It'll be quite a drive, but I'm sure that will be more than made up for with the fun to be had both at the con and in the tournament.  It's also my first tournament of the year and in a very new environment, so we'll see how it goes.