Blog Lord Agragax's Making and Painting Blog - Steampunk Buildings, and... Ulla!

It's been a while again, and I actually finished these a month or so back, but this is the first time I've had a chance to sit down and post about them.

The Laurekh Dynasty has received reinforcements!

First to awaken from the Stasis Crypts is Illuminor Tutepri, officially a Chronomancer but as I already kitbashed a Chronomancer aeons ago I will use him as a Geomancer as I still use the chad 5th Edition book in gigachad 6th Edition :


Following him are the Ancient Blades of Phoras, three Skorpekh Destroyers come to reave and cull:

 

Plus their accompanying Plasmacyte:


Following are three of the new Warriors to add to Warrior Phalanx LW-05, who were undermanned with 7 models beforehand:





And last but by no means least, the reanimated version of Vargard Kromm, Phaeron Mithihotep the Indomitable's personal bodyguard and greatest champion, having re-emerged from his Stasis Crypt as a Royal Warden:

 

My goodness, did I really last post here over half a year ago? In which case I must amend that!

I can’t remember when I started these to be honest, and, High Elves being especially detailed (and the least favourite of my armies to paint because of it), I can’t remember how long they took me either (especially with my job reducing me to painting at weekends), but at last they are done - 14 High Elf Archers:


You’ll recognise the Champion from many years back - I kitbashed him from a spare pair of legs and a bow from the High Elf Chariot kit, a Wood Elf torso one of my best wargaming buddies let me scavenge from his bitz boxes, and a head from the Archmage/Mage double kit.

He is joined by 11 of the monopose Archers from the ancient 4th Edition boxed game (one of which was missing his bow so I gave him a new one), and a Musician and Standard Bearer built from Spearman legs, torsos and heads and bows from the multipart Archer kit, all bought from one particular model shop I love bit hunting in. I’m pretty chuffed to see that I haven’t lost my touch in painting the Yvresse eagle motif of my army after painting it over 15 times on my Spearmen I posted a few years back. Indeed I think I made use of a better method this time - where before I painted the design on straight over the dark blue shields and painted the black outline around the white and blue eagle and wave shapes, this time I undercoated the banner white (along with the Elves themselves), outlined the shapes in black, painted the dark blue background around the black outlines and then filled in the Eagle and waves accordingly.

One thing I have been doing before these and will be continuing with now that these are done, is something significantly smaller-scale - some of these will be coming next.

 

Well, I've set a new record... now I haven't posted here for over a year .

Will fetch photos of the smaller-scale stuff I painted over the course of last year as teased above later, but I thought I'd showcase some of the more recent stuff I've painted.

First up, a load of the newer Tyranid models that I grabbed for my Hive Fleet Kraken swarm, starting with some Neurogaunts:









And a Neurotyrant with its attendant Neuroloids:





Plus the biggest beast of the lot - a Psychophage:








The two monsters were pretty fun to paint, though the Neurogaunts were a bit of a ball-ache with the carapace and chitin being so much more interweaved (making it easier to get a wrong colour on the wrong part of the body ). These are, would you believe it, the first models in my Tyranid army to have been given an all-over wash (despite the fact that I've been a lot more prolific with washes on a fair few of my other armies) - Seraphim Sepia over the red carapace and bone chitin, Reikland Fleshshade on the brains of the Neurotyrant and head Neurogaunt and the fleshy sac of the Psychophage, and Biel-Tan green on the green smoke, cysts and exposed musculature. I certainly am happy that it does make my creatures look even better - now I just have to wash all the rest of them with the same colours...

 

Also, I did some kustomizin' work on the Looted Wagon/Battlewagon I have for my Orks... it started life as a second-hand 2nd Edition-era Space Marine Predator, but (partly due to the previous owner sticking different guns into the sponsons which isn't allowed in 5th and 6th) my younger self decided to go to town on Orkifying it.

Around 12 years later, I returned to it and decided to give it a much bigger (and killier) gun on the turret - I removed the twin Lascannons from the 2nd Edition Predator turret, and after a lot of trimming down, managed to fit the Autocannon from the later 4th/5th Edition plastic Predator in its place - with my Orks it'll serve as a Killkannon, as, being Orks, they've found many ways to make the gun noisier and a lot more capable of blowing things up (likely at the cost of its long-term lifespan). Decided to paint the housing for it in a vivid Imperial Fists-style yellow, and the dozer blade (from the 2nd Edition Predator kit that I added simply to give it some more armour to make it more fitting for a Battlewagon) in a bright Blood Angels-style red, both to contrast vividly with the Ultramarines blue of the tank itself and showcase how my Orks think nothing of stealing parts from any tank they can find and bashing them together to get something that, with some of the legendary Ork willpower, seems to somehow work.

I'd like to think you'd agree that the new gun gives the tank a considerably more threatening look to it, and, despite an Autocannon being vastly inferior to a Killkannon game-wise, at least gives the appearance of having the oomph worthy of the latter:








Also gave it a hefty wash all over (previously I had only washed the crew's Orky skin) to make it more grimy and used.

Finally, onto my most recent project - a massive departure from Warhammer, it's a fully scratch-built 10mm-scale house, for the Steampunk epic-scale game Armoured Clash, by Warcradle Studios (have a butcher's at it here, it's fantastic!). Here are some progress shots from the past couple of months:











This is my first-ever scratchbuilt terrain piece, and I'm pretty darn pleased with how it's going... slow progress, but certainly getting there. It was all thanks to a video that I've posted in the Tips and Tricks thread here that I first began to realise that, actually, scratchbuilding can be a pretty easy way to make some really nice, unique scenery pieces all from your own imagination.

Still got a way to go on it, of course... got to finish off the clapboard cladding on the upper walls, add in the roof pieces, get some chimney pots and add an extra layer to the chimney around them, get some planking plasticard for the floor of the porch, paint the clapboard and window frames, wash the brickwork and finish off the bay window before adding the Steampunk extras. But it has been a very enjoyable and therapeutic activity, it's been a great new challenge for me to overcome and immensely satisfying, and it's certainly been worth it starting off in a smaller scale, as it has made gathering resources more affordable and has meant that making mistakes has cost me less in terms of wasted material.

Stay tuned for more progress, and, as always, all comments and feedback are welcome!

 

For sure a good looking army of Nids

Great work on the scenery piece, it is very satisfying to complete a piece of scenery and use it in a tabletop game. Good luck with the last steps.

Grrr, !mrahil

 

Thanks mate, high praise indeed from the Middle-Earth-scenery-making maestro . I'm certainly looking forward to grabbing some Armoured Clash stuff to use it with - it's also especially exciting when the scenery piece you're making is the start of a brand new gaming project

 

Great work.

I think it is a seriously underrated aspect of the hobby. Once upon a time it was much more widespread, but GW's ready-made plastic terrain kits seem to be to go to choice for many gamers. But those are all the same, whereas you are making something that is one of one.

 

Great collection of different models.

I have 20 on my desk right now, I feel your pain.

 

Remember this house I was making? Here it is now... feel old yet?

Spoiler: Some WIP shots

Finishing the last of the walls and adding a chimney, bay window and raised porch:

Adding brick plasticard cladding and window frames, and fashioned a set of steps for the porch from the same card:


Applying clapboard plasticard to the upper walls and 'tile' slats to the top of the chimney:

 

Spoiler: Some more WIP shots

Adding the clapboard roof and some chimney pots extended with green stuff:

The clapboard and chimneys are painted white, the brickwork is touched up with Skrag Brown and the stairs are painted a wooden brown:


Healthy doses of wash are applied, particularly to the brickwork, to add in the grime, before I added in the now-painted window bars and borrowed @Imrahil's neat trick to add light (or not) to the interior:

To complete it, I painted the various parts of generator and piping and added those last to add some Steampunk magic to the building.

It's taken a good lot of planning and experimentation, but it's finished at last! Thoroughly chuffed with this mini masterpiece, the first of many I plan to make to create an especially grimy and Dickensian-looking Victorian Sci-Fi battlefield.

 

This particular design was based off of a real(ish) building from an old Charles Dickens-themed tourist attraction that used to exist here in Britain for a while - it had so much character and suitably Dickensian grime and decrepitness to it that I had to make a mini replica for it to use in Armoured Clash. The attraction had long since closed down by the time I had planned this scenery, so I had to dig through reams of photos on TripAdvisor and Google Images to find enough shots to roughly gauge the building's dimensions:


And I am very happy that it now has a surviving mini-me cousin to populate my 10mm Steampunk battlefields

 

Indeed... I was so happy that in between getting to points where I could paint that house, I made another building - a shop this time:

Spoiler: WIP shots

Constructing the building...

And painting it:

Apologies for the blurry photo in that last shot...


But that one is also nearly complete, just needs a sign (which I will make myself and print out later alongside others for more shops) and then it will join the house as my little Steampunk village (which I have dubbed Greater Orbing) begins to grow...

 

Meanwhile, a green flash was seen erupting from Mars and speeding towards Earth... and these were captured by eyewitnesses in those new-fangled "colour photographs" a few days later.

 

Lots of great stuff @Lord Agragax of Lunaxoatl !

 

Great stuff!! Love your scenery work!
Happy to have helped in some kind of way

Grrr, !mrahil

 

These are very interesting @Lord Agragax of Lunaxoatl . Very creepy and otherworldly. What are they a part of?

 

Ha, never thought of that until now... but yes, they very much do. Not only creepy... but

They are intended to be Mars Battle Tripods for the Enlightened faction in the 10mm Steampunk mass battle game Armoured Clash, though my own design for them based around the Legions Imperialis Dark Mechanicum Stalker Constructs kit, with the intention of making them more closely resemble the Martian Tripods from The War of the Worlds, specifically the artistic interpretation of them depicted on the Jeff Wayne album:

 

Talking of which... yesterday I finished making a couple more!





These ones are Phobos Assault Tripods, melee Enlightened Tripod variants. While the Mars Tripods will be sitting back and evaporating enemy forces with their Heat Rays, these will be racing forward to use their arrays of grim tools to get to work in cutting into and dissecting human troops and vehicles alike, in between releasing toxic clouds of Black Smoke from the proboscis-like emitters sticking out from their heads.