20092510:13
pm
What the flock?
So I figured out an absolutely brilliant solution to my smoke dilemma, courtesy of the tutorial on this nice blog. Essentially, one takes bushy flocking material and glues it to the flight stem, and after repeated glue applications it resembles a fantastic smoke trail.
The flock was applied with cyanoacrylate superglue at first, giving me what resembled large bushes trailing behind my Stormboyz.
After two coats of watered-down Elmer's glue, they start looking less like flying shrubbery and more like smoke:
The trails are firm, but a coat or two more of the glue might be necessary before I'm entirely comfortable drybrushing it. I may actually try and find some thinner cyanoacrylate glue so I don't spend all of tomorrow sitting around waiting for this stuff to dry up. I think it's a vast improvement over my earlier wool or cotton options, though, as it has a much nicer texture to it.
2009253:42
pm
Smoking is hazardous
So I've decided these guys are one of the first projects I want to catch up and finish off over the summer. I glued some sand and ballast down onto their bases for terrain, and before I prime them and paint 'em, I'm trying to figure out my options for smoke.
The left is steel wool, and the right is a cotton swab. Truthfully, I'm not too pleased with the appearance of either. The steel wool holds its shape reasonably well, but it's hard to pull apart and has a very dense look to it. The cotton's a bit better at looking wispy, but I think I'd have to use some sort of spray adhesive to get it to stay put well enough to paint. Neither smoke idea looks good enough that I want to really consider leaving it. The third option is to sculpt some sort of flames coming out of the nozzles, but I'm not too thrilled about the idea as I am poor at sculpting and painting fire would give me a headache. Alternatively, I could leave them smoke-less, but that feels like a bit of a cop-out.
I have seen things like armorcast's smoke bitz that are intended to give the same effect, but whatever I add needs to be able to fit around the wire that's holding the stormboyz up in the air. Plus, a metal smoke bit sticking out the back would seriously unbalance these guys, and I've gone to great pains to get them to sit stable.
On the bright side, I've figured out a nice recipe for a dark grey/blue military scheme that I'm going to be painting on all of their cloth and uniform parts, using primarily the citadel washes. Hopefully, once I sort the smoke out, I'll be able to get these guys painted and done with.
2009182:48
pm
Never, ever buy hosting from Powweb
Hello! I am alive. It's been a while!
Judging from the e-mails I've been getting, a lot of you were wondering what the hell happened. The Warforge was temporarily 'closed' for a few months as a corollary to the increasing difficulty of the material I was getting put up against in law school. Accordingly, the site's been unupdated for at least two months, and for that I sincerely apologize.
Additionally, our previous web provider, Powweb.com, threw a monkey wrench in the whole site when they decided to delete the entire web site on the grounds that we were in 'violation' of their Terms of Service. As you can imagine, I was in contact with them pretty much immediately, and over the course of the next week I discovered a few things. Powweb outsources their support to India. While this isn't necessarily a bad thing, what it means is that nobody you talk to on their '24/7 support' team has any idea how to fix anything, or why anything has happened, ever. They could not give me a straight answer as to what files on my account were in violation of their Terms of Service, other than the amorphous 'anything unrelated to your web site', which apparently was everything.Good call, Powweb. That's one way of eliminating a customer who has been with you for three years.
Eventually, I got a full refund from Powweb, but they refused to furnish all of the files they deleted. I've been piecing The Warforge back together little by little, and I think I've got everything back the way it should be. If you spot any broken or missing images or posts, please let me know immediately!
2009279:56
am
And then there were ten
So I've made ten, and I'm fresh outta Stormboyz!
Number 8 and 9, which are pretty boring to be honest:
I had a fun idea for number 10 - a loony stormboy who loves his boomsticks. I figured the zillion stikkbombz he'd be chucking would make up for the fact that I neglected to put them on most of the rest. 
I'm fresh outta Stormboyz parts now, as I only bought enough for 10 to start with. I have to pick up another 10 at some point, and when I do I think I'll be doing some more fun things with them. I have an extra stormboy body, thanks to my Stormgrotz taking his place, so I may make a rokkit and have him hanging from it by a hand or something.
Anyway, I'm going to watch ebay for cheap stormboyz. In the meanwhile, I'll figure out how I want to base 'em and add some smoke and other finishing details. (I just noticed a slugga I forgot to drill out, and some mold lines)
2009251:40
pm
Something squiggy this way comes
On Jan 31st of this year, I placed an order with Forgeworld for one of their small squiggoths (as opposed to the Gargantuan ones, which I already have two of ). It took almost four weeks, but it finally arrived today, and I'm excited!
A few things struck me about the kit right off the bat. First, the squiggoth is much smaller than I was expecting. My initial reason for ordering it was to use it as a 'Counts-As' battlewagon - I figured with a bit of work to the howdah, you could easily pass the thing off as a battlewagon with various upgrades, and it would be a fun and entertaining thing to see on the field. However, I'm a bit surprised to find that the squiggoth is hardly larger than one of the new ork trukks! I think I might have misjudged scale a tiny bit based on how ridiculously huge the Gargantuan model Forgeworld makes is. Knowing its actual size, I probably would have waited and bought one of the new Warhammer Fantasy Lizardmen Stegadons instead. That said, however, it looks to be an exceptionally nice kit.
This is actually the first Forgeworld kit I've seen that provides any sort of options as to how you want the model to look, which I found quite surprising. The iron gob for the head seems completely optional, and extra tusks are even included if you decide you want to leave it off. Likewise, there seem to be two options for the 'tail' weapon, both of which are represented by choppy flail bits. Although the legs are separate, it does not look as though the kit is intended to be easily reposed due to the armored plating and chain details.
There is a notable absence of included weapon with this kit, which Forgeworld makes clear up-front on their web site. However, I think the addition of at least a kannon or other big gun would have been very welcome, given the model's price tag and relative size.
Here's the squiggoth's main torso alongside one of my trukks for comparison:
Given this relative scale, it's pretty clear my initial goal of creating a "squig-wagon" is not going to be doable, as the squiggoth is just too weedy to measure up to the required size. A bit of creative howdah construction could probably provide something to carry 20 boyz, but it's a stretch. I've been scratching my head as to what I could possibly use the model for at this point, and come up with a few ideas. Most obviously, I could make it a counts-as Trukk, as it's just about the size required. However, a few problems crop up when you try and count it as an AV 10 vehicle that can move 18". The squiggoth is arguably more armored than the trukk kit itself, and given it's size I don't think it fits the rules very well.
Instead, I've been giving some thought to tooling it out as a 'looted wagon', which I think fits the profile much better. With a higher AV, a slightly smaller transport capacity, and the ability to haul big guns, it seems an apt fit. It's even better if you consider the 'Don't Press Dat!' roll looted vehicles are required to make - rather than the vehicle breaking down or careening off, it could represent the Sqiuggoth being ornery and breaking loose from the commands of it's handlers. The mean gob on the squiggoth can probably be used to represent a wrecking ball, reinforced ram, or perhaps even a grabbin' klaw if you can picture the squiggoth snatching things in it's maw. I think this is most likely what I'm going to end up doing with it, though I will also admit the idea makes me want a couple more!
I took a photo of this Squiggoth with one of my Gargantuans for further scale comparison.
I think the fact that I now have 2 Gargantuan squiggoths and a smaller one has hilarious (and terrifying) implications involving squiggoth breeding. The fact that I now have three also means I can run the nifty Squiggoth Battle Herd formation in Apocalypse! I'm going to have to get all of these things done so I can throw them down on a table.
2009257:57
am
Something seems runty…
Ain't nuffin' 'arder 'den a stormbo-...
Oi! 'Ow'd grotz get a rokkit!?
I figure the model's sufficient enough to count as a stormboy. Got all the wargear - chainsword, slugga(s), and a stikkbomb.
2009177:35
pm
5 Stormboyz rocket into a bar…
Banged out two more stormboyz for the mob.
I'm fine building a couple more axes, but I need some alternative chain-weapon ideas. I'm giving some thought to making one 'stormboy' be a pair of grots who managed to get their hands on a rokkit pack - maybe one hanging from a harness, and the other riding on the top. 2 grots is almost equal to a boy, right?
2009179:46
am
Waaagh! from above
Stormboyz are 3 things: Shock troops, orderly, and disciplined.
I scratched my head a bit about what I wanted to do with these models and came up with a few rough ideas:
- They should be flying, or at least some of them. The 'just touching down' look is fine, but I wish they hadn't cast the base terrain into all of their feet. That aside, their body poses are still pretty dynamic, and they can easily be made to look like they're 'suspended' in the air.
- Gas mask helmets. Once hortwerth made his Death-Korps-ish helmets available for sale (here from The Warstore for those in the US, and here for those in Europe). Gives the stormboyz a somewhat intimidating, uniform appearance.
- Similar weapons. Here, I think I've decided to give the whole mob of 20 chain-bladed weapons, meaning chainswords, chain-axes, that sort of thing. A buzzsaw or two may make an appearance if I end up cannibalizing one of the new nob choppas into something smaller. I thought that might help with the 'shock' part of shock troops, since a mob of orks blasting towards you with revving weaponry is probably enough to force a morale check on it's own.
So I started off with this guy:
The stormboy was hacked free from his molded-on plastic base detail. The choppa arm is the one swinging the chain from the warbike set, with the chain hacked off. A 2nd edition ork choppa was added in it's place. The slugga arm's from AoBR, and just reposed a bit with some greenstuff and pinning. The head's straight from Micro Art Studio.
I have some 14-gauge galvanized utility wire that I used to suspend him in the air above the base. I decided on this stuff instead of the normal flying base because although I have about 40 of Games Workshop's clear flying bases, there is not a single one that doesn't have ridiculous air bubbles in the stems. I've also read stories about how easily same stems can snap, and being a klutz, I figure galvanized wire will be better to work with.
A washer was added underneath the base to help with balance issues, even though the miniature could still stand without it:
I'm going to get some 2-part plumbing epoxy later and just cover the whole base over so the stem will hold a bit firmer into the base.
I figure the stem can be hidden at least to a tiny degree by the addition of either flames or smoke. Sculpting flames would be fine, but I'm sort've giving smoke more thought right now because a bit of steel wool would probably be easy to add, and it's certainly much easier to paint than fire.
Anyway, I made two more stormboyz after this guy as a start on my mob of 20, so here they are:
Yeah, I see the mold lines, don't worry.
I'm going to try and limit the number of identical weapons I have in the full group of 20 to maybe 5 max, so I don't end up with too much redundancy in the chainswords. I really like the 2nd ed chainsword on my first stormboy, but a lot of input I'm getting about these suggests they might be too weedy in comparison to the current-edition chunky chainblades ork boyz have. I'm not sure if I want to change the weapon or not, honestly.
Anyway, that's a start.
200961:47
pm
Meanin’ plenty ‘o harm
I started base-coating the banner, but I'm going to be out for the evening, and the light in my apartment was decent, so I figured I'd take some better photographs than the last batch. These get the true color through much better than the last bunch. Ignore the banner for now, and the unpainted gas can and chains.
The bike itself looks sort've clean, despite repeated washes to try and grunge things up a bit. It hasn't gotten the same amount of chipping and weathering as the front wheel guard and grille do because I imagine that front section would take the most hits, what with all the 'umies he must be running over.
200969:44
am
Just a good ‘ol boss
The bike's got a bit more paint on it. My photos are sort've crappy, as they were taken around one in the morning, but you get the idea.
The painting style on this thing is a bit different than some of my other works, but I think it's alright. The bike's obviously not done - I have some more weathering and detailing to add, and the obvious matter of the banner and unpainted parts.
A couple people pointed out the 'confederate flag' resemblance on the gun casing, which I didn't really notice until then. I think it's alright - certainly more work to go back and change at this point, and I don't want the paint to get too thick on this thing.
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