Plague Progress

There was a break in the weather so I was able to spray the Plague and I have just based them.

The 'General' and his specialist weapons (I used the mortar crew for the general, I think with his greatcoat and binoculars he looks much more important than any of the others).

Rank and file (rank in more ways than one)

Plague Dogs.

Painting was pretty much as standard.  I'm not completely happy with the skin tones, I don't like the official pink but I wanted to go for some sort of 'off flesh' colouration.  I played around with various combinations of flesh base coat and washes, then I hit the least garish one with Army Painter Softtone wash (the same colour as the lightest dip).  This pretty much gave me what I wanted, but meant that if I was using the softtone dip rather than strongtone I would have to wash some areas before the dip.

The dogs have different base coats, one is a light grey, the other bone white.

Clear bases again, and I had a few minor issues with smearing superglue.  I will see what can be done (very little I suspect), but they don't look too bad.

A Plague on this Weather

I'm part way through painting a Strike Force of Plague for Deadzone, unfortunately I am waiting for dry enough weather to spray the Antishine on them.  Grr...
When I get them done I will base them and get pictures up.

Meanwhile I have been building (yet more) cardstock terrain for the D&D campaign.  No pictures yet until a) its finished, and b) the players have seen it first.  Don't want to spoil the surprise.

I also gave a friend an introductory game of Kings of War.  He had joined in the epic Battle of the Stag, but this was his first go with a force of his own and an explanation of the rules.
As usual I found the system easy to teach and pick up, and he loved it.

Set up; Orcs to the left, cannon to the right.

From the other end.  The terrain is mostly GW, it always helps if a game looks good as well.

The battle nears its conclusion.  Near the wall lurk the orc skulks, which I failed to get rid of all battle.

In the end it was a hard fought draw.  A good result for a first game.

A Puzzling Map

A quick hark back to the previous month's prop making.  I wanted a combined treasure items and puzzle for the players in our D&D game so I came up with this puzzle.

Its supposed to be made from squares of gold, but I needed something lighter (and cheaper).

I used two squares of foam board with the card peeled back.  I drew the map shape onto one of them and then cut it out.  I began using a hot wire cutter, but it broke so I had to finish off with a sharp craft knife.  The hot wire cutter did a better job though and there is quite an undercut on some of the pieces cut with a knife.

Then it was a simple matter to glue everything together before cutting the individual squares apart.

Finally an undercoat followed by successive layers of bronze, brass and gold paints, then the detail added.

If you're interested the map shows the Empire of Y'hog at its peak, and it has a few arcane properties, thus I can give some historical information to the players.

It didn't take them too long to work out, though it took rather longer for them to identify where it was (the land forms have changed somewhat since it was made).  The players thought it was great fun.

Deadzone Marauder progress

June the Month of Deadzone is progressing well.
I have finished most of my Orx (or Marauder) strike team.

I still have the captain to finish, but he is taking longer with all the braid and greatcoat.

I went with what I hope is a believable looking military uniform, rather than the more ragtag look I have for my fantasy orcs and goblins.

The figures were undercoated with Army Painter Leather Brown. Then the skin was base coated Vallejo game colour Sick Green, the pants Citadel Desert Yellow and the tunics VGC Khaki. Equipment was mostly VGC Dark Fleshtone or VMC German Grey. Metals were VGC Chainmail.

I then highlighted with lighter shades, e.g. VGC Goblin Green on the skin. Then a coat of Army Painter Strongtone dip, followed by Antishine.

Clear acrylic bases should look good on the Deadzone scenery and mats.

I've already got 100 points of Plague assembled ready to paint as well.

Prop Progress?

So how did 'prop May' go?
Pretty well. I haven't posted much because most of the props were printouts from the adventure or pictures from the internet. Very useful for player immersion, but not very interesting to show here.

Moving on; New month, New project.

As I mentioned previously I went to the Mantic open day, there I picked up a pathfinder set for the new version of Deadzone. It's not the full retail box load (and I'm still waiting for my kickstarter stuff), but is great for running demos.
I've been planning the terrain and looking through my old DZ stuff putting together a few 100 points forces.

Last night we managed two consecutive games using my stuff alongside T'OtherOne's stuff (mine is teh unpainted grey stuff in the foreground, his is the rather excellent yellow stuff behind; more about it on his blog, link below).

We all had fun and got both games done in around two hours. No surprise then that June looks like Deadzone month.