Tutorial – Frozen Pond

I have been busy building terrain to play in Frostgrave, a skirmish game set in a ruined city that has been frozen over in the past. I’ve been experimenting using aquarium and terrarium terrain to build cheap nice looking terrain pieces. I’ve done up this quick tutorial on making a frozen pond.

 

Things you will need:

  • Terrarium pond (Can be found at pet stores in lizard section)
  • Cracked ice fluorescent light cover (Big plastic sheets at hardware store)
  • Paint (I used a couple shades of blue)
  • Paper for making template
  • Woodland Scenics Realistic Water
  • Snow Flock
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First thing is to make a paper template of the inside of the dish, you could make your own outer dish with foam as well if you didn’t want to buy a premade one.

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Trace the pattern out onto the cracked ice sheet.

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Start cutting it out and realize you flipped it over and need to start over (you can skip this step if you like). I use a hobby knife and some pliers to score and snap the plastic.

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Cut it a little bigger and then shave it down so it fits.

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It fits!

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Get a couple different shades of blue. You can use cheap craft paint as this will be covered up.

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Paint the basin with the darkest color in the middle where the water would be the deepest.

Pour about 1/8″ of realistic water into the basin and let set over night.

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If you want just water in the basin you can stop here.

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Glue the plastic down. I used spray adhesive but any clear glue will work.

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Pour another layer of realistic water over the top (optional but I like the extra shininess)

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Combine snow flock and realistic water into a paste and apply to the gaps where the snow would drift into.

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Finished product!




Darkfire Castellax and Legion Praevian

I’m currently on vacation with the family at the beach, but I brought some models to assemble while I am here. I built up 3 Castellax with Darkfire Cannons and a Legion Praevian to run them in my Ultramarines. They will be dual use as I can also use them in the Mechanicum army.

3 Castellax and Praevian




Horus Heresy – Mechanicum vs Iron Warrios

Played a 4000 point game with Pete today. We rolled up the misson where objectives can be worth 1,2,3 or negative d3 victory points plus 1 point per unit killed. The Iron Warriors ended up winning (he had 100 Strength 8 shots in the army!) but it was close and a lot of fun. I’m pretty happy with most of the army, but I’m not getting a lot out of the Knights. Next time I will probably only bring the Knight Styrix as a Lord of War and take more Mechanicum stuff.

Mechanicum Deployment
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Finished Battletech Assault Lance

I’ve finished up painting the Assault lance for my game on Thursday. I will probably go and strip these guys down eventually to do a different paint job, but for now they are good enough for play.

Battletech Assault Lance

Battletech Atlas

Battletech Cyclops

Battletech Zeus

Battletech Stalker




Battletech Assault Lance WIP

I’ve managed to get some paint on the assault lance for my Battletech game on Thursday. Still need to do some lighter highlights as they turned out a little darker than I had hoped and I’m going to attempt to freehand some unit markings.

Atlas
Stalker
Zeus
Cyclops




Army in a month assembly progress

Basilean Army

So I made a lot of progress on assembly over the last few days. I’ve built over half of the models, enough to make about 1500 points without any upgrades. The final goal is to have 2000 points built and painted by November 30th.




Assault lance for Battletech

Last Thursday I got to play Battletech for the first time in more than a decade. Battletech was my first love in miniatures war gaming and something I was obsessed with from 7th grade until I graduated from high school. After high school I assumed that adults don’t play games and hauled all my books and models to Goodwill to hopefully go to a deserving geeks collection. I of course regret getting rid of everything and have slowly picked some stuff up second hand over the years to keep up but haven’t really had the right group to play regularly. Last week I got invited to play again and so many memories came flooding back as I was hooked again.

The group plays fortnightly, and to prepare for the next game, I will be painting up an Assault Lance for the FRR Tyr Regiment, Second Battalion. I built and prepped the models tonight and will finish basing them and prime them tomorrow in preparation for painting in the next few days.

FRR Assault Lance




Kings of War – An army in a month

It’s been a few months since I posted, but I have a pretty good excuse. I was diagnosed with cancer at the beginning of the year, Hodgkin’s Lymphoma specifically and I finished 6 months of chemo in July. The treatment left me without energy and feeling sick all the time making hobby time scarce. I’m officially in remission now and recovering enough to start my hobby back up. To celebrate I have decided to crank out an army in a month. I’m building a Forces of Basilea army for Kings of War. I backed the Kickstarter and recently got the Basilian mega army and rules books. I have around 100 models to build and paint in the next month.Forces of Basilia Mega Army

This is everything in the Kickstarter. I will be building and painting the following:

  • 1 War Wizard
  • 1 Julius, Dragon of Heaven
  • 1 Samacris, Mother of Phoenixes
  • 1 Grand Master Gnaeus Sallustis
  • 6 Elohi
  • 40 Men-at-arms
  • 20 Sisterhood Panther Lancers
  • 10 Sisterhood Infantry
  • 10 Crossbowmen
  • 20 Paladins on foot
  • 10 Knight Paladins
  • 1 Heavy Arbalest



Firestorm Armada – Dindrenzi

So I picked up some Firestorm Armada ship in trade recently and assembled and primed a Dindrenzi starter fleet. I’m excited to paint them for a change of pace. The plan is to do a gray and purple accent paint scheme on them.

 

Firestorm Armada Dindrenzii




Scratch built Ursarax

There is no official model for the Ursarax from Forgeworld yet so I’m working on building some custom ones. I’m going for a darker theme for a bunch of conversions for the Mechanicum to represent them toying around with things the Imperium might not normally allow, but not yet joining Horus in his rebellion. This will give me the option to play on either side in the 30k events.

The models are built off of Vampire Counts Crypt Horrors and use pieces from a few other kits. I’m still working on getting more greenstuff cables attached and working the details out, but I’m really happy with how they are turning out.