Chroma - A Blog in Ruins

Wow... it sure has been a long time since we posted anything here. Doesn't mean we're out of the hobby or anything... just busy... yeah, that's the ticket! (Marriage, new houses, school, jobs... you know the drill!)

Pipboy's non-ruined building pieces inspired a lot of creativity at the HQ, so here's a couple of shots of some of the cool stuff we put together:

I've done up some Imperial monuments/shrines as well, using all kinds of bits:

That's just a taste of things to come, we've been doing a lot of casting and building and will showcase more stuff soon!

Pipboy - Settlers of Catan 3D

I'm in the process of sculpting and casting a 3D Settlers board for my girlfriend for Christmas. I'm not very good at sculpting so I think the results so far are looking pretty good. These are the raw clay prototypes of two ocean tiles, two port tiles, a wheat tile, a desert tile, and a hlaf finished pasture tile.

Pipboy - Building Mock-ups

This will give you a better idea of what I'm thinking. I still need to add a low wall around the edge of the roof sections to form a little lip. Just you wait to see all the cool building layouts I've got brewing in my mad little brain...

Pipboy - Epic Imperial Buildings

I've been poking away for a while trying to create some non-ruined Epic buildings. I've taken the ruined building sprues from Epic 40k and chopped them up and built whole facades. Then I cast them and now I have turned out the first few casts. The Alumilite casting plastic I have been using is a little viscous for this kind of project so there are loads of bubbles. Once they're painted I don't think they will look any different than all the shell pock-marks covering the buildings anyway. I've found a source in Toronto for Smooth-On brand casting rubber and epoxy plastic. This new stuff should do much better as it is much thinner and will pour with far less bubbles trapped. Anyway, I'm convinced that these new buildings combined with all the cool scenery parts I've discovered I still have will make one damn fine looking Epic table...as soon as I get enough of the buggers cast.

Chroma - EPIC Titan Competition

Well, Specialist Games was holding a "Create a Titan" competition this month and I really wasn't inspired to do much for it initially. The prize of a 3000 point army plus other goodies sounded sweet, but I just wasn't sure what to do. Pipboy had some ideas, but I think he lost inspiration as well as the month progress. One also had to write up the stats and flavour text for this new War Engine so it combined both modelling and creative skills.

Suddenly, I was inspired! (I think it might be the new shower head I got as I've been getting some really creative ideas in there! *laugh*) I scrounged around for bits and pieces and worked out something that, I think, is really cool. Now, the submissions for the competition just closed this week, so no judging has occurred. I'm going to keep the full glory of my creation under wraps for the time being until after I've found out how much I've won... ;) But here's a little sneak peak:


BloodNGuts, Pipboy, and I are going to try and set up a 4000-5000 point game to take my creation out for a spin. More word when we've worked out that plan!

Chroma - The Changing Ways of the Eldar

Hey there EPIC comrades! Summer has been a busy time for all of us here, though I have been averaging two games of EPIC a week for most of it. Mainly been focusing on playtesting the proposed rules changes put up by the Eldar Army Champion Sotec over on the Specialist Games forums.

One of the cool things that happened is that he and I actually got to play a few games when he was down here visiting family. I did up battle reports and you can see them here.

Sotec vs Chroma Battle 1

and

Sotec vs Chroma Battle 2

I've gotten in a lot of other Eldar vs all-comers games as well, just head over to the Eldar Forums at Tactical Command to check them out!

Pipboy - Almost finished

I've been rather overwealmed with the positive responce to the Necrons - thanks everyone. The army is very close to being finished but after 2 weeks of non-stop painting, I need a break. In the meantime I give you the finished infantry. All infantry stands and Obelisks are mounted on a 1" steel washer and Monoliths and Pylons are mounted on a 1.5" washer.

A selection of basic Necron Warriors:



A couple of shots of the 4 Necron Lords:



The Destroyer Lord is my favorite.



The 4 stands of Pariahs were converted from the DRM Andrayadas Scouts. I chopped off their rifles and added a glaive made of paperclip wire and plasticard blade.



The Heavy Destroyers used 40k scarabs for the body and Andrayadas Heavy Weapon Trooper for the torso.



The Obelisks are scratch-built starting with a 20mm square base. I slapped a flat deck on top and built the 'central column' and 'corner stones' out of square plastic stock. The 'conduit' detail on the deck surface is just more square plastic stock. A bead from the craft store completes the model. Obviously these ones aren't fully painted yet. The only thing left is to paint the crystal a suitably glowing green.



The Monoliths took a lot more work (and patience). I began with a 20mm square base for the top and a 25mm square base at the bottom. I then carefully cut notches in the sides of each base and glued 'U'-shaped plastic stock into the notches, thereby joining the top and bottom in a vaguely pyramid shape. I then cut plasticard plates and glued them to the sides to cover the open corners of the model. (It occurs to me now that I really should have taken progress photos of all this...) The 'corner stones' were made from the same square stock as the Obelisks, only taller. A 40k gauss flayer muzzle was used for the crystal cradle. Once that was all done I cast the Monolith (and the Obelisk and Pylon) with RTV rubber to make a mould. I used Alumilite casting plasic to produce a handful of copies. Finally I added the fiddly details like the vertical buttresses (more square stock), the rear detail, the top 'arm' (hand bent 'H'-beam stock), the portal door, and the crystal. Voila! It's pretty big for an AV but it is suitably impressive on the table. Again this Momolith is not yet finished the painting stage. I still have to paint the portal, crystal and icons.



Finally the Pylon gave me the biggest headache but the best result (I think). I used an old 40k Tarantula base for the legs and scratch-built the rest. The whole thing is built from plastic stock of various shapes ('H'-beam, square, flat, round, and quarter-round). The tricky part was to shape the crescent. I built the basic shape of the curve first, then immersed it into boiling water for a few seconds. The heat allows you to bend it around a shape/form. Hold it in place until it cools and retains its shape. It took 4 tries to get it right. After all that effort it was still a battle to get a descent cast of it due to all the fine projections. In the end it came together and now it's my favorite model of the army (for now).