Januine wrote: Got any Inquisitor figs?? Theyre usually pretty characterful and you could give them a small retinue of savant, tech dude, bodyguard etc to go along
I do have a couple of them, but I'm not entirely sure where they are I'll have a look and see what I have. And avoid anything with too much painful all-metal assembly, like that bloody Death Watch marine.
Paradigm wrote: Perhaps pick out a 'commander' model for each of your main armies and give them a nice paintjob; keeps them as something you can put down on the table, while also being able to spend some real time and effort on.
Failing that, you've been doing a lot of old stuff recently, so how about some stuff that's somewhat newer. I know you mentioned you had a few AoS box sets, all the character models in those are pretty stunning.
One model at a time, Para! Though I might pick out a couple to work on so I've got a second model once I finish the first. Any suggestions for which army to look for a commander model from? I've got quite a few armies I haven't started painting yet, but more than happy to start on any of those with a cool command model. Similarly, any specific model from the AoS set you'd suggest?
If there's enough feedback, I might list a few suggestions that I'm up for and get people to vote on them/help me choose the final model(s).
If I had to pick one model from AoS, probably the Lord Relictor or the Chaos Lord... damn, that's two! Aha, but it's only one from each faction! Problem solved!
I'm not a terribly big fan of AoS but I don't think I'd mind seeing some painted here. Either a character like that or possibly a big (but not too big!) fangly beast from reaper or similar.
I vote for a larger centerpiece model. Do you have something that would work as a slasher for KoW goblins? Or maybe some sort of skeletal beast? Something like that.
I've got a Reaper Bones Bone Giant and a D&D Dracoliche that are both started (and I've been working the Draco again lately), so they'll both be part of the "normal" series of updates as I plod along and paint stuff. Also a Reaper Bones Hydra that's been part-painted for most of this year which I'd like to get completed.
While I was rooting around looking for the Inq54mm models last night, I found my models of Be'lakor, the Dark Master and the Marauder Giant, so both of those have moved into the running.
I also found (some of) the mounted Archon, though he can't really go into contention unless I find the rest of him. I'm also tempted to paint a Contemptor Dreadnought or some sort of Marine Hero as well. Or maybe the Avatars of War Ogre Chieftain, or the AoW Ogre Marauder...
This is the problem, you see - and is both why I have so very many half-painted models and why I've been trying to clear the backlog of part-painted ones!
And now for some more truly Oldhammer models. These Chaos Familiars date from 1986-88, and were sculpted by Jes Goodwin and Bob Naismith. I believe the two on the outer are Goodwin sculpts, and the middle one could be by either.
CH5 Chaos Familiars: Manequin (sic), Beastling and ..unnamed?
I painted these models a very long time ago. Sometime not too long after the Space Marine Paint Set was released, based on the robes the unnamed familiar is wearing. (Shades of the Watchers in the Dark!). I painted two of them with Tzeentch in mind - being the most magically-oriented of the Chaos Powers, and a nice chance to paint something different to my usual Khorne' dominated stuff. I'm still very happy with how they came out, especially the duo-tone on Manequin.
All they needed recently was a tiny touch-up and rebasing onto more modern bases. If you think they look a little big for familiars, it's because I've used 20mm round bases that I got with some of my Red Box Games minis. Our final image provides a better sense of scale, provided by a friendly passing Oldhammer Champion of Nurgle. These guys are small! Smaller than a goblin. Like Snotling sized.
And in a surprising bit of awesomeness, I recently found that most of these figures are still available from Games Workshop even today, as part of the limited range of Direct-only metals that they still stock. Even more amazingly, they're available for a reasonable price. If you're someone who likes these cool old models, I'd change the flag on the GW website to your own one, and get them while you can! It also makes them even older than that Perry Troll I painted a few months ago that seemed to be one of the olderst things still available. I think there are some old-school Goodwin champions and maybe Chaos Warriors there as well (Slambo?)
I'm still making up a list of potential things to paint in December. The good news is that all of the models are awesome. The bad news is that even with a month off, the onset of summer (and years-end videogame releases) means there's no way in hell I'd be able to get them all painted.
So far as potential suggestions from here and elsewhere I've got:
GW Belakor
FW Plague Ogres (3)
GW Bragg the Gutsman
AoS Chaos Lord with puppydog
AoS Chaos Standard (probably a two-fer)
AoS SigMarine Lord on Dino
AoS SigMarine Chaplain/Standard
AoW Ogre Marauder
AoW Ogre Lord
Heresy Big Boris III
Marauder Miniatures Giant
FW Contemptor Dread
Mierce Talos
If all went well, I'd be able to paint a couple or even a few of them, but I'll have to narrow it down. Still, for the time being I'm open to adding more to the potential pool. I'll post them all up at the end of November for a final selection - so feel free to suggest ANYTHING (if I don't have it, or it's too hard, or too easy, I'l just say so!)
...and especially for Josh - I'm on it as far as Undead centrepieces go! (I'm just very, very slow....)
I'm gonna throw my vote for the Contemptor. Love to see you do some sci-fi after all the fantasy. Any thoughts of what chapter or would you make yourown?
A small force of (Modern) Dark Angels that I need to turn into a more legal army, though they already have a dread.
A few 2nd Ed Space Wolves, part-painted.
A bunch of old, RT-style Ultramarines. They used to be an army, but I screwed it all up, sadly by stripping figures I should have left alone and it goes on and on. I'm still too traumatised to touch them again.
A small force of post-heresy Iron Warriors that need to be finished, added to, made legal, etc. I'm planning to mix in a lot of pre-heresy stuff as well. And also stuff like IW Khorne Berserker warbands and so on.
A 3rd ed army of Mentor Legion, that just need transfers made and added to finish a bunch of them (plus, add more models, finish others). I created some on my Mac a million years ago, but the fixative on the transfer paper was an abortion, and I've never managed to find the missing PSD file. They do have an unfinished Dread in there already, though.
I've been planning an old-school look-and-feel Crimson Fists force for several years, initially to have been made of RT models, but now would also have a lot of Heresy-era models added as well.
Minotaurs (for my wife). I've got their crazy Contemptor Dread model as well.
Blood Angels and Flesh Tearers - a combined army I haven't started painting, though I've got a painted BA Contemptor I got off Nerdfest/Damo which is the "start" of the painted models there.
Black Templars. I've got a few variously painted, but nothing army-worthy yet.
Other various chapters in smaller and larger amounts. I read an article about "Crusade Armies" in an old, old RT-era WD that talked about forces made of small elements from many chapters and have always wanted to do one of those, as an excuse to paint lots of different Marine Livery and still use them. So I've got bits of lots of different chapter-specific stuff, and have accumulated literally hundreds of unbuilt marines. So it's pretty open in a lot of ways, both pre-and-post Heresy...
Automatically Appended Next Post: Uhm. SO after all that, I'd probably lean towards Crimson Fists, Iron Warriors or Minotaurs.
for including lots of different chapters in a singualr force - there's always the deathwatch. OK the different livereies are limited to a single pauldron!!!! Still - very very cool lot the deathwatch.
Saving that - black templars are pretty awesome.
Heh, I've also got sufficient models bought (hoarded) for Deathwatch and Grey Knight armies. I'd still really like to get a whole lot of 500-1k pt Marine armies done at some stage, which I could then combine into larger forces for games as needed.
That's essentially part of the plan once I get the backlog done, but for December I'm going to chuck the big plans and rules out the window and just enjoy painting. As long as I finish whatever I start, it'll all be good.
That zombie dragon needs to be finished or, faling that, sent to me. That ghostly thing on the left is pretty sweet, as well
Crimson Fists rock. I have a mid-sized CSM force patterned after them, as well as a bunch of RT era stuff that was going to be a loyalist force until I gave up on 40K. I'd like to see your take on the 'Fists.
From your list: I vote for either of the AoW ogres.
Would love to see one of the AoS lords painted in your distinct style. That or the Marauder giant, which is a classic (although weirdly not nearly as cool as the older citadel giant).
I have always loved the Deathwatch models. I am amazed GW hasn't released a plastic boxed set to make a Deathwatch squad. Would have thought it would be a huge seller.
Yeah, they're pretty nice. I have a bunch of the metal parts and even started (and never finished) a squad. I've mostly been painting Fantasy stuff in the past year, due to getting into KoW - but there's a decent amount of 40k in the part-painted backlog that I'll be getting onto.
Or you could just send it to me. I am sure I have need of it in my plan for armies.......just kidding far better you work your paint magic than let me get my mitts on them.
Actually, I should thank(!) you for reminding me that they're there (in a case). It means I can fish them out and complete them without it being starting a new project! If I finish the Mordor Uruks that I'm painting at work, I can even slot them in to the work slot, because highlighting black.
Now the new stuff - Black Númenórean Standard Bearers!
Standard Bearers, you ask? Yeah. GW Never made any, but that's not important. They only produced three sculpts of Black Númenórean Warriors, and that was it. As fate would have it, I had two Warriors of the same sculpt who both had their swords broken off. I really wasn't sure what to do with them for awhile. Repairing those swords was right out since drilling into sword blades is a fool's errand. Make a polearm? Drop an axe in there? Bin both and just replace the models entirely? Ah, maybe it'd work to try and put a standard in there?
So I did. It worked.
Originally, I'd hoped to freehand an inscription into the flag, but it was just too small and ragged to do so. I spent a couple of hours working out an appropriate inscription, translating it into a bastardised mixture of Adûnaic and Black Speech (to stand in for Black Adûnaic, and because the available vocabulary of both are very limited) and even worked out how to write them in Adunaroth, thanks to another speculative page online. Then it was too big for the bloody banner, and so I just painted in the Eye of Sauron instead. Blah. Yes, the angle of the drapery and skulls look a little odd. at first. That is until you realise that he's in the midst of thrusting that banner skywards at an angle, and that's why it's all trailing behind at such an angle. You see? Reasons!
But what to add? What to use? Whatever it was, it needed to be spiky and unpleasant. After rejecting the Dark Elven banners that I had, I settled on these two, from the GW Chaos Marauders sprue. Both looked spiky and evil enough to pass for the fallen men of Númenór - and fit in well enough with the GW models. Sure, the skulls are a little big, but they must be from non-humans. Olog-Hai or something, right?
In the end, I managed to turn two junk models into what will become the centrepieces of their unit(s). As with the Wildmen, Golgfag's Ogres and quite a few other models from the last year or so, models I disliked for whatever reason have become models I'm really pleased with - which is always especially satisfying! I'll get some full unit shots of these guys and their cohorts up soon. First I have to finalise their leaders, and GW Mail order sent me the wrong blister, so I need to get that sorted out first. GWAU's customer service is really hard to get hold of these days for some reason - I've been trying to get the guy on the phone for three weeks and only succeeded once, just before he went home on a Friday night over a week ago...
Very, very cool and original conversions. Now I'm intrigued to see what you're using as unit leaders... if I were to guess, I'd say Castellans, but I'm pretty sure those are a bugger to get hold of these days...
Good call. For your new stuff I vote Epic.....or Starships.....
Actualy seriously have a look out for some of the painting competitions run randomly on Dakka great for giving you the impetus to paint something else....
Those Marauder banners are so useful, the fabric one is suitable for basically any evil/barbaric army and looks great on the Númenórean and the spiky one looks great too.
Weird that GWAu seems so difficult to deal with given how good a reputation they have in the UK. Maybe they are overworked or just have limited hours due to dwindling (I assume) Australian sales? Anyway hope you get the issue sorted soon.
Yeah, I've found a few more plastic banners that could be useful in other armies, so they'll start turning up as needed. I'm working with a ragged Beastman banner for a different unit of models now.
I think the main problem is that there's only one guy answering the phone at GWAU mail order these days. So I keep getting his answering machine and he apparent;y isn't great at returning calls if you leave a message. The last times I had issues were both a year or more ago and they answered first time and sorted the issues out very quickly.
I've just created a new thread for the Painting December Project - to give it a distinct identity (as much for myself as anyone else) and help crystalise it as something that will actually be a thing with selection, pre-production, a set start time and an actual end - as opposed to the open-ended army building and painting that I usually do.
So I've done bugger-all miniatures painting in the last few weeks, as work has gotten to the point of completely crazy-busy - with the small exception of a few 20-minute lunchtime chances on some Orcs.
I used to show WIP models a fair bit previously. I’ve done that a lot less in recent times, and with just under 2 weeks left until I have my time off (though still tons to do at work!), it’s also a small window of time where I am able to work on a few other projects – in this case gifts for people at work. This year, I’ve got three – all of which need to be completed in the 11 days before I finish. No pressure, then.
The first is a Littlest Pet Shop toy repaint. I’m turning a generic LPS cat toy into “Lil BUB“. Mounted, masked and sprayed grey with Mr Surfacer – which actually sticks nicely to the soft PVC of the toy. I probably shouldn’t have masked the eyes since I’m going to have to try and match those distinct gigantic saucers on the actual cat. Oops. I’ll figure something out. Coming along - it should be relatively easy to finish off. Then I need to spray it, let it dry and then take a bunch of photographs before giving it to it's recipient.
The second project is a Calavera – or Mexican “Sugar Skull”. This one is a Wedding present for a friend who really loves them. It took awhile to figure out how to create one of these. I decided to decapitate a 1:6 scale COO Model Skeleton who’d had a forearm breakage due to trying to post the overly-brittle plastic it is made of (yes, even after heating). It’s a nice feeling to be able to repurpose something that cost me that much into something besides wargame scenery – I was pretty POed when it broke and it’s just been sitting on a shelf getting glared at whenever I pass it by.
This one is more of a traditional modelling project, despite being made from a 1:6 Model. Neck is mounted on a 50mm rolled-edge base and that on top of a Secret Weapon Miniatures plinith. Not sure how I’ll decorate the plinith yet. It’ll depend very much on time available. I’d like to do something at the base of the neck as well – even a bit of greenstuff to blend it in with the base and give some additional stability. Again – I’ll have to work it out.
And this is where we’re up to…
The final part of this project is “Jinx” by Raging Heroes. I’ll write more about this one later, it was a gift from RH to it’s eventual recipient, but getting it so very late in the final wave of RH stuff has made things much more difficult than planned, especially as I’m going to have to buy some kind of chemical to remove the terrible mould release that Trollcast seem to use. TC’s equally-terrible choice of where to mount the channels for the additional parts is going to result in a loss of details and need for resculpting part of Jinx’ tail. If they’d added those exact same channels on the opposite side of the model it would not have interfered with Jinx’ tail at all. There’s also some pretty bed mould slip across the entire model, to the extent that if I find this on any of my other RH models when I finally get them all in hand and QA them, I’ll be asking for replacements. I’m not sure how or why RH allowed this poor level of quality through from Trollcast.
So with this in mind, and despite the kindness and good intentions from Mirielle, Jinx is going to be the bottom priority of these three. I'm still waiting on advice on the right kind of cleaning agent to get the awful mould release off so I can get it painted. In a week. Hopefully I can still get it done...
Very cool ideas for presents you have here. I do not really bother showing WIP's either, usually seems like a waste of time and by that point I am not going to change the scheme anyway. But these WIP's I like. I am a cat fan and owner but it is the sugar skull that I am looking forward to most.
Hope that work gets a little less hectic for you. Best of luck with the project.
Someone recommended Pine Sol to me in the Alien Host thread, and that worked pretty well, although a couple parts needed to be washed twice, and I haven't tried to paint any of them. Impact miniatures recommend using dish soap with a degreasing agent, although I'm not entirely convinced.
Some rough WIP shots from this afternoon's painting. Time to wrap it up for tonight though and get ready for shower, bed and work again.
Rollins' Sun is a little wonky, but that section of skull is pretty rough and features the joins between the sections, amongst other things. Still, it fits the Mesoamerican feel pretty well. While the Sugar Skull stuff might (mostly) not be my usual type of content, It's certainly good fun practicing my freehanding ahead of December's stuff. I think an extensively-tattooed marauder Giant is almost definately on the first-tier menu at this point....
2 weeks since my last post. The mad frenzy that is the end of the year at work was the thing that it is, though even more intense with me finishing up 2 weeks early, so my life for the past couple of weeks has been a cycle of go-to-work, come home, crash out and sleep for 3 hours, get up at 11 or 12, work for 2-4 hours, sleep until 6:30am, get up, go-to-work… repeat. Pretty much no time for gaming, videogaming, TV, hobby or anything else and mostly just extra sleep on the weekends. Just the odd post on Dakka in the middle of the night.
Now it’s over, and I’m on leave. The downside is that I still have several things to do for work, for others, and for the December project. I’ve basically just slept in chunks since Friday and cleaned up around the house a little bit. I did smaller 3 pieces of work for work tonight, leaving me with 3 larger pieces of work to do for work. Probably tomorrow and Tuesday.
I managed to finish one of the three gifts in time. The Calavera/Sugar Skull can be done by the middle of next week and still “work”, and similarly – I can get Jinx done in the next 2 weeks and still be able to give it, due to a small change in circumstances.
Anyway, I did manage to get one of the pieces completed, and the young lady who was the recipient was very happy with it.
Ooooph, sounds like a harsh work/life balance you had for a time there. Glad to see Lil' Bub done, and Leonard looks happy enough with him. As a cat man myself he gets a big thumbs up.
On a semi-related note, does anyone know where I might be able to get hold of round, non-lipped 50mm bases?
I really just need one of these, though they seem a but difficult to find at a reasonable price to get to me here in Australia.
Does anyone know of any UK-based discount retailer who sells them? Preferably someone with free worldwide shipping? I'd happily buy 30 quid worth of stuff (that I want anyway) at the same time to get a free shipping threshold.
I'd rather avoid US retailers, since US postage is pretty horrible these days and the transit time can be 2-3 weeks. UK places tend to have something like a 1 to 1.5 week turnaround.
You might think Vic Minis, located in the next state would be cheap and easy for something like this, but she charges US$4.50 for 5, plus another $5 for shipping, so US$9.50 for 5 bases or AU$13 which is a bit rich.
Thanks gents. Looking to min-max the postage element of it all. I don't really trust Wayland to despatch on time, unfortunately, and I've had poor experiences with them on more than one occasion in the past - so I'll probably give them a miss. I'll check the others and try to get something ordered tonight.
These figures were found in their half-finished state - and finished off about a month ago. They were pretty much the last things I finished before stopping/changing over to the December project. Two of them had broken pikes, but I was unfortunately only able to find one. I re-glued it with plastic cement, and as you can see, the repair is a little rough. The other guy is pretty much sitting out for an indeterminate time until I can either find his pike or care enough to drill it out and replace it with wire. Not anytime soon, then!
No matter - later on when there are many more, the broken-pike guys will just blend into the masses. I'll probably do 15 in the next batch of these for a total of 24, so I can set up either 2 regiments - or more likely - a horde of Pikemen for KoW. Not sure which rules to use for them yet. I'm thinking that their not-Chaos-Warriors list might be more appropriate for filmic LotR Uruks, though the pikes are going to be an issue. I'll figure it out later, I guess. Might have to be a customised unit profile, though I prefer to avoid those.
I'll get right onto that! ...when I start on the next batch of them. Much later.
I've just checked, and the completion of those guys brings my YTD total to 385 figures, which is more than I've ever finished before in a calendar year. It seems rather small compared to the amount I've bought this year, so that's a bit of an issue. I'll look into that a bit more in a couple of weeks when we all start doing our painting resolutions for 2016...
Ugh. I wouldn't know where to begin. I've bought quite a few historical armies this year - 4-5 for Bolt Action alone, lots of Perry and Warlord stuff, received a bunch of Mantic stuff, picked up a decent bit of resin, lots of stuff off eBay earlier in the year...
I've had many - too many - years like that. For the foreseeable future, I'm going to try to beat the previous year's record. This was my third year attempting to get 365 painted. In 2013 I got 158, and 2014 I got 319. For some figures, like Historical infantry in particular, they'll very much be painted to a tabletop level rather than doing my best, though they'll still need to hit a minimum quality level to keep me happy.
Automatically Appended Next Post: SUPPLY DROP!!!!!
Ok, a lot of this stuff has been a long time coming and has just happened to arrive all at once:
Video Games: PS4 Lego Batman 3
PS4 Just Cause 3 Medici Edition
PS4 Dragon Quest Heroes Spec Ed.
Tabletop Games: Zombicide Black Plague Core box
2x Battle for Calth (2 more due anytime now)
2x Dungeon Saga Carton A
Cthulhu Wars DVM pledge (I'm not game to try and unbox/inventory those yet - maybe on the weekend, or in a week's time!)
Warlord German (FJ) army deal + extra support weapons + transfers for my British armour
42 Various Sprues from Warlord's Black Friday Sale (16 Germans, the others various historical command sprues)
Sarissa Industrial Battlefield
1:6 scale figures: 2x DAM FSIN Saturn
2 x VTS Black Storm Guard
1 x Soldier Story KSK
Automatically Appended Next Post: Oh. Calth. Um, not sure yet. Just stockpiling for now. I'll eventually assemble and paint a bunch of them as either 30k or 40k. Might even play the boxed game!
I'd be interested in seeing the Zombicide Black Plague Figures if you get a chance to snap some more photos.
Did you only get the Dungeon Saga Core A boxes? I'd of thought that you would have done some expansions, Or did they arrive earlier and I'm just so far out of the loop.
Great job on 385 . I might....Might hit 300 this year, which equal what i've done in the past 5-10 years combined
I used to be more into the 1:6 stuff, with lots of Hot Toys, movie figures, etc before their prices blew up a couple of years ago. Now I just get the odd military one, as well as various unlicenced movie/pop culture ones. The hardest part of that hobby is storage and display.
I'll see if the wife wants to crack open ZBP tomorrow - if so, I'll take some pics. With DS, they sent me my expansions directly (with their usual selection of missing and broken bits) which I've had for maybe a month now and the core boxes have only just arrived now.
And Theo.... only 300? You seem to paint hordes of zombies in your sleep. I can't believe it's only added up to 300?? When I look at my zombies and then your ones it makes me cry...
Nice Uruk Hai! I was going to use mine as an allied pikemen block from Kingdoms of Men, since they're neutral and can ally with anyone.
385 is a really good total for the year. I'm also working to try and get up to the 365 total, but I don't think I'll make it. I find the prospect of actually playing with stuff really motivates me to paint it, so I'm painting piles of stuff for RPGs at the moment and my historical armies are still sitting in their box unpainted even though intellectually I am excited about them, I just know it'll be a good while before I get to play with them. So I've done a surprisingly large number of Board Game minis this year, and bugger all historicals, which was my plan originally.
That's a mega-haul there, btw. Looking forward to seeing you work through it!
Just adding a couple of photos here since the December Project thread will fade into obscurity once it's done, while this one will remain as the main depository of my models here on Dakka.
Thanks guys. It went through some points where I wasn’t sure about he weathering but in the end I’m quite happy with it, and I really appreciate the confirmation. Now onto the other two, and if I can get them finished, I’ll add another for December.
Having the Talos done brings me to 386 for 2015.
There's some other 2015 stuff I've painted that I'll try and show off here shortly.
Yeah it’s a bit trite, but I don’t care. Have a great Christmas all. Enjoy the time with your families, friends and a bit of quiet time for painting, gaming, sleeping in, gorging and binging (on Netflix, natch!)
Here's this year’s Christmas Loot! (The Calth boxes got repurposed as gifts via the magic of Christmas Money.
They say that you shouldn’t post your presents to social media because criminals. I totally get that, so it’s lucky that my real name ain’t on here, I don’t use geotagged photos, and probably that my loot this year is a 14-year old boy’s dream, but notsomuch for “proper” grownups and criminals.
More models and games in the days to come, and I’ll have to come up with my gaming resolution(s) for 2016…
Wow, great haul, very jealous. We are being terrible parents and making the kids wait till this afternoon to open their gifts . We will be heading to my parents for Christmas brunch shortly so they will get goodies there.
Also 300 is a rough guess. I know there's at least 200 zombies, plus space marines various other gribbley things. I did take about 6 months off though between my moms sickness and a malaise I was having at the beginning of the year (which is sort of returning now).
Joyboozer wrote: What do you use icestix for? Is that just an unfortunate choice of name?
Make your own icy-poles with juice or whatever. They're actually pretty good. And yeah, Thrax, I had a brief WTF are those? moment when I opened the wrapping paper...
Did you get Black Plague, Theo? Perhaps a different type of Zombie will spark your spirit again?
Thanks Grim. We watched a doco about Spartans today (after one about the early Assassins) and so started assembling a boc of Warlord/Immortal Spartans. Historicals for KoW, essentially. They'll be painted in a much more "git 'er done" way than most of my Fantasy stuff. Nothing worth photos yet, though.
Paradigm wrote: Nice collection of stuff there indeed! Merry Christmas!
What's the large thing with the T-70 X-wing on? A book? A model?
I haven't posted anything new from the December project in awhile. It's because I'm honestly not enjoying painting Be'lakor or the giant at this point. Bel's flesh-and-black look is tedious to paint, and the Giant's clothing issues are once again completely off-putting. (They're why he didn't get painted 20-odd years ago). So I've mostly been playing videogames instead, and after watching a documentary with Marouda about Spartans a couple of days ago, decided to harness her brief moment of enthusiasm and see if she wanted to work with me to assemble and paint up some Spartans together.
We cracked open the Warlord box, and found that their rebadged Immortal Miniatures sprues are completely the same across all three of their Greek ranges - the only difference being a unique command sprue for each. Bell (bronze muscle) curiasses are rare in each box (one per sprue of 8), with the majority wearing Linothorax (linen armour) and two out of every 8 wearing only robes. The command sprues add one more Bell curiass and another robe-wearer. So - no units uniformly all wearing bell curiasses unless we wanted to loot all of them from the other Greek boxes with the result that they would then have none in their units.The Spartan box's main distinguishing feature is a bunch of heads wearing the Pilos helm on the command sprue. So we had some decisions to make.
In the end we went for a "idealised fantastic" selection for the Spartans. We both felt that while the pilos helm might be accurate for (late) Sparta, it's ugly. So we went for a majority of corinthian-style helmets (worn earlier) which we'll be pairing with shields bearing the lambda (worn later). We're going with the Lambda to easily distinguish the Spartans from other Greeks and also the Macedonians that will be painted and assembled later. I know (from the research that I did while working out our options for these models) there are people over on TMP who'd happily tell me that I'm doing it wrong, a heathen and more besides, we're going for models that look aesthetically pleasing (to us) that can also be distinguished easily as Spartans by ourselves and out friends. Rivet-counters be damned!
The models took 3 days to assemble, and were sprayed last night with a Tamiya dark red. This morning I gave them a zenithal highlight of a brighter Army Painter red. Now I'm troweling acrylic putty onto the round Renedra bases to make their integral bases stand out a little less. In my researching, I found that the colour of the Linothorax worn by Spartans is debated, and may have possibly been red rather than buff/white so I think we'll go with the red, along with their robes and skirts in red.
These being historical figures of troopers rather than anything special, they'll be getting "fast, tabletop" paintjobs - with the same mentality of "get them done" as my Moria Goblins or the plastic Gondor Rangers. Base coat, simple highlight and wash, then a matte spray basically. The aim is to look good as a unit on the table from a foot or two away rather than look good as individual models.
Hopefully Marouda will keep her interest so we can get them finished inside a week - and then I can get back to this giant and daemon that have sapped my enthusiasm with a refreshed attitude.
Spartans look really good. I'm not enough of a history buff to say "there should be more/none of that armor", so all is well here.
I did get Black Plague, along with prison outbreak and recently getting Rue Morgue. I'm not at a loss for wanting to paint, just kind of waiting for the new year. Plus I hurt myself at work a couple months ago and sitting for prolonged times was not a good option. I'm back on the mend though.
My wife (as a practicing archaelogist) would be able to argue the colour of their gear til the cows come home of you ever wanted. Can be quite fun pushing her buttons about it a lot of the time.
As the end of another year comes to a close, it’s only natural that people stop and take stock of the year that was. For hobbyists like ourselves – or indeed any people who work on projects or hobbies of ongoing concern it makes sense to look over what you’ve managed to achieve and look forward to make plans for the following year. Resolutions are a “normal” way to do this but I’m too old for that now, and I’d rather just keep (trying to) make incremental improvements and do better with various things all year ’round.
Hobby goals on the other hand, are perfectly legit. My main goal this year was to simply paint more models. Soft target was to beat last year’s total of 319 models and the Hard target was to paint 365 models. Last year I was well on target until I just stopped painting around October-November and petered out with 319. This year I had my eye on it, and watched myself sink into the same late-winter funk as worked ramped up to ridiculous levels at the end of the year. I credit painting at work for getting me through that painful time with some productivity, since there were more than a few weeks when the only painting that I managed to do was that 20minutes or so during lunchtime at work. In the end, I finished with 388. The list is already at the top of the page, so I’ll just link it rather than repeating it here – though I’ll have a separate “2015: Year in Review” post up shortly.
Hip Hop Hooray?
Now I’d like to look over my “other” goals from the last two years and see how I am with them now, at the dawn of 2016. For my own curiosity as much as anything else.
Goals for 2014:
Fantasy: Finish the 2k pts Ogre Army for KoW – NOPE. Close, but hasn’t been on the radar for awhile. The two Chariots have been an issue.
Paint a 2k pts Dark Elf/Twilight Kin Army for KoW – NOPE. Not even close. The first unit got cockblocked by the banner. I should finish that.[/color[
Paint a 300?600? pt Allied Detatchment for KoW to ally with others (Giant, Trebuchet, Wolves) – [color=green]YEP – These have happened. They’ve mostly grown to army status.
Paint an Undead Army for KoW using GW, Mantic and LotR Undead (also doubles as an Army of the Dead for LotR SBG and WotR!) – YEP. Not every undead model I own is painted, but we have a fully-painted and functional Undead Army at this point.
Finish a ton of Men of Gondor for SBG/WotR and KoW armies of Man – YEP. This started as one of those detatchments, and grew into a rather large (for me) painted army. Still lots more models to go.
40k:
Resurrect/update my previously-finished old Dark Angels Combat Patrol into a 6th Edition 600-pt Combat Patrol
Paint 600-odd points of Deathwing as a CP Paint 600-odd points of Ravenwing as a CP Add some extra DA stuff back in – like the almost-finished Dreadnought, Asmodai, etc and Bingo! 2k+ point DA army!
NONE of the 40k stuff happened. I could blame the royal confusing clusterfeth that 40k’s rules have become in the past couple of years and it’s certainly a factor, but I simply haven’t gotten my Fantasy stuff done to the point where I’ve been able to move back to 40k.
2015’s Goals:
Last year at this time, I was still pretty much burned out on painting, and didn’t really set any goals. Over the course of the year, some “happened”, though. The first one was to COMPLETE my Gondor army for LotR/KoW. By this I mean to have every model that I own painted, with the only exceptions being any odd dregs leftover that didn’t fit into units. This later morphed into painting all of the Minas Tirith models, with the fiefdoms, particularly Dol Amroth to be their own, separate project.
The reason the above morphed so was because I got a ton of Moria Goblins painted, and decided that I’d like to paint every one of the little suckers that I own to get them done and dusted. I had about 140-ish plastics and a couple of dozen metals to go, plus a couple of trolls, etc. So Dol Amroth got downgraded.
But then – in order to have room for all of this, I decided I needed to clear off my painting desk, but not in the usual manner of dumping all of the half-painted models into cases and back onto shelves and into boxes, but to finish the bloody things off.
This became my penultimate project of 2015, as I got an awful lot of stuff done, and widened my scope to include figures that had been rotting in model cases for a long time, “finished” by the standard of their original day, but disliked enough by me to keep them there. Often it just took a new base and a bit of touch up to bring them back to life with a standard that I’m happy with today.
Finally, I had enough of all that, and decided that I wanted to paint some centrepiece models. I booked 2 weeks of Long Service Leave from work (I’ve never taken any before) and decided that I’d try to prep the models beforehand, and from December 4th when I finished, I’d get stuck right in. Well, as the best laid plans have it, instead of a clean break – I ended up doing an hour or so of work from home each day for the first week and then a bit more in the second. Which, frankly, was bs. Of the three models I selected to paint in December, I got one completed, and the other two have both stalled out at this point.
So now what? Well, time to set some goals for 2016. Here goes:
Paint more models overall – Soft Target is now 365, and Hard Target is 389 – one more than last year.
I think this is very achievable. I’ve got some small scenic items in mind to give me a nice initial boost for January. It’s not cheating – it’s planning!
Get a completed army worth of Ogres Finished – I’ll need to redo my lists since points changed in KoW, but I’m thinking 2k minimum with 3k as an ideal.
I haven’t counted them in awhile, plus changes to points costs. But I figure I’ve got close to 2k painted already, but I need to paint the Captain and ASB on chariots to have a “completed” army.
Finish all of my Moria Goblins – not much has changed here. I still need to do a GW direct order for about $200 for the last “bits”
Much the same as before. about 140 models plus some extras. They’re pretty simple to mass paint, so I think I can do it.
Finish all of my Minas Tirith Figures – Again carried over from an organic 2015 goal.
This one could be tricky, but then, they’re good fodder for painting at work.
Encourage Marouda to Paint more – never hurts to have a Hobby Apprentice, right? Or should I get extra geek points for instead saying Hobby Padawan?
She seems to have a confidence issue and is having difficulty with the “just keep painting” approach to getting better and more confident.
Greeks on the Table – Get the Mythical Greeks to the point where they’re a playable force. Even only an allied contingent in size.
Seems doable. I’ve got 2 units WIP right now, plus the Talos and the 2 Bulls. It shouldn’t be too much more to get them up and running. I'm taking the approach of researching them and then choosing to disregard whatever doesn't look as good in favour of what does.
Dark Angels on the Table – Resurrect/update my previously-finished old Dark Angels Combat Patrol into a 7th Edition 1k-point force.
Mostly I think I need to bring my 3rd-ed sub-10 squads up to full 10s. And get someone to do a list for me. Archer?
Get more half-painted crap finished – an ongoing project, methinks.
Might take more than 2016 to get it done, but I want to have the part-painted backlog finished within a year or two.
Allow myself more fun – Stop the regiments more frequently and allow myself to paint a dragon, a hero, a cool monster, a forge world model. And try to it at least once a month.
We’re all gonna die one day. May as well take the time to paint and finish some of the nicer models!
Oh yeah. Happy New Year and all that. Thanks to all of the people who read - and especially post on this blog. The feedback I get from posting here really makes a huge difference in helping to keep me motivated. But you knew that, anyway!
Good stuff Az. You sure did get a ton of great stuff done this past year. Have really enjoyed following your blog as you went along. Would defintiely love to see you take on some 40k but then I'm biased good luck in the new year and looking forward to more
I really enjoyed your painting fest this year with all the flash back models. Very motivational and getting the walk down memory lane was great as well. You definitely deserve to do a fun model every now and again. I seem to keep getting distracted by those, and the deals I get, but they are good to break up the monotony of massed hordes. Will definitely be watching for the spartans
I've enjoyed watching you blast through all these minis this year, and I love your more "bloggy" posts (I have been known to check out your actual blog as well ).
Thanks guys - I'm hoping that the goals will be achievable. Given how long it's taking me for the Giant and Be'lakor, I'm not sure if I'll get a big-cool model painted every month, but having it there will hopefully encourage me to do more of them.
Thanks, Boss, while a lot of the content gets posted in both places, I do some other stuff there, and usually have a few more pics of the models as well.
Turns out my "Year In Review" post with all of the pictures is going to take me literally hours to transfer to Dakka because I'd have to re-embed the images and then re-imbed the links into each image - so I'm going to use the time working on getting the first batch of those Spartans finished instead (and hopefully playing some more Max Payne 3)
I'll leave a link here for anyone who wants to look over a year's worth of painted miniatures in one post (with links to each individual entry)
It's a very good set up for keeping track. I got a free calendar from one of the doctors at the hospital I work at, I was just going to keep track of it.
Love the goals. Should keep you going strong. Definitely think letting up on massed infantry and doing something special is so worth it. Can really get the enthusiasm going again.
I actually forgot three more goals that I've been wanting to get done:
Minotaurs on the Table – Get 1k points worth of Minotaurs Space marines built, assembled and painted.
I've easily got the models, the scheme is pretty straightforward, and it gets Marouda a 40k army of her own (somewhat) into existence.
Iron Warriors on the Table – Resurrect/update my previously-half-finished Iron Warriors Combat Patrol into a 7th Edition 1k-point force.
I need to finish the models I started, and no doubt add a few more. They might well be a mixture of models painted as pre-heresy and "modern" IW. Vikings and their Foes - Get two warbands built for games of SAGA. Vikings, and one other.
That's what? 30-odd figures a side? Very doable, though 60 figures is a good chunk of annual output as well...
I'll need army list help for both, of course... since I hate list-making, especially in it's usual overly-competitive form. If I can get both finished - amazing, but if I can get them both well on their way, that'd be fantastic in and of itself.
Do you mean list building for the marine armies or the SAGA stuff? Just do what I do and build lists you like the models/back story/aesthetic and then damn the torpedoes and get them on the table top
SAGA I can do myself. 40k list building is the main obstacle to me actually getting any forces built or put together. For some reason I just hate doing it these days. I've got the core of both the Dark Angels and Iron Warriors done, and know some of the things I want to have in the Minos. but it's filling in the gaps and then the expansion beyond what's already "assigned" that's the nightmarish part - especially since I'm so far out of the 40k loop these days.
Anyway, I finished some stuff today:
These twelve models are the first of 36 Spartans that Marouda and I started painting the other day after watching a doco about (who else?) Leonidas and Thermopylae. She seemed enthusiastic enough, and off we went. It took three days to clean and assemble the 36 models, and with a bit of daily painting, we've (well, almost entirely myself) have gotten the first dozen done. I swapped in a lot of the bronze bell curiasses into this group. Initial paint as noted the other day was a dark Tamiya red spray with a Zenithal highlight of Army Painter Red. Maybe I have a crappy can, but that AP spray really leaves a horrid grainy finish. I don't think I'll buy their stuff again. I'd rather pay a slight premium and buy GW or Tamiya's coloured primers.
Anachnonistic Spartans showing their shields. Ready for SAGA Ancients! Whenever that becomes a thing.
The Warlord (formerly Immortal) figures are decent enough, and have both positives and negatives. The sprues that make up the majority of the kits are identical between the Spartans, Ancient Greeks and Classical Greeks, with only the command sprues offering any differentiation or extra pieces. The Spartans come with a sheet that has 90 Lambdas, though that's broken up into 30 White, 30 Black and 30 Red - so if you want uniformity from your box of 40 figures, you need to buy more. Except - here's the kicker - Warlord don't actually sell them!
I got lucky with Warlord's quality customer service when I called them the other day and asked to order several sheets. I paid for the EIR sheets and they're going to manually swap them out for the Spartan sheets, which will give me enough to have some freedom on my boxes of Victrix Spartans that don't come with any decals at all.
Of course when they're front on, you can't see their armour decorations.
I did my research before putting together or painting these guys. The Warlord models don't come with cloaks at all, which is a shame. There's differing opinion on whether Spartan linothorax armour (the linen armour) was dyed red or not, so I went with "yes". Similarly with the horsehair crests, there appears to be differing opinions on red or black and white, or some combination. Since the Spartans were around for quite some time, I'd guess both are probably correct. Similarly, I chose a "Hollywood" style anachronistic combination of the Corinthian Helmet (worn in earlier times) over the Pilos, along with the Lambda (used in later times - and not yet at the time of Thermopylae). Let's face it - if anyone were to decide that they don't want to play with us because the Spartans aren't historically accurate (and knowingly so! GASP!) then I probably didn't want to play someone like that anyway.
It wasn't until taking these photographs that I realised I forgot to flock the figures. I'll have to do that tomorrow. I might go over the shields again with a satin varnish. The matt is a little washed out. These models aren't going to win any painting competitions, but it's been a nice thing to finish a dozen models - a unit - from sealed box to ready for the table (after flocking!) in only 1 week. They're at a tabletop standard that I'm quite happy with for historical models that I literally have hundreds of (roughly 900-1000 plastic infantry between the various types of Greeks and Macedonians - ouch!) It's also been a good learning experience on what to do and what not to do. Now to get the other two dozen of this batch finished!
It also means that my painting total for 2016 is 12 models after 3 days!
Great job on the spartans. Only note is you glued all the "V's" upside down .
As for 40K lists, I can't even bring myself to looking at GW rulebooks. If anything grab an older codex and add 20% to your points for each previous edition back that you go and you will probably be good.
Very nice! About the AP sprays, they're really good, but unlike other sprays, you have to be VERY close when spraying. Like max 10-15 cm or something. If you're spraying from further away, like you do with GW for example, they'll dry before they hit the mini and you'll get that grainy finish.
I enjoyed your photographic retrospective for 2015. I remember seeing all of those minis as you posted them, but seeing them again all together really showed just how much you got done last year.
I hope you meet and exceed all your goals for next year!
So I'm bored.
Yes, I've got stuff to finish off, and a pile of painting goals for 2016, but I'm bored.
Like many people, I read and thoroughly enjoyed Paul Sawyer & co's "Tale of Four Gamers" from WD in the 1990's and have always wanted to do something similar, but of course never really happened. There was a thing last year or the year before with monthly painting challenges on Dakka, but it petered out, as these things do. Full Army-building challenges are obviously hard to do and maintain, what with the majority of us having work and/or study, not to mention significant unexpected life events scattered through the year. I like Para's monthly painting challenges, but my brain is usually too full of horsegak from work to be able to think much outside of my little box and plan mini-dios, etc and actually start (let alone finish) an entry.
A Tale of Four or Six or whatever gamers probably won't work. Especially since most of us will never be able to play against each other, and that seems a useful key to those particular projects. I think Archer is the only one around here who's even in the same city as I am, but I believe he's right over the other side, way East.
So I'd like to figure out something that a bunch of us can and would be interested in doing for a year, or even six months - regardless of geographical locale. I guess we'd probably want to have some sort of common theme to tie what we do together better than "I painted an ancient greek spartan this week" "cool, I painted a mantic zombie" "lovely, I painted a chaos space marine" "and I did a TIE fighter". Unless we all chose an army/force and tried to meet targets. Though we'd want them to be achievable first and foremost - something to encourage painting rather than seem like more bloody work and deadlines. And also something that wouldn't interfere with our existing projects/goals for the year, either. Unless whatever it was was adaptable to also cover one or some of people's individual projects.
I dunno. I'm really open to ideas. I'd be fine with it being flexible enough to cover "brand new" projects and also people's existing WIP projects. Whether it's a motivator to start new models or just finish off old ones - I think allowing for both would be better than making a bunch of strict rules that all models must start off new, etc.
I guess the first thing to do is see who'd be interested in joining in, then we can thrash out what we'd like to do and what the "rules" would be - then we can move it from here and give it it's own thread?
"A Tale of Several Painters" sounds delightful. If we need a shared theme, a lot of people are working on Dungeon Saga, so that might work. I have a bunch of half-finished games that I want to get done this year as well-- Dreadfleet, Sedition Wars, and Myth stand out, as well as a ton of Deadzone stuff and most of Bones 1-- and I know that I'm not the only one. Maybe a round robin challenge, where every participant chooses something from another's list that they want to see?
There's a lot of people here such as myself working on Zombies. We could challenge everyone to paint their zombie hordes wether they are Zombicide, GW, Mantic or WGF and keep a running total. It would be fun if there was a map that could track hotspots by color code and geographic location. The winner is the most infected or one who painted till they dropped....then got back up and painted more.
But I could probably also go for dungeon saga, sedition wars or blood rage as all of those are in boxes around me with some having been primed.
I like Theo's idea about the geographic numerical something or another happening. Be it zombie outbreaks, or a loose generic fantasy campaign where the imaginary borders of good and evil are pushed back and forth based on how many good or evil things everyone paints. I could shuffle some things around to participate as much as possible, though my entries would be spotty at best what with the kids.
I think you may have to figure up some kind of poll or something.. figure out where the most interest is. It would be nice if the campaign thing could have the loosest possible theme to allow the largest number of participants given varied interest... but at some point narrowing down a proper theme would be necessary for the narrative. I guess?
I dunno. I don't have the time or energy to manage anything these days... but if you do, then do it And tell me the parameters for my participation
Well, the way I see it is that we need at least a very loose "theme" of some kind to make it more than simply our usual plogging updates - but more flexible than "We're all going to build 2k point 40k armies with a minimum of 200pts per month painted" which will allow more of us to participate. One Blog I follow (Cheetor's Sho3box) has a thing with Mr Saturday where they alternate having a single Judge Dredd/2000AD model painted every fortnight (so one a month, each).
Or it could be "pick a single army for the year from any game you play and get a legal unit painted for it each month" so as a collective we all end up with more painted and cohesive armies at the end of it (and people like Archer can participate while gliding through 3 or 4 armies for the year!) That's fairly flexible to the point where "I'm counting all of my Black Plague Runners as a unit" or "My Dungeon Saga Orcs & Gobboes" sound perfectly reasonable as well and stops scatterbrains like myself from simply having 12 units painted in a year for 12 different games/armies. I figure - as with most wargaming campaigns, the simpler the better - and if it works we can thrash out more advanced rules at the end of the 6 or 12-month campaign. Actually, I'm thinking 6 months might be a good length of time if we went for an army-unit-based "theme" - at the end we could continue with the same force for the Challenge, or go for something completely different.
Though the geographical thing might have legs.. we could split into "teams" based on geography, or even "good/evil" forces for some friendly banter and very casual competition.
Hm.. I'm liking the sound of "pick an army (or boardgame) and get a unit painted each month" more and more as I think about it. It allowed anything from KoW armies to Imperial Knights, to a Wing of TIEs to whole sets of Zombicide and/or DKQ through to Infinity and beyond! (sorry!)
What do you guys think of that as a loose-enough theme? Who'd be up for it?
Well, I think if we can get at least 4 of us who are keen, this weekend can be the "official" starting date, and then allow maybe a week for any more people who want to join in the first "campaign".
Essentially we'd each be setting our own restrictions by the project that we decide we'd want to complete (or make solid headway on) in the time.
Call the finish date the end of July, and allow people to call January a "full" month, a "half" month (with a smaller "getting started" unit target?) or roll it into Feb as a "combined" month?
I'll call it a full month if I can continue my zombie horde. I'd ideally love to finish way before July, but that is a good target date. Especially if I disappear for 6 months again.
Well the idea is really just something to help us with motivation to get stuff finished with a bit of focus along with a bit of fun - I'm more than happy for people to continue working on projects and models that are already started. Besides, if you call your project "Zombicide" you can add in the survivors, zombivors, appropriate scenery (barricades), model cars, Black Plague/Hasslefree/Studio/Heresy models, buildings, etc - anything that fits!
So if people would like to call the rest of Jan a full month or a half-month, I'm fine either way.
I just did a horde of zombies so I'll have to sit that out!
A very well spent year you've had Azazelx. Lovely spartans too. Ancient armies are fun. I have a yen for the historical and really wanted to get some samurai this year myself.
Thank you, Weety - though you'd be more than welcome to join in.
I don't mean that it wouldn't be one "Zombies" project for all - just that Theo might choose "Zombies" or "Zombicide" as his project while mine might be "Gondor" and Grim might do "Infinity" and Josh Might do "Dwarf King's Quest".
You might choose "RT and 2nd Edition 40k Orcs and Gobbos" or just "40k Greenskins". Or anything else that you like.
Me and theo are working on zombicide it sounds like a few people are working on dungeon saga. Could have something along the lines of a tale of 6 board games
Yeah. Since it's looking like it'll actually become a thing now, I'll probably post it up tomorrow around noon with the "rules" and such since it's 10:30pm here now and I've gone some stuff on early in the morning.
Januine wrote: 5 'stealers down and a hulkload more to go!
Sounds like you've already started!
You're more than welcome to, Slinky!
Spoiler:
did the Broodlord and 4 pals a few months ago to try out a possible colour scheme. Now I have to find the bloody recipe I used (if I even wrote it down >< ) for the rest of them
Archer - I think I'm going to go with something loose enough for people to choose their own wargame faction or boardgame and run with it. We can see how well it goes, and do another one starting in July based on how it turns out, and work out of we want it more or less prescriptive.
Well, now that the paint challenge is definitely a thing, I need to work out what I'm going to paint for it. I've narrowed it down to three choices, each with their own pros and cons:
Gondor
Pros: Defined ending/most complete-able - I have a limited number of models to go and don't intend to buy any more. - When it's done it's done - unlike both of the others.
Pretty easy to paint in general.
Looks awesome on the table.
I can work on them at work.
Marouda can help a bit.
I use them for Kings of War which I'm (theoretically) playing as well as SBG, etc.
Cons: Kinda boring to actually paint.
Cloaks and flags can be very fiddly if I paint the White Tree on them.
Undead
Pros: Pretty quick and easy to paint in general.
I enjoy painting bone.
I can work on them at work.
Marouda can help more. Encouraging/teaching her to paint is a good thing.
Zombicide Black Plague figures can count.
A good mix of simple models, intricate models and big cool models.
Can (later) be split into Generic Vampiric Undead and Tomb Empire of Dust Kings
Kings of War again.
Cons: It's an army for Marouda
So, so very many figures to paint. Way more than Gondor.
Iron Warriors
Pros: 40k. I haven't painted 40k in ages.
I own lots of models and parts to choose from - modern plastics, RT metals, Forge World, Puppetswar, upgrade packs, plus vehicles
Mix of 30k and 40k models
Enjoyable to paint.
Fewer(?) models per unit to make a "legal army?
Cons: Much more work per individual model than either of the others.
Marouda probably can't help much - more advanced project.
No defined end point since I have so many marines and marine parts. Way more in turn than Undead
40k. I haven't played 40k in years now and may not at all this year.
I should have some actual painted models up a bit later today, I got some painting gifts finished last night that went out this morning. In the meantime I need to finish the last of those Spartans and mull over the three options above. I'd be happy to see what people's thoughts are, though - since I could easily see myself doing (and enjoying) any of the three.
What models would you be using for undead? GW or WGF naked skeletons would be fast but boring; Mantic ar more interesting visually but take longer to paint because of their armor/clothes.
If I went with undead, I've got some started stuff that would be first up to finish - Undead Ogres, Dracoliche (Undead Dragon), Bone Giant are all clogging up my table with their unfinished-ness. Then I've got a bunch of those Brigade Models single-piece metal skeletons - archers with flayed clothing, warriors with sickles and shields.
Then pretty much almost anything.TK Warriors, Corpse Carts, a Black Coach, GW and Mantic Cavalry, Mummies, 2x old-school Screaming Skull/Skull Chukka, the new TK Screaming Skull, GW Vampire Knights or whatever they're called, old and new GW skellies and zombies, Mantic skellies, zombies and ghouls, Vargheist, a million Bones models, a pile of random GW metals and heroes, the entire Plack Plague box....
Like I said, there's easily enough for two (or more) pretty big armies here, and it'll eventually be split into Undead and Not-TK once enough numbers and faceless troops get painted.
In that case, I vote for Minas Tirith first. I predict that, when you finish off that army entirely, you can ride the wave of satisfaction through at least 100 other models.
I'm all for Undead/Zombies. I'm a little one tracked mind with them at the moment, so they take the stage for me. Though I am also an Iron Warriors fan and would love to see what you could do with those, but like you I have no 40K urges right now.
While I find Gondor a bit boring, your guys look great ranked up and I can imagine it's a very visually pleasing army on the table.
Undead is more "fun" and you seem to have a lot of interesting models for it, but I wonder if the nature of the models might lead to a bit of frustration due to their complicated nature in some cases (stuff like the Corpse Cart looks really cool but might be a pain to paint to your high standards and with your "clean", crisp painting style, for example).
I've no interest in 40K stuff any more (my Word Bearers project stalled completely dead with the release of 7th edition and I haven't touched it since) so I'd pick one of the two fantasy options if it were me. Probably Gondor to get something actually "done", which always a nice feeling.
My vote is split between Gondor and the undead. If the Gondor are significantly lower in number maybe do those since it's something you can definitely finish.
I would say Gondor or Undead. I find it difficult to get excited about space marines anymore.
Would it be worth splitting them into Not TK and Generic Undead before you start painting them in order to have the more manageable goal of painting only one of those forces instead of both?
Llamahead - I've been putting off so, so much. I'll enjoy painting the Iron Warriors more than a lot of the Fantasy stuff, though - so I think I might keep them for the second half of this year. I tend to get into a bit of a painting (and general) funk around September-October, so if I'm concentrating on IW it'll be a nice reward for the top half of the year.
For the moment, I'm seriously considering going with something a bit silly, and trying for dual Gondor and Undead. I do have a rationale, though - Both armies can be worked on at work (I have criteria of a very limited palette and nothing too tricky for work - skeletons and plastic Gondormen fit that well). I've got 2 units for Gondor well on their way to completion. 4 if I count heroes. I've also got 3 units for the Undead well on their way, also clogging up my table. All of these models have been hanging around for months and bloody months, so maybe I can actually get the lot of them off the table. I'll naturally be painting more than just challenge miniatures as well, so this also gives me the chance to mix things up and keep myself interested while also having a deadline to get MOAR STUFF painted instead of, say, 24 Men of Minas Tirith followed by another 24 Men of Minas Tirith because
I'm happier to keep them in one undefined blob for now, Carlos. Either way they're not especially manageable at this stage anyway - so a bigger variety gives me more choices to keep myself interested painting them.
As noted back when I started painting this model, Raging Heroes' Jinx was a gift for someone. There's a little story behind it, though - which I'll share now. Back when the RH KS1 pledge manager was a thing, I asked a question in the chat box and was answered by Mirielle. Now at times I've been both a strong supporter and also a strong critic of RH (sometimes at the same time), and not been shy to take the piss, either (Hey BrookM!) - so this led to a couple of interesting and quite amicable chats over a couple of days.
In those conversations, we talked about what we do a bit, and in there I mentioned how I worked with a young lady with ASD who is also completely in love with cats, to the point where she writes a blog based around my own cat. Mirielle made a very kind gesture, and offered to send out a 54mm sculpt of Jinx as a gift for this young lady. Fast forward to roughly a year later and the last wave of RH KS stuff arrived, including Jinx.
There was a bit of mold slip, which I was (mostly) able to clean up on a fairly tight timeframe, as I was attempting to get it finished before the 4th of December, when the young lady finished up and moved on. Since work becomes an actual nightmare at that time of year - as I've referenced before - it didn't get completed - cleaning the Trollcast resin just to get started was quite problematic, but I made arrangements with her parents to catch up with them and her over the start of the New Year. This gave me a chance to keep working on the model.
Since Jinx is theoretically one of those hairless cats, there's no fur texture. I decided not to worry about the "lore" but went instead for colours that would be acceptable in animation - something that would stand out - and so Jinx became a shorthair with purple fur. Highlighting and shading was going to be an issue with a model this big on a deadline, and I'm still far from confident with an airbrush, so I went with a very careful drybrush and wash combination, which seems to have come up quite nicely.
With purple, gold/brass was an easy choice for a nice contrasting colour for Jinx' jewellery. I'm sure gold jewellery could have had something to do with the choice of purple for Jinx' fur, but at this point I can't recall. The faint texture of the resin gives enough of an impression of very short fur, certainly on the 54mm Jinx. Basing was a bit of a quandry - I certainly wasn't going to add sand and flock or tufts, since this is a shelf ornament rather than a wargame model. In the end I went for classic black. I did a little more touch-up after these photos were taken, and varnish was applied immediately afterwards. Gloss varnish on the gems, eyes, etc, yesterday morning.
In the end, the large details were quite nice to paint, and not one of those painful models at all. I checked the RH webstore and it seems that the 54mm Jinx isn't available at all. I think perhaps the 54mm Mascots were exclusives limited to the Kickstarter campaign/backers? Most importantly of all, when I presented the model to her yesterday she was absolutely delighted and it was immediately decided that Jinx is "an Egyptian Cat". Her parents were also touched by the story behind it, so I do have to publicly offer a warm thank you again to Mirielle and Raging Heroes from all of us here.
Azazelx wrote: As noted back when I started painting this model, Raging Heroes' Jinx was a gift for someone. There's a little story behind it, though - which I'll share now. Back when the RH KS1 pledge manager was a thing, I asked a question in the chat box and was answered by Mirielle. Now at times I've been both a strong supporter and also a strong critic of RH (sometimes at the same time), and not been shy to take the piss, either (Hey BrookM!) - so this led to a couple of interesting and quite amicable chats over a couple of days.
My senses were tingling, something was triggered. But yeah, I'm in the same boat as you in all honesty, I want them to succeed for sure and they will get my money, but I also strongly feel that criticism has its place in it all. What a ride that was.
Azazelx wrote: In those conversations, we talked about what we do a bit, and in there I mentioned how I worked with a young lady with ASD who is also completely in love with cats, to the point where she writes a blog based around my own cat. Mirielle made a very kind gesture, and offered to send out a 54mm sculpt of Jinx as a gift for this young lady. Fast forward to roughly a year later and the last wave of RH KS stuff arrived, including Jinx.
Job's a good 'un for sure, it's an interesting paint scheme for the critter, but it works well with the extra pieces of jewellery on the model, making for a nice contrast.
And kudos to Raging Heroes indeed for sending you one, it's indeed a nice gesture.
edit.
The 54mm mascots will be added to the range at a later date, they're not KS exclusives and according to the pledge manager site will go up for around $27 a model.
Awesome story, and a great model to go with it I'm glad she enjoyed the gift, long fought for and well deserved.
Also you saving Iron Warriors till end of the year sounds good. Maybe by then I'll decide to break mine out of their fortified dungeon world and we can have a co-challenge like I'm facing Grimdork with. Though getting together for a game might be problematic
Thank you gents. Theo - that sounds like a plan, mate. I've got a games table here, so you'll have to come out here for a game. There's a fold-out couch, fridge and TV in the War Room, so it'll all be good.
Azazelx wrote: Thank you gents. Theo - that sounds like a plan, mate. I've got a games table here, so you'll have to come out here for a game. There's a fold-out couch, fridge and TV in the War Room, so it'll all be good.
I'll have to start getting in shape then because the only way it's happening is if I manage to swim their while carrying my mostly metal iron warriors . Plus I'll have to work on my immunity to all the poisons if your land while Honning my senses to keep me alert from attacks from drop bears, great while sharks and beautiful Australian supermodels (well two of those at least).
Yeah, the poor mouse! Not normally softhearted about that but the expression on the poor guy's face, and the evil grin on the cat...very nice.
Btw, I reckon dual projects for Gondor/Undead is a good idea. Gives you a change of pace every now and then which is neede d when you're doing block infantry.
I'll have to start getting in shape then because the only way it's happening is if I manage to swim their while carrying my mostly metal iron warriors . Plus I'll have to work on my immunity to all the poisons if your land while Honning my senses to keep me alert from attacks from drop bears, great while sharks and beautiful Australian supermodels (well two of those at least).
That's cool. Don't worry about the immunity thing. I'll be able to keep you safely away from at least one or two of those things.
I didn't even notice the mouse at first. It was a bit of a shapeless blob until I worked out what it actually was supposed to be, and then I had to paint it!
I Should have some undead finished shortly. Just need to finish this second batch of Spartans first. I'm hoping to use the models that are well on their way to completion to help me get through them while I clear out a couple of other things (the December stuff, another gift) and then I can mix up boring block infantry with more interesting characters, monsters, etc.
In the meantime, here's another gift I finished on Friday for the same person.
No huge story behind this one. They love Grumpy Cat and LPS, so when my wife happened to see this particular sculpt (which is apparently the one that people repaint as Grumpy) I bought the pack and repainted it as well. I already used it in the motivational picture for the Take of 4 Billion Gamers thing the other day.
And now the fruits of most of the last couple of week's labour. (Cats aside)
Today I finally finished the second two dozen of these. The first batch had all but two wearing the bronze bell curiass - the other couple wearing a linothorax. I realised that with the limitations of the Warlord/Immortal kit there was no avoiding having a whole lot of the models simply wearing robes and a helmet. So this lot are in essence the "secondary" group of Spartans to the first. Like the first batch, these are a little anachronistic in terms of their gear, but nomoreso than most media depictions and they look decent, so I'm fine with it.
As such, I went for a shield scheme that would be distinctive from the previous set, to mark them out as a separate unit. Black Lambdas on a bronze field, rimmed with red was a simple scheme to apply that also looks striking and effective.
Being a mass of historical figures that will be far in excess of my "proper" Fantasy armies - and also made of figures on the low end of the detail scale, being both "historical truescale 28mm" and frankly not that detailed anyway (their feet are just undetailed hams with a hint of toes at best) I gave them as simple a tabletop job as I can stand to. I still couldn't help going and lining the clothing of every one of them with a bit of white pattern, though. You can really only see some it from the side or behind, though.
They'll be predominantly used for Kings of War at this point, and so the 24 models make up either two regiments - or more likely a horde - of Spear Phalanx. Marouda helped sporadically, but didn't enjoy the experience, so I ended up doing much more on them than I'd planned to.
As with the previous unit, I did a simple conversion to mark out the leader. Not that it matters for KoW, but I like to take the opportunity to add a little bit of character in this way. I gave him his spear to hold in his shield hand so that he could wave his sword in the air, no doubt while delivering a stirring speech or battle cry to his men. If many years of warhams have taught me anything, it's that leaders must be shouting, not wearing a helmet, pointing, or waving something around in the air. It's simply the rules.
I should also point out that since these guys are neither Undead nor Gondorian, I'm not counting them towards the Tale of Umpteen Gamers 6-month army painting challenge. Instead, these guys are just to be counted as more of the "general stuff" that I work on throughout the year.
Company Master Balthasar (40K Dark Vengeance set) would like a word with you on that point re Leaders lol. Helmeted and generally looking badass with his sword Fellbane..
While they do look great, I must say, harump, that the historical accuracy of these models is most questionable, therefore totally ruining the immersion for me.
I kid and as mentioned, this "light" paint job is aeons better than what I can muster on a good day.
Thanks guys - Much like the Warriors of Minas Tirith, they're not much to look at individually, but they look good and effective as a whole unit - which is what I was aiming to achieve with these. I'll put more work into the heroes and better quality figures that I do down the line.
Uh.... the problem is that unlike Archer, I never seem to actually finish them. I do at least get them onto the table (sometimes) though.
Let me work out what's at least reasonably table-ready for KoW - so not counting stuff that I haven't started or models that are random/odd/not nearly fieldable yet like the GW O&G/Beastmen/Chaos:
Ogres
Moria Goblins
Minas Tirith
Basileans East (Confrontation prepaints)
Basileans West (Confrontation prepaints)
Blood Elves
Undead
(Mythological) Greeks
Automatically Appended Next Post: My hobby work for today/tonight:
Cleaning up 20 single-piece metal Wargames Foundry Harpies from their Mythological Greek range, flattening the little jokes of a integral metal base they have so I could superglue them down to Renendra 25mm rounds.
Seriously! Look at those tiny and skinny little things!
So then I decided to greenstuff around and over each and every one of them in the hope that it'll help them stay on their bases and not pop off as a result of looking at them funny. Once that dries, I'll use some acrylic putty, then glue the sand down, then prime and take it from there. I'll see if I can get Marouda enthusiastic and set a highly idealised target for the 20 of them for Monday night completion to varnish, and Tuesday night for static flock and photos. Wish me luck!
Back in August last year, I put up a post reviewing the Ral Partha Europe Undead Ogres from the Das Schwarze Auge line – Undead Ogre – Axe, and Undead Ogre – Club. I'd recently picked them up and shared my experience with ordering from RPE and showed off the figures as well as the minor conversion work I did on them. I'd originally planned to take them to work, since painting bone and metal is something I can do there with limited time and a limited palette. It never actually happened, since the models were a bit too big to find a small enough carry case for them once I'd based them on their 40mm squares. So, like so many others, they sat on my desk, staring at me for months with baleful eye(sockets).
Thanks to starting up the "Tale of X Gamers" army painting challenge here last week, I had something to motivate me to get these suckers finished. I couldn't choose between the Undead and Gondor, so eventually I decided to try and do both - 1 unit from each per month. Hopefully I can pull it off.
So here they are. As a direct result of making some rules for myself in the form of the challenge, I knuckled down and finished these guys off yesterday. Mostly it was a matter of highlighting the bone, painting the shield, and finishing off the metal. Not too much, but sometimes it's a matter of making yourself complete these things rather than an actual lot of work.
This trio will be used in Marouda's Undead Army for Kings of War. We'll use the entry for Zombie Trolls, since the stats fit well enough with these big fellas. Now I owe the Gondor Army a completed unit for January!
If nothing else they can be used in dungeon saga as an undead troll. I guess the same for KoW as well. They look awesome. It would help to fill out an army of the old Dogs of War undead where they had skeleton skaven, orcs, goblins and such.
Look at the wights profile, got bumped up to large infantry and may provide another option.
Yeah, though I've also got some wights painted that I'm very happy with - and a few more from Otherworld that are also really nice sculpts. I'll make them a custom base with holes that they can slot in and out of to keep them "legal".
Automatically Appended Next Post:
JoshInJapan wrote: Very nice. I remember seeing those as WIP last year. They turned out great, especially the customization . I may have to get some for myself.
Thanks Josh. The customising was easy, and the models themselves were very cheap, even with the postage. It'd be great to see your take on them!
Theophony wrote: If nothing else they can be used in dungeon saga as an undead troll. I guess the same for KoW as well. They look awesome. It would help to fill out an army of the old Dogs of War undead where they had skeleton skaven, orcs, goblins and such.
I wish you could still get those older models easily and cheaply. Or at least modern ones by other companies that filled the cheap and easy criteria - along with being decent sculpts. I'm sure there's some out there, but I ain't found them yet... They could be used in DS for the trolls, and theose are the stats we plan to use them with in KoW as well. I'll also get the DS ones painted up at some stage as well, but these three were the ones that were outstanding for the last 6 months on my desk...
I had that undead unit till recently, just gave all the undead to the brother in law that I play with occasionally. Even had some of the mordheim casualty figures in the batch to be fresh meat for the grinder.
Archer - I'm renovating/repainting a unit of Gondor Cavalry that I picked up off eBay ages ago. They were somewhat painted, but no mould lines were cleaned, no gaps filled etc, so I've used them in games but they need basically a total repaint to be at a level where I'm happy with them - the existing paint is a base coat at best. I redid their bases awhile back, and I've been trimming them and LGSing them today. I've got a second unit in pretty much the same condition for Febor March or something, but I need to drill out the broken lances and replace them. Just ordered some new drill bits since I can't find my really fine ones.
Also doing a little bit of DS scenery, but that doesn't count towards the monthly total, just my "beat 2015" numbers.
Thanks for the kind words on the Wights, guys - the ones in the pic there are the two Citadel Lord of the Rings Barrow-Wights with one of the plastic(!) Army of the Dead guys in the middle. All really nice models. I've got the Otherworld Wights to paint at some stage which are also exceptionally nice models - (maybe as part of this down the road) but I'll need to find a third with the same kind of body size/proportions to make a third for them. I'm going to see if I can get a big batch of MDF bases made up, so once I do, I can build up some sort of cool barrow for each set of three to stand on.
http://www.games-workshop.com/en-GB/Barrow-Wights
Ian, I can't recall exactly how I painted them - it was well before the new GW paint range and nihilakh oxide, so it'd just be a mixture of mid-greens and blues. The metal again was before I discovered Devlan Mud, etc, possibly with Model Air metallics or even P3 - so it's probably various metals with paint wash and a bit of brown ink for the aging. Honestly, AP Dark Tone or Nuln Oil and so forth would probably work just as well.
Marouda's slowly working on the Harpies. Funny thing is seeing just how much slower she is compared to me. A combination of going much slower and more carefully and then taking 20+ minutes to do the stuff that takes me literally 2 and a half minutes. She also paints much less often than I am able to. I'd estimated having them finished around now to show off tomorrow, and they're still very much in the starting base coat stage.
Whatever the misgivings about broken and warped models, the usual Mantic Missing items, and Jake's half-arsed co-op rules, the scenery items for Dungeon Saga on the other hand, are pretty damned good. The doors are made from a proper, hard plastic (ABS or HIPS, most likely) while the bookshelves, wells, barrels, and so forth are made from a softer PVC-type plastic. Both sets are actually pretty damned good - especially for stuff that comes in a boardgame - and I've got no hesitation in recommending them to anyone.
So I decided to start painting up a few of these pieces. Now, a word of warning. I purchased several cans of Rust-O-Leum sparay paint awhile back, since the cans read that they were a primer and colour spray in one, and that they have some kind of special formulation that binds to plastic. Great! I sprayed a bunch of my PVC scenery with it, and the stuff simply never properly dried. Even after more than a week of Melbourne's Summer Heat. This made my "quickly knock up some scenery quickly" task a lot more painful than I'd planned. The brown eventually mostly dried, but the black was still sticky and horrible, and so I threw them into some Simple Green a few days ago. I'll get back to those, later. The point here being - DO NOT USE Rustoleum spray paint on miniatures. At least the formulation that they sell here in Australia. Never had a problem with other brands, and so I'm back to those. On reflection, though - it seems similar to problems that people have had with Reaper's Bones PVC, so maybe it's not the spray after all. I'll have to do some tests on HIPS sprue and some resin offcuts....
As I have three wells in hand due to buying two of the sets + extras (I'm missing more scenery, too), I had an idea as I was taking them outside to undercoat. My first thought was to paint them all "dungeon grey"/bluestone but then as I was getting out the spray primer (damn Rustoleum) I had the thought to paint them differently. One to go with my desert mat, one to go with my green mat and one to go with the dungeon internals. I added a bit of Vallejo realistic water at the bottom of each to make them look a little nicer than just leaving the shallow sculpted bottom (which, again is quite decent for a sculpted model.) I painted the first one as pretty uniform sandstone, and the second one as field stone. I added a bit of variation between the stones, but that seems to have mostly disappeared after washes and highlighting. I finished the field well by adding some plant growth around the edges, and added a little more realistic water than in the desert well.
Seeing how well there turned out makes me a little less apprehensive about the amount of dungeon furniture I have to paint for my January goal. I especially like the idea of painting the well as something other than dungeon grey. We always need scatter terrain, and a well or two will look nice among the papercraft village I've been working on for the last couple of years.
At one time I pointed out the bones like nature of furniture but apparently not enough to save you the grief of finding out for yourself. I just needed up painting directly onto the tackiness with my chosen colors and hit it with testors dullcote lacquer, sorted that issue right out.
I must have missed your warnings, sadly. I ordered both sets of the Reaper HD paints the other day, in part to use for basecoats and also in part so I can get more Bones painted without BS. I guess they'll also be perfect for Mantic's furniture.
To be fair - it might be the material. I'd test it on some sprue if I were you. In fact, I'll test it on some sprue here as well, when the humid, thunderstormy weather abates and we get back to regular heat.
That's a real shame about the primer - I didn't have an issue with the Army Painter ones I was using, but I did find that the washes I used on mine tended to bead away from some areas on the models.
Yours have come out very nice though. I share your enthusiasm for the set - I hope they do another bunch at some stage because I would definitely buy it.
If its just like bones wash it t hourougly with soap first that helps with beading. Also hand prime with paint or possibly gesso, it may take an extra coat than you're used to. Usually once you get past the first layer it's more or less like painting normally.
Automatically Appended Next Post: THis is my plan for my own items after i get through the first tacky set.
It isn't the primer, it's the stuff under the primer. And bones (and maybe the DS furniture too) is weird in that when I spray it with my usual go-to krylon matte sealer... that dries tacky and almost never gets all the way dry to the touch. My minwax dip will eventually, though in the case of my big dragon thing it took better than a week.
Testor's Dullcote lacquer (the brush on kind, haven't tried the spray variety for this purpose) has been able to, so far, fix any tackiness issues by being applied liberally to the model to seal and dull it. Dries nice and smooth, and in just minutes. Smells like it causes three kinds of cancer though, gotta use it outdoors almost it's so bad.
I'll update on the rustoleum issue when we get past this run of rainy days.
I hope it's just the PVC in the formulation I have here, since I bought about 6-8 cans at once when I got them. I'd rather keep a use for them than have to turf them...
Well bones/DS stuff that's taken spray from Krylon has been tacky, hard plastic or metals that have taken the same sprays have not been. So that's a thing.
6 Gondor cavalry - total repaints. The casual observer probably wouldn't be able to tell the difference, but I can, and that's the important thing. Filled the gaps, repainted the horses, a bit of wet blending of their hide, some variation on the socks of one of them, and then washes. Knights themselves cleaned up, mould lines and nubs where they were clipped from the sprue trimmed and cleaned up, new metal over the top. Pennants trimmed, de-lined, repainted in more of a silver-grey.
Still needs a bit more work on the knights armour, horse manes. Need to redo the black cloth of their skirts and the horse blankets. Small amount of re-detailing on the shields and add the tree and star back in on the pennants. Probably 1-2 hours work or less for the first three and then ready for varnish, but I just can't get motivated at all.
WIP on Marouda's Harpies. Some colour tests on different variations of the dark blue-black that she wants, with some stark highlights showing through. Tests using Army Painter Dark and Blue tone, vs Minitaire Ghost Tints in Midnight Blue with (regular) Blue over the top again in a second, defined section. Also combinations between the two.
After these Gondor Knights are done, I can get back to work on the December models, and then some more half-painted backlog stuff from the past N years, though in a lot of ways I just want to do something completely different and paint some Space Marines...
I dunno if its mantic exactly, anymore than it is bones. The dungeon furniture seems to be largely the same material as bones which also can't can't most spray primers.
A quick warning woulda been nice though.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Sweet knights BTW.
Chipping in on the primer issue: I've used Rustoleum's Ultra Cover and Plastic Primer without issues on Mantic's hard plastic Kickstarter Deadzone, aswell as on "standard" PVC pipes.
I did have a non drying/stickynes episode on some soft, flexible plastic piece on a sratch build (sadly, of unknown origin or actual material), though, so the "soft" part might be the problem.
Those gondor knights look pretty sweet, although I can see how hard it would be to paint all that black/silver/white over and over again. Props to you for persevering.
Where are those harpies from? They don't look like either Mantic or GW to my eye.
It looks like it's going to be on-again-off-again rainy until Tuesday, so I'll do some rustoleum testing then. Theo- did it stay tacky on the Dungeon Saga figures, or the scenery, or both? I know the figures are a type of pvc, but they're a bit harder.
Semi-related, I've used (non-rustoleum) spray primer on my Zombicide figures with no issue, and they're quite a soft PVC as well. I won't be "testing" any of those, though - since they're not exactly spare and don't come with sprue, etc.
Harpies are from Wargames Foundry
I've been guiding her to give them more unnatural colours than the browns and normal skintones that WGF have used, though.
I'll try to try and push myself through at least the first 3/6 of those Gondor knights today. I know I'll be happy when they're done. Just getting there is the problem. I've got another set of six of them to do for February as well...
Oh, those aren't mine. Those are Foundry's promo figures. Ours will be quite different.
Automatically Appended Next Post: I started these last night. Well, sorta. I cleaned them up around midnight and sprayed them black. I started with two of the old 2nd Edition Boxed set marines, but couldn't find the bolter for one of them so put him aside instead of basing or spraying him. This morning, I found that the bolter for the guy I didhave - the bolter I cleaned up last night - has gone missing overnight. feth that's annoying!
So anyway. Here's 3/4 of the figures I started with. I might see if I can get the second lost bolter guy to the point where he's almost finished, excepting the bolter (and any decals - not wasting those on a model that's missing a weapon!) Maybe even bring his mate up to the same point close to completion and then set them aside until I can find or scrounge up a pair of 2e starter set bolters. feth! Very annoying! I mean, I could mod up a more modern set of hands and bolter, but I like the idea of having a couple of pretty much original 2e models in the back of the unit with their original parts.
Oh yeah, they're going to be Minotaurs Space Sarines. I've liked them for years and have wanted to try out the silver-and-glaze method that worked so effectively over on Sasa0mg's sadly-deserted Minotaurs P&M blog. it seemed relatively quick and easy - and more importantly looked/looks great. These two/three/four? are the test models for the techniques. Black spray, coat of White Knight Squirts Silver, then a zenithal-style highlight of British Paints Silver since it's a bit brighter, then Seraphim Sepia wash. Here they are with one layer. Another layer, then I touch up the armour, and think about things like very subtle verdigris, where I'll add some red, and which markings and where.
The plan is (was) to see if I could paint them quickly and use something fun (these) as the motivation to get those Knights done. Now with 2 of the marines in a situation where they won't be able to get finished, though....
Still haven't done anything on those damned Knights. Motivation still very low.
So I've dug out the stuff that I'm going to try and get done at minimum for the Gondor component of the 6-month paint challenge. If I can get more done, then great! But you know. Minimum. Maybe getting them all out will help the motivation. Because of the 25mm bases, I at least need to use fewer models than the "official" for KoW regiments. Once these are done I still have tons of metals, but hopefully they'll be a little more fun. The plastics at least, are simple enough that I can do the majority of the work at work during my short lunch breaks.
This is almost all of them, with the exception of the second unit of 6 Knights that are in the cabinet behind the table. My pin vice bits arrived at the end of last week, so I can repair their broken lances now.
A KoW troop of Archers.
A regiment of Spearmen. I'll be using the eBob heads in the little baggie to change them to swan helms for them to represent some Dol Amroth foot troops. I'll also have to file the white trees off their shields, though I'll probably freehand the replacement heraldry - it'll be easier then trying to achieve sculpted details.
A regiment of Swordsmen. They'll be getting the same Dol Amroth treatment as the Spears. At their side is a hero model I need to finish who also - Forlong the Fat. He's another model that I've been stuck on for about a year.
Lastly, those fething knights.
Tomorrow I prepare to go back to work on Wednesday, as my Christmas Break/Long Service Leave combo finally expires. So I'm going to have my first week back at work worth of being horribly tired to try and finish the six horsemen. Unless I try to finish Forlong instead, and use the Horses as February's model completion. Well, I need to try and get one or the other finished and off the desk...
I remember liking the Dol Amroth minis when I was thinking about getting into LoTR, but I never got around to buying any. They would make a nice change of pace from black-and-silver.
I've been working mostly on scenery today. Got 10 jersey barriers drybrushed and then dirtied up. Gloss varnished (for durability) and drying out in the shed. Tomorrow after work I'll hit them with Testor's Dullcote. Got the next 10 inside drybrushed and ready for the first phase of the dirtying, so depending on how much I can get done tonight and how I feel after going back to work to see if I get them done tomorrow.
Harpies haven't had any more work done on them yet. Hopefully I can get Marouda motivated to get more done. If they turn out meh it's because she did them. If they're ace it'll be because I'm advising her on what to do next and showing her how to do it.
With the discontinued nature of the LotR range, I've since decided to not chop up my metals, and just headswap some of the WoMT plastics instead.
Before I get onto those, I'm going to do a few more in the black and silver - I dug out 12 swordsmen and 10 archers. I figure the Gondor contingent should be noticably larger than the DA one. Once they're done, the DA headswap models will represent almost all of my remaining Gondor plastic infantry. Just leaves a few spears (probably a unit worth of them).
This is a slightly better picture of the Minotaurs-in-Progress. That's black spray, dark silver spray, zenithal bright silver spray, 2 washes of Seraphim Sepia and then highlighted with Vallejo Model Air Bright Brass. In some ways they're a little rough, but I kinda like the ever-so-slightly slightly grungy look that the washes give. I'm obviously going for a more gold-type brass than a copper-type brass.
What I need to decide on now is where to add the red - I'm thinking maybe just the right shoulder inlay on these guys and I can vary it on different squads. One shoulder rather than both since I like the look of the brass shoulder pads as well. (I need to look for my FW Minotaur Transfers!) I'll save the brass etch and FW pads for more important and exiting models like specialists, sergeants and upwards for the time being. Also need to decide whether to keep the eagles and aquilas the bright brass, try to go a brighter gold, go silver, or go bone. Same choice for things like wreaths as well, though with green as an option as well.
I'll also add a little bit of weathering - just a tiny bit of Coelia Green in strategic spots to represent a slight tarnish of his armour. I don't think I'll be going so far as to use Nihilakh Oxide.
I have always found if I lay all the models out I want to get done I get overwhelmed by the number of them so I hide them until I need them. But good luck that's a lot of Gondor.
So, Saturday your time is the same as Saturday my time,right? I'm in the home stretch but I have a little more left to do than I had originally planned...
With my return to work, general antipathy for painting Cavalry, and distractions with those Minotaur Space Marines (I found my transfers and Brass Etch today - only took about 3 hours!) my plans for my Gondor unit for the 6-month "Take of Gamers" painting challenge got diverted, even moreso since I started playing Rainbow Six: Siege this weekend. So I thought I'd spend much of this post complaining. Without enough time or the inclination to finish that cavalry unit, I found another Gondor unit that satisfies the criteria: Forlong the Fat.
A casualty of the Battle of the Pelennor Fields, I started Forlong at the same time as I started the Axemen of Lossarnach. That is to say, roughly a year ago, and possibly a couple of months longer. As he'd been sitting on my desk for a year, he's actually an ideal hero figure to complete for this challenge. Now, he's not much to look at up there, but the rear view will show why it took me so long to complete.
Sure, it looks nice now that it's done, but that goddamned tree is such an anti-motivator to paint. It's a combination of all of the swirls and twirls along with the need to keep it as (close to) perfectly symmetrical as possible. Anyway, like much of the Gondor army, it's not that much fun to paint, but looks nice when it's done. I still need to add the static flock once his spray varnish dries, but I'm calling him done now.
January's Painting Challenge models, completed. Of course, I got a ton of other stuff finished in January. 65 models so far, and while some of that are scenic pieces, only 22 are scenery. Off to a goo start to beat my 288 from 2015. Let's see how it goes. Now I'll try (again) to finish those cavalry for February....
Thanks guys! I've got some more jersey barriers finished today, as well as two models that finish two units of (Undead) for the paint challenge. They're drying outside after a spray, so I should have the flock on them and take the photos tomorrow. I'll hold off until I've finished all of the jersey barriers before I photograph them. I picked up a ton of them and other little bits of resin terrain secondhand last year or the year before, so I'm finally doing them now, but in batches since they're not exactly thrilling to do.
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I've done a bit more work on the Minotaurs.
Close to finished, but I'm in the process of deciding whether to use a touch of green shade to the armour at the end. I've tried to keep it quite subtle, a slight bit of discolouration rather than severe corrosion, something from wear on well-used armour that would be mainteined well enough that it never got severe. Similarly, I'm after a mid ground between beautifully polished and immesely battle-worn. These pics are a bit small, but I'd describe what I'm after is a slightly "roughened" look.
Here's the other two as well. It took awhile to decide what to do with the chest eagles and such. Eye lenses aren't finished, nor are the gloves or chest gems on the 2e Marines. I need to decide whether to paint the laurel on the... 4e? 5e? Marine's forehead. The other option is iron/silver, similar to the chest eagles. Weapon strap will be a deep red-brown. Packs aren't all glued on yet, nor are any of the weapons which all need a few more touches, and obviously the weapon strap. I'll probably redo weapon grips to black rather than red. I'm not going to add brass to the weapons as in IE10 - there's already plenty of bronze on them, after all...
The story behind these models joining the painting challenge is simple. I had 2 of these models from ages ago, and always planned to have them lead the Black Númenóreans. I only had two of them, though - and I wanted the third sculpt because a) collector, and b) aesthetics. With all of the changes that GW has been making in the last couple of years, I thought they might be discontinued, especially given the ridiculous prices people are asking for them on eBay. But no - they're still for sale, and indeed - the model I'm after (Sword and Dagger) is specifically still available. It's right there on the picture. A shame, going by the webpage, it seems the third one may have been discontinued as it's not pictured with the "models will be supplied at random" disclaimer that the GW pages used to have.
So I ordered it and received a blister with 2 duplicate sculpts. As in, not only a sculpt that I already had, but two of the same one in the blister. I tried to contact GWAU's mail order number a couple of times a week (when I remembered, after work when I got home early enough) for over a month and could not get an answer or even a callback. I eventually got onto someone, after well over a month and the guy had a bit of attitude, telling me that he'd been moving. Which.. doesn't really explain why nobody answered their customer service line, or made callbacks. Anyway, I explained my issue, and as it was close to 5pm on a Friday, he said that it'd be hard for him to get down to the warehouse to check, because they were finishing up for the week.
So back to the same, and a couple of weeks later I managed to have the phone answer there again, and it was a different guy who was much more helpful. I explained my issue again and he suggested that I could look on a swap group on facebook, or similar. When I pressed him and also let him know that the blister was still unopened (we're a couple of months after receiving it at this stage) and told him that I really wasn't keen on paying more postage to get the figures that are pictured on the website, he gave me the details to return them and said that he'd have a look with the warehouse guys.
Though by now we're into the start of December, and the craziness that happens at that time of year, so I actually mailed them back in the quiet time between Christmas and New Year's. A couple of weeks later (completely understandable given the time of year and what it does to the post) I received a little box in the post with a blister containing the correct model. So thank you to Sam at GWAU for sorting it out in the end. I do wonder what's happening there though - as on the rare occasions I've had issues I needed to contact mail order for in the past they answered the phone pretty quickly, and things were sorted with lightning speed (and maybe a photo emailed to show the exact issue). Hopefully they can get it back together.
So now we roll around to February, and the 6-Month Tale of Gamers Challenge over on Dakka that I've been coordinating. My "pledges" are to complete a unit/hero/warmachine/monster/etc each month for both Undead and Gondor. Now complete means just that - and it means I can motivate myself to finish off figures that have been part-painted for ages, or the last couple of models from a unit and so forth. While painting their robes on my lunch break at work the other day I realised that these guys finish off the two units of Castellans/Black Númenóreans that I started months ago, and so they count - since they'll be used in Marouda's Undead army with the Soul Reaver Infantry statline - essentially Vampiric infantry. I think they work well as Medieval-Fantasy Vampiric types who will drain your soul rather than just your blood. Not all vampires have to be 19th century aristocrats, after all....
I painted the Númenóreans some time ago last year over a period of time. I shared the first few on the blog, as well as the standard bearer conversions (not much of a conversion, but hey). Later on I finished even more of the warriors but didn't feel a need to write another post showing off identical models to the ones I'd already shown.
The eagle-eyed amongst you will note that there's one guy missing from the back rank in the second regiment. I appear to have misplaced one of my Black Númenórean Warriors. Funny how on forums whenever I point out some minor thing like that, there's always some socially-inept person that feels a need to post "I saw that". Well, between the Reaper forums and the LotR ones, anyway. Yeah, thanks. Well done you. So I'll have to either find the little bastard, or failing that - locate another Black Númenórean and paint him to finish the unit. Again.
Let's face it though, even I think that painting 2 non-character models in a month for half of a painting challenge is a bit pissweak, so I'll be trying to paint that RPE Skeleton Ballista I showed the other day on my Wordpress blog as well for the Undead component.
Thanks guys. Back from my out of town work trip now, so hoping I can start getting some more painting done. I'm still pretty smashed, though.If history is any guide, I'll start getting right productive and enthusiastic about painting by Sunday afternoon/night. Just in time to go back to work.
Still, I wanna get some more stuff finished this weekend.
Those guys are awesome! The Minos are good too, though I do find it quite amusing that your 'middle ground' between weathered and shiny is my 'get some more weathering on those boys pronto, this ain't no parade ground!'
Thanks guys, I'm quite happy with how they turned out. Getting the models from GW was indeed a fething nightmare, so I dread finding the last Numenorian (and did I even have that last model, or did I miscount?)
I finished the RPE Skeleton Ballista and crew last night/early in the AM, so it's drying after a spray varnish outside. Supposed to be hot today, so it should all hopefully be dry this afternoon so I can add flock, etc and get some photos up tonight. I've still got the unrelated RPE Skeleton model that I intend to use as the Ballista Commander (for now at least) to finish - hopefully today, and then hopefully the 4 test Minos as well.
Para - I guess the preferred "look" of my marines comes from when I was your age and younger - Rogue Trader era, and then a resurgence of imperfect but pretty clean marines when 3rd Ed came out in my mid-20's. I reckon the "FW look" of the last couple of years has imprinted on you in the same way that the "RT look" imprinted on me. While I can really like and appreciate more heavily weathered marines (and your Howling Griffon looks great), I don't think I'd enjoy painting marines to look smooth and clean(ish) and then dirtying up and chipping the paint to that extent.
Imperial Guard, on the other hand, or anything "realistic"....
Automatically Appended Next Post: It's unusual that I actually manage to start and finish something this quickly, though it helps that both of the kits I reviewed last week are pretty simple, and fall into two of my natural "speedpaint" categories - that of skeletons and simple fantasy war machines. Even though I was out of town for most of the week, I still managed to finish them off today - the ballista and crew in the early hours, and the Mage Knight model that I'm using for a commander just after lunch. Add a few hours for varnish, flock and tufts, and they're done! My second unit of Undead for the month's challenge. Now I better get some Gondorians painted in the next fortnight!
The Mage Knight model has a very "Oldhammer" feel to him in terms of his sculpt, pose and details, such as the integral shield. He really feels like one of the undead from late 2e WHFB to me, and is a lovely sculpt that I have no hesitation recommending that interested parties pick up. Especially given the cheap price of only £2.50. I really do like this guy. As his shield is smaller than the usual plastic add-on, I wanted to do something a little different with his shield, so went for a red field and a simpler, "scratchy" skull painted on using Dorn Yellow with VGC Off White over the top. I gave his cloak a per chevron field, (with a little red trim at the top edge) without a device to maintain a strong link to the colours of the Undead army (Black, Red, Brass, Iron and a bit of Aqua via the verdigris) especially since the other models in this batch don't really have much gear with which to maintain that link. The per chevron is also a little more interesting for a cloak than the usual halved or quartered that I've done in the past.
The Ballista had a little secret that I only discovered while working on the metal bracings and studs on the wheels - there's actually different detail on both sides, with a slightly more ornate side and obversely less so. I guess you can make the machine itself a tiny little bit more or less ornate, or simply have the less florid details on the inside of the wheels. Naturally, I only noticed this when it was way too late, so mine are mixed - not that anyone will ever notice, so it's cool. I'm not tearing the bloody thing apart! I've gone for woody colours here, keeping in the overall colour scheme of the army. If the model itself was more explicitly "undead" then I might have painted the "bow" as bone (like the Skull Chukkas) but this way it's a little more generic, so with a simple crew swap it can be used in almost any army on the table as needed. Both the "firing rope" skeleton and the ballista needed some height adjustment (via bending and a 60mm GW base) to ensure that his rope could slip onto the firing peg of the Ballista. The two crew are quite finely detailed, though simple. The Ballista crew are very “flat” or 2-D castings, if you know what I mean – with very little that can be bent to make them more 3-d (as I have pretty much always done when it’s been an option).
The faces don’t have the “evil eyes” of the “oldhammer”-era GW skeletons, though I’d hesitate to call them especially realistic either. I’d say that they were someone’s best attempt at doing “realistic” at the time, though – and that’s the better description of the style. Hopefully you can judge for yourselves via the photographs. Still, it's a great little kit for £6.95, especially when you're used to GW prices. These models have a nice, old-school vibe. Apparently RPE have a small-scale 28mm dwarfs Kickstarter coming up that looks like it'll be worth my time to back, as I'm quite liking the look of their preview models.
And as a tight unit. You can also see just how "flat" the crew are.
And I finally found those Brigade Skeletons this morning, too! I've now got 2 units of spearmen to clean, base and prime for March's challenge. Well, I only need to finish one of them, but we'll see if I can do better...
Finished the first four Minotaurs on the weekend. Just need to add either some flock or tufts and then photograph them - probably/hopefully tomorrow. Also started a dozen vikings (well, cleaned 'em up, glued them down to round Renedra bases and added some acrylic paste to build up the bases levels to the integral round ones.
Dude, you really knocked that ballista out of the park. Is that really a Ral Partha model? I may have to spend some more time looking around their webstore.
Yep, a Ral Partha model. I was surprised to see it as well. I was actually buying some old Bob Olley Ogres when I saw it and decided to grab it as well. Given the price it was an easy impulse purchase.
Here's those stripes again for you, Weety.
Something unrelated to painting challenges today - some Proof of concept models for the Minotaurs Chapter that I've been wanting to get around to painting sometime for the last several years. One of quite a few Space Marine projects that I've had percolating in my head in various ways for the last decade or so: Legion of the Damned, Mentor Legion, Iron Warriors, 30k Iron Warriors, Rogue Trader-style Crimson Fists, Space Wolves, Flesh Tearers, Dark Angels, Blood Angels, Grey Knights, Deathwatch. A couple of those have been started in some form or another (LotD, Mentors, Iron Warriors, Space Wolves, Flesh Tearers) while others have had a lot of parts gathered (the started ones, the rest, plus more).
So anyway - Minotaurs!
I wanted to try a reasonably quick "wash based" scheme inspired by Sasa0mg's Minotaurs. I've been going with a spray black, spray silver, zenithal spray of a brighter silver, 2 coats of Seraphim Sepia wash, and then a highlight of Vallejo Model Air Brassy brass. Later on, I've given them a subtle wash of watered down Coelia Greenshade for a subtle verdigris wash based on the Forge World Badab War books' artwork. I went with Silver/Iron for the chest eagles and such, along with red for eye lenses and gems. I wanted to minimise colours other than brass/bronze, red, black and "steel", so leather straps and bags are done in a red-brown, and only rarely green appear on lenses or on specific things like wreaths in green, or (some) skulls in bone.
I used a pair of Marines from the 5th Edition starter "Assault on Black Reach", though they seem near-identical to the 4th Edition starter models from "Battle for Macraggae". Clearly I wasn't paying a lot of attention when various Space Marines got dumped into figure boxes. The other two are from the 2nd Edition 40k starter. I'm actually not especially fond of them as models, but as cannon fodder/squad filler they'll be fine. This is why I decided that these guys would be V squad (also, fitting the transfer onto the embossed tactical arrows). Mino transfers are from Forge World and the squad number markings are from some very old (90's era) Ultras transfer sheets. Obviously everything has been rebased on 32mm round bases.
Anywho, I'm pretty happy with them and will continue with the same scheme. I've selected the rest of a squad worth and have started on a pair of them - using one of the many, many 2nd ed metal captains as the squad sergeant, and a metal 2nd edition flamer marine. The others will probably be additional plastic starter marines.
Very nice Mino's Az. Amazing how even the Macragge Marines look suited to 32mm bases. The freehand on the chapter symbol is superb, and brave of you to do it on the Tactical grunts.
I eagerly await some of the older metal Marines to come. All told, given the amount of Marine projects you have planned, how many unpainted Astarte's do you think you have?
Thraxas Of Turai wrote: Very nice Mino's Az. Amazing how even the Macragge Marines look suited to 32mm bases. The freehand on the chapter symbol is superb, and brave of you to do it on the Tactical grunts.
I eagerly await some of the older metal Marines to come. All told, given the amount of Marine projects you have planned, how many unpainted Astarte's do you think you have?
Oh no, the chapter symbols aren't freehand on these models - transfers! I did use Micro Sol and Micro Set on them to get a "realistic" look, and the Minos transfers were printed slightly off-centre, so they were "touched up" but they're transfers here still. Consistency and perfection with the markings is my priority with things that need to be uniform like Space Marines, so the only freehand will be on personalisation stuff. How many unpainted marines? It would easily be in the multiple high hundreds, and possibly over a thousand. Probably not 2k+, but I honestly don't know... it might well be. I was collecting each individual sculpt within my means for a long time, and still kinda do that - and then there's endless numbers of grunts.
Thanks Josh, it's actually pretty quick and painless by my standards. I can often get a bit hung up on things like that, so these are an easy, fast and straightforward way for me to do armour that comes up pretty decently, if a tiny bit rough.
Just a lot of accumulation over the years. Plus wanting to do a bunch of different chapter-armies with them as well, I guess.
Any suggestions for an army list for these guys? Aside from these Tac marines, I've got a Dread, a Contemptor, the Minos Contemptor, the Minos Special Characters from FW, a Spartan LR, a captain's torso with a shield and a librarian model picked out to go with them so far. I'll also want to add a second Tac squad, probably some Terminators.. Sternguard? I can do a rhino or razorback, etc, but I'm not really keen on the whole "5 sternguard squads each with a rhino, 2 assault squads in drop pods" level of list building/uniformity.
I'm far more interested in fluffy and fun then "competitive" as the primary concern.
Well, the Minotaurs are pretty much anti-Astartes, and are quite melee oriented. Very well equipped and have a lot of MKVIII armour (which sadly, isn't particularly common in SM kits) and terminators. Also pretty good at siege warfare. So maybe have your boxy dreadnoughts as Ironclad? Dreadnoughts can now be taken in groups of 3 IIRC and that would be pretty frightening.
Thanks Jan. They're really nothing special individually, but they should create a nice group effect once I start getting full units and some heroes and specials done.
angelofvengeance wrote: Well, the Minotaurs are pretty much anti-Astartes, and are quite melee oriented. Very well equipped and have a lot of MKVIII armour (which sadly, isn't particularly common in SM kits) and terminators. Also pretty good at siege warfare. So maybe have your boxy dreadnoughts as Ironclad? Dreadnoughts can now be taken in groups of 3 IIRC and that would be pretty frightening.
Yep, I've got/read the IA Badab War books. Getting Mk8 armour is difficult. I've got to find all my Anvil Industries parts that I ordered ages ago, but I might do a new order as well for a few more. I'm planning to have at least 2 Tac squads - the one made of older figures to "get rid" of them and one with lots of Greek/Spartan-style aftermarket parts. The boxy dread is an AoBR one (again, to "use" it) but the Contemptors will be Hekaton Aikos, with an option for one "Normal" Contemptor that can be armed with pretty much any options. I could use either a resin Contemptor or a Calth one. So probably a Vanguard and an Assault Squad rather than the Sternguard, you reckon?
I've got a metal torso (sans head, pack and weapon) of the guy with the terminator-honor tower power shield here ready to be assembled as well. I guess I could save him for a Templars (there's another one of those Marine armies I've collected models for!) force and use a different model as a base for a Minos hero. I do have this boxed set at least twice to play with. I chose him because of the leather crotch-straps,
Yeah Assault and Vanguard would be pretty nice. I have the tower SS guy as well for one of my many Company Master options. I was of the impression the axe was already part of the model? I may be wrong here as it's been a while since I put him together. Think he'd look ok if you had a spare round shield, then bling it up a bit and paint the chevron on it.
What weapons would you give your Contemptor dreads then? Already got multi-melta and assault cannon options covered with the Calth set, so what else do you have?
The axe hand is a separate piece. I was just going through some of my marine figures and parts and found that guy's torso with shield attached. I've got lots of the smaller historical-sized Greek shields from the Warlord kits, but they might look a little weedy on a marine Captain. I'd have to have a look. The termie shield is definitely attached to that sculpt's torso, though.
I'm not sure what to give the contemptors. Well, Hekaton gets the default plasma and CCW with bolter/flamer (I forgot which one's in there), but the other(s).. I've probably got all, or at least most of the contemptor options somewhere. Actually, after looking at the FW site, I don't have the Volkite and not sure about the Conversion Beamer. I'm 50/50 on the lascannon and don't think I have the chainfist, either. Huh. I've got fewer options than I thought... though I can always buy more as needed, I guess (once I've got enough stuff to make up another order) and just paint "around" any missing arms.
Basically, I've spent the past 3? years almost exclusively painting fantasy figures while slowly continuing to buy 40k in the background. The bloodthirsty nature of Minos doesn't seem to go with a
I think Moloc needs an Honour Guard to ride in the Spartan with him and Ivanus. No need for more than about 5models. but they could be oh-so-awesome. Given the Spartan shields to simulate the Artificer Armour, Power Spears, Anvil do some awesome capes...
Hekaton dread has a built in heavy flamer on his ccw, just zoomed in on the pic, and you can just about see it. Might wanna put him up front in a game, or drop pod him since, if I remember right, he's pretty indiscriminate when it comes to killing things. Pretty much Kharn the betrayer if he was in a dreadnought lol.
For the 300esque bodyguard you could have them as TH/SS terminators maybe?
Angel and Para - Yeah, I figure that sometimes he can be Hekaton and other times just a regular nutter contemptor. Now I'm torn on whether to kitbash some blinged-out Vanguard-style marines or use Terminators. Hm...
And you've given me an idea. I'll need to check my bits, bigtime - but if it works it should be quite cool. I'll keep it to myself in case it falls apart.
Here's the WIP of the next two - 2nd edition metals. With luck, I'll get them finished this weekend. My actual first use of brass etch on the (former) captain. I've got to work out whether to paint his braid and gems red, or try to mix it up a bit more. I really want to keep these guys pretty hard to the core army colours with very little deviation, though... I might also do his kneepad in red and add a lambda - except I've been considering doing a different Greek letter on the right knee of the whole force as a campaign badge. Not sure which one, though. Have to do some more thinking....
Those actually look great for older minis, I'm not generally a fan of 2nd Ed type stuff but the painting sells these as minis that can definitely stand alongside the newer stuff. Love the bionic leg on that Captain.
Cool, more space marines, looking forward to them. I can't really advise you on the colors, markings, or game usefulness, but I'll be in the background here cheering you on just the same
You're not trolling me there, are you Grim? I'd usually have said "teasing" but I understand you've officially been labelled a troll, so I'm following protocol. Seriously though, I know you're not too fond of the Adeptus Astartes these days...
I actually don't have anything against space marines, I just haven't had fun painting them lately. Much better to left folks like you who will do a better job of it
No worries, Grim. I wasn't sure how much they were in your "bad books". Some people around here seem to have a bitter-breakup ex-girlfriend attitude towards them for some reason.
angelofvengeance wrote: Yeah Assault and Vanguard would be pretty nice. I have the tower SS guy as well for one of my many Company Master options. I was of the impression the axe was already part of the model? I may be wrong here as it's been a while since I put him together. Think he'd look ok if you had a spare round shield, then bling it up a bit and paint the chevron on it.
As it happens, I was going through my Minos stuff tonight and saw the model again. 100 derp points to me - the ace is part of the model - the shield not so. I don't know how I managed to screw that one up, especially given that I had the thing in my hand just the day before - but I did.
At least it means that I can easily give him a nice Greek shield and helm and he'll be set. I ordered some Scibor shields and stuff last night, so 2-3 weeks and I can work on him. I guess I could do all but the shield, but I should finish some of the others first.
Thanks Para, and evildrcheese. I'm not especially fond of a lot of the 2e metals, but mostly because of metal bodies + plastic arms is a bit painful, though they do tend to scrub up well. I guess the metals will still blend in decently as anonymous members of squads while the piles of sergeants and captains from the era have enough interesting points to them that they can still look good - as long as they're not painted in a 2e, overly-garish style. Well, Blood Angels in 2e style can still pass, but the rest look a bit worse for wear these days.
A pretty unspectacular update this time. More of a post to document the completion of more figures than anything else. I've just finished the last of these eight archers to form either a bunch of archers in LotR SBG, or a troop of Kingdoms of Men archers in my Gondor/Minas Tirith army for Kings of War.
Archers of Minas Tirith in SBG/Skirmish formation. No need for commentary or musings of paint descriptions. I've painted a pile of these guys and I've got another pile still to paint. Job's a good-enough-'un, so these few are now done and dusted!
Archers of Minas Tirith - Kings of War "Troop" formation. Another month's tally done (just). Now onto March's units!
I can sympathise with trying to knock out some uninspiring models. But your archers have come up really well.
I miss the look of many of the older marine characters. Some of them may not have aged well. But I feel some of the newer stuff has a mass produced soulless feel to them.
Yep - the "Tale" combined with being relatively simple to paint in terms of scheme so I can do much of the grunt work at work in lunch breaks means that at least I'm getting them done. Still a whole pile of Gondor plastic to wade through before I get to the more interesting metal models as a reward. Though there's more metal rangers amongst them there than I can safely call a "reward"...
The segmented armour is pretty shallow, but not awful. The White Tree of Gondor embossed on the plastic sword and spearmen's shields is incredibly shallow and painful, though. Much nicer to work with on the metals.
I'm working on a dozen Swordsmen as well. I've gotten the highlighting on their black clothing done on half of them (trying to finish 3 a day at work to my satisfaction) so I might get half the unit completed this weekend, but I doubt I'll force myself to get the others done before next weekend, so they'll go into an early finish for March's challenge, and then I'll get back to those bloody Gondor knights.
Looking through my metal marine characters, I think many if not most of them can still come up well with a "modern" paintjob, and avoiding things like that "flat metal cloak" backpack. You know the one!
I didn't get him or the flamer guy finished last weekend. Trying again this weekend!
And now, more Gondormans! Another unspectacular update today. I've finished the next Gondor unit for my Tale of Gamers challenge - my completed submission for March. A dozen WoMT swordsmen for LotR SBG, or a regiment of Kingdoms of Men "Shield Wall" in my Gondor/Minas Tirith army for Kings of War.
I started these last month, and it looked like they might have ended up as a "painting stretch goal" for February, but it didn't work out, as I do the tedious highlighting of their black robes at work. Well, I'm another dozen models closer to finishing this army. They look pretty damn boring taken as individuals, but they do look good en masse. I'm also working on some alternative unit trays. Probably lipless MDF cut to regiment size, possibly with a simple texture over the top (if I can find textured spray paint). Still unspectacular, but more uniform across the army.
I've put the Knights of Minas Tirith that I didn't manage to finish in January onto my painting desk now. I might get them done as a March stretch if I'm lucky! At work in the meantime I'm working on my Undead goal for March. As work through the stages, I'm also taking pics for a Skeleton painting tutorial in my "warm" style as requested by one of the readers on my wordpress, so that should go up shortly after I finish the first batch of Skellymans. I'll probably add it as a link here unless people want me to post the whole thing?
Instead of working on the Knights like I'm "supposed" to be, or the Undead for the challenge, or trying to finish off the first squad of Minotaurs, I got distracted again.
Working on some very simple conversions. for the Gondor army. Simply Warriors of Minas Tirith models with the heads sawn off and replaced by metal heads from eBob miniatures - "Alternative heads for Knights" - or to those in the know - Not-Swan Knight heads. I originally bought a bunch of them years ago with the intent to replace the rather un-LotR heads on my various metal Swan Knights of Dol Amroth - both on Foot and Mounted. The actual GW models have these huge helms that look much more like they'd fit properly on Warhammer High Elves. With the passing of several years, and the passing of metal models, I've decided to leave the metals be, and simply use the eBob heads on a variety of other models to "Dol Amroth" them up. I had a little accident when sawing one of the WoMT heads off and took his bow with it, and simply could not find it to repair. I found another guy to replace him, and took his head off and caught him up to the rest of the gang.
So after reorganising my KoW Gondor Archers from Regiments ("20" models - I use 12) to Troops ("10" models - I use 8) because there's not much point in Regiments of Archers as both have 10 attacks and only a difference in Nerve, it transpired that I needed only 4 more archers to make another unit of Troops. I found a painted pair that I must have been using as war machine crew before I finished painting the war machine crewmen, so I went looking for 2 more models. I found one, and it turns out that the model I used to replace the broken one was my only other spare one. Just fantastic, eh?
I did some more poking through my Gondor boxes and just found three more unclipped sprues. Or another 36 models. That gives me another 12 each of Archers, Swordsmen and Spearmen to paint, or another unit of each. I guess I can throw three archers into the spares box and finish that other unit now, unless I really want to have one regiment...
Now do I paint up these newbies as more Dol Amroth troops, or more Minas Tirith troops? I've got a unit or so worth of Arnor figures - which, yes, would be anachronistic outside of scenarios, but they can work for another fiefdom in Third Age games - should I paint a unit or three (ie, one of each WoMT type) in the green livery of Arnor? And does anyone know a cheap/easy source of "turbaned"/wrapped helms similar to the GW ones?
I love how you can just be rooting through your sprues and find 36 miniatures! I think they would look great in a green livery, and it might be a welcome change from the Dol Amroth and Minas Tirith that you have been painting recently. I can offer no real help on the wrapped helms...but congratulations on 50 pages of excellent blogging.
Thank you! I didn't realise I'd hit 50 pages. As for the sprues, my collection is a bit like that, which can be both a blessing and a curse. I'm so so looking forward to finishing off all my various Gondor models so I never have to think about them again or buy another one - even if they're cheap.
Well, never think about them aside from playing games with them.
I personally found the Gondor models a right chore back with the release of whichever game box they came with...probably a good 12+ years ago now? So I feel your pain, and I was taking a lot less care and attention with them than you do.
It is good that they are a solid basis for a sizeable KOW army though...with your massive Fantasy collection you must have a massive amount of points for KOW spread across numerous armies.
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Now do I paint up these newbies as more Dol Amroth troops, or more Minas Tirith troops? I've got a unit or so worth of Arnor figures - which, yes, would be anachronistic outside of scenarios, but they can work for another fiefdom in Third Age games - should I paint a unit or three (ie, one of each WoMT type) in the green livery of Arnor? And does anyone know a cheap/easy source of "turbaned"/wrapped helms similar to the GW ones?
I suppose that depends on how burnt out you are on painting Minas Tirith guys. My inclination is to do them as Dol Amroth, but that's probably because I have fond memories of painting so many old Citadel elves with similar helmets. Also, turbans over helmets looks kind of weird to my eyes.
I mentioned these guys a couple of weeks ago when I started working on them. Simple conversions on the Warriors of Minas Tirith models to Dol Amroth.
I'd originally planned (years ago) to file off the white trees on the plastic WoMT breastplates and shields. I've decided to leave the breastplates be, as Dol Amroth is of course a Fiefdom of Gondor, so I'll leave them on the breastplates but remove them from shields when I get to the swordsmen. Unlike the single units of troops and hero from Lossarnach and (yet to be painted) Lamedon, the Dol Amroth contingent will number a reasonable number of units. At least one each of Archers, Shield Wall, Spearmen plus Swan Knights mounted and on foot, plus of course Prince Imrahil. I may expand it further using more eBob heads on Perry Miniatures Foot Knight bodies, but I'll worry about that once I've got all the official models painted. In fact, I'm using the first batch of heads I ordered from eBob, and having placed another order (literally 5 years to the day later) on Feb 5th this year, for 6 more sets of heads, a trio of spiders and the lovely "Lady Greensleeves" sculpt. I thought it reasonable on March 6th to send a followup email since I've not had anything arrive nor had I heard anything since placing my order. Usually stuff takes 1-2 weeks to arrive from the UK, with 3 weeks being for outlier cases. So I sent him an email...
I received the two word reply to my query on 8th March. "sent today". So a month and three days after payment I had to prompt him to send my stuff. He even quoted the "your payment has been received" email from PayPal that reminds him to send product within 7 days. I guess caveat emptor applies here, and that's the kind of gakky service we can expect from eBob. I decided to order a few more head sprues from him and make sure they get posted before I publish this post. So I ordered a few more head sprues and followed up by immediately emailing him to say I expected that they'd be sent out a lot quicker than a month. He sent them the following day. I guess the lesson there is if you choose to order anything from him, email him within a few days to ensure that your stuff actually gets sent.
The paint scheme is the usual base metal - Army Painter Silver(?) (it's an unlabelled metal paint from the first KoWKS), highlighted with VMA Steel. I then vary the usual by washing with a 1:1 mix of AP Dark Tone and Blue Tone wash to give a subtle Blue Steel look.
P3 Cygnar Blue Highlight as the base for the cloth parts, highlighted with P3 Arcane Blue and shaded with a wash of VMC Dark Prussian Blue (I think - the label is unmarked). Leather straps and Boots - and Leggings are painted as a dyed blue, so VMC Dark Prussian Blue with a touch of old-Citadel Ultramarine Blue for highlight, and slightly-thinned AP Dark Tone wash. And yes, I've written down all the paints here so I can easily replicate the scheme with later units. A lot of people paint their Dol Amroth models with white cloth and blue accents. I may do so for the SkoDA and other nobles, but for the common troops of Dol Amroth, I wanted their livery to be Blue with white accents, and the dark, almost black blue to tie in more strongly with their brethren from Minas Tirith as well as the blue to keep them close to their own noble-born elites. The swan crests on their helms were painted in VMA Steel and washed with thinned down AP Blue wash.
You can see just how well the eBob heads fit onto the plastic WoMT models.
So these eight make a small unit for SBG, that can simply use the WoMT profiles, and in KoW they make for a troop of Archers, again using the KoM profiles. I'll use different statlines for some other Dol Amroth troops, but not these guys.
Lovely job on your Dol Amroth guys here, Azazel. It's nice that the Gondor lads equip their archers with actual armour, rather than crappy rags that sort of unit usually ends up with lol.
Love the cloth on these Az, cracking stuff. It is a shame that you have to prompt ebob to send out your goods, it sounds like he is just forgetful rather than anything untoward.
That's a nice unit of archers. The head swap works remarkably well-- did you have to sculpt the hair, or were you just really careful when you cut off their original heads?
angelofvengeance wrote: Lovely job on your Dol Amroth guys here, Azazel. It's nice that the Gondor lads equip their archers with actual armour, rather than crappy rags that sort of unit usually ends up with lol.
Yeah, GW didn't vary at all from the Weta designs for these guys. I can't even recall if I saw any archers in the film, but I guess it fit their game rules and it works for me.
Theophony wrote: I'll have to try that dark tone and blue tone wash as I love the finish you achieved.
Thanks! After I did it, I noticed that GW did a similar thing with their Deathwatch models - though they obviously went to town while I simply washed the models. If you look at their left arms and shoulderpads and power fists and such, you can see a "brown tone" and a "blue tone" to the metal they used. Funny thing is you really don't notice it until you put it next to another "shade" of metal.
Thraxas Of Turai wrote: Love the cloth on these Az, cracking stuff. It is a shame that you have to prompt ebob to send out your goods, it sounds like he is just forgetful rather than anything untoward.
Cannot wait to see what is up next.
I'm not sure. I hope it's just forgetful. I had a bloke on my Wordpress tell me about his mate who had to get his credit card company to sort a refund. As for what's next...
JoshInJapan wrote: That's a nice unit of archers. The head swap works remarkably well-- did you have to sculpt the hair, or were you just really careful when you cut off their original heads?
Thanks Josh. I was careful when sawing the heads off, and then it turned out I needed to carefully clip the necks off the eBob heads. Result - original hair with no putty needed! They really fit that well.
Coming up soon:
Here's what will probably be my next Gondor unit(s) - I'm managing to avoid completing those two cavalry units like a real champion!
I cleaned these guys up and then sprayed them yesterday, just did the brown on the bases now (for some reason PVA & sand sticks much more effectively to painted plastic). So sick of painting WoMT plastics, so I dug out my unit of 10 Osgilliath Veterans, with an armoured Faramir and a standard bearer. Jeweler's sawed the head off the standard bearer and replaced it with a bandaged head from Warlord's Roman Veterans sprue. Still need to rough him and the Faramir model up a bit more before I spray them. There's also 2 plastic WoMT archers which it turns out will complete another troop for KoW (and the paint challenge) after my reorganisation from regiments to troops.
I've got 10 skellys with not too much more left to do to complete 2 units of Skeleton Spearmen. They should be done by this coming weekend. You can kind of see the musicians behind the goblins. Though I'm starting to get a bit sick of painting Gondor and Skeletons so I felt like a palette cleanser tonight. I have some lids on the edge of my painting desk with figures that I didn't put away when I cleared the desk at the end of 2015. I grabbed these goblin netters and clubbers and decided to do their nets, which (I think) was what put me off, since their robes and skin are all pretty much done (flames notwithstanding). I might be able to get them done this wekeend as well? (the two with flocked bases are already finished, not sure if they've been shown - I have them with the others for colour reference). In the background are a few Vikings I'm slowly working on and some more Minotaurs Space Marines. And 8 Skaven Plague Censer bearers that I just stripped, rebased and sprayed. Need to work out a scheme for them as well.
Good stuff, the headswaps and brighter scheme really sell them as Dol Amroth troops.
There are plenty of Minas Tirith archers in the movie, at both Osgiliath and MT itself. Once the Orcs get inside the latter, you don't see much of them though (to be fair, they all had swords, probably just pulled those out and got to work).
Yeah, it's been awhile since I've watched RotK. I remember lots of WoMT, but not what they were doing exactly. Goblin netters might (hopefully) be done this weekend. Quite a lot to try and finish this weekend actually. I've got 7 Skellies almost done, and another three to follow, plus the 6 gobboes and then I'm onto the Minotaurs and Skaven.
In the meantime, since I'm pretty tired from work, I've just been doing the simplest of things of an evening. So the last couple of days has seen some of the monkey work on my Osgilliath Veterans!
Sorry the pic is garbage - the lighting for my desk works well for actual painting, but is awful for snapping WIP photos. Sand glued down, 2 layers of drybrushing (1 to go, later) and now 2 layers of metal drybrushing - VGA Gunmetal followed by VMA Gun. Next plans are for one more highlight, and then a 50-50 thinned wash of Dark Tone and Soft Tone to give these guy's armour a subtle "brown" tone, since they're beaten up and have been in the field, so it will represent a layer of grime that's attached to the oil on their armour. Though the film look is much darker than the typical painted look for Gondorian Warriors (including mine)
I haven't been posting much lately. Notsomuch from lack of painting or lack of wanting to - I just haven't had any new content for awhile. I'm working on a bunch of skeletons for KoW and I've been finishing them, but it's been quite the slog. I'm also working on those Gondor guys, Minotaurs Space Marines - even some Skaven who I finished stripping the other week. But nothing ready to show.
So I'm revisiting a model from the deep past. This guy is the original Terminator Space Marine Captain from the original Terminator Squad boxed set. This one was painted for a relative in the early 1990's and eventually found its way back to me about a decade ago.
Clearly, it was painted during that transition period between Rogue Trader and 2nd edition's styles. I can tell by my overly-colourful paint scheme (too much bright blue and yellow) combined with the use of personal heraldry on his shoulder pad. So most likely around '93-'94. The only thing that's been done to him since I got him back was a rebasing to my own style as opposed to the green flock that he originally had.
Personal Heraldry on show. The BA symbol is a decal. The rest is freehand. I believe that there was a full article with B&W illustrations on Marine Personal Heraldry, but I may be misremembering. Either way, the 'eavy Metal page shown below was a huge influence and remains in the back of my mind even today when painting Marine heroes.
White Dwarf 123: 'eavy Metal - Space Marine Heraldry.
On "Character". I know the popular thing to say about old, oldhammer and metal models is that they have "character" that new models somehow lack. I do think the old models often have "character" but to imply that newer models somehow lack character across the board is just silly. Now to say that some of the newer models lack a je ne sais quoi is fine and accurate - things like the IoB skaven troopers and Poison Wind Mortars are sloppy sculpts, but it doesn't mean that everything does - The IoB skaven hero is actually quite nice. This model is a nice one, but it is dated and very static compared to the newer sculpts. I still like it, but I'm as aware as anyone else that the rose-tinted glasses are in effect when dealing with many of the miniatures from my youth. Having said that, I still love metal models and that won't be changing anytime soon, however nice the newest plastics are (I can love both!)
Auxiliary Grenade Launcher for the win! Now, putting together a Blood Angels army has been on my list of Armies to Put Together for quite a few years, and I've been gathering the kits to do so for years on and off - as well as buying the odd pre-owned collection to use as well (Hi Damo!) I'd certainly like to use this guy when I do get to properly building my BAs. So that leaves me with a few questions to ponder - what to change and what to leave the same?
Now, I'm ashamed to admit that a few years ago, I stripped a whole lot of my original metal beakies in order to have them fresh for my Rogue Trader Crimson Fists project (that I still haven't started). I didn't even photograph them. I had several models in particular where I'd managed to paint the finely detailed Rogue Trader-era captain markings, sergeant and veteran sergeant insignia onto their shoulder pads, as well as weapon designations. I later picked up an unpainted copy of the "captain" model from ebay for about ten bucks, rendering the regret in stripping him to even harsher levels. Because of this, I'm hesitant to feth with my old models too much. But I do like to tone things down that are too garish - as I've shown with my Beastmen and other Realm of Chaos-era models.
So the elements I'm considering changing:
* Rebase to a 40mm round.
* Repaint most/all of the blue. (Not on the shoulder) Mostly to black or brass/bronze, depending on the location (not to Khorne levels!)
* Repaint the AGL entirely.
* Repaint the cables from a fleshy colour to a dark metallic colour.
* Tone down the yellow on the chest eagle.
* Tone down the yellow on the bolter - or repaint to a black casing.
* Brighten the "bone" colour on the Crux Terminatus & touch up the Captain flash on his shoulder.
* General neatening up, but not changing the red or the black. (Or his head).
I think a thoughtful touch-up is going to make him look great - I reckon your list of jobs is spot on, though personally I would leave him on his 25mm base for nostalgic reasons
It would be great to see you tackle a whole BA army, I look forward to that. I think your plan seems great, the only thing I can think of is to either change the hair colour or to differentiate it more from the rest of the yellow on the miniature.
It is amazing the difference that the bigger bases make on Marines. My Iron Warriors just look odd to me now on 25mm bases.
I'll have a look and see what I have. And avoid anything with too much painful all-metal assembly, like that bloody Death Watch marine.
Though I might pick out a couple to work on so I've got a second model once I finish the first. Any suggestions for which army to look for a commander model from? I've got quite a few armies I haven't started painting yet, but more than happy to start on any of those with a cool command model. Similarly, any specific model from the 
Nice Haul 
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