Continuing with the Shadow Wars: Armageddon terrain

My hobby time slowed down a bit last week as regular life (and a quick digital visit to The Commonwealth wasteland) caught up with me. Also a bit of project fatigue is setting in, worsened by Games Workshop's botched launch of Shadow Wars: Armageddon. I was not aware it was going to be a limited edition game and its anemic supply sold out before I got a chance to order a copy. Luckily I managed to secure one through a friend. Apparently there is a rulebook in the works now that makes me wonder if I should've bought the box. That is not how I usually spend my hobby money. I will try to be more careful about getting hyped up on announced products before they show up (GW seems to be slightly off form this year, with the rather disappointing Shadows over Hammerhal (compared to Silver Tower) first and now this and to be honest what I've seen of Shadespire is not fueling my enthusiasm). I'm considering trying Test of Honour by Warlord Games because the rules look interesting and the game looks awesome (but it is also sold out, what's up with wargames manufacturing?).

But enough whining and on to hobby time. The second set of buildings has been built, including my first attempt at a polystyrene building with the new tools.

Another three rusty buildings are waiting a drybrush of metallic, a dab of grey and color (and a lot of Ryza rust) to be ready for use in Shadow Wars.

Here is a shot of three extra buildings after rattlecan gun-fu treatment. Nothing fancy here although I did remember to slap my home-made Typhus Corrosion on before spraying the rust tones on.

I liked the way the cardboard tiles looked on the previous set of buildings so I decided to add more tiles to these four.

And this is a quick shot of the four tiles just after production. The green stuff on the base of the double promethean vat is an awful mess. I first decided not to cut a bad circular bit of foamboard to enclose the bottom of the vats. Then tried to use a mixture of paper and PVA to close it (it looked awful) and then I finally tried bits of green stuff that I failed to properly flatten. In the end I will probably solve this with an extra helping of rust.

That is a rusty landing pad. 

Here is the third building, that I cut from polystyrene with the rust colors added. I learned the hard way that sealing the foam with PVA closes up the dents I made with pencil much deeper then I anticipated. For the future I should either cut bigger grooves or forego sealing it and use (air)brushes only on polystyrene. In this case even using some Vallejo washes didn't help really bring out the grooves again. Undeterred I masked the base and salted the landing pad (for another bit of salt weathering and painted it German Grey followed by a bit of Shadow Grey (both Vallejo) to make it look interestingly grey (now there is a paradox ;) ).

Airbrushed on two layers of grey.

I covered the blast hole/elevator/grate in the center with a bit of paper that I held in place with low-tech 'holding in placers' (my fingers to be precise).

The rust on the central blast area was carefully protected (only to screw it up later).

 I ended up with this. The next step was printing an imperial aquila out to size and using a scalpel to remove the inner bits of paper. Once again I made a rookie error by using regular printing paper instead of the slightly heavier paper I actually have for precisely this purpose (sigh). The lightweight paper curls a bit making it a sub-par mask.

Scalpel+paper=mask, now if only I did not destroy this one in an inattentive second...

I went on and applied it anyway using a very light grey (Wolf Grey or Cold Grey I think followed by a bit of white).

Throw mask on subject and hope you don't spray too much paint underneath.

Keep hoping...

I did not really like the end result.

Remove mask and curse the damn grate.

So I grabbed some rust colored airbrush paints (Vallejo Rust and Light Red I believe) and restored the grating. Then I reapplied German Grey on the aquila.

Paint over the failure (the paint is still wet, making the white shine through).

Being impatient I did not really give it enough time to dry before reapplying the aquila a bit higher. As I looked at it, I absentmindedly crumpled the thin piece of paper in my hand, belatedly realizing this was the mask I had painstakingly cut out. Sigh, there was a reason I put in a lot less hobby time this week... In stead of a double aquila top and bottom I went for the stripe mask by Mantic to put in some striping at the bottom of the pad. I also painted a dirty bit of Averland Sunset (Citadel) to the edges of the grating.

Redo the mask, this time a bit higher and add some random hazard striping.

Next step consisted of removing the salt. Also after giving the building a bit of a though I decided to add a small ladder to the the side. You can't expect people to climb this high to get to their transport and if the grate in the center is an elevator they might bump their heads on the bottom of the ship. So a ladder it is. Next up I will probably give the other three buildings a quick paint and then I'll have to switch up because fatigue is definitively setting in and that hurts quality.

Most importantly, add a ladder so you little plastic space men can climb up :).

Still can't wait to see some nasty Genestealers or nefarious Orks climbing over this landing pad.