Nicodemus' Non-Dawi Zharr Blog

[Nicodemus]

I used on have a non-Dawi Zharr blog on CDO. Figured I’d start an updated one here, mostly for completed BATG things at the moment, but I’m sure there will be more to come later on.

In Feb I was out of the country for a week, got COVID on the way back and wasn’t able to get out of bed for a week, then was still isolating for a week, although that week of isolation I was well enough to start painting. Nurgle seemed fitting so I made sure I licked the brush during the start of the process. Here’s what I managed to finish:

Nice old metal Plague Bearers

Putrid Blightkings & Lord of Blights (one with the shield)

Lord of Plagues and Gutrot Spume

Spoilpox Scrivener and Horticulous Slimux

All metal gang: Beast of Nurgle, Great Unclean One, & Epidemius

I’ve had Epidemius assembled and he and the Plague Bearers have even been based since 2009 or 2010, so it was great to finally get them painted up!

I have around 40-50 Chaos Warriors from various eras - In hindsight it would have been good to have painted up 8-10 of them in the same colour scheme as the Blightkings. I may do that sooner than later anyway, as my next big batches are going to be Slaanesh, Tzeentch, and Khorne, so it seems fitting to have faction-appropriate CWs for each while I’m at it

~N

[Stumpy]

welcome back! Beautiful models!

[Loidrial]

there is always that strange feeling of home when looking at nurgle miniatures
idk, i find them cozy for some wicked reason uhahuaauhahu
well done Nico! those plaguebearers are very nice put all together!

[Nicodemus]

It turns out that after searching I could only find 49 Chaos Warriors, although I am fairly sure I still have some metal command models somewhere. I opted not to modify the battle masters models, and will instead dress them up with lots of weathering effects. I used some leftover body, head, and weapon pieces from the Blightking set and then hacked up some preassembled chaos warriors I had picked up dirt cheap from eBay a number of years ago. I am really out of practice using Green Stuff. Mostly because I am so allergic to the glue I have to wear a respirator, so I just usually avoid doing any green stuff work until I have no choice.

I did manage to find enough remaining chaos warrior models and bits to make factions for the other chaos gods at some point too.

So all in all 8 more to paint up and then I can move on from Nurgle… at least until I get to 40K!

~N

[Nicodemus]

The final painted result of the stragglers from Nurgle’s horde:

And my Tzeentch army progress so far. Like the Nurgle models above, these have all been painted during BATG 2023 …

Still several more Tzeentch models left to paint (Sorcerers, Chaos Warriors, other Daemons), then I can move on to something completely new!
~N

[Nicodemus]

I’m recreating my post that was lost in the site update… or some semblance of my post anyway

My wife got me a Bambu X1C 3D printer for Christmas. I decided to finally commit to a plan I’ve had for several years to fill out one of the shelves in a display case in my hobby room with a large diorama for storing/displaying miniatures. I took advantage of the 50% off sale on myminifactory.com over the holidays to pick up Stormcrow City - The Silent District:

Here’s the current layout

The plan is to build-up the left side of the space with an additional street level that joins with the 2nd story of the large building, kind of like the multi-level streets in some older cities, like Edinburgh:

The scale of the building may seem a little off, but it’s a rather grand scale of gothic buildings. Compared to doorways, staircases, benches etc it’s all very appropriate.

I’ve got a number of additional medieval town buildings printed with the backsides trimmed so they’ll sit flush against the cabinet walls. Any of the places where I messed up dimensions and had to cut pieces on the table saw I’ve been frugal and saved the off-cuts to possibly employ elsewhere.

The left side of the main building needs some extra modification to fit the design, so I’ve been cropping components before printing them and will have to figure it out as I go.

The plan is to fill the cityscape with the Warhammer Quest Cursed City models I’ve been very slowly painting my way through. The city streets levels will hold the larger models and hero characters, while the sewer level will be used to store trays of magnetized models that can slide out when needed.

Wish me luck
~N

[Xander]

Holy moly, dude, this is excellent!

Giving me lots of Elden Ring vibes. If love to get a printer like this and print out some really cool terrain.

Really cool idea.

[Nicodemus]

Building the upper street level with a small bridge to the mansion. The parchment paper on the bottom was to avoid squeeze-out from the epoxy resin I used when gluing sections together. Not everything is glued, but it’s a bit of a jigsaw puzzle now with how it all slots together.

I had some spare threaded rod laying around from a deck project so I cut a length of it, pre-drilled into the top level street at a 45^o angle and did the same in one of the tower pieces and secured them with 5-minute epoxy.

The bridge section was just a few mm too long to fit the space, to I notched into the wall of the mansion so it could sit more securely. I also had to print out an extra piece of curved stone work to go under the overhang on the mansion so the arch for the bridge didn’t just terminate abruptly. It’ll get patched with Green Stuff later.

The other segment of threaded rod went into the support for the top level street. I drilled straight through the street level and left the massive bolt head visible as it’ll be covered by a removable building anyway. You can see there’s still work to be done with where this joins the wall on the main street. I’m leaving that until I get the layout figured out.

This section also got two pieces of threaded rod inserted into the columns to really secure the top-heavy piece to the base (it’s a little better aligned after taking the picture).

After the epoxy cured I checked that everything was still relatively level…
Mansion, check

Wall-street, check

Top-level street, close enough.. check! *don’t mind the building, lol

Next steps now will be to disassemble each of the sections and start cutting away unneeded parts, manually fixing gaps, adding foam and Green Stuff to fix areas here and there. The trickiest part is going to be getting the stairs up the side to the upper streets. Wish me luck!
~N

[Jackswift]

Amazing stuff, Sir! Looking forward to seeing this display come together. I really need to get a 3D Printer.

[Nicodemus]

After bouncing around the country for the summer months we’re back home now - time is tight with work but I’m trying to force myself to chip away at a few projects here are there. I had a 10-year-old unopened package of Milliput… it does start to go off a bit. After cutting away the partly dried/oxidized/cured surface on each half I was able to mix it up and start filling in some of the most unsightly of the gaps. Still lots to do, but it’s some moderate progress nonetheless!

This side piece of the cabinet with all the different levels requires the most work as it’s just a jumble of parts not meant to be assembled this way!! Once this side is finished I’ll be in the home stretch!!

With the overhang piece I needed a piece to dress up the underside. I think I’m going to try to blend it in with something like this:

The bottom is actually a ruined variant of a spire for one of the turrets, but it should work well enough here!

I also needed to do some serious gap filling on the janky way the 2nd floor for the large manor came together (all due to the alterations I’ve been making). This isn’t great, but should blend in well enough once it’s painted. Worst case scenario I hide the worst parts with a crow or some skeletal remains or moss or something

~N

[Jasko]

Oh this looks fantastic!

[Zanko]

It`s just awesome!

[Nicodemus]

Picking up where we finished off last time. I’ve been measuring and making templates for the odd area shown below where all the stairs intersect. The patched up bits here are ultimately going to be a continuous piece of wall with a walkway above (and no janky mis-matched openings)…

And just in behind that area - I wasn’t liking how open and vacant it was looking so I took a spare piece from the manse that wasn’t needed any longer and was able to stick it in here - now it just needs to be notched in the corner to accommodate the wooden framing of the bookcase.

And the other part we left off at was the unfinished underside of the small tower I had jutting out. It’s actually supposed to be a dice tower that sits on the table, so there never was a bottom piece for it. I was able to cobble something together out of a few different STL files, resizing them, comparing with the on-screen fit, and then merging them. I used 5-minute epoxy but needed lots of painters tape to hold the piece against the bottom while it set

Not bad at all! I think once it’s painted and I add a tiny bit more Milliput around some of the seams you’ll never know!!

Here’s the site viewers won’t see from the bookcase of that same tower. I’m not planning to fix the stairs or the jagged bit I had to cut away on the tower- because who’s going to ever know besides me?!??? I’ll also be the only one who knows there’s a silent statue within the tower. Forever lonely and forgotten.

I also wanted a different top for the tower than it was supposed to have, but the regular tower and the dice tower have support columns that are offset by 45 degrees, so they don’t match up. I cut away a portion here so I could do a stepped angle thing… or attempt it anyway.

I only roughly shaped each piece. Once they cure I’ll sand the surfaces down so it looks a little more like properly cut stonework. Painters tape is just there so I didn’t accidentally glue the piece down to the lower tower as they need to come apart for assembly back inside the slightly tight fit of the bookcase (it’s got a small overhanging lip at the top).

And since it was supposed to be a dice tower it’s all open inside. I’ve just covered this over with plasticard and at least now there’s room for some models up here once its finished. Maybe some Cursed City bats??

If you couldn’t tell from the other images - this is the dog’s breakfast at the back that I had to cut away to get it to property fit into the bookcase.

As I noted earlier, if I was just a bit more savvy with 3D printing and manipulations I probably could have digitally built the whole thing and designed it to fit as-printed. I’m still enjoying the craftiness of it though, I don’t want the 3D printer to take away all the fun of building and making!

And not that you’ll be able to see too much of this angle either, but I also had to cut away some of this piece because it was never meant to be stacked like this so it was mostly wall and not big enough for even Dwarfs to fit through At least now it looks like stonework again.

Getting closer!! I’m looking forward to being able to get thing whole thing out to the garage soon and make a sizeable dent in the painting with the airbrush once the last bits of the terrain comes together!! I’ve still got a portion of the main street and a portion of the exterior wall of the manse left to do.

I just know that Silksong is going to cause some MAJOR delays soon
~N

[Nicodemus]

Sat down this weekend and took measurements of what I needed and then made some simple mods to my 3D print files before sending them off. Got a number of small things patched and looking better now for the bookcase diorama.

Not that safety is top of mind, but my weird Escher style staircase intersection was looking unfinished… not it looks slightly more intentional.

I also trimmed the caps for the pillars before printing so I could just stick them on without further modification (this part is against the wall of the cabinet, so edges have to be flat).

I also cut down the big unfinished blocky section at the base of the stairs and printed out some large flagstones to finish off the area instead. Now I just have a little gap filling and a little more work at the top above the doorway to do and this whole area will be done.

.. so getting SUPER close. Only a little more work on the stairs portion and the sewer and I can make the decorative facade to cover up the face of the sewers and streets. I may also add some lighting inside the main building and the sewers, but I really badly want to get on to painting this!
~N

[Nicodemus]

This always takes WAYYYYY longer because I can’t use GS without cyanoacrylate glue, and the CA glue requires a respirator. The 15+ year old one wasn’t fitting great and needed new cartridges anyway so I picked up a new one and got to work cleaning up problem areas…

Patching in missing facade. Filling in gaps in the edge of the stone base, and gaps in where the buildings joined. The GS needs some filing and reshaping, but the basic shape is there.

This remaining gap along the stairs needed patching. The small piece in the bottom right corner was always going to be a weird fit, but I cobbled something together out of a dozen pieces that sort of worked. It fits in the corner nicely and a hid some of the small remaining gaps with 5-minute epoxy and some of the terrible/cheap Cost-Co cat little that I saved from 20 years ago!!

That odd little corner piece is going to be serving an extra function, as there’s a part that it’s out of line-of-sight that I can use to hide a switch for lighting. First pic I’m checking the positioning of the switch, then securing the switch into place, and finally checking the accessibility of the switch for after installation. Good enough.

I should note that the switch was salvage from my old Chaos Dwarf airship. I scavenged as much as I could from it, as there were a lot of very good parts all still useable in future projects

I decided the piece needed lighting. I’ve ordered 3mm flickering LED bulbs for all the sconces, and for the recessed areas of the sewers and out-of-sight spots inside the big house there will be LED strips. Of course this requires making a lighting plan and starting to notch out areas for wires.

The stairs at the back will get their own bright continuously-lit lighting, then a couple of the middle sections will also get some continuously-lit lighting as well, and the one torch spot on the wall will have a flickering LED. I also cut some space for where the wiring (in purple) will transfer into the upper portion of the diorama.

Here’s close-ups of the cut-out sections for LEDs and wiring. Luckily these are so far down there’s never going to be a viewer looking up at an angle that will be able to see far back enough in the lower levels to see the gaping holes in the ceiling. I must still assert that there is no evidence of these rat-men! These gaping holes down in the sewers is nothing more than normal wear and tear and any assertions to the contrary is pure hysteria!!

With the sewer pieces still in place I traced the openings onto the back of the faceplate for the piece and then carefully cut out the openings. I still need to come up with some kind of additional design for the faceplate to go between the openings - like bat or gargoyle heads. I was thinking of something inspired from Cursed City, but I have ZERO skills with making STL files for 3D printing.

A few final images of some of the cleaned up areas…

Re-assembled and almost ready for priming… looking at it now I want to adjust the angle of that floating structure on the left… but that’s just how the epoxy set around the threaded rod argh!! I also need to give some thought to a backdrop.

~N

[UPDATE]
After stewing for several hours about the crooked suspended tower that’s fastened into place via a threaded rod and epoxy… I decided to do something that I KNOW was stupid and beyond unwise - I just marched into the hobby room, secured the sides of the tower and just started applying torque to it. Even as I could her crackling inside like some of the plastic letting go I kept at it because I was determined NOT to have a crooked tower. Even as I could her more cracking from deep inside I just kept doing it, all the while knowing it was a really stupid idea. .. then, more cracking, kind of continuous, and louder, and then it shifted!! There is still an incredible amount of resistance on the piece, but I can feel it turning through the rod. I think I may have torqued the threads free of the epoxy and I’m now just adjusting the angle via the threads of the rod… beyond belief, it’s straight!!

Wow. I can hardly believe doing something that dumb worked. I’ll blindly apply this approach of brute force and wrestling them into submission for all future projects, in the same way that if I had broken the piece irreparably I’d still have learned nothing from doing it and done it the same way in future anyway

[Nicodemus]

Definitely non-Dawi Zharr content… the completed shadow box (first pic is without the glass for photographing).

LOL, now I just need to free up some wall space in the hobby room to hang this… easier said than done!
~N

[Nicodemus]

Continuing the diorama storage cabinet for Warhammer Quest Cursed City.

Completely done painting the sewer level and I’ve applied a clear coat over top. I also painted the model storage trays at the same time following the same paint scheme and weathering steps and gotten those clear coated as well… the floor and walls of the sewers got a few extra layers of the clear finishing spray simply because it’ll get some wear and tear from the storage trays sliding in and out.

The remainder of the diorama above the sewer level has only received some basic blocks of colouring from the airbrush so far. Still needs more shading, a dark wash, then some dry brushing for added highlights.

Last to go in will be the LEDs.

Once everything is painted and wired up I’ll be able to hot-glue the facade to the front… for now it’s just held on with masking tape!
~N

[PawocK]

Truly stuff of wonders, thank you for updating that truly inspiring blog.

[Nicodemus]

Using the airbrush to block-in colour on all of the pieces in our basement workshop, while also spraying primer on all of the small parts out in the garage workshop. After this I also mixed up ~300 mL of black wash (150 mL water, ~120 mL acrylic medium, ~20 mL black ink, and ~25 mL Tide laundry detergent as a flow improver). Absolutely everything got a coating of the black wash.

The printed trays (3 in total) are setup to slide into the sewer passages and can hold a decent number of models. I have some ideas for dressing up the faces of the drawers, but we’re not there yet.

Reassembling the blackwashed pieces to check how well the shading matches across all parts before starting the highlighting. So far the colours are working nicely I think - particularly for a Warhammer Quest: Cursed City setting.

The flickering LEDs finally arrived for all of the small light sources and of course I reverted back to my tried-and-true flame method of using Woodland Scenics Water Effects.

To make these I’ve got a pretty simple process:

1. Finish wiring the LED and get it into position, ideally glued in place.
2. Apply the Water Effects material directly on to the LED bulb
3. Using a toothpick dipped in orange and then yellow paint, gently touch the paint to the surface making vertical lines
4. Clean the toothpick and use the tip to tease the shape of the Water Effects up and outward into something that looks like flames (be careful not to mix the paints too much and NO stirring).
5. Wait 12-24h for the material to cure (it changes from opaque white to clear)

I’m using the power from a 12V LED light strip that’s controllable by IR remote. Importantly I made sure to purcahse 12V LED bulbs, so there’s no need to make resistor voltage reducers like I’ve been stuck doing on another project :

I use hot glue to hold the LEDs into the sconces, and I HAVE to draw attention to these cordless hot glue guns. Game changer. So much better than having that cord around in the way. I’ll never go back! On the street plates I installed LEDs underneath so that the sewer level has lighting. I also put the on/off switch inside so that I don’t need to have the IR remote. The brass rod is holding the switch in place along with 5-minute epoxy.

Getting ready for a marathon of LED installations and running wires. Once all the routes were cut and holes drilled for the wires I went about installing all of the LEDs, finally hot-gluing each one in as the last step (the Water Effects flames is always the very last step).

Some of the wiring was a real pain in the backside, especially when wires need to make a 90-degree change of direction inside the structure… patience is a virtue!! I also glued the two statues at street level.

The final stage of LED installations was to put some LED strips inside the mansion. I wired these up so that the blue and red connections were both connected so I’d get a continuous purple glow. These were then installed inside the building in spots with no line of sight to the viewer. Even from afar the purple glow gives a great effect.

.. still lots of trim, flame effects, and windows to finish. The clock tower is also going to get some treatment for the clock faces to aid the lighting effect. Stay tuned.
~N

[Grimstonefire]

Looks a bit like a haunted nightclub! Amazing work though