A Sciolist

A chunk of terrain! My goal continues to be to have a table that could be configured in three ways: residential/commercial focus, industrial focus, or military focus, with a varying degree of natural/rural character. So first up, more excellent industrial terrain by Lazy Forger:

The silos are stable enough, but I might end up putting them on heavy washers like I did some of the trees if they end up getting knocked over too much in use. Aggregate conveyors I’m happy with, but I think I might need to model two piles of said aggregate to put under them to sell the visual.

Time to expand the road network! I got some more bundles from Blotz, mostly focusing on ground-level streets. Thankfully it’s not a ton of work to assemble since most are one or two pieces, with the only tedious part being sanding down the nubs left on the attachment points to the MDF sheets they were cut out of.

The only extra work were these two ramps. I wanted to fill in the gap, so I got some spackle and did just that. Unfortunately I can’t find any pictures of said filling pre-paint, but it did the trick well enough.

Painting the road lines was a test of will power, and that’s all I want to say about that. The roads themselves were done with the same spray paints as I did last year with the elevated highways, except that I left the bottom of these pieces bare except for a sealing coat of flat varnish.

Last was some flocking, which involved spritzing a very wet solution of clear PVA glue and sprinkling flock from above at random, with a few larger flock clumps attached here and there. A subsequent sealing with flat varnish spray and it felt solid enough to use on the table.

After playing with layouts, I still feel like I’m short a few pieces (could use some more curves and flat edge-of-board bits), but overall I think I should be able to make most any reasonable layout.

I was concerned that the puzzle piece style joints would be too visible on the table, but once painted up they aren’t too bad. The only problem was a consequence of the random spraying of colors on the roads, where one piece might have an end that’s darker and the other brighter, making an obvious joint. Mostly solvable by just switching out what piece is fit into which at least.

I wasn’t really sure how to do the flesh and muscle, so it was experimentation with what likely ended up being an excessive number of steps:

• Prime black
• 2 coats Vallejo Light Rust all over
• Vallejo Bloody Red on muscles
• 1:1 TTC Adriatic Skin to Vallejo Light Rust on skin
• 2:1 TTC Adriatic Skin to Vallejo Light Flesh on skin
• TTC Viscera Red glaze, primarily on muscles but thin coat on skin
• 1:1 TTC Adriatic Skin to Vallejo Ghost Grey on skin
• Army Painter Light Tone Wash on skin
• 1:1 TTC Adriatic Skin to Vallejo Ghost Grey dry brush on skin
• Vallejo Light Flesh dry brush on skin
• TTC Black with gloss medium on eyes
• Matte varnish all but eyes

I’m sure some of those could be cut out, and there was lots of touching up throughout to bring back highlights and things like that.

The mechanical bits are simpler:

• Prime black
• Heavy dry brush of Ghost Grey
• Vallejo Xpress Gloomy Violet
• Vallejo Bright Bronze or Chrome on metallics
• Army Painter Light Tone or GW Nuln Oil on respective metallic
• Triangles: Ghost Grey, GW Contrast Ironjawz Yellow
• Matte varnish on non-metallics

I also decided to strip and redo my Anomaly ship, as it was bit rough with a lot of details that weren’t picked out, and I wanted a more vibrant purple.

The paint job is mostly the same as the mechanical bits on the flesh drones, with two primary differences: the ‘internal’ portion where the wings plug in is done with GW Contrast Leviathan Purple, and some of the dots are painted with Vallejo Electric Blue. The detachable core bit also got redone to a blue green-ish metallic rather than the yellow it was, as it’s apparently an “energy core” according to comments from people who talked to them on the show floor.

And lastly, a Lynx I’ve had kicking around for a bit. I’ve started painting the major dots on Shaltari models, as they began to look a bit plain as a collection without them, but I fear I’m going to be compelled to go back and do that on all the models. I don’t even want to think about the behemoth in this context.

The crest I had as just a silver metal initially, but it looked plain, so I ended up slapping on the same pink contrast I use on Scourge. I don’t usually like to reuse colors between factions if possible, but I think it’s alright here since it’s a metallic/glossy finish vs the more flat finish on the Scourge pink. Also, I didn’t notice my thumb pushing one of the legs aside a bit while gluing, so it’s only just barely stable which is a tad annoying!

On the topic of actual games played, we recently did a small 999-point game of Dropfleet using the new civilian vessels in the Mass Exodus scenario. Didn’t take any pictures, but it was PHR vs Resistance:

I was PHR, with the goal of having an irritating to fight list that didn’t completely sacrifice offense. The Resistance list was focused on trying to rush down and/or snipe two of the civilian vessels while dropping into the other two.

Ended up with a 5-4 victory for me; one vessel made it into the exfiltration zone, while the other ping-ponged control and was stuck just short of full scoring under my control at the end. The other two vessels were in fact blown out of orbit almost immediately.

The Agrippa having to activate first every round if I wanted to use it to shield my civilian vessels made me very predictable, but it was still the main thing responsible for keeping the surviving two under my control, so it did the trick. The Harpocrates did manage to shut down the Tribune for a key dropping turn but were promptly wiped out by bombers afterwards, so overall, mission accomplished on an annoying list!

Of the civilian ships, I think the Nirvana is the most interesting. The spike-hiding provides some interaction between it and your actual fleet ships, while the other three variants mostly do their own thing. I had it with the Agrippa group, allowing the constant minor spikes from having to station keep it, and the launching spikes on the Priam and Ariadne to be ignored, allowing the vanguard group to be basically untouchable outside the first activation.

In any case, there is another fleet game I learned about recently I’m hoping to sit down and look into soon.