[23/48] 500p Skaven painted

20 out of the 25 (I decided to expand the number of clanrats, I've got a second IoB set to tap into. Seriously thinking of getting a third!) clanrats are now painted. The shield+spear ones that is. Not sure if spears actually help me though. Think they don't :( Handweapon + shield gives such a nice bonus with the 6+ ward save in combat after all.

I'm also thinking of changing what weapon teams I use to two poison wind mortars. 5p less and better range. The warpfire thrower is pretty mean, but it feels like I need a lot more familiarity with WFB before I can make good use of it.

In news unrelated to wargaming. My 2 year phone contract was up so I've ordered a new phone! Should arrive on Friday with a healthy dose of updated camera hardware compared to my current one (see picture to the left).

I've also found out that painting five rank and file rats at the same time is the correct amount for me. I can get them done in one sitting (3-5 hours or something in total, not including cleanup, assembly, basing, and priming). Painting more than that at the same time would prove demoralizing to be honest, and I think that I will start painting one marine at a time from now on, as actually finishing one gives me a boost to continue with the next. I'm horrible at repetitive tasks:)

I'm also thinking of making a little tutorial on painting basic Skaven fast (I've given up on a highlighting stage, it's base color + wash now for rank and file). Anyone interested in that?

[8 / 43] 500p Skaven army

A little update on my Skaven army. 8 out of 43 models painted. I am amazed that people play 2000-3000 points worth of Skaven, as there are so many cheap units, and they all take a lot of time to paint:) Then again, it will be an interesting experience playing a horde army:)

Below we have two weapon teams, one warlock engineer (going to play him with the musket, but not the warp energy condenser), one standard bearer, one musician, one clawleader and two clanrats with spears and shields.

What's missing is some static grass here and there (I want to spray purity seal on them first) and some wash on their teeth. On, and 35 more clanrats:) I do have the movement trays painted though, but also missing static grass. Looks like this can be fun!

Librarian WIP

I felt that I wanted to give a librarian a go. For just 40 points I can suit him up in Terminator armor and a storm shield. Which should at least give him a fighting chance when the bullets starts to fly :) So I bought a libby in terminator armor and gave him a shield.

My initial opinion on finecast stands. Awesome material, really nice to work with, and Games Workshop has a quality assurance issue that is very severe. The damn thing looked like a swiss cheese before I whipped out the green stuff and knife. I think that I, as a GW customer, deserve better than that. I pay for what is usually a great product, but with finecast that isn't the case. I don't want to call and complain after I've bought their product, not ever time. I really hope it changes in the future.

That sad part done with I put the brush to the miniature. Enchanted Blue for the blue, and well, I'll let the WIPs speak for themselves :)

The force weapon is electrical! :)

The shield turned out pretty nice, so did the crux terminatus.

Full frontal :) He's not glued onto the base yet so I can still easily paint the base. Going to put on some of my special mix on it as well (Brita filter contents).

More is on it's way :)

Skaven Poisoned Wind Mortar

Another Skaven unit painted. I just need to seal them and then paint the globes with 'ard coat.

Tried some bronze effects, I hope you can pick it out :)

I think these guys can end up looking really stellar on the game table. Now they just need their fellow team and, ehm, wops, 80 clanrats to join them. 80! That's almost twice as many as all the painted marines I have:)

Opinions? Anyone like?

Warlock Engineer

 Warlock Engineers (and Grey Seers) are my favorite Skaven characters. I guess I have a sweat spot for the guys:) The crazy contraptions, the weird tech, the magic, the green warpstone. They are awesome. Unfortunately I don't think I can pay the points for all his gear (15p for the musket is a bit much in a 500p army, and since he will already be 120p :)). Looks quite menacing in this pose doesn't he?

 You might wonder what the odd white thing is. It's a High Elf shield. Not that I do it justice at all, I just painted the whole thing white :)

I used a three color scheme for each color. Base, highlight, and finish it with a wash. Except for the metal, which is boltgun metal or dwarven bronze with a Thraka Green wash on top.

Tallarn Flesh for the skin, with Elf as a highlight and Vermin Brown as a "highlight" for the fur with Ogryn Flesh for a wash. Bestial Brown, Bleached Bone, and Devlan Mud for the wood. Snakebite  Leather, Bubonic Brown, and Ogryn for the leather. Black and Boltgun for highlight (no wash).

The red is just Mechrite Red with Blood Red and a Delan Mud wash. Plus some greens and voila this is what you get.

Not sure what to do with the base. I ended up repainting it after this but I thought it turned out too bright. I want kind of a muddy feeling, and the Chinchilla Sand seems to work out OK. Might need a little more sand though, roughen it up a bit. Going to finish it off with some static grass.

Next step, 40 Clanrats and two weapon teams :) And two 5x5 movement trays.

Skaven!

My sneaky ratty plan is to paint up what you see below and to use everything but the chieftain/warlord for my 500p army. Possibly add a few extra clanrats (yes, I need an extra IoB Skaven set:) Two ain't enough!). We'll see how I'll expand after that. Slaves, ratogres, something :) Jezzails looks awesome but *wow* pricy!

40 Clanrats and two weapon teams! Too me around 3 1/2 minute per rat to clean up. Not a fan of this stage. I also found it hard to build the movement trays. Hard to make them neat. Time to break out the green stuff before I put sand on the sides and prime.

My new cheap grey (light) primer turned out to be pretty neat. I'm also trying out Chinchilla sand as a basing material. I wanted the base to look like it wasn't filled with big rocks :)

And here with some color on. Not all basecoats are on yet. Then some highlights (you might notice that I highlight the black with boltgun metal, looks pretty sweet!) and I will finish up with washes. I hope to get it really fast in the end so that I can speed paint all the guys. Plus it will make them look darker and grittier. Plus the clanrats will get rust on their metal. A Warlock Engineer is liable to have means to avoid rust :)

So what do you guys think of the rats? Think it can work out?

Valkyrie/Vendetta WIP, again!

A little more work has been done on the flying contraption of orange. I elected to give the engines a wash of badab black and that was as far as washes went. Didn't feel that it would be worth it going over it with oil paints. Might just make it worse :)

Then I grabbed the last of my boltgun metal and using a sponge (from an old blister) I wiped most of the point off and simply dabbed, dragged, and messed around in different ways to get a worn look. Still looks fairly clean, i.e. not grime and dirt, but well used. The next step is adding a bunch of details such as crew, radar monitor, canopy, the light on the side, etc. It should break up the massive orange blocks even more :)

A side view for your viewing pleasure!

Coming at you. Probably will look a lot scarier on a flight stand with a full set of "blowing you out of the sky" weapons :)

Weathering on the tail. You really need to look at the zoomed in image to see it properly.

And some wear and tear on the engines!

I now have the carrot at home. A very awesome forge world exalted vermin lord. Looking like this! Now I just have to finish the IG rides and my 1000p Skaven army, and updates to my IF army, THEN I can paint this fantastic and totally awesome dude :) I'm probably going to use it primarily as a display model (when can I play with a 775p monster?) and it is going to be dedicated to my late pet rat who are now with the great horned rat.

Valkyrie WIP

Cue Richard Wagner, Ride of the Valkyries. Go on, go find it on youtube or Spotify before you continue. Found it yet? Listen to it while you direct your peepers on the following:

White primer, white airbrushed, then hit it with red (you'll see why later). One of the markings is a bit off though, might fix that later:)

My home made stencil. Painters take isn't, well, it isn't made for this really…

Here's my paper stencil that I use to cut out the wings in the tape.

Some tape so it will be easier to glue the (brown) engines on later. Ended up being a pretty good contrast between orange and brown. Going to be interesting to see how the yellow fares.

It was pretty hard putting the tape on btw, but it looks like it could work though, right?

Blue wings on white with red tips looks kinda cool, doesn't it?

It's quite orange isn't it? I think it will look great when I get some spot colors etc on there. Can't wait to see it on a gaming table fully painted. Hope I won't be the only one liking it though, there's some insanely well painted Valkyries out there on the inter-tubes.

And here we can see wings. Kind of a dark photo though.

And this has too much light instead:) But by combining both you should get a fair idea of how it looks in real life.

So let me have it, does it look good? Bad? Cool? Sucky? What would you do? It's not done, I'm going to add some weathering and such as well. The wings really need it as there was some orange sipping through and I need to make that look more like the white is chipping than a screwy stencil.

I also finished one of the Dark Angels:)

Vendetta WIP

First of all, the iPad 2 does not a good camera have. Just look at this! I hope you guy can get something out of it and see what is up :)

The Vendetta WIP!

Looks odd? Got some odd ideas:) Might pan out, might not, really really hope it will pan out. Need to put some thinned badab black in the recesses on the wings. I would have preferred to use oils, but they dry in, well, forever:)

Next step, secret masking tape sauce, prime the sucker black, and a healthy dose of foundation paints for the whole thing.

What else have I been up to without writing about it? Almost done with a tactical squad, starting painting on a metal 5 man squad of Sternguards (will never see the table, paint chip too easily with metal, I'm done with that), building a 10 mans squad of vanguard (converted death company) and a 10 man squad of Sternguards (converted from chaos marines, it's going to look sweet!), finishing up 5 Dark Angel Veterans, and the three vendettas. Wow. That's a lot. Oh and building two devastator squads too. And I still got plenty of plastic crack left after that :) Sad…

(PS Not starting a guard army:))

Various things

Hi dear blog readers,

I haven't posted for a while so it's time for a quick review of what I have been up to. Here goes!

Painted a daemon Juggernaut of Khorn. Forgot to take pictures. Gave it back to it's owner. Wops:) It looked pretty cool in yellow and brass. I also painted a green Ghoul at my FLGS for Matt. If you're reading this, I want to see how you did painting the rest of them :)

I have also started to play Warhammer 40k, with pretty mixed results. I've found that Razorspam probably works just fine, if you spam them, but two Razorbacks is just too much of a soft target. Same thing with my poor Land Raider. It has a tendency to blow up before it can wreck havoc. My thinking is that I will switch to Rhinos and use the points for a Devastator Squad instead. Five man and four Missile Launchers. And to go up to 1750 points I'm thinking of adding two Vindicators.

Either way since the plan is to build a whole company I should have plenty of options in the future:) Technically two companies since veterans are from the 1st Company :) I'm also thinking that some dreads should be a good idea to own. Three of each kind:) And as a last note about playing, I really am thinking of seeing what you can do with a lot of plasma. S7 AP2 shots would be an interesting thing to throw around :)

I also have been painting. Almost done with Tactical Squad VI for the 4th Company (only IF transfers left) and here's a little green teaser. How's he looking? I'll post again when he's finished :)

Dark Angels green directly on top of a white primer worked really well. Takes a few layers to cover, but you get a free shading in the recesses :)

The painting weekend continues

The Vespids are taking shape. Looking at how they are painted on the box I have to say that these models really are for high end expert painters. I'm in awe of GW's 'eavy metal team!

Imp fists project. Will show a group photo when the plasma team is done :) Think I might have a ride ready for them as well. Need yet another Rhino for the upcoming all melta team :) Q is, combi melta or fist for the sergeant?

Two more shots of the Russ. The paint seems to be drying just fine. What do you guys say, think it's time to seal it with some Purity Seal and ship it off to Sam?

Weekend painting

I will be spending a long weekend (taking some extra days off) painting and playing Apocalypse. I hope to have finished by mid next week:

Squad of ten Tacticals (4th company, 6th squad). Plus special surprise.
Captain Vulcan of the 4th company (count as guess what:)) Might give him a better name though. It's a conversion :)
Five (six) Vespid. The weapons are a bugger to paint this way. Questioning my sanity a bit:)

A Leman Russ.

Tiger stripes and weathering. What do you guys think? Looking ok? I think I will leave it like this, possibly painting the light at the front. And a protective coat at the end. The CVinton like weathering failed me big time. I have a hard time finding / clearing off the damn liquid mask. Guess I need a better one in the future. Funny thing is that if Sam ends up rubbing/chipping paint of, it's brown/orange beneath :)

Anything beyond that will be counted towards bonus. I really need to get a move on and order those magnets so I can put the two Land Speeders and a Land Raider together (possibly two). And the Ironclad dread. And I've got sternguard and vanguards and scouts and wolves. I better get a move on!

Rules musings

Played my third game of Warhammer 40k with my 1500p Imperial Fists army today. We never did finish (2on2 with a total of 3000 points a side) but I'm pretty sure by now that the two razorbacks I have are not even remotely paying for themselves. That and assault marines are pretty tame against Genestealers (auch!).

One thing that struck me though was a rule interpretation that I found a bit odd. I've read about others running into this, but I didn't really have the opportunity (or will) to discuss it at the time. On top of that it was to our opponents disadvantage to interpret the rules that way.

To break it down. The Genestealers charge my Assault Squad and funny enough three of the marines survive and make their leadership test (Stubborn!). In our turn a Tau squad (Farsight and friends) charges into the fray. Looking over the situation I comment that only one Genestealer is situated so it can only attack my Marines, the rest can attack the Tau. To my surprise everyone around the table then agreed that the Genestealers could only attack the Marines!

Obviously they can attack anyone they want, as long as that squad has at least one model in base to base with it. To support my interpretation I steer my eyes towards the FAQ:


Page 41 – Multiple Combats, Attacking. A third bullet point should be added, as follows:
• Models that at the beginning of the combat (before any model attacked) were engaged with more than one enemy unit, but were in base contact with just one of the enemy units, must attack that unit.
Page 41 – Multiple Combats, Attacking. In all three bullet points, the word ʻcombatʼ will be changed
to ʻround of combatʼ.

Q: For multiple combats there are two extra rules under the heading ʻAttackingʼ. For these rules, at what point is “at the beginning of the combat”? (p41) A: It is after defenders react when you pick the combat but before any attacks have been rolled.

Ta ta! At the beginning of combat (i.e. after defenders react) the Genestealers can choose to attack anyone they want, as long as they are close enough (with one only within 2" of a model in B2B with the Marines but not the Tau). So Matt if you are reading this, three things. Bring all the Dark Angel veterans on Sunday and I'll put them together and paint them, Friday I will work on the Vespid (including basing this time:)), and let me know if you agree/disagree with my interpretation.

Calling the hivemind, I need feedback!

While waiting for the Vespid to dry I gave the tiger stripes a go on the turret. So I need opinions and feedback. How does this look? I am unsure of how to add depth, as any wash over white will stain it quite a bit. I am intending to slather Devlan Mud on the tracks and use some pluck foam to give it some extra weathering (grey and paint in some metal in some of the spots) plus some mud color (I am more than happy for tips on which GW brown to use for that!) low down on the tank. Will that be enough?

Any adventure with weathering powders will happen in the future. It sounds real cool, but I don't have any at arms length to try them out I'm afraid :/

Just the other side.

Let the opinions flow!

Leman Russ???

I should be painting my tacticals, or the six Vespid I'm painting for Matt (from the local game store), but the Vespid are getting their bath and, well, I wanted to give Sam's Leman Russ a go. See what I could do :) I thought I should try out the tutorial CVinton posted on painting tanks. So here goes!

The tank came partially primed (black) so I added some white primer. So this is where the journey begins :)

So I airbrushed on some brown.

And some redish, orangish stuff as well. Then I tried to put some masking "goo" on the model. I skipped taking a photo though. And I forgot to spray some matt varnish on it. WOPS! Hope not too much color comes off. That would be, bad...

Fortress Grey. Makes it look all modern military. One could surely leave it at this stage, but I'm going for a different look.

White! Since Sam asked for tiger stripes, I first thought of painting the tank in tiger colors, until I realized that there are black and white tigers :) So the next step is to paint all the metal, and then black stripes. I'm going to go all out and freehand the stripes. Madness you say? We shall see:)

Tacticals, Vespids, Leman Russ. Which will I finish first? Stay tuned :)

Lord Kaldor Draigo

Here's my finished take on a Grey Knight. Interesting but very busy model to paint, bet it's a great army for people who really like to paint and are quite good at it, just like both forms of Eldar. I think my take on it looks OK for putting on the table top. Hope the owner will enjoy fielding him:) I myself is looking forward to a few days of agony as more and more snot(lings?) is created in my nose. Hate being sick, but maybe I'll end up working on a little secret project or two :)

And from a different angle :)

Any comments?

Grey Knights WIP

I always have a bunch of projects in the planning stages. Got my single Tau battle suit that should be painted, my airbrush Alaitoc Eldar project, some Orks, the whole fourth Company of the Imperial Fists, etc. Some models I have, others I plan on buying, but not before I have reduce the pile of miniatures a lot. Even have a few Dark Eldar I want to paint :)

But one way to saturate my need to try things out is to politely ask if I can paint others minis. Not whole armies mind you, but rather just one model. Frank so gracefully let me paint one of his Ultramarines not long ago. I found myself a new victim at the store this week:) So without further introduction let me introduce a Draigo WIP!

Not a number of things left to fix, but I have made some solid progress. Tried a zenithal highlighting with the airbrush, which explains why certain parts looks very dark:)

More will follow, hope you enjoyed the WIP :)

Group Photo

I gave a comment on a blog that I had "given up" trying to build a cohesive looking army. The very awesome Ron Saikowski of From the Warp fame misunderstood me, thinking that I had given up on my Imperial Fists. That couldn't be further from the truth! I did convince Ron that I am indeed continuing with the boys in yellow. Expanding them even! But I thought the whole thing was quite interesting so I thought I should make it into a post.

I have not given up on my Imperial Fists, but what I have done is "given in". I can't for the life of me match the color on them after trying so many different ways of yellow. I have learnt new things, I have tried new techniques. I experiment and the result is an army that looks a bit rag tag. It isn't cohesively based, got different types of highlights, different shades of yellow, different shading, and…

…here it is! 1500 points of yellow Imperial Fists! A bit too tooled up to get to 1500p, but still:)

Here's a closeup on the left side. We got the Assault Marines, one Tactical Squad, the Razorback, and the big man himself with his "bodyguard" of five Assault Terminators.

And on the right side we have Lysander's yellow cab, followed by the other Tactical Squad with Razorback. If you look closely you can see that the Razorbacks got both Assault Cannons and Lascannons. Still need to paint a big arrow on the Rhino hatches:)

Because there are a few things missing. I have to name all vehicles, write the names on them, put a gunner on the other Razorback, a little guy looking out the hatch on the Land Raider, Rhino hatches, and that's it. Then it's time to paint the rest of the IFs I have laying around. A quick list:

Sternguard x 5
Pedro Kantor (should I rename him?:))
Vanguard (Death Company) x 5
4th Company, VIth squad Tacticals (Plasma all the way)
Ironclad Dreadnought
Legion of the Damned

Until next time, enjoy your hobby, and give in to enjoying it rather than following something because you have to :)

Land Raider finished

Only thing left is Purity Seal and some 'Ard Coat on lenses. So feast your eyes on the finished product. Hope you like it, but all (civil) comments are welcome!

Vroom vroom says Lysander's ride :)

To finish it off a higher quality photo of the Ultramarine. Should be possible to see the VIII on top of the Jump Pack this time around.