Eldrad Ulthran Is My Master Now

I've always really liked Eldrad Ulthran as a special character. Some terrific stories surround his role in the game and his rules are terrific (especially in the new codex). This is just the starting point for me but, in my mind, Eldrad should be dark and even ghostly. As the greatest Farseer of Ulthwe (and maybe of them all), he should wear the Ulthwe colors and manifest the darkness of the Ulthwe look. Sometimes you come across Eldrad paint jobs that makes you ask "Gee, is it Mardi Gras already??", and that's all fine... but I wanted something dark... so this is the starting point.

Another step forward for Johnny Flame

In case you don't know what's new, it's the bronze on the armor and sword. Bringing it up to gold, you see. Those of you who know my old army will know I put a lot of time into gold. Anyhow... take a peek.

The Fusion Gun

My name is Corey. And this is my Fusion Gun.


I got it at Canadian Tire, on sale, for $12.99. It's like a blow-dryer, except about a squillion times hotter. Some smartymen use it to make depressions in foam that can be filled with water effects and turned into ponds.

Here's the chunk of foam that I used for my third and final "tester" table. You'll notice I have three "ponds"; one deep, one shallow, one medium. Just to see how that went.


Covered with sand, it's hard to see where the ponds are... but there's one of my Fire Dragons.


You'll see that I put some GW gravel at the bottom of the pond areas (as I am applying Bestial Brown). I thought this was a really good idea until I realized it would cause MORE bubbles...


As you can see... we have results. Still some bubbles, but it's ok as far as I'm concerned. I sprinkled a bit of GW flock into the water efects as it was drying to make it look a little more shmutzy. Welcome, by the way, to Galadriel, who was painted by my daughter, Dora.


The winner of the water effects Pepsi Challenge, btw, was Woodland Scenics.

Ace and Gary

Jokes aside, the question of how the Games Workshop Autarchs are equipped is an interesting one. I got both because I wanted to mix and match a bit (as you can tell from my options-obsessed solution here). Fusion gun for one guy, Reaper Launcher for the second, exchangeable back-mounted gear for the rest. I gave some thought to the question of "What if I want the Autarch with Mandiblasters to have the Fusion Gun and I want the Autarch with the Banshee Mask to have the Reaper Launcher?"

And then I decided life's too short.

Notice I built Biff's left arm from a Dire Avenger Exarch's arm (using the one with the Deflector Shield and the pointing finger from the wrist-mounted Shuriken Catapult). The swords that come with the models are too pokey-outy. In other words, I wanted them to take up a bit less space. I'll put a sword on Biff's belt, so no problem there (why have a Banshee Mask if you're not gonna hit someone with a sword?), but I haven't made up my mind yet as to what he should be holding in it. I have an idea, though...

Stay tuned.

Flame On

Just the starting point... there'll be a lot more.

Rare Earth Magnet Wonderfulness

Two Autarchs. Let's call them Biff and his life partner Harold. I trimmed the feathers off of Biff's head and took the extra shoehorn off of Harold's helmet... but that's not what this is about.

When it comes to Autarch, the question is: What do you equip him with? You can give him the back-banners, the Warp Spider Jump Pack, or the Swooping Hawk wings.

My decision was that I couldn't live without being able to give either of them whichever I preferred:


I used my Mighty Power Go-Go Sparkle Fun Dremel Powers to put a nice, deep hole in each of their backs... as you can see:


Insert magnets, fill with Green Stuff and voila... change their gear on the fly.

...

How big is a Forgeworld Avatar?

This big.

Speaking of paint jobs...

My army has a consistent look and feel: Enchanted blue wherever possible... hardened plates (i.e. armor) are typically bone... Golden Yellow for accents... Liche Purple for gems... and the occasional touch of Scorpion Green. This doesn't take into account the various Aspect colors, but I blend them with my usual scheme anyhow.

For special characters and so-on, I'm going a different route. I'm painting them as appropriate to their Craftworld or fluff rather than to match my army. Eldrad Ulthran will be done in Ulthwe Colors... Yriel in Iyanden... the Avatar will be in flames (and I'm considering a few touches of gold, though his tabard will be Enchanted Blue, as he is the Avatar of Baast)... Phoenix Lords will be painted according to their Aspect and background.

I want the special characters to stand out as "Guests" in the army, not to blend in with it. When you survey the entire force, you can pick out the unique additions easily.

Just felt like explaining that.

He *IS* the Brute Squad

The Forgeworld Eldar Avatar. My second piece of Forgeworld resin*.



Observations so far:
- The detail on this thing is NUCKING FUTS. Observe, the arm and bracer: The picture doesn't do it justice, but the runes on the bracer are settled on top of a subtly textured arm. It's really nice. There's a lot of light flash to remove, but that's so little work it's not even worth mentoning.
- The huge blob of hair isn't mounted on a pinhead's worth of metal like the GW Avatar. Instead it rests on the extended thingie that comes off the head AND on the "fins" on the sides of his helmet. Those of you who nearly got an ulcer from trying to get the hair to stay on the GW model will be glad to see how this one works.
- It is NOT very posable. The joints are molded in such a way as to allow one pose and very little variation thereof. Naturally, anyone can convert any way they want, but I for one do not have the guts to mess with the detail on this thing by trying to change the angle of the elbows or waist.
- Even as a guy who has had a few Forgeworld pieces in his hands over the years, I am amazed at how soft the resin is. I can bend the sword back and forth with minimal effort (though part of my soul dies of terror every single time I do). It reminds me of the plastic that they used to make the little green soldiers out of... just with a bit more resilience.
- The cost-to-product ratio is not worth it. If you buy one of these, do it for love... not for the desire to get a good deal. It's a puny handful of 7 resin chunks and a base. Good for "treating yourself" if you're not a regular resin junkie, but not priced in such a way as to make it a must-have item.
- The paintjob is what's going to make this model work. The details and sculpt and all that is truly great, but it's not one of those models that stands on its own before the first drop of paint is applied. What will make the Avatar great will be the completed article. This, my friends, is not my idea of a paint job that makes the model great. Reminds me too much of this guy.
- I'm leaning toward a flaming, molten body, a glossy, bloody hand and making the Wailing Doom the one metallic item in my entire army: Gleaming gold, I was thinking... as gold goes with red. Ask any woman with red shoes and a gold handbag.
- I'm going to hand-prime it in order to avoid killing ANY of the detail.

* I sold that Phoenix Flyer

Just let me do this, Mr Kelly...

This skit reminds me of what I was like when I met Phil Kelly.



I even had the hat.

(BTW it looks like NBC told YouTube to yank the video. Shame)

Welp. I screwed THAT up.

I don't wanna hear any smart talk out of you people (especially you, John... you bastard).

The thing about reading the directions, whether it be for Water Effects or a home stereo or nitro glycerine, is that someone usually writes them for a reason. Take, for example, the instruction on both bottles of Water Effects which clearly say that you should layer the water in 1/8" increments. I just sorta said "screw that" and piledrove my way into it. Patience is a virtue... it's just not my virtue.

So the result (predictably) is that there are bubbles everywhere. The Games Workshop product has lots of little ones:


...and the Woodland Scenics' has a few giant ones.


Both of the ponds have a hard-enough surface that popping them is difficult and also leaves a permanent mark (or it would if I didn't fill it with more product after).

Interestingly, the Woodland Scenics product is coming into the lead again. It's easier to do on-the-fly repair work with it (like popping a giant bubble and then refilling the hole with more resin), whereas the GW product tends to tug and ripple when you mess with it in a way that is hard to compensate for.

The battle's not over yet, though.

Pimp my ride

Yes. I'm that bored.

Ok, I should flesh this out a bit.

Yeah, this photo is just one of those "I'll take it and post it and I'm not sure why" things, but I'm also looking at the turret of the Scorpion II tank as inspiration for my Fire Prism conversion.

It's a really nice turret. The other tanks should have a turret so nice.

GW Water Effects edges ahead

An incident has come up that gives Games Workshop Water Effects an edge over Woodland Scenics Water Effects. It's about bubbles. Observe:

On the left you'll see some bubbles that have come to the surface. The GW Water Effects is thin enough that they float to the top, and I just popped them with the end of a toothpick. GW Water Effects always seems to let the bubbles out (most of the time they pop on their own, in fact). On the right you can see a bubble stuck at the bottom of the Woodland Scenics pond, and it won't come up. This is typical for the WS product; the bubbles tend to stick to the bottom. I don't know why that is, but I have to decide whether I want to dispatch that bubble by shoving a toothpick in there (because the resin is already hardening, it's likely to leave a permanent mark).



Advantage: Games Workshop.

(p.s. The Woodland Scenics stuff does look very watery at this point, which is nice. Still being in liquid form probably has a lot to do with that)

What to do while the resin dries...

I have a conversion concept for my Fire Prisms that I wanna show you:

The Pepsi Challenge

I added more water effects to the two ponds. I also added a sprinkling of green flock to see if it looks nice when the time comes.


Here are the current standings:
Games Workshop Water Effects:
Clarity: Very cloudy
Speed of drying: Extremely slow
Bubbles: A few little ones that work themselves out
Shrinkage: Minimal
Ease of use: Due to the small hole through which it's squeezed and it's low viscosity (compared to Woodland Scenics), pretty darn good.

Woodland Scenics Water Effects:
Clarity: A little cloudy
Speed of drying: Slow
Bubbles: A couple big ones that had to be dug out with a toothpick and a permanent mark will be visible once it's dry
Shrinkage: Enough to reduce the "dome-like" surface
Ease of use: The open bottle top (as opposed to a hole to squeeze it through) makes it too easy to accidentally pour more out than you intend to. Also, it's much more viscous than the Games Workshop product, so it's harder to do pin-point drops to fill tiny holes without getting a "rope" of resin coming out.

Winner so far:
If the challenge was over now, it'd be Woodland Scenics for clarity, cost, and shrinkage (which, as I said, is a good thing). It is still way too early to tell which is the better product, so stay tuned.

This is going to take several days to resolve, but I'll keep you all posted.

The secret of Brown

If you read this blog then you already know a fair amount of how I do the table thing: Paint it black, then Bestial Brown, then Desert Yellow, then Bleached Bone, then a dusting of Skull White. I'm not gonna go through another series of photos which chronicle it.

Thing is, after I started painting the black, I got an idea from looking at some photos (namely this and this): All this time I've been thinking about adding vines to give a much more "jungly" appearance, but couldn't figure out how to add the green vines to the jungle floor. The answer was simple: Use brown vines, not green.

This simple detail emboldened me to roll up a bunch of Green Stuff "Snakes" and start laying them around on the table (even though I'd started painting).


As you can see, once I built up through the various colors the vines looked really good and very natural.


Ok. Time to move on to the next stage. First thing I did was fill the two "pools" with Dark Green Ink.


While that was drying, I played around with the watered-down glue and added a little bit of flock here and there to the tiles. Now this... this is starting to get close to the effect I've been wanting. Very happy with how this looks.


With a bit of Reaper Mini Pure White, I painted "GW" (for Games Workshop) in one pool and "WS" (for Woodland Scenics) in the other. Then, I started filling each with their respective resin products. I'm going to try to build up slowly in layers rather than pour it all in at once (which is what the instructions say I should have done the first time... duhhh). So the Water Effects Pepsi Challenge is now underway:


Now, I shall eat some cheese and crackers.

Test Table v2.0

Now that I've pretty much finished off the first "test tabIe" I was working on, I can now learn from my mistakes a bit and try something new. in particular, I'm really trying to nail down a technique for making marshy ponds and for creating swampy water. I also want to start working on some of the stone tiles and adding vegetation.

I started with a hunk of foam (for those who are curious, I did not take this from the bag that has the spider in it. I still haven't gone into that bag since I made the post):


Next, I used a T-square and ball-point-pen to etch out tiles, each .5" apart. The tutorial here suggests I use a blade to cut the tile grooves instead of the pen, but that just seemed like so much trouble.

I also marked out two ponds. I will use Games Workshop Water Effects in one and Woodland Scenics Water Effects in the other. Whichever one is better, that'll be what I use on the full-size table.

Note the rock I have hanging around. That's there for rubbing on the foam to give it a rougher, more organic look. It really works!


Here's a close-up of the tile surface. I would love to accurately create an effect which replicates aged water damage on these tiles but, seeing as I don't actually know what the looks like in real life, I'll have to do without.


Two ponds, dug out with an Xacto blade. This really isn't the best way to dig the ponds out, believe me; the ponds end up way too deep and you end up wasting Water Effects solution there (not to mention that deep ponds take longer to cure, and I'm impatient enough as it is). Anyhow, live and learn.


Speaking of impatience, I like to point a fan at the glued sand to dry it as quickly as possible.

As I did with the first "test" table, I coated the relevant areas with white glue and heaped on the sand. I then used watered-down glue over the sand to seal it in. You'll notice how the sand is of different hues. I have no idea why this is except that they come from two different GW sand tubs. BTW, GW sand is the best. If I could use it on the entire table, I would in a heartbeat... but I'm too busy spending all my extra money on overpriced Water Effects to afford any overpriced Modeling Sand.


Here's a good head-on of the test piece as it currently is at the time of this writing:


...and a close-up:


Now that there's nothing to do except wait for this thing to dry, I think I'll go have a nap.