Scenery Showcase: Jungle Hive Fortress

Deep in the jungles of Pariah, the Jungle Men of Lapitar maintain hundreds of secret fortresses built around one or more landing pads.

The bases function as watchtowers, detecting enemy troop movements and quickly relaying them throughout the network.

The Jungle Men of Lapitar do not maintain a single headquarters base but instead distribute their command structure. In this way their organisation resembles more of a hive mind than a traditional top down framework.

Each Garrison Fortress holds a company of warriors, standing ready to quickly redeploy wherever they are needed or stand firm against an invading force.

The Jungle Men favour the Vendetta pattern gunship rather than the Valkyrie because of its heavier anti-tank armament. In these drop ship they can quickly drop in on grav-shoots to deal with enemy personal at the end of a flamer barrel.

Although on the surface, each fortress may seem small, most have tunnel networks beneath for additional command nodes and troop barracks.

Supplies are sourced locally on the whole but can be easily flown in.

Regular patrols pass out from the fortress every day both by air and on foot. In addition, the jungle for miles around each base is peppered with surveillance devices and traps. It is impossible for enemies to approach by land and not be spotted.

Each fortress is fortified to hold off attackers providing numerous parapets for occupying troops to fire from.

They are also equipped with emplaced heavy weaponry programmed to fire on approaching unfriendly personnel or vehicles. These can be manned directly in times of attack to provide greater accuracy of fire.

The Jungle Men of Lapitar are a secretive people and far more of them exist than Imperial records show.

These Hive Fortresses provide a perfect medium to keep numbers unknown, response time to threats low and dependability high.

Due to the devolved nature of the hive network, it is very difficult to deliver a crippling blow to the Jungle Men as a nation.

Destroy one or more fortresses and the highly manoeuvrable Lapitar forces will simply counterstrike with overwhelming force before disappearing into the mist-enshrouded jungles again.

Underground tunnels connect many of the larger base. These are set with demolitions in the case of enemy ingress with multiple redundancy systems to prevent them falling into enemy hands.

Hyper-charged underground transports are held ready within these tunnels for moving large bodies of troops at speed, either towards the front line or away from it as required.

In this way, if a major incursion were to occur in Lapitar, the enemy would suddenly face a force many times larger than anticipated as troops poured up from underground and flew in from the skies.

Including from the Tyranid assaults of the first Manticore War, Lapitar remains the most untouched and highly defended regions on Valorax Prime.

It remained relatively untouched during the planetary bombardment of the Scouring and continues to be so to this day.

The Jungle Men of Lapitar are aware of the menace of the Tyranids festering beneath the canopy in their realm and are already taking steps to combat it aggressively.

Ammunition and manpower are being moved into battle-ready positions and an alpha strike is being planed all across the hive network.

One hive mind will combat another as the Jungle Men sell their lives to eradicate all trace of these alien locusts.

The time to strike is approaching.

It is almost here!

Scenery Showcase: Wall of Martyrs Tempestus Firebase

Well after a couple of weeks of freenzied activity and a disaster where I ran out of black ink wash for ages, take witness of my brand new completed Tempestus Firebase & Fortresss of Redemption.

I tied all the buildings in with the same colours and used the same blend as on my war board (dark brown, light brown, mustard, cream).

Here's the Firestorm Redoubt and a Vengeance Weapons Battery.

And the other one. 

The Aquilla Strongpoint with Macro-Cannon... and a  Wall of Martyrs Defence Line

 And pretty soon I'll be posting the battle report of the Ork attack on this set-up...

Tutorial: How to Paint the Fortress of Redemption

So you want to paint the beautiful Fortress of Redemption the "me" way?

Well here's how!

1) Whine for months until your mum buys you a Fortress of Redemption for Christmas.

2) Leave fortress in its box for approximately one year.

3) Remove from box and build, making sure you leave each section of the fortress disconnected.

4) Spray black.

5) Make half-hearted attempt to paint it starting with a dark grey drybrush.

5.5) Listen to the audio book of Wilbur Smith's excellent novel, Gold Mine.

6) Place the incomplete fortress on the top of your shelving unit so that it's almost impossible to reach.

7) Leave for two more years.


8) Hear that new rules are coming out for buildings and suddenly get inspired to finish fortress off.

9) Realise dark grey colour scheme is a terrible idea.

10) Gaze speculatively at cream-coloured scenery pieces, wondering how you can do it even better.

11) Respray fortress black.

12) Wet-brush fortress dark brown.

13) Keep clippers to hand in case of cat-attack.

14) Watch some TV.

15) Drybrush the fortress light brown, leaving dark brown in the crevices.

16) Lay out Epic Eldar army ready for a game then realise it's never going to happen and put them away.

17) Read Forge World book instead.

18) Dryer-brush the fortress mustard with a lighter touch this time.

19) Lay out dirty kitchen towel squares nearby in case bandage needed after cat-attack.

20) Play Cityfight game of 40k with Tau versus Imperial Guard.

21) Continue painting fortress when its your opponent's go, really-dry-brushing cream, focusing mainly on the upper areas.

22) Ignore death-stares of opponent.

23) Grin inanely at opponent while continuing painting.

24) Use fortress section to provide impromptu cover for a Leman Russ Battle Tank.

25) Pick out detail on Lascannons (Tin Bitz with Dwarf Bronze highlight).

26) Paint other details metal then ink black and drybrush metal for highlight.

27) Pretend you don't notice Sentinel sneaking past.

28) Paint floors in metal.

29) Give black ink wash.

30) Use patented "swirly drybrush" method to highlight centre of each square with metal again.

31) Remark to anyone listening how ass-kickingly good you think it's going to look when finished.

32) Paint missiles dark then lighter red. Pick out tips in light grey and then white.

33) Try to think of witty simile for the way the missiles look.

34) Give up.

35) Do same metal, black ink, metal drybrush trick on other details and pick out skulls in cream and white.

35.5) Wonder why GW put skulls on every single scenery piece.

35.75) Wonder whose skulls they are.

35.8) Wonder if they want them back.

36) Lay out completed fortress.

37) Wonder if strange white shape in the background is headless man hunched over while trying to pick up a dry-roasted peanut that has fallen on the floor.

38) Flee from headless peanut-eating man while continuing to take pictures of fricking amazingly painted fortress.

39) Make deal with headless man that he can go back to looking for peanuts as long as he'll let you take photos of the damn fortress!

40) Realise you haven't actually finished after all because the Lascannon glowy bit hasn't been done.

41) Paint glowy bits turquoise and then light blue to simulate "glowiness."

42) Paint missile bay cover to match Crimson Blades insignia, always sticking to two or three tone painting method.

43) Realise it needs a bit more work.

44) Don't bother to do extra work.

45) Arrange tanks next to fortress in "cool" configuration.

46) Look smug.

47) Continue to look smug.

48) Write blog post, basically so that you can tell the world how smug you feel.