Back to 40K...

After the Spartan community debacle, I couldn't bring myself to look at any FSA models at the weekend, so I thought I'd get back to sorting out my Hellhammer and painting up a landraider. The Hellhammer has sat around for ages - I've always intended to sell it, but other things have always been more important/distracting. Anyway, I need the money so that's always a push in the right direction. First up, I needed to spray the sponsons, and then go over the whole thing paint chipping with a Karisma silver pencil. Here's progress to date...

Next up is to do the detail painting on the sponsons and weathering, then she's done. Then it will be ebay and off to it's new home!

Next up was a landraider, which on a whim I decided to paint up as a Blood Angels vehicle (I'm normally an Ultramarines man). So, a base coat of Mechrite red, followed by Blood Red and Blood Red/Blazing Orange sprayed highlights;

An overall wash of green for contrast (still wet in the photo)...

...and then drybrushed with Blood Red and then Blazing Orange;

Lots of specific painting to go now - lascannons, exhausts, bolters, tracks, emblems, lights....then more washing & drybrushing, followed by weathering & paint chipping. Seems like a long way off but getting the base colour sprayed is always the biggy, as I don;t seem to get the time to spray as much as I should or would like.

Old Terran Ships

On the Spartan Games Community recently, I posted a few designs for older Terran ships - The Thorn Class Battleship, The Guardsman Cruiser and the Missionary II Frigate. One poster remarked that it wasn't paper designs they wanted to see, but actual physical ships.


As Spartan are frankly unlikely to create such retro-engineered designs, I thought I'd give it a go myself. I picked up a Terran fleet cheaply on ebay (which had the Razorthorn in three sections - front, middle and engines, plus the multi-part resin cruisers and frigates), and set about creating the predecessors to the standard Terran ships that I'd already crafted using my Excel version of Spartan's custom ship generator protocols.


First up was the Thorn Class Battleship, here are the stats I came up with for the ship;


DR: 6 CR: 8 Mv: 6" HP: 7 CP: 4 AP: 4 PD: 6 SH: 1 Mn: 0 FW: 0

Fore Fixed: 5/6/4/3
Fore: 6/8/3/0
Port: 6/8/3/0
Starboard 6/8/3/0

Torpedoes (any arc): 2/3/4/5

So reduced long-range firepower in Port & Starboard arcs, lowered FF and no turrets, but a fore arc (same as port/starboard) instead, torpedo effectiveness considerable reduced and only a single shield. I wanted a substantial and dangerous ship, but showing older technology - so still lots of guns, but not as effective over range.
So, some of these mods are easy to show on the model - no turrets being the obvious one. I also removed the extreme fore of the front of the Razorthorn and added a thorn-like "nose" of green stuff, which also double as a shroud over the twin linear accelerators I would add later. In order to get sufficient area for the fore arc (in addition to the Fixed Fore LAs), I planned to add some raised platforms on the first and last broadside positions of the Razorthorn. These were built up from green stuff and then cut back with a scalpel to provide a nice clean edge. Here she is at that stage;

Next I would need guns...so I made simple push moulds from FIMO and baked these for 30 minutes until hard and allowed to cool. after that, wetting the moulds and pushing them on to soft greenstuff produced sufficient guns for the new weapons fit.

Now I just have to decide what weapons fit to go with...

 

Orders Received! Excel Generator

Just coded the 1.5 version of Ravagers Orders Received battle generator for FSA. Here's the link;

Excel 2007 Version
Excel 97-2003 Version

Enjoy!

Battle Report - Assault on Peredith

I've been meaning to post this for a while, the first part of a battle report form Oscar & I's latest game. I won't spoil the end for you by telling you the result, but it was very close!

Assault on Peredith Part 1.pdf

In other news, I've been doing a lot of coding for the FSA Army Builder files with Chris (veritechc) from The Black Ocean - check out the website if you get a chance, it's got a whole heap of interesting goodies on there. I've also coded an updated version of the FSA Custom Ship Creator in Excel to make it easier to crank out your own ships for the game and get the right cost for it.

Very little else happening on the modelling/gaming front - hopefully will get some bits done at the weekend. Until next time....

Oscar's Aquans Expand...

So it was Oscar's birthday last Friday - last week involving a lot of preparations for that (as one of his presents was a small aquarium with a Malabar pufferfish - not that easy to hide!). On the FS:A side he received a Manta MkII battleship and his Medusa for his good school report, then earned his Mk II Barracudas and got a pair of Stingray Destroyers for his birthday. all in all quite a big boost for his Aquan force...expect to see a clash of them with my forces of evil soon.

Also on the FS:A side I wrote the rules for Firestorm: Marine! (downloadable link by clicking on that) - an alternative card-based way of determining boarding actions in Firestorm Armada, inspired by Captain Dan and Ravager from the Spartan Games Community. I also completed the update to the Excel-based version of Ravager's Orders Received! 1.20 scenery and battle generator. Finally, I've been doing a bit of coding for the Army Builder files with Chris of The Black Ocean, trying to get some of the more difficult bits to work properly (easier said than done)!

In real life, I've been hunting down a new job, and also a new place to live, as we were given notice on our house (as we rent at the moment). More unnecessary stress for the family we could all do without...but what can you do but roll with the punches?

A few musings on model photography

So we had some old friends of the family to stay last weekend, and Ian has started his own photography business. He'd brought his (very expensive!) new Canon 5D, lenses, flash etc with him too to get some shots of Stonehenge while they were down.

This proved to be quite serendipitous, as the problems I'd encountered photographing my three-tone Dark Red/Red/Black Relthoza hadn't gone away. The weather has also been apalling the last couple of weeks (as anyone in the UK will testify), so getting good light for model photos hasn't been easy.

Anyway, Ian introduced me to Adobe Lightroom while he was down which, for those that don't know it, is a FABULOUS piece of software. The abilities it has for easy image handling, white balance, colour correction etc are immensly powerful, yet far easier to implement than a very intense program like Photoshop. He also introduced me to the website SLR lounge, which has a fantastic series of tutorials on Lightroom and many other things.

This got me thinking...I used to be an SLR guy, 35mm film, zoom & macro lenses etc, but gave up my old Ricoh for a Fujifilm bridge camera a fair few years back now. I currently have an S8100fd, which is a great piece of kit for those wanting a camera that can do a lot of different things quite easily. I hadn't appreciated, howver, just how much further things have progressed since the last time I lookd, nor how much prices have come down to get a decent entry-level DSLR. We're talking not much more than a decent "standard" digital camera.

So, I've taken the plunge and gone back into the SLR world. Going for a Pentax and various lenses (which my old macro, polarising & UV filters should fit), shooting in camera RAW format with a colour reference chart and then post-processing in Lightroom, and we'll see how we do for accurately capturing those Relthoza ships!

Aquans and Relthoza

Well, I've been pretty busy over the last week or so, mainly because my employers kindly decided to make my position redundant, so had to spend some time tying that all up, which always occupies one's mind. Fortunatelty its amicable enouh, despite being completely unexpected.

I've still had time for hobby pursuits, but haven't been so inclined to write it all up on here. This means I've somewhat of a backlog to get through! Been spending quite a bit of time helping out Chris of The Black Ocean on the Firestorm Armada Army Builder files, coding Zenian League ships and working out how to do some of the validation of Alliance fleets. Also been redoding the Orders Received! Excel version of Ravagers, and posting on the SG Community too.

Anyway, onto models...Oscar has been busy painting up new Aquans...MkII frigates, a Triton and a converted Mon Calamari ship from Star Wars - the Aquan "whaleshark" dreadnought. Also WiP is a Medusa Dreadnought that I'm not that keen about playing against!

I've been concentrating my efforts into the rather large Apex dreadnought, a Scarab Heavy Cruiser and two Venom class Destroyers. Unfortunately I've also discovered an apparently common issue with digital cameras correctly capturing shades of red - in short they don't do a very good job of it (which explains why I couldn't get good pictures of them). I've ordered a photographic colour correction chart, so hopefully I can use that to ensure I get good, accurate photos of them soon.