Todtstein Zombie Troops

The relentless shock troops of Von Todtstein were originally raised in a small village of Brashovice, where Kain Von Todtstein apparently made his first appearance in the Old World. A few days after his ravage, Altdorf witch hunters came across an utterly mad priest wandering in the wilderness. Distressed, he told a hardly coherent madman's tale of terror. The tale that most of the townsfolk find hard to believe even till this day...

"Just before sundown a great, terrible fog appeared, seemingly out of nowhere. From it, a huge dark shadow with burning red eyes emerged. That very moment, without any warning the whole village burst into flames, as if by some apocalyptic evil magic. There was no escape for the unfortunate and surprised villagers, young and old, as they started running down the streets, screaming their lungs out, while slowly being consumed by fire. Flesh falling apart with transforming, shifting colors. Bodies flailing and buildings collapsing through unnatural black burning. Those who fell continued twitching in agonizing torment as they slowly passed away. But they did not remain dead for long."
In days to come, no proof of black magic was found, but there was no other way to explain the obliterated village, burned to the ground, abandoned by the living and the dead. No bodies were found, neither those killed on that terrible day, nor those buried long time ago in the local graveyard. All of the graves were desecrated, every single one of them empty and gaping. Not a single plant, root, animal or any other lifeform was to sprout in the village of Brashovice ever again. The village remains a place of utter desolation. 
This is how the first of many Todtstein legions came back to life, or more precisely, unlife.

For the first unit of zombies I decided to go with the Games Workshop Zombies from the Age Of Sigmar range. These models have been around for about twenty years, but I still like them very much! Partially because they remind me of the good old days when me and my friends played Warhammer Fantasy Battles. :) What I like about them the most is their expressive faces with the sunken and staring eyes, hanging tongues and grinding teeth! My main objection would be their oversized hands that are definitely out of scale. This by itself does not present a problem. It becomes a problem when you want to mix them with zombie models form other manufacturers to get some variety. Zombies from Fireforge Games or Mantic, for example, are about the same height as those of GW but their hands are way smaller, so it looks kind of silly. The other issue that I have with the GW zombies is the way that the shoulders look. When you assemble the models the shoulders look very exaggerated, with no transition from the shoulder to the torso. However, this can be fixed by adding some modelling putty. It does take additional effort, especially when you consider the numbers, but I think it is worth it.

To get some variety using only GW models, I did some minor conversions like ripping the jaw on one of the zombie heads and making his tongue hang out, or making the skull open exposing the brain inside, etc. My favorite conversion is the zombie staring at the sky with the slit throat. I always loved the severed head which can be found on the GW zombie sprue. Sadly, this had wasn't intended to be used as a zombie head. I always thought it had a perfect expression to be used as one, so I took the matter in my own hands and with a bit of Green Stuff created my favorite and unique zombie. I also used some parts from the OOP Empire Free Company Box and Empire Flagellants sprue to make the unit even more interesting. The unit is twenty zombies strong at the moment but I will be adding many more. The zombie legion will constantly grow! 🧟🧟🧟🧟🧟🧟🧟🧟🧟

Year 2022

Year 2020

Ruined Townhouse

Since I started playing Warhammer Fantasy Battles, somewhere around 1998, I was always into tabletop scenery. When I came across the terrain section of the Empire Army Book (6th edition Warhammer), showing examples of the scratch built buildings, I was immediately inspired to make some terrain pieces for my own gaming table. My friends didn't care to much about terrain, they just wanted to play. I remember we even used books for the hills. :) I was on the other hand always drawn to the visual side. You could say they were purely gamers while I was more into painting and crafting side of the hobby. I find the game so much more immersive and appealing when you have decent scenery on your tabletop, be it natural features or buildings. I always found myself getting to the eye level of my miniatures and checking out surroundings, feeling like I'm there in the fantasy world or in the middle of the action. :)

Through my years in the hobby I have built plenty models from scratch and painted a lot of terrain pieces made by different companies. The beginnings were humble, I was making small structures like hobbit holes or trees made of bottle cleaners, but with time the projects became more challenging and complex. However, I newer tried building something out of the XPS foam. Having seen some inspiring videos on YouTube I felt there was a lot of potential in the material, so about a year ago I decided to give it a go.

For my first project made in XPS foam I decided to do a Ruined Townhouse which would fit nicely on my friend's Mordheim table. I did some basic sketches but the building was pretty straightforward and I didn't think too much about the design and made decisions and changes as I was crafting it. I did however think about gameplay, making sure that the floors are high enough to fit most of the miniatures and that there is enough openings for models to shoot and move through, as well as places to hide.

For cutting bigger pieces of foam I used Proxxon Thermocutter. I strongly advise buying this piece of equipment if you are serious about making terrain out of XPS foam. It allows you to make perfect and clean cuts. For gluing pieces together I started by using a glue gun but this showed to be pretty messy so I switched to PVA glue which turned out to be perfect for this kind of material. Before gluing different wall sections together I was considering how easy will it be to carve the surfaces after gluing. If I saw that some of the sections would be hard to reach, I would carve them first and then glue them in place.

I found the ball pen carving technique really intuitive and easy to master. The only thing I regret is using a blue ink pen. Later on this proved to be a mistake. Blue ink got mixed with grey acrylic paint making the greys bluish which was quite frustrating. If it was a black ink pen, it wouldn't matter.

Once the build was finished, my main concern was fragility of the XPS foam. Thin parts, like protruding beams, can easily snap if the players are not careful enough when moving their hands around the structure. In order to seal the foam and make it as hard as possible I used watered down PVA glue and gave the whole model a rich coat.

When this dried completely I started to paint the model. I immediately realized how nicely acrylic paint adheres to the foam.

Once the paintjob was finished I added some grass tufts, dead leaves and moss, to give it even more deteriorating and abandoned look. All in all, I am happy with the result, especially considering this was my first try in making terrain out of XPS foam.

 

In the near future I plan to make an in-depth tutorial showing the techniques I used to make this Ruined Townhouse.

Cheers guys! 🍻

Kain Von Todtstein

First of the nobles to fall under the dark influence of the necromantic propaganda and deadly dark magic of the Nameless One. As one of his most trusted servants he is believed to be the first one who was sent to spread the word and announce to the world a coming of the end days. Upon his arrival all nature withers and animals die. He is always followed by a great grey mist that appears as his vanguard and remains shortly after his departure. He appears as a terrible dark shadow, clad in armor, with red burning eyes and a cloak of screaming tortured souls. Armed with a huge double handed sword named "The Soul Taker" he is known to chop his enemies in half with a single killing blow. His family ring, now glowing with arcane necro magic, possesses otherworldly powers yet unknown. His appearance is said to be so horrifying that none who saw him in person survived to tell the tale or kept their sanity intact. His first recorded appearance was in the small village of Brashovice near the southeast Empire border. That was the first among many places to witness his cruelty, terror and despair.

For the Kain character I decided to go with Vlad Von Carstein miniature from Games Workshop. I think it perfectly fits the background story of Kain.

I always liked the model, although I was never a fan of the official paintjob done by Heavy Metal team (color-wise). He just seemed a bit to bright and flashy for my taste. I decided to go with a darker look. I painted his hair and cloak in black and his armor to represent dark steel and aged bronze. Since dark and muted colors dominate the miniature, brightness of his family ring stands out even more!

My Recipe For Painting Rust

More then a few times someone asked me how do I paint rust on my miniatures. So I thought this would be a perfect subject for my first tutorial. The process I am going to show you is suitable for painting various stages of rust, depending on how much technical paint and pigments you use. Here are the examples of various stages of rust on shields done with this technique:

To complete this tutorial you will need the following:

PAINTS:

• Citadel Leadbelcher (or any other dark metal color, like Vallejo Chainmail)
• Citadel Nuln Oil (or any other black wash)
• Citadel Typhus Corrosion 

PIGMENTS:

• MIG Productions Old Rust (or any other dark rust pigment)
• MIG Productions Standard Rust (or any other medium rust pigment)
• MIG Productions Light Rust (or any other light rust pigment)
• MIG Productions Pigment Fixer  

STEP BY STEP TUTORIAL

STEP 1
Basecoat the model in black or dark grey color. It is a good idea to give it a zenithal highlight, although it is not necessary.

STEP 2

Paint the metal area in dark metal color such as Leadbelcher from Citadel or Chainmail from Vallejo.

STEP 3
Wash the area with Nuln Oil from Citadel or any other black wash. You could probably get away with not doing this step but I think it is worth the effort because there is a subtle difference in depth in final paintjob.

STEP 4
Paint the the whole area with watered down Typhus Corrosion. Then apply pure Typhus Corrosion to the parts where rust would accumulate more heavily to give it more texture. While the paint is still wet I like to run my finger over some exposed details like edges, rivets, etc. making these details highlighted and less affected by rust.

STEP 5
Apply Old Rust or any other dark rust pigment. Apply it with a brush, as a powder, not mixed with water. Cover most of the surface but think about where would rust in real life accumulate more and put more pigment to those areas (most often that would be the same areas where you applied pure Typhus Corrosion).

STEP 6
Apply Standard Rust or any other medium rust pigment. As you are moving to lighter rust tones you should concentrate on smaller areas, more affected with rust. Like (in this example) places where metal got eaten through by rust or in the recesses.

STEP 7
Apply the Light Rust pigment to the spots most affected by rust.

STEP 8
To seal/fix the pigments in place use the Pigment Fixer. Apply it with a brush but without doing brush strokes. You don't want to mess everything up. Just touch the surface on a few spots with a loaded brush and let the capillary effect do it's work. Keep in mind that the pigments get toned down once you apply pigment fixer, so don't be afraid to go a little overboard when applying them.

And there you have it, I hope you found this tutorial useful. 🧛‍♀️ Cheers! 🍺

Real life examples:

And So It Begins...

Welcome to PALEtte!

Having seen so many awesome and inspirational blogs on the internet, the idea of creating my own was slowly growing in my head for last couple of years and I finally decided to go through with it. :)
The main purpose of this blog is to document and showcase my work. I do however plan to make painting and crafting tutorials that I believe will be useful to potential readers and fellow hobbyists.

I am a big fan of old Warhammer world and all things medieval and fantasy in general. Especially dark, grim and gory stuff. My biggest passion is collecting Undead/Vampire Counts/AOS Death miniatures and for them I will dedicate separate page on this blog. Every character and unit will have a background story written by very talented mr. Morbid.

However I like many other miniatures as well and I will feature them on my blog.

Apart from painting and converting miniatures I also love painting and crafting tabletop scenery, be it ready made terrain from different companies or making it from scratch.