Whiskey Jacks and a Stepped Tenement added to the Undertown table

Whiskey Jacks is the seedy watering hole that the Undertown needs to survive.  Home of all manner of ill favored leisure pursuits its the bane and the glue of the Undertown.

The kit itself is the most complex of the Undertown buildings I've worked on to date. Its also got the most sparse set of building instructions which seem to assume that you are already familiar with these buildings.. which... I am! so its all good but if you start your Undertown journey with Whisky Jacks be aware that you'll have to search a around the blog a bit to find instructions for some of the sub assemblies.

 One of the coolest features of this kit is also super simple... but brilliant!  It includes security shutters for the doors and windows that are easily placed or removed via some hooks.  This makes the shutters themselves all single piece items and likely to stand up well to use.

 Above you see the security shutters in place and to the left they are removed to reveal the reverse etched window details and doors.  Of course this is the Undertown so the doors and storeroom windows have permanent security bars installed even during business hours.

 I re-enlisted the aid of Sister Scout Celenia for scale from the fabulous Raging Heroes lineup.  Also appearing are some police/security guards from Mantic's Star Saga as obstacles to Sister Celenia's investigation of the moment.  Fortunately she is adept at moving unseen through the Undertown and evades the very alert security team.

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The upstairs residence (or VIP room) is an example of how it helps to understand the way these buildings are assembled.  The instructions ask you to place the front hall wall before adding the black interior  detail strips and door frame.  This is contrary to all the building instructions I've previously assembled from this series.  Adding the front wall first would make it much more fiddly to glue the interior wall details neatly into place.  Armed with the experience of the previous kits I left the front wall placement until after completing the interior hall details.

 While the interior is not the highly detailed variety that we saw with Suburban Office 2 it does have a nice, operational, bar and I'll come back and detail this up once I make certain I don't have some resin upgrade or scatter package for it in the big box o Undertown stuff.

The Office door was completely missing from the instruction write up but did show up in one of the interior pictures. Be careful when installing the Office door base plate as I got it in backwards and had to drill a new hole due to the door being directional.  Always dry fit first!  The other doors are less fussy but they get build with a definite front and back which is important for a nice fit when closed.

 Whiskey Jacks comes with two main signs... one designed for permanent mounting which, due to my failing to read the entire assembly guide before starting the build, I was unable to attach as designed.  I had already used the alternate part and the glue was well set.  No worries though the detachable sign works quite well (after modifying it to accommodate a larger border wall.  Its set up for single wall thickness and all the roof-line walls are double thick) and I'll be able to convert the other into a detachable sign as well... never too many signs!

 Random Tardus? from the Reaper Bones Line.

The Stepped Tenement allows you to be the vicious Slum Lord of your dreams! Not content with merely providing the miserably small living spaces and thin walls of the basic Tenement it lets you actively oppress the residents by forcing them to walk through every square inch of hallway and stairs in the building to get to their room!  Fiendish!

 The scene is further set with some vending machines and dumpsters.  I believe the Vending Machines here are from Armorcast and the Dumpsters from Antenociti's Workshop.  The rooftop signs are from the Forward Base Kickstarter from Antenociti's Workshop.

 Sister Scout Celenia ghosts past security as they search the Stepped Tenement. heading for the Traffic barriers that are blocking the road out of the Undertown.  The traffic barriers are also from Antenociti's Workshop and still await, as does the rest of Undertown, the addition of proper amounts of graffiti!

Internal view of the Stepped Tenement Its similar to the basic tenement except that the halls alternate sides by floor.  Great for making sure that anyone who is trying to sleep has hallway traffic noise above them, below them, and outside their door.  Evil genius!

Arthenya VI the Archpapess and Bruegleburg a day at the fair

 Arthenya VI the Archpapess is another great model from Raging Heroes.  I have a couple of iterations of her because I want to use her in some dioramas as well as a plying piece.  This is the playing piece version.

She is escorted by some cherubs to protect her and hold some of her ceremonial gear. 

The model is resin and the details are very sharp making her a bit easier to paint than you might imagine.  Fuscha craft ink, Reaper Bone triad, Gory Red triad, and solid white, Secret Weapon washes (Storm Cloud, Armor, and Flesh) Secret weapon Engine metal, Vallejo mediums, GW Necron Compund and Shining Gold.

 Bruegleburg: A day at the Fair was a kickstarter by Lead Adventurers that featured a lot of colorful townsfolk for festive settings.  There were some options to add a more military flair to it but I was really drawn to the Slice of Life feel of the whole thing.

Here are a pair of looters in the colors of my Stirland Fantasy army. 

 This batch of models has more military or local officials in it than I've done so far so there is the recurring theme of the local livery in green and yellow on most of these.

 Country Nobles sporting their colors for the fair.

Greens were worked up from Vallejo Emerald, Secret Weapon Washes and Verdigris weathering, and Reaper solid White.

These are metal models and are sculpted traditionally so they sit really well with the older style citadel models that I used to build most of my Sylvanian army.  The scale is well suited to that era as well.


Yellows are Reaper Yellow triad.










I've based this batch on 25mm rounds for use with some of the newer skirmish games but I've also done a lot of the previous models on 20mm squares to better fit with my existing terrain sets.  I'm a bit torn on this but even old reliable Tabletop World is moving to a larger Heroic scale and the 25mm really does support these big metal models better...
A wandering mercenary and his henchman.  Since he's not a local and is a veteran of the Chaos Wars he is in red.










These two are still WiPs but I'm out of time to finish them until I locate them again after the big move.  I'll do some patterning on his red coat which will reduce the Santa effect a but and the shield devices are just roughed in at present... more to come on these two.







That wraps it up until after the move.  See you again in Late August or Early September!

Sci-Fi Lamp Posts

 Clearing the desk of odds and ends between rounds of packing!

 Here are a set of six sci-fi lamp posts from Antenocitis Workshop.  These folks make some really outstanding stuff so take a look if you would and see what they have on offer.

I got these from a 'Designed for Infinity' kickstarter called "Undertown - The seedier side of the 'sphere" which I am anxious to really dig into.  I've only built some peripheral stuff like signs, trash bins, cargo pallets and a street food vendor... things like that ... but there is so much more!

Arriving as unpainted (gray) resin and supplied with tinted  clear acrylic bits they painted up very fast.  Antenocitis has a really high quality resin that feels a bit more like plastic and has none of the brittleness usually associated with things resin. It has good detail and arrives very clean and holds paint well.

I did these fast... moving house ya know!... so a quick spray with a paint/primer combo in French Vanilla, lining with Storm Cloud (Secret Weapon) touch ups and highlights with Splintered Bone (Reaper)... glue on the acrylic bits... done!

In future they may get weathered and/or signs etc... but good to go for now.

Shown with some Void Elves (Raging Heroes) for scale.

Hopefully I'll get a few more posts up before the pack out but ya never know!

Raging Heroes Holy Blades All-Stars

Raging Heroes has had a few regular releases that expand on the TGG Kickstarter offerings.  Its very nice to see them working outside the massive Kickstarter format.

The Holy Blades All-Stars are a group of female Paladins that I'll use for warbands in Vanguard, Mordheim, and Frostgrave.  I'll also get a lot of mileage out of them in some RPGs, especially High Fantasy in the vein of Dragon Age.

 The Models were pretty clean and the resin has crisp detail and is just flexible enough to make handling them easy.

 The Models are very light weight and several of the more dynamically posed, the Standard Bearer in particular, were prone to falling over if the terrain was at all uneven, or the table was bumped, so I added a 1" (25mm) steel  washer to the base and now they are super stable.

 The flag staff of the Standard Bearer is holding up a huge, otherwise unsupported, banner and I'm afraid that it will eventually break during handling.  I'll probably try to replace it with a brass rod or similar if that comes to pass.

Painting wise the banner is not finished.  I'm going to add some patterning and images to it after we get on the other side of the big move.  So its mostly just concept at this point... playable but not really done!

 I experimented with a different way of doing armor and started with Tire Black (Secret Weapon) over the standard Khaki primer/white dry-brush foundation.

This was then dry-brushed with Engine Metal (Secret Weapon) and edge highlights were Necron Compound (Citadel) then lining with Tire Black thinned 50% with Glaze Medium (Vallejo).

 The rest of the color scheme is kind of traditional for warrior nuns and I viewed them as an Order of Paladins that specialized in fighting the Undead and so are equipped with a lot of tools for the consecration/reconsecration of burial grounds so that the Necromancers could be stripped of their access to the mortal remains that fuel their endless hordes.

 With that in mind there is a lot of gold on these models.  I tried to make the embroidered cloth of gold details have a different texture to the ecclesiastical tools that are meant to be metal.  To accomplish this the gold cloth is entirely non metallic while the tools etc... are done with regular metallic.

 The gold cloth is Iron Oxide dry-brushed with Sun Yellow (Reaper) while the metals are Brass Casings (Secret Weapon) washed with 50/50 Flesh Wash (Secret Weapon) and Glaze Medium then spot highlighted with Shining Gold (Citadel)

Whites are layered with the Reaper Bone Triad (Dirty Bone, Graveyard Bone, and Splintered Bone) and lined with diluted Soft Tone (Army Painter).

Lots more to do and the packing is accelerating!  I'm hoping to get some a few more Raging Heroes, Lead Adventurers, Hexy Shop, and RWBY figures done before the end... fingers crossed!

Raging Heroes Executrix Regulars Troop

 Raging heroes makes some amazing figures.  This Void Elf Executrix troop are gonna make great Incubi proxies for my Ynnari. 

They'll be operating as the Emerald Execution and I wanted to stay away from the usual colors of my more traditional Dark Eldar.  These Death Eldar seem a little more flexible with wardrobe colors as they are not so focused on being the Evil Eldar... leaving that for their Cabalite Cousins.

 As I was working on these the Emerald and white base coats left me with a unit that was very heavy in cool colors so I elected to warm up the accents with an orange-y red for their swords and for the wing guards.

The wing guards are really a great weapon option idea!  they seem to be a device that dangles close combat blades while walking or standing but deploys they forwards when the knee is raised and bent giving extra stabby power!  I'd count this as, at least, an off hand weapon... which... given that the main weapon is a Double-hander... is awesome! So, If you are reading this Benoit please integrate something similar in the TGG3 Game...wink, wink...

I'm sure that will give my 40k opponents a little heartburn but they all love integrating cool models so I'm sure they'll be happy with it!  For everyone else they'l operate as plain vanilla Incubi.

I've also experimented a bit with textures on the flowing cloth bits... kind of going for an exotic monster pelt... looks like I'll have to generate a suitably exotic monster with such a pelt for them to hunt!  (Maybe another suggestion for the folks at RH?)

The blades are meant to look like power weapons but that was mostly just an excuse to paint them in warmer colors and not a weapon option suggestion...

The whole unit together... keep in mind this is just the regular troopers set... there is also a command group set which is in various stages of being assembled at the moment.  I haven't decided If I'll replicated these colors so I have add-on options... or if I'll pattern them after another alien beastie...

Back to work then!

Raging Heroes Ash Tank Gunner and some Heresy Girl Assassins 3D printer experiments with the Snapmaker

 Raging Heroes' Ash Tank Gunner was initially thought of as a torso only sculpt for use in a vehicle hatch but had the lower body included pretty early on in the TGG1 Kickstarter process.  As a result she became useful in a Forward Observer or scout role.  I have a few iterations of her so its possible I'll do a tank crew version of her but I really like having her in stand alone form.

She's painted like the Veteran Jailbirds in a signature prison color scheme.  The orange is Reaper Lemon Yellow a wash of Secret Weapon Orange and Highlights of Reaper Marigold Yellow.

 Ash also sports the Blood Red Rags of Rebellion that were popularized by the Jailbird Freedom Fighter Raven the Chainbreaker.

 Next up are the remaining four proxy Assassins from the Heresy Girls Kickstarter 1.  The Deathshadow was examined here although I think I forgot to mention the name of it.  In a similar vein I've done one each of the factory resin model and a 3D print from my Snapmaker on hi resolution.  The elements of failure are painted blue for clarity and also because I'll use these as active camo/ecm versions.

 First is Black Phoenix which seems like a Vindicare proxy.  The Snapmaker had a hard time with this one and I was unable to get the waist region of the torso to fill in so there is a big hole at the join.  With glue its stable but the poor girl looks kind of undead.

The factory resin, as all of them are in this set, was cleanly cast with little flash and practically no cleanup required.  The bases here are also from the 3D printer and the Snapmaker does good quality on them.

 Ghost is next and was the most successful of the 3D prints.  I used the alternate factory resin head and the 3D print version was not good.  Even on this more successful print there is a lot of printer error and lost detail.

 Ghost look like a Callidus Proxy and its passable in that role.  Its also useful for any sci-fi assassin or operative.

Last up is Jade Devil.  A clear proxy for Culexis psi-hunters.

This one was the most trouble for the Snapmaker and I got zero percent clear print.  Nice stealth field effect but a complete failure as a model print.

Bottom line is that the Snapmaker can't produce acceptable resolution in 28mm humanoid models.  I'm generally happy with its performance for buildings, bases, vehicles,  terrain, and accessories like dice boxes etc... but I'll have to move into SLA printing to make .stl files of 28mm soldiers viable.

Not all 3D printers, or 3D printer formats, are good for all printing projects so don't expect nozzle extruded 3D prints to fill the ranks of your toy soldier armies at this time.  SLA has much higher resolution and I'll get round to it eventually but for now I'll be relying on the printer for the more coarse applications where its pretty reliable.  The right tool for the right job!

Back to the desk!

Raging Heroes Kinghts of the Chalice (SF)

 Back to painting after an unanticipated emergency tooth extraction!  The Knights of the Chalice are Raging Heroes Science Fiction Super Heavy (Terminator Style) Militant Nuns.

The models went together very well and were a blast to paint.  There is a crazy amount of detail and they remind me of a more baroque version of the Gray Knights.

I started these as Retinue for the Mother Superor or the Space Papess... but as I was painting I kept thinking of them as "Knights of the Chalice: Order of the Oracle Doralys"  after the amazing model by the same company.

 What was significant about that thought in painting terms was that I started thinking about the oracle as a more ethereal, or even ghostly figure and that encouraged me to include some very cool colors in what was otherwise a very warm paint scheme.  You see it in the greenish flames of the chalice and the gems and in other details.  When I get to painting Doralys herself I'll have to include some of these hues.

 I wanted the armor to resemble a nun's habit but the overall scheme was very black indeed... so I reprised the tabard on the mother superior that I had painted several weeks ago complete with the modified skull rune border.  That helped a lot but the real topper was the ethereal green (Secret Weapon Verdigris, Secret Weapon Green Wash, Reaper Splintered Bone).

I'll want to create a symbol for the oracle and incorporate it into these models probably via the, currently blank, two tone red heraldic shields on the hips of the models.

 The unit champion really displays the yellow metal well especially on the shield's chalice.

The bases are 40mm and are all 3D printed.  The PLA material takes paint well and it was great to be able to print a themed set when I discovered that I had round lipped bases with these models instead of the beveled edge I ordered for the rest of the army.... DoH!

Next up should be some 3D printed accessories, terrain, a building a vehicle, and maybe a wrecked building... its been a fun learning process. Oh and I think there might be some Star Saga almost finished as well!

Back to the painting desk!