Cursed City Update

 

The Ulfenwatch

Watch Captain Halgrim

So, as promised on I go painting up the adversaries from cursed city.

Morrvahl Olbrecht

 

When you get in the zone you get in the zone. I have impressed myself with what I can knock out in 24 hours. 

Although they do say that when you learn a new skill you get better and then you plateau and get faster and that can be a sign you need to push yourself onto a new skill.

Death

 

So, it happens that I spent January in hospital with very severe Covid 19. So much so that when I arrived in the hospital the initial doctor basically said I was going to die. They applauded when they wheeled me out of the intensive care two weeks later, to spend two more weeks learning to breathe normal air, and walk around.

One part of recovering from something like that is getting back into the groove of any skills you have; skills such as miniature painting.  

At first I was only up to assembling. So I spent a lot of time assembling stuff. I've got a gray Zombie Dragon and a gray Neferata that I might paint at some point. Then I decided to paint some skeletons. Why all the death stuff? Well part of the reason is after my own near death experience I guess I'm feeling kind of morbid. The other thing is, I think wish something like Sisters of Battle, which is the project I had on the go before is... each miniature deserves to be a celebrated work of art. These skeletons will be in a big block of 40, so if any of them are a bit outside the lines or have a discoloured scrap of cloth it doesn't feel like it matters nearly as much.

Also as it turns out this has been excellent practice for cursed city. Which I am very much looking forward to. I will be very interested to see what those new skeletons look like next to these ones in terms of height and build. I'm working on a Morrvahl Olbrecht currently and then will have the deck clear for when Cursed City arrives on Saturday.

This year I am doing another annual challenge, I'm following Games Workshops "Hobby Bingo" card and aiming to fill all the squares by the end of the year. 

I have given myself TWO squares for these guys as there are 20 of them:

You can follow my progress here or in various other places, or even join in on the discord
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750 Points of Sisters.

Seraphim

I've now finished the 250 point chunk of Sisters of Battle that I aimed to have painted in March, meaning I can move on to the 250 point chunk I aimed to get paint in April. Getting there.

500 points of Sisters!

500 points

Got my second 250 point chunk painted, which means I am now ready to start the 250 points I should have started in march. I know it might not be appropriate to hope the Covid-19 lockdown carries on, but I kind of hope it carries on long enough for me to get my entire army painted. In this blog you will see some miniatures you have seen before as I have reorganized the squads.

Plastic Sisters!

The first 250 points

So after not updating my blog for so long, this would usually be the point at which I would make some kind of offhand comment about not being dead. However, given this current virus stuff that might be a little on the nose.

Let's focus on the positive, this year my plan was to paint 250 points of sisters of battle each month until I had a fully painted 2000 point army of the new plastic sisters. Due to mounting work pressure and a World of Warcraft addiction, it has been pretty slow going. But, seeing opportunity in a crisis I have decided to catch up on my plans during this Lockdown. Which I seem to be enjoying far more than most people.

My Lovely Wife is also joining in and you can see her stuff here:
http://everydayautonomy.blogspot.com/2020/04/primaris-salamanders-250-points.html

Before I get into the rest of the pictures, I just want to say that I seem to have forgotten how to take decent photographs. Google has doubtless 'improved' my camera app which may be the source of my issue.

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...