Adepticon 2026: 

A Word on Competitions. 

I did the Long War Doubles tournament Friday (everyone has a bit of grey in their beards these days, we aren't getting any younger). I also did the Team Tournament Saturday and Sunday. THis was a lot of late night and early morning shenanigans. I'm getting too old for this. Now, this year team events were part of an overall best-in-show type of award, now called the adepti-cup. This is new to me as I missed out last year. So, we aren't just competing against other teams - we're competing against the whole convention. Yikes. But... we can't let the old Bolter and Chainsword down. We've got to represent. I think the convention was said to be over 8,000 last year (I'm sure it was much more this year, frankly it's gigantic now). So, can we compete with the fantastic castles and sweeping imagery of titanic Sigmar displays? Can we compete with the near-golden demon winning paint jobs of kill team team events? No. But, I can give it all I've got. 

How it Ends.

As to the Adepti-cup we got invited to the showcase. That in itself feels like a big honor. On Saturday night, invitees line up their armies and get judged (this year by Sam Lez, Courtney Devries, and other big names in the miniature world). We didn't place. Which, if I'm honest the rushed work on this really did show up close. If i only had another week or two... But... Fear not brothers! In the end we did take best display in the team tournament. Lots of displays were amazing. Like really really great stuff. This was the hardest competition I've ever been in (well except that one year where a necron player built a digital board that interacted with QR codes on models., that was genuinely insane). We got real lucky. 

On to the Display. 
The team wanted a 'Pacific Rim' movie theme. I didn't really know the movie, but the team was set on it. So that's what I went for. For today's entry, I think I'll just start with the water effects problem. I wanted each section of the board to have some kind of 'showstopper' element to it. Here are the main points on the board:  

• Rock formations + Hangar (with fog machine)+ Reaver Titan
• Landing pad (rotating lights)+ Void Shield Generator (working lights)
• Crane + Billboards and Terrain kits
• Wall Sections, AA guns
• Ocean Effects + Statue of Liberty + Kaiju (Giant Nids)
• Vintage Monster Movie Posters + skullls

Space and Transportation.

So my jeep only fits about 38.5 inches wide, 31 high, and 61 inches deep. This board had to be broken in to at least 3 parts in my mind.  The full statue of liberty had to be cut down down. I made my own base for it. This was a filament 3d print. So it had a lot of lines. This required automotive primer and sanding. it did get fairly smooth though. I went with Vallejo for the copper. Using some dark blue under coating in the shadows the patina really jumped out. I should have added seaweed and bird poop along with drawing a lot more into the highlights and shadows. But... time is short. Good enough for now. But we did get hurt in the ultimate judging for painting. I keep kicking myself for not starting on the board earlier in the year. 

Pro Tip: always measure 3x. And, after you've measured go and fit it into place as a trial run anyway. Turns out my jeep door takes up another 4 inches when closed...

Display Base

The display board was based around the idea of a sea wall. We envisioned monsters coming out of the water. So, for practicality of transport i kept the wall separated and disassembled. I constructed a base for the wall with room for the giant door to move and open.

Water Effects

The key to the whole project was a youtube video of a guy who built a wizard's tower and made huge waves really pop. I loved it, but could i do it???  It was at that point i figured we had a cool enough idea to actually make this board. He however used resin, which he poured on plastic sheet/bags  then just before fully curing he found it flexible enough to fold into wave shapes to be mounted on his board. His project was positively amazing. I do not like resin though. I figured I'd try something cheaper: Caulk, silicone type 1. It's super sticky and also miserable to work with - but only to a point. Using a tongue-depressor/popsicle stick you can smooth it out. I used about 5 units/pipes of caulk on this board. I've seen people use caulk to make molds (which is also miserable). Basically you can fill a bowl with water and dish soap, inject the caulk and then start to work it. The idea is that it's not supposed to be sticky. I never got it to work. So i just spread it on the table. Now, the caulk is unruly. It needs to be smoothed out. The trick is to work in layers. Layers here - unlike painting - take a loooong time to dry. But, you can get great effects. Over the top of the caulk I just used super heavy gel medium (or you can buy super expensive model supply wave effects if you want...). Now, there's another important point here. Ultimately i painted several coats over this caulk. This means the transparent properties of water effects that i thought i needed were not really needed. See-through transparency is important for things coming out of the water - alien arms, legs, etc. But, by and large i'd say sculpt heavy waves in air-dry clay over crumpled tin foil. This would be very inexpensive. Only a small thin layer of caulk then water effects over that. 

The Fear.

I will say, putting the caulk down was a very nervous moment. I felt like if it didn't work we were absolutely sunk and I'd have ruined a lot of time and effort... 

Painting Water

Here you can see I'm coming in with Kroxigor Scales and Akhellion Green (which is inexplicably a deep blue...). You could use any paint you want really. I thought about doing more of a muddy water, but i figured it wouldn't translate well in miniature. I wanted deep ocean blue. Interestingly since i had used various wave and water effects some were not dry. Woodland scenics actually goes on white. So at various points while painting you could see white streaking under the waves. I guess what i'm saying is that there is definitely a cool effect just waiting to be captured by a better painter. Anyway, i came back over the tops with white. I got a bit careless here and should have used some masking (time crunch was really really bad though at this point). 

Below here i had mapped out all the colors. This ended up being unnecessary as i used a lot of paint on the waves themselves. Depending on your strategy you may well want to 'underpaint' like i did here though as you could have a board where it does show. 

Ok, this part was the show time moment. I used 3-4 types of woodland scenics water effects. None of them were super necessary. Just get some superheavy gel medium of any brand (MIchael's, Hobby Lobby, etc). If it's clear that's better as it's easier to see what you are doing. Most of them are white until they dry. So, below here i have just the normal water effects. This stuff is only good to be poured maybe 1/8inch. It also doesn't make waves. You can pour it out on plastic to make waterfalls and such as it is flexible. Anyway, you gotta mix this with the snow flock to make the white caps on the waves. This is messy. The super heavy gel might have been better, but I ran out of most of it. This was good enough. The ratio of mixing is really up to you. If you go more heavy on the water it'll be like a slush. If you go heavy on the snow flock it'll be super detailed - but it won't stick to anything. So, I kind made a slush to spead on the wave, then made a snow heavy batch to spread on top of that to get a lot of detail and contour. 

This one is just going back to show the design layout. I was originally going to put all turrets out there, but somehow I could only find 3 vengeance batteries. As they are $250+ on ebay now i'm not buying more... Anyway, i would later find that statue of liberty STL and was thrilled. I will say building my wall was actually a complete disaster. I'll have to do a separate section on that. The STL was great. It solved the problems, but I'd originally planned a very different wall. 

Here are the experiments on the water effects. Early colors were off. Early texture experiments started to show some promise very easily with rapids/wave texture just by tapping the popsicle stick on the water effect. Here i used super heavy gel. One major problem though, which persisted all the way through was wave design - straight lines hitting shore seemed ok, but waves are actually very complex patterns. I never did get it quite right. However, with some reference photos and working in layers i think anybody could beat me here. It's totally doable. As I looked at the board more i realized that you basically look at where the wave hits and where it would bounce off to. Just keep layering. 

This photo shows how textured the caulk is naturally. So this is just me smoothing it out as best i could. I will say if you sat with it and kept combing it up ward for hours until it dried you could probably get some neat effects - just super tedius work though. And, why not just go over this with gel medium to smooth it? Way easier solution.  It was here i felt the colors were coming in right. I felt we could do the project. In hindsight... this was only 3/4 to 1 inch tall. Meanwhile my waves on the board are 3-4 inches tall. I think my waves are a bit thin and should instead be beefy and fat. Admittedly that'd have taken another couple barrels of caulk, but it'd have looked cooler. 

Ah, the last photo before the caulk went down. A tense moment...

Ok, thanks for reading. I think I'll stop at water effects here. I'll have to do separate entries on the other stuff. Electronics is not my strong suit and we brought in legos for the win!