The new demon armies provide gamers the opportunity to play one set of models for both 40K and WFB. The lava bases project is for a friend of mine who wanted a complete set of bases for an upcoming chaos army project. All that’s needed is either a pinning or magnet system to flip an army from one system to the other.
The bases are green stuff/procreate over plastic bases. Texture is applied with a concrete rock, then lava channels are added with a wire hook tool and a standard sculpting tool. Hardest part of the whole project was mixing up all the green stuff - the bases used up a 30 inch roll of GS. I spent more time mixing than sculpting. FYI - don’t let your green stuff lay around too long. The roll I used was stored in the freezer for 6 years, causing the yellow portion to develop a skin that mixed poorly with the blue portion.
The bike/cavalry bases are designed to go from square to round. The square cav base slots into the open space on the round bike base.
40K collection
25mm round - resin bases
WFB collection
25mm square
Concept pieces for a new line of lava bases. A friend of mine is building 
a new demon army and is looking for a set of custom bases to highlight the force. His design calls for solid rock over glowing lava cracks - sort of like the thumb nail to the left. After creating a pair of bases matching the design, I threw together two other ideas just to see what else I could come up with.
The first two bases are made using Apoxie Sculpt. The material is inexpensive, but continues to display deficiencies when sculpting fine detail. The lava channels in base #1 are shallow due to the loss of flexibility in the epoxie after about 10 minutes of working time. Surface texture is from a piece of concrete. Base #2 is all “cold lava” with no channels for hot lava. Texture is from a bit of resin rubble.
Base #3 is made with Procreate. This epoxie has none of the rubberyness of green stuff and takes detail very well. The same concrete rock is used to apply the texture, but this time the detail is much more complete and deeper. Base #4 is a complete departure from the design request. This base uses floor tile to create free floating flagstone in a pool of lava made from basing paste.
Bell of Lost Souls posted the latest round of 40K 5th edition rule rumors. For the most part, I don’t get worked up about changes to 40K rules- I’ve only played 2-3 times in the past two years. But this one really burns me:
Line of Sight:
There are no height levels, all terrain is true LOS (even jungles and woods). They will need to be modeled appropriately if they are to block LOS.
Now even the terrain is made obsolete by a new rule set! As the person who frequently brings the terrain, I now need to bring and build taller terrain if I want to make sure LOS is blocked equally for all units. Short trees need to be replaced by tall trees. Short, fragmented ruins need to be replace by larger, more complete buildings. If you’ve followed this blog at all, you know that most of my terrain pieces are cast in plaster. Bigger terrain will mean heavier boxes, more sore backs and even worse fuel economy getting to events (OK, that last one is a bit of a stretch).
In related news - stay tuned for a new Warhammer Ancients army - those Chinese from 500 BC are not changing any time soon.
Baegor the One Horned painted for the Adepticon Masterclass auction.
The figure is cleanly sculpted and cast with an attached rocky base. Detail on the model is crisp and easy to identify for painting. Cast in two pieces, the left wing is separate and requires assembly.
Assembling the wing joint was a bit of a chore. The figure comes with a small peg and hole as an attachment point. Not trusting the peg to hold the metal pieces together, I used (an over-sized) pin vise bit to drill a pin hole. The bit was much to large for the wing & ripped through the outer skin of the model. (Ever pin a Daemonette or anything by Rackham? It was sort of like that.) Plan B was to fill the hole with super glue and stuffed a ball of green stuff into the void. GS does a marvelous job of taking super glue and bonding metal parts together over large gaps.
Paint plan is white primer with GW brown ink base coat. Body is GW Dark Flesh blended to highlight with Vallejo Flat Red. Wings are GW bleachbone with GW brown ink wash. Details in light grey and bleachbone. Metals in bright silver and gold with brown ink wash.
Adepticon 2008 Painted Objective Markers. Thanks to Cathy Wappel & Joe Adams for painting the Team Tournament & Championship markers. Thanks to Jamie Welling for sculpting and painting the Lord of the Rings markers. All other sculpting, casting and production credits to yours truly here at CTF.
All markers will be available as part of AdeptiCon 2008 – April 11-13 Crown Plaza Hotel, Rosemont, IL (Just outside of Chicago).
Archeo Tech: 40K Championship
Alien Artifact Collection: 40K Team Tournament
Camp Fire: Lord of the Rings
Ring Stone: Lord of the Rings
Beacon
Generator
The Weapon
A few favorite figures from my miniatures collection.
A Possessed Chaos Space Marine inspired by the art work in the 3rd ed codex. For those of you who missed this piece - the possess is bursting from his armor with muscles twitching & claws in all directions. The figure is a Strigoi vampire with a Long Drong pistol and plastic CSM shoulder pads/backpack. A lot of dremmel work was required to fit the shoulder pads & a touch of green stuff built up the backpack mount as well as the leg armor.
A Chaos Space Marine Predator. This tank dates back to some time in the late nineties & is one of my first major conversions. The Grey Knight welded to the front armor is a never ending source of amusement to me. The rest of the conversion parts include demon prince heads, skeleton shield bosses and BFG launch bays used as engine vents.
This Confrontation warrior (exact name escapes me) comes from a time when I was hanging out with a few Golden Demon painters and was making a real effort to improve my painting skills.
The third and final objective marker for Adepticon: The Weapon. The counter is a matched pair of curved blades made from two layers of plastic card with epoxy putty smoothing the transition lines. Laying two swords on a bare base looked all too dull- the solution was to elevate the blades on a pair of rounded tubes (which also matched the design concepts of the two previous pieces). Because the marker will be cast, the gap between the blades and the base was filled to prevent mold lock. Fortunately, the most common view of the marker will be from over head - hiding the fill.
For the Adepticon Team Tournament, I was tasked with creating three objective (40mm) markers of alien origin. This stipulation makes for a bit of a creative challenge - most equipment of human origin is a square with buttons or rivets. The GW universe has a variety of alien looks - but if I “borrow” from any given race the marker is no longer alien, it will be recognized as “Eldar” or “Necron”. After a bit of playing around, I fell into a three lobed foundation.
The Beacon uses three antenna to project a pulse or beam. This piece may also work as some sort of disruption field.
The Generator is a micro particle imploder - three chambers drive to a central collection hub.
The final marker remains a WIP - a weapon. The molding process requires a flat object, eliminating any sort of upright gun or barrel. I thought about a psychic crown - but a man sized crown could be difficult to communicate in 28mm scale and a head piece is not clearly a weapon. I’m considering three blades on a raised pedestal - but standard straight sword/knife blades don’t match the tri-lobe theme. Maybe a set of curved, falchion like blades. Or an exotic blade (think bat’leth) in a lobe style.
Hands down, the new plastic Baneblade is the best model kit GW has ever produced. I hope the fan boy is not roaring too loud here, but the model practically builds itself. The computer aided design is very evident in the precision and fit of the pieces. Joints and corners are very cleanly constructed with very small tolerances. The auxiliary weapons are cast with both more and finer detail that previous kits. And best of all, at $95.00 the Bane Blade is at a better price point than most of GW’s kits.
Of course, I am still able to find one thing to complain about (this is the Internet after all) - the drive wheels on the front and rear of the tracks should be better connected to the tank hull. The rear wheel is very weakly attached to the side wall with a small pin & wrapping the caterpillar tracks around the wheel in a straight line was a “challenge”.
Additional comments on the Baneblade can be found at Work in Progress and Dakka Dakka.
