Specialist Arms Forum
Specialist Games General Discussion => Modeling & painting => Topic started by: Chios on April 02, 2016, 11:35:33 AM
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Hi Guys!
I started my scratchbuild-thread with my Chaos fleet in the BFG Discussion section before noticing the modeling & painting section, so I'll continue my builds in here from now on.
For continuity, here is the link to the discontinued Chaos fleet blog:
http://www.forum.specialist-arms.com/index.php?topic=8070.0 (http://www.forum.specialist-arms.com/index.php?topic=8070.0)
On to new builds!
So I noticed our tables were a little small for BFG and made a starfield out of 3 interlocking plates of XPS, securing the edges with wooden L-shaped brackets (for the life of me I have no idea how you would call such things, they are used for the edges of furniture).
I then painted the first nebula with a cotton pad (see picture 1), the second with a brush and lots of paint (picture 2) and for the third one, which came out the best I think, I took almost no colour onto the brush and painted the spiral nebula with a very light drybrushing-like technique. Differently coloured stars were sprinkled on with a toothbrush.
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Since we might start a campaign in the near future, I started building orbitals, one Lance battery made out of a bottlecap and a pen is already done as sort of a template.
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Nice scratch-builds!
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Ooooooh, cool!
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Nice board.
Will you be doing much with planets and asteroids?
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Thanks for the kind words guys!
I have started collecting materials for planets and such, while my girlfriend has announced that she will contribute by building asteroids when me and the guys do a modeling afternoon for the fleets.
For the time being I still use laminated 2D-templates, GW made a document with asteroids and planets and such, and I did some gas cloud templates of the same size because I like that you can take those little markers and form the fields in a rather organic fashion.
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One of the problems I've always had with BFG is that I always like well modelled terrain- but you can't balance a spaceship on a planet very easily! I've always used templates for that reason, even though the game then loses something from it.
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I made a new ship prototype: A Scythe Class Harvester for the Necrons. I really like this one, although I have a feeling that carving pyramids out of a rectangular rod will become tiresome pretty fast.
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Veryimpressive!
Fortunate for you thatNecron fleets are so small- you'll have these done pretty quickly.
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I think you did a pretty good job making that miniature. How long have you been scratch building? Instead of carving them all you could do stepped pyramids take some styrene sheets a mm thick and cut three squares each a little smaller then the last. The chaos cruisers shape is good but I think the next step for you is to do more detail passes, very nice so far!
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Thanks for the encouragement! :)
I did a lot of scratchbuilding back when I played Warhammer and 40k and money was pretty tight.
Now, after a 6-year-hiatus (give or take) I started playing BFG with my friends, so I started modelling the ships out of plastic sheets, rods and the like (GW bits from back then are all somewhere at my parents house in the attic).
I hope to get my gaming group into collectively building fleets for our campaign, that's why I don't do any Green Stuff modelling etc.; I want the fleets to be buildable by everyone in the group and still fit together, thus I keep it simple.
Nevertheless, Blindhorizon, you are right that there are some "bald spots" on my Chaos cruisers, I will have to deal with them at some point in the future.
At the moment I have a whole lot of escorts in the works (one of the guys wants to play the human pirates list), so stay tuned! (Not too tuned mind you, will still take a while :P)
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New ship, straight outta the dockyard: an Iconoclast destroyer
My camera cannot handle the white models so well (especially since this one is only 4cm short), I will upload again when I have painted the bugger.
Take my word for it though, this one is much more higly detailed than the other ships ;)
The rods I had for making weapons batteries are too big for this little fella (2mm diameter looks huge). I guess I will use it as a system defence monitor instead, since they are described as having far more guns than the small ships could reasonably hope to handle.
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That is some amazingly fiddly detail. You must have the patience of a zen monk!
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Holy crap that ship is amazing!!!!
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Thank you guys for the kind words! :D
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Hey nice one ! The BFG range really explode with those 3D printers. It's a good thing. I long to see the same with the Man O'War range...
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Thanks!
I never used 3D printing because I like the physical act of building, but the stuff people on here are printing is some great inspiration.
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For quite a while, the dockyard stayed pretty silent. Recently however, we started our campaign for real!
Better yet, the whole affair got some of my fellow admirals secretly plotting to assemble their own scratchbuilds! :D
I went ahead and started bringing my Iconoclasts up to squadron strength, using the templates I made for my prototype (pic shows WIP).
In addition, I comissioned 100 small and 20 big baseplates out of steel to properly hold aloft what fleets are to grace our tables in the future.
The small bases are just 30mm in diameter (instead of the 32 of GW's small flight-bases), but none of the guys seems to break a sweat about that. A 3mm brass rod gets inserted and hammered flush into the baseplate.
The bases are so heavy, a small one can comfortably keep an Ork Slamblasta made out of a PC mainboard erect.
I will start collecting pictures of my friend's creations, the Ork and Space Marine players went ahead and did some stunning pieces! 8)
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Finally I have collected some pictures, let's start with the Ork player and his capital ships!
For now he's got a Kill Kroozer, a Terror ship and a really mean-looking Slamblasta. The thing really screams "space pirate" at you, complete with a 600 meter high eyepatch!
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Very funny idea but i fear that even painted, it will looks like computer parts. You should add some citadel items to melt everything.
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The almost unthinkable happened - I painted something!
It is the first time in at least 4 years (excepting a basecoat on some of my chaos cruisers)... Imagine how my paints look... They range from "fossilized remnants", to "crusty" to "slightly tinted water with rich pigment bed".
Fortunately, I had two models that benefitted from not getting much more than a mere drybrush.
The Scythe Harvester will in all probability the only one of its kind, seeing as the guy I built it for promptly switched to Dark Eldar ::)
The orbital lance battery has a subdued grey colour to make sure it is not tied to a particular fleet, but rather fitting for whoever controls the planet at the time. I painted some yellowish windowlights on to give it a sense of bigger scale and even did two little runway-strips for incoming shuttles. I'm not sure you can see any of that properly with my prehistoric camera, but then again it surely is for the best that way^^
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Nice ! Perfect for scenarios.
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I started an ambitious project: I want to gift an Eldar fleet (or, far more likely, as many capital ships from his campaign army list as I can pump out in the time) to a friend of mine.
So I got until end of January to do lots of Eldar scratchbuilds.
His whole list would be one battlecruiser, one cruiser, two light cruisers and a hefty sum of 12 Escorts. Let's see how far I get!
I'm gonna show you guys my Prototype first. I always get a prototype built after the first drawings in CAD, to get a feel for what works and what doesn't. In case of the Eldar fleet, my Aurora Class Light cruiser has gone through some iterations, after each of which she got shelved for an indefinite amount of time until i felt like SpaceElves(TM) again.
The initial build featured a prow made from modelling clay, filled into a small spoon to get the shape. Then, two pieces of toothpick were added and the teardrop-shaped gun turrets were modeled on with green stuff. It was about that point that my nagging suspicion turned into grim reality: I had become guilty of infringing on the copyrights of a certain sockpuppet frog. :-\ So shelve it for a year or so.
At some later point I redid the front, using a sawed-off pen as the prow and most importantly, mounting the pulsars VERTICALLY. Ain't seen no frog with those features yet, no sir! Mightily pleased with the decided un-amphibiousness of it all, I redid the Pulsars to represent what they are in my mind's eye: Gatlin-lasers! Oe thing led to another, and now I felt I had to improve the plain wings to fit the overall detail on the prow. Inspired by the Void Stalker, I bought a sheet of aluminium with lots of holes in it, cut out the old wing and set to work on a new one.
I t will be quite a while before I finish upgrading the Aurora, as it is not on the campaign list of my friend's.
At the moment I'm working on two Solaris light cruisers, I attached a very early picture where I laid the first parts roughly where they're gonna go.
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Dual-link resolution images? ???
Hard to see the blown-ups there mate.
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I have no idea what dual-link resolution images are, but if you enlighten me I will try to do better. What should I do differnet? :)
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Your 2nd and onwards thumbnails are 2560x1920 resolution. Your average monitor is 1920x1080 - you have SUPER sized images and a fantastically good camera is all. What to do differently? No idea, depends on your camera I guess :D
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That bit about my fantastic camera made me chuckle. It's actually a hand-me down through my family, me being the third owner, the thing gives you picture quality like a brick with a biult-in flash. ;D
But I can make the pictures smaller on my pc before uploading, no problem! Also, I struck a deal with my girlfriend yesterday: from now on, she will take the pictures with her smartphone-camera, which is way better. Next time I'm gonna have some pictures you can actually look at... I hope. 8)
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I painted the first Iconoclast, the one which had the comically huge guns attached. It looks a little less ridiculous painted I find.
Also I painted the first of my 15 Transports. I wanted to have a really subdued grey to accentuate that piloting a hundreds-year old rustbucket full of promethium and foodstuffs for warfronts is probably not at all a glorious profession... But the result is even too drab. I might revisit the little hauler at some point.
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Very cool, creative builds. I'm enjoying what you do. thanks for sharing!
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I really like those round shaped tank looking cargo.
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While I did fall short on the whole "let's gift a complete campaign fleet to my friend" goal, I managed to finish two Solaris Light Cruisers, which turned out pretty nice. Also, he really liked them, which was the whole point of the exercise after all!
Here are some work in progress pics, I need to take pictures of them painted when I meet the birthday boy again :)
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You got skills. very nice............... Did I mention I got a birthday coming up!
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Nice try, Gun_wun ;)
As compensation, may I offer you these pictures of the painted ships...
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Blimey! These are fantastic :o
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Rodger that, Lord Barak!
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Oh, and I forgot to mention, do I not get a birthday present because I'm green?
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Imagine you got a broken USB stick. You dismantled it of course, because you might use it later for spaceship parts, because that's just what you do.
Now it sits there, in front of you, begging you to get all the materials out, because you KNOW this will be fun, COME ON man!.
Nevermind that you have everything locked away so the desk can actually be used for something else.
Nevermind that the USB stick (and at this point you start to suspect the little bugger got someone briefing him on what exactly to say to sway you, they are not usually so damn persuasive) lends itself to a ship you most likely will never use, seeing as noone you know even plays its parent fleet but wouldn't it look glorious and who knows, it might push you to build the ships you really DO need afterwards.
Sigh.
Then imagine that your girlfriend (who may or may not have been able to outtalk the broken electronics but at the very least could have distracted you) is away for a few days so all you got to show after giving in is a really bad picture taken with your mobile camera.
And then look at my new WIP Tau Emissary! ;D
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As cunning as a Fox who has just graduated from Oxfords school of Cunning.
That looks awesome man.
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Almost exactly two years after Blindhorizon's request, I have inreased the detail on one of my Chaos cruisers.
I don't know if my camera shows this clearly, but the white stuff on the side of the command bridge is looking like pinnacles of a church... maybe after paint it will be easier to see.
Unfortunately, as the last time my group played was in April 2017, I have little hope of playing anytime soon. This is why I haven't been building in a whole while. I noticed however, that making models is something I really missed. I guess I'll try to finish some of the things I already started first, let's see wether I can get myself to get my four Chaos cruisers done.
The bright side of burying my idea of building fleets with my friends is that I won't have to hold back on the detail as there will be no frequent changes in the ships I need. ;)
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It will appear more clearly with painting, but it's already visible. Nice job :)
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Today I drybrushed a terrorship a friend of mine built from pc parts... I gotta say, it looks incredible!
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What is a Terrorship ?
Anyway, i appreciate it. Massive, frightening... A big Hulk like in old times...
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The terrorship is the Ork's carrier cruiser.
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I like it and i recognize some of the parts ;)
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Some small headway...
I painted up (to my usual shoddy standard at least) the upgraded Devastation carrier. I'm liking it so far, the only thing that really stands out in terms of lacking details is the aft shields, but I already got a great idea for those...
...and big changes!
For my 30th birthday, a huge of group of people chipped in and bought me a 3d printer! What a bunch of maniacs!
I have been happily printing and 3d modlling ever since, and now I got the first couple results to show for it!
It is incredible how many people will post good 3d models online for others to enjoy and even modify...
Now back to the good idea mentioned earlier. I made my Chaos cruisers with cardboard templates to be able to reproduce them at any time. These templates were made in a CAD program, so I can use the original templates to design and 3Dprint fitting visual detail parts for my cruisers! Yay!
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I like the frigate with the very long prew ! And the rest is nice too of course ;)
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Some very nice work here so far, keep them coming :D
I may have to even use your earlier Iconoclast as inspiration as I need some haha.
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Thanks marell, the prow of the Sword is actually a 3d model I did myself! (only that one part though)
Also thanks Captain-Matthias, if you want I can give you the templates for the Iconoclasts, the models are very quick to assemble (detailing them takes longer than making the base model).
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Also thanks Captain-Matthias, if you want I can give you the templates for the Iconoclasts, the models are very quick to assemble (detailing them takes longer than making the base model).
You have templates? wow, Id very much appreciate that, it would certainly come in handy as Id like to do about 6 in total.
Any other tips would be great too haha :D
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Ok I reopened my templates file after 2 years of not looking at it and I found it to be... rather basic. I'm not sure you can use this very well, but here goes:
(The 3 leftmost parts are more like construction diagrams, the actual template parts are the bits on the right)
Good luck, I guess? ;D
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Ok I reopened my templates file after 2 years of not looking at it and I found it to be... rather basic. I'm not sure you can use this very well, but here goes:
(The 3 leftmost parts are more like construction diagrams, the actual template parts are the bits on the right)
Good luck, I guess? ;D
Thanks matey, I shall have a looksy and get back to you if I have any luck :D
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I managed to make a little upgrade-kit for the fins of my scratchbuilt Chaos cruisers.
I am very pleased with it, the whole ship is now on the same level details-wise I feel.
Also I have been busy with priniting a fully magnetised Imperial Navy fleet, I now have 2 Dauntless, 5 cruisers, 1 battlecruiser and the Sword I showed earlier. I printed the prows in a different colour, to make the ships look better in the looong while it will take me to get round to painting them ;D
6 more Swords and a Battleship are in the works!
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Very nice fleet !
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After quite a long hiatus, i started BFG back up!
Today, i painted the Kill Kroozer a friend of mine scratchbuilt a while ago (pictures of the unprimed model on page 2 of this thread).
I like the rustbucket!
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Very interesting designs!
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They look Ork. Dat's Gud. :)
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I like the big chimneys :)
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I decided painting rust is right up my alley, so I did the terrorship as well!
The guy who built it said he wanted the taxi of Corben Dalls from the 5th element... I gave it a shot!
I took the pictures before noticing that I did not paint the skull on the prow... Well you guys can imagine that with a shoddy red paintjob I'm sure ;)
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Really nice ship and a great paint job! The one thing that kinda bugs me is that it doesn't feel like a ship that's several kilometers long, but rather more akin to the size of contemporary battleships.
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Yeah, i know what you mean!
It is those flat surfaces and I think especially the jaw that ruins the effect.
That being said, I always have a little trouble imagining the kilometers on the original sculpts as well... I mean why would they sculpt visible viewports on the bridge for instance?
Some of the artwork really does a good job with showing every surface an the vessels being heavily textured (like Star Destroyers in Star Wars were done) but the models seem to me always like being roughly the size of a modern aircraft carrier.
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Finished painting my Desolator battleship, you guys do know not to expect a Borak or OSJC paintjob here, I like it nontheless ;)
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Very clean! Is this a 3d print by the way? The model looks very tight!
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Very nice! Love the colour scheme!
That base is great as well. Where did you get that from?
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Indeed it is a 3d print, the base model is done by the very talented Italianmoose over on thingiverse, while I designed the prow myself, i am very proud to say :D
Below a picture before painting, the lance batteries were too thin for my printer, so I redid them with plastic rods. Also, the weapons are all fully magnetised so I can use the hull for a Relictor as well. (picture with as of yet unpainted armament for the Relictor)
As for the base, I had a family member who works at a metal workshop make me a couple ( I think he made like two hundred, yeesh) discs with fitting diameter and 3mm hole out of steel, into which I inserted brass rod, hammered it flat on the bottom to plug it in, and printed the radar thingy you can see on self adhesive paper (and putting self adhesive clear plastic foil over that). Then the radar thing gets glued onto the disc and presto!
I can upload the improved design (it became clear that the angles were not visible enough on the tabletop) if somebody is interested.
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After almost exactly three years' time, I finally finished building and painting my third Iconoclast destroyer.
The three entirely scratchbuilt Iconoclasts are pictured with two 3D printed Infidels, and I dare say they hold up fairly well.
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Finished painting my Desolator battleship, you guys do know not to expect a Borak or OSJC paintjob here, I like it nontheless ;)
sorry for late reply. I feel I Must say there is absolutely sweet fa wrong with that paintjob! Also Must admit that I'm far too wary to even attempt a two-tone finish rather than a straight colour but you've totally nailed it and that looks fantastic! It's bought out so much more details on the chaos vessel that I'd actually missed before... Btw great job on those iconoclast scratch builds. I love them!
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Wow, these guys are awesome! Great conversions and great paint jobs
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The Chaos escorts are really some of my favourite BFG designs, really nice what you've done here. :)
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The scratchbuilt escorts are very good! I love those Ork ships - the radar discs for bases are cool too.
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Painted up a 3d printed imperial cruiser. Once again the prow is my own design (I noticed a while ago that I seem to have a weird fetish when it comes to custom prows).
The weapons and prow are fully magnetised to support every configuration. I just cannot show it very well since I did not paint any spares yet ;D
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I really rather like that ship design. Looks real sleek and modern-esque. The prow is indeed especially neat.
'twould look nice in my Armageddon fleet ;)
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Well you could always print them yourself you know ;-)
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Yeah I don't even know where to begin with that stuff. Or where I could even get it done...
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New model, first of an Imperial Fists fleet!
Unfortunately, there seems to have been some green paint left in the drybrush, so it has the ever so slight lime green tint to it... better luck next time!
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A friend of mine scratchbuilt a battlebarge a while ago, I painted it for him. That thing is HUGE.
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Wooooow!!!! Really digging what you did here.
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That’s really cool, love me a good scratch build and your paint job wraps it up in a beautiful bombardment cannony bow