Not “Dune 1984”

So i had the miniatures and but which ones to start with. So i picked the sardaukar and House Corrino:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sardaukar

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_Corrino

What next? Yes some flyers. Actually i really love the range from puppetswar.
But i had to lay my fingers on some old models from Revell: Hefty price tag.

Summer 2014 the first faction House Corrino was mostly done:

Sadly i had to interrupt the flow of the project for another 1:1 minature building project: my house from 2014 to 2016, which consumed much of my hobby time. I started building my gaming board in my new hobby room after this. But it was worth the wait. More to come.

Late 2016 i decided i wanted to present my project on the Hamburger Tactica 2018 (yeah that is more than a year).

So my plan for 2017 was to finish all the board and the minatures.
That were 200 minatures and 15 vehicles + extras and the board.
And for this i needed a rough project plan:
1. Step: Troops (Jan, Feb, Mar: Special ones in Sep)
2. Step: Vehicles (Apr, Jun, left ones Oct)
3. Step: board and buildings (May, left ones Nov). Here i will hopefully get help from my gaming club.
4. Step: Characters (Jul, left ones Dec)
5. Step: preparation of presentation (Aug). Asking the gaming club if it wants to help too (no con presentation can work on just one man for 2 days).
I thought it’s a hefty timetable (and it was), but i also think there are some hidden reserves (i was right to plan those in). We see after the the first steps.

So 3 month s for the gros of troops:
4 factions with around 180 minatures to do. Quite a big chunk.
But the imperial factions was mostly done.

On the january, 10th 2017 i finished the Corrinos troops with those pics:

The next day i started on the next faction: House Atreides.

Well the House Atreides is doomed. And there are only few battles to be fought over in the beginning till the forces of the Atreides are destroyed.

But the first battles in the film are the important ones, because it acutally marks the climax of this tragedy in a classical structure (I’m deviating).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_Atreides

I started with a test trooper:

Well these came out very good. So it was time for the first group shot (do you love those too?):

I added quite a lot of details into them (for just troops). Next the house guards.

The Atreides Houseguards are the veterans of this faction. Did much investigation on these and to paint them took more time than expected. Almost did them twice.

Why didn’t they clean their boots? After the over work i’m quite content with the result

Next are the evil barons troops 😉

Again did some research.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_Harkonnen

And these were my references:

So many gingers are going to die on Arrakis 😉

Well this was in april. So i had to look on vehicles from then on. Fremen would come later (reserves where planed).

Well BoW ate my first pos today. So one more time.

In april my schedule said vehicle. First i thought about ornithopter, but because i wanted to use Bolt Action i was more about some light vehicles and 1-2 tanks. So the first vehicle i finished was the golden attack buggy for House Corrino (you notice the pattern):

Actually it misses a lion head decal.
The gold was harder than usual. The yellow gold cockpit was hard to do. Used tamiya clear yellow thinned down with isopropanol through a airbrush on a basis of vallejo air chrome colour. The result was not so smooth. But using some new products and techniques faults can happen. Overall i like it.

After this i did some additional light vehicles:

Next some Tanks. Plz post publish.

I’m not talking about bola tanks. Anyone who played Dune 2000 well there are tanks on Dune. Maybe not in the open desert, but they are there. So i did some of them, the first was the golden tank of House Corrino (do you now notice the pattern):

Every bloody ruler of the known universe needs a golden tank. And anti-grav tank on top (fancy enough?). Fun fact, this one may be the best tank, but it will drive sand worm to go crazy due to the use of the suspensors for the anti-grav effect.

Third post ate by BoW again.

Last post today. Well i had to do a light tank for the House Harkonnen:

One faction is missing a tank. So House Atreides tank was next. @oriskany may notice the camo pattern 😉

So these were the tanks i needed. But i still have more tanks to paint (later). The ornithopters may have to wait for another slot (and this was a good decision).

So next was the board and the terrain.

Well the board started like most boards with a frame (in this case a high frame) and 3 styrodur/hardfoam plates 60 x 120cm inside. On the underside i added 4 triangles in the corners for rigity and between the plates 2 closing bands. Then additional painter tape for closing the connection. Then i added some solvent-free glue to the connections (very important, solvent melts the foam). On top of this filler mass. I wanted a very flate surface. You may think on dunes, but i would do those on bases.

When everythink was dry i added again water thinned glue and on top of that fine sand (my one was almost to fine). Then don’t do the whole plate at once, because the glue dries and the the sand doesn’t stick to it anymore:

When everything was dry, i removed the sand (saving what i can) and paint the sand with a light sahara color from the hardware-store. Some more white and drybrushing. Due to the fine sand. The effect was more marginal. After this i wanted to try out a 2D sanddune-effect and i like it. You may try to do smaller ones with more breakouts. For this i cutted cardboard (pizza) in the right shape and sprayed with model mates sand effect on the surface (i added some references too):

May look i little bit hard. Less may be better. But overall i can live with the result:

Next step finishing the board sides took some time and i finished them in january 2018. So other pictures may not include them. But i want to finish this. So next post is on the board part 2.

Well yesterday BoW ate my 2nd post and it was a big wall of text. So from now on i will use the update entry button more often.

After finishing the board ground i had to do the board sides. This took some time and experimenting. And the board was finished about 6 weeks before the Tactica. My idea on the inside of the board was a horizon. I never did this before. So i again looked on pics of deserts (see previous post). At first i tried to use paper stripes. But that doesn’t work. The paper is too thin and dents, when glued on a board. So i used 0,5mm thick plasticard stripes. On this i airbrushed a transition from bright blue to dark blue and then i added a yellow for the dust, which gave it a green tone. At last i airbrushed some yellow clouds in the distant.  After this i halved the stripes and painted on the bottom part the same sahara colour, which i used on the board. After trying i added dunes with the airbrush with bigger dunes on the bottom and smaller ones on the higher end (possible i overdid a bit here). I really like the result:

Accidents happen. Whit all stripes prepared. i glued them to the board. I advice here to paint the top and bottom sides before glueing those stripes in. You may later not reach them.

So you may now notice the dune logos and the house logos. These are stickers. The house logos are from red-ape design. And the dune logos i ordered from a professional. I tried a big waterslide decal, but on this size and so thin this does not work. Trust me i tried.

I really like the overall effect:

Next no board, without terrain. And BoW tried to ate my post again 😉

I had different ideas for what terrain i would need.

1. Terrain for the battles around Arrakeen
2. Terrain for battles in the desert

Well the desert does not have many features except for dunes and sand. Lots of sand. But fighting over sand doesn’t make sense, or?

What were other features. It was the rocks and stony isles in the sand sea. And then we have the sietch. In the mini-series we were able to see the sietch Tabr:

So what i needed was stones to build the sietch. For this i bought a suitable hirst arts mould and began on making those stones. Then i bought some cork bark for the rock. I saw this on some other projects and wanted to try out this too. I although bought some other suitable deco parts from thomarillion.

I sorted the bark by size and on top of a base and with hot-glue i began the building process:

After the bark and the stones were glued in, i added a back side to the sietch. I closed the gaps between the bork and the top with the same filler, which i used on the board. You will see more pictures of this later.

Then i started painting those. This took again much time. When all part were painted i glued the last parts in.

More pictures of this will follow. Next post will be on the stoney isles.

On the stony isles i used the same corc bark, like on the sietch.

For every part i used the same size. So these had to be sorted by size. I hot-glued the bark on the the base. In the center i placed hard form. And more hotglue. So these are totally one piece.

With everything in place i used the filler to close the gaps and the top.  And did this many times again, and again, till i had no bark or ideas.

Ok more than i needed. But better to have some more so you choose the nicest.

With the help of the people of my gaming club i was able to paint those in 2 days (drybrushing, drybrushing and more drybrushing).

Desert table check. And done.

Arrakeen is next.

In the both movie versions the main battles on Arrakis happen in Arrakeen. There were more battlesites. But these were the important ones. First House Harkonnen and Sardaukar vs the House Atreides and the 2nd one Fremen vs House Harkonnen and House Corrino.

What did i need. Mostly flat houses, like we see them in the middle east today. Here are some references:

On the same way i found most of my terrain. Here are some of my sources:

https://www.ziterdes.de/wustenzuflucht.html

https://www.ziterdes.de/wustenzuflucht-ii.html

Mud Brick House

To these i added some extra like wooded frames for glass windows and more to give some variation. These were cheap, but needed much filling on the gaps.

https://www.miniaturebuildingauthority.com/products.asp?cat=28mm+Middle+Eastern+Series&pg=2

Scatter Terrain and other pieces from Micro Art Studio.

I mostly started with base coat of zandri dust. Then washed them with agrax earthshade. When dried i, i drybrushed all of them.

On a similar way i did the scatter terrain (which i also use in Freebooters Fate now):

These were needed the first time in out test games for the Tactica.

Next post i will return to the miniature side of this project. Long life the fighters.

Well here we are, returning to the to people of the desert, known as Fremen.

At first i thought i now have enough of them. But now i think, i need more of them, the size of the population of them was hidden from us. I now have 47 including the characters. For bigger games i need more. So i’m looking in the Freeborn from Gates of Antares or fighters from Akula. But my original source seems to be closed. Or we see them from Gale Force Nine. We will see.

Because there was not much variation on my miniatures, i did some head swap (Hasslefree), weapons swaps (sniper-rifle, missle launcher, thumper, some weirding modules) and bending.

Also did some hidden markers.

In the movie from 1984 most of the fremen wear black still suits. Especially the main characters. Mostly these were covered in a very thick dust. which i tried to replicate with pigments.

From one batch of fremen to the next i tried to get a little lighter. For adding shadow i used agrax earthshade and when dried on this the pigments (light yellow ocre from Vallejo). I also painted the with of the eyes with light blue, but due to the flash, it is not good visible.

Next post on guild.

Suits. Here we have them. The mysterious navigators guild. Moving without moving. I would love to insert the scene where the 3rd stage navigator meets the emporer. But i was unable to find a clip.

Well the first one to do was this buddy:

Well i have another small one. But he is not painted atm. So i did a 2nd stage navigator like Edric, who was to be seen in the mini-series:

I wanted to present this buddy in a tank filled with spice gas. With a 3D-modelling program i constructed a bottom and top part for the tank, which i sent over to a 3D-printing service after some preparation. It came out quite nice. For the tube i used a acrylic-glass tube. The spice gas is a orange-coloured woll. The black parts of the tank are sprayed with a black gloss spray.

And then i came to this masterpiece of the 3rd stage navigator, which i almost ruined in the painting/spraying process:

I was quite lucky to get this unavailable model. The painting of the navigator was easy. Painting a light flesh colour then sepia washing and cleaning. Adding the eyes and done.

The tank was quite harder. Using the minatures size and the movie prob used in the movie i constructed a multi-part model. So it would not cost to much in the printing process. I had 2 bottom parts, 4 top parts, 1 acrylic tube halved and 2 sheets of acylic glass. At the end it still was quite expensive, but it is a unique part, which i wanted hard.  I sprayed the model in a black gloss (don’t use this spray under 10°C, trust me, don’t, never. You will almost ruin the model). In the end i did it in cellar, with a breathing mask and after this i opened all windows. Never do this. But time was running.

And i love this model. Almost perfect.

From one beast to another. Next post comes another kind of beast.

And now to something different… another beast.

On my schedule there were some characters to be done.

And maybe Rabban is the boss on Arrakis, till his beheading. But there is another Boss for the whole House Harkonnen. The Baron. Valdimir Harkonnen.

And to finish the line for i needed one last piece of artillery, which is a Sig-33. The crew has a head swap from Mad Robots range.

You may ask why this modell? It is not shown in the movie. Well this piece is quite usefull on arrakis, were no one else uses artillery pieces, because of the use of shields. But we see the Atreides had a traitor, who sabotaged the shield generator.  So castle arrakeen was unprotected from artillery. Another point is, Shield don’t work very good in the desert. They tend to overload, like to be seen in the battle with the corrino. And last shields in the desert attract worm. So placed on a protected postion these were of much use.

Next post something different.

We saw tanks and buggys, but the most utile vehicle ist the ornithorper.

I was very lucky to find a Revell ornithopter with a affordable price tag:

I also bought 2 ornithopters/flyers from puppets war, which i really can recommend:

https://puppetswar.eu/product.php?id_product=187

The 2nd one with the container looks to be missing.

Sadly i was not able till now to finish those flyers (they had no use for the Tactica scenarios i did). I hope to finish those in the next year.

Then i found those ornithopters/flyers:

When i received them (just in time), well i wont hide it, they were not the best quality models. So it took some time with warm water bending, cutting and filling holes. But when done, primed and painted these came out quite well:

Next post something different… another beast.

On the last weeks before the Tactica i wanted to do my sand-worm, shai-hulud. When i bought the revell ornithopter i also was lucky to get the sand-worm. At first i wanted to do it myself modelling the sand-worm by hand (could not be so hard). Well it was harder than i thought. So i stopped that. And then i wanted 2 sandworms: one emerging from the sand and attacking and one to ride by the fremen (this one still waits to be done).

So i returned to the revell sand-worm (i love that it is so nice in scale for what i was needed):

What i disliked, was that the model has a opening for the throat, but it was very bad executed. So i did it myself like in the first pic above:

And then i thought it missed the teeths, from which the fremen do crys-knifes (how do they get them?).  So i took tooth picks and cutted them to size and form which i wanted. These i inserted in the green stuff or glued them inside the throat:

Worked quite well.

Next problem was the sand the sand-worm would emerge from. I thought about a rolling sandwave (do you know a way to model dust waves 😉 ?)

I painted the inside of the throat before glueing it inside the opening, because i was not sure if, i later could reach the bottom of the throat. Think, before doing.

I also primed the modell before glueing the throat in. Then i glued more tooth picks in.

The inside of the mouth was painted in a flesh tone and then washed with a sepia and flesh wash mix.

The skin of the worm was painted in a mix of flesh and light earth/sand colours.

Base in the same colour of the board.

I’m totally surprised myself with the result. And i think it was one of the key-models and most photographed models in the display on the Tactica. It played a vital role in the 2nd scenario, because the fremen with the thumper could call it in like a bombardment and in later turns it would randomly attack the non-fremen, who does the most noisy sounds 😉

So that is mostly what i did. I think all people at the Tactica who came by at our table loved it.

Pink Uncorn: doing an interview

Impression from the Tactica. By the way we have many visitor from the UK and neigboring countries.

A big thanks from me for the votes and all nice words. And the community spotlight.

I was in vacation when this came and all to busy since them.

Be sure, i will return to the desert planet. The Landsraad has some troops too.

The mat is from Deep-Cut Studio is named Dunes.

Now i’m more mobile with this, than with my build board.