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Hello all.

Like a lot of wargamers, I have too many projects on the go and hobby butterfly-itis means I never seem to get to a place where I consider anything complete.

To that end, and as a simple record of what I have done when, I am starting this log to hopefully focus the mind and push towards some "completed" projects.

With that in mind, I am aiming to do the following (in no particular order):

Repaint 2,000pts of Tau - Current completion 500/2,000
As per my signature, I have approximately 3,000 points of Tau painted. The majority have been only painted to a fairly basic tabletop standard as they needed to get bashed out in fairly short order for a large game. Since then, I have painted around 500 points more in a slightly altered scheme and to a higher standard. The plan is to get a total of approx 2k of my existing models stripped, and repainted in the shiny new scheme.

The new scheme as modelled by my Coldstar Commander:




Genestealer Cultists - Current completion 900/1,000
I've recently started collecting GSC as well, essentially as the antithesis to the above Tau. This is an army that I get to participate in all phases of the game rather than just the shooting phase. It also helps that all their models are new and fresh! I have an escalation campaign starting soon where the first checkpoint is 1,000 points so that is what i am working towards. I'm nearly there...unless I decide to tweak my list and take something else. A lot of the points are tied up in purestrains that I will likely get rid of.

Here's my latest completed unit - Atalan Jackals:





Expand Lizardmen Fantasy Army - 3,000/4,000
I'm fortunate enough to have a gaming group that still plays old Warhammer Fantasy, but arriving late to the party I had to start my army from scratch. Thankfully I had some 5th edition Saurus in the loft, and after some kind donations and canny purchases I was able to quickly build a 3,000 point army on square bases. The majority of these were painted in a 4 months period so aren't as well painted as my more recent models, but they look great on the battlefield all ranked up. I am looking to gradually increase this army and collect some of the minis I don't yet have.

[Placeholder for pictures]

Idoneth Deepkin Battleforce - Unstarted
Despite playing Fantasy more than AoS, a few of us are dipping our toes in the new system and are enjoying it so far. Frankly this is mostly a thinly veiled reason to paint some new toys, as I could just use my Lizardmen if I really wanted to. But where's the fun in that?

Paint Blackstone Fortress - Unstarted
Not much to say on this, great fun board game with some lovely minis, picked up a box for a bargain price with an eBay code so will be looking to get this painted to the best of my abilities.

Repaint Epic Space Marines - Unstarted
A rummage through my parents' loft found a veritable treasure trove of half painted boxes of models. Whilst a Space Crusade and Heroquest boxes were quickly secured, the more interesting find was a reasonably sizeable Epic Space Marine army from what I am informed was the 3rd edition of Epic. Apparently I was as unfocused at painting as a teenager as I am now, so these are only half painted in a passable Imperial Fists colour scheme, the rest is bare plastic. I'll be looking to get this back into a playable state.

So how many of these will I achieve this year? Well, maybe only a couple. How often will I get distracted with a side project? Probably regularly. Will I keep this log up to date? I'm going to try! Let's see where I end up.

The Tau especially is fantastic

Really cool posing on that Tau Commander! And I'm loving the Jackals. Excellent paintjob on excellent models.

Hello all,

A bit of a milestone: I have got my GSC to approx 1k points! Unfortunately 130 points of that are purestrain genestealers who haven't really made their points in games so far. So they are going to be replaced with either more acolytes or neophytes, maybe both!

Here's some shots of my army so far.

https://www.dakkadakka.com/gallery/1010193-.html (Full army altogether is here, but the image is previewing too large so feel free to click!










Next up and primed are another squad of neophytes, this time with webbers!

January update

It's just the one Terradon actually

Woo boy it's 2020 already. That came around quick.

So I set this thread up in Spring 2019 with the expectation I would be able to keep it going and updated through the rest of the year. Sadly that didn't happen because I both lost interest in painting for a bit and then became a father (having grossly underestimated how much that would impact on my painting time).

But I have recently got back into the painting groove, and have mostly been focusing on Titans for Adeptus Titanicus. So far I have completed a warlord, 3 questoris, and more recently a pair of warhounds, the second of which I finished on Friday:



Better, lightbox photos to follow.

I've also been working on a skink chief on a terradon for my Lizardmen. My current army is very much slann and saurus focused which, while effective, isn't particularly fun. I am going to focus on getting more skinks in to my list and I have started with a flying skink of death. I've hopped on catgut's coconut crab scheme hype train for the terradon in a nice shocking blue:


I started by blocking out the colours and shading the white.


Then got excited and did the dots despite having not shaded the blue...


So I shaded, reapplied the blue, then re-did the dots. Ooops!

Now just the metal work, feathers, claws and highlights to go.



Also at the back end of last year, I started playing with some test models for the Idoneth battleforce mentioned in my OP. I have in mind the idea of a more dark and grim version of the Idoneth than you normally see. Usually they are brights with sandy beaches and tons of lovely coral. That's great but it didn't sit right with me. In my head, they should look like they are remorseless night raiders from an eternally underwater kingdom, with more of an English Channel than tropical paradise feeling. As such, I went for a more grubby approach, with highly oxidised bronze and rusted aelven steel for the metal work. Originally I did a sea green for the robes, but this clashed with the oxidisation, so I changed to a rich purple.
The basing is meant to simply be mud at this stage, the dry land having been turned damp and soggy by the Idoneth's tidecasting. I think if i carry on with with this I will add puddles with water effects as well as wood planks, sea weed and coils of rope, as though they are raiding some unfortunate coastal community.

Original Sea Green scheme


Updated Purple Scheme



Finally, earlier in Autumn 2019 I started painting some High Elves. I have somehow amassed quite a sizeable force of unpainted High Elves sat on sprues and in boxes without having much done to them. I always want to get an army finished for them but with the number of models to paint it's always intimidated me somewhat. But one of our gaming group is proposing a small campaign using Dragon Rampant rules, which is the perfect opportunity to paint some of the elves in a quantity that doesn't utterly terrify me. Here are the first 6 Sea Guard!




Automatically Appended Next Post:
Right after getting home from work, I finished off the flying skink of doom! I'm really happy how this turned out, which obviously means he will die instantly in his next game, which is Sunday!










Additionally, I took some better pictures of my two recently completed Warhounds for Adeptus Titanicus. These are fantastic models and I fully intend on picking up some more...after I paint the knight household boxset I picked up, and a reaver titan!





This is the clean one, I haven't thought of a name for him/her yet. Originally I was going to weather it but I quite like him pristine!





And the more battered one I have taken to calling Pyre of Lucius.

What's next? Well the Skink Chief has got me in the mood for more square based lizards, so it is going to be the start of a mighty skink cohort! Then 4 Knights Cerastus after that. Thanks for reading!

After doing a few models that I spent a fair bit of time on for each of them (the warhounds and the skink chief above), next up is the start of a mighty skink cohort!

I'm aiming to get a full unit of around 40 skinks, so these will be bashed out in a bit of a faster, less careful method. Time is money after all!

The final unit is going to be a mix of the current skinks available from GW and the old bow skinks that I will try to convert to shield and javelins.

First step was just a simple coat of Genestealer Purple.



Normally I would start with a base of Daemonette hide but that usually requires a few layers of Genestealer purple after the shade and I am hoping to do a rougher layer or drybrush to get a similar result far quicker!

Next will be a shade of Druchii Violet.

Those titans are very nice, really crisp detail work on their carapaces.

Thanks fingol!

So I managed to have a couple of games with the lizardmen on Sunday, using the 9th Age rule set rather than 8th ed. This was only my second and third games with these rules but I have to say I like them. They feel more measured and less exploit exploitable than 8th ed and at no point did I have to take a whole unit of saurus off to a single spell (looking at you curse of the bad moon).

Game sizes were 3000 points (which I would estimate to be around 2000 in 8th ed) so that we could get a couple of games in each. 3 "good" armies against three "baddies", my Lizards, a force of stoic dwarves and a sprawling human army were arranged against some horrible ratmen, the living dead and some barbaric greenskins.

I went up against the skaven for the first game and won and then sadly lost against the Vampire Counts. Overall the baddies won 4-2 but a good time was had by all and the fantasy bug has bitten us all once again. I am now planning a narrative escalation campaign for us all to use new armies. Personally, I think I'll be going High Elves.

My list for the weekend was:

Cuatl lord (Immortal grasp, BSB)
Skink chief on terradon with spear and shield (well i had just painted him!)
25 Saurus warriors with sword and board
25 Saurus warriors with spears
21 Temple Guard
5 Chameleon skunks
Bastilidon (or Thyroscutus) with sun engine.

MVP for me was the basti, who successfully tanked a hellpit abomination in the first game and steadily killed off 3 vargheist in the second. That 6 armour is a godsend! Makes me want the snake altar variant now...

Here's some pics (more in my gallery)


Some fantasy ring rust evident as I block my temple guard turn 1 with my basti


Meanwhile the heroic skinks try to get round the flanks


The saurus units wheel round to surround the skaven while in the background the humans square off against hordes of greenskins


Game 2 started well as the bastilidon resisted a charge by the vargheists and steadily crushed them in turn...


But the battle was ultimately lost in the centre where the temple guard couldn't hold out against the resurrecting grave guard.

Hello all,


Took a bit of a break from purple lizards to knock up something for an Inquisitor28 campaign that is soon to start. I've never done an RP campaign before, so I thought I would combine it with something else I hadn't done before, kitbashing!



So this guy is my attempt at a Magos Biologis to support the band of reprobates pressed into service by our Inquisitor. I wanted to try to give him a mad doctor look so gave him a white coat, blue surgical glove and plenty of gore:




I also managed to finish 21 skinks for a skink cohort. These were a bit of a struggle, I hate batch painting even when it is basically at a table top standard. It just burns me out. So I just wanted these done, screw the fineries.



I'd already painted 9 old 5th ed bow skinks converted (badly) to have javelins and shields so with these old and pretty badly painted skinks I got to a nice round cohort of 30 T2 skinks!



Next up, these guys need a banner bearer and a musician to coax them into a battle fury. Plus I have second salamander to paint! After that, it'll either be a return to Adeptus Titanicus or some High Elves. Who knows!?

Hello all

So I feel like 2020 may end being the year of the knife ear for me. I've steadily amassed a rather large backlog of high elves over the last 2 years. So far I have painted the 6 sea guard shown earlier in the thread. This is...pathetic.

Thankfully, I have motivation to get a decent chunk of them done! My gaming group are starting an escalation campaign (of my devising) using new armies for us all with the 9th Age rule set we've come to prefer. So, my challenge is to paint up 2,250 pts of high born elves over the coming weeks. Eek.

With that in mind, I am making progress on 6 more sea guard:



These models are fantastic for monopose, full of detail and character. Not fast to paint with their various materials and intricacies however. And yes, they still suffer from the standard monopose issue of weird sculpting where parts just morph into one another. In this case it's the quivers.

So not only do I have vast amounts of high elves to paint in my backlog, and the Idoneth battleforce box mentioned in my OP. But I also was offered a fantastic deal on c.2000+ Craftworld Eldar. The majority of these are metal, most unpainted or primed. Some will need stripping and others will need fixing. But I am rather excited to get started on my own Craftworld paint scheme. Current plan is grey/blue armour, gloss black helms and off white guns. Once Storm Dennis passes I'll prime some guardians and get going on them too...

The command group of the Lothern Sea Guard have been completed and added to the existing 6 test models.






There's a couple of errors, particularly on the banner, but I am very happy with the end result so am not going to go back and adjust. So that's half of my first unit of sea guard done and dusted. Rather than churn out the next 12 for the unit, I am going to do 6 swordsmasters and a reaper bolt thrower next. The bolt thrower is the older metal multiple bolt model, so it is going to be interesting to see if it fits the newer Sea Guard aesthetic once painted.

Glad to see another fantasy square bases general!

You're elves are looking really good. The bases really make the colourful miniatures pop.

Any cavalry in the amassed backlog of elves you've got?

I thought the two most recent cavalry kits for the high elves where great, especially the dragon princes.

Thanks!

Yeah I have 16 Silver helms in store and I am hoping to pick up 5 Dragon Princes soon too. Should be good!

Other than lots of Sea Guard, Reavers and swordsmasters from the 8th ed starter box, I have 20 archers, 2 tiranoc chariots, 1 white lion chariot, 20 white lions, 2 reaper bolt throwers and assorted HQs.

What I dont have is decent spearmen. The newer box seems to be rarer and the old monopose tend to be pretty poor condition in second hand sites.

Hi mould, great work you’ve been showing here. The Warhounds look fantastically crisp and neat, but it’s your Sea Guard that steal the show for me! Looking forward to see where you head next!

Thanks gobert!

I'm definitely in the mood to paint more square based elves. Sadly the weather has not been supporting this so I wasn't able to prime any high elves in time to paint this weekend. I did however smash out a speed painted salamander:



Not my finest work but I was annoyed with it being finecast and so just wanted it painted so it could be used in battles (and out of my painting queue).

The weather did hold off for long enough to prime some Swordmasters and Bolt Thrower crew late yesterday afternoon, so they are next on the painting table. I'm interested to see how well the old metal bolt thrower crew fit in with the 8th edition Sea Guard and Swordmasters, I'm hoping once painted up in a consistent scheme/style they will fit in ok!

Nice work in here - keep it up!

Thank you!

Not made as much progress as I would have liked until yesterday due to real life issues. Apparently having a 6 month old and a full time job didn't eat into enough of my hobby time, now we are looking to move house!

I have pretty much finished the six swordmasters I was working on above. Just need some static grass and then posed in the light box for decent photos.



After reading through the old Fantasy Heraldry book for High Elves, I've decided to have my army based in Cothique. So used a Sea Green on the helmet plumes and will go back and swap some of the blue to a similar colour on the sea guard later too.


Proper photos to follow!

The Sea Guard look superb and the Sword Masters look to be following suit. Looking forward to some OOP Eldar.

Better pictures of the Swordmasters ahoy!

A little bit more progress! Finished up an oldhammer bolt thrower and crew. I'm rather pleased that the older metal model doesn't look out of place next to the newer Sea Guard and Swordmasters. I do have one of the newer plastic bolt throwers as well as another metal one still to paint so hopefully they all look good together.





These guys did have their first battle last week as I took my High Elves for a 3000 point battle against Skaven using the 9th Age ruleset (which is now preferred to 8th Edition WHFB for my gaming group). Obviously I fielded a lot of grey plastic but thankfully my opponent was understanding that I wanted to give the new boys a spin.

Everything was going pretty well until my unit of Swordmasters underestimated the combat ability of a Skaven Warlord, and managed to lose combat against the unit of clan rats he was with (seriously, 16 attacks resulted in 6 dead clan rats). The Swordmasters promptly broke and fled, panicking a completely unscathed unit of White Lions despite them being in BSB range. Both units were promptly ran down by clan rats. Welp.

Next up, either more Swordmasters or an Eagle to hunt warmachines and be a general nuisance!

That's really nice work. I still think those swordmaster figures look so neat, and I really like the green accents

Thank you!

Took a break from painting High Elves to see if I could smash out a quick to paint scheme for Beastmen with a test Ungor. This is what I came up with:





I wanted him to look like a raider from a mountain tribe of Beastmen, so took a palette inspiration from mountain goats. The basing is meant to look like scree, not sure if it works!?

Overall I am happy, but I think it still took too long to do, probably 1hr30mins, which would mean a 30 man unit would take 60 hours. Welp. Might try another test one with contrast paints some day. See if that speeds it up.

He does remind me a bit of a mountain goat, so i think that came out well!

Those elves look fantastic! The black and gold sheathes on the bolt thrower guys are a good little touch, it’s not often you see black on High Elves, but it works really well. The sea green will work well to tie them all together that’s for sure!

Hello,

Well despite the global crisis I have still been pretty busy with work and parenting. But I have managed a bit of time to expand f my unit of swordmasters!



I've not done as good a job on the standard as I would have liked. Thankfully I have 4 or 5 versions of that model so I can easily give it another attempt at a later date.

7 more swordmaster until it feels like a proper unit!

The banner looks pretty good to me, in fact the whole unit does so far!

Thanks gobert!

As always, I have gotten distracted from Elves again!

I wanted to have a play with rusted metals and metallic blue, so started working on a Chaos Lord on Daemonic Mount, specifically the mount part!





This is what I ended up with. I'm not entirely happy with it but I learned a lot.
Pros: The rusted chain mail and metal spikes came out how I wanted them to, as did the pale rock/scree basing. The metallic blue was pretty easy to accomplish and should be replicable across larger units.
Cons: The scarring doesn't look particularly natural, and the placement of the rust patches on the blue also needs to be more selective. I think I will also try basing the blue with a brighter silver to get more of a pop. The model was finecast which continues to be a pain in the arse to deal with.


The lord himself next!

It's a lovely evil horse. Metallic blue looks fun to do!

Thanks amazingturtles!

I've now finished the rider too...





Only problem is, it makes me want more chaos! Back to elves again soon.

This looks great