Unusal Picture

Saw this painting at an Ikea store. Its about 5x6 feet.

New Venusian Creatures

With a campaign starting on Venus shortly, I thought since its a rushed land grab by various colonial powers there has been little exploration of native creatures that might include humans into Their food chain. So searching about I located some star wars miniatures that fit the bill, and only around 50cents each.

So these critters should be hungry enough to figure that the soldiers are some sort of Take Out..Fast Food. Still have to put some colors on them, dry brush here and there. I did procure at least 4 each of them, as they might be the kind of creatures that hunt in packs!

New Demonic Allies

Got some Dreamblade mini's finally to add to my Evil Sorcerers army. Pretty much used their original base colors as the dark prime coat to dry brush multiple layers onto except for the second from the right in the bright maroon color. Otherwise a tiny bit of flash was cleaned and I started painting.

Muzzel Blasts

So, during a VSF battle last week, there lumbered the mighty behemoth tanks and walkers, firing for all they were worth... and it looked.. dull. No Bang, No Flash, bah. On the to hobby table to tackle the problem of no muzzel flashes. First was the problem of how to make it removable since there would be times the big gun would not be firing.

So on the left is a half inch of plastic tube, into which I hot glued with a glob of hot glue, a piece of bamboo skewer. I small glass of water was near by which sped the cooling time of the glue by dipping it into the water. I had to be really carefull with this first step so that the skewer and plastic tube were aligned properly and not pointing off at some angle. On the right is the first build up of hot glue, on went lots of glue, then dip to cool and repeat.

Next 2 photo's show the continued build up. I reshaped the areas that were "wrong" to the eye by holding the tip of the hot glue gun to the spot in question till it softened, then shoved it around.

Having gotten the hot glue on and cooled, I then proceeded to give it a paint wash and bit of dry brush. Hmmm still not right, so on went some Cotton for smoke out of which the flash comes. Still, not to bad but the remaining problem that became apparent when I put it on the end of the tanks cannon was that the plastic tube was larger than the diameter of the end of the cannon and that the flash drooped down in a not satisfactory direction. I solved that by adding a bit of Plasticine modeling clay into the end of the plastic pipe so that when its placed on the end of the cannon, it acts as a temporary stabilizing tacky glue.
And there you have it, fast and easy to make.

Venusian Rifle

After some enquiries I shot a picture of a before and after assembly picture of my Venusian Rifle, made from a laser rifle and bolt pistol.

I just nipped a bit off the end of the rifle barrel and the end of the bolt pistol, then heated the end of the rifle barrel with the tip of the hot glue gun, then dab of glue and apply to the pistol grip. Paint it up and its done.
Not to much time per assembly, just in rounding up enough bits to do it.

New Venusian Race for a Jungle/Swamp setting

Not wanting to field modified skinks or kroot, I found some star war aliens and decided to modify them for use in the VSF world. Being that they came with a type of pitchfork stabbing spear, I wanted to change them up and took some old Imperial Guard 40k laz pistols and rifles and combined them. Next, I got rid of the spear and drilled out each hand to take hold of the newly created rifle:

To the right is the unmodified creature, and to the left he has his shinny new ranged rifle. I rather like the snake scaled hide, but will work on the colors some, maybe a wash and some dry brushing to change it up some.

Kaptain Kneemo's forces

Fully assembled on parade, the Kaptains Expeditionary Venus Ground Forces:

2 units of Clockwork Mechanical Robots, 1 Unit of Heavy Infantry, 2 Heavy Steam Walkers, 2 Light Steam Walkers Tanks, 2 Light Steam Walkers, 1 Brigade of Marines, 1 Brigade of Sailors and 1 Brigade of Mechanical Robot Infantry, plus of course their Illustrious Commander.