Late night ill-advised political rantings.

Part One: Why you should vote

There is a General Election on the 12^th of December. If you aren’t registered to vote or, your not sure if you are registered to vote go here https://www.gov.uk/register-to-vote . 

Fallen Techmarine (Warpsmith)

Fallen Techmarine

So; I said in my last post that I was planning on expanding my fallen detachment out into a full 2000 points fallen themed chaos space marine army. This is the first part of that second half of the army. I know I haven't quite painted the first half yet, but I like to rotate through character- squad - vehicle for my own sanity.

Warcry?

My Warcry Warband

No, these aren't new models that I have just painted. I just wanted to talk a little bit about Warcry.

Another Rhino

Rhino

I did another Rhino, much like I did the previous Rhino. See, this is why I never stick to large army projects. Because painting one of something is fun, painting the three copies of that same thing is less interesting and I have less to say.

Second squad of fallen angels

Fallen Angels

See, sometimes I get back to projects it looks like I have abandoned. Not much to say on the painting since I painted these in exactly the same way I painted my previous selection of fallen - the Librarian you have also seen before.

One Shot - Pinup

One Shot - Pinup

So they released another relic knights miniature. This one is a 'pinup' version of a character for a game which is already pretty well hitting the absurd anime sex appeal thing. Hence the lack of trousers.

Funnily enough smooth expanses of skin are a difficult thing to paint well. I think I did a reasonable job. I'm also quite pleased with how the face came out, although frankly, anime faces are a bit cheaty because their eyes are supposed to be enormous.

I have to say, a bit of a palate cleanse from edge highlighting seemingly endless armour plates on an imperial knight.

I am aware this won't be to everyone's taste. Normal, space marine related service will resume shortly.

The Pale Knight

The Pale Knight

I don't need another knight. I have enough knights to feild an entire 2000 point army of House Krast Knights. Bit of a story to this.

Baleful Realmgates

Baleful Relmgates

So, having finished my 1000 point meeting engagement force for Age of Sigmar, I sat down and properly re-read the rules. Seems like you are generally supposed to have to pieces of terrain per player. So I figured I would pick up some baleful realm gates, because they are interesting, have little murals of skeletons on, and you get two in a box.

Painting these was messy. Very large so you have to pick them up as you paint them. The method was to paint them all over with Dark Reaper. Then I picked out a few of the bricks in russ gray. Followed with an all over wash with earthshade. Followed by a bone drybrush all over, and I finally used the filth wash I talked about last time I did some terrain painting in various cracks and crevices. I then went around and picked out all the Bronze in a fairly standard way. The portal energy was done using contrast paint. First I painted it all over with gray seer, and then the magos purple contrast paint.

I think they came out well enough, for quite a quick paint job.

More Ghosts

WoooooOooooOoo

Not much to say about these really, it's the other 10 Chainrasps from the starter box. Now they are painted, I have painted my entire 1000point meeting engagement force for Age of Sigmar. Which is nice.

The only remotely interesting detail here is that there isn't really a leader. When I originally assembled these I had every intention of running them as a single unit of 20. The chap in the stocks there is the alternate build of the leader model with the candlestick. I suppose this is the tension between collecting and painting cool models and making viable gaming pieces.

I don't think anyone I play against is going to care too much that the unit leader does not have a weird candlestick thing.

From Golden Light They Come

Adeptus Custodes Kill Team

I couldn't face painting another 10 Ghosts today, after painting 10 Ghosts yesterday so I decided to finish one of those projects that was hanging around half painted.

I hate that, when you end up with a half painted project just knocking around. Seems to always take forever and a day to get back to it. I laid down the gold basecoat, wash and highlights for these guys ages and ages ago. At some point I had done the blacking in of all the rubbery joins and things; today I finished them.

Custodes in Kill Team are interesting. They do a good job of not dying and destroying everything that stands before them, unfortunately, most Kill Team scenarios require capturing objectives and things.

Fun though.

Painting wise I largely used standard kinds of methods. The red leather was a bit of a first, hand to pick up a couple of new paints. It's gorthor brown with red highlight. Did use athematic blue contrast paint on the power blades and it looks amazing. Highlight them up as if they are normal swords and then just slather the athematic blue on top. That's all power weapons from now on sorted.

Hope you enjoy. Tired now. Back to work tomorrow.

Chainrasps

Chainrasps

I feel like I am letting down my skeletons by painting these spoops. I like skeletons a lot. However, in meeting engagement, they really have a place because they have a little more mobility. I've had the nighthaunt side of soul wars for a long time; since a good friend of mine bought it for the storm cast and was like 'do you want these for thirty quid'.

Death things

Lahmian Vampire

I know, I know I can't stick to any project. Today a bunch of death models. This was spurred on by the new Generals Handbook which includes a way to play with only 1000 points of models. I put a list together, and I needed to paint up a few extra bits and pieces.

Warhammer Day DIY Funko Pop

Funkopop

So this one takes a little bit of explanation. Games Workshop gave a licence to Funko Pop. Funko promptly came out with three different big headed vinyl dudes. A Dark Angel, A Space Wolf and an Ultramarine.

Today (technically, yesterday) is (was) 'Warhammer Day' a somewhat abitary celebration of the Warhammer hobby, a few things were available exclusively today, one of which was this 'DIY' funko pop. It's essentially the Ultramarines one, but just painted flat gray. With the idea being you can paint it yourself.

The Dragonborn Comes

The Dragonborn

Who's played Skyrim? I've played Skyrim. A lot of Skyrim. More on that later. I had of course seen that Mophidius had acquired a license to produce a Skyrim miniatures game, but I have enough models. I was resisting. However, my good friend the IT guy decided to buy me one as a gift because (he's awesome?) we had talked about video games (smashing every stereotype about men who work with computers) and he knew about my Skyrim addiction. So no I'm going to have to collect a force for the main game when it comes out. Which was probably his plan all along right. We've all done that...

Gellerpox Infected (Citadel Contrast)

The Gellerpox Infected

Okay, so this represents my second play with the new contrast paints. As I said in the last contrast related blog I really think the secret with contrast is to use a suitable subject. These Gellerpox Infected are perfect for contrast because they are mostly organic textures. These were very quick to paint, and while yes I could have done much better if I had taken the time to go full classic method on all of them, these are some more models that I was unlikely to ever get around to painting 'properly'.

Alabaster Automata

Alabaster Automata

Relic Knights. Well. I blogged about this game before, back in 2017. You can read that blog post here. In case you haven't been keeping up, that Kickstarter still hasn't delivered. Due to spiraling costs. Nevertheless, Ninja Division has started to put out a small number of new sculpts, and are ploughing the profits from them back into fulfilling the original Kickstarter.

It's a long sad story, and not one I want to particularly retell here.

This model is for the 'void' faction, which is essentially the bad guy 'meta faction' which can be hired by any of the three main bad guy factions.

According to the Ninja Division website:

Chained to her duty and torn between two worlds—that of the chee and the "living"—the Alabaster Automata struggles to find the true meaning of self as she battles throughout the galaxy in the name of the Chee Collective.

I think they are going for the human-created robot gains self-awareness trope. Which I suppose explains why she (it?) is proportioned and dressed like a love object. I used to be really into Anime and had a definite fondness for this kind of content, then I grew a bit and discovered shame.

A bit of an indulgence then in terms of the subject matter.

I'm really pleased with how the skin turned out, given the name of the model it really had to be a very pale white skin tone. I actually followed a Games Workshop tutorial for painting raven guard faces. The 'clothing' is my standard black recipe; I did struggle a bit to differentiate the metal of the chains and the metal of the sword. Tried to do more of a dark gunmetal on the chains, and more of a polished iron on the sword. Not convinced I carried it off. 

Blackstone Fortress Ambul (Citadel Contrast)

Ambull

So, in case you were somehow unaware, today Games Workshop launched to much fanfare their Citadel Contrast line of paints. Basically, a very heavily pigmented transparent paint with slightly odd flow properties. The idea is you can paint your model in just 'one thick coat' of contrast and get a passable tabletop standard.

I had pre-ordered a bunch of contrast painted in the colours I tend to favour (black, red, bone) but due to funky distribution issues, I have not yet received my pre-order. However, Helen decided to go down to Games Workshop and pick up some other contrast paints so we would have some to play with. I looked through my shelves to find something that would look good painted in mostly blues and greens.

This is the Ambull from the Blackstone Fortress expansion set which I picked up essentially because I wanted to play the game. I never had much interest in the model, and therefore it was in the 'unlikely to ever get painted' section of my staggering collection of models.

Enter contrast. This is maybe 30 minutes work bashing paint on straight from the pot like I used to paint when I was eleven. It just dries with magical highlights. Could I do better if I invested far more time? Yes! But the Ambull undoubtedly looks better with some paint over no paint.

There is a bit of mottling on the top of the carapace. It looks okay on the ambull because he is a creature. I think the contrast is going to look suboptimal on space marines, however. Best to stick to natural textured things like Lizardmen, Tyranids, Skeletons, Nurgle Daemons or Skaven.

Nekima

Alt Nekima

I decided to buy and paint the plastic 'Alternate' Nekima. Neverborn have always been my favorite kind of Malifaux Crew, so even though I already have a first edition Metal Nekima (you can see her here, I've improved!) I decided to pick this one up as a bit of treat. We don't talk about the second edition 'standard' plastic Nekima. It was a terrible model.

I attempted to do some blending on the wings, which I think has worked out really well! I'm not very confident with blending, but in this instance, I seem to have nailed it fairly well.

Crimson Fists Kill Team

Crimson Fists

I know, I know these aren't Emperors Children, or Fallen, or Malifaux. Like I said nothing if not totally inconsistent.

As I have explained before I run a Warhammer Club at school and I  have had these guys knocking around my office for ages and ages. I like to have a simple project on the go so I did the basecoating and edge highlighting over a couple of lunchtimes. At half term, I decided to take them home and get the rest of the details done.

The aim of this project is kind of twofold. First of all, I had a pile of marines knocking around. The three Intercessors are from the push fit starter kit sprue: although with some conversion. The lieutenant is from the endless parade of limited edition primaris lieutenants Games Workshop seems intent on producing. So I had some models without a purpose.

The second aim of the project was to test out painting Crimson Fists, as I may decide to paint my currently assembled-but-not-undercoated space marine army this way. Let me know what you think.

Malifaux!?

I know. I know. I'm nothing if not inconsistent. I have, in fact, made a start on the next five fallen in my painting queue. However, it came to my attention that the third edition of Malifaux is out shortly, and the rules are basically known at this point since there was an open Beta.

So, what started as an activity of rationalizing my Malifaux miniatures collection (a lot of Guild and Outcast stuff is no longer desperately useful to me) ended up with me clearing out the last two unpainted Maliufaux models I own which have sat out on the side for an extremely long time.

Fallen Librarian

Fallen Librarian

So the second character in my Fallen Angels detachment is the Librarian. Now, technically the model is a Chaos Sorcerer; but with the fallen, it's a question of degree. As there is no specific model I decided to go for the Librarian from the old Dark Vengeance boxed set, which happily can be picked up on eBay for a reasonable sum.

The paint scheme was a matter of some debate, as there is very little in the way of description of how librarians dressed in the time of the Horus Heresy. There are references in some of the novels to the Librarians having blue robes. I decided to interpret this as being the inside color of the robes. To hint at the fact that this marine now uses spells from the Chaos spell list I decided to paint the blues in the slightly more turquoise tones used by the Thousand Sons, rather than the royal blue of most imperial librarians.

It's a Rhino

Rhino

Behold the mighty rhino APC. Not a massive fan of how this turned out. The edge highlighting is weird and chunky. No matter how much you paint black, it still kind of looks unfinished on a big tank. I did some weathering. The chipping came out quite nicely which you can see. I used some forge world weathering powders on the tracks and wheels and around the bottom of the tank. Which look a lot better in real life then they do in this photo, but still somehow don't quite pop.

Still, having done a character, a squad, and a tank I now get to loop back around and do a character. Might get these fallen done this week if I power through.

Dark Angels and a painful month.

Fallen Angels

Yeah. I started a new army. When Vigilus Ablaze came out I looked at the Fallen angels detachment and thought to myself. Hmm. Two of the people I am most likely to play against play Dark Angels. This will be enormous fun. 

I've always had a soft spot for the fallen. Not Imperials, but not quite Chaos worshipers either. Probably. Just sort of doing their own thing. Desperately seeking redemption, fighting for the right to exist.

They can and do exist at all points on the spectrum from out and out villains to the space A-team. With no real official models, I decided to make mine fairly sympathetic. Essentially, I made heresy era Dark Angels.

Brexit?

I know. You are accustomed to coming here and looking at painting toy soldiers. For a long while I have felt their is no point writing about anything political. We the people as it where cannot change anything just at the moment. However; my view is evolving and I feel the need to lay it all out once again.

Barty Crouch Jr and Death Eaters

Barty Crouch Jr and Death Eaters

I said I'd end up buying some more of these. I'm not even a Harry Potter fan really. I've seen the films. I thought they were pretty good. I'm not convinced they make my top 10. What I like is collecting I will collect anything. I used to have a collection of bottle caps. I also used to have a collection of miscellaneous cables until I was made to throw them out (I still ache for the loss of my miscellaneous cables). But better than the random hoarded items is when you can collect entire sets of things. Since my wife decided we were going all in on the Harry Potter pre order and I was doing the evil side. I mean now I am doing the evil side. Now I have to own every single evil model. That's just the rules now.

Severina Raine

Severina Raine

Finally got around to painting this Black Library Celebration miniature from this year. She was actually fairly straightforward to do. Red, black, silver and gold are all pretty well staple colors. I do want to say that the sculpt is really fine, really crisp. I know that Citadel Finecast has a really bad reputation, so much so that they don't use the 'finecast' brand any more. But actually the new stuff, the stuff that is designed for resin is a high quality product.

Really enjoyable to spend a lot of time painting a single model too - although this doesn't help my annual target much.

Horus Heresy March army update.

750 points of Emperor's Children

As previously advertised this month we are both expanding our forces to 750 points. I am thrilled that Helen has decided to make a post on her blog (find it in the sidebar) showing off her Salamanders in more detail. In this post I am going to talk about the stuff I have added to grow my force to 750 points.

Horus Heresy February Battle Report

The set up

Something a bit different today. As I have previously mentioned my wife and I are doing an escalation campaign of Horus Heresy. Today we played our first game. 500 points using the Zone Mortalis rules.

Last, and very possibly also least. Peter Pettigrew

Peter Pettigrew

This model has the quite unique combination of being a really lame character, but at the same time being quite a lot of work, from a painting point of view. Which is why it got left until last. Painting pinstripes is hard. Fortunately because peters suit is so bashed up and dirty and torn, the fact that the stripes are a bit wiggley is, I think lost in the general composition of the model. I tried really hard on the face to try and capture his ruddy cheeks by introducing a bit of red glaze. Hopefully he looks like he's unfit and out of breath, and not like he's just gotten into mothers make up box. Otherwise the model was a study in browns. I own a lot of different brown and brown adjacent colours. I'm not convinced that his shirt is quite the right colour. But evil characters in films tend to be lit dark and gloomy sort of colours so it's super hard to work out what colour anything is meant to be. I like the model anyway. Proud of it.

So that's all the harry potter bad guys painted. I think my wife has painted only something like three and a half of the good guys from the pre order because she's a slacker less of a monotask then me and gets really busy doing other equally valuable things. Of course Knight models have come out with a few extra bits and bobs since we pre ordered the entire range, and this set is particularly tempting. At the same time, I'm itching to get back to something a bit more my usual speed; as much as painting the more realistic stuff like these (and also the Warlord Games Doctor who miniatures, seriously if they ever do a 7th Doctor set I'll be picking it up in a flash). Maybe eventually though. The collector in me likes finished collections..

Bellatrix and Troll

Bellatrix

What a successful 'let's just get this done' this has been. I actually went outside today and let the sun touch my face, went and had a picnic in the park with my family (and predictably, pick up some more paint from GW... although this was for helens salamanders) I still managed to get two miniatures painted. Bellatrix is the last character of the ones I have who's just an exercise in painting black. Went for a gray black on the cloth bits and a blue black on the leather bits. Went the whole hog this time and did two highlights. I also tried a new (paler) skin. recipe which I think probably worked out okay. I still think the models look far better in person then they do in photographs. This is probably because I just don't know how to work the photograph app on my iphone to the best of it's ability. I'm quite proud of the face and hair anyway.   

Troll

I'm less proud of the troll. I do stand by what I said the other day. The big creatures in this range just feel like they were sculpted by work experience boy. Troll just feels clumsy and chunky like an action figure. Also trying to colour match to what is actually really-bad-for-2001 CGI was difficult. He's darker then the film troll. I  think. I dunno. I wanted to emphasise the bluish tinge that the troll seems to have in some parts so that he didn't just blend into the cobblestone base thing. And then I went woah thats too bright, and hit it with a bunch of washes (including some purple around the feet and hands). All the highlights were done by drybrishing because it just seemed to suit the models details.

I have one of these models left. Which I will probably paint tomorrow. Then I might have to find something else to paint before we tumble around to March and I can crack on with my Emperors children again. 

Malfoy Family

Malfoy Family

Another day, and more inroads into my collection of models from the evil side of Knight Models Harry Potter miniatures game. Not exactly how I expected to spend the last couple of days, but then the box is almost empty now.

Two nasty pieces of work.

Dementor

Never ever stop when you are in the zone. I don't really know why I am juggernaughting through all these harry potter miniatures. However I am now pretty close to getting all my evil side ones done and getting stuff crossed off the list is always good. 

I have to have a little moan about this sculpt though. The Dementor here is just really really bad. I mean I get that he's kind of formless but you can basically see the lumps of putty in it's spooky robes. It was also as I'm sure you can imagine pretty miserable to paint. Highlight black. Paint some hands. Done.

Dolores Umbridge

Oh man what. Why did they have to sculpt Umbridge wearing that coat cloak thing with the weird black pattern on. She has other all pink outfits that would have been far easier to paint. I tried. I tried. I probably ruined a subtly shaded and highlighted pink in order to do it. This is the kind of rubbish you don't have to put up with when you are dealing with intellectual property designed from the ground up to be part of a miniatures game, that crops up from time to time when you are dealing with something that was originally a film or TV show. I think I did a good job on the face, which hopefully takes away from the horrible cack handed effort on the pattern. Maybe. 

Voldemort (and some acromantulas)

Lord Voldemort

Sometimes you don't paint something because it's massively intimidating and you are afraid you will muck it up. However, after much thought I finally worked out how I was going to paint this guy.

Harry Potter Death Eaters.

Death Eaters

Sometimes a change is as good as a rest.

Zone Mortalis doors and barriers.

Doors of Excitement

Just a quick one this morning to talk about some exciting doors.

30k Emperor's Children

500 points of perfection

In which a passion is reborn.

Tempestus Scion Kill Team

Kill Team (with two commanders)

So what I have is an essentially an inability to stick to any one project. for every long. Or so attest the one painted miniature from Blackstone Fortress, the half a box of unpainted miniatures from the Harry Potter miniatures game and of course, my recently stripped and re-undercoated sisters of battle army. However in the February Half term my local Games Workshop is running a Kill Team tournament. I figured I would paint up a new Kill Team for the occasions and I happened to receive the Tempestus Scions kill team starter box for Christmas.