III. The enemy

I have intended to make a NPC force for this narrative game. According to the plot I needed a person, who retranslated the Call coming from Skallamark planet.
It was fallen Imperial saint Saturninus, buried under the ruins of Archghoul's palace. He have defeated Archghoul, but the planet needed a new figure to bear its mystical power. So, saint Saturninus have became a new Archghoul. But he was still buried under the ruins of the palace. The planet's "ecosystem" needed a new Archghoul, so the seismic activity has began to free the saint from his stone cage. After a while he was freed.

The first sketch

                                                                      I was going to make him a little bit more wizard-like

 But I have ended up with this

                 The saint with his retinue

               His trusty minion Lasersight

II. On the way to the game

That post is, in fact, a recap of the event, that has already happened. But I wasn't in a mood to write down everything in this blog in time.

When I left off with the first post I was going to make a small skirmish team of Astra Militarum. I have decided to try to organise a game, involving my friends. So that I will have a deadline for preparing my miniatures and a company for playing.

Battlefield

But for the game I needed a scenery. A nice small battlefield and some scatter terrain.
I have made the battlefield from 2 50x50 pieces of styrene. I've added texture to them, using knife, wood filler and small pieces of the dried moss. The latter wasn't very wise decision, because it was difficult to put terrain on top of them.

Polysterene tile with added texture

Partially painted. I mainly used washes over the white primer.

Flock and inks added

Second tile upcoming

With these black trims I could hang them on the wall as impressionist paintings

Terrain

Because I hadn't a lot of time, I had to make the terrain quite quickly and easily. My friend gave me several old pieces of Tekhnolog ruins and Tamiya oil drums.

Polysterene walls 

Oil drums. The right one is way darker, because I've  layed pigment on it.

Quickly made ruins

Well, that was my first try in making such scenery. Next time I will make it, I would definitly pay more attention to the terrain basing and the surface of the board. It seems, that too much texture isn't any good.

I. Humble Beginnings

Hi! I suppose this blog will be about miniatures. Mainly converted miniatures.
I have some projects in my mind and have already started with one two month ago. This one is my Astra Militarum killteam. Funny enough, a few days ago GW announced, that they are going to build a new ruleset especially for killteams. But after I have watched the trailer, I have bad feelings about this.

Astra Militarum killteam

What was my intention?

Firstly, I wanted to create a small team. I am more into skirmish games and, honestly, I love the painting and modelling part even more then playing. So I thougt that the ideal size would be around 10 infantry miniatures. Therefore I've decided, that killteam is an ideal format. Not because I was going to play in Shadow War: Armageddon, I would  prefer, actually, to play in something inq28-like, but it's quite hard to find someone who plays in this game in Russia. So it was more the question of format.

Secondly, I needed to choose a fraction. It was quite easy, actually. I've played a lot with my friends in Dark Heresy, so "regular" humans of the 41st millenium were of particular interest for me. So I have chosen Astra Militarum. But I didn't want to make usual Cadians or Catachans. I had in mind something more medieval-like. And after I've stumbled upon houseguards made by Kari of Iron Sleet for Pilgrym project, I found my inspiration.

Background

These guards are from grave-world, which serves as a place of final rest for the heroes of Imperium. And they are crusading across the Galaxy to collect even more bones and relics of fallen martyrs. Of course, the Ecclesiarchy patronizes this regiment eagerly. Therefore this squad has access to bionics and better weapons than humble lasgun. Also they include a lot of priests and crusaders who want to help them in their noble service. However, they aren't most bloodthirsty and belligerent regiment of the Emperor's finest due to their specific goals. Also they lack artillery and vehicles, except their relic-harvesters.

Their homeworld may be as well considered feudal. Not in terms of production but rather in terms of social structure: people are coneccted to each other by different corporations and various bounds. They are dominated by tradition and highly conservative. I still struggle with the most important part - with the name of the world, but I believe that someday it will come.

Grave world by Christian Schwager for  DH 2nd ed. 

Modelling

So it begun. I've started with Empire Handgunners, Greatswords and Skitarii kits. I used Handgunners for regular soldiers and found out that their slightly leaning poses make them quite dinamic. Their sergeant, in the contrary, was made using Greatswords body and, therefore, has a more solid pose.

The first sketch of this team.

I decided to make their bases look like a desolated road in the warzone. It's not landscape of their homeplanet, but of the numerous battlefields, where they are looking for relics.

The result this far. 

I'm going to add more pigment to them in the future. Also I want to make some crusaders with close combat weapon to join this team. And as well they need a proper hero! I like how their sergeant turned out, but I think, that a knight or a priest would be a nice final touch. 

But for now, that's all.