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Reposted from the Khemri forums, HERE.

Hello everybody, thanks for reading my project log!

So my friends switched a while ago from 40k to fantasy. I was able to keep getting games by virtue of my Menoth army, but the Dark Angels unfortunately remained stuck in their case.

Tomb Kings were an army that I'd been eyeing for a while. One of the guys in my group beat me to the punch, and I was actually very close to purchasing a shiny new lizardmen army when I heard he was already bored of the TK (one of *those* kind of players ) and was looking to offload them for a good deal. I caved in and wrote a cheque.




Here's the army, in all its glory. Some of it's painted, some is assembled. I've added the three boxes of tomb guard and the sphinx in the back. The latter is still in box, while the tomb guard have been clipped from sprues and split into those little trays you see on the left.



Closeup of the skeleton warriors. My friend hated the TK skeletons (as do I, actually), and decided to do the entire army with VC skeletons instead. A pretty expensive proposition, since it meant buying TK skellies for the shields and bows and VC skeletons for the bodies. No wonder he turned himself off the army so quick!

They're a bit blurry, but you can see my 20 bowman in the back mixed in with 6 bowshabti. I love the new Ushabti models, but I'm not super taken by the rules. Considering mixing them in with my skellies as unit filler at the moment.



Scatterpult, lovingly painted. You can see his basing scheme quite well in this one, which I've unfortunately decided not to continue. Means that I'll have to go back and strip this base at some point...ugh. More on this later.

Still undecided about whether to keep the paint job or not.



Lawrence Doom Scorpion. Of the New Hampshire Doom Scorpions, of course.

He got sidelined in my buddy's list for failing to show up one too many times, and unfortunately he's likely to stay on the benches under his new owner. One more painted model means I can throw him into the fray in a pinch if I get behind on my painting, though.

This is another model where I'm not entirely sure about the paint scheme. I understand why he went with bone (unifying theme for the army, and all), but these sorts of constructs really seem to me like something that should be carved out of stone. The question is just which stone, and will it look better than the bone?



Casket of Souls. Don't ask how long it took to saw the lid off that sucker: still pretty bitter about it. The plan is to do a raised lid with tortured souls spilling out, arm of the casket keeper outstretched overtop (arm-swap with the TK model). You can see the wing of my carrion on the right as well.



And the legion of the unassembled. Snakes in front, skeletons and tomb guard in back. I didn't realize until some time after I'd bought the army that I'm missing the riders for the snakes. Grrrr. My friend couldn't find him and thinks he threw them out, so i'm either going to have to spring for a set of stalkers or convert up some riders out of tomb guards and charioteers.


What hasn't made its way into these pictures are the 90 skeletons I ordered from Wargames Factory, which I just got word were shipped today! Their forums state that they're in the process of updating their skeleton moulds, but the post is two months old and people on the forums sounded like they've been waiting significantly longer than that. I decided to just bite the bullet and put in an order. 90 skeletons for $72 shipped to my front door? Can't really go wrong there!



Here's the test base for my new basing scheme. Inspired somewhat by the Lost Army of Cambyses, I'm envisioning a skeletal horde raised from the desert sands and the behest of its priestly masters.

The secret to the method?



Drywall putty. I've used it before to good effect when trying to simulate mud. I've also used it as cheap filler for a couple ambitious greenstuff projects that I never finished.

So far my method has been to spread the putty onto the base (with a sculpting knife or drywall knife, depending on the size of the base) then let it dry. Then I go back in with my sculpting tool and essentially carve it into a semblance of dunes.

The downside of using drywall putty is that it cracks when it dries, doesn't always stick to bases (though it tends to separate in a single piece which glues down easily enough), and makes a rather ludicrous amount of mess. I also have some concerns about whether it will chip, or whether a few coats of paint will be enough to protect it. Otherwise I may be able to get away with a coat of watered-down PVA glue. Either way, that's what the test base is for.

The benefits of using drywall putty is that it's cheap and relatively easy to work with. Oh, did I mention cheap? With well over a hundred skeletons in this army I can't afford to be spending too much on basing materials.



I'd been looking through a lot of people's TK armies and was really quite taken by the centaur-archers I've seen a lot of people do. These guys were also my first try at the "rising from the sand" effect, and I think they turned out pretty well!

I ran out of bows part way through building these guys, but I'll have some extras once I make room for a command in the bowman unit.



And here's my snakes carved down to size, and ready for basing.



Same guys from another angle. I'm going to have to ask what kind of glue my buddy was using, because these guys were an absolute nightmare to pry off their bases.



Here they are with a base coat of the drywall putty. It'll turn white once it dries. I've decided that for the big bases I'll do the whole base as "undisturbed" sand first, then go back afterwards to add the displaced sand from the rising model. I'll do some sand ontop of these guys as well.



And here's my King, in the first stages of getting his new face. His halberd thingy has been repurposed into my liche priest's staff (below) so he may not end up being a king at all in the end, instead ending up as my second priest.



Here's the closeup of his new face. It's the mask from the TG champion (who I'm now going to have to find a new way to differentiate). His braided beard hasn't been added yet, and I also have some touchups to do around the edge of the mask, but I'm super excited about how this guy turned out. Im still trying to figure out arms, but he'll probably either get the weapon-arm of the warsphinx king (if he does indeed become my Prince) or the staff from the casket keeper (who will have *his* pointing arm outstretched over the open casket).


Automatically Appended Next Post:
HUnfortunately I no longer have access to the wicked camera that took the previous pictures, so for the time being I'm stuck with dark, blurry pictures taken my by ancient 3rd gen iPhone.



So if my gaming-intensive weekend taught me anything, it's that magic advantage is key and the casket is bloody amazing. Thus I've started work on finishing off my hierotitan, my casket, and scratch-building a second casket.

Pictured here are the legs from the hierotitan, made from the rear legs of my warsphinx and the necrosphinx body. I carved off the hood thingy housing the sphinx's head, which I intend on replacing with the cobra-style egyptian headdress. The rear legs have been cut apart with a saw at the joints, positioned with wires, then joined with greenstuff.

Also pictured is the footprint for my second casket, the lid, and the casket's Keeper (Apophas, clearly, with a faceswap from the Necroknight champion).




Very terrible and blurry picture of the HT's legs now upright. Once i'd decided on a position I liked I glued the feet to the base, then went about constructing a pelvis out of sprue bits.



And here he is with his torso attached. Once this has cured I'm going to go back in and start working on the detail. The "ribs" of his armour wil be extended to fill the vacant spots, along with the nameplate on his stomach (the belt piece which is now going to be used to cover his rear). Once the joints have been touched up to my satisfaction I'll then start working on a skirt to cover his amorphous nether region.



And finally the HT combined with my two in-progress caskets. Not shown in the picture is the detail beneath the metal casket's lid, which is a greenstuff pillar I've sculpted with dozens of tiny little screaming faces.



First up is a shot of all my new acquisitions (save the NK, HA, and metal carrion, which have simply had more work done on them from the last update).



Here is Tomb Prince Mekhet, in all his glory. His left arm is from the casket keeper, with the head snipped off and replaced with the blade from the warsphinx king. His face is from the TG bits, with a greenstuff beard. His right arm is a tomb guard arm, which still needs a bit of greenstuffing.

Unfortunately he took a little tumble, and the sand on his base got destroyed. Luckily it hadn't been carved yet, so it won't be much effort to rebase him. Definitely need to keep sealing the bases (though more on that later).



Here's my mostly completed Priest. Warsphinx king, head from the Empire Wizard kit, and the staff head off the aforementioned casket keeper. Really proud of the work I did greenstuffing his neck, though it can't be seen in this picture.

The "S" designs in his head I'm probably going to greenstuff over to give me room to freehand something on his head. Probably an Eye of Horus or something similar.

I've decided to go with a theme of Light-and-Dark for my dual-priest army. This guy is going to have a black mask, and be paired with a black casket (the metal one), black warsphinx and snakes, a black catapult (the finecast one), and a black scorpion (not pictured, and yet to be assembled).



My second priest. Head is a combination of the TG musician horn and the champion's mask, with a TG crest attached. Staff is the axe from the Prince model, with the blade cut off. It didn't turn out in this picture, but this is one of the models whose base has been completed.

Continuing the theme, this will be the white-masked priest (or maybe I'll switch them. I'll decide before I base). He'll be paired with a white casket (the scratch-built one), the skeletons, and the models that my friend has already painted. This saves me on repainting time, and will end up with a really cool theme in the end I feel.



Command for my skeleton block. Originally I'd been using a TG as the champion, but the finecast SSC crew champion is just SUCH an amazing model. No way am I wasting that guy as a glorified wound marker. Both standard and musician are WGF skeletons with TG and skeleton bits.



One half of my skeleton block. These guys have been based, sprayed, and washed. The bottom left two are test models for the sand colour, though I've only gotten the base colour on there. To be honest this block is hugely intimidating to me, and I'm frantically procrastinating on getting back to work on them.



And the other half of the block. You can see why this is intimidating now. As cool as the sand effect looks it actually takes a decent amount of time per model, and by god is it boring. Also by "half" I really mean "third," since I have another 20 skeletons still to assemble. That or snap the spears off the converted VC skeletons pictured in my first update.

Note you can see the old TG champion top left. The SSC crew definitely fits in better with the WGF skittles.



My snakes. Unfortunately my friend lost the riders, so I'll have to buy some stalkers at some point to replace them. That or use charioteers...

The sand effect turned out really well on these guys, though funnily enough I realized I didn't do it on these bases with the same scale that I did on the skeleton warriors. D'oh!

However, a botch-job on the undercoating means I'm going to strip these guys anyways. If that ruins the basing then I'll just have a good excuse to fix that.

Note that I've been sealing the drywall-puttied bases with Vallejo liquid plastic. Watered down a bit it's actually quite glorious for this job, since it dries rock-hard and doesn't marr the texture all that much.



A closeup on one of the snakes that gives a better view of the sand effect. Once I get the colours right it's going to look amazing.



Just for fun, here's some spell markers that I whipped up. The one I've nicknamed "Ozymandias" there on the far right (being used to mark Doom and Darkness with Arkhan) is a test for my Hierotitan's head. It turned out well enough that I've decided to go ahead with it.



My shiny new warsphinx! Not much of a conversion, but I had to find a way to use this model with its hind legs requisitioned for the Hierotitan. A bit of creative saw work and blammo, he's rising up out of the sand.



And from the other side. The howdah has also been filled with drywall putty to simulate the sand. The base is going to be greenstuff-anchored putty as well.



Magnetized the howdah for ease of storage. I used some iron nails as anchors to save magnets (plus they were actually easier to anchor at the right height, rather than fooling around with greenstuff).



Here's my new catapult. I must say, as much as I've railed on finecast in the past I am absolutely sold on it now. I put this badboy together inside an hour and it looks fantastic! The models for the crew were great as well (the crew champion so good he's been repurposed as my skeleton champion). The army's former owner didn't keep the crew models for whatever reason, so one crew is being saved for the base of my other catapult when it gets rebased.



And that's everything! I'll try to update once the caskets and hierotitan are finished, but after that it's back to the slow and painful slog of painting five dozen skeletons. UUUuuuuugggghhhhhhh. At least the WGF skeletons don't have armour bits to worry about?

Project Update!

So this post has been a while in the making. I recently joined a new gaming club that's a bit more competitive than the casual group of friends I'd been playing with before.

And, by "a bit more competitive" I mean that I've been getting absolutely annihilated by some very nasty, tournament calibre lists that I have hitherto not been facing off against. Being the competitive obsessive that I am, I ended up completely throwing out my old list and starting again from scratch.

My new list:

Khatep
Level 4 death, dispel scroll
21 archers, mus, champ

Ramhotep
33 tomb guard, FC, halberds, razor standard

5 snakes, banner, mus

6 chariots, flaming banner

2 catapults

2x5 horse archers

casket

This is my final list. I might play around with the characters a bit (2x level 2, or 1xlevel 2 with a prince), but otherwise the list is to remain static while I get the necessary models painted up for Gottacon in February.

Unfortunately my skeleton block got cut at this point level (to be added back in at 3,000 points for some later tournaments), so all that work on the unit is to be shelved.

The plus side is that I finally get to assemble those 30 tomb guard I've had sitting around in boxes since February. Also to be assembled are 5 more horse archers, my 6 chariots, and 2 more snakes. Not to mention that I'm going to have to figure out how to make riders for the snakes I bought from my friend, who disliked the riders and simply threw them out when he moved.

Tomb Guard

First up to bat are my tomb guard. I only have 30, so to make the 33 necessary I'm going to have to create some unit fillers. I figure that since I've been going for the "rising from the sand" theme I'll just create a couple bases with a few guys popping out of the sand, and perhaps some heads/arms here and there to create the illusion of more. Boring, but it'll look cool.



Here's a picture of the first 4 I've assembled. I've chosen to angle their bodies in a way to create a shield-wall with the front ranks. It's slow going since the models weren't really designed for this pose.



Sorry for the blurry picture, but here's the unit with a few extra models added. I decided that I hated the frills on top of their heads, which is nice since they didn't actually fit on the models in this pose anyways.

I'm really happy with how they're starting to turn out. I've also noticed that they're really starting to look quite "Romanesque," with the legionary stance and the way their headbands kind of look like roman helmets. I'm considering running with this and painting the tops of their heads in a metallic.



Another super blurry picture of the completed unit.



Held up to the light my crappy iPhone is actually able to sort of focus on the models, and you can see a bit more of the detail. The banner is the one supplied in the warsphinx kit (seriously, this kit is absolutely amazing for bits). You can also see the heads more clearly, and get a better idea of the pose.

The stock necks do not support heads in the pose I'm forcing them into, so they have to be cut off and re-made with greenstuff.

I'm probably going to keep a frill on the head of the champion, just to make him stand out more. Whether that frill will be the stock one, or whether I turn it perpendicular to continue with the roman theme, remains to be seen.

One thing I have no idea what to do with is the musician. As you can see for previous banners I've featured the TG horn quite prominently in my skeleton block, so I'm not really sure if I want to repeat it on my TG. I *do* have enough that I could use the same instrument in all my units, including the archers, but I'm not really sure if I want to do that.

The other alternatives are the weird curly horns that come with the TK command and the also curly (but on the other arm) one that comes with the VC skeletons.

However I don't have to make the decision yet as a friend is borrowing my big roll of greenstuff to finish his lizardmen army, so I can't actually do anything about it for the next couple days.



Here you can see a picture of my army, sans archers, as it exists right now. The archers are models that I received prepainted from my friend whom I bought the base of this army off, but will need to be rebased to match the rest of the army.

My snakes on the left need to be stripped of paint, as I was lazy and impatient and tried to undercoat them black with a tank brush that just globbed on paint and absolutely ruined all the details. I have some oven cleaner that's supposed to be good for stripping models, but I have to try it out first on some of my older plastics to make sure it won't melt the details and I've been feeling way too lazy to get around to that.

You can also see the chariot unit that I've carved down to make them "coming out of the sand." The white ones are some models I picked up off a friend-of-a-friend on the cheap ($40 for a failcast prince and priest and 3 chariots. Not half bad).

In the back you can also see my scratchbuilt casket, which I've decided to go with over the standard model (even though I have it). I'm using my converted Apophas as the casket attendant, and will add some greenstuff swirls to the sand and have some sand jetting up with greenstuffed scarabs emerging from it.

This will constrast with my second casket (which I do intend to paint up at some point), which has more of a bones-and-spirits theme. More on that later, though.




Here's a couple pictures of the first half (third...quarter...) of my skittle block, to show off the basing scheme I finally decided on. Originally I'd gone on the suggestion of a friend to do a darker scheme that started with a darker brown rather than the zamasi desert but it ended up looking more muddy than sandy. I liked this colouration a lot more.

Yeah, right now it blends in far too much with the skeletons. However I figure that with a heavier drybrush of white and some colour on the shields the skeletons will stand out a little more. Not that I want them to stand out too much though, as it'll make my characters "pop" a bit more if they stand out better from the skeletons rising from the sands.

The swords are something I was experimenting with, where I started with a drybrush of red up to an orange (i think?) with a light dusting of chainmail to make them appear metalic. It's the sort of thing that looks quite good up close where the light catches the silver but really falls flat from a distance. This is actually something I'd love some feedback on, but I'll get back to that later.




More shots of the TG.



And a closeup of the chariots. They're not quite in the right order here, they were assembled to be "rising up" from the back left corner towards the front right. I think I'm going to ditch the standard chariot crew and replace them with WGF skeletons, so that all my standard skittles match, then use the crew as either bases for characters (i.e. Ramhotep) or snake riders (with some greenstuff and TG bits). The latter will save me some money buying another box of TG, though I'll probably still need that when I bump that unit up towards 40 in larger games.

A Note on Colour Scheme

So the concept I had for this army is a dual-scheme. Since I have two priests, death and nehek, I figured that I would scheme one of them white and the other black. Both have had their faces replaced with masks, so one of those will be white marble and the other black marble, along with the base colour of their robes (with bronze and blue highlights, most likely).

Continuing from there, each of my units will be tied to one of the priests and schemed either black or white to match.

Now my QUESTION to you guys is, how should i go about doing this? I think the snakes might look really cool white, while the flaming chariots (who I'm going to greenstuff flames trailing behind) would get more contrast if they were black. The casket will be white with black and blue accepts (while the other one will be black with blue and gold accents).

However what I'm really unsure about is the tomb guard, and how I'm going to paint up metal. The two choices I'm waffling between is whether to do a standard shiny metal, using tin bits worked up to gold. This would add more contrast and make the models pop a bit better.

The alternative is to go balls-to-the-wall and really challenge myself with a grungy, decayed, faded, rusted look. I'll be honest and say this one appeals to me more, but I'm frankly terrified that I won't be able to pull it off. Also that it'll come across really drab, and that I'll have trouble creating the contrast I'll need to show the models off.




Here's an example of the metallic colour I have in mind. This is taken off an old GW article. The artist apparently used an undercoat of tin bitz, drybrushed with dwarf bronze, then highlighted with watered down hawk turqoise to create the verdigris (oxidation) effect.

I think this looks totally badass, but it also looks totally terrifying. It COULD look cool to do an army with weapons/armour of this colour, but it could also look really drab. Not sure if I can pull it off.

If I do go with this approach, though, I'm thinking I'll work just the blades of weapons with KB up to a pure bronzy-looking gold, and paint the patterns and inscriptions on their weapons with a glowing blue or red to suggest a magic effect. The magic, of course, being some sort of low-wards on the weapons that have protected their edge (and thus their killing blow).

Since I have BOTH halberdguard and snakes in my army that's a fair bit of killing blow, so I'll have plenty of opportunity to showcase this design.

Oh, and just for fun here's another model I've been working on.




Meet Sir Osred Dawn! Captain of the Stag Guard of the United Colonies of the Stolen lands. Former Lord Commander of the Lebedan Ducal Guard. Also better known as Mr. "I Hit It With My Sword!", as most two-handed fighters like to do.

He's my character for a pathfinder campaign, and I've been sitting on this model for forever. He's converted from the Reaper "iconic cavalier" model, though I carved some of the extraneous bits off, and swapped out his sword for a larger one I took off an old chaos space marine model. His lance/spear/banner thingy was also replaced with a spear from the VC skeletons.

He's not QUITE done, as i'm probably going to give him a more interesting base and finish painting his banner with an upsized version of the falling star on his codpiece (which is too small, unfortunately, to have really turned out that well). The highlights on his armour also need some touching up. Otherwise I'm pretty happy with how he turned out.

Tomb Guard were fully assembled and primed over the holidays. Painting began on them this month. It took quite a while for me to finish my test model, and my first batch of 7 took even longer. That said, I think I've gotten my techniques down so subsequent models have been getting faster and faster.



Here's a picture of my first completed models. Sorry for the crappy pictures: I no longer have access to the camera that took those nice pictures in my first few posts (since I'm no longer dating its owner ). Just crappy cell phone pictures now.

EDIT: Note that the virdigris is coming out a lot more pronounced in this picture than it is in person. IRL it's more of a dull, very realistic-looking oxidization effect. I'm quite pleased



And a close-up picture of the two I'm working on currently, testing a slightly-streamlined technique. It's turning out quite well, and the rest should go faster from here.


For any interested, my technique is as follows:

Metal: basecoat of warplock bronze, followed by a drybrush of balthasar gold. I then liberally coat the model in the Nihilakh Oxide technical paint, mixed with a small amount of water and acrylic flow aid. Excess is wiped off with a blunted edge of cloth (i.e. the end is rolled and folded, so that it's not wiping paint out of the recesses). Once dried, I then dust the model with a light drybrushing of Gehenna's Gold.

Bone/Cloth: I've simplified this step to speed the process. First I undercoat the bone with bleached bone, and the cloth/bandages with ceramite white. I then wash both with Devlan Mud, before applying the same colours for highlight. Simple but effective. Previously I'd been using seraphim sepia on the bandages, but I really didn't like how glossy that wash dries, and i'm afraid a matt varnish would ###### up my metallics.

Basing: Zamesi desert, followed by a Tyrant Skull drybrush, followed by a light dusting of praxeti white drybrush.

Finishing touches: the edges of the swords have been done in gehenna's gold, followed by mithril silver. Hard to tell from the photos, but these highlights are a sort of spikey pattern beginning along the edge of the blade, getting thicker towards the tip. I'd done it evenly before but it wasn't catching the light well from above, so I went heavier towards the tip of the blades.

All-in-all I'm very happy with the outcome. I think I might add some detail to the shields eventually (they're a little boring at present), but that'll wait until the rest of the army is finished. My thought is to do some faded paint along certain parts of the detail, perhaps some sort of yellowed ivory plates for the "sunburst" pattern on the shields.

Progress teaser. Just hafts, blades, and some touchup left on the bulk of my unit. Only 10 models, one unit filler, and Ramhotep to go. Ugh...




I'm so bored of painting these guys, so this last batch is going to be a very serious trial of my patience. Luckily after this I get to jump back into some more modelling (my favourite part of the hobby) when I finish off my chariots.

The WiP pictures of the chariots are back on the first page (no new work has been done on them of yet). They're going to get WGF skittle riders, one with reins (GS) and a spear, the other with a bow. Greenstuff flames coming from the banner, and the entire unit will be tarnished bronze and glowing orange.

My inspiration is this photo. Obviously not my paintjob, and I just found it on Imgur so I'm not even sure who to credit it to. Looks friggin badass though.



My idea is to do cooler tones towards the sand, and hotter tones further away, as though their time buried has slightly cooled the flaming attacks. This one is going to be heavy on washes, so hopefully it takes less time than this bloody TG unit does.

From there it's on to my snakes.

Wow, I mean, wow, your post was intimidating to say the least. I spent the remainder of my lunch hour scrolling away, reading and looking at the pretty pictures: what a project!

Tomb Kings is one very beautiful army and your conversions are looking great. Better yet, the "rising from the sand" idea looks great, allows you to save bitz and looks "fluffy". It was perfect

The Tomb Guard may be a bit boring to paint, but your effort was worth it! The metal looks freaking good, it was the first thing I noticed, that equipment just looks cool!

Best of luck with this gigantic project

Thanks! So kind of you to say. I too am very pleased with how everything is turning out. I think I just need to break my painting sessions into smaller chunks, or perhaps rotate in an easier unit to break up the monotony. It's the picking out a thousand little individual bandages or bones that's so fiddly and mind-numbing.

That's also just the nature of WHFB armies, though. Massive quantities of monotony broken up by huge, gorgeous centre-pieces. For me that's going to be my casket and snakes. Hopefully the chariots too, if they work out.

Another quick update on the Tomb Guard.

My Devlan Mud Alternatives arrived at my FLGS the other day, and I took the opportunity to try them out.



From left to right, we have Army Painter Strong Tone, Vallejo Umber Shade, and good o' Devlan Mud.

As you can see from the samples on paper, the Umber Shade is quite a bit thinner than the other two. The Strong Tone is very similar to Devlan Mud, though not quite as thick (though as I use my citadel washes right out of the pot, it might be a result of the paint drying rather than anything else).



Here they are from a slightly different angle. You can see that Umber Shade also has a different flow texture than the other two, looking much more smooth. However, since the splotchy look was more what I was going for I'm leaning towards the Strong Tone as my replacement once the Devlan Mud dries out.



Here they both are after highlights. For all my previous comments, the differences are really pretty subtle between the three. Even with better pictures you probably wouldn't be able to tell.

...though I'm also colourblind, so who knows what subtle shade differences I'm missing


And finally, here's my progress on the full unit:



It's all really coming along! Just bases, weapon hafts/blades, and some touchups left to go.

The banner is obviously going to need some more love, but I'm really not quite sure what to do with it. I'll probably go in and paint up some of the gems or something, but for the time being I'm going to leave it how it is. Got a tournament in less than two weeks, so my plan is to try and get as much of the easy stuff completed as possible.

This. I like this. More please, sir!

Hey bud! I mainly play and paint 40k - but im kicking off with a Vampire Counts army now. And this blogg is a really good inspiration for me. I love the way your making the models popp out from the ground, was thinking off doing the same when i decided to start VC.

Great modelling skills man, and nice paintjobs - looking forward to see more!

Thanks you two! Charky, I'm honoured to hear my blog has inspired you. The "rising from the ground" approach is great for VC as well, and I actually see it much more often with them. It's a great way to make some unit fillers too. Undead units die in droves, so doing regiment-base unit fillers (i.e. bases that are long and wide) are actually a great way to save both time in-game as well as cut down on models. Essentially you replace 5 bases needing 1 model each with 1 base that you can put maybe 2-3 models on (just hands sticking out of the ground, for instance).

This unit has two unit fillers, which I unfortunately had to put on 2x2 bases since that's all I had. It's actually quite annoying to paint / use in play, but still saved me a few models. I got 34 bases out of this unit with only 30 Tomb Guard models.

Hey folks, long time no see!

I started a new job last fall, which has been sucking up large portions of time that I'd intended for hobby. I'd thought the holidays might change this, but Christmas party after Christmas party left me with even less free time than I'd had before.

Luckily we're now in the January lull, and with my next tournament little over a month away I'm committed to getting this army fully painted in time.

First up, my TERRORGHEIST:


Work is progressing on my terrorgheist conversion. Picked up a heatgun from Michaels to reshape the plasticard on his hood. The ribs shaped nicely along with the plasticard, and given the contours I’m now very glad that I sculpted these before I took the heatgun to it.

The wings have also been magnetized to the model for ease of transport.

Here he is from a different angle. You can see the fangs a little easier from this angle.


...and a closeup of the underside of the hood. It’s become quite apparent to me just how much work there is left to do on this model. Some sort of neck needs to be sculpted to blend the body into the hood (prob 2-4 hours). The head needs to be sculpted, including eye sockets (3-6 hours). I might sculpt a serpentine tongue into his mouth as well (2 hours). The inside of the hood needs to be cleaned up, along with all the joints - especially where the body meets the tail, and where the wings are magnetized to the body. Probably 2-3 hours there.

However the biggest project is going to be the rear of the hood. My plan is to insert hieroglyphic inscriptions, a la the rear of the necroknight snake hoods, and surround that with necrotic snake skin. I’ll probably press mould these off either the warsphinx legs or the necroknights. Either way...a lot of work.

Thus I’ve decided to postpone this project until after the rest of the army is painted, and make do with vargheists instead. Not optimal, but I want him to hit the table for the first time when he’s fully painted. The rest of my army has been seen by the scene in various stages of completion, and the “wow” factor will be spent by the time it’s done. The terrorgheist will hopefully be my way to win that back.

Thus this is sadly the last you’ll probably see of him until sometime at least April, if not June.

Gottacon 2015

I've got a little under a (normal length) month before I need to be ready for my next tournament, Gottacon 2015 in Victoria, Canada. Lot's of work needs to be done to get ready in that time. The girlfriend was not pleased when I shared the google calendar with my painting schedule, but such sacrifices must be made in the name of Hobby!

...yes I have a shared calendar with my painting schedule. I am that kind of dork.


The Lost Legion of Mekhet for Gottacon 2015!
Little fiddly bits are still to be ironed out. However roughly speaking my army is to contain the following:

King Mekhet (Vampire Lord-General)
Queen Ahi (Vampire Lord)
13 Black Knights
40 skeletons
40 more skeletons (Flaming banner)
20 direwolves
2 spirit hosts (if they fit, Lore of Undeath otherwise)
2x4 Vargheists

Estimated time to completion: 100 hours.

Scheduled painting time: 139 hours

....gunna be tight!

First up, the Vampires.
KING MEKHET

King Mekhet is coming along swimmingly. He’s got some touchup work to do around his waist, and I’m not really liking the spear tip on the butt of his axe...gotta find something to replace it with instead.

I’ve also been toying around with how to garnish his hood. Can’t really be a King without a Crown, now can he? I’ve tried my hand at sculpting a few snakehead crowns and none of them have turned out. I’ve also tried press-moulding the one off my metal tomb prince and it didn’t turn out well either. Snake bits I have from everywhere else are way too big.

The only other thing I’ve come up with is to use the rather boring crown off the warsphinx prince. I have the mangled remains of his head lying around somewhere after it was hacked up to be replaced for my old Hierophant conversion. I’m going to give that a shot and see how it turns out.

QUEEN AHI

Lady vampire in progress with her wings attached, and with her spear. The tip is Prince Apophas’ dagger, which was removed to convert him into my casket priest. The butt adornment is the pommel from a TG sword.

Attached to her base. I stupidly snipped her off the tab, and didn’t realize until after that this made it nearly impossible to attach her to the base. She’s pinned at present but her spindly little legs aren’t super fond of it and have broken on several occasions.

Here she is at present. I’ve sculpted her a new left shoulder, to fit a witch elf arm I got off a clubmate. She’s getting a round shield hoplite-style shield, just like her husband. I need to attach this to the arm first (and sculpt some straps, like with King Mekhet’s shield) before I reattach it to the shoulder. The GS was sculpted to fit so it’s just a matter of gluing.

Here’s a better view of her from behind, with her new hand. Again, from a witch elf. It’s a liiiiitle bit too big, but not super noticeable from any angle save this one. The WE arm wasn’t at the right angle and this arm is sculpted as part of the body, so I didn’t want to go through the trouble of hacking it apart. I might reassess once she’s got some paint on her.


Let's talk about colour shapers.

Got a set of these as a Christmas present from my girlfriend. They're kind of like rubber-tipped paint brushes in various shapes, meant for pushing paint around on a canvas. Not sure how well they accomplish that, but as sculpting tools I can attest to how AMAZING these things perform.

You'll still want a metal tool to create the broad shapes...they're a bit too soft to be pushing around large amounts of material. However what these things excel at is the little details. First of all they leave no tool marks. Secondly, because of how soft they are you can really control how your sculpting medium is being pushed around and shaped. You can make tiny, incremental changes to where things are, letting you avoid the endless cycle of over-correcting back and forth that I find happens with metal tools.


This is my second attempt at using the colour shapers. The first was sculpting Lady Vampire's left shoulder, which turned out tremendously better than my previous attempts with my standard metal tools. I disliked how it looked like the only armour on her torso is those silly little nipple tassles, so I added a ridge to make it look like she's wearing a breast plate (tee hee!). Will probably be painted burnished bronze, to fit in with the rest of the army. Might be burnished gold instead...undecided.



Here's a closeup so you can see it better. See how smooth those lines are? Just blown away.



And with my little finger for scale, so that you can see just how fine of detail I'm talking about. These things are just head-and-shoulders above my previous tools. I really can't recommend them enough for anybody wanting to do some serious sculpting.

I think it was $50 for the set, roughly comparable to picking up a nice set of sablehair brushes (like Windsor & Newton series 7, which is what I use for painting).

Vargheists up next...


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Vargheists


First up is my test vargheist. I felt that the stock head was a little too “gothic”/”generic horror” plus they don’t have any metal bits on which I can do the signature “tarnished bronze” that is the unifying colour in my army’s paint scheme. I first considered giving them some semblance of the scale mail found on my Tomb Guard, but this turned out to be way too much work. Thus I endeavoured to do a head swap instead.

After some failed attempts I ultimately settled on the Sepulchral Stalker champion head. I really liked the contrast between the dynamic body and the otherworldly calm of the mask.

Problem though: you only get ONE of these heads per necroknight box, and I only have one of them having not gotten bits when I purchased my first three knights off a friend.

Solution: press molding. I use a product called “Instamold” to copy the face and crest of the heads. They’re not perfect, but as I plan on painting these bronze-with-verdigris anyways any imperfections can be covered up as oxidization damage.

More progress.

Here’s some progress on my test model. As you can see the mask is turning out well with the verdigris-ed bronze. You can’t see from the picture, but I’ve picked out the edges with gold and silver to make the features stand out a bit.

A bit more progress, and here with some work done on his hair. This is just black with a white drybrush. A clubmate of mine (who regularly wins best-painted armies with his utterly gorgeous WoC army) has recently gotten into drybrushing, and convinced me to give it another try.

Drybrushing is one of those “lower” techniques that experienced painters condescend towards, but done right it can actually create some really amazing effects. I’ve used a large P3 drybrush here with so little of the paint wiped off it that I had to do probably 50 passes to get to the point you see here. However the result is a slow buildup of white that creates a blend effect. I’m very happy with how it turns out. Beats doing a half-dozen layers on every single piece of hair, I’ll tell you.


Here’s some progress on the unit.

...and the Vargs on their fancy new magnetized movement tray.

A friend of a friend is an engineer with access to a laser cutter. He offered to create some laser-cut sheet metal strips for real cheap, and I went to town on that offer.

The sheet below the vargheists is measured to give the requisite ½ inch of space between them. I’ve also put a ½ inch border around the outside, the idea being that two trays touching will be the minimum 1” gap between my units. It will also allow me to blend the sand effect of the bases into my eventual display board.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Black Knights

As always, a proof of concept to start.

I’ve been resisting doing black knights ever since I first picked up a VC book. Heavily armoured vampires is an anathema to the lightly-armoured TK theme, and felt like I was going against my roots. I’ve also grown up playing around fluff gamers, who ruthlessly shame people for optimizing their lists. Thus even though my list is shamelessly tuned and optimized for competitive play, I still have a few holdbacks that I won’t move past.

End Times: Nagash is what finally made me break down, specifically Undead Legions. I’d been running my Tomb Guard as a counts-as Grave Guard unit to good effect, but their M4 was proving to be a little lacklustre. Undead Legions finally gave me a TK-themed cavalry option for running a bus in the form of light-armoured horsemen. 4+ instead of 2+, and T3 instead of T4, but I found that by running them 3-wide (Bretonnia style!) I could mitigate that downside by limiting the number of attacks that could be allocated against the unit. Then with the extra attacks I could finally squeeze in that second vampire model I’ve been dying to use. Go go gadget 50% lords!

For bodies I’m using the tomb guard riders from the warsphinx kit, heavily converted. Also some extra necroknight riders I had lying around. They’re anchored to standard TK skeletal steeds.


Next up the champion, because nothing gets me jazzed up like converting up champions. The idea for his head is shamelessly stolen from somebody on the Khemri forums, with a crest made from one of the skeleton warrior standards. I was going to give him the axe from the necroknight champion but it was in the wrong hand and I got fed up trying to convert it.

Here he is from a different angle.

And the unit as a whole, on their fancy new movement tray.

Basing them was surprisingly time-consuming for some reason. I’ve been creating a sand dune effect by carving ridges into drywall putty (left to dry for 48h), followed by a coat of Vallejo liquid plastic to protect it from chipping. Even after that it’s still quite fragile, but I haven’t found a better way to make them that incorporates the model into the basing. There are companies that produce pre-made resin sand dune bases, but the models just sit unnaturally ontop of the dunes...doesn’t really work for me.

Another angle


...and another.



Automatically Appended Next Post:
MISC BITS AND BOBS

Possible crypt horror concept. Ushabti body, great weapon converted into a hand weapon, with a shield made form a press-molded TG banner top and plasticard. Not sure how I feel about this.


Zoooombiiiiies. 30 of them, from Mantic, to be fielded purely for Raise Dead purposes. I was actually pleasantly surprised at how easier these are to put together. Easier than the fething Wargames Factory Skeletons I'm using that's for sure, as good as they look.


Movement tray for the skeletons. Unlike the vargheists their tray is to be made up of 20mmx100mm strips, which will magnetize the skeletons in individual ranks (using fridge magnet strips on the bottoms of their bases), since skeletons tend to die in groups of 5. MUCH easier, both for removing models and for putting them back together at the end of the game.


Skeletons on their tray.


And both my skeleton units together. I painted the first 20 quite a while ago using Citadel seraphim sepia wash. Not a fan of how it turned out. I've since transitioned to devlan mud wash (still had a pot, as well as Army Painter Strong Tone and Vallejo ...something shade...both of which are almost identical). I probably won't repaint the sepia skeletons until after Gottacon.



Another picture of my Vargheists. Their wings are disattached to make painting easier. I'm thinking that the champions will get gold masks, to further differentiate them from the rank-and-file. They also have beards and a snake crown on their masks, which I couldn't reproduce with the press mold heads.



Direwolves, twenty of them.

I absolutely loathe these models. However I got the whole lot of them for $10 off my FLGS owner, so I really couldn't complain. After Gottacon I'll essentially toss these, and replace them with Mantic war panthers converted with manes to be "lion" constructs. Will probably paint them with a black or white marble effect (perhaps each different unit a slightly different colour). This will give me good practice for the warsphinx I will eventually add to the UL version of this list.

However in the mean time I'm using these crappy old direwolf models. They'll get the same treatment as the mantic zombies, namely standard basing (ugh) plus some sort of wash and drybrush. I'm thinking bone prime, mud wash, then a heavy brown drybrush followed by a lighter brown drybrush.

Nice work on the bases, I love the rising from the sand look. Some of your pics are enormous though and it's making the text hard to read.

 hungryp wrote:
Nice work on the bases, I love the rising from the sand look. Some of your pics are enormous though and it's making the text hard to read.

Oops, is that better?

And thanks! The bases are a lot of work, so I'm always happy hearing when people like them

Little better, but still some big ones in the earlier posts, first two I think. Not as bad as it was at least.

 hungryp wrote:
Little better, but still some big ones in the earlier posts, first two I think. Not as bad as it was at least.

Fixed. Bloody imgur links. Shame these forums don't automatically turn those big images into thumbnails. Oh well.

UPDATE: SKELETONS

Skeleton brick is almost done! Here’s some pictures of the progress.

Here’s a picture illustrating how I make the bases. Drywall putty has been spread over the base and allowed to cure for 48 hours (it flakes off in big chunks if you try and do it too early). I use a metal “scoop”-shaped sculpting tool to carve the sand dunes.

Note that the dust gets EVERYWHERE, so proper lung protection is very important. I didn’t use a mask the first time I did this and I was sneezing for days afterwards. The drywall dust is also a major skin irritant but I’ve found gloves get in my way while modelling. I just make sure to wash my hands very thoroughly after instead (though they still get red and a bit angry if I’ve been at it for a while).


Here’s the movement tray, sculpted and sealed. I ran out of Vallejo liquid plastic so switched to liquid greenstuff for a second coat. Not as big of a fan of this stuff, and the bottles of it dry out really quickly. Très unimpressed.



Progress on basing the unit. Dear god...so many skeletons.


Finally got them finished and primed! Used spray-on Army Painter Bone. I’ve found you need to be really careful with the armypainter sprays as they have a tendency to melt miniatures and glom on thick. Can’t beat them for range of colour though...I’d just stick with GW for black or white.


Primed unit from another angle.

The next step is painting accent colours prior to washing. I paint the shields, bandages, and any cloth bits in Ceramite White, while any wood/leather bits get undercoated Mournfang Brown. Then the entire unit gets splashed with a healthy coat of Devlan Mud (aka liquid gold)...


...which I just ran out of. OH, THE TRAVESTY!!!


Luckily I have a backup. Umber Shade to the rescue! Reaper product, I think? I also have Army Painter Strong Tone, which is also functionally identical. Can't remember what the vallejo product is, but I'm pretty sure they have one.

Not a fan of the new GW Agrax Earthshade. It's got a bit of a green tint, and most definitely does NOT match the old Devlan Mud. These products all have slightly different consistency, but are otherwise functionally identical.


Here’s the completed unit, after being doused in wash. 1 ½ of those ranks are Umber Shade while all the rest are Devlan Mud...see if you can tell the difference

Another picture with slighting different angle/lighting.


After washing I drybrush all the bone bits with Ushabti Bone. Then I undercoat the metal bits with Warplock Bronze.

Still to go:

METAL: drybrush the metal bits with Balthasar Gold, then wash with the Verdigris technical paint. After that I drybrush the metal with Gehanna's Gold, then edge any parts I want to specifically highlight with Mithril Silver.

SHIELDS/CLOTH: Just an easy highlight of watered-down white here. I say watered and not medium because I want a splotchy, streaky, uneven finish to make it look like faded cloth/paint. The texture also helps differentiate it from the bone (which is otherwise a very similar colour).

BASES: Undercoat zamasi desert. Then drybrush with ... crap one shade up from the ushabti bone drybrush, followed by an extreme highlight in ceramite white. I find it's too hard to use the praxetti white for extreme highlights because the paint dries out too quickly and it's hard to control the amount of pigment on the brush.

I'm actually really quite disenchanted with Citadel's line of drybrush paints. I like the colours they have, but the paints themselves are just complete garbage. They dry out really quickly, are hard to control, and just are all around not very pleasant to use. If someone has any tips for getting them to work I'd love to hear, since I have a good $30 worth of them that I'm strongly considering just throwing into the trash.


More angles on the skeletons:

Whoa this army is impressive ^^
I would love to see your vampire king and queen painted T.T Your conversion work is so effective

 soulcow wrote:
Whoa this army is impressive ^^
I would love to see your vampire king and queen painted T.T Your conversion work is so effective

Thanks! I can't wait to see them painted up either. Sadly they're being held in reserve as my treat to myself for finishing all the boring parts of the army (80 skeletons, 20 wolves, and 30 zombies for Raise Dead). Their conversions are 90% done, so very close!

Wil be posting some more work Ive done on the skeletons probably Saturday. Unit is mostly done, just finishing up touches on the shields and basing.

UPDATE:




Skeletons are substantially completed. Splashed verdigris technical paint onto the metal to give it that tarnished bronze look, painted the shields with a heavily-watered white in several coats to get that streaky faded paint effect, then painted all the bases.

Just waiting for the weather to get a little dryer so that I can hit them with matte varnish, then highlight the metal a bit with a drybrushing of Gehannas' Gold. Will probably edge the swords in mithril silver as well.


Next up is my black knights. Movement tray has been shaped and sealed, and is ready for priming. Again...just waiting for the weather to turn a bit. It's been raining quite hard these past few days and the dampness messes with the spray undercoat. Looks like the sun will come out Wednesday, so until then I will probably finish off the sculpting work on my characters, carve the bases on my zombies and direwolves, and drill holes into the mantic square bases to magnetize the zombies to metal strips for ease of placement.

Ok this army is awesome! Loving the creatures coming out of the sand, just beautiful Looking forward to seeing all of these models finished. I really hope that you finish of all the actual TG stuff as well as I want to see this black/white army idea

Keep up the good work

Young Logan

I'm awed by this blog, I scrolled all the way through with the hope that it just went for ever. This is probably one of the best representations of tomb kings i've ever seen, I LOVE the idea of their army but the miniatures have always felt too outdated for my tastes, but I love what you've done as well as the aesthetic that you've created!
Fantastic blog mate,
LDP

Wow your army is looking fantastic, really captures the desert vibe.

Thanks for all the praise, everyone! Been grinding things out pretty hard this last month and having the community cheering me on really helps keeps the spirit high throughout the monotony.

...because seriously...what kind of crazy idiot decides to massively convert every single model in a frikkin horde army. With hand-carved bases to boot? Ugh...

UPDATE


So an unfortunate setback the other day. Got a bit impatient and primed my black knights too soon after it stopped raining. Result: fuzzy black knights. <Sigh>. They're currently sitting in a bath of Simple Green. Very likely going to have to rebase them as well, as I suspect the drywall putty on the bases won't withstand soaking in the liquid. We shall see. Thus instead of painting black knights I got to drill magnets into mantic skeleton bases (flat bottoms, nowhere else to put them) and carve dunes into their bases.

In the mean time I plotted out all the work I have left to do. It's going to be tight...

Characters:
1) finish conversions (King Mekhet has work left on his crown, weapon hand, and finishing touches on his scale mail around the belt. Queen Ahi needs her shield arm connected and touched up)
2) bases (set, but not carved)
3) painting (leaving them for last...they'll likely just get basecoated to bring them to 3-colour standard, rather than rush out the paintjob on my important characters)

Skeletons 1 - FINISHED

Skeletons 2
1) Movement Tray
2) some painting (some of the shields aren't done, a few misc bits, a few bases need painting, if I have time the bone needs repainting on some of the skeletons that I did with seraphim sepia before switching to a mud wash)

Direwolves
1) bases
2) undercoat
3) painting (thinking black->drybrush white for bone,

Vargheists 1:
1) Painting (already undercoated, basecoated, needs drybrushing on hair, metallics on faces, and blending on muscles)

Vargheists 2:
1) Finish greenstuffing neck on champ
2) Undercoat champ
3) Painting (otherwise same as vargheists1)

Zombies:
1) Undercoat
2) Paint


Goal for tonight is to get the direwolves based and magnetized, the movement tray for the skeletons finished, and finish the greenstuffing on the final vargheist. If I have time I'll do the finishing touches on the two Vampires, then get started on a yet-unmentioned mystery conversion (ooOOooo ).

Weather is supposed to clear up early next week, so over the weekend I plan on getting all my conversions finished then start working on painting up the vargheists. I have a lot of work left but a lot of it should be easy (direwolves and zombies I have very minimal plans for), my other unit of skeletons is substantially finished, and I've mentioned how I'll cut corners on my characters if I run out of time.

UPDATE:
Since the weather hasn't been cooperating with letting me prime some minis, I spent the remainder of last week pushing through the last few non-painting odds and ends.



First up, movement trays. My other unit of skeletons is substantially painted but has been languishing on temporary movement trays for quite some time now. Here they are set out on a piece of 0.6mm sheet of plasticard, which I've cut with a 1/2" border on all sides but the back.



Next step is to glue some balsa wood strips down around the minis to hold them in place. After this picture I glued down a second layer of balsa wood just to give the plasticard some extra structure (the drywall putty cracks if bent), then used an exacto knife to cut a slope down towards the edges of the tray.



I may have mentioned this before, but I've been using tubes of Drydex drywall putty to do the basing.



...as also mentioned before, this stuff is a skin irritant. Don't disrespect the warning label!



The stuff goes on purple then dries to white. It requires 48 hours before it cures hard enough to work with properly. Before then it's far too soft and crumbly.



20 direwolves and 25 zombies are now based, sealed, and ready to go. Whyyyyy did I commit to such an elaborate basing scheme in a friggin horde army.



At this point it's just characters and movement trays left to carve. You'll notice that I'm wearing gloves here as I finish off the base on Queen Ahi . Learned my lesson there.



Leftover material removed during the carving of those bases. You can see why wearing a mask is so important...




On a more positive note, Queen Ahi is now modelled and ready for paint! Rather pleased with how she turned out. Her shield arm is sliiiiiightly longer than the weapon arm, but I don't think it's super noticeable. Well...to anyone but me. We'll see how much it bothers me once she's painted I can always go back and replace that arm if necessary, and just use paint-on primer for that part of the model.




King Mekhet misbehaved by losing his head in a practice game the other day, so I thought I'd take my revenge out on his model. Desperate times call for desperate measures...



Kidding. Got sick and tired of trying and failing to sculpt him a proper crown so he's getting the one from a finecast tomb prince I had lying around (okay, that I bought specifically for this purpose. But shhhhh! Don't tell the girlfriend!)





Here's the (substantially) completed model, once I used GS to fix up the hood. There's a few little things I need to touch up (the right side of his hood is a bit rough, there's a few lumps in the back of it to be smoothed out, and his weapon hand needs some work), but otherwise he's good to go. Must say that I'm ridiculously pleased with how he turned out as well. His crown looks a little odd from the top-down view you currently get of him from the tabletop, but I figure I can fix that in the future by sticking him on a more scenic base that angles him upwards a little bit. However I'm waiting on some of my friends to get their sh## together so that we can do an order of some Hirstarts modular scenery pieces. I'm envisioning him standing on a partially-downed Egyptian-style column sticking up out of the sand.


Sun is finally out so I'm heading home now to get some primer on all this stuff. Plan is to churn out the direwolves and zombies today and tomorrow, then spend the rest of this week and next finishing off the direwolves, vargheists, and characters. Only 11 painting nights left!

Zombies are finished.

Prime white -> Talarn Sand on skin -> mud wash -> tallarn sand drybrush on skin / watered white on clothes -> base -> white on eyes, grey on guts (which should have been done before the wash, but oh well)

Holy crap was that soul crushing. Zombies are so boring to paint. I do NOT understand how people can paint 150 of those, let alone more.

Speaking of soul crushing, tonight's project is my 20 direwolves, which are about 50% finished. No pics because they look like hot garbage before they're washed. Really hating on these models. Will definitely replace them with something prettier before this army is done.

The hard work on the zombies paid off though they look excellent.

 GiraffeX wrote:
The hard work on the zombies paid off though they look excellent.

Thanks I'm not entirely pleased with them, but that's also partially because I'm colour blind and they look a hideous goblin green to me. Haha. Had to check with my GF to make sure the test model was an alright colour before I finished up the lot.


UPDATE:


Test direwolf completed. As much as I hate these models I'm relatively happy with how he turned out.

Tallarn sand on the skin (like with the mummies), stormvermin fur on the muscles, ushabti bone on the bone bits. Wash whole thing with devlan mud. Paint hair black then drybrush white. Base. Should probably go back over and highlight again but I can't be arsed. Too much to go still and not enough time left to do it.



Here's the whole lot of them. Sorry for the washed out photo: my phone camera was being cranky getting the lighting right. I'm going to try and borrow my dad's DSLR at some point to take some proper photos before I head out to Gottacon.




And here's my "done" pile. Missing a handful of skeletons and their movement tray, but otherwise these are all done.

120 models down, 25 to go. Unfortunately those are the 25 hardest....

PirateRobotNinjaofDeath wrote:

 GiraffeX wrote:
The hard work on the zombies paid off though they look excellent.

Thanks I'm not entirely pleased with them, but that's also partially because I'm colour blind and they look a hideous goblin green to me. Haha. Had to check with my GF to make sure the test model was an alright colour before I finished up the lot.

That's quite weird, considering you were painting them in goblin green (from your perspective) they came out an excellent brown colour. Dont change them they look spot on

 GiraffeX wrote:

PirateRobotNinjaofDeath wrote:

 GiraffeX wrote:
The hard work on the zombies paid off though they look excellent.

Thanks I'm not entirely pleased with them, but that's also partially because I'm colour blind and they look a hideous goblin green to me. Haha. Had to check with my GF to make sure the test model was an alright colour before I finished up the lot.

That's quite weird, considering you were painting them in goblin green (from your perspective) they came out an excellent brown colour. Dont change them they look spot on

Thanks, good to know

With colourblindness, basically there's a range of colours that are either indistinguishable or really difficult to tell apart for me. Certain shades of browns and greens are the worst offenders, but also yellows & oranges, greens & greys, reds & browns and blues & purples (I am of the firm belief that purple doesn't actually exist, and is just a vast conspiracy perpetuated against us colour-defficient folks). My brain has been trained to guess which is which based on certain clues, but sometimes it just plain guesses wrong.

Luckily paint comes in labelled pots, else this would be a very frustrating exercise for me. Also explains why I'm drawn to more muted colour schemes. "Cartoon colours" just look kind of garish to me, and models that are too colourful will often just look busy and overwhelming.

Wow. You've done an amazing job on an amazing project. It's very characterful in both its concept and execution.

UPDATE:


Didn't have time to update last week as I frantically ground out hobby for my tournament.



Here's some progress on my mounted wight king conversion. He was a late addition to the list, so I'm a little concerned about getting him done in time. However in test games he was extraordinarily helpful to making the bus more durable, so I'm really hoping to get him done in time.

He's of course made from a finecast Tomb Prince with his skirt carved out to fit to a horse. He's magnetted onto his horse so that I can swap it out for a more fitting mount at a later date should I need to.



Vampires are primed! I didn't notice until afterwards but the primer went on a little heavy in a couple places and totally ruined the minis. They're both getting a bath of simplegreen as soon as I return from the tournament, but I don't have time to do that beforehand. They'll get enough paint on them to earn paint scores and that's it.

Unfortunate, but not the worst. Nothing a bit of simple green can't fix.



Speaking of Simple Green, here's my lovely lady friend helping me out by scrubbing paint off my black knights, who have been sitting in simple green for a couple days. She's been amazingly patient with me through marathon hobby sessions, though that patience did start to fray in the couple weeks leading up to the event (where I was up until 1:00am every night, and later on weekends).

"What can I do to make this end sooner?"

5 minutes later...

"This is actually oddly satisfying."

10 minutes later...

"Okay, so I know you said the rest of these models in here aren't for *this* army, but do you need them stripped *eventually*?"

Keeper right there.



Last of my movement trays done! Took a couple tries on these bad boys as I didn't put quite enough drywall putty on the first time, and sadly it doesn't adhere to itself very well when you try and add an additional layer. Which is odd, but oh well



Metallics on the vampire. Needs a highlight of mithril, but as I said he's getting stripped anyways so not overly concerned there.



Paint on the skin and hood. Thinking the blacks will need to be highlighted blue to make them pop. Not sure what to do with the crown, now that the hood has gold in it.



Of course the moment I get my black knights based again the window of gorgeous weather I'd been having closes and it starts to rain again. Bloody hell. I really need to pick myself up an airbrush.

You can see the primed vargheist in this picture as well. Other than characters these are the last models I need to paint before the event.



Washed and metallics done, and I decide to call it "good enough" on these guys. They need some mithril edging on the metallics to make them "pop" (kind of dull right now), as well as some white highlights on the bandages (which are also quite dull). Banner also needs more highlights to stand out.

I realize at this point that I am exactly one black knight short, who is still sitting in simple green. &*^%&*^%. Too late to change the list, so he's just going to get "forgotten on the painting table" for this one.



6:30 am the morning before the tournament and here's where we're sitting. Everything is "good enough" save the characters, who I'll have to finish painting in the hotel room. Vargheists wings aren't glued back on, but a clubmate is bringing some blue tack for me.

I double-check that I have everything (except the 1 missing black knight) for my list and carefully pack it all away. Then I hazily pack my bags, and start loading up the car as my friends arrive at my place.



From the other angle. 147 miniatures all told. I can see all the cut corners still, and places that need to be touched up, but damned if I'm not proud of this army.




Turned out a buddy of mine wasn't done his army either. So Friday night we check into the hotel and the convention, then retreat to our room for one last marathon hobby session. He finishes at about 11pm and I snap this picture of his completed army for the Whatsapp before he packs it all away and goes to bed.

I have hours of hobby left, and seeth with jealousy.



Progress on the wight king's cloak. I don't want him sticking to his horse, who he's attached to with magnets, so I use seran wrap as a barrier while I'm sculpting. It works surprisingly well.



Finished. Sculpted some hair to cover the area around the mask. GS was necessary also to fix the blade on his axe, which was basically hollow. ###### finecast.



1:00 am and he gets suspended above the hotel lamp to speed the curing of the greenstuff. Really should have planned ahead and done this before.



Here I am outside the fabulous Empress Hotel in beautiful Victoria, British Columbia...huddled in a little stairwell priming minis in the middle of the night. The things we do for hobby, eh?

Security guard caught up to me as I wandered around looking for a spot out of the wind to prime. "What are you doing with that spray can buddy." Didn't truly realize how sketchy / ridiculous I must look until right then haha. He calmed down as soon as he realized I was just some dork putting paint on my toy soldiers

Not pictured is the horse ontop of the mcdonalds cup, being primed while its rider cures.


2:00 am and the horse is painted, and the rider is ready for prime. Security guard waves at me as I pass by him again with another mini.


Final highlight in Mithril Silver. Yes...I still have some in the old pop top.

...just realizing now that I don't actually have "finished" pictures of the characters. Will take some when I get a chance.


Finished painting at 3:30 am. 4 1/2 hours of sleep, ate breakfast, then headed to the venue for game 1.

Link to my battle report thread to follow.