For the past week, I’ve been working on this idea I’ve had to make a miniature dungeon crawler type board game using paper models and a modular dungeon system.  I have a playable rules set that works with 1 - 5 players.  The 1 player game has the player using two hero characters and the dungeon has pre-determined behavioral patterns for the enemies.  2-5 players have one player take on the role of the dungeon master.  You generate your character from one of four races and four classes, then give them some starting equipment and send them off into the dungeon.  Each time a room is explored, you roll on the monster generator chart, which shows how many and what kind of monsters there are as well as if there are any treasure chests or not.  I currently have 7 hero models and four enemy types, of which I will be rapidly expanding in the ensuing week.

I still have to do the highlighting, but this will be the color scheme for the necron army I’m building.  The purple is actually a ceramic stain that is VERY bright.  The color scheme works great for the overlord and deathmark, but the necron warriors look like they’re wearing football shorts and shouldrpads.  Oh, and the Command Barge is going to be hell to paint.

Here’s two figures I painted up for a friend at the local gaming shop.  Dude painted his Black Reach dread up so bad I told him I’d re-paint it free of charge just to help him out.  My thought was that if he had a nicely painted centerpiece to the army, he might try and take a bit more time painting the rest of it to match instead of just splotching white and red paint on his figures in a few areas.  He mentioned wanting to try out a chaplain, so the figure here was built from random leftover parts in my bits box.  Plague marine head modified to be a skull helm, Fantasy staff and backpack decorative bit made into a crozius.  I like to modify the backpacks on chaplains to have skulls for the exhaust vents.  You can see the freehand on his chapter symbol shoulder, but there’s also a neat looking painted skull that takes up his entire right shoulder as well.  All in all I’m pleased with how they came out.  

I still have to go back and make the jewels inserted into the left skyboard orange, but other than that, these two hellions are now done.  THe one on the right is riding the decorative skyboard from an earlier post.

Here’s my take on Duke Sliscus.  The main portion of the figure is Yriel with one hand spliced to hold a venom blade and the other arm replaced with a DE kabalite arm holding a blast pistol.  The second venom blade is hung from a sheath on his belt.

I painted GW’s finecast version of Lilith Hesperax in my army’s primary colors.  I hate how the resin impaler spear and flag post can never stay straight.  I’m tempted to just cut off the impaler and replace it with one from the plastic wych kit.

Here’s a hellion gang that adopts the colors of the bulk of my army.  The other two gangs of five are in red/orange and green/white respectively.  The fluff has them all in various cliques that randomly work together with the cabals, so I paint my Reavers, Hellions, Wracks and Scourges in gangs of 5.  It gives the overall army a sort of flying circus look.

Here’s one of the green/white skyboards.  I’m still working on the rider.  This group is supposed to be Baron Sathonyx’s personal retinue, so their boards are in an inverted variation of his own.

For people who’ve been asking me what colors I use, I’m not sure how much the answer will help you.  Other than washes, I never touch GW paints.  These are done with Delta Creamcoat paints I pick up from various craft stores local to my area (Ben Franklin’s to be specific).  The blue color is Liberty Blue.  I add small amounts of white or black to it for shading.  The first coat over grey primer covers the entire mini in blue.  I then go over the exposed flesh areas with Santa’s Flesh, which, when properly thinned, shows up much paler than normal, thanks to the blue undercoat.  I go back over it with a thicker paint for the highlighted areas of the face and arms.  The oranges are some other cheap acrylic paint brand.  Apple Barrel or Folk art or something.  I use tow shades of purple, with a third highlight color mixed consisting of the lighter purple and white.

Here’s what I have so far for my Dark Eldar Baron Sathonyx.  I still need to find some way to give him a cloak and the farseer bones.  I’m happy with how the board came out though.  I used the Helliarch board from the Hellions kit with two of the larger bladevanes left over from a Raider kit fused to the edges via sanding and liquid greenstuff to hide the seam.

Here’s another cake I made for my nephew’s birthday last weekend.  Unfortunately,  I had maybe four hours to make the cake, so I didn’t have time to make the fondant figurines for Hawkeye and Black Widow.  Plus the Avengers I was able to make came out looking slightly retarded.  I mean, just look at Thor’s expression.  It’s like he’s looking at me saying “Jim, I am disappoint “.  Aidan loved the cake anyway.  I wish that I had pictures of him tearing into the figurines after everyone got a slice of the cake.  Bit cap’s legs right off.

Here’s some cakes I made this past Saturday.  I was in the kitchen for almost seven hours baking, carving, frosting and covering the cakes with fondant.  The forward lean of the zombie T-rex looked a little bit awkward until I placed a Lego cavewoman in front of it.  The Iroc-Z Camaro is a replica of my roommate’s car he’s been restoring.  I made a yellow cake recipe with a bit of cornbread mix and honey added to give it an interesting flavor.

Also, whoever coined the phrase “piece of cake” was obviously neither a baker or a cake sculptor.  These things are nerve wracking when you’re on a deadline.

I’ve been working on the Emperor’s Knuckles a bit more.  Currently, I have a captain with plasma pistol and power sword, chaplain, 2 power fist sergeants, three bolter marines and three pistol and chainsword guys.  I plan on adding about fourteen more marines for the time being.  One of the guys over at the local shop ended up with a couple of classic Rogue Trader era heavy weapons, so I’m resin casting the rocket launcher, heavy bolter, plasma cannon and lascannon to make a heavy weapons team.  I have three of the knucklecarts I showed in one of the previous posts, and I plan on getting two more to make a squad of five.  For vehicles I have:

vindicator made from a rhino kit, a sherman tank turret and the metal demolisher cannon from the old Leman Russ kit.

2 classic rhinos

2nd edition metal land speeder (a second is in the mail on it’s way to me)

a Robogear Condor to use as a land speeder typhoon.  The same guy that gave me the classic heavy weapons also gave me the torso for an old squat figure to use as a pilot.  The cockpit area of the kit was just an empty slot, so I used the inner cockpit part from a Venom.  I’ll get better pics of this later as the Condor is a really nice kit despite being only $8 (though shipping from Russia takes a long time).

And last but not least is an old “Chuck” dreadnought from the Rogue Trader days.  I’ve constructed some twin-linked autocannon arms for him using a bunch of Imperial Guard heavy weapons leftovers hacked together and some eldar bits.  The original Melee arm and lascannon are still usuable, as I’ve magnetized the arm mounts to move around and drilled the inserts to use styrene rods to peg the options I’m using in place.  After slapping it on a scenic base, it doesn’t look too out of place, even compared with a modern dreadnought.

These are photos of the stuff I’m currently selling on Ebay.  There’s an eldar Dark Reaper Exarch, a Games Day limited edition Wolf Priest, a 1999 3rd edition release Black Templar Captain/Marshal and two (or three depending on the sell price) Night Lords chaos Hell Blades.  Note that I’m willing to just give whoever asks me for any of my paper templates to build themselves, so I’m only selling these for my time involved in building them.  Credit for their design and use still goes to the amazing folks at Games Workshop and Forgeworld.  The problem is, Apocalypse games are always informal gaming affairs where scratch building is not only allowed, but encouraged, and Forgeworld prices are obscenely high for most of their vehicles.  I try to match the actual models to the best of my ability, but I still suggest to anyone who has the means to buy the real thing, as my copies are akin to a paper standup of a space marine mounted to a base compared to an actual plastic figure with full detailing.  It looks right from a distance, but it is by no means the same as having the real thing.

I plan on using this as a Vindicator.  The body is a standard Rhino.  The turret is from a cheap $10 Sherman tank kit (I plan on using the lower section in another kitbash later) with the metal Demolisher Cannon from the first Leman Russ tank kit.  Then there’s the spotlight, storm bolter, smoke launchers and aerial antenna from the first edition Rhino kit.  This is my first attempt at freehanding celtic knotwork on a tank, and I’m happy with how it came out.  I may go back and add in some highlights to the tank later, but for now I’m calling it finished.

Next up is the first attempt at painting a Knucklekart.  I don’t really like how much green is showing.  I may have to go back in and re-do some of it to show more brown, which is the primary color for the Emperor’s Knuckles.  The squad upgrades in the army will all have opened visors and wear red toboggans.  I’m calling them “Redcaps” instead of sergeants.

And finally, here’s my first company captain and a chaplain I’m working on.  I had to cut and splice the power sword to make it the right size for my midget marines.  Since I’m using plasma pistols as plasma guns, I had to hunt down the old style plasma pistols to distinguish them as actually counting as pistols.  The head is from the first plastic kit release of the Warhammer Fantasy dwarves with the helmet shaved down to a knitted cap.  The chaplain will have a closed faceplate with a skull painted across the front.  I have him turned aroun in the picture to show the work on the backpack with the drilled out skulls replacing the exhaust vents.

I’m planning on getting some more basic infantry done, but my rubber mold for resin casting the bodies and lower legs won’t seem to cure right despite following the mixing procedure down to the letter.  I think I bought a bad (old) batch of casting rubber since the base started out a far thicker consistency than any I’ve used before.  I’ll give it another day and see if it has hardened any more before taking it back to the store for an exchange.