Painting Update: Chaos Cultists, MDF Terrain And The Nerd Room

So many boxes, but at least most of them are now gone.

After many months of inactivity, 2017 saw me resume my painting and my playing of wargames.  This is because I finally have a new nerd room!

Shelves upon shelves of roleplaying games, board games and wargames.

Long time readers will know that in my old flat we had a spare bedroom which became The Nerd Room™, also known as "the fungeon", "the man cave", "the shed" or "that bloody mess".  Such is also in the case in my latest abode but it took a few months to decorate and unpack it - inexplicably, Sister Superior insisted that minor areas like the dining room and bedroom took priority.

Check out those hues!  Hopefully Fulgrim is proud of his new digs.  Also that's yet more games in the corner

She did however help me to get it painted a glorious Slaneeshi palette of colours, with Dulux supplying us with the wonderfully titled Lavender Quartz and Purple Pout.  She also helped me assemble some new furniture: a dedicated table with storage drawers for my painting and a clear display cabinet for my cooler figures.  For my part, I arranged three folding aluminium tables which combined together make a 6' x 4' play space.

The painting table and trays holding all my stuff.  We will get to those figs in a minute

With all my bits and bobs unpacked and displayed, I could finally try painting for the first time in.... according to my blog, over half a year.  It took me a bit to get myself psyched up enough to do it but for the last week or so I've very much had a hobby bug and some bits and pieces have been going on.

Details follow!

Chaos Cultists very roughly base coated and untouched for six months

Well, the last thing I had been working on was a squad of Cultists and these have been sitting half-done for ages.  I therefore got to work in finishing these off and adding another 14 members of the lost and the damned to my chaos horde.  As before, my goal was to have the option to play them as a member of the Renegades and Heretics army list that Forge World produce, giving my Chaos Marines access to some new toys and letting me play a slightly different style.

Added to my previous cultists this gives me 35 of the little bastards all in.  The new models include 3 rifles, 8 close combat weapons, 2 rogue psykers and a Cult Leader.  (Actually a Denethor figure from the Lord of the Rings range, which 40K Dave acquired in a job lot and passed on to me.)  Most of the grunts are just duplicate Dark Vengeance snapfit Cultists but there is a House Goliath Juve from Necromunda whose metal body has made the leap to the forces of darkness

All fourteen figures, as finished as I'm getting 'em.

All were painted very similar to my previous cultists: a mixture of Vallejo Off-White and Vallejo Pink was used to produce a pale robe colour, their weapons painted in Runefang Steel and a personal colour called Incarnum Indigo (an even parts mixture of old Citadel Blood Red and Enchanted Blue.)  Little patches of light and dark brown for leathers are added with Coat D'Arms Barbarian Leather and Rhinox Hide.  The bases are more like my later figures than my original cultists, painted Mechrite Red and washed in Dark Tone Quickshade before drybrushing back up with Mechrite and with a perimeter of Rhinox Hide.

The skin colour was somewhere I was more daring with.  To try and make more a slightly less white-boys-only-club look I used a variety of different flesh hues and mixtures throughout.  Traditional GW Bronzed Flesh, Dwarf Flesh and Dark Flesh were used and mixed together along with another custom Quail colour, Kara-Tur Flesh - Bronzed Flesh with Sunburst Yellow at 3:2 to make for a more East Asian look.

Slaanesh - not just for white boys.

Rather than use the Bronzed Flesh neat I also added in some of Sister Superior's old foundation.  Yes, you heard me, I painted my figures with make-up.  Obviously foundation on it's own won't stick as well as paint - but combined with paint or medium to give it a bit more strength it added a softer, more nature touch to some of the skin hues.

The figures were given a gentle shading, with Soft Tone Quickshade used on most of the metal/brown/flesh areas while the indigo and the base got Dark Tone Quickshade.  The pink, however, I was more careful with: that got a wash of watered down Warlock Purple, a dry brushing in Changeling Pink and some edge highlighting in the very similarly hued Carnal Pink that Privateer Press do.  This was a recent acquisition and while the Warlock Purple darkened the figure down more than I'd intended, combined with the two lighter pink highlighting it makes for a more natural colour shift.

The cultists in the front right had foundation added to make for a lighter hue.

With a spray of varnish these fourteen figures and are added to my cultists.  It's time to move onto the next on the to-do list!

A bit more wild west than my usual terrain style but it's too decadent for me to say no to

This is a piece of MDF laser-cut terrain by TTCombat, the Burlesque House, which I got ages ago from Common Ground games.  This is my first attempt assembling and painting such terrain and I wanted to experiment with this smaller piece before trying something more sub-sub-substantial.

The item came in four sheets of laser-cut wood, with tabs and slots to plug it all together.  Some wood glue helps keep it together, but some parts weren't glued so that I can still open it up and potentially move figures inside.

The inside of the first floor with furniture visible.  The ground floor is also accessible.

A spray of white undercoat was applied and the next painting project for me is ready to go,  However there's other items ready to go... and in particular a certain Forge World piece the missus got me for Christmas is cleaned and ready to go.

Scrubbed of release agents and ready for undercoat.