Results from the 2023/24 Hobby Season

 

So we've come to the end of another hobby season and it is time to reflect on the season past to discuss what got completed, what did not, and showcase the fruits of my labor.  Here's where the 2023/24 To Do List stands as the hobby season wraps up. Items crossed out were completed, the rest were not. I rarely looked back at the list for most of the season so it's interesting for me to see the results. How did I track against my expectations for the hobby at the start of the season?

The Horus Heresy

• Complete two Dark Angels Legion Characters
  
• Complete two Dark Angels Legion Infantry Units
  

Warhammer 40K

• Complete a Ballistus Dreadnought from the Leviathan launch box
• DreadTober 2023
  
• Complete two Dark Angels Units
• Chaplain on Bike and Invader ATV
  
• Complete Lion El'Jonson
  

Adeptus Titanicus

• Complete Legio Tempestus Warmaster Iconoclast Titan
• The titan is built, with some magnetization required
  
• Complete Legio Ignatum Warlord Titan
  
• Complete some more weapon options
  

Aeronautica Imperialis

• Complete Adeptus Astartes Planes
• Completed 7 Horus Heresy era planes
  

Bonus Projects

• Complete Dark Angels Primaris Repulsor
• Complete Dark Angels Company Heroes unit
  
• Complete Two More Blackstone Fortress Characters
• A new surprise 40k faction (Tyranids)? 
• Leviathan box set Tyranids built
   

Here is what got completed that was NOT on the list for the season:

Legions Imperialis

• 10 Dark Angels Legion Rhino Transports
  
• 4 Dark Angels Legion Spartan Assault Tanks
• 6 Dark Angels Legion Land Raider Proteus Explorators
• 4 Dark Angels Legion Kratos Heavy Tanks
• 6 Dark Angels Legion Predator Battle Tanks
• 6 Dark Angels Legion Sicaran Battle Tanks
• 9 buildings (scenery)

I had not foreseen how much would be released for Legions Imperialis, nor how fun it was going to be to paint. I started well along my To Do list until I chose to paint the Rhino transports. Then I went off the rails with excitement and inspiration driven by these tiny tanks.

Other than Legions Imperialis, I stuck to my choice of game systems and made sure to put progress on those projects that mattered most to me. At the beginning of the season, for instance, I got really into painting 40K Dark Angels and would have cleared my 40K to do list had Legions Imperialis not stolen the mojo.  For the Horus Heresy, I did make the conscious decision to focus on Legion Imperialis and Titanicus instead of the the Age of Darkness, although I did build a mk3 armored command squad for fun. :)

If I haven't miscounted, that's a fine 61 models completed for the season.  If you are interested, pictures of each completion follow after the break.  It was a great season and I'm already looking ahead to the 2024/25 Season of Wood! But more of that in my sent post.

Cheers and Happy Gaming!

Season of Scenery 2024 - TO DONE

 

Greetings and welcome back.  Today I'm sharing the project I completed for Season of Scenery 2024.  I painted up nine buildings for Adeptus Titanicus and Legions Imperialis. Eight buildings are built from the Adeptus Titanicus Civitas kits.  The ninth is a ruin built from an old Epic plastic ruins set. Here are some of these buildings after being built back in November 2019.

It's nice to get paint on some of them.  I was able to prime and base coat the full collection of buildings (more than is shown above), but I left six or seven on the table for now, not completed. I'll come around to them before too long...hopefully not in another five years. 😂 But for now, here's a big stamp o' DONE for Season of Scenery 2024!
 

If you are interested in the close ups, keep scrolling down after the break. Due to the symmetrical nature of the buildings, some pics appear to be duplicates but are actually different faces of the same building. I also want to point out that my goal was to make interesting terrain as a back drop to AT and LI games.  I didn't want the building to detract from or out shine the game pieces themselves (titans and various armor and infantry units for those games). There is a lot of detail on these buildings and one could certainly go to town on them as one might any individual model.

Cheers and Happy Gaming!!

SEASON OF SCENERY 2024 - Adeptus Titanicus/Legions Imperialis Terrain - Part 3

 Greetings and welcome back!  The summer has been in full swing and my painting time has been reduced as a result.  However, progress has been made!  Today I'm sharing the latest three buildings for Season of Scenery 2024.  What started as Ecclesiastic (in my mind) ended up as fancy head quarters/offices for for three factions of the Imperium: the Collegia Titanica (aka Adeptus Titanicus), Aeronautica Imperialis (Imperial Navy), and the Imperialis Auxilia (Imperial Army). Thanks to the recent 8mm games, there are plenty of fun transfers to choose form for these buildings.

 With the fancy gothic windows, I decided to go for a lighted stain-glass/colored glass effect to ass interest and break up the tall monochrome look of these buildings.  I also kept the dark roof look.  For this Imperialis Auxilia building, I decided to add this dark armored bad around the second tier. It came out kinda goofy, in my opinion, so I did NOT do this with the other two.  

I added verdigris to weather the dome and pointy bits.  Not sure it's at all how a roof might weather, but I don't hate the look.

I varied the colors in the windows to add additional interest between the buildings.  I wanted them to be different enough to be owned by separate factions, even though they basically look the same, due to how the kits work. None of this will matter on the table during a game, I imagine.  But it's just how I hobby. 😂

That's it for now.  I have five more Civitas buildings to go I believe.  I may stop here though for Season of Scenery.  Not sure yet.  I slowed way down (even with other vacation and family distractions this summer), and it might be prudent to have a bit of a palate cleanser before finishing off this terrain to avoid burnout and going sloppy on the last few.

If I call it, I'll put up a finished post for Season of Scenery 2024 that shows all the buildings together.  If I carry on, you could expect to see more buildings.  Regardless, September kicks off the 2024/25 Hobby Season and we'll be on to something else no doubt!  I'll have a wrap up for 2023/24 posted by the end of this month too.

Cheers and Happy Gaming!

SEASON OF SCENERY 2024 - Adeptus Titanicus/Legions Imperialis Terrain - Part 2

 

Welcome back to Season of Scenery 2024.  I've poked away at a few more buildings...and I built a bunch more tiny Astartes stuff - but it's more of the same tiny stuff, so I'm not posting it here. I've been playing with various roof types and increasing some of the details, like dry brushing the doors with ProAcryl Dark Silver to make things a bit more interesting.

 

 

The flat roofs need a bit more black so they are less swirly, maybe. But that's not a big deal.

 

Here I thought it might be fun to make a building stand out a bit from the others with a fancier roof.

 Also I went with more layers of transparent black on the flat roof to get more even coverage.

Having finished the Administratum buildings, I started to work on what I consider the Ecclesiastic buildings.  There is such fun detail in the windows here that I decided to play a little with colored glass.  I used some ProAcryl florescent colors over ProAcryl transparent colors to try to get a hint of light coming through the glass from within.  Not a full on OSL thing, just some added brightness. I also tried some transparent yellow on the circles that look like they could be lights on some of the walls. Doesn't show up so well in the pics though. This building isn't yet complete.  I plan to add verdigris on the pointy gold bits.

So there's a look at the progress so far.  I took a couple nights off to build some extra drop pods and Astartes support stuff. Then there's some family summer fun going on so I won't get back to painting for a few days.  But I should have something to show later next week as I crank through the Ecclesiastic buildings. 

I hope your summer (or winter) is going well.

Cheers and happy gaming!

SEASON OF SCENERY 2024 - Adeptus Titanicus/Legions Imperialis Terrain

Greetings and welcome back.  Today I'm sharing a group of Adeptus Titanicus buildings that I am painting up as part of Season of Scenery 2024. This scenery is also suitable for Legions Imperialis, although it provides more line of site blocking than garrisoning terrain.  Of course, you could certainly garrison these buildings so long as you can agree with your opponent as to how that works.

Here is the full range of buildings I'm hoping to complete by the end of August. The more "churchy" buildings were sprayed with an off-white rattle can from the local hardware store (Rust-oleum brand, in the US).  The more "administrative" buildings got a similar rattle can spray coat of light grey. I then made two simple washes - brown for the off-white buildings and black for the grey buildings.  For terrain, I planned to use a lot of wash/shade so I needed an effective but cheap solution - NOT GW Agrax or Nuln Oil.  I chose to use the "Les Wash" recipe for this. I made up the medium mix a head of time, then just added the sepia and black ink to suit my taste.  I didn't follow the exact number of drops used in the video I linked. You can see how the brown/sepia wash affects the off-white buildings above.  The Black wash is shown below.

After shading everything, I started looking at the details I wanted to pick out.

Here I used Proacryl Transparent Black on the doors, and Proacryl Rich Gold on the dome.  Then I used Dirty Down Verdigris on the dome. I covered all the gold with the verdigris, then before it fully dried, I used a wet paintbrush to remove the Verdigris from the center of each panel.  This left a pleasing effect in the cracks around the panels where I thought verdigris would collect/build up.  I went back in with a matching Proacryl light grey here to clean up the areas around the gold.

Here I used more transparent Black on the doors and a bit of rich gold on the imperial eagle wings. Then I went to work with some Proacryl Jade. on the tower roof. This was shaded with the same black wash as the building to tight things in.  Agrax Earthshade was used carefully on the eagle wings. I ended with some more clean up with the light grey.

This is a piece of terrain from the Epic days that I built from sprues I found on eBay back along.  Here, I was going for a tower that was hit and burned out. So I used used layers of Proacryl Coal Black dry brushed heavily on the inside, and then lightly with upward brush strokes only following the windows from bottom to top. I wanted it to look as though smoke billowed out of those windows and rose up along the side of the building.  I finished up with the Proacryl Transparent Black on the inside of the wall bases and GW Agrax Earthshade on the outside of the wall bases. Simple but effective for easy tabletop terrain at this scale.

Then I spent more time on this "Generatorum" building.  You can see Proacryl Transparent black used on the doors and all the roof details.  The black "Les" wash was applied in a few layers on the roof. I then carefully dry brushed Proacryl Dark Silver on the roof pieces, followed by Rich Gold on the Imperial eagle wings and the generator thingies.  I used verdigris on these gold parts again, though with the large generator bit, I used it sparingly in between and around the base of the "tubes". That doesn't show in the pictures much, it's subtle.

I used some thinned Proacry Transparent Black in some of the wall details that looked metal. I then dry brushed those a bit with Proacry Dark Silver, or left them black totally on whim, and the likelihood of not getting dark silver all over the walls. I used Dirty Down Rust around the large pipe coming out of the wall and dragged it along corners and down the walls where I though crud/oil/rust/etc. might drip down the wall. Again, not going to win a Golden Demon, but a quick and effective way to add a little interest to the building.

Here is another look at the grime work on a similar panel on the other side of this building. I spent a lot more time on this building, hoping it stands out a bit as a focal point among the general look at the rest of the Civitas buildings. I should add that I used roughly matching off-white and light gray paint to touch up and spots on the buildings where I thought the wash pooled or simply dried in unpleasing ways.  This was mostly along the top railings and occasionally dry brushed here and there to lighten the surfaces some.

So that's where I'm at so far.  I have these four buildings done from the collection of 14 I'm planing to complete by the end of August.  Swing by Wargames Terrain Workshop to see what else Dave Stone is up to, and maybe catch an update on the Season of Scenery 2024.

 

 

Cheers and Happy Gaming!

On the Workbench [July] - Legions Imperialis Ruins

 Greetings!  Leading into Season of Scenery 2024, I finally sat down to build the Legions Imperialis ruins. They look great, and honestly aren't that hard to assemble.  But boy did it still take me some time to work through them. There's a lot of little parts and cleaning (esp. if you are a perfectionist, like me 😂).  But after a couple sessions, I had everything assembled.

Lots of fun terrain for the infantry to take cover in, and garrison. Some line of sight blocking for the rest. As shown above, one box roughly covers a little more than a quarter of a 4'x4' gaming mat.  Hopefully mixed with the rest of my Titanicus terrain, there will be enough terrain variety for a decent game. The plastic bag in the upper right holds all the bits of scatter terrain (piles or debris, etc.) that help fill in some of the empty space with cover.

While digging out terrain for painting, I also came across this resin landing pad that I had forgot I picked up.  Seems to host this Thunderhawk quite nicely. :) This piece got a primer coat along with all of my Adeptus Titanicus buildings.  For mey next post, I'll share WIP pics from that project as I move through the Season of Scenery, 2024. Perhaps ironically, these ruins are not on tap for the challenge, unless I have time after all the buildings are done. And there is a lot of buildings...

Cheers and Happy Gaming!

Dark Angels, Legions Imperialis and other Odds and Ends

 

Hello and welcome back!  I've been resistant to post as I've not felt there was much of interest to show lately, despite remaining busy with the hobby.  However, I think now I've built up enough content to make a meaningful post, so here we go. 😂

The Dark Angels Repulsor continues, but has been sorely neglected as the hobby butterfly in me spent way too much time collecting and assembling tiny forces for Legions Imperialis. Maybe it's my age or the decades I've spent in the hobby, but it's so much fun, and easier, to collect and store tiny models in favor of the larger ones.  Some day, I should do an updated post on my hobby space to reveal the scale of my operations.  It's....a lot.

Anyway, I've been slowly poking away at this Repulsor. I've had trouble holding on to the incentive and inspiration to drive the project forward.  But it is getting done despite that by slow degrees. I added some details, like the lights, and started work on lenses.

Then last night I arbitrarily highlighted the red armor bits (except the techmarine). It's not typical for me to pick at a project like this.  It shows my complete lack of inspiration; which is odd since I really like the model and have lots of interest in adding painted work to my 40K Dark Angels in general.

Well my secret to success has always been perseverance. Better to do *something* and keep momentum than get caught up with painter's block and do nothing. So I'll paint whatever captures my attention on a model until I get back in the grove and inspiration or vision takes back over. I think I'm just side tracked by Tyranids which I had planned to be painting by now before getting further distracted by Legions Imperialis. Squaduary was to be a Tyranid unit from the 40K Leviathan box and for Monster March, a large model from the same (likely the Screamer Killer).  

Now I'm undecided.  I have a planned Adeptus Titanicus game looming large in March and I'd like to have painted terrain for that...so Squaduary is likely to be a large squad of buildings/ruins now. 😂 Which may then carry on into MonsterMarch!  Ugh, no, that's no good.  I have plenty of titans for the game, so hopefully I can paint an actual (Tyranid) monster for MonsterMarch - I normally paint a tiny titan or other large 30k/40k model.

Anyway, time will tell.  Stop back in a couple days to see how I am using Battle Foam trays to store my current Legions Imperialis models in the original box.  It's not going to last if I buy even a single new model for the game, but it's fun for now.  I was sort of hoping to convince myself NOT to by a single new model (can't fit!), but I guess we know how that conversation typically goes...

Cheers and Happy Gaming!

On the Workbench [January] - Legions Imperialis Ruins!

 

Greetings and welcome back. Still obsessed with tiny models, I dug around among my dusty shelves to find the two sprue of Epic scale ruins I had snagged on eBay shortly after Adeptus Titanicus was released.  For AT, there really wasn't a need for these empty shells, just line of sight blocking terrain.  So I never built it.  Instead I cribbed a piece here and there to put on the bases of larger titans. I think these were released during the time that the Epic Warhammer game was available, but I wasn't really playing that back then - though I did pick up a bunch of Ork stuff...wonder where that got off to?

There are some great details on these tiny broken buildings that will really stand out with some paintwork and transfers.The size is close enough to fit in with the other Adeptus Titanicus terrain that has been released so far. That terrain seems almost undersized a bit for the scale which helps these work, where Epic scale infantry and tank models definitely do not, at least not with Legions Imperialis.

There are three main styles of buildings giving plenty of variety when scattered about the table. I'm looking forward to seeing how they paint up.  For their era, they have pretty crisp details.

These ruins will provide some necessary variety and cover for the infantry in Legions Imperialis. And they are still suitable for variety on an Adeptus Titanicus table, honestly.  Just not necessary.  I threw down a few Legions Imperialis models to see how the scale works.

Definitely god for gaming! I hope to pick up the newer terrain set that released with Legions Imperialis at well, and I hope it all mixes with the Adeptus Titanicus terrain I also have - including some 3rd party 3D printed buildings and fortress walls that I also picked up and stashed away for future games. 

I have a game planned for March, so I'm going to try to get paint on some of the terrain before then.  I have a solid collection of painted Titans now, and a nice printed game mat to play on.  It's a shame to set them up with unpainted terrain!

So that's the workbench this month.  I REALLY need to get back to painting now.  The Dark Angels Repulsor is crying great crocodile tears on my painting table as I type...

Cheers and Happy Gaming!!

On the Workbench [November] - Adeptus Titanicus Terrain

Following hard on DreadTober 2019, I decided to take a painting break and work on some Adeptus Titanicus terrain I had still on sprue. I picked up a couple boxes of the original buildings, and then a box of the spires and it was time to get them off the shelf and put them together to see what I could come up with.  Some buildings were built stock from the instructions, some were of my own design. The kits go together well and provide a lot of options for customization.  I have a second spire kit on the way and will build out this set a bit more, I think.

This simple Administratum building should provide some good cover to advancing Titans and skulking Imperial Knights alike. I'm sharing front and back photos of each building to showcase the many details.

The spire kit blends well with the base building kit.  I built the spires pretty much stock form the instructions and then added them to some of the base buildings which I varied a bit for variety.

Lots of 40K Gothic goodness on all sides.

The small cathedral is a design all my own. It was fun to go through the various pieces and sort out the overall design.

Lots of windows to allow in the light of the Emperor of Mankind and various doors to admit the many, many pilgrims bound to bathe in His glory.

I imagined the nave the top end of the cross, so no doors there.

Another of my own design build, this was a blatant attempt to provide simple line of sight blocking terrain, at least for knights and the smaller warhound titans.  It is still good cover for the mighty Warlords.

A fun challenge is making sure pipes, doors and windows all make sense.

More stock build combinations to form various tall structures.  "Rule of Cool" and good line of sight blocking terrain combined! The details on the plastic kits just continue to amaze.

It's going to be great fun putting paint on these buildings.

Soaring arches, vaulted roofs, gilded domes - you have to appreciate the architecture of the age.

I guess that once you've seen one tall spire you've seen them all...

But they are still pretty cool!

For a game I haven't even played yet, I sure am excited to paint up the terrain...

Wow, you stuck along through all of this, eh?  Good on ya...

I promise it'll end...soon.

The humble beginnings of a basic building from the kit. This one awaits the new spire kit before it can soar to new heights.

And to think I found this simple structure pretty cool when first released.  The look even more fantastic with the spire kits bits on top as shown in the examples above.

SO that's where I'm at with a collection of terrain for Adeptus Titanicus.  Once painted up these buildings should provide a great backdrop for the Legio Tempestus Titan maniple I've painted up.  And now I have transfers!  Or will have once they arrive in the mail. Expect some more AT projects through out the hobby season.

For now, however, that's all I have from the workbench.

Cheers and Happy Gaming!