Blindwater Congregation Complete Army

My Blindwater Congregation stands 99% completed! I have a few wreck markers and proxy feralgeists to clean up (and there are always new models on the horizon), but the main force is complete. I have a few empty base spots left over for expansions, so I might make some coverings to make the display look fully filled up. In the meantime, I can move on to other projects!

A Third Gator Wave

I have been busy with my Tau project for the last month and a half, but I found the enegry to follow it up with completing quite a bit of my Gators on my paint queue in only 2 or 3 weeks. Here is the state of my display base, things are getting a bit crowded now. Any future purchases will have to be planned out or added in new tile cuts.


 My Blackhide Wrastler has seen some of the most conversion in my army. I decided early on to head-swap with another company's model to give it a bit of a different feel. I covered up the sawed neckline with a hood, as well as to give him a look similar to Barnabus. Some things still irked me about the model, so I kept hacking. With a fortutious set of bits I was able to make another set of ropes similar to his stock, and formed a shoulder pad for his other arm. I also decided to change the pose with a quick arm move, so that he was now in preparation of charging. The extra shoulder pad meant I did not have to resculpt the shoulder, so win-win. I also added in some bits on his belt, cause a gators gotta have a beer now and then. For paint, I followed the colors used on the second snapper, deciding to add in some color variation from my normal green gators.


 The Spitter is stock, but was enjoyable to paint! The shell almost directed itself with highlights and shadows, and came out just as I saw in my mind.


 The second snapper in my force is likely to go to Wrong Eye, so I decided he needed a bit more flair. The model is the same one used for the head of the wrastler. I greenstuffed in a hat and gave him a bit of a snack.


 Totem Hunter got no real conversion, but a whole lot of reposing. I cracked just about every joint on him to get him to line up with the rock in the stance I wanted. This was one of those builds where I just kept breaking joints and resetting them until it came together. When it did, it was perfectly how I wanted him. I felt much better with the new pose, and he painted up really well too! I may change the skin up with a bit of texture at some point.


 Bog Trogs got some armor upgrades and reposing to have them actually in the pose of ambushing. I especially like the one just holding his head and shoulders above water. I'm not very happy with the orange fins, I may change their skin colors to differentiate them a bit more from my Rask colored bog trog unit. I am also going to go back and experiment with water splash effects. I plan for Maelok and the second posse to follor the newer gator colors, and maybe fill out a solo or two to close out the army for now.

Completed Desert Table Sees Some Action

So I never completed my 2012 challenge goals. As I am moving towards a new challenge to be unveiled on Sunday, I should really finish the previous ones off!

The desert table has been complete for awhile, but it has been a matter of getting some pictures together to log the completion here. Well that day has come, here are the completed board pictures, along with a few days of gaming on them. They are holding up well, though they don't always line up perfectly.

I still have some terrain pieces to finish for them, but they will be done more as a group project. Overall I am pretty happy with the boards. They were not difficult, nor that time consuming to make. I may make some additions in the future, like some pits or river features.

I've already posted my Cryx, Gators, and Dystopian wars, so I am almost done with the challenge. This leaves posting pics of my Shadow Crows, and the completion of my Descent miniatures as the last goals from the previous challenge. Only a few models to go!

Gators Wave 2

My second wave of gators represented filling out choices that I did not have with my initial set. Adding in Rask as my likely caster to have with Barnabus, I wanted to get some of the non-gator elements ready. They all follow the theme of having lost their left eye's during some sort of Blindwater Congregation ritual. I did not want to overstate this though, so the modeling doesn't always call attention to it. Caliban and one of the goblins simply have masks with the left eye pieces closed up, while rask and another goblin have patches. The Swamp horror apparently doesn't care, or was a recent convert due to its open bloody eye socket.

Rask was a lot of fun to make. I really wanted a different pose, and this one ended up being very natural to convert to. It was relatively easy to remove his gun and replace it with a wire frame of the tree. I made a wire frame of the gun handle connected to the removed gun, and used pliers to close his pointing hand grip around it. I then greenstuffed a passable tree and pistolgrip, and an eye patch. You can see more of the WIP from the previous post. Painting-wise, I struggled for a while on what colors to make him. I had been moving towards the greygreen as seen on the base-lip as my standard basecoat, and decided to work with that. I washed his fins towards a much darker blue-green, but eventually built up the layers to be much brighter. I remembered my experiments with glaze medium, and it worked very well to get brighter highlights. His armors were done in a new purchase of blackmetal, which I am liking a lot. I may be using it on my newer Tau reinforcements.

The Swamp Horror was definitely a horror to convert. I had the misfortune of getting two of the same halves of the tentacles, and being too impatient to get replacements I modified the set to work on the other side. This meant a million hours of filing to make the mouth fit. I've talked about this in the previous post, but the painting is new! I started with some purple and pink basecoats, and got a little worried that it would be way off the feel of the rest of the army. I decided to try for an oily black latex kind of look for the skin, and something more earthy/bone for the chitin. It worked much better than I could have hoped for, and halfway through it was no longer a chore but a great paint sessions to work on all the little folds and tentacles. I painted the Ryan with a few muted Cygnar colors, and gloss coated the whole thing a few times. I also experimented with my new blood source of Tamiya clear red, and it works very well. All I can say is bring on a minions Gargantuan version for me to paint!

In addition to these models, my second wave efforts were also to finish up my accessories for the army. One thing in particular at the back of my mind was to make a movement tray that would both transport my stuff, and look good in my display case. I will go into the build on a seperate post, but here it is in it's completed glory!

I also finished off 3 more 5" swamps for Barnabus to sling around. More gameplay with them have definitely required 3-4 to operate without picking old ones up that still have models on them. I experimented with how much wash, and adding water-effects. I will probably resin over the water ripples, they didnt come out very well.

Thats that! On to a break for some Tau, and then Wave 3 and Wave 4 of my Gators! You can see some of them already have some greenstuff work on them in the display board picture, but I still have a long way to go before they are ready for paint. Below are some more shots of the completed wave 2 stuff!

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