Realm of Battle Board Finished and Gen Con

So, after nearly a year of not very much getting done, I finally finished and sealed my GW Realm of Battle terrain board this weekend. The weather was nicely non-humid, so I was confident that the Dullcote matte spray sealer I was going to coat the board with wouldn’t get all weird and ruin the whole project.

A four-by-six foot patch of desert wasteland to call my own

I mostly like how it turned out. There’s one panel of the six that seems to be slightly darker than the others (and it the above photo, it looks much more different from the others than it does in real life) but otherwise, it turned out well. Using the camouflage paint from Krylon worked great for several reasons: it was the right color for my desert theme, it sticks really, really well to the plastic, and the ultra-flat finish makes the board less slippery, which means that models don’t slide around on it.

A few of my Chaos Space Marines enjoying their new play area: “There’s so much room for activities!”

I finished it off by using two cans of Testors Dullcote matte spray. Do this outside, do it on a dry day, and expect that one of the little cans of this stuff will cover three of the six panels. I coated it pretty liberally, and now it’s just as flat as the Krylon paint was before, but also coated with a clear finish, which should protect it from the wear and tear of war in the 41st millennium. I’ll let you know how it goes.

In other news, I’m leaving for Gen Con in less than 48 hours. This will be my third year in a row doing interviews and videos for Beasts of War, so I’ll be a busy badger during the convention. I’ll try and post here during the convention, but I can’t promise anything. However, I’ll be live tweeting for Beats of War, so I’ll throw that info up here tomorrow as soon as I get it all figured out and such.

Starting Plague Marines

There’s another Combat Patrol tournament coming up in early September and I want to play in it. However, I want my figures painted this time. Last time, I got a 1 (out of 50, I believe) on my painting score so I want to improve on that. I suppose doing any painting at all should help raise that score, but I’d like to do a little bit more than that.

So this weekend I decided to start work on the Plague Marines from my list. I’ll either have five or six of them in my list, depending on my final decision, so I figured I’d paint six of them just to have my bases covered. I believe that I picked up all of my Plague Marines from the mighty bitz seller at Adepticon, so many of them were pre-built or previously mostly built. I got six good ones together, added basing texture to their bases so they matched my other Chaos Space Marines, and took them out to the garage to prime.

Primed Plague Marines, and yes, that plasmagun does seem to be made out of wood

I used the Khaki color of the Krylon Camouflage spray to prime and basecoat the models all in one step. As usual, the Krylon worked great, making a great color layer that takes paint amazingly. For those who don’t know, Plague Marines are followers of Nurgle, the chaos god of disease and decay. Because of this, they generally have all of the diseases and like Mr. Burns from The Simpsons, this makes them very tough. Due to their condition, I want them to look dirty and decayed and sick, therefore I’m starting with a dull tan (the Krylon Khaki) and started layering dirt and filth on top of it.

Starting to look dirtier

After the primer had dried and after a quick drybrush of the highlight areas with some Bleached Bone from Games Workshop to give them some depth, I went to town with the Gryphonne Sepia wash, also from GW. The wash fills in and darkens the crevices nicely, and also darkens the overall color of the model. If you want to see the difference in color (before / after wash), look at the weapons in the above photo as I didn’t add wash to them. After brushing it on pretty liberally, I set them aside to dry.

Now these figures are downstairs drying and I’m trying to figure out what I’m going to do next. There’s going to need to be some green on these guys for general pus and sickness, I guess. Do I completely cover them in a Thraka Green wash, or just apply it in specific places? Also, I’m thinking about doing another edge highlight / drybrush, either with Bleached Bone or some kind of straight while color. Should I do that before or after the green wash? And maybe a bit of yellow somewhere, to look like infection? I want to make sure I get it right, because I’ll be adding at least another dozen Plague Marines to my overall army, and I want to make sure I have the paint ‘recipe’ nailed down so that I can keep them all looking mostly the same.

I’ll update these and also show you my progress on the Lost from Hell Dorado that I started before Gen Con. They’re nearly done.

Lastly, speaking of Gen Con, my last post was about the stuff I brought back from the convention. You would be amazed at how many hits your blog post will get when you title it ‘Gen Con Booty‘.

‘Lost’ in Hell Dorado, Part One

Last year at GenCon, I purchased a few starters for a new-ish skirmish game from Cipher Studios called Hell Dorado. It’s a game that pits different forces against each other at the mouth of Hell, which seems to be somewhere in Europe, I think. Actually, I haven’t read much of the fluff yet, so don’t quote me on that.

I love me some skirmish gaming, and recently I built and started work on painting up the ‘Lost’ faction starter, which is all lizardmen. The scuplts are really cool.

Primed and basecoated in one step

Being lizards, I figured that green would be a good base color to start with, and if I could prime and basecoat all in the same can, then all the better. I fell back on one of my old favorites, Krylon Camouflage Paint. The color I used here was the ‘Woodland Light Green’ flavor. This stuff is technically designed to stick to plastic, but it sticks to metal quite nicely, too. And it has a really nice ultra-flat surface which makes it great to paint on top of.

Now that these guys are dry, the next step will be to hit them all with a wash. I’m thinking about slobbering them all in a brown wash like Games Workshop’s Delvan Mud, and then adding a wash of the Badab Black wash to the undersides of the models (underarms, between the legs, etc.) to create shadow areas. As soon as I do that, I’ll let you know how they look in Part Two.