Desert Ruins

My 3D printer has been very busy these last two weeks, producing enough scatter terrain to cover a densely packed 3’x3′ area, or a more loosely covered 6’x4′ board. The theme: desert ruins, more specifically Egypt-like ruins.

The primary motivation for this effort has been the Silver Bayonet, I picked up the Egypt supplement a few weeks back and one of the North Star units for the game, and needed a nice set of terrain to play some of the missions. The good news is that I have a fair few other games that require desert terrain, such as Bolt Action for my North African forces, and Warhammer of course for my Tomb Kings.

The models I printed were from two sets: the ruined walls are by The Lost Adventures Co., and the Egyptian statues/columns etc are by Txarli Factory. I printed the walls at 65% scale to make them a nice size for my historical miniatures, allowing them to peek over the lower sections of wall.

I undercoated all the pieces with an old can of Citadel Roughcoat which is a spraycan-based texture paint (and long out of production, I’d love to find a good replacement). This had the dual effect of hiding the print lines on the models, and adding some nice grit for that sandstone look.

Painting-wise these were pretty straightforward. I sprayed Vallejo Primer German Dark Yellow all over, followed by a top down spray of Vallejo Model Colour Dark Sand through the airbrush. I then drybrushed Vallejo Model Colour Dark Sand, followed by another drybrush of Vallejo Game Color Bonewhite. At this stage I popped the pieces onto my desert mat and realised they looked out of place as the mat has quite a bit of red to it. To remedy this, I added patches of Vallejo Skin Wash Ink using the airbrush, followed by another drybrush of Vallejo Game Color Bonewhite. I would probably have skipped the first Bonewhite drybrush if I’d known I’d be doing another, but sometimes you find things out and need to go again!

I’m really pleased with how these came out, the roughcoat really did a nice job of making the 3D prints more stonelike. The reddish tones also really tie the pieces to the game mat. Here’s a few more closeups showing off the different pieces:

A nice quick update after the longer last few posts. I do enjoy panting terrain as a nice break from more involved models. I’m currently painting up my Egypt campaign unit for Silver Bayonet (guess what nation!), and looking forward to playing some game with this new terrain. The Egypt 3D model set also comes with a sphinx and a pyramid so if I feel like filling out a bigger table I have what I need!

Chariots of the Dead

To the surprise of absolutely no one I’ve been very excited for the relaunch of classic Warhammer as the Old World and doubly so now release is just around the corner. As part of said release I ended up ordering one of the stater sets, and not the one that might have been expected given the fact I’ve been painting Bretonnians recently. So off to the dusty tombs of Khemri for me!

Clearly I was excited about Tomb Kings after that, so I scrounged around my forgotten sprues pile and found a full box of Tomb King chariots! Well not so full, one of the crews was missing, probably cannibalised for some long forgotten project. I decided then that this crew-less chariot should serve as a character mount, and low-and behold I had in my possession a model of Prince Apophas, the mass of beetles with a head (very the Mummy). I’d gotten Apophas as a fun alternate Wraith for my Vampire Counts many years ago and had converted him to wield a scythe of all things, and promptly never painted him. I therefore had an empty chariot and a purpose-less Tomb Kings character on my hands and settled on making him my chariot rider!

Given his previous stage of conversion, the original dagger the model came with was long lost, and while I still have the original head, I wanted to change that to make this a bit more than just Apophas on a chariot. I had a look around for promising heads and found Arkhan the Black’s head as a spare on the Mortarchs sprue, left over from when I built Neferata many years ago. That seemed like a good fit so on it went. I thought his arm position was well suited to be cracking a whip, so I had a look around for an appropriate donor model, and cast my eyes upon a poor metal dark elf chariot rider, again leftover from some previous project (see, you should never throw anything away), and cut off his whip to give to my new chariot rider.

These 3 chariots will join up with the 3 that come in the starter army to make a nice chariot block, when I get these I’ll build the command models so the unit has the usual banner/musician/champion. Speaking of the starter army, I’ll not be getting this till February, as Australia is a few weeks behind the rest of the world for receiving their stuff unfortunately, so I better write down my recipes so I can match up the new models with these!

  • Acronyms:
    • VMC: Vallejo Model Color
    • VGC: Vallejo Game Color
    • PA: Pro Acryl
    • S75: Scale 75
    • GW: Games Workshop/Citadel
    • AK: AK Interactive
  • Blue
    • VMC Dark Prussian Blue
    • VMC Andrea Blue
  • Red
    • VMC Cavalry Brown
    • PA Shadow Flesh
  • Bone
    • 50/50 GW Aggaroth Dunes/Contrast Medium
    • 50/50 VGC Bonewhite/AK Ivory
  • Leather
    • GW Wyldwood Contrast
    • For larger areas only:
      • VMC English Uniform
      • 50/50 VMC English Uniform/VGC Bonewhite
      • 30/70 VMC English Uniform/VGC Bonewhite
  • Bronze
    • S75 Necro Gold
    • GW Nihilakh Oxide
    • For larger areas only:
      • VMC Light Sea Grey – very thinned down, in uneven patches
  • Gold
    • S75 Elven Gold
    • GW Reikland Fleshshade
    • S75 Elven Gold
  • Scrolls/Fabric Straps
    • GW Skeleton Horde Contrast
    • VMC Iraqi Sand
  • Bases
    • AK Sandy Desert (Texture)
    • Mig Light Dust (Pigment)

Note that in addition to the above the models got a pin wash of dark brown enamel to pick out the details. If you’ve followed the blog for a bit you’ll notice that my usual application of GW’s Agrax Earthshade for shading is absent. I decided I wanted to get these models much brighter and less contrasty than usual to get that sunbaked feeling, hence the light enamel wash instead of the usual heavy acrylic wash.

These models were really fun to paint, and I look forward to the sea of bones headed my way in the new starter set! As for what I’ve seen of the new rules so far, I’m really liking. It’s capturing the essence of the editions I really enjoyed, that is 6th and 7th editions. We’ve already decided to use this new edition for our Border Princes campaign, and I can’t wait to get stuck into the new books.