Antenociti's Workshop is an online store selling all kinds of high-quality materials and tools for scenery building. From grass flock to ruins, they have it all at a really good price.

There's also an extensive articles section on the site, and two articles have caught my attention last week because they tackle two common problems when trying to create realistic looking ground.

First there's an article on ground covered by grass and how to make everything look very realistic: http://www.barrule.com/Workshop/Extras/extras%20-%20Groundwork%20-%20The%20Art%20of%20Flor(a).html

The second article is about creating realistic looking dunes and sand cover: http://www.barrule.com/Workshop/Extras/extras%20-%20modeling%20realistic%20sand.htm

I will have to read more of their articles in the future, because the level of realism achieved is fantastic! Of course I will post the links here.

I mentioned this little side-project in my latest desktop shot post, and here are the details. I've bought this boxed set about a year ago on eBay, but I never opened it. A few months ago I assembled and based the figures, and now I finally started painting them. I'm not really planning to use them for gaming purposes, and a very high-quality paintjob would take up a lot of time so I'm going for a very good gaming standard.

This picture was taken last week when I primed the figures and stained them using a dilluted mix of sepia and black ink.


After that I painted the skin area on all the models. Right now I'm focusing my work on two figures: Aragorn and Frodo. Here's what I have so far:

I'm working on several projects at the moment... so it's time for another desktop shot to give an overview.


In front of the paint bottles are some more Space Marines. They're tacticals with special weapons. On this picture they are only basecoated, but I finished the armour of four of them yesterday, and the others' armour is also nearly done.

At the bottom left you can see the latest addition to my Space Marine force: a Drop Pod. It was a joy to assembly, a bit tricky in times but I think it turned out OK. I used two colors of primer on the pod: black for the inside and the bottom, and white for the outside. At first I wanted to leave the pod in a few pieces to make the painting easier, but in the end I decided to assemble the entire thing in one go. This allowed me to put some extra glue on here and there and create a really strong structure and I avoided the painstaking process of assembling and touching up already painted parts.

In the center of the table (on the two bits of foam) is the Infinity mini I mentioned earlier. Actually this is 60% done, so I should really post a WIP here before it's done :)

And then the group of brownish figures in the center is my latest side-project: the Fellowship of the Ring. I don't play the game, but I'm really intrigued by it and the figures are great. The Fellowship box has been lying around my desk for almost a year now, so I decided it's time to paint this up finally. I'm going for a very good gaming standard. Right now I'm working on the skintones. A WIP post will be dedicated to these figures really soon.

I recently bought some small magnets on eBay to use in my Space Marine army (I'm thinking of magnetizing a dreadnought or maybe some tanks). Last week this article on magnetizing was posted on the official Flames of War website.

It's a good primer on the use of magnets in my opinion.

Finished these figures two weeks ago... finally had some time to take pictures. I'm really happy about the final result.

Last weekend the annual event Crisis was held in Antwerp by local club TSA. I missed last year's edition, so I can't really compare to the previous one, but compared to two years ago this one was much more crowded and more interesting shops were present.

Some highlights were Fantasy Gelände, with their new natural materials range, Black Cat Bases which brought Hasslefree Miniatures to the show and a small stand displaying a new game: Okko. This is yet another new game by some French miniature superstars and it is set in the Japanese universe of the comic strips and they offer both unpainted and pre-painted figures.

The painting competition was a very solid one this year. Not too many entries, only the single fantasy category had a high number of entries, but the average quality level for each category was very high. A rather small group of people attended the award ceremony afterwards, which added even more to the friendly and intimate atmosphere among the competitors.

When I first visited Crisis 5 years ago the painting competition mainly had historical miniatures. But now this is completely different. Several of the historical categories had only a few entries. Maybe the organisation should consider putting some of these together in one historical overall? The youngbloods category was also a bit of a disappointment this time, but the winner really deserved it. The best of show award went to Stefanie Arndt's piece 'Herbstspaziergang', well deserved I must say. Sven Wichert was another big winner, together with Brenda Gosman from Holland. I didn't enter anything new for this edition, but I won bronze with my Hell Dorado Demons unit :)

Here are some pictures from the event, expect a full photo report when I finally have a gallery :)

See you all next year.

The event was very crowded this year.

The different stands ranged from miniature manufacturers to hobby suppliers like this one.

An impressive table by a wargamers club from Dortmund, Germany.

Historical wargames still make up the mainstay of Crisis.

The beautiful demo table for the Okko game.

The crowded single fantasy category from the painting competition.

Some highlights from the competition entries:

Check this baby out. This is a planned release for February, when the new Lizardmen armybook comes out.

The Anima figures are completely finished, I took pictures last night but no time yet to put them online.

By the way you will notice a gallery is still missing here... I hope to fix that problem really soon.

And tomorrow is Crisis in Antwerp, I hope to meet a lot of people again, since I could not get there last year. Stay tuned for a report and a picture gallery of the event somewhere next week.