Flames of Orion: Dark Demon

Dark Demon is the name I generated using the Flames of Orion Callsign Generator, and dammit I'll stick with it, although I'm tempted to try again. I painted up the mech today while hanging out with the gang over at the Hive Scum HQ.  We had intended to actually play too... but sandwiches and xacto knife dartboard got in the way. 

You know how it goes.

Anyway this mech started off as a Marauder I pulled from a blind box a while ago. My favorite mech from Battletech I've seen! I had already painted this one, but wanted it to fit a little more in the FoO-niverse. I added some greebles and some grit, and I made it a bit more asymmetric and came up with this:

 

She primed up nicely, and I put a wash of a couple GW shades I had kicking around over the very bright white zenithal I had laid over. 

I was already liking the way it looked:

I added some red on a few areas for pops of color:

Then I hit it with some streaking grime, and after that had dried I hit the windows with some red, to match the booster in the back and gel with the red details.

After it was mostly dry I tried to make the base pop by mixing up a bunch of random paint to see what happens. In this case it was Dirty Down Verdigris, a yellow contrast paint, and some sky blue for highlights.

After that I painted to base rim black and called it done! I probably could so more to this, added more highlights etc., but thats the fun part of painting with others for me. I paint quickly and I don't care as much, and usually it comes out better than expected.

Thanks for lookin'! Pce!

Flames of Orion: Bashing a Pilot

As always, spurred on by my friends, I'm excited about a new project. 

As always, I am trying to dive head first into this idea before I lose any steam.

Steve (@sovthofheaven), has been working on Flames of Orion for a while now. I played it in the early playtest days and I liked the game. Steve has gone on to put together a successful kickstarter of the project and people are really psyched on the world he's built. 

For a while though I had gotten my fill of his universe. I was still stoked on the games development, but, well, idk what it is about mechs that doesn't really light my flame... maybe the lack of humanity.

On this new episode of Hive Scum (65), Steve talks a bit about a more RPG focused Flames games he's been running. I dug into it a little with him and well, here I am - excited about envisioning what a mech pilot might look like, and creating ONE mech that will be his to pilot.

This is what I want from Flames of Orion, a world where I feel like I'm living in it. Less about a fleet of robots and more about the story of some hot-rodder, fixing his damn rig and keeping an eye on the horizon for potential threats.

The mech I wanted to use is my favorite mech I've seen for BattleTech: the Marauder. I pulled this from a blind box and was taken by the interesting shape. I painted this up a while ago, and I'm going to add greebles and modify it before I prime over it and paint it again, but that's for another day. 

Pilot first:

I pulled out a bunch of "potential" frames to build my dude from. I wanted "chill guy" energy from this pilot. not someone engaged in combat, but someone who might just be sippin' coffee, waiting around for a call to roll in about potential credits he could score. 

Think Spike Spiegel

Ultimately I cut a couple of these bodies up to make the frame for the mini, welding the two with green stuff

Found this head off a Victoria Miniatures sprue, I'd never noticed it on there, but boy does it have the perfect relaxed and kinda cocky look to it. Plus he's got the little rangefinder, for firing his big ass long range cannon.

I wanted his hands doing nothing important. It's hard to find hands like that so I modified two "gun holding" hands I found in my bin. One went into a green stuff pocket and the other I created a cigarette being held up to his mouth with speaker wire strands. Nothing says dystopian than a cigarette.

Cleaned him up a bit, added some little flavor bits and he's done! Meet David "Dax" Bauer

Now to work on the mech itself...


 

Turnip28: Building Brutes

I wanted a unit of Brutes for my Turnip28 regiment, and I also received the moldmoldmold book from my good pal Gage (@noclearcoat), after flipping through it, I thought I'd try and use these brutes as an opportunity to do an "artist study" and recreate some of his style in there. My idea for this unit is they are some sort of Frankenstein creation using root and parts from dead soldiers and animals that get pulled into the mud.

It started off with 6 different similarly sized minis:

These minis are from all over, I just took them right out of the box where I keep my "bodies" which I use as the base models for my bashes. Then I did some greenstuff and bead work on top of the minis:

The wires stickin' out is speakerwire, figured it might look kinda rooty at the end? Anyway next I filled out some arms and crammed some dirt in here and there to fill gaps and build chunk.

After this was the part I was nervous about. moldmoldmold talks aabout using a "concrete concoction" in his book, but doesnt explain what it is. So I mixed plaster, concrete patch mix, and my Readi-Base™ dirt mix. I figured I'd give it my best shot and see what I got.

I wasn't quite sold on them immediately afterwards... but I let it dry, and hung tight, hoping it would be ok.

After priming them, thinking they might be a bit much, I was pleasantly surprised that they do look like monsters made from root and dirt. 

Now onto the Snobs!






 

Turnip28: Building Whelps and Fodder

I've been meaning to get to Turnip for a few years now. As sometimes happens with hobby projects, I kept putting it off, and when it would come up in conversations I would start putting some ideas together, but the project would lose steam and I would spend too long in the thinking/planning phase. 

Brad (@bitsbibsorks) brought up the idea of doing a one day Turnip28 game-day later on this year and it was all I needed to reignite to excitement again for the project, but this time I would do it differently.

The problem I fall into with Turnip is that everyone else seems to have sick ideas and I struggle to come up with a way to put my own spin on the world. So I plan, and I think, and I don't do any of the work because I get stuck in idea-ville.

This time I just started snippin' sprues and gluin' dudes. I think the themes will come together later. I can always expand the regiment or edit things. This is something I've done with Skaven and them Orks. I let the "build" lay out the flavor, rather than the other way round.

Anyway, I dug out some whelps that I had started a while ago, but glued them onto better bases:

The horses came from Warlord Games Black Powder line, the British Union Brigade Calvary. I picked this box up cheap a long time ago and the horses come in handy. Not sure where all the riders came from, but at least a couple are from the same set. I had some other heads on these riders, but I pulled them off and put some 3D printed beaky turnip heads on. After they were on the bases I gritted them up using a mix of baking soda, PVA, paint and some chunkier sand. I also created a movement tray by cutting some MDF for the bottom, which I made too small, and them sliced some balsa wood to fit. the border is real thin because of my mistake in measuring, but it'll do!

Last thing I did was make some ragged caparisons to go over the horse faces, my first little touch of weird for the regiment, then I was onto the Fodder:

The Fodder is made up of Warlord's Napoleonic British Line Infantry, which I also got cheap because it didn't come with bases. I had JUST thrown out some 20mm bases, and only had 25mm leftover from skaven, so I had to dig through some dirty kitty litter in the trashcan for 'em, but found them and based this guys really quick with the same gritty mix I used for the movement tray and threw some turnip heads on 'em, making sure I crammed some baking soda in the wet glue for extra texture.

Added some more grit to the duders, and made them a movement tray (this one better measured) and these guys are done for the time being.

At the end of the day, the desk is a mess, so I put it all way and now it's clean for the next session.

I'm really stoked for this project, and excited to have an army, even if it needs some flavor adjustment down the line. 

Next up I think it'll be some Brutes!

xoxo

Black Templars for 3rd Edition

Gage (@noclearcoat) and Tyler (@tylerisalrightatpainting) got me really stoked on making a small 500 point list for a 3rd Edition City Fight idea they had. Tyler has been working on this insane board, which you'll see on here if we end up rocking some games.

I was with Gage at the Hive Scum studio late one night, bashing up some Orks for our ongoing Sargos 40k campaign, when I stumbled on a half-built firstborn marine in the bin. I always thought there was something charming about these little fellas, and they are, well everywhere, as no one seems to really want them.

I remembered then that I had a ziploc bag of 'em at home that I'd never done anything with, which I found in a tacklebox at a thrift store a few years ago:

So I went, dug them out, did some sorting, some listbuilding with what I had (newrecruit.eu) and added them to the dudes I had taken from the bits bin at the studio and came up with this ragtag team:

I bashed up a leader, Castellan Luthair Bremaan, wearing some snazzy Terminator Armor and onto the next step.  Here they are after being primed, sponged on with some gray, and then drybrushed white. I also went over the pauldrons in white to get ahead of it.

Next I debated on using decals (I've had microset and sol kicking around for ages) but ultimately decided that doing a messy freehand would give these guys a looser, more impressionist look.

Then I painted some red on the crew:

After this I painted the faces of the helmetless dudes, which I forgot to photograph, then I hit 'em all in streaking grime. Bottom pic is a little side-by-side because it's been a while since I've used the stuff and I was happy with the result.

After this it was all just clean up, a little highlighting, and I like to make my banners out of comic books, and then add some small freehand/unifying color work over the unwanted bits. I forgot to photograph this process, but I will at some point in the future. Here's how they came out! I'm stoked for 'em. Space Marines (firstborn specifically) are a blast to paint up. I'm gonna continue to add units to this army, and I'll post up with I do.