Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

I do not need a fantasy army. I do not need a fantasy army...

It's been a nice couple o days holiday so far. Yesterday we went to the zoo, saw baby lemurs and then went to a midnight showing of Promethius. Today I am sitting in a comfy leather arm chair in Bugman's Bar at GW HQ, waiting for Arakasi to turn up for our weekend of 40k and sculpting masterclass with a nice burger.

I've just been around the museum and gazed longingly at some of the absolutely gorgeous studio armies (and some not so great ones by the Hobby team using the new painting techniques they have in WD). Sadly this has made me want to actually do something with all those Empire bits I have kicking around... Not least because tomorrow I get yet another box of goldswords at the masterclass... This will take me up to enough bits for 30+ greatswords and a few other units! I both love and hate this place. So much inspiration, yet too much inspiration at the same time.

Tomorrow's masterclass will be teaching us sculpting by converting a greatsword into an undead warrior. I now want to look at making an unread empire army... It doesn't help that I do not play WFB and don't particularly want to start either. Anyone want to pay me to build them a vampire counts army made with hordes of dead empire troops?

Maybe... I'm starting a Vampire Counts army... maybe not a full army, but possibly a few bits and bobs...

I would consider paying you to make me some skeleton skaven.

I'm converting my (lots and lots of) skaven into zombies...but I think that whether or not it works will be up to the paintjob. Skellies are much more difficult, though.

Undad skaven sounds like an ace idea, but unfortunately I think skeleton skaven are a bit beyond me at the moment. Good luck with the plan!

I guess I'm the world's biggest idiot. I'm already doing that Warhammer quest project and have lots of the bits anyway, so I can make them without needing to start a new system. Duh! sometimes I'm thicker than a vey thick thing.

On an unrelated note, the cabinets are currently missing all of the WFB warriors of chaos, high elves and daemons armies as well as the tau, ultramarines and 40k chaos marine and daemon forces

If anyone sees the devil ice skating this afternoon... That is my fault and I apologise. somehow I just managed to pull off a massive victory against Arakasi! out of 1500 points of guard I managed to lose two platoon command squads, 27 basic grunts and the turret off a chimera... All he had left were two empty trukks, 7 boys (fleeing) and 7 nobz (fleeing). Still in a state of shock...

The sculpting masterclass yesterday was so worth while. Not only did we get Aly Morrison, as advertised, but we also got Trish and Aragorn Marks, one of the newer sculptors here who used to do a lot of the Rackham work as well as some of the Hordes miniatures. It is interesting to see that each sculptor has a very different approach to making something, and uses different tools; most of which they have made for themselves... seeing Aragorn sculpt an awesome head in about 15 minutes was unbelievable... As was his real chain made from pieces of modelling putty... Link by link so that it worked as a proper chain just because he could.

Good grief...I'm rather jealous...Sounds like it was a lot of fun!

Yeah, it was great. I'll try and post some photos of my end model later. The main things we were taught was fur, chain mail, chains and cloth Alon with the different properties of different sculpting materials.

They are trying to work out what would go into an advanced sculpting course next... God help us all.

I'll try and type up what I can remember later when I get home. Bug mans bar is calling

It was a good game to be sure - just couldn't touch that armour. At least I won the first game - which you should have been able to win too

Oh - only 6 Nobz running (only 6 to begin with) - and it was nice to see all my newly finished Orks out on the table (yes, that means the Trukks didn't survive too long...) getting picked off by Guard firepower - not...

Arakasi has already written up a great overview of the masterclass, so I'm not going to redo all that here and now. I think I've a few different notes, but I need to double check those at a later date. Instead, here's what I made on the day

I just realised I never did have a look at your finished piece!

Neat work endtrans!

I dig it. those look nice!

Nice work, endtrans! I like the idea of an undead empire army, and the green stuff work is excellent.

Thanks! I'm fighting the urge to build a full VC force now. It's not like I actually play, or ever intent to play, WFB... but I've so many ideas of things that could be done for it that it's not funny.

Over the last couple of days I've realised I have far too many projects on the boil (in my head) and need to actually consolidate or discard some. So... here's a list of what is running around in my head:

1) Finish my last GMS marine
2) Finish my purchased Imperial Guard
3) Inquisitor Dorothea & retinue - Armies on Parade board
4) Warhammer Quest (flooring, monsters and heroes)
5) Vampire Counts army in Empire uniforms
6) Infinity - Aleph
7) Infinity - Nomad
8) Infinity - PanO
9) Carry on learning to paint
10) Learn to sculpt
11) Start making lots of bitz for conversions and sell them.
12) Paint my Dust tactics forces
13) Paint everything else I own...
14) Go to Adepticon in 2015 (nothing like a bit of forward planning there!)
15) Build a gaming table in the attic
16) Paint Sedition Wars miniatures

That seems like far too many things to contemplate and really needs to be culled a bit. On the plus side I actually own almost everything I need to do all of them (which is scary in itself!) with the exception of the WQ monsters and heroes.

So. How to trim this down to a more reasonable size... Unfortunately the Armies on Parade board is most likely going to be dumped in favour of just creating the inquisitor and retinue for use in my Guard army as Apocalypse allies. I'm thinking of also parting with a load of miniatures/game systems that I'm not likely to paint or play, which will reduce the bits kicking around and taunting me a bit. Wants and trades will go up in the DCM forum in the not too distant future as I sort through everything properly.

Points 10, 11 and 14 also merge nicely into one, more easily managed list as my aim for 2015 is to create a kit that allows me to make all of the infantry for the proposed UK DCM team theme, as well as fleshing out my Guard even more... like I need more Guard!

Point 5 is going to be culled down to making 5 Grave Guard for Alfndrate and limiting my other ideas to just WQ usable units. Kind of a shame as I had grand plans to convert the Celestial Hurricanum into a Mortiis engine. In my head it was awesome

This brings us down to:

1) Finish my last GMS marine
2) Grave Guard for Alfndrate
3) Finish my purchased Imperial Guard
4) Inquisitor Dorothea & retinue
5) Warhammer Quest (flooring, monsters and heroes)
6) Infinity - Aleph and nice Infinity models
7) Carry on learning to paint; write mini tutorials as I go
8) Sculpt British Empire IG pieces for Adepticon & build an expeditionary force
9) Paint my Dust tactics forces
10) Build a gaming table & terrain in the attic (Attic not ready for table yet) - On Hold
11) Paint Sedition wars miniatures (Doesn't arrive until September) - Oh Hold

If you see me try to start something that isn't on this list... you have my permission to shout at me. Big time!

OK endtrans... eyes on the prize buddy.

11 still seems like a lot though :/
The aim for this weekend is to cross off at least item one, if not item two as well.

At least 1, 2, 4 & 6 look reasonably self contained "small" projects That would bring you down to a more manageable 7...

3, 8, 9, 10 and 11 at least seem to have end goals, if somewhat far out ones

That just leaves 5 & 7 as the never ending open ended projects...

Maybe you should separate the as such - short, medium and long term projects - where the long term ones probably need sub projects in the same categories

I'd hate to go through this for mine at the moment...

Go on, you know you want to. I want to feel happier that I'm not the only one with too many items on the list

What do I owe you for the grave guard? lol, we never discussed that. PM me?

Good catch! I'd forgotten all about that, you almost got them for free! This is a good example of why I'd be rubbish running a business

PM sent

Don't feel bad...here's everything I thought of in the last 2-3 minutes...there's probably stuff I'm forgetting...

1. Assemble and paint Beastmen
2. Assemble and paint Space Wolves
3. Convert and paint Skaven Zombies
4. Paint Legion of Everblight
5. Paint Menoth
6. Finish assembling then paint War Pig (Minions) army
7. Finish assembling and painting Daemons
8. Sell off my Grey Knights
9. Stop writing GK lists so I CAN sell them...
10. Paint Combined Army (and assemble the horror that is the Anathematics model)
11. Paint Nomads
12. Don't buy any more Infinity armies until I convince everyone to start playing it...
13. Paint WotR Mordor
14. Paint WotR Dwarves
15. Paint WotR Elves
16. Start PLOG so maybe I'll be motivated to do these items...

I'd bump number 16 up to first place if I were you; closely followed by number 8 as this will force you to stop doing number 9

It's been a while since I posted any pictures... so just to show that I am still slowly working on things...

First we've got a WIP shot of a Marine for Knightley. I'm pleased with the white helmet so far, though the photo does seem to indicate that the shading/highlights on some of the grey armour is too subtle. You can also see the start of the osl for the scanner



And then we have three WIP shots of some Grave Guard... possibly for Alfndrate if he likes them. The plan is to add some greenstuff bits to them to make it all look a bit more ragged... but you get the ideas



I've also pieced together enough new guard to finish the full 5 infantry squads in a platoon, rounded the number of spares up to allow for the minimum Whiteshield and made enough spare troopers for all my heavy weapon squads as well. Should be impressive to see an almost full platoon on the table. Now I just need to make 30 more whiteshields and some special weapon squads

Excellent work on that marine there endtrans.

I'm not happy with the chest piece or the terminator honours on the shoulder pad... but the moulding on both is really difficult to work with... one os so fine you can hardly see the detail, the other is so blobby there is no detail :/

nice grave guard... and speaking of guard, how goes the IG?

Looking great man, please remember to include a spare death watch pad in the post

Nice work, endtrans. I really like the pose of the marine, with one knee on the rock. That's a nice touch. For the white on the helmet, is that just white with a sepia wash?

I really like your grave guard, too. I'm tempted to get some greatswords and skeletons myself!

For the white it's something along the lines of:

- white undercoat
- Paint thinned VMC Silvergrey in the shadowy areas, leaving about 50% of the helmet pure white
- Paint some sepia wash into the recesses of the Silvergrey areas
- Paint another thin layer of sepia wash in some of the darker areas of the silvergrey once the first layer is dry
- Paint a 50/50 mix of Sepia and black wash into the very dark areas of the shadows.

The trick is not to wash the area as you'll cover up areas you want to remain pure white, but to slowly build up the shadows


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Rogue Wolves wrote:nice grave guard... and speaking of guard, how goes the IG?

Guard have been on the back burner for a while, but this morning I undercoated about 24 more infantry to try and finish off the full 5 infantry squads and minimum sized Whiteshield squad for my first platoon. After that, I need to clear off a couple of other smaller projects and then I can move onto the planned second platoon