Wednesday Workbench 31 May 2023 (aka 27 Days Later)

 Oh dear. It seems that I dropped away from posting for much longer than I should have done. Sorry about that.

I haven't picked up a paint brush since finishing that pair of Fatties, as I've been doing a lot of test printing for Kathy Millatt's kickstarter campaign. I've also been doing a lot of design work for the Peach Trees terrain. I think I've now got the atrium walkways as good as I can get them now - I just need to adjust the positioning of the OpenLock clip holes and make some minor changes to the corner pillars. I've also test-printed enough sections to do three levels of one side:

I noticed that without the apartments behind them, the walkways sagged a bit so I quickly designed some support columns to hold them for these photos. As it is 1m (40 inches, actually) wide I found that the only space where I could actually take the photos was on my kitchen floor, so the lighting isn't as good as it could be.

A lot of research (and trial and error) has gone into these - finding images online, realising that there aren't as many showing what I need as I'd like and then capturing screen-shots from the film to get more images.

For the atrium corner sections, I think I might make sense to do them as 8" x 8" tiles (8" x 9" for the ones where the parapet sticks out beyond the pillar).

The next stage of this project will be to design the apartments, shops and other bits that are needed. The first stage of that will be to create the repeated elements like wall lights, entry-phones and such.

Wednesday Workbench 03 May

 

I seem to be coming out of my painting rut! I managed to get the highlighting and metal details done on the two models I first started painting (checks back - errmmm, crap - errmm - surely not that long?) four weeks ago. 

Tomorrow I'll give them a light gloss coat, black-lining wash and then varnish and base them.

It's just as well that I'm coming out of that painting rut as this arrived yesterday:

What's that? You don't seriously think I'm planning to paint a cardboard box, do you? I mean, I know I've done some daft painting projects, but that would just be too silly. No, no, no - it's the contents of the box which will be joining the painting queue.

Lots of goodies!

Everything apart from the freebie sample sprue

That's a hefty chunk of resin to clean up and paint.

Yes, my "Block wars" wave 2 pre-order has been delivered. With the CitiDef packs, I'm going to have to try to remember the paint scheme I did for the original packs.

Wednesday Workbench 05 April 2023

 

Well, that is what I got primed a week or so ago. Most of the figures are "model railway people"; some I am leaving as greyscale to use as "average citizens" for Judge Dredd games, the rest will get painted up to bulk out the "Resident Mobs" for Block Wars games (at least until Warlord decide to t=do the obvious and release further Resident Mob packs - the two from the starter pack and the ten in their own pack just won't be enough for one player, let alone two). I also primed all the figures from the first wave of Block Wars.

"Average Citizens" - I need to get some 30mm round bases for the rest.

Wave 1 of Block Wars

Speaking of Block Wars, Warlord announced the Wave 2 releases for pre-order last week and I might have ordered them as a birthday present for myself...

I did make a start on painting the Wave 1 figures last Friday, doing the flesh on all of them. I then got distracted and didn't return to them until today. I decided to start off with the easy job - doing the Riot Judges and remembered that I still had two Lawmaster bikes that needed painting as well, so added them to the workbench:

I actually finished painting them all today, and I'll be varnishing them tomorrow. Then it's onto this bunch of nutters:

I'll probably do these in small groups over the next few days.

Wednesday Workbench 22 March 2023; Judge Dredd - Block War

 

As you can see, there's actually nothing on my workbench right now. That is a purely temporary state of affairs, of course, but I haven't decided what project to tackle next. It hasn't been completely empty since the end of the Challenge - yesterday it had my airbrushes in various stages of being deep cleaned, but that's all done now.

On Monday I took delivery of a pre-order I'd placed in January:

Yes, the Block War expansion for Judge Dredd, plus a couple of freebies.

Para carrying casualty - I've already got this, so I'll make a gift of it

1812 Russian line infantry, to add to all the other sample sprues I have.

Block War Expansion

The pre-order was for the expansion, plus the first three associated packs. Looking through the rules, it looks like another eight packs are set for release later on (from bits mentioned in the rules but without previews, there should be more).

Block War

The expansion contains an A5 format rulebook, a pad of record sheets for players' blocks in the campaign, 2 figures of belligerent residents, 3 new Armoury cards and 15 Block War cards (which replace the Big Meg cards from the main game).

Mega-City Resident Mob

The pack contains 10 belligerent resident figures and 3 cards (1 x stats, 1 x Armoury, 1 x Big Meg)

Fatties At War

The pack contains 2 "fatty" models - Fats Hambo and a fatty battering ram, and 4 cards (2 stats cards, 1 x Armoury, and 1 x Big Meg)

Justice Department Riot Control

The pack contains 3 figures (2 Riot Judges, 1 Assault Judge) and 4 cards (2 stats cards, 1 x Armoury, 1 x Big Meg).

I've had a read-through of the rules and they look as though they should make for an interesting campaign between 2 or more players. There are 12 scenarios split into Early, Mid and Late phases (4 for each). There is an escalation factor in the games - in early phase scenarios you get 75 point, mid phase 100 points and late phase 150 points (NB - points/models available can be affected by certain block upgrades, details of the scenario, special abilities, Block War cards and results of preceding scenarios). Added to the rules are heavy weapons emplacements 

Each player selects their Block from one of 65 types, although it's not clear (other than through their random number of block upgrades) what effect beyond the number of structural points the block has on the game. Maybe just for a bit of "colour" - how many levels and how many residents per level. Winning a scenario will cause structural damage to the loser's block.

Update - on taking another look, the type of block does have an effect and (in one case) the population/level. However, the number of levels seems to have no effect. 

For the block factions, players get to select their roster from the Block Gang, Citi-Def, Fatty, Robot lists and any non-Judge characters. There isn't a Justice Department faction, but one of the block upgrades and certain Block War cards can bring in one or more Judges under your control during mid and late phase scenarios - as four of the 15 cards can do this and each player picks 3 cards from the deck, there is a very good chance of both players being able to bring in and control Judge models (although Judges can never target each other). Each block must have a "champion" - there are stats (and special rules) for these, but I don't see why the Champion couldn't be a Block Gang Lieutenant, a Citi-Def Lieutenant (figures not released yet) or one of the two named Fatties (Dick Porker and Fats Hambo); you could add the special rules for Block Champion to them by upping the points cost.

I've got pretty much all the scatter terrain I need for the 'tween-block plaza scenarios, but might get a few more pieces. 

This expansion is definitely positioned as a perp vs perp game, whereas the main rules (the scenarios at least) are aimed more as Judges vs perps which can lead to a major imbalance in the activation system if you don't use one of the house rules that have been suggested by players and one of the designers). From figure previews that have been seen, it looks like "The Day The Law Died" will be the next expansion and that will pit Judges vs Judges - also a more balanced game. The heavy weapons and new Citi-Def models might also suggest an eventual Apocalypse War expansion.

Saturday Workbench 18 March 2023

 

OK, so it's actually Sunday here in the UK but it is still Saturday to the West! Tomorrow is the final day of the Challenge, and I'm frantically trying to finish things off in time to get everything photographed and the post written before the deadline.

Today has mostly been cutting up the decals I've made, gloss varnishing the Type S ready for adding decals, painting and gloss varnishing the backdrop pieces, priming and base-coating 1/270 and 1/1000 versions of the Type S (I thought that if I do have time to get them finished, they'd make a great addition to the post - I'll just have to see how things go tomorrow), painting up some snack and drinks machines for the backdrop and adding decals to everything that needs them.

Speaking of the decals, they've been an absolute nightmare. First off, when I went to print them, my inkjet printer wouldn't output black. I knew the cartridge was a bit low, but there should have been enough. Luckily I had a spare cartridge, so I put that in, hit print and...yes, not printing black. After about 30 minutes of going through the cleaning, deep cleaning and print head alignment processes, I finally managed to get it working. Of course, that was about 2am on Thursday night/Friday morning. Yesterday I hit them with gloss varnish to seal the ink in.

This evening I was adding the decals to everything. The small ones for the cargo items were (mostly) good, the ones for the Type S went on nicely. However, I had real problems with the ones for the backdrop, possibly because of the size. The 36 x 56mm ones weren't too bad, the 16 x 96mm ones were a touch tricky, but the 36 x 196mm ones...let's just say that there was a lot of swearing. Luckily I had made sure to print extras of each, which was all well and good until I accidentally picked up one of the boards to move it after applying a top coat of MicroSet, and of course my thumb just happened to land right on top of the softened decal, pulling it up as I removed my thumb. And no spares remaining! I've printed another sheet and varnished them. I'll have to apply that one tomorrow.

Tomorrow (today, I guess) will see me doing lots of varnishing, some touching up around the edges of decals on the ship, some weathering, some more varnishing, photography, photo resizing and then writing a rather long blog post for the submission.

Thursday Workbench 16 March 2023

 

I just realised that I'd completely forgotten to do my Wednesday Workbench post last night - better late than never!

I've finished painting the 3D printed figures you saw the other day, and they're varnished and stuck on acrylic bases (well, not the sitting and relaxing figures). On the workbench right now are a few whimsical bits that might become part of the story. At the time the photo was taken, they were waiting for the first round of washes. They've just had a second round, which completes the painting - I'll be varnishing them later on.

I'm still working on the backdrop boards. The 3D printed panels have been glued onto the wall boards; I'll be gluing on the extra bits this afternoon/evening. I'm just over halfway done on the floor board - I've still got two more print runs of floor panels to go; it should be ready for priming and painting tomorrow.

Monday Workbench 13 March 2023

 

I've started painting up bits to accompany the Type S. Yesterday I painted a bunch of small cargo items and gloss coated them this morning. I'll be adding decals to them later this week once I've (2D!!)printed and prepped them.

This afternoon I began work on painting up a few 3D printed figures. As of taking the photos, they have all been base-coated; I'll be doing highlights over the next couple of days.

There are six figures in 4 poses each, plus three individual figures. I've limited the colour palette as much as possible to help speed the painting up.

At the moment, I'm not quite halfway through printing some bits (wall and floor panels) for a photo backdrop for the figures. The wall plates will be going behind the items shown above (NB - positions of some of those bits will be different on the final piece and some may be omitted).

Wednesday Workbench 08 March 2023

 

The photo above was taken a couple of hours ago and I've since made a very good start on all of the figures. These are for the World Cinema and Historical Drama studios.

Last week I 3D printed a fairly big collection of figures to accompany the Type S. Not all of them will get used, but I wanted to have the options. I've recently come across a technique using Mod Podge for gap filling, and thought it would probably also help to fill in the layer lines on 3D printed stuff. 

Yesterday I zenithal primed roughly half of the figures; I then gave all of the figures a coat of Mod Podge and left them overnight. Today I did another round of black/grey zenithal priming on all of the figures to see whether another coat of Mod Podge was needed - it was, so I did that, left the figures for an hour or so and then did another round of black/grey zenithal priming. It seems as though two coats of Mod Podge ws enough to smooth out most of the layer lines, so I then added a final zenithal of white.

I remembered that I'd previously zenithal primed an identical figure to one of the ones in this group, which was convenient as it allowed me to compare the with/without Mod Podge:

Mod Podge; no Mod Podge

Speaking of the Type S, I've finished all of the painting now which just leaves decals and weathering of the exterior. Given its current state, you won't see any photos until it's been submitted and published.