Current projects
Been a very long time since I updated this. What with one thing and another my hobby time has been somewhat limited over the last few months and i've been dedicating it to actually painting and gaming!
So, what have I been up to recently? My Flames of War German army is coming along very nicely with the addition of some extra units to bolster what is already a formidable force. I reckon with the new additions that the points cost to take everything would be well over 3,000 now.
Recently got into some new games as well, including Alkemy from Kraken Editions in France. This is another skirmish game based in their own world with some very nice 28mm figures available. One excellent feature is that, when you buy a starter set it includes everything you need to play the game including a tape measure! This is a nice touch and means that it's very accessible and easy to get into.
My paintjob on epic Butcher also won me the coveted Single Mini award in the painting competition at my local games club, 4TK. I am very pleased with this result and have the trophy proudly displayed in my painting room.
I've also been wanting to get more into terrain building after my successes with the ruined tower from Hirst Arts and a few other smaller bits, I feel that it is time to tackle something bigger. I've been wanting a fully scenic Flames of War board for a while and now that I managed to rope the missus into helping me to clear out the garage, I now have a work space that I can leave things set up in for months at a time. Let's face it, this is me we're talking about. This latest project isn't going to be done much before this time next year!
Some things I have in the pipeline are doing a few tips and tutorial posts for painting and terrain making for this site. Nothing earth-shattering, but just some bits and pieces that i've picked up, tried and learned from over the last few months. I think the first one will be on duplicating rust effects in different ways to get different effects.
Mantic Games Ghouls
Just got my ghouls through from the Wayland Games special offer and I thought i'd share them with you. They're from Mantic Games, who do a range of undead and elves along with a few other bits and bobs. I've seen their elves before and, for my tastes, they were far too delicate looking and didn't appeal in the slightest.
Well, they've really turned things up a notch with these ghouls. Gone are the days of the lumbering undead moaning "braaaains" these things are most reminiscent of the zombies from Left 4 Dead, fast and dangerous-looking. I think they'll probably see a lot of use in my undead warband for Mordheim and I will be getting some more to fill out the ranks as time goes on.
So, without further ado, here's the photo. I probably should have taken one from before I cut and glued them, but in my haste to see them together I completely failed! Anyway, on with the show.
The build was nice and easy, with legs, torso and head separate items. There are a few detailing bits but not a huge amount. It's not really needed though as the sculpts are very finely detailed and beautifully crisp.
The detailing on them is exquisite and, despite the fact that both bodies had both hands moulded on, there were separate hands carrying cleavers, shivs or the wicked-looking claw i've attached to mine above. I love the small details like arrows and knives sticking out or through them too because they really help to bring the models to life and will be a lot of fun to paint up.
Now to the bad stuff. There isn't a lot to be honest, but one thing to look out for is that the hands are delicate. Mine arrived in a jiffy bag and the hand on one of the bodies was showing obvious signs of having been stressed with very white markings. If you don't know what i'm talking about, grab the nearest gray plastic sprue near you, bend it slightly and you'll see the plastic around the bend whiten as you stress it. This was one of the reasons why I swapped the hand for the claw. The other was that it just looked so damn cool.
All told, I think these models are absolutely fantastic and I can't wait to put brush to plastic and get them looking every bit as fearsome as the sculpting deserves.
Cryx work in progress shots
Thanks to the four day weekend, i've spent a bit of time working on my Cryx scheme and trying to decide whether I like it or not. Although I like the purple, I decided that the armour didn't look good purple so i'm going to go with plain metal for most of the armour, but make it very rusty.
A favourite Cryx tactic is to jump off ship, sink to the ocean floor and walk to shore to attack and, since they're all technically dead, I decided that they wouldn't really take much care of their armour so i'm going to make it very damaged and rusty.
I'm happy with the way the eyes have come out (they look a lot brighter and more obvious in real life), and I think they actually look like they're glowing green and since this was technically my first attempt at source lighting on a model, i'm quite pleased with it. You can also see the rusting effect on some of the armour plates. This was done with the rust colours from the Tensocrom Lifecolor sets which are acrylic paints designed for model railway enthusiasts, but work just as well on models like this. The range includes other colours like Kerosene and Petrol which aren't as useful, but the Smoke makes for a very realistic smoky effect for warjacks and the like.
You can see the original armour plate in the sort-of metallic purple which I really don't think works very well. I'm much happier with the rusted armour plates now.
A close-up of the armour plate showing the rust effect in more detail. I think a bit of thinning on some of the colours to use them more as a tint, some more stippling with them and some other techniques (as well as more damage on the armour with a knife or the dremel may be in order) could serve to make the effect even more realistic. As a test of the scheme though, i'm happy with it and don't feel the need to give him a green bath just yet 
Next up is going to be shading on the "skirts". I think the colour I have on there at the moment is going to be as light as I want to go with the base colour. I want these models to be quite dark and moody so bright, sharp highlights aren't really going to work with that idea. We'll see though.
I'm also going to find another colour to use on the armour as an accent on the edging and patterning. Maybe another metallic, like the tin or copper vallejo paints or maybe try them in purple, but really beaten up. It's all a bit up in the air at the moment, but that's the point of a work in progress
A bit of Flames of War painting
Haven't been doing a lot of painting recently since finding Steam and Left 4 Dead on the PC. However, my hard drive decided to pack up this morning so i'll be doing a lot more painting whilst i'm waiting for a new one to show up.
On the table this weekend was some more of my German Flames of War army. This time it was the turn of the mortar team in their 251/2's. All the crew and the observer teams are painted up and awaiting mounting. The half-tracks themselves have been primed and are ready for basecoating, camouflage and weathering. For the colours, I use the FoW Vallejo paint sets to get some nice authentic colours. The half-tracks (along with the rest of my vehicles) are based in Middlestone with German Camo Dark Green and Chocolate Brown for the camouflage pattern. I get some excellent use out of my airbrush, which makes it so much easier to get a nice, smooth coat on and makes painting the camo pattern take seconds rather than hours.
I'll hopefully be finishing them off tonight and after that, I can go back to the Kayazy Assassins, Behemoth and Kodiak for my Khador army that i've had sitting around half-painted for a while now.
Epic butcher finished at last!
It's the end of an era. Well, it feels like it anyway! The model that holds the record for being on my painting table for the longest (I think he's clocked up nearly 3 months on there) is now finished. Epic Butcher is finally done, varnished and based.
I'd love to post some pictures here, but i'm planning on entering him in the next Steve Dean competition so I can't publish any shots of him beforehand. After that is done with though i'll be putting up photos of him on the main Mini Painters website for everyone to peruse to their hearts content.
I'm pretty pleased with the way he's come out and i'm only slightly disappointed that the second gloss varnish coat didn't clear properly and has left him with a slightly white sheen, but i'm hoping that will clear given enough time.
So, the question is what do I do next? I've still got Behemoth and a Kodiak on the table from my Khador Warmachine forces, not to mention all the solos and other warcasters that need a lick of paint. Then, there's always the Cryx to finish off my test scheme and get them underway. I could also indulge in a bit of scenery building using all the graveyard bits and bobs I bought ages ago, or maybe do something with the 2x4ft boards I got to replace my warped ones.
So much fun stuff to do, so little holiday to use...
More work on eButcher, Cryx colour scheme and a bit of gaming burnout
My epic Butcher paintjob is coming along nicely. I spent part of last night doing the spikes on his shoulder guards and, after making a bit of a mess over the already-completed red I decided to put the paintbrush to one side and leave it til later. I did some tidying up on the reds and cleaned up the mess a bit but it'll never look as good as it did, which is a shame. Luckily the spikes look great though
I also started on a Bane Thrall to test the Cryx scheme. The purple works quite well, and i'll be shading the "skirts" later to get a feel of how that'll work. I think the purple is going to be the brightest it's going to go with nice, deep shadows to make it stand out. I'm not entirely convinced on using it for the shoulder pads though as I think they just look a bit silly, so i'll probably go over those with a dark silver and weather them. I don't want these models to be too bright or garish so all the metal effects are going to be muted and weathered heavily. The only bright bits are going to be the head and eyes, which are going to be the traditional luminescent green with lighting effects on the eye sockets.
The league is still taking it's toll on me and i'm not feeling the gaming vibe at the moment, so i'm taking some time off from playing to concentrate on upping my painting game. I'll still be attending the club on a regular basis (you're not getting rid of me that easily!) but i'll be doing hobby stuff rather than gaming most of the time and hopefully the need to see my enemies driven before me and hear the lamentation of their women will return given time.
Paint chits, Cryx colour scheme
After seeing a tip on the ever useful Brush Thralls website about a great way of organising your paints for creating colour schemes. The basic idea is to create individual colour chits for each paint you have with the name of the paint on the other side so you don't get unduly swayed by the name. For mine, I sprayed a sheet of foamcore board with white primer to give a nice surface to paint on then I cut it into small pieces 1cm by 3cm which is enough for a good-sized colour block along with enough room for the name of the paint on the other side. So far i've created chits for all my Citadel foundation and P3 paints and i'm about 1/3 of the way through the Vallejo game colours. It's a long, tedious process, but I think the end product is worthwhile especially when you consider that the colour of the paint in the pot often bears little resemblance to the colour when it's dried.
If I was to do it all again, I think i'd probably split each chit into thirds and prime one third in white, one in gray and one in black. That way you'd be able to tell what the colour is going to look like when painted over different primer colours. Obviously this will take even longer than the original method and i'm not sure it would be any more useful.
My Cryx army is coming along nicely, all the minis are washed and i've started on one of the Bane Thralls to test my colour scheme. After consultation with a colour expert (that'd be the wife) i'm going to go with a VGC Royal Purple for the main colour, with a darkish gray as a secondary colour and the usual green glow effects with P3 Wurm Green and Necrotite Green. I'll be testing this colour scheme on the thrall shortly and i'm confident that it'll be easy to give him a green bath if i'm unhappy with the results.
Paints, brushes and other tools of the trade
Not a lot happening in my world at the moment with regards to painting. Had a crack at epic Butchers trousers last night and i'm not completely happy with them so i'm gonna redo them sometime over the weekend. Beyond that, the assault kommandos are coming along nicely, with the leather bits being painted this morning and only the brass bits and bases left to do before I can call them done.
So, I thought i'd take the opportunity to give you a rundown on what I use in the way of paints and brushes. My collection of paints is pretty extensive, covering Citadel, P3 and Vallejo with a toe in the water of the Andrea acrylics with their silver set. At the moment i'm using a lot of the Citadel Foundation paints as these can be thinned down considerably and still cover beautifully thanks to the massive amounts of pigment in them. P3 also figures quite significantly in my painting at the moment thanks to their amazing ability to be thinned to the point of complete translucency without breaking up the paint at all. Vallejo still figure in my mix, but I mainly use them for basecoats or paintjobs where i'm not really trying because of their habit of breaking up badly when thinned too much.
I've been trying out the transparency painting technique used by a lot of very good painters and, although it's a very time-consuming technique, the results are fantastic and I can definitely see my paintjobs improving dramatically.
Another area where i've been experimenting is with the paint brushes I use. Like many people I started on the Citadel brushes which are fairly good, but have a tendency of losing their point quickly when painting with them. I quickly moved on to the Windsor and Newton Series 7 miniatures, which are excellent brushes in their own right and keep their point very well. However after a bad experience with several badly-made size 0 brushes, i've moved on to a completely different brand from France called Raphael. These are Kolinsky sable brushes that are absolutely fantastic. They keep a point incredibly well and the size 0 that I tend to use for practically everything is capable of producing the thinnest lines i've ever seen from a brush. They do take some looking after, but with that kind of investment, you're going to want to take care of them for as long as possible.
MIG FAQ DVD Vol. 1
MIG have produced an excellent DVD all about using their pigments (or to be honest, any pigments at all really) for weathering military vehicles. The production quality is really quite good, with clear examples worked from beginning to end (minus drying time, obviously) and a fairly good voice-over. The beginning segment of the DVD is incredibly cheesy, but thankfully over quickly and largely irrelevant to the actual content.
I've used the MIG pigments before for rusting and weathering my Imperial Guard tanks and i've never been completely happy with the results. They're good, but they just don't look as good as the stuff in magazines or the Modelling Masterclass book from Forgeworld (not really surprising I guess, they are the experts in the field). Watching this has shown me a lot, including the fact that i'm not putting enough pigment on and that layering several shades is vital for a realistic look. Also that I don't really need to worry about where the pigment is going because, until the fixer is applied, it's all removable with a finger or cloth.
I think next time I approach weathering a vehicle, it's going to be looking a lot better now. I did start watching Vol. 2, which is all about the modulation style of airbrushing and basecoating models, but I fell asleep halfway through and missed most of it. I'll report on that one when I get a chance to watch it in full.
100 points of Warmachine madness
Last night was the huge Warmachine battle between my Khador and a friend's Menoth. I'm hoping to get some photos of the event up here soon because the league organiser was taking a few pics of the battle. Anyway, on with the report.
We'd both done test deployments previous to the game so, after rolling for setup, we decided that we may as well just do a staggered deployment with myself, who won the roll, putting a few units down before my opponent started putting his down. That way he could still react to where I was deploying but setup didn't take all night to complete. Luckily neither did the game.
We rolled for scenario and ended up with one where there is a rectangle in the middle of the table 8" by 16" and you have to end your turn in control of it. It is worded slightly badly because, as it stands, all I had to do was run an advance deployer in there on the first turn and I win. We decided to amend it to read "beginning the third round, a player wins if he's in control etc.." that way we'd actually get a battle out of it, and boy did we.
The first turn I ran practically everything forward, only really pulling my cavalry short of their full 16" run so they wouldn't get immediately charged on my opponents turn. Eiryss moved up and took a pot shot at a unit attachment (you'll have to forgive me, I don't know the names of the Menoth units) but didn't do enough damage on the roll for a clean kill, which was a shame.
My opponent did pretty much the same thing, starting off with activating the unit Eiryss shot at and doing some special action that allowed them to shoot and then charge in. This combined with the combined ranged attack ability and combined melee attack spelled the doom of all but one of my doom reavers. A few AOE shots off the bow took down a few of the Iron Fang Pikemen but that's what they were there for, to soak shots so I wasn't too bothered.
The second round was where battle was joined with the full fury of 100 points of Menoth and Khador meeting in the middle of the table. I made a few mistakes judging distances at this point and managed to get a completely failed charge with the IFP, which later led to them getting massacred by firebombs. I also charged the Avatar with my Iron Fang Uhlans ending up with two of them outside of melee range, which also spelled disaster for them. Still, they put 5 points of damage on the Avatar so not a total loss One of the manhunters wandered up and lopped the head off of Eiryss once and for all proving that Menoth had managed to hire a fake one. Unfortunately the real Eiryss didn't do a lot, trying to get disruptor shots off on one of my opponents warcasters and failing miserably each time and finally dying to a free strike from a light 'jack. The remaining Doom Reaver and Fenris combined managed to almost completely massacre the shooty unit that decimated them the turn before.
On his turn, my opponent realised that he was going to lose if he didn't get a model into the area in the middle of the table, so he moved up a really annoying unit that could only be hit by magical attacks and weapons. Those being few and far between on the table, things weren't looking too good for the boys in red. After watching his mates get clobbered, the last remaining shooty guy decided to leg it and died to a glowing green sword in the back. Unfortunately the final Doom Reaver and Fenris then looked up and saw a heavy warjack and several light 'jacks heading their way rapidly. The Doom Reaver was rapidly turned into a fine red mist and Fenris' horse was knocked from under him and subsequently squished by another 'jack mooching into combat. The Ulhans and Pikemen were both massacred shortly afterwards and then my opponent realised they'd left me with a perfect charge lane straight from Yuri to one of his casters. Gotta love the damage output of a weapon master on the charge
So began the start of my third turn and, sadly for my opponent, the shortest one of the game. I got Eiryss killed by trying to leave combat (she's next to useless in combat, especially against a 'jack) to take another shot at the caster. One lucky roll later and she was a small red pile of entrails on the floor. I charged in a put a few damage boxes on one of his 'jacks with the Great Bears. What's better than weapon masters on the charge? Weapon masters on the charge with two attacks, that's what! The Man-O-War Shocktroopers then thundered into combat, combined their attack against a light 'jack and stuck something like 14 points of damage on it. Not great for a unit worth the same amount of points but it was the only thing in their range.
I then decided that I may as well see if the game ended that turn. My opponent only had 1 solo inside the control area and I had plenty within charge range. The problem was that he could only be hit by spells. Unfortunately for my opponent, he'd managed to park him mere inches away from my Greylord Ternions and Koldun Lord. Practically the only magical attacks I had left on the table short of my casters. Oh dear, oh dear... So, spray attacks all round then. The first attack hits! 3 damage. Not enough for the kill, but I still have 3 more so i'm not worried. The second attack misses completely! The sweats started and with a shaking hand, I roll to hit with the third ternion. The third attack hits home! But only 2 damage. My opponent then informed me that that was enough to kill him. The Paladin toppled over and I ended my turn in complete control of the area and the game.
Looking back on it, things were not going well for me. I'd lost several units and solos already, the IFP, Uhlans, Doom reavers, Fenris and one of the Great Bears were already down and all i'd popped were an annoying shooty unit and one of the multitude of light 'jacks. The only upside was that I had Beast '09, Drago and 2 Juggies all souped up and ready to kick ass at a moment's notice. Had we been playing to caster deaths, I think it would have been interesting to see how the game progressed. My opponent was hampered by playing such a huge game with a lot of units that he wasn't familiar with and space for movement was very limited.