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.

Right now these look like pre-painted collectible miniatures . However this might actually be my favorite time in the painting process. It's when I've finally gotten all the fundamentals out of the way and can start work on the details. While I used to completely detail some parts of a miniature before painting the rest of it, I now find it more motivating to finish base-coating the entire miniature first because it makes the miniature seem more complete.

I know that feeling, the great one when you've planned out all the colours and know what to do.

They look great, waiting to see what comes next.

Lookin' sharp, Jon. They'll look great all together.

Swordwind wrote:
Also you paint rather fast, to me at least. Takes me about 3 days to get 1 colour down. ):

kitch102 wrote:
And I second swordwinds comment, you paint unnaturally fast

I'n actually convinced that I paint quite slowly compared with a lot of people! I think that what lets me get a lot done has more to do with having learned to be more disciplined about painting. For example, I generally get a bit of painting in every day even if it's only fifteen minutes. In this time I set very modest goals such as "I'll paint all the right hands on these miniatures". This helps with motivation a lot too. Everyone has parts of miniatures that they find boring or tedious to paint. Painting all these bits at once lets you get those parts out of the way so you don't have them annoying you every time you look at a WIP squad. Painting the same bits together also makes you faster overall because you don't need to think about how you're going to approach the next part. You just paint it like the first few!

Having a good audiobook(s) and podcasts to listen to also helps to keep me going.

Hope that helps!

First mini's of the Year of the Dragon! May you find health, wealth and happiness in the new year, unlike these poor creatures! I really like how the blue face plates turned out, given that I had considered painting them bronze. They make a nice focal point for the miniature. I'll probably paint a few more at some point (I'd like to try out the special weapons, especially the liquifier) but right now I'm just running them as two squads of three for cheap objective grabbers.

Seeing how well these guys turned out makes me want to paint some Grotesques. It's a shame that GW offers only one "speed skater pose". Otherwise I'd have bought a squad right away. However, I have seen some amazing conversions using the Isle of Blood Rat Ogres. The only thing preventing me from picking some up is that they're always out of stock at bitz sites!

For the Grotesques maybe use the new crypt horrors set, that might look cool.

The wracks look awsome, although some how the skin seems shiny.

The skin was probably still drying.

Happy Year of the Dragon to you too. Great Wracks, knew they'd come out well. What's your next project?

I would love to see some Crypt Horror Grotesques tbh.
When I come to make some more I'll likely grab a box, it'll give me 3 more grots and a ton of bitz.

But yeah - there's also several options, using spare Talos bits / Greenstuff with Skaven Rat Ogres, Ogre Kingdoms Ogres or Wood Elf Dryads.

There's also a few third-party companies that will do them too.
And if you could find any 40-50mm tall Dragonball minis / models / toys, they're in the correct vein for this too (generally being smaller legs, huge arms, massively over muscled and proportinately funny)

The Paulson Games Grots are awesome. Highly poseable and highly detailed. The don't come with any upgrades though, that would require conversion

They are so ugly...








In a good way! ; )

Always look forward to seeing your completed minis Jon and as usual you have done a super job of them. Well done mate.

Dude, you have GOT to get these in to the what's new today blog, seriously, great work

Been planning some Crypt Horrors with spare Talos masks and vials myself, they'd make for some fantastic grotesques, and much better than the monopose model that GW released

kitch102 wrote:Dude, you have GOT to get these in to the what's new today blog, seriously, great work

Been planning some Crypt Horrors with spare Talos masks and vials myself, they'd make for some fantastic grotesques, and much better than the monopose model that GW released

He's already been in the blog, albeit rather unexpectedly.

I never even considered Crypt Horrors but now that I look at them they do have the exact body shape for Grotesques! Definitely something to think about and hope that some third party comes out with an "upgrade kit".

Tech Guard wrote:For the Grotesques maybe use the new crypt horrors set, that might look cool. The wracks look awsome, although some how the skin seems shiny.

Alfndrate wrote:The skin was probably still drying.

I think the brand of matt varnish I use (Mr.Color) has either changed their formula or I had a slightly shiner can than usual. However, I no longer have any problems with the varnish fogging up (which I still get sometimes with other brands) so it's a tradeoff I'm willing to accept. Also, the Wracks seem to have dried a bit more overnight and have lost some of that muscular sheen of sweat look.

Swordwind wrote:Happy Year of the Dragon to you too. Great Wracks, knew they'd come out well. What's your next project?

Live long and prosper (I always thought that summed up most of the tradition greetings)! I've been trying to decide between Wyches and a Razorwing Jetfighter.

Ovion wrote:I would love to see some Crypt Horror Grotesques tbh. And if you could find any 40-50mm tall Dragonball minis / models / toys, they're in the correct vein for this too (generally being smaller legs, huge arms, massively over muscled and proportinately funny)

That might work although I think Grotesques outdo even DBZ in terms of proportions!

whalemusic360 wrote:The Paulson Games Grots are awesome. Highly poseable and highly detailed. The don't come with any upgrades though, that would require conversion

I had a look on their website but they seem to have discontinued them.

IPS wrote:They are so ugly...In a good way! ; )

Thanks!

monkeyh wrote:Always look forward to seeing your completed minis Jon and as usual you have done a super job of them. Well done mate.

Thanks for the regular support!

kitch102 wrote:Dude, you have GOT to get these in to the what's new today blog, seriously, great work
Been planning some Crypt Horrors with spare Talos masks and vials myself, they'd make for some fantastic grotesques, and much better than the monopose model that GW released

I've been meaning to take some photos of various models in better lighting and sending them in to GW but I keep ending up painting stuff instead!

Alfndrate wrote:He's already been in the blog, albeit rather unexpectedly.

and I hope to be in again, although perhaps by a more conventional route this time. Although if GW was willing to fly me to Italy I'd be happy to do my painting there!

I vote Razorwing.

And if you check my p&m blog, the biotitan was a DBZ toy

Seriously Jon, you have to slow down or you're going to run out of ways to impress us if you keep this pace up!

I've never seen anyone stick to a colour theme as well as yet and you truly are an inspiration, not just with Dark Eldar but with this hobby in general.

The fact that you gave me credit for sharing how to cut the rudder bits on Raiders and Ravagers a few posts back makes you even more praise-worthy in my books.

</gush mode>

So now a hobby question, do you have a list in mind for the Wracks and the Grotesques or are you building and painting them mostly for the joy of the hobby?

Looking over the Vampire Counts model range, I stumbled upon Isabella Von Carstein. Am I only who thinks that, with a quick head swap and amore vicious looking blade, she would make a great Female Archon? Would look quite sweet next to your sexy female Haemonculus conversion...

Can't wait to see what you come up with for Grotesques, I'm sure you'll exceed our expectation as always.

These wracks look great as usual. I particularly like how you have managed to mix up the proportions of the same colors to give totally different effects while still keeping the army look cohesive.

Also, I would LOVE to see you do a razorwing


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also, what colors did you use for their skin? I can't remember if you've said already...

So far it's three votes for the Razorwing! But before I saw those votes I decided to work on some Wyches because I felt like trying out some poses I've had in mind for a while. Right now I'm having fun building the Wyches but I'll hold off on painting them and start on the Razorwing (I've actually opened the box, assembled the flying stand, test fitted the parts, and made suitable swooshing sound effects).

@Ovion: That biotitan makes me wish Forgeworld would come up with some rules for similar large bio-engineered monstrosities. I find the idea of a giant flesh golem like you've built strangely compelling. Although that would probably be encroaching on 'Nid territory.

@Dark_Gear: That was one of the most well-written complements I've ever received! The Wracks I plan to use in every build of my army. At 10 points each for a durable Troops choice I can seldom find a reason not to include at least one small squad in each list. Today I tried out two small squads of three in shock-prow equipped Raiders and they did very well. I put the Wracks in reserve and boosted the Raiders around tank shocking things and actually managed to run a squad of five bikes with and attached attack bike off the table! I then charged a squad of three Wracks into another bike squad and found that nine poisoned attacks can be surprisingly effective given that it's not easy for non-combat specialists to win combats against them. The Grotesques would be mostly for fun. Although I do dream of running a squad of ten with Lady Malys.

@spyguyyoda: I was actually pleasantly surprised that I could make the scheme work so well on such a variety of things. In particular, I thought the Warriors would look too blue, but then I hit on painting the bodysuits in the brown instead of the more commonly adopted single color schemes.

The fun part about Apoc is Scratchbuilds are perfectly fine

I've got the rules for the Magnatesque pretty much worked out, and another Warhound equivalent haem monstrosity the 'Felis Panthera Flesh Hound'.

I can give you the rules for both if you want, be interesting to see what you'd make to put my efforts to shame xD

You're welcome

Make that 4 votes for the Razorwing, if only for getting the chance to make swooshing sounds at every game when they're deployed and launch their payload. If I played more 2500 point games I'd be dropping my lone Ravager and replace it with a 3rd Razorwing as they are just that effective and fun to use. I'm sure my opponents will disagree.

Regarding Wracks, at my last tourney, another Dark Eldar player reported great succes with 9 of them, flanked by a haemonculus, charging into IG and Termagaunts. Whatever didn't die from the liquifiers was usually quickly mopped up in the following charge. I'll definitely have to experiment with them and see if it's worth dropping some Wyches.

As for Grotesques, in a perfect world (that mythical land where time and money for new projects is never short, the FLGS is fine with FW models and your wife doesn't pass out when she learns that your "hobby" budget matches her "purse and shoe" budget), I would field 8 of them with Rakarth and bring them to the table on a Tantalus. In the meantime I'm thinking 4 of them in a Disentegrator Raider will suit my needs just fine.

I can vouch for the viability of wracks. I ran seven of 'em with an agonizer and haemie with a venom blade into a BA assault squad (including a librarian) and ended up running them off the board. Wracks work wonderfully

Hey! I've been lurking on your blog for ages and i can't for the life of me remember if i ever posted here. Well i am now, I love what your doing, props to you, sir, props to you.

I spent my free time during the last two days having fun posing a squad of Wyches, with a bunch of them leaping off rocky outcrops. I'll put some pictures up tomorrow since the glue is still drying and I don't want to risk moving them for photos yet. Going to start on the Razorwing.

@Ovion: Zap me a PM, or are they in your blog already?

@Dark_Gear: "and your wife doesn't pass out when she learns that your "hobby" budget matches her "purse and shoe" budget)". Battlefoam will take care of matching the purse budget itself! Don't know what would be a good analogy for the shoes though.

@prime12357 & other Wrack Lovers: They're probably my favorite Dark Eldar troops choices right now. If they could take something that could at least glance tanks they'd be perfect! I'm trying to get the points level at the FLGS bumped up to 2000 points so I can try some bigger squads of them on a more regular basis.

@LostSoulCasey'sLaw: You've dropped out of your lurker mode a few times in this thread already so feel free to stay decloaked for longer!

Seeing as how you liked the previous stowage tip regarding the rudders on Raiders, here's another quick tip regarding the Razorwing.

When getting ready for final assembly, you'll notice that the rear tail of the plane slides in perfectly into a set of narrow rails. The cool thing is, the fit is "just" snug enough that it won't slide out if it's not glued. Slot it in, don't glue it, paint your model. When the time comes to put it in storage, slide the tail off. You've just shaved 2 inches off the height of the model which means you don't need to invest in 6 inch foam trays as the 4 inch trays will fit it just fine. As a matter of fact, you can store 2 Razorwings in 1 single Razorwing box with no fear of damaging the models.

Have fun making swooshing sounds. In the meantime, I'll be tweaking a fun "fwooom" list, (picture 8 liquifiers in 2000 points and you'll see what fwoom stands for) <cue: evil grin>.

I ran wracks pretty extensively for a while and I noticed a couple of things.

1) Yes, liquifier guns are EXACTLY as awesome as you think they are.

2) I never had much success getting past 3+ armor saves...even when I got furious charge and was rerolling to wound.

3) I switched them out with wyches.

I think this means that I probably had my hopes up just a little too high to begin with.

Best of luck to you

@ Spyguy: That's what my initial testing showed me as well but lately the Wyches have been doing the same thing with their Agonisers... So now I figure I'll be putting 2 liquifiers per squad in a Disentegrator Raider. I'm thinking Marine players won't approve of the, um, improvement...

The only time I've seen Wyches do really well is when you run 10 per squad, 2 shardnets and 1 Agoniser. Reducing a Marine Characters to 1 attack... Priceless. Sadly though, get a run of bad saves and the girls also tend to just bounce close combat at times. You win some, you lose some...

Trying out different poses is one of my favorite stages of painting and modeling miniatures. It's fun to go rooting around in your bitz box (or boxes, or disorganized heaps in my case) and finding just the right piece. I can spend hours trying different combinations and orientations of heads, torsos, legs, arms, and weapons to refine poses and create a really characterful squad. While building these Wyches I ripped off heads and arms multiple times on some of the models! I wanted to make them all look purposeful and not like they were just casually waving a weapon around in the air. I'm particularly happy with two dual knife wielding ladies leaping off the rocks.



@Dark_Gear and spyguyyoda: Right now I see the Wracks more as mid and backfield objective holders with larger squads also being able to deal with non-combat or weakened units. So I've actually not tried them against anything (like assault marines) that could give them a fair fight yet!

For mainline combat units I've found that various combinations of Beastmasters have done the best for me. Last weekend I tried a completely new list using a webway portal and two units of six Razorwing flocks which ripped their way through 12 Marine Bikers and then went on to tear up two Land Speeders. I was really impressed with just how much of the board you can cover with that setup. The real kicker is that you aren't too put out if they don't show up till a bit later since they only cost 126 points per unit.

Leaping with knives is good.

I always love dropping by in this blog... Dual knife lady is looking great!