Strange Aeons: WIP Manse

My Strange Aeons buddy Pete hit the ground running, with this imposing scratch-built house for us to eventually use in our games. Not sure of the name of the Threshold agent upstairs but I'm sure he is happy that the witch hasn't appeared out of the ceiling corner and asked for the rent.

Strange Aeons: The Stars are Right

 

My buddy Pete and I are starting off into the land of Eldritch skirmish with Strange Aeons and I couldn’t be gladder. He dropped off my copy of the excellent rulebook Strange Aeons, had a fine McSorley’s ale with me and we hashed out some plans about some joint projects in the land of fishmen and .45’s. 

Pete is a huge pulp fan and has been painting everything from pirates to spacemen to cowboys for some time. Since he just finished school he has time to delve into something new and me, well, I won’t miss out on 1920’a era agents fighting Lovecraftian horrors despite me being a senior in what hopefully is my last year as an undergraduate.

So, we are starting into the game with a decent amount already done, since we each own terrain and figs suitable for the game. That said, we have some some things to do since we want to do this right.  The beauty of the game is you are free to use pretty much whatever models you want from whatever ranges you want  as long as they are accurate in depiction. 

 I’ll be using some models from Ral Partha, GW, Privateer and whatever else I can lay my hands on. To that end, here is my task list for the immediate future, based on people and creatures from the rulebook:  

1. Daemonic Hounds ( via an old GW Chaos hounds boxset I had laying around
   A threshold agent (via Carmine Defazio Mob Hitman w/ Thompson SMG)
2. Maniac (via Privateer Press Doc Killingsworth)
3. Ghouls (via Mantic ghouls)
4. Dark Puppeteer (via Privateer Press Swamp Horror)

Stay tuned for some WIPS, batreps and general mayhem.

 

Battlefleet Gothic: Hashing Things Out

After a few small games I realized that for me, I dislike the Battlefleet Gothic Bearing Compass. I don’t dislike others using it, I just get tired of using the compass and accidentally nudging a model. I tend to use a laser level for movement too, so hash marks seemed smart and could speed up my turn while taking a bit of the fidgetiness out of the game.

The problem was I have a ton of ships already finished so I had to come up with a way of making the marks in a clean fashion. I played with masking with frisket paper (too risky), print decals (looked bad) and gluing on raised dowel (too laborious.)

In the end I went with a chisel point Sharpie and a template jig I had laid out in Photoshop.

I printed out the template on heavy stock and then cut the square out. I then tacked it to a manila folder. 

I connected the lines of the template across the manila, to help line things up better. I made a register’s mark forward, for the bow of each ship.

Using the cut out of the square from the template, I removed one triangle to make a line guide for the marker. I painted it grey-green so I could see the template on the dark base. I put my register marks on there so I could use it on small and large bases. From there, gaming nature took its course.

Since the bases were Dullcote'd and matte, the sheen of the Sharpie ink sorta pops but you could dull coat that if you wanted. It occurred to me halfway through the Chaos fleet that I could’ve used a Red Sharpie for a more opaque ink that would’ve been purple over the deep blue of the base. I may do that for the Eldar ships or just keep it consistent, not sure right now.

Overall, I am pleased. I wasn’t crazy about losing some of the blend-in-ability of the bases to the hash marks but they are definitely more enjoyable to use in a game and still look clean enough that it doesn't pull away from the paint jobs too much.

Here's a shot with a lot of flash so you can clearly see the hash marks.

More pics can be found in my Photobucket: http://s2.photobucket.com/albums/y15/ap3xg3rm/General%20BFG/

Eldar Abyss 3: Meh

Well, the color matching went well on the Battlefleet Gothic Eldar ships (see Eldar Abyss 2, below) and then I added the iridescent tinting medium to the sails, expecting that would pull it all together. I'm crestfallen. I think the medium would probably do its job best when mixed into the paint instead of a skim coat. As it stands, it is a subtle effect and really understated compared to the pop of the bright green sails. I'm still leaning towards the purple scheme though.

Opinions?

Battlefleet Gothic: Torpedoes

 I got my hands on some first-gen BFG ordnance sprues which I think may have been early versions of Chaos fighter craft, as they were shown in the first Warp Storm and seemed lined up as a flight of fighters, not torpedoes, in the picture. The casts were so bad I just turned what I could into torps for the game. Nothing fancy, but nice to have.

Eldar Abyss 2

Dice color? MATCHED.

Eldar Abyss

I had originally intended that my Eldar ships look like the "UFO's" from The Abyss but by choosing green for the solar sails, I moved away from that. While looking at the Necron fleet sitting in a box I realized that I had crossed the streams, so to speak, in using GW's Scorpion Green with the Eldar. I was planning on using that for "Necron glow" when I paint the 'Cron fleet.

My buddy Joe knows that I have this obsession with finding dice sets that match my army color schemes and true to form, I picked up a cheap Chessex set that matches my Eldar fleet scheme well. Seeing the purple/blue/mother-of-peal dice was a hint to maybe try and tie the scheme back toward The Abyss.

To that end, see the color matching tests I did off of the Chessex dice above. It's a tricky match because you have to get the tones right one level up on the value table, to account for it coming down again when I add the iridescent tinting medium on top, which adds a lot of sheen and that mother-of-pearl look. I'm going to do up a test Eldar frigate in the paint method above but then paint the solar sails in these matched colors instead of green and see what it does for the overall look. After that test ship is done I'll post it and you guys can let me know which you prefer.

Add clever Space Marine vs Eldar caption here.