Category Archives: 40k

Warhammer 40k Cities of Death Terrain from Urban Conquest

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40k Cities of Death Terrain from Urban Conquest

A decent little chunk of 40k terrain today – something a little different for a change from all those 3D prints! We have a big chunk of the larger terrain pieces from the Warhammer 40,000 Urban Conquest campaign expansion from 8th Edition.

For some reason I appear to have aquired four of these sprues, and obviously I only picked up one of the Urban Conquest sets. I’d guess that one or two probably came backed-in with the Kill Team boxes they were putting out for a time that contained a sprue of models, booklet, cards/tokens and some terrain. Either way, we know how GW loves to repack terrain sprues, and there’s nothing particularly wrong with that, either.

40k Cities of Death Terrain from Urban Conquest

I have painted one of these vent pieces before, back in 2019 – and it even got its own blog post. How very quaint. I obviously have no recollection of painting the thing this many years later, so I compleyely abandoned the idea of consistency and just painted all of these in their own huge chunk.

40k Cities of Death Terrain from Urban Conquest

40k Cities of Death Terrain from Urban Conquest

Having pointed that out, it’s probably a good idea to write down how I painted these – totally for interested readers of course and nothing to do with my own future reference.

They started pre-cleaned and pre-sprayed black, which was nice of Past Me. I then heavily drybrushed them with Vallejo Model Colour French Mirage Blue, then AK 3rd Gen Intermediate Blue, then final highlights with Warpaints Fanatic Ash Grey and AK 3rd Gen Off-White. Metals were simply Citadel Leadbelcher and detaily-bits painted in whatever I felt like. Everything was then washed with the 1:1:1 Vallejo Dip of Black, Sepia and Future, left to dry, sprayed with clear acrylic, then weathering pigments of various types added, then sprayed again to seal it all in (which is why you can barely see the pigments).

40k Cities of Death Terrain from Urban Conquest

40k Cities of Death Terrain from Urban Conquest

I originally planned to paint all of the statues in Copper, then drybrushed with Citadel Canoptek Alloy, but later decided to go with some heavy verdrigris weathering on some of them. I did this by using AK 3rd Gen Pastel Blue, Pastel Green, and adding Off-White again. There may be something else in there, but I don’t recall what it was, if there was.

40k Cities of Death Terrain from Urban Conquest 40k Cities of Death Terrain from Urban Conquest

In the container containing these pieces, there was only one of the navigator statue, and zero of the four “upright” Angels of Death statues – so I guess I’ll have to find those somewhere, someday. I do recall seeing the AoD statues, but I have NFI where that may have been at this point in time. I’m also missing one of the larger rubble piles, so hopefully they all turn up eventually so I can paint them out of the way.

40k Cities of Death Terrain from Urban Conquest

Speaking of the AoD statues, I painted two in the copper/bronze finish, and then verdigris-weathered one of them. The other two, as you can see, I painted in a pale stone kind of way.

40k Cities of Death Terrain from Urban Conquest

As regular readers know, I’ve been on a bit of an Epic-scale terrain kick as of late, getting the table ready for both Battletech Alpha Strike as well as the one-two of Legions Imperialis and Adeptus Titanicus – so I was curious as to how well (or not) these pieces would work alongside the teeny-tiny army mans and tanks and walking wobots. The answer seems to be …okay, actually. The smaller ruins seem a bit more thematically appropriate for Battletech as opposed to the gigantic statues, but I think they all work ok for the 40k-themed games.

These 23 bits of terrain all count towards Dave Stone’s Season of Scenery ’25.

Forge World Tyranid Capillary Towers

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Forge World Tyranid Capillary Towers

Today I have something different to the stuff I’ve been churning out over the past months – something from Games Workshop – Forgeworld in fact. What we have here is the set of three Tyranid Capillary Towers that have been OOP for many years and that I’ve had sitting around here for many more.

Forge World Tyranid Capillary Towers Forge World Tyranid Capillary Towers

They weren’t too hard to paint, though they did take me over a year from start to finish. They’ve been about 80% done for months even within that.

Forge World Tyranid Capillary Towers Forge World Tyranid Capillary Towers

What was keeping me from finishing them was simply laziness – needing to get right in there and finish the “meaty parts” and all the rocks. The problem that was keeping me from starting them, on the other hand – was not having settled on a colour scheme for my Tyranids. This mentally blocked me from even beginning to paint them for many years until I finally just decided to get them started sometime over a year ago – probably for one of Dave Stone’s Season of Scenery challenges. I finally settled on using the “Cockroach Brown” scheme that I did paint a few Tyranid/Genestealer models in many years ago as a Combat Patrol – for a very old, White Dwarf version of the rules. Sadly, I’m not even sure where those models are at the moment.

Forge World Tyranid Capillary Towers Forge World Tyranid Capillary Towers

I figured that if I go for a different Tyranid paint scheme in the future, I can always add contrast over the top of the brown to tint them red or purple or whatever. This way they’re finished and out of the house – they sat next to the printer for a year or so and Marouda always told me that she was worried one of us would accidently stab outselves on the spikes.

Forge World Tyranid Capillary Towers

As you can see here, they’re pretty impressive looking next to a Space Marine, and have potential use for any other games that need some Alien/Kaiju Biomass bursting from the ground, etc. I always wanted (but never got) the triple-version of these – the Spore Chimney as it had gone OOP by the time I was thinking about ordering it. Luckily there’s no end of readily available STL files to make similar models to both Spore Chimneys and Capillary Towers and more these days – so if I decide to keep goiong with my ‘Nid scenery, I guess I’ll be doing that. I’ll probably have to start painting the models first, though! As models that I’ve owned for a decade or more, these ones certainly count towards Dave Stone’s Paint What You Got Challenge 24-25.

Forge World Tyranid Capillary Towers

I’m aware that I do need to get onto more of my GW models – both as painting exercises and just to get more of them done. The difficulty is that the main game we’ve been playing has been Zombicide, I’m into the final sets of models for our 1st edition collection, and as I’m sure many of you will agree – games are more fun when the models are all painted – so I’ll just have to try to keep sprinking in a few more GW models, though unless I suddenly start playing 40k or AoS on the reg, I can’t see the focus shifting dramatically away from the endless hordes of Zombies.