Flekkzo

Imperial Fists Gunner

2012-02-06T02:00:00.000-06:00

Tried something new. I pre shaded a marine with Tausept Ochre and here's the result! It's still missing the lenses on the bottom part and Imp Fist logo on the shoulder, other than that it's ready for the table top. I think I'll paint up the Devastators using this method as it is cleaner than the post shading. I just need to remember to paint in the black before I do yellow:)

Looking good/bad?

Current state of the Vindicator, Vindi #2 has hit the assembly lines and Vindi #3 is still sitting on a shelf waiting for me to buy it:) Planning on making the third one the lead one so it will get a few extra bits and bobs. Going to paint on some large scratches (black, bolt gun, mithril) and use a piece of foam to give it smaller scratches. Then end it with a spray of devlan mud on the lower parts all around.

Also found myself some matte varnish today so I can airbrush it on. Going to give it a go and if works well I am going to use it before any tape touches a model again.

Painting

2012-02-01T00:04:00.001-06:00

I have gotten questions about what I use to thin my paints with. Here it is! 1/4th of the Liquitex on the left, 1/4th on the W&N on the right and to top it off 2/4th of water. I use tap water but I've thought of trying to pick up some distilled water instead.

Is this the best thing ever? No, not really. But I like it:) I picked it up on the internet and it's suppose to be Jennifer Haley's old recipe. I might try out some other one in the future when I run out of these. In fact, I really recommend learning about the various tools that are out there.

Another version I've heard of is just using airbrush medium. Should work.

What I do then is to drop a few drops of the mix on a palette, get some of the paint, and mix it directly on the palette. I don't mix up a big blob but rather mix in a little of the mix into the color until it gets the right consistency. Figuring out what works for you and how to get a good mix that goes on smooth is an absolute must. Bad coverage and streaks is not a stylistic choice, it just looks bad :)

So how do you guys do this?

Painting yellow!

2012-01-22T14:27:00.000-06:00

I've fallen behind on my blogging, but funny enough not my painting. I plan on getting photos of everything painted and put in on the static army pages (I.e. Imperial Fists and Skaven, and probably a misc as well) and start chronicle things from here on.

I've been trying out Vallejo's white airbrush able primer. It works really well, with one exception, tape can rip it off (with disastrous effects on the valkyrie I'm painting!) back to the plastic. I would love to get hold of an airbrush able primer that really bit into the plastic (and resin) since I never ever anticipate trying to strip any paint off anyways (I just paint something else from my big pile of plastic crack:)).

So I started out with the white primer, then I pre shaded with Tausept Ochre. I didn't really clean up the Tausept well which I will do next time around. Apart from that minor snafu adding on the Golden Yellow afterwards went really well. The Tausept turned out to be a bit orange in shade which actually looked quite nice. See for yourself:)

45 degree hazard stripes. 15mm "wide" (I measured 15mm between the dots on the top and bottom and then drew lines between them, they aren't actually 15mm wide per se). I really need to find a better tape, this type pulls off the paint (even when careful!). I didn't have it on nearly as long as on the Valkyrie, which probably saved me some headache, plus the pieces that happen to peal off (small) ended up on spots I intended to paint other colors anyways.

After airbrushing black. Looks pretty cool already :)

With bolt gun painted on. Going to paint the wings/skull red and give the metal a thing wash of badab black, followed by a devlan mud on the bottom quarter. Then some nicks in mithril silver and it should be off to battle we go. I do have a little experiment I'm thinking of though for the back of it. Going to paint in some "light" from the headlights on the tank on the back of the shield (the little flaps are there to represent that you can open them to let the light through). Going for light blue xenon light:)

So, how's that for painting yellow?

[23/48] 500p Skaven painted

2011-10-09T11:39:00.001-05:00

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

2011-09-30T19:49:00.002-05:00

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

2011-09-27T18:42:00.001-05:00

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

2011-09-19T00:47:00.003-05:00

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

2011-09-10T01:22:00.003-05:00

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!

2011-09-07T23:36:00.001-05:00

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!

2011-08-31T17:24:00.001-05:00

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

2011-08-20T22:56:00.000-05:00

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

2011-08-14T14:36:00.000-05:00

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

2011-07-14T21:38:00.000-05:00

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

2011-05-28T14:46:00.000-05:00

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

2011-05-27T13:56:00.000-05:00

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

2011-05-25T00:42:00.000-05:00

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!

2011-05-20T21:50:00.000-05:00

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???

2011-05-19T23:10:00.000-05:00

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

2011-05-04T17:19:00.000-05:00

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

2011-05-01T01:42:00.000-05:00

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

2011-04-24T21:53:00.000-05:00

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

2011-04-10T20:40:00.001-05:00

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.

Finished Ultramarine Assault Marine

2011-04-07T22:14:00.000-05:00

Here he is! The glue for the base is still drying so I will remove the excess later. I hope Frank will like him. Maybe I can get him to let me paint some neat Ultra HQ :) Feast your eyes on one of the Assault Marines from the VIIIth squad of the 2nd Company of the Ultramarines:

The transfers were, as usual, hard to get to stick neatly. Doesn't seem to matter what I do, I just don't have the Mojo for it apparently. I do use the nifty special liquids and all. Go figure! I do like having the assault X on top of the jump pack though. Looks awesome.

I also painted the chainsword as the pictures in Codex:Space Marines. Three red bars for the 8th squad. Looks pretty cool if you ask me. Breaks up the big block of black on the weapon. The VIII on top of the jump pack bled out *really* bad in the photo, it is far more readable in real life. Still pretty hard to freehand stuff like that for me. Baby steps, baby steps. I can't actually paint/draw anything so it stands to reason that I might find it a bit hard:)

So what do you guys think? Did I do the wrong thing to go yellow instead of blue? :)

(No I am not switching over, I just enjoyed painting something else once:))

Ultramarines! WIP

2011-04-06T23:02:00.000-05:00

I went to the nearest gaming store yesterday (Armored Ogre Games) for 40k day/evening and watched a game between a team of Tau and Ultramarines battle Blood Angels and Tyranids. I asked Frank the Ultramarine player if he had any unpainted minis that I could have a go at and he promptly showed me a bunch. I choose one that I like to paint for him.

It was already primed (a thick black, I really need to push my message of thin thin coats of primer at the store) and the glue work wasn't totally up to snuff. After some surgery (split the jump pack and cut the arms off) and cleanup I glue him back together and went to work with the airbrush. Mordian Blue if anyone is wondering :)

He still needs battle damage, a VIII on top of the jump pack, a base, some scripture to protect him, and maybe some other weathering, but it shouldn't be much more work to get him done. I really hope Frank likes my little experiment as I think he might have some high expectations. "Sure I'd want a professionally painted mini." or something similar at least, was mentioned. While I won't be ashamed to put down my Imperial Fists on a gaming table, I have no illusions that I'm a professional Painter:)

So what do you people think, will Frank be happy with his Assault Marine?

PS I've actually painted some Imperial Fists since last, but the WIPs hasn't been that interesting. Will return with a group photo of 1500p of fists plus some highlights:)

First battle damage

2011-03-20T23:10:00.000-05:00

What is this? Two updates the same day? What has happened is that I have been painting more after watching TV. Here's a WIP of the Land Raider.

And here we have the first battle damage. Any opinions? Does it look ok? I went with blood red, chaos black, and finally mithril silver. I'm thinking of going with sunburst yellow, bleached bone, and finally mithril silver for the yellow hull. I don't want too much though, it's Lysander's personal "Panzartaxi" after all. Such a bad ass first captain rides in style :)

(I'm keeping away from yellow on weapons so I can reuse them on Space Wolf vehicles later on:))

Comments are very welcome at this point. I'm a bit nervous about the prospect of painting battle damage on such a large surface (I'm going for more of a worn look than being shot up).

Various updates

2011-03-20T20:56:00.000-05:00

Did some airbrushing today and here's the results. I was very surprised how well Boltgun Metal worked with an airbrush. The finish was really awesome. I'm going to add some black wash, black drybrushing, and some special treatments on the flamer (hint: blue). I do wonder if I can add some weathering to the metal color *hmm*. And if you look in the top right corner, that's a future project taking form :)

I ended up winning one Assault on Black Reach Tactical squad. I intend to make it a plasma squad, so plasmagun, plasma cannon, and absolutely no plasma pistol (+15p in the current codexes is silly). Might put a combi-plasma on the sergeant though. Going to be conversions at the very least. So stay tune for Squad III, 4th Company, Imperial Fists :)

My wife and I went out to find me some gift for me for our 3rd anniversary. I thought it was time to try to cut down on the plastic crack and went for another of my vises, books. This is today's loot. Half priced books had this awesome stack of Horus Heresy books in real nice quality. I've got tons of reading material now :)

Until next time, be careful out there!

Magnets and a crazy idea

2011-03-06T21:22:00.000-06:00

Started with some nice big magnets behind the tracks. I really can recommend these. I think they are around 1/4" for us whom are trapped in the terrors of the land that don't do SI. Gotta buy me more of these since I'm using them on the backside of the sponsons :) Still don't know what I'll do with the extra weapons (2x hurricane bolters, 2x flamestorms) :)

Here we have the Land Raider, very overexposed so we can see the frag launchers and smoke launchers. All of it is magnetized. And one important lesson to all you kids from uncle Flekkzo. Get the polarity right, every time. I didn't once, and I am not happy about it. It was a pain to dig that magnet out of the plastic and glue :(

Now on to the crazy idea. Assault on Black Reach Marines. I'm thinking about getting four sets of them and paint up squad III to VI of the fourth Company. I'm also thinking of repainting my two squads to be fourth (green) instead of fifth (black) to give me I and II. Add to that my Assault Squad and that would be 7 squads. After that I would need to get 10 Assault and 10 Devastators.

Super poor grammar aside, that would be a full Company of Marines. Would be awesome to field in a game of Apocalypse. I could add a Captain with a command squad and why not a librarian and a chaplain. And yes, I am crazy for even thinking of doing this, but it would be soo cool :) Anyone agreeing with me? :)

Some more miscellaneous magnetic Land Raider pictures

2011-02-28T19:57:00.000-06:00

Woroxon wanted to know about my magnets, and yet I ended up taking any good pictures of it. I will try to rectify that now! I glued the magnets on the backside of the frames. You can see the bottom four in the picture below. The other four are hidden already. I'm going to add magnets under the tracks so I can plopp the fun grenades on the front on and off. I hope to acquire a standard Land Raider weapons sprue in the future and the standard Land Raider doesn't have them :)

Another W.I.P. picture. Has a bit more depth now, and some more highlights. You can also see how horrible the door looks. I decided to retcon the whole thing and claim that that piece comes from an old and venerable Land Raider (Terra Ira) that now lives on in this one. Going to try to paint a bunch of battle damage on it and dirty it up a bit. Make it Venerable :)

And here's one of my little Hobby Helpers :) The runt of the litter, Merryweather.

Land Raider W.I.P.

2011-02-27T15:22:00.000-06:00

Turns out two things didn't work out the way I'd hoped. Golden Yellow apparently covers Iyanden Darksun just fine when using an airbrush, and Sunburst Yellow doesn't cover a thing. Ended up using Bleached Bone instead and adding Iyanden after the fact at the bottom of the sides. Also painted the engine covers Iyanden Darksun instead of Golden Yellow. I will add a bunch of soot later, so I thought I'd play around a bit :)

The white color I got with my airbrush #$(%#$*%^#($ sucks, because it peels off just so damn easy. Not fun! I ended up re-airbrushing the white parts. So I've used up a bunch of masking tape today :) Also, painting white with a brush? NO WAY, doesn't freakin' work at all :( Gotta airbrush that stuff.

Doesn't this look a lot better painted? I haven't highlighted/washed anything (except a black wash on the wings) yet, that's the next step. Maybe, just maybe, I can finish the hull today. Then there's weapons (plus some Rhino/Razorback ones) and tracks left:)

Still haven't decided 100% what to call the yellow beast. Terra Ira is winning at the moment though.

Break over, back to painting! :)

Teaser

2011-02-26T22:20:00.000-06:00

The Land Raider is assembled, I've even assembled some of the weapons. I primed it (white of course) but I fear I might have, by mistake, over primed a few spots. Really irks me as I thought I'd learned by now. Kids, don't overuse your primer! A little is far better, and that way you can come back.

Next up is the airbrushing, and I've rearranged my hobby / rat room today so I should be able to do the deed tomorrow. White and Yellow, here we go! And I thought I'd leave you, my faithful readers, with a little teaser. I personally think that engine looks pretty much a lot better with both those logos on there :)

Imperial Fists are awesome

Only one big question left, what to name the beast. Malleus feels a bit cliché, but Pugnis might work better. I want it in Latin, to make it sound righteous :) Maybe Terra Ira would be a suitable name. Just hope I get it right :)

"Inside" scope on my Land Raider

2011-02-20T20:00:00.000-06:00

I'm done painting the insides of my Land Raider now. Time to glue everything together, but not before I take some pictures to show my faithful readers what I have been up to. Plus it will be a tad bit hard to take photos when it is all glued up :)

The right side, with all the nifty stuff on it. I figured out that drybrushing Space Wolf Grey was a pretty nice touch, made the seats and such look nice. I have also glued in two magnets in each door so I can switch sponsons at will.

The left side, plus two frag assault launchers. I'm painting all the weapons and such dark red so I can use them both for my Imperial Fists AND my forthcoming Space Wolves :)

Some more pieces, and you can see some extra magnets I added so I can magnetize this and that to the top of the Raider.

Close up on the monitors :)

And to close it all up, here's my favorite piece. I'm quite happy with the icon. Looks very very snazzy. Hope it's going to look like the bee's knees when I open the front hatch and snow people the insides :) I'm quite amazed at the reactions I get when I tell people I paint the insides of my vehicles :)

Captain Darnath Lysander

2011-02-02T23:31:00.000-06:00

Hello dear readers. I've snapped some quick photos of my now finished Captain Darnath Lysander. These are just some quick shots with my iPhone (3GS so not such an awesome camera), I'll snap some better shots in the future. I think I will try to take new photos of all the units in my army.

Went with the classic red cape. It's both a pretty cool mini as well as a very very busy model. Tons of little details.

Which you can kind of see here. Look at the GW page to see how many little things they've ended up getting in there.

You can also see how much brighter he is than the troops. Cheap white primer, then Skull White, then two layers of diluted (see previous posts) Golden yellow. Looks awesome, best yellow I've ever done. All my 1st company is going this way from now on :) Got some Death Company that will turn into vanguard veterans, and I am itching to pick up that box of chaos space marines that will be my sternguard:)

Next up, can I magnetize a Land Raider???

Lysander WIP

2011-01-29T00:31:00.000-06:00

Found myself a local gaming store to hang in, but I feel the need to actually game too, so I've been hard at work lately on my HQ, the big guy himself, Darnath Lysander. What looks like dark blue is going to be almost black curtesy of Badab Black. First time I paint Golden Yellow directly over a white primer (with a little extra Skull White added for a basecoat) and I should have been doing this the whole time. Far far better than any of my other "Recipes". I think all of my 1st Company Fists are going to get this treatment in the future :)

(Or to be more precise, Death Company as Vanguard Veterans and Chaos Space Marines as Sternguard. Fixed up to be properly pure Imperial Fists, no stupid emo vampire marines or spikey marines here:))

Competition Winner!

2010-12-27T22:45:00.000-06:00

Before we start with the pleasantries I want to start off with a small apology and an advice to everyone, myself included. First I'm sorry that I have been slow in posting this, four days late! And the advice? Never ever ever assume that you get extra time for things over any kind of holiday, it seems like one actually gets less time! Next time I will make sure I synchronize the deadline with some big deadline at work so that I am pumped up to get things done rather than filled with holiday food.

The winner of my little competition is Andy Dahl! You see the entry just below this text. What really got me was how I was thrown for a loop several times. I don't know if the same thing happens to anyone else, but at first I thought I was looking at a Farseer, then slowly it dawned on me that it's a Tau Ethereal, only to land in deamon infested territory. And I who was under the impression that the Tau were safe from such horrors, maybe he's involved in Farsight's destiny?

Andy throw me an email and we'll set it up so I can snail you the prize. Hope you will enjoy the model :)

I also wanted to comment on the runners up. For those with 1337 h4xx0r 5k|llz, I tend to name my files things like one, two, three. It doesn't have any meaning :)

Here we have Dorn the Betrayer. Being an avid painter of yellow I was intrigued by the idea. I think someone has written a story on this topic. What if Dorn betrayed the emperor instead? I like the Nurgle look. I do not know if Nurgle was suppose to be Dorn's chaos god of choice, maybe Slaneesh would have been a fit. Either way, cool idea! Hope you add to Dorn's army Travis. I know I will add to my loyalists :)

Julio wanted to create a Sister of Battle without any actual Sister's parts. I get a mixture of Eldar (neither Dark nor Craftworld) and something Tyranid. Julio, make sure you send me painted pictures too, because I am really curious how she will turn out painted. I look forward to GWs future Sisters release, as it could end up looking quite sweet, and by then my friend Julio here will have a cool and unique looking army already. The big shoulders, the figure, nothing is Sisters of Battle, yet it draws your thoughts that way. Well done!

That's it for tonight. Next up will be Lysander, vehicles (2(!) Land Raiders and 2 Land Speeders, time to pull the airbrush out!) and a debrief on running a little mini competition. I hope you all had a good time and that it led to some interesting hobby moments. Have a good new hobby year, and stay safe!

New fully painted minis and comp update

2010-12-22T21:41:00.000-06:00

Feast your eyes on five Assault Terminators. Two with Thunder Hammers and Storm Shields. All fully painted, based, and finalized with a nice coat of Purity Seal. Next up, Danarth Lysander and a Land Raider!

For a list of all my painted Imperial Fists (minus one Tactical Squad that I need to take photos of) head over to: Flekkzo's Imperial Fists.

Also tomorrow I will crown (!) a winner in my little competition, which means one lucky hobby enthusiast will be one box o Eldar death richer.

And to all of you: God Jul!

New brushes

2010-11-09T22:53:00.000-06:00

I've tried one of my new brushes today. Painted on a bunch of yellow and grey (decided to first paint Astronomican Grey and to then follow it up with white) using thinned paint and my initial impression is: It's a very different way of painting. The thinned paint worked far better with the Raphaël 8404 size 0 than my GW brush. It kept much more of it and it went on better, painting with the sides of the brush rather than the tip tip. But you really really have to develop a lighter touch. I could be much more raw and rough before, it's almost like I could force the paint onto the mini in the past, and now I am just gentle nudging the surface.

For those curious I use a thinning recipe ripped directly of the intertubes. It's suppose to be Jennifer Haley's. She's damn good so I thought it could be a good start at least:) And it works quite well for me right now. I drop a few drops on my palette and then put some paint next to that and mix it up as I go along. So no magic there, just messy old me :)

For the curious, this is the recipe in question:

25% Liquitex Slow-Dri
25% Winsor and Newton Flow Improver
50% Water

A bad bad picture (an iPhone 3G is *not* a good camera for minis!) but the paint just goes on so much nicer with it thinned properly and a good brush, and the yellow is easily the nicest in my collection already. Hopefully my remaining vehicles will end up real nice with the same way of painting. I am actually starting to wonder if I should bring out the airbrush at all as painting this way is quite quick. At least quick for *me*.

Finished test Terminator, Assault Terminators WIP, and Brushes

2010-11-07T14:49:00.000-06:00

I tried a few different things with this test model (the last test!) and I think that I need to add an extra highlight above sunburst yellow. Thinking of bleached bone.

I also tried Gryphonne Sepia on the white. Nope, didn't really turn out that well. Looks off. Going to go for a very thin astronomicon grey on the real deal. At least I am planning to do so, never know if I will change my mind :) I do know that I am done with building up yellow for quite a while, white base is the way to go. And nicely thinned paints which I will get back to after this message:

I paint very randomly. I see something I want to paint on the model and I go for that. There's a lot of detail on these guys so it will take some time it seems. Going to go for painting all of them to the step before washes and then probably finish them one by one. I am happy with the shields which are turning out quite nice. I am also going for a kind of red tone for the gold which we will see how it will pan out. Lysander got quite a lot of gold on him so I better get some practice in :)

I now thin my paints with something else than just pure water. I found Jennifer Haley's recipe here and there on the web and copied that as a starting point. I got a fairly large empty bottle as well to mix it up in, which turned out quite meh as it is very hard to pour from. So mostly I pour some of the liquid into my palette and mix the color and thinning medium right there and then. Works quite well and it is a lot easier to paint, slowly starting to get the hang of it (I hope) and I really get while people want to start out with a white primer as thinned paints are hard to paint on top of black (for me).

In minor news, I got the Dark Eldar codex, awesome, and just a few minis because they look so awesome that I want to paint some. I ordered some real brushes (sorry GW) so I will probably give some thoughts on them when they arrive and I can try them out. I have also gotten 0(!) contributions to the painting competition. I think I need to promote it a bit more soon! So anyone wanting to enter will not have a lot of competition, at least not yet.

Happy Halloween

2010-10-31T22:54:00.000-05:00

WAAAGH!

1st Company tests

2010-10-23T21:04:00.000-05:00

I've done some previous tests but this will be the final test model before I go "live". I intend for this to be the new look of my Imperial Fists, with the 1st Company being the firsts to get it and then it is vehicle painting time™.

So my plans were pretty grand, I would being with a wash, so I would go from this (I got some poor coverage on the white, more on that later. I am also trying out a new primer which can be seen in the picture below):

To these:

I tried six different washes. From left to right, top to bottom: Leviathan Purple, Ogryn Flesh, Gryphonne Sepia, Badab Black, Devlan Mud, and Baal Red. I can really see why there are people who can get really cool results with Inks and Washes as they hug the mini quite well in many ways and help with showing off details. My idea was that I could paint over the already shaded mini with yellow and get a nice looking effect. This is what happened:

Thinned down Golden Yellow, with I think three layers. What do you all think? I can tell you what I though, "By Dorn's dirty underwear, this will never fly!". Yes, didn't quite work out as well as I thought. I don't want to pin my hopes on my airbrush either (which is what I am using on the vehicles later on) so I decided to put some more Krylon white primer on the mini. It was at this point I realized that I really should put more primer on as I really need the good white to paint on top of. I will give my Assault Terminators an extra bath in white before they get painted.

So I tried painting with a thinned down 50/50 mix of Iyanden Darksun and Golden Yellow instead which worked well. Covered nicely over the white as well. So I base coated the rest of the mini as well and here's the result!

The plan is to wash everything that isn't yellow the normal way, and use a good brush to careful apply Gryphonne Sepia only in select spots. Then give the yellow a coat or two of Golden Yellow and finish it up with some highlighting and the likes. I think this will be my recipe and I am starting to like the 1st company so I want to paint up some more of them. Like Vanguard Veterans and some Sternguard Veterans. Planning on some conversion for those as well.

Stay tuned for more and don't forget the competition!

Paint to win an Eldar Fire Prism/Night Spinner!

2010-10-21T23:49:00.001-05:00

It's time to bring out the bitz box, the bartering skills, and your painting tools of choice! I'm holding my first ever painting/modeling competition. Let's start with the prize. A brand new, still in plastic wrap, Eldar Fire Prism/Night Spinner. Shipped for free to the winner. Sounds pretty good doesn't it? If you are an Eldar player you sure could use it, if you just like to paint it is one awesome looking model (I have one myself that I am going to paint in the future), and if you don't want anything to do with the Pointy Ears you should be able to trade it with someone who does for something you fancy more. If you win and do paint it up yourself, please post photos so I can see the result.

What do you need to do to win this prize then you ask? You need to impress me with your enthusiasm, skill, ingenuity, and ability to finish a project. To be eligible to win you need to follow these rules:

Send me

Three WIP photos from various stages of modeling/painting.
Three photos of the final entry.

Follow the theme. The theme is loosely "Mirror world". Model and paint something like something else. Turn good guys to bad guys, one race/codex to look like another another. Go wild, be funny, slick, clever, cool, different, or surprising. Be subtle or obvious. Give someone an evil beard like Evil Spock or Flexo from Futurama. Have fun!
The final entry needs to be painted. Anything from base coated (with a dip perhaps?) to golden deamon will be accepted.
Email me the photos by the 20th of December and include contact information. I will repeat that last one, contact information. I will have the email you sent from, but I need to get hold of you so make sure it's an email you check often enough. If I can't reach you by the end of the first week of January 2011 the prize will go to a new winner.
Any and all contributions to the competition can and will be posted on this blog by me. I will do my best to comment on all the entries but I will not give criticism. All entries are welcome and you have nothing to fear.
I will select one winner from all entries. So what do you need to do to win? I will simply select the entry that I like best and upholds the spirit of the theme the best. If the criteria seems a bit murky, the best thing to do is to create an entry that you yourself really would like to see.
The winner will be announced, on this blog, on the 23rd of December. I will be the high Inquisitor and my judgement is final.
If you are too lazy to look up my email address: flekkzo at gmail dot com.

If you have any questions just comment on this post and I will answer it promptly. I hope that this will be a chance for you to get away from painting squads of ten, twenty, thirty models and use some colors you don't use so often.

Most importantly, have fun and enjoy yourself. I will be looking forward to the entries coming in!

Getting ready for Halloween, WAAAGH! style :)

2010-10-21T23:28:00.000-05:00

Carved my first ever pumpkin today. I don't yet have a candle to put into it but I did a quick dry-run with a flashlight and it looks far more awesome with the light on.

So what do you guys think, should I make this into a tradition and have Ork themed pumpkins carved every Halloween?

Stay tune for something awesome coming up soon on the blog!

Imperial Fists army update

2010-10-17T15:08:00.001-05:00

I've updated my Army page with the "final" version of the Assault Marine squad. I write "final" because there are a few more things I want to do, but they will have to wait until I've finished more of the army.

Here's a link or you can press the link at the top of the page.

I'm back (again!)

2010-10-12T23:42:00.000-05:00

Hello everybody!

I'm back! I wonder how many blogs have exclaimed that at the top of its lungs only to be silenced again shortly after. I've been slowly getting back to my hobby after moving (yay house!) and now I finally felt that I had done enough to warrant a post and a glorious return to the painting-but-not-playing-yet scene. I'm sure my list will have both gone in and out of the metagame several times over before it will be all done. But first things first!

This is my painting table. Or this was what was going to be my painting table. It ended up being the home of our two pet rats (Skaven!) instead. For those of you who are pet inclined, the white one is called QT Pie and the black one Koko Puff. Sure wasn't me who did the naming! We've got three more coming in at the next of the month, so maybe I can get some better naming going :)

I am going to let the table double as my airbrush table though, so sometimes the little pets will have to move to the dining room table while I spray yellow (or maybe grey blue since I now own a Space Wolves battleforce!). I still wonder if I need more ventilation / something to cover my mouth when airbrushing. Anyone with advice please write a comment. There is a window just next by which I plan on having open at least.

This is my painting table! Look at all the crap on it! I was entertaining the idea of clearing it up before taking a photo, but that would be cheating. So there it is, my painting station version 1.0. I'll snap shots when I start upgrading it with more nifty stuff. Right now it's a cheap Wal-mart plastic table with a lot of stuff on it :) See if you can spot anything interesting :)

And now to my lovely Assault Marines.

There are now ten (!!!) of them. Only order of business left is letting the decals dry. Spray some Purity Seal on them, and repaint the eyes with 'ard coat. Done and done! (Yes, I am still thinking of adding something on top of the jump packs. A VII or a 7 or assault Xs or something. Just don't have any decals in green :(

Pretty sure WAAC min-max players will hate on me when I show up with these guys, but I've determined that I will gain more from loosing at first and really learn to play well with interesting units rather than point and click winning.

So what does the future of this blog hold? I've started on another test termie model to try out a completely different way of painting yellow. If it turns out it should be far far faster, hopefully look at least as good, and be the new look for all 1st company marines/vehicles/captains. And what I have in the pipe is five termies, Lysander, Land Raider, and two Land Speeders (with rokkits!). So clearly painting the rest of my army is part of what is next.

I also have some for fun models, for instance my Eldar (blue and yellow!), the Legion of the dead (BDay gift) and also a box of death company which I have mixed feelings for. Should I paint them as the death company or mod the crap out of them to be Vanguards. *hmm*

I don't own it yet, but I have thoughts of konvering a boxed set of chaos space marines into Sternguards for my Imperial Fists. Could be fun! Also have a dread to assembled and wreck havoc with :)

Any games my IFs will play will also be retold. Win or loss. I've got a number of people around these parts I'd like to get it touch with and play some games. None of them know me (might read my blog though, are you?:)) but they have blogs and have spilled their beans about being Minnesotan:)

Oh, and the two most interesting things coming up. First a way for me to get tons of Ragnar's company plastic shoulder pads (two per box of ten wolves, what gives???) that could be profitable for a donor, and to top that one off a competition!

See you all in my next entry :)

Jump packs and the first company

2010-06-17T21:16:00.003-05:00

Time for some opinions again. Let's start with the point, I like Jump Pack marines. They are cool looking with their Jump Packs. Trouble is, they don't seem that terribly good to play. I really don't get why Jump Packs are so expensive points wise in 5th edition Warhammer 40,000. For example the standard Assault Marines. 100 points for five marines with a discount of one rhino or drop pod. That makes them 25 points cheaper than a five man tactical squad, if they don't take the Jump Packs. In this case we talk 5p per pack. 1.5p for a ten man squad funny enough.

A vanguard squad gets to pay 10p per model for Jump Packs, which gives us a 100p premium per 10 man unit. HQs gets the packs for 25p or 15p, those that can take them that is. The command squad gets to walk or drive bikes.

With that out of the way I can almost hear some of you scream: "Of course you pay for them, they are extra equipment. You can move 12" and deep strike to boot!". Yes that is very true, but the Jump Packs are a trade off, they say: We give you these two new awesome rules, but we can't allow you to ride in a transport (sans the Storm Raven). So my point is this, you loose the ability to be transported so the upgrade should be free. It's an either or choice.

So with transports being "better" than footslogging, even with a 12" move I feel hard pressed to claim that Jump Pack marines are competitive now. But since they are cool I am going to try to make the best out of them anyways. Nothing cool with trying to play it like everyone else:)

Which brings me to my next point on today's agenda. Why can't I play a 1st company Elite army? I know this is a speciality of the Dark Angels, with their Deathwing, and to a lesser degree with the Space Wolves with their so called Loganwing. But what about vanilla marines?

I think that it would be really nifty to use Vangard/Sterngard veterans (why are there no devastator veterans?) and Terminators only in an army. Sure it would be very Elite and probably hard to play, but the veteran models are very cool looking and it could be a very cool future project to make my own.

Just a little rant:) Let me know if anyone has any opinions about this.

Tactical squad and Razorback

2010-06-10T00:30:00.004-05:00

Hi all,

here comes a picture of one of my tactical squads, complete with hand painted tactical arrows and a roman 2 on each right shoulder pad. Only thing missing is doing something cooler with the sword. Sometime in the future I will give it a go:) I'm thinking of lightning, power sword and all.

And my homies needs to ride in style, so five of them rides in this sweet Razorback with assault cannon. I am pretty happy with it except the color. Still having some trouble figuring out my airbrush and yellow color and all. Hopefully I will get it pat down in the future so I can get a nice smooth yellow on my Land Raider and Land Speeders.

I've decided to try to collect pictures of all my armies so I have started with my Imperial Fists on this page. I will update it as I paint and will have every single painted Imperial Fists unit I have. I hope to get a better light setup and a better camera in the future and if I do I will update all the pictures. Hope you like it :)

Tactical squad Sergeant

2010-05-28T22:27:00.005-05:00

Time for my second squad fifth company Imperial Fists chapter tactical sergeant. That's quite a mouthful:) It's quite a quick and dirty tutorial but I hope it can be inspiration rather than a step by step professional tutorial. It's the first time I've leaned a bit more towards a tutorial format rather than a series of WIPs. So, let's get started!

This is the victim. Magnetized banner and armed with a power sword. I've got one power fist sergeant as well (not fully painted though) and I am entertaining the idea of have a PF for each squad if I want to go that route at some point. I'm also considering painting up all special weapon options I have models for. But that is for later. Onwards with the plastic!

After a white basecoat (black works too. I prefer to paint on white, but I must say that black is better for when you can't reach/miss something. It is far more forgiving.) I paint the marine Tausept Ochre, the eyes Blood Red, the Aquila, banner, and "loin-cloth" orange, sword handle Vermin Brown, the metal parts Boltgun Metal, skulls and seals Dheneb Stone, and finally the weapon black and the soft parts of the armor. I used to always paint the black parts late but it was a pretty good idea getting it done early. Made things easier and cleaner:)

Time to go nuts with the washes. Blue Asurmen for sword. Gryphonne Sepia for armor, skulls, and seals, Baal Red for everything orange, Badab Black for the bolter, and Ogryn Flesh for the sword handle.

Now we clean up the armor with. Iyanden Darksun? Nope! See that cap of that foundation pot is painted. That's my 50/50 Golden Yellow / Iyanden Darksun mix. I did my best not to get any paint in recesses and such to keep the darker color there to give the model some more depth.

Here things went wrong wrong wrong. But it ended up not being too bad. I grabbed the wrong yellow and painted along happy and woah, what did I just do? If you want to go with my "normal" recipe go for Golden Yellow, or if you want it brighter go for Sunburst Yellow. Paint just about the same as the 50/50 mix before but leave a little extra at strategic places if possible. Also note that the shoulder guards are now glued on.

Highlighting with Necron Abyss on black (hard to see, but gives kind of a neat highlight for black, try it out and see what you think), Bleached Bone on the yellow (or sunburst if you can separate your paint pots), some cleanup with black, drybrush of Bleach Bone on bone details. I think I used some red or orange (my mind is foggy) as well to spiffy things up:)

Gluing the loin-cloth and extra purity seal on. I don't have any pictures after this, but I've added some minor things like Mithril Silver on the studs on the weapon and based the guy. I also painted a black pointing upwards Arrow on the whole squad, plus squad markings, plus transfers (which I still suck at!). I will take a group photo with both tactical squads soon to give you all an idea of what they look like as an army.

That's it! Not really a fully fledged tutorial but I did get the question if I could make one :) Now we know. If there is an interest/I do it anyways there might be something similar but more detailed in the future. If you can't wait or want other views on how to paint an Imperial Fist check these out:

Games Workshop

CB Studios

Awesome Painting Job

...and to round it off a guy who writes *awesome* tutorials you always should read!

Master Darksol

Hope you all enjoyed this post. If you really super enjoyed it send me an Eldar Nightspinner (because I want that kit but I can't motivate it to the wife:)).

50th post and Gretchin Marine

2010-05-18T00:25:00.002-05:00

I just noticed before I started to write the post that this will be my 50th post. I am a bit impressed by myself and quite happy that I am staying with this blog even if the frequency sometimes are quite uneven. The time for hobby related activities vary quite a bit but I hope I will get more time over at the end of next month when my wife and I move. I will live closer to work which will shave off my commuting time. Fifty miles a day has been exhausting!

My Gretchin konversion begun with a post by Woroxon (http://bit.ly/azEnDi). If you don't follow his blog I recommend taking a peak at it. I have seldom had the pleasure to read a blog by a guy who loves the hobby more than him and approach it with more joy and glee, or should I say WAAAGH! :) His awesome Ork konversions are more than worth checking out. Oh, and that contest, you'd be a fool not to enter it. I have:)

The konversation started out with some choppin' of the hand and gun and some good old glueing. Later the hand holding the sword fell off and I ended up pulling on my Dok gloves and pinned it. Should hold better after that! I also gave the backpack and shoulder pad some battle damage courtesy of a file. I wanted to have two shoulder pads but there was no way I could get it on the little bugger:)

And here we have him all painted up. With quite a light toned skin. I wanted him to stand out among the Orks and Nobz. I also painted the Imperial Fists colors far brighter than what I normally do (the second squad Sergeant is just about done and stage by stage pictures should come up soon) just for fun. It turned out quite well and it was quite quick.

Prime white, add watered down bubonic brown, then sunburst yellow and highlight with bleached bone. Mordian blue gave me the blue trims and blood red + wash the reds. The green I did with a bright green sprayed on with my airbrush (first use of it) and then added Thrakka Green.

The blue trim was chosen to represent the 9th Reserve Company that consists of devastators, hence the devastator symbol as well. I also chose a plastic looking color instead of metal for the battle damage. Does a space marine's armor really have a metal color? Thought I'd play around and try something else :)

Click on this one to make it WAAAGH! sized and get a look from different sides. Also note the base, painted in Warboss Woroxon style with brown and dark green. It was a lot harder getting straight triangles than I thought. Live and learn!

And until next time, and another 50th posts, WAAAGH!

Terminators and seer councils.

2010-05-03T23:33:00.003-05:00

First, if you have ever thought of getting a seer council, check this out: http://www.thehogsofwar.com/2010/05/eldar-seer-council-jetbike-conversion.html

I might just go that route and screw the hard to do conversions. Just make some small stuff :)

Here's a new revision of the test terminator, plus an older model I painted some time ago that I repainted parts of (and forgot a black wash on the red! Gotta do that!). I painted the Iyanden Darksun / Golden Yellow - 50/50 mix directly on the shoulderpad and, lo and behold, it looked great from the get go. I might just change the formula to white, the mix, wash, highlight. That will make my painting far faster. Maybe I'll give the model a good black wash before the mix tough. Damn, I feel another test coming up :)

The white shield is done with Necronomican Grey, a watery wash of Chardonite Granite, followed by a N. Grey and a Skull White drybrush. Good bad? Let me know!

Don't know if it shows up but the "bumps" on the powerfist have little gold "blobs" on them. Just like you would do rivets on a weapon with mithril I thought gold would look interesting on an Imperial Fist. YMMV.

The old model also have a different paint scheme for the crux terminatus. My personal preference is the newer one :)

I decided to paint hard edges in white on the shoulder pads only. Brightens them up a bit :) Also the side guards are grey with white edges. I am still unsure about that. Maybe I should go red to really light it up?

The shoulder pads also needs a good old black fist, to look the part.

Shows how different the helmet looks in yellow vs white, and also how the black wash helps the red looks better (remember, I forgot...). They sure look like they mean business :)

If there is a reader out there that has a right shoulder pad for a terminator and wants to donate it to me, well, let me know :) I am one short for an assault cannon terminator. I wouldn't mind a "shoulder rocket launcher thing" as well. Yes, got an empty head and am too lazy to go check the Space Marine codex:)

Terminator test

2010-05-02T21:48:00.005-05:00

As I have previously mentioned I have 5 assault terminators primed and ready to be painted. I wanted to paint a test terminator first though, to figure out what works and doesn't work. I did want to work in white somewhere as the first company's color is white but I think that the shoulders guards in white, well, that is too much white and white is quite hard to paint well it seems. At least for me:)

I do like how the white helmet turned out though. More rough and grimy. I did all the red details with foundation red and a black wash. Darker than what the rest of the army has, but it sets them apart which was the point.

I also tried an Ogryn Flesh wash instead of my usual Gryphonne Sepia which looked good. I do think that the legs turned out a smidge too dark though, so I am thinking of lightening it up with some yellow before I wash it next time.

Here's the guy, let me know what you think!

Oh, and I experimented with a "light box" which was just a box with the sides covered in aluminum foil and two pieces of white papers. I took more pictures but the two first I took with the flash on, and lo and behold, it was actually a lot better *with* the flash! Who would have known? We'll see what the future holds! Again, all and any suggestions are welcome. One day I will have to test a red wash on yellow to see how it turns out.

Eldar seer council on bikes

2010-03-28T22:09:00.003-05:00

No "hobbying" this weekend. Yup. I am more disappointed than any of you. My plan is to make a step by step guide on how I paint Imperial Fists using a sergeant. First tutorial type posting. I am also planning on trying to make a little "white box" to use when taking photos. Just a cardboard thing I plan on making white somehow.

What I have done is thinking. I do a lot of that stuff:) I have been thinking about making a jetbike seer council. I am far behind on my Eldar and don't expect to have anything playable for quite some time, so I am will just paint models up now and then and not care about lists or anything like that. Maybe I can have a little cache of Eldar for when any future codex hits :)

I have looked around the internet as much as I can to find any good ways to convert farseers and warlocks for jetbikes. I've found some cool looking examples out there, but I haven't found anything that really spoke to me, that really said "that is what you want, that is what is going to be *your* council!" Here's a few really nice examples I've found:

Meandering the dune sea

40k maunderings

moc065

Don't get me wrong, they are awesome, but they don't get me what I want. So what do I want?

* Jetbikes. Don't really plan much here. Maybe a flag or so. Maybe minor GW to make them stand out a bit.

* Farseer. I want a traditionally looking farseer, but I want her to fit on the bike. So robes and runes etc. Should look like it could be an official model. Either a nifty helmet or get an elf head from somewhere.

* Warlocks. Same theme here, but not as elaborate as the farseer.

So what could I do? Weapons seems like I can find in WHFB, but the huge problem is the robes. I can't find any good robed characters I could use that would fit. I don't want leather clothes and a cape/mantel. My thinking is trying to make them with green stuff, and then add some cool details either from other kits or green stuff. Problem is that I am a total noob with the stuff :( Anything I could kit bash would definitely be preferred. I would start with one of the standard riders or a shining spear.

I will put a magnet on the seat of the jetbikes so I can switch out drivers. Just have to solve the handle problem. Either that or remove the handles totally :) And now it strikes me that I could start with any model with good weapons, add the legs from a jetbiker, and have the robes cover the ugly seams. Hmm.

Going with an Alaitoc theme I want to base the bikes in a foundation blue (which I haven't decided) and then try to "stipple" it using an airbrush. Using a few different blue colors and one grey (black might make it look too camo). Paint up the underside in yellow/white, the seat in some other color, use the blue wash in a few places and a thinned out light blue on the edges. Tape off the front for some nice yellow patterns. Freehand/decals might be in it as well.

This is going to be more of a long term project, as the rest of my Eldar, but sometimes it is important to get out of painting the same stuff, and sometimes one has to try new stuff.

Any ideas is *more* than welcome at this point. But before that I have 12 marines and 3 vehicles to finish :)

Finished Meltagun and Sergeant

2010-03-16T22:21:00.003-05:00

Here are pictures galore of my newly painted Meltagun Marine and his Sergeant. The banner is magnetized (gives me the option of painting a cooler banner in the future as well as stow it far better in its battle foam case), which I personally think is cool. I intend to give them a good coat of GW Purity Seal and then some 'Ard Coat on the eyes (hoping to make it shine a bit and generally look cool) but other than that they are done.

Notice the white 1 on the side to denote first squad. Also note that if you click to get the larger version you can see what I did to the meltagun. I decided that I wanted a bit more color so I painted it in foundation red and washed it liberally with badab black. Makes an awesome dark red! Maybe I should use that on my termies, together with white (1st company), to break up the yellow. I also plan on adding something dark brown to the wash to darken it more. I don't like a black wash on marines, and I don't like liberal washes on top of yellow (they tend to look kinda brownish and not like shadows on yellow).

Next should be the step by step of the other sergeant, and then termies, lysander, and five more assault marines. Then vehicles:) I should put something up on the side of my blog to show painted and queue!

Misc Imperial Fist WIPs

2010-03-07T23:19:00.002-06:00

Time for some general progress. Here's the Sergeants shoulder guard. Looks pretty close to an AoBR one right? Me and my friend green stuff fixed that :) Sorry for the fuzzy shot.

My Sergeant has had his backpack magnetized and so has the banner. Easier to stow it and I can switch them around if I want to. I chose to go with red as that is a common second color for the Imperial Fists and I use that for the eagle on the chest and any fabric on the marines. This is Macharius Solar Orange plus a liberal amount of Baal Red. I am quite happy with the results. I think I will add some writing and probably a "1" for the Squad number. Maybe I should include Chapter (VI) and Company (5th), hmm.

Here's some WIPs of the sergeant and a Meltagun marine. AoBR comes with a flamer and I thought that it would be better to have a Meltagun instead. It should provide some extra potential killingpower if needed. Hopefully the Ass Cannon will clear any vehicles first though :) On the right side you can see my first attempt at some freehand. A simple "1" as a test. I think I need to fill it in with white again and clean it up a bit with black, but I think I might go with it. This way I have not just the arrow but also a number to show that the are the first squad. I might just go for painting on arrows on the second squad. Only time will tell:)

I will glue on the loincloth when I am done painting. Just too hard to get it good before painting everything that is behind, and the meltagun isn't glued on either (finally I was smart enough:)). If you look closely on the power sword you can see that I have used a blue wash on it. Thought that it could be a good base before I paint anything else on it. Still want some lightning on it!

I also have a secret project visible to the left :)

Tacticals and a little Dreadnought

2010-02-22T19:48:00.004-06:00

Putting on decals is really hard. At least on shoulders. Here are "the gang". It is missing a power sword sergeant (I wonder how often someone fields a chainsword and boltgun sergeant) and a meltagun marine. I also realized that I need to fix my lascannon marine so he's got a tactical up arrow as well. I have greenstuffed up arrows for the two new marines (pictures coming in the future when I start to work on them) and it looks pretty nifty all in all.

I like the AoBR tacticals, thinking of getting more of them. Maybe I should have two fourth company squads too :) The downside is needing two more Razorbacks :)

Here's a slightly better view of the decals. And again, how the heck to you get them to conform to the shape of the shoulder? I do have Micro Set and Micro Sol, yet I get wrinkles etc. And there is no way I am freehanding that, it is far too hard for someone with my handling of the brush. Maybe in the future:)

And here we have a little dread! Chose to put the logo on the left weapon arm instead of the leg "plate". Thought that it felt better that way. I have put some basing sand on him, we'll see how that goes. He is getting close to finished, even though he is out of the list. Maybe he will make a comeback :)

In the background we have some sergeants (power fist and power sword, with magnetized banners. Cool huh!). But that is for a future post!

I also popped by The Source this weekend for their Black Crusade 2010. There was a massive amount of people there and series of gigantic Apocalypse games. It was a brief visit and I scoped out the local scene a bit. Some nice looking minis there, and one insanely expensive piece of terrain in the form of a Thunderhawk. Dark Angels Thunderhawk. A freakin' Thunderhawk as a piece of terrain. Awesome:)

I really do need to get some games in (blah blah, don't have my army up and running. Me stupid!), I am getting itchy for some gaming. I also realized that my painting is pretty good. I think I have looked at the works of far too many great painters online and effectively use that as a frame of reference. Stop being so freakin' awesome you internet people! :) But seriously my painting is pretty OK for being me :)

I am very strong!

2010-02-22T19:32:00.003-06:00

This is my cutter. Or rather it was, because when I tried to clip some metal Eldar Rangers it...broke! I broke it from my fantastically non-existing hand strength. I find this both amusing and intriguing :) Moral of the story, be careful with your tools.

I got myself a cheap replacement. Hope it survives longer :)

Assault marines done (painting at least)

2010-02-22T18:34:00.003-06:00

I finished painting my assault marines this weekend. So half of them are now done. Got a pretty ok recipe for the colors now. Should be able to finish the last five fairly efficiently. Started to use Astronomican Grey as a base for certain parts and then hit it with Sunburst Yellow. That brightens it up real nice and good and lightens up on the big patches of yellow. Hopefully you can see it :)

This one ended up with a flash.

While this one ended up without a flash. Can't decide which one turned out the best. I do need a better camera though:) (it is a theme on this blog it seems)

This is a bit Beatles inspired (hint for the age-impared, look up Abbey Road). I still need to give some cool effect to the sergeant's power sword. Some lightning or similar. To show how bad ass the guy actually is :)

Also note the green assault crosses. Looks pretty good when I got all five of them painted. At least I think so:) Feel free to have opinions in the comments!

And the final shot shows the weathering pretty well. Just have one weather effect, but it turned out pretty ok. The sot from the engines looks pretty realistic, but wow you had to be careful with the black to not overdo it. I really didn't want to repaint:)

So power sword, Imperial Fists decals on the shoulder, some Purity Seal, and I think that I will finish with 'ard coat on the eyes. I hope that it will turn out! I also need to pimp them up with some extra purity seals and the likes. Especially the sergeant.

Trying to finish up the tacticals as well. Put together an extra melta guy and two sergeants (power swords). They will be next on the list.

Oh what do you guys think of the bases?

The tenth company

2010-02-06T23:58:00.002-06:00

Darkwynn posted on BOLS about playing the tenth company. I thought that was kind of a nifty idea so I set to checking out how I would build a 1500 point tenth company army. Imperial Fists of course :)

First up six five man scout teams. Four with sniper rifles and camo cloaks, two of whom would have a heavy bolter and two with missile launcher. One would be lead by a special sergeant, i.e. Telion.

The last two scout teams would be tooled up with combat blades and power weapon plus melta bombs for their sergeants. They will fly in style in a Landspeeder Storm with Assault Cannon each.

For HQ I would take a Librarian on a bike that hooks up with one combat squad out of ten scout bikers. The sergeant gets a power fist, cluster mines and a locator beacon. Three scouts get an Astartes grenade launcher.

The scouts are guaranteed to get into trouble, so they need to be supported by six Legion of the damned marines. The Sergeant gets a power weapon and the marines have to make do with a melta gun and a multi-melta (relentless rules). Having them arrive should give any opponents the hiccups for sure:)

That's 1492 points of scout based Space Marines. I couldn't resist seeing what I could come up with. I wonder how it would play :) What do you think?

Next post should feature my Assault Marines again, they are getting closer and closer to being finished.

Imperial Fists Assault Marines

2010-01-31T19:52:00.002-06:00

This is my fortieth post. Just thought that I would open with something fun. :) I have been, slowly, working on the first half of the Imperial Fists Fourth Company VIIth Squad Assault Marines. Here they all are, in various stages of painting. I probably shouldn't have had glued the flamer to the hands of the marine, but oh well. I chose to wash the container for the flamer fuel (can't remember the name of the stuff) with Ball Red. Turned out a bit too pink, so I might give it another brush of metal, but this time a lighter color, and then more Baal and some Badab Black, maybe even a little red paint in there.

The next two are the closest to being done, then the Sergeant with the power weapon which I do not know how I will paint, and last my little was directly on white test subject. I will probably go for the Iyanden Darksun/Yellow mix directly on top of that.

I gave the exhausts a drybrush of black to give it more of a used look, even though I don't go for any battle damage yet. Maybe in the future :) I hope that it is visible in the photo. I borrowed my wife's camera but it isn't that good for close ups I'm afraid.

This is the two closest to being finished. They lack the IF transfer on the left shoulder and I want to put a VII somewhere so it is easy to see which squad the belong to. I am thinking of doing the same thing as what is often done for the Ultramarines, just that I can't use white transfers as they won't be very visible. I am also not at all good enough with a brush to paint it. I have a pretty odd style compared to what I see in videos online when people paint. I sure don't make the brush go as smooth as the pros :)

I have been playing with the idea of using masking tape to get an assault X and VII on the top of the backpack. We shall see how that goes in the future!

Until post 41, hope you enjoyed some yellow painted assault marines:) I hope to have all of them painted for my next post, and hopefully their 5 friends at least assembled.

Assault Marine

2010-01-12T22:19:00.003-06:00

I am still around :) Wanting to finish one before I finish the rest (five still needs to be glued together!) so I see some faster progress I painted this Assault Marine. He's still a WIP but you can clearly see the idea of what I want to do. The next step is a few decals (First on his left shoulder, squad number on the top of the jump pack on the left side, thinking of seeing if I can't get a green assault marine X on the other side, but I need to find some real good tape for that. Yes, I suck that much at painting freehand:)) and then some minor weathering.

I am thinking black soot around the jump pack exhaust and some small metal chips around the edges. Some mithril silver lightly drybrushed in the black part of the exhaust as well. Maybe something more, but I want to keep it fairly "clean" if you can call that with my ad hoc yellow paint style.

This Marine is Tausept Ochre as a base, with a Gryphonne Sepia was followed by a 50/50 of Iyanden Darksun and Golden Yellow. One (!) layer of Golden yellow followed by Sunburst Yellow as highlights. I think it was just one layer at least. He's a bit darker than a few of the Tacticals, but funny enough roughly the same color as my dread (which will be finished and getting some decals when Mr. Marine gets his. I just feel reluctant to do it since I suck at it:)).

The green is a Gretchin Green with Goblin Green on top and a Scorpion Green highlight. Not much for mixing paints right now. We'll see how it goes in the future:) Oh, and the eagle on the chest is blazing orange with a baal red wash or two. Too narrow to brybrush so it was just easier this way:)

So feast your eyes on the WIP (damn I need a proper camera instead of my iPhone):

I will write more about this later, but I have a little display case now :)

And this was a little XMas present to myself. More pictures to come :)

Working on my Assault Marines

2009-12-03T23:07:00.005-06:00

Hi readers of my blog. It's yellow time again, this time with two different Assault Marines that I've given some attention. Again poor pictures but at least there are pictures :)

I based one of the guys in Tausept Ochra, then added some Sepia in select places, followed by a mix of Iyanden Darksun and then "darker" of GW's two yellows. Turned out pretty good thus far, and faster than I thought it would be. I will follow it with just yellow and then start to highlight and all that jazz.

The other boy I just washed in Gryphonne Sepia. I plan on giving him a ID/Yellow paint followed by yellow and then highlights. We'll see which one turns out the best. That's the guy that I haven't painted the bolt pistol on btw :)

Sorry for the odd order of the pictures btw, blogger has one seriously awful interface for uploading pictures. And darn it, I gotta raid the wife's camera next time it is time for pictures. Also I need to go lighter on the skull whiter primer, damn it cakes. Maybe it is too darn cold here in Minnesota... I will put another 5 assaulties together and paint them as I think that I will go with a full Assault Marine squad and kick out my dread. I will also have power weapon sergeants and have a meltagun in both squads.

Enjoy the blurry pictures and let me know how I am doing :)

It's alive!

2009-11-29T22:29:00.003-06:00

Hi all who reads my blog. Been pretty quiet in the last month and a half. My current gaming goal is finishing up my 1500 point Imperial Fists army, so that I can go forth and make the Minnesota (or rather Twin Cities) WH40k world shiver before my mighty army. Or more likely having my fair share of defeats and a few fun wins too:) Being busy first with an insane amount of coughing for weeks and also starting a new job the hobby time suffered greatly. I did a few little things, but nothing worth writing about, and I want to keep this blog about gaming.

So what have I been up to? Assault marines! I am for the first time trying a white primer, skull white from GW, and it was very hard getting a nice even clean cover. I wonder if it is already too cold here to spray outside. Black has treated my far better in the past, but then again I have never sprayed in this low a temperature before. We'll see how it goes in the future.

This is the first half of a 10 man squad. I have a sergeant with a power weapon and one guy with a flamer. I will fill it up with four more chainsword + bolt pistol and more one flamer. I also have modified the right shoulder guard on all five of them to have an assault four way arrow. On to pictures!

And from the side. Click on the image to get a slightly larger one. Sorry for the poor quality, the iPhone is wonderful in many-o-ways, but photographing minis is not one of them. Sometime next year I do have to look into a good camera. I just don't know what to look for yet.

Also got some of the chainswords painted. No proper highlight on one of them yet, but that is coming. The super-duper shoulder guards should be easier to see on this picture.

I created the shoulder guards by cutting out the shape in .25mm plasticard and gluing it to the shoulder guard. I liked the look of the tacticals from the Attack of Black Reach and tried to emulate that. That said, it was really really difficult. Not easy at all to make it perfectly symmetrical, which is how I envision the Space Marine's armor. We'll see how it looks painted. I am going back and forth on what kind of yellow I will try this time around. The future will tell!

I have also bought the Retribution of Scyrah force book. Damn Privateer Press makes awesome stuff! The quality is really good all the way through. And I have already put together a little 15p army. Couldn't help myself. I just have to finish my IF army before I start another project. Plus I want my Space Wolf army too. I might just paint an eldar council on jetbikes or some Ork Boys in between just to clear my palette.

I have also used the 25% rebate from battle foam. 251 fresh dollares later I had ordered a big ass (that's a technical term!) army bag that will fit many a marines, fists and wolves. I might just have to order a special one for my retribution forces in the future. Looks very slick. Maybe I will donate my old bag to my wife, on account of her starting to paint some Circle Orberos. We'll see how she feels about them after she has painted some. Pretty cool stuff, I will post pictures of the army bag and my wife's Argus when it arrives / are finished.

I hope to have the assault guys done soon, and after that comes Lysander + Assault terminators, followed by vehicles. War needs to be waged!

Being sick sucks

2009-10-08T23:24:00.002-05:00

Being sick sucks, and thinking that you were getting better a week ago and then getting even more sick sucks even further. I've coughed up my lungs several times and I am certain that getting transferred into a Space Marine gotta be a great deal.

Which means that any progress I've had in painting has been, well, slooow. I am almost finished with the Blood Angel, so I should be able to submit photos tomorrow. I don't hold any illusions but I hope that I won't make a fool out of myself at least. I have come to the conclusion that my current painting skills are weak compared to my imagination. I.e. I come up with cooler stuff than what I can make.

I have started to dabble with transfers and found out that it is REAL hard to get them on smoothly. I've put three transfers on three shoulder pads on my fists and not a single one looks real good. I am pretty pissed about that. I hope I can master it by the time I get to my assault marines since I am kind of going all out of those guys. I've finished a first test assault shoulder pad and I am painting up a full metal sergeant with my chosen colors before I do the rest of the team. That said I think the shoulder pad is totally filled with win. Too bad I am not a wizard with the green stuff and can whip up a nice steel glove for the left pads too.

I did on the other hand do far better with the transfers on the blood angel. Pictures will come tomorrow hopefully. And I have given him my new secret super basing. We'll see what happens tomorrow.

I have also gotten the new Wolf codex. It isn't nearly as powerful (I think) as lots of people say, but I do like the idea of being able to use Wolf Guards as "Sergeants" of my teams and their Devastator teams rules. I am going with two long fang units, both being bolstered by a mean wolf guard with a cyclone launcher (Heavy 2, yes 2!). Oh and a mean Wolf Guard team headed by Rangar, two Grey hunter packs headed by power fist wolf guards (2 points cheaper than their grey hunter brethren, isn't that nice?), and a blood claw pack with a wolf priest. No psykers or anything, just pure fluff and mean cool Vikings in Space!

Also my melta guys are going to get Mark of the Wulfen, because that makes extra sense to me, since the get one less attack anyways :)

Have I gone and died?

2009-09-23T00:46:00.006-05:00

Nope. I am still going strong (?!). It just seems like that between the interviews, thinking too much about me acting like a boob, and spending time with the missus I just haven't gotten that much painting done. I have added some more extreme highlights on my dread but it's kind of slow going. I have, finally, ordered some Micro Set and Micro Sol so I should be putting on decals like crazy soon. Got a bunch of tact marines that need some nice IF markings and that dread do need a bunch of decals as well.

Oh, and I also have a little project. Check out this "preview". Some of you reading will know exactly what is going on, others won't have a clue, and yet others will work really hard at not caring. That last group should go watch American Idol or Dancing With The Stars or something :)

The pic is a bit dark and I think you might want to click to watch the big version of it to get at least a little of the detail. Jupp, I sorely need my own camera for taking photos of minis (which more than likely will be the only thing I would do with it ^_^).

I have put on a very liberal Baal Red wash on it after stealing a pic of it. Starting to suspect that mixing the red wash with maybe devlan mud or gry********* sepia and then badab black would be a good idea. I will see tomorrow how well the wash did in making dark shades. Think I might have to add in some extras here and there to select areas before I throw on another layer of blood red followed by blazing orange. I really, dearly, lotsa need to learn how to blend colors directly on minis. Maybe this will be my finest hour, we shall see:)

Still Around,

Flekkzo

More dreadnaught

2009-08-26T23:25:00.002-05:00

Some more red gold on the model now. The camera makes it look more goldy than it is though :/ Looks niftier RL. Got the first layer of yellow on as well. Took better than usual. I think that it helps making sure that the foundation color really covers well. I'm thinking of applying the sepia wash already and then go for more yellow. Probably going to go for a heavier highlight than usual as well just to try it out.

Lots of black and yellow with a little red gold. Gotta get me some more color :)

A from behind shot :)

I'm going to add some Badab black to all the metal, but I might go with some green wash on the canisters for extra niftiness. Hmm. Or what color should melta canisters be?

When I look at the base I'm wondering what I should do with it. Need to make something nifty for sure!

Dreadnaught WIP

2009-08-22T22:19:00.003-05:00

Here comes the big bad dreadnaught! Following him will be an Ironclad dread, but that poor fellow is still in bits, and I think that one needs a drop pod. Maybe I need to have two ironclads each with a drop pod. Might really want a special dread pod though from forge world, which means more expensive. Wish they had released it as a plastic kit too.

Anyways, back to my current dread. I took a little gamble and painted the sarcophagus first in tin bitz, then burnished gold with some shining gold at last and finished it all with a baal red wash over the feathers, sockets, and on the black background. Give the whole thing kind of a red gold feel to it. I like. In fact, I like so much that I will give the skulls on the model the same treatment. Good thing I came up with that before I had started with the non foundation yellow.

Also the cables between the sarcophagus and the rest of the dread needs to go metal colored. The tip of the multi-melta looks horrible in this picture but it really is metal colored. I haven't done anything to any of the metal areas yet, but I will give it some tin bitz and devlan mud + badab black on the multi-melta and badab black on the rest, plus some highlight metal.

Hope you all like it :)

I've been thinking of adding a few more purity seals to the model. Only one? On a dread? Hmm...

I keep some of the back parts black with a little gentle metal brush just so I don't paint the whole freakin' thing yellow. Takes time and all that jazz. Plus it kind of looks better this way:) Apparently black was my favorite color as a kid, a story my mother loves telling me (and I promptly hate hearing, especially since I apparently couldn't pronounce it right even!). Needs a bit of soot on the, ehm, chimneys?

This skull will also go red gold and the plate it is on will be black. And that close combat weapon, it needs to kill kill kill to earn its points back.

Stay tuned for more dready goodness in "da future".

Perils of the Warp

2009-08-16T16:45:00.003-05:00

Greetings from the US of A. The jetlag is starting to slowly die down and it's time to start posting again. This is the carnage that was the result of traveling. Perils of the warp for sure! Luckily everything broke at places it was glued together so it was just a case of bringing out the glue and go to town. Also note that the plastic colored Captain has a little problem, yes, I put the darn flagpole on the wrong way. That had to be fixed too.

And this is the result, now they look dressed for success again :)

And in my excitement I started to paint the dreadnaught as well. Gonna take quite some time to finnish that bugger I'm suspecting. I think that the Ironclad will be painted in parts and then assembled. It's just a better way of doing things for me. Cleaner if nothing else.

Oh, and if you think the quality of the pictures are different it's because I just *had* to try out my new iPhone 3GS :) I will steal my wife's camera in the future as it surely will take better pictures being a camera only type of device, and I did brought my gorilla pod:)

Bye bye Sweden

2009-08-06T12:59:00.003-05:00

Time for a real life post. There won't be many, this is a miniature wargaming blog after all. I've decided to keep myself to one broad subject per blog. I am sure nobody wants to read about all the aspects of my life after all :)

This is a big one though, because this is the last evening I will spend in Sweden for some time to come, as I am moving to the US of A tomorrow. One way ticket. First Class. Immigrating. Ad astra, ad infinitum.

I'll be back blogging in a few days. Hopefully with pictures :)

Hej då Sverige!

Playing IG

2009-08-04T18:24:00.002-05:00

Got my first chance at playing IG. Felt odd fighting a foe I knew very little about. Guess I'm the type of person who will end up owning all the codexes, just so I can know:) Fought with my normal force, with lascannons on both of the Razorbacks. It felt weird facing so many tanks and models as my army felt a lot smaller.

Ended up with one objective on the far right in my deployment zone, and one directly over the other side in my opponents. My plan was to try the tricksy play style (in the event you read this, you know who you are who inspired that) so I reserved my entire chanterelle fighting force. I was going to let one combat squad hold my objective and use one of the razorbacks to contest the other. Boy did half of that plan go south quickly.

Everything but my dread ended up on the table in the first reserve roll. Go figure! Both my razorbacks got popped real quickly, without dealing any sort of punch first! Yes, epic fail on those two. Two hunter killers fired, both misses, and like 3-4 twin-linked lascannons that utterly failed doing enough real damage. Think I did pop a transport though. That put my two "super" squads on the board instead of their taxis.

One of the lascannon squads ended up killing a vehicle. Good times. My now foot slogging soldiers ended up tying up a squad of walkers and utterly destroying a bunch of IG veteran troops. I love weak IG saves. I especially liked tearing into them with power fists and power weapons. I want terminators :)

For once my dread did his work. It came in on turn four I think, and while on the board it managed to get a weapon destroyed (multi-melta) but not before popping one vehicle with it, and then I was able to assault another vehicle, ending up destroying that as well. Good times, good times.

There was no chance I'd get over to the other side of the board with anything, so we ended up holding our own objectives and it ended in a draw. Razorbacks are too expensive to not fire with, so I move them slowly and they don't end up getting that far before turing into smoldering wrecks (two hits, two sixes, two exploded Razorbacks, bad karma anyone?). I need to be able to get further with them, and I should just dump the lascannons for assault guns. Drive 12" the first turn and pop smoke, and then let that Heavy 4 tear into my enemies with a land raider in there for fun (i.e. my idea of a 1500p IF army).

Last game in Sweden ended up a draw. I'm curious of what my first US game will look like:)

The future of the fists

2009-07-31T17:00:00.002-05:00

List building. It's my latest pastime. I've come to that point where list building is a fun idea. I'm thinking of how to bring my IFs up to let's say 1500 points for instance. Like Chernobyl commented I've been thinking of retiring my captains and replacing them with Lysander for some more punch. Not quite sure what his bolter drill would do for me though. I need to fight something else than other marines, they don't particularly die much when shot by bolters for some reason:)

I was thinking of replacing my underperforming dread with a very close combat styled ironclad dread (think two close combat weapons and two heavy flamers) as well, as that would go well with the captain switching. And to bring it up to 1500, well, terminators *do* sound real nice. But what is best, two squads of five or one squad of ten? With Lysander joining terminators. They are dead 'ard, but they can't be everywhere on the other hand.

I have also started to play around with building lists just for the heck of it. As kind of an exercise to understanding the codex better. Through this I've found that it is very fun to try to think up ways of making themed lists with a certain goal. Like the Raven Guard style list I came up with. I am totally sure that somewhere out there there are someone else already having done this, but the idea of a list totally void of mechanized mayhem appeals to me. I don't want to copy somebody else's winning list, I want to make my own, by being creative. Yes, I've been inspired, and you all have to guess by whom yourself :P

Oh, and that play list? This is it:

Shadow Captain Kayvaan Shrike 195

Assualt Squad, 5 extra marines, double lightning claws, Melta bomb 225

Scout Squad, Sniper, camo, 4 extra scouts 154

Scout Squad, Combat blade, combi-melta, melta bombs 155

1,488

And with 12p to spare :) Hmm, that is like 14 boxes and one blister. And lots and lots of more painting. I do wonder if such an army is even viable. No reserves, just infiltrate like crazy, go heavy on the sniping and use fleet of foot to get into assault fast.

Bah. I need to play more :)

First game

2009-07-24T18:26:00.002-05:00

Two games of Warhammer 40k played today. Basically the list I posted before (hellfire rounds did jump over to the other captain though, since I didn't have the right gun on the other one, and one razorback got the twin linked assault cannon). The first game was more of a warm up play thing. Played 2 vs 2 players in teams with a fifth player deep striking randomly in the center of one of 1/3rd of the game board. Sounds confusing? It was, but it was mostly a test thing to get going. Funny enough my team won and I lost two marines in a razorback if I recall correctly. But oh well, it was just not that proper yet.

On to the second game. 1000pts, Imperial Fists vs Chaos Space Marines. I was facing two rhinos, one squad of Berserkers, one squad of Plague Marines and a Predator. I felt that reserves was a bit too advanced for me quite yet so I deployed pretty evenly over the field with the lascannons in the corners and the razorbacks and dread in the middle.

The lascannons definitly were the starts of the show. They popped a rhino and the predator. I concentrated my guys on first the bikes and then the plague marines, whittling them down on by one. Now the start of the show was definitely the captain with the power fist who took a few turns to turn them into mince meat. By removing or suppressing his long range firepower I stayed away long enough to fire a lot of shots by be fairly unaffected by his shooting. The dread and one razorback got immobilized but continued to punish the traitors.

I won by 4 killpoints to none and I lost in total one flamer marine and one standard marine. Pretty good for a first game but I felt that this is far from my trial by fire. Never the less I got a feel for the rules in action and we'll see how it goes tomorrow.

State of the Fists 4

2009-07-23T17:16:00.004-05:00

Tomorrow is the big day, tomorrow the Fists go to war for the very first time. I have a firm grasp of the general rules, but there are several minor rules that I surely won't remember. I just hope that my opponents are forgiving (they might see me as an easy win, but I will fight back:)) and I will try to focus on using what I know and see how it goes. My goal is mainly to get to play the game and get some playtime in before I move. Which is soon now! I have actually gotten my US visa approved:)

Here we have my two lascannon guys. The missions will be Annihilation so I'll probably pop vehicles with them and then concentrate my fire to try to break morale. I don't expect their 4 fellow marines will do much unless my enemy either kills them or gets within 24" of them :)

I painted the "thingie" at the back green and give it a *very* liberal wash of Thrakka Green. Then I decided to put a violet was over Fenris Grey on the other one. Not too happy with the result of that one though. The other Fenris + purple combo (leviathan purple I think) turned out great. I.e. the hose and the, ehm, thingy on the barrel. Also went for a very black backpack. Anything having opinions?:)

My second Razorback. Looks like it was pretty much seriously rushed out of the manefactorium, big time. But it *will* be finished in the future and hopefully looking ok. I plan on numbering it II while the first one gets I. No big surprises there:) Like the interior? It's the same as #I with one minor difference. Unfortunately it's impossible to see on this picture unless you know what you are looking for. Maybe maybe I'll change #I to look like #2 :)

The Dozer blades are fully magnetized on both of them now. Looks neat and works neat. Here you can see the fairly large magnets hidden inside the Razorback. The stick on quite well. I have to magnetize weapons, doors (on #2), and well, that's it I guess. But it has to be done never the less:)

And now for a blurry with flashlight group photo! Don't they look chanterelle-tastic? I should hook them up with a better photo op when I have painted more of them. I am considering switching out the AoBR Dreadnaught for a new one so I get some more weapon options. Or switch the bugger out completely and get some Land Speeder Storm love and people seem to love those Predators and Land Raiders. Hmm, what is a Chapter Master to do :)

I'll return with a brief report on how things turn out tomorrow.

State of the Fists 3

2009-07-20T17:39:00.002-05:00

Woot! My Fists now have one more Razorback that has the interior painted fully (I have realized that I have no Purity Seal sprayed in there on either. So I will have to remember that!). Other than that it is black and have no magnets or weapons. Have to work on the weapons when I get back from Stockholm.

I will put magnets in for the Dozer blade just like the other one, but this time I will remember to take a photo before I seal it all up. I've got two pretty strong magnets glued in the drivers compartment that easily should hold a blade. I just have to incorporate magnets on the blade in a cool fashion. Thinking of going all Boltgun metal crazy on the blades, so it should fit right in unpainted though. Magnets are so nice.

I will just throw the weapons together so I can play. Thinking of having them put together with "häftmassa" (blue-tac?) so I can play as I don't want to glue all of it as I want the ability to switch weapons. Might even get hold of an Assault cannon! Which would be awesome sauce for sure! A Heavy 4 should give me more crowd killing after all.

I have also assembled (and painted!) one of the Lascannon Marines and a second one is well under way. Pictures will come! I need to base the last lot and I still need to put on the transfers. Guess I've been reluctant because I fear failure. But what the heck, I'll throw them on soon:) I am also thinking of somehow getting the black up arrows on the right shoulders as well. But that wouldn't work well with my Devastators though. Then again I don't think that I will ever play them as such, but rather have options for lascannon, heavy bolters, and rocket launchers for my marines. I do wonder if heavy weapon guys in Tactical Squads have the Tactical Squad or Devastator markings. Hmm.

I will put up a group photo of the whole force as soon as everything is assembled. I will push on and paint everything after gaming is done. The dread might be replaced soon as the AoBR model somehow ended up getting the arms glued, so I can't even switch weapons around. *wops* Might pick up one of those nifty Ironclad Dreadnaught boxes soon, maybe even get two and replace one of the Captains just for fun, or just use it to expand towards 1500. I do dearly want those storms though, but I am starting to think that a scout squad with sniper rifles isn't a good idea in one of those. It's going to be contest / objective grabber after all.

Next post will have pictures, promise :)

State of the Fists 2

2009-07-18T18:29:00.002-05:00

Got all the plastic for the 1k army now. Got everything off the sprue for the new Razorback (a.k.a. II) and into little plastic bags. Cleaned out the big main parts and I am going to prime and assemble them tomorrow. And paint the interior. I have a simple interior paint scheme that is very fast to paint, and well, I don't want the inside to be just black. I know, I am craaazy :)

I also need to get the weapons done both Razorbacks and magnetize the weapons and dozer blades (got some big magnets inside to hold them, pretty neat ^_^). *phew* It takes longer to build an army than I ever thought!

I have gotten 7 "standard" marines done and the melta gun one. Only got three left after that, two lascannon marines and one captain. I think I'll remodel him to have a powerfist after all. Can't go wrong with a powerfist :) Or maybe I can? Let me know!

The craziness continues!

State of the fists

2009-07-16T19:22:00.004-05:00

The cat's out of the bag on Fritz's second blog so my 750 point Imperial Fist army isn't much of a secret now really:) As things have happened its progress has been slower than anticipated. I guess after getting all space marines in the black reach box put together so quickly I didn't anticipate the tempo to drop so steeply so fast. Life, the color yellow, and other things slowed me down. On top of that there is a 1000p tournament next week, and maybe, just maybe, it could be that I can get an army put together by then. It will be built straight up on the list suggestion so kindly provided to me and can be seen as a bit options heavy. But I am working on a budget here (a time budget). I do hope I get to play some 40k in Sweden though.

So with that in mind, let's start with the WIP shots. Here we have four bog standard marines finished and their three friends feeling a bit out of hands. No basing and transfers yet. It will come, but it's low prio at the moment. I'm thinking of doing something to get me black arrows on the right shoulder pads to make them more similar to the black reach marines. Fist transfers will go the left shoulder pads.

And here we have the *very* unfinished heavy weapons guys. Two lascannons! Why should heavy heavy weapons you ask? Because I can! I will make up two heavy bolter guys as well, and an extra rocket launcher with the cool back pack. The launcher in the tactical squad box set just doesn't cut it, it looks bad. Good thing I have a devastator box:) Question is, should I kit the 5th and last guy out as a sergeant or another heavy weapons choice, hmm.

Got a bad ass sergeant with a power fist. Totally bad ass. Totally black primer, totally bad picture. And the base that I am going to transplant my Eiryss to looks great in the picture. Stay tuned for that project:)

Here's a lone melta carrying marine, and the arms and pads for him and his three buddies from earlier on. The pop? It's Dr. Pepper ofcourse! :) The cardbord box pieces are from German Wine :)

So now it is time for... the list! I might tweak the options a little bit, we'll see. One thing I have been thinking of is going for a powerfist on the Captain instead of a lightning claw. Haven't glued that guy yet, so I can change my mind :) But, the list!

1 Space Marine Captain	Storm Bolter, Lightning Claw, Melta bombs, Hellfire	133
1 Space Marine Captain	Melta bomb, Auxiliary Grenade Launcher	120
10 Space Marines	Las Cannon, Flamer	180
10 Space Marines-	Las Cannon, Melta Gun, Power fist	215
1 Razorback	Las Cannon, Storm bolter, Hunter killer missile, Extra Armor, Dozer Blade	115
1 Razorback	Las Cannon, Storm bolter, Hunter killer missile, Extra Armor, Dozer Blade	115
1 Dreadnought	Multi-melta, Extra armor	120
		998

998 points of Imperial Fists. The former "lone" marine combat squad now has a Razorback and a Captain. The tactics will be the same as for the 750 list. It's not meant to be a highly competitive list, but rather a fully working list that I can learn 40k with. Been toying with the idea of assault cannons for the razorbacks and heavy bolters for the tactical squads.

Now I also see that the second Space Marine squad should be 210 points, so I have 7 and not 2 points unused. Wops :) And dropping some extras I think that I could squeeze in a whirlwind. No way I can do that until next week, but the idea *is* interesting :)

And since I am in dream land, I want to add two Land Speeder Storms, a 10 man scout team (half bolters with a sergeant, half snipers) that combat up and jumps into the storms. Then an extra dreadnaught with some interesting options (probably should replace the one I have too with a kit instead). And replace a captain with Lysander for some proper Imperial Fist love. Should have some points left for maybe a pair of whirlwinds or so. Lots of models :) No phat land raiders or termies though. Or vindicators or predators for that matter. But maybe it could be a fun list. A squad of three land raiders to go with the storms could be good too. Some real fast moving end game love for sure :) Could keep them in reserve even :)

That's all folks!

New armies

2009-07-09T17:16:00.002-05:00

From reading the rumor mill on the blogs I've found out that the new Space Wolves codex is planned for October this year, and we already know that Retribution of Scyrah is scheduled for a September release. Let's say that this just adds to my determination of having my life fixed and set up by that time so I can get my claws on these fantastic new armies.

I dearly want a mage hunter army, and I am considering giving the Myrmidons a more green paint job to look like they belong to the rest of the hunters. And maybe make a dawnguard themed army as well. Kinda like having two factions in one :)

And the wolves, they are just so very very cool. Some might find their viking inspiration as too much, but I just find it charming. Maybe I should deck out one Blood Claw as being myself :) Lots of fun ahead!

Pictures

2009-07-08T15:13:00.003-05:00

Here are the promised pictures. I didn't get any painting done today due to outside interference. It's going to be interested to see how the marines look actually assembled. So here's the pictures!

The marines have kind of a "dirty" look. It's not so much a conscious decision as it was what I ended up with. I hope the shoulderpads + arms/weapon is going to balance the marines out a bit.

And here the two little side projects. I thought that painting Orks would be hard as heck, but not really. It so happens that models with a lot of stuff on them sometimes are easier to paint. The Marines are far more "clean", but that just makes it harder for me. I hope you like these guys, they have 3 more Nob friends primed so I might just finish those three as well, to have myself a little Nob squad to look at me when I paint :)

Damn it takes time to paint

2009-07-07T19:30:00.002-05:00

Between lots of things needing to be done and generally being tired (I miss AC! I want to be able to sleep when it is warm out!) and that little pesky issue of yellow paint, I haven't actually painted as much as I had hoped to. I might just be able to finish my 7 Boltgun Tactical Squad Marines tomorrow though. Painted 8 shoulder pads today and have worked on the arms/bolters as well. Slow going, but it would be so nice to have 7 fully painted models. Then I just have to paint 2 special weapons and a sergeant.

I did cheat a bit and have painted two Ork Nobs, for fun, and it was a lot of fun! I don't have any Goff checkmarks on them though. Should incorporate them in the future. Gotta make Mr. Thrakka feel welcome in the future :)

I really should take some pictures of my progress tomorrow. For fun :)

1000 points of Imperial Fists

2009-07-05T05:48:00.002-05:00

I am hard at work (or, well, at least now and then) on my 750 point list still. But I am thinking about what I could do next, how I could up it to 1k points if I want to compete in the upcoming tourney. I fear I must take the simplest route, i.e. the one involving the least amount of miniatures as my painting is slow moving. Pictures will be up when I can get my hands on a camera again. I'm working on 7 boltgun marines. I'm leaving off all the "extras" such as grenades etc. Cutting corners:) I might add them later on though, I just have to be super careful with the glue. I have found that putting some glue on a piece of cardboard and holding the plastic I want to glue and gently dipping it in the little pool of glue works far far better than trying to apply directly from the bottle. Don't want glue all over the place anymore after all!

So what would I want to add? I want to add two land speeder storms. Which means 12 (!) scouts and two (!!!) vehicles. Released on the 18th of July none the less. On top of that I want one squad of Space Marines scouts, half of them with sniper rifles, that I split into two combat groups each boarding a storm. Fast, open topped, skimmer. It opens up for some interesting tactics for sure. I should probably drop my dreadnought if I do that and replace him with a devastator squad or something (since I plan on painting them anyways). But I would have 22 scouts and 2 skimmers to paint then. Over a weekend. Doesn't sound like a realistic plan to me :(

That said, it would be a great way to move my army up to 1500 points. Add one more Razorback to that mix, and an extra HQ (thinking something rock hard, to go in the other 2nd Razorback) and some mobile elites. Maybe on or two drop pod terminator squads. I do hope you *can* drop pod them. A squad of three land speeders would be a cool addition as well. Would make my army quite fast I hope :)

What I will not add is bikes. Not a fan of them at all. Nope, no bikes.

Hmm

2009-07-04T06:21:00.001-05:00

Hmm, maybe one should get one of these in the future:

The Spear of Sicarius

But then again, what's the odds that the thing will be around for long enough for that to happen :) I do quite fancy those spiffy drop pods though. No idea if they will play well, but they look really neat :)

More Razorback

2009-06-24T18:18:00.003-05:00

The Razorback is now glued together into one and is starting to resemble an actual dedicated transport. I do notice that trying to paint individual pieces at different times was a huge mistake. I have put foundation on the body of the tank, but the bottom have one color and the hatches another etc. I don't think the body will match either. Oh well, it's my first try with yellow, and I have found it to be better to move on than to get stuck. I've got another tac squad to paint after all (and a few other pieces).

I am seriously thinking of investing in an airbrush in the future. The cover well and I could easily put down many coats of paint evenly. See how the hatches stand out here (even if I haven't actually started the yellow coat over the foundation coats yet).

You can even see how the yellow is uneven as hell here :(

The back hatch is magnetized, that is a part I am pleased with :) Also the tracks looks real nice.

Funny enough the inside of the Razorback looks, to me, real nice. Fenris Grey all the way baby! Also brushed metal + Badab Black is a fantastic little invention. Or rather metal + any dark wash. Maybe I should try it with green, purple, or blue, just for the heck of it :)

But you can see that I now have Fenris Grey insides on all that hatches. I plan on having anything that isn't outer hull in FG and add transfers and some black details on the outside to make it a bit more interesting. I will number it 'I' as it is the first armored vehicle I do have for the Fists. I do feel a bit miffed at how much that isn't included with the Razorback though, the second bolter that goes in the front isn't available so I can't build a Rhino with two bolter-thingies for instance. And only two main weapons out of five or six for the Razorback. Bad Games Workshop, bad, bad, bad.

I am getting really curious of what a 750p army can do. We'll see if I am a tactical genius or a heretic :)

Working on my Razorback

2009-06-21T17:24:00.003-05:00

I need to get my Razorback in at least a state where I can play with it, even if it won't look finished or pretty. But being the little weirdo I am I do want to paint the inside of the tank, and to do so I will have to do some assembly - paint - assembly - paint iterations. I have assembled the sides with the tracks and glued them together, but I haven't glued them together with each other yet, so they are not glued to the bottom nor the panel+weapon "thing".

Here's a pic of the inside:

It's a bit hard to see (I need more sources of light to get better pictures) but I hope you can see that I have painted the inside in my new favorite color: Fenris grey. It is one awesome color and I couldn't wait to get to paint Space Wolfs with it, so I chose it for the inside of the tank. It's just the foundation paint and sometimes I used a little blue wash (GW line) and a lighter blue foundation paint to highlight buttons etc. Painted the triangular buttons red and green as well, as I wanted them to pop a bit. They look like door open/close buttons so I thought, what the heck :) Here's another shot at the inside. Not that I painted the floor gunbolt metal with a badab black wash and touched it up with some more metal. I need new drybrushes though, they are already worn out from Cygnar painting:) Wish GW's new huge drybrush was released. Guess I will just buy GW's two drybrushes plus a large one (tanks need large brushes!).

I am pleased with the tracks. Tin bitz + some gunbolt metal + devlan mud wash and voila. Stole that one from GW's site :) It was real simple, fast, and looks good.

Less easy is this darn yellow. I do like the foundation WAAY better than the failure that was the Army Painter spray, but it is really hard to get an even coat on there. I have been playing around with how much I should water the paint and such, but it is still really really hard. Oh well, maybe in the end I'll learn something :) Plus I've got Orks and Eldars to learn how to paint as well. And Retribution, and Space Wolfs, and more Cygnar!

This part I do like. It looks pretty good (even better RL). Just enjoy the picture:

I wanted to have working side doors, and here you have one of them. I did change my mind about the color though, and now the inside is Fenris Grey instead. To match with the rest of the insides. The backdoor (*tihi*) will have the same setup with Fenris Gray inside and yellow on the outside so it will match.

The neat thing is that I have magnetized the door so I can pull it off, put it back on, and have it open for the Marines to run out. Like this!

You can also have it shut. I hope I won't end up having it get too thick because of paint and be hard to fit. I've got the other door painted and magnetized as well.

I have painted some more after these pictures were taken and I am going to finish magnetizing the back door tomorrow. I had some mishaps and will have to redo the fitting of the magnets. The magnets are 1 x 1.5 x 5 mm btw. Quite a handy size and fairly strong. Thus far recommended :) Bought of a German site.

Stay tuned for the next update. I am determined to get this Razorback in playable fashion this week, maybe even fully painted! I do need to start using the transfers though. On the squads as well.

//Brother Captain Flekkzo

Terminators

2009-06-21T17:02:00.003-05:00

I've painted one out of five Space Marine Terminators now. I am still playing around with different ways of getting yellow to not look awful, and I ended up with a way to bleak looking terminator. So I gave it some more wash and then drybrushed a bunch of yellow on it and gave it some slightly more pronounced edge highlights. I am not too fond of the look you get from it though, and I don't particularly like the idea of layering like crazy (nor the idea of painting smaller and smaller areas as I get lighter and lighter colors). I am still sold on the idea of wet blending. Tried it a bit on the cloth of the sergeant of the tactical squad earlier. Maybe I'll go nuts and use it much more on the Captain :)

Here's the Terminator! I'd love some opinions! I will paint the other four with similar highlighted edges (i.e. painted on instead of drybrushing, with the exception of the helmet).

Warmachine league

2009-06-18T18:02:00.005-05:00

Something I didn't expect happened today. I now have no less than six wins and one loss in the FLGS Warmachine/Hordes league. Six in a row even. And with a pretty themed up army even, and sometimes some pretty awful dice rolls. Life is sometimes funny :) Cygnar will prevail!

I also started to paint one more gobber today, but I think that I honestly failed with the skin. The drybrushing just made it look weird instead of a lean green machine. Gotta figure that one out. I've got no less than one lots (technical Mekboy term mind you) of Orks to paint even for my 750p list, and a lot of them have green skin to be painted. Or I could turn it around, after painting that many Orks I better improve my technique *somehow* :) And one nifty thing with Orks is, they shouldn't look uniform, so if I try out different colors and techniques, that is just Orky anyways.

In Space Marine land I've painted a termy today. The GW foundation colors thus far has been a hit. I recommend! Go buy!

They are painted!

2009-06-17T05:36:00.004-05:00

Here comes the lads! A full 10 man Tactical Squad with the optional heavy weapons and the sergeant. I tried putting some extra color on the sergeant by using London Gray on his "extras" and then bathing it in Badab Black wash. Turned out pretty good. I have mostly yellow and black on the models, with some mithril metal color lightly brushed on skulls and weapons and the likes.

The yellows turned out quite dirty and rough, so they do not look like shining plastic storm troopers ready to rock the Milky Way, but rather a rough bunch of guys. Oh well, first time painting Space Marines, can't expect too much:) Hopefully I made some improvements in my brush handling techniques along the way.

Next up I should start to assemble, magnetize, and paint the Razorback. I want to paint the insides so I will need to assemble, paint, assemble, paint, etc. I should also at least assemble the second tactical squad so that I have my army at full strength and can play with it :) I need opponents!

I'd love me some comments, good and bad. I think the thing that is most obvious though is the low amount of highlights. I tried drybrushing them on and that might not have been a total success, plus the Army Painter spray didn't work out. I will buy me some Iyanden Darksun paint and see how that will turn out for me instead :) The sergeants red cloth did get some highlights that turned out quite well though, even if the method was total madness (wet blending was intended, but, well, ehm, let's not continue down that road).

Oh, and they need their Imperial Fists transfers on the shoulder pads, and some stuff on their bases (gravel + static grass I think). More to come :)

More Imperial Fists

2009-06-13T14:44:00.002-05:00

Time again for some Imperial Fists! For some reason it felt easier to paint these guys as they are not my favorites. It's different with Cygnar, Eldars, and Orks. I have all chosen them with more emotional commitment. But even then these guys are starting to grow on me. They are freakin' hard to paint though, even though I am running with the simplest of simplest when it comes to color scheme. Let's face it, it is yellow, with black, and just a little red and bleached bone (for the purity seals, and you need to know what that is to find it in any of these pictures!). With that in mind it stills is a pretty cool color scheme. Who knows, maybe I'll decided that the other tactical squad is from another company, and thus will have red, or blue, or silver, or something else for the "trim" :) I do think that when I do the next squad I will make sure I paint then assemble when it comes to weapons so that I can paint the imperial birdie in black (or red, or whatever company I choose).

So on to the pictures, to the hotness itself! Check out these, ehm, Fists:) Here you see my very first yellow (army painter spray primer, looks like desert painted tanks) primed marine to the left. In the middle the experiment with london gray + yellow (I believe that it is Gold Yellow from Vallejo Game Color, but can't be sure coz the print came off and now I can't see the name) which turned out pretty, well, so so. And then the paint a bunch 'o layers marine to the right. It's just simply black primer (the Chaos Black primer rules!) and yellow on top, then a GW wash on top of that and some drybrushed gold yellow + some brighter yellow. Some brushed bleached bone for good measure as well on the black. These guys remind me of yellow storm troopers for some reason:)

Here the gang has been joined by two new recruits. Same yellow primer, but with slightly less sucky results. The primer gave me a really uneven and nasty finish. Even color but really rough texture. The tank in the desert feeling is *very* strong. This time around I tried being more careful and with slightly better result. I still don't know if I shook the can too much, too little, not chop sue enough, or whatnot. I did try applying the yellow color in a new way though. I did the same thing as if I would drybrush it on, with a drybrush brush (Citadel small drybrush), but didn't bother drying it off much. With some violent application it covered way better than the other technique, and quite fast too! Try it if you are in a similar situation. The guys furthest out to the left and right have one coat on each. I will apply at least one more, more than likely two, but by three I might be tired of it and will jump over to the "wash that bugger" step.

Should be pointed out that I will add the Imperial Fist transfers. I do feel envy of the insane amount of transfers that the ultra marines get, but damn it, no more Smurfs now! I do enjoy knowing that I will have one blue, one yellow, and one green army for 40k though:) And a gray one as well, because there is no way I will be able to keep away from the Space Wolfs:)

And before I sign off, there might be a mod in the pipeline for me. I've got an Assault Marine Sergeant with a power first that needs to become a tactical squad Sergeant. The best course of action seems to be to cut the power fist arm off and attach it to the original Sergeant. The Assault one has too different of a chest and it will look stupid. Silly GW for not including *all* freaking options, they should do that!

For the Emperor!

Imperial Fists!

2009-06-11T18:02:00.004-05:00

I think that I will swap out the Space Wolfs for some Imperial Fists instead. I'll go for the Space Wolfs when the new codex is out (only rumors I've read on the net, but you do know that everything you read on the net has to be true now don't it?). This means that I'll have Alaitoc Eldars, Imperial Fist Space Maries, and probably Goff Orks. I can fight myself basically:) I just need to assemble one tactical squad of 10 plus a razorback and I am in business for 750 points. I will cut down my original Tactical Squad to 6 (to fit in the Razor) and give the new ones some new nifty options. Endless hours of fun!

2009-06-11T04:13:00.003-05:00

Greetings Space Marines fans. I thought that I should show proof of glueing, and here's a full Black Reach Space Marine army. A bit over 500 points I think. Neat huh? :) I tried some improved techniques for the photo so I hope you guys can see things more clearly this time. I think you do have to click on it though to get a good idea of how it really looks (the thumbnail seems quite blurry). I still have some issues with lighting the scene and I will have to go on a scavenger hunt to find a bunch of good lamps to use (since the sun seems to be hiding these days).

Next up, painting these sucks Chaos Black, spray style! Then either over to the Ork assembly line, Cygnar painting station, or I might just want to start painting the marines. I still want them to be Space Wolf colored though, which I still don't know if it is a good or bad idea. But Ultra Marines? I already have chosen blue *twice* for armies, can't have it on a third (thinking of Goff painting for the Orkz, simply because it is Orky).

I am also thinking of those foundation paints that GW puts out. This time maybe I'll just buy the *box* instead of buying them individually *cough* washes *cough*. Or I could just go for the gray and green colors:) I just wish I owned all paints in the range so I never had these problems, oh well, there is always The Future!

Sniffin' Glue

2009-06-10T16:53:00.002-05:00

No pictures today, but I do own a Gorilla Pod and have read up on photography. I hope that future pictures will look much better than the horrors I've produced thus far. Maybe, just maybe, you all will think that I paint better if I post better pix, or you might actually see at what level I do paint :)

So why post anything? Because I've had some progress, I have previously glued up the Dire Avengers, I have cut out a whole bunch of Eldars from the sprue from which they came, and ta taaa, I have cut, cleaned, and glued the full Space Marine army from the Black Reach box. I will proceed to do the same for the Orks, and then possibly glue some stuff to the bases and then go all out and spray the whole bunch 'o them Chaos Black. Lots of paintin' to do!

And my Centurion still sits there on my table waiting to get painted:)

Oh, and there was some joy today as my packages from Germany arrived. Soo much packaging for such small things, but I now own a bunch of magnets that will magnetize a bunch of stuff for my 40k armies. Deffkoptas, Shining Spears, Falcon, Wave Serpent, and a lonely Autarch on a Jetbike will all get really nifty magnet connected flying bases. More to come!

Hunting the hunter

2009-06-05T16:48:00.003-05:00

Time to paint some warmachine again! I have been real bad at painting my Eldars. I do have a squad of five Dire Avengers all glued up now, so I will more than likely give them a go. Question is, should I go for white or yellow helmets. I think I wanna go with standard Dire Avenger colors though, as I tend to enjoy having standard colors.

So back to the Hunter. I decided that I wanted a Cygnar look to it, since that is what I am going for in general, but I wanted to give it a little pathfinder touch. I did this by painting a few parts green instead of blue. Here's no less than four pictures, from four different directions! I did fail a bit with the flock so I have to add more, and I do want to "borrow" some water effect from someone so I can fill up the stream a bit. Still, I hope whoever reads this blogs finds it neat:) Haven't sprayed "purity seal" on it yet on account of the botched flocking.

2009-06-02T07:56:00.006-05:00

This is a top view of my Bodger experiment. I green stuffed the base pretty much all over and filled up the hole with green stuff and secured the "tube" there, sticking up from the ground. I can't for the life of me decide if I should go with a grayish look where I drybrush in darker and lighter greys to make it look cement-like and get some stains on there, or if I should make it more into a "out in the field" type of base.

Out in the field definitely *would* make it look a whole lot more in place though, making it look like they are Field mechanics and not In a factory mechanics. Although do I get cover saves from being in a factory that I carry with me? Who knows? Who knows? Pray tell!

Other than that I need to fix the shiney top and again I don't know what to go for. Black and yellow? Just greasy black? Metal at the top end only like a battery? I don't have a clue! Help me out internets, give me a clue from the intertube!

And to top it off we have a full frontal fantasy, ehm, full metal fantasy Goblin Bodger from the front. Complete with dog tags and blue Cygnar jacket. And muscles. Bet this little guy gets all the Goblin ladies knickers in a twist we he gets home. He better survive the battle first though, not known to be sturdy our little Goblin friends!

More bases

2009-06-01T09:09:00.005-05:00

Time for some pictorial evidence to my basis. Writing this it strikes me that the layout aren't the best (and why do I have a tiny tiny little window to edit in, when I have a huge browser window that is now 70% empty? Silly!). Maybe I'll try to have the text flow around the images in the future. Might be better, might be worse, we'll see:)

So here comes to pictures of the Hunter. The model itself isn't even primed as you can see and thus shines like crazy. My awesome photographic skillz shows through as per usual. Although I blame the equipment!!! The idea is that there will be a little stream in front of the light 'jack and that round thing is a rock. I will flock the whole thing in dark green fluffy stuff, whatever it is, except the area where it has pushed away dirt. That is going to be dirt colored. Pretty amazing huh? :)

A different angle on the base.

This next one is my journeywoman. I have Haley and one squire on rocks, so I thought I'd throw her on rocks too. Several layers and a few small pieces that was wedged in strategic places. It already looks pretty OK to me. Going to do the usual black, and then lighter grays, but also some tin bitz (for that rocky glow from something that looks like quartz) and some of that green flock I so love to dash on everywhere! But just a little, I want it look like lush moss, not cover it up :) Think of it as a bikini for rocks!

My good old bodger, the only one painted. I cut a new hole in the base for the bodger further back, covered up the original slit (or whatever it's called) and then cut a huge gaping hole. In that hole I am going to put green stuff and build in the glass chamber (it's a glass fuse btw). I opened up one end on other one I have and I am drying cotton as we speak. I'm going to put some cotton in it, white and some shades of blue, to give it a smoke/lightning kind of flavor. We'll see how that goes! Then it's time to make it all happen :)

Remember, when there is Cygnar around, lightning will strike :)

Basing

2009-05-31T18:50:00.003-05:00

I have no less than three basing projects at the same time now. One for my Cygnar Hunter light warjack, another for my alternative journeyman warcaster, and lastly the first one for the Field Mechanic Goblin Bodger. I look forward to working more on them very very soon :)

I am building up a little greenstuff base for the Hunter. I want it to look like one of the feet has pushed up dirt into a little mound and you can see the brow dirt where it has pushed. The rest should get a good amount of dark green flock for a mossy / swampy feel. There will also be a stone (how the heck am I going to paint that?) in the form of a round piece of GS and a little stream in between. I am kinda torned about the stream as part of me wants to cut into the base to make it deeper, but cutting is so imprecise with a knife that I feel that I might just end up damaging something instead of doing good. I also dearly need to "borrow" some water effect from a certain pirate captain that sometimes shows up at my local gaming store. I hope his offer of borrowing some water effect still holds true. It would be awesome!

The alternative journeyman warcaster is getting the cork treatment to go well together with Haley and Haley's squire (Stryker's got his own, and quite frankly I should either get the alt. Styrker model and base that one or just rebase both him and the normal warcaster. My straight up static grass bases are quite boooring after all). I also like to use a little tin bitz color on it to get a quartz kind of feeling to the stone, and then I like to put some of that dark green flock I have on it, to give it a little mossy feel. Good times all around!

And then to the last one, the cool one. I have cut out a new slit for the model to be in, further to the edge of the base. This gives me more space to put the glass cylinder that is going to look like it has smoke and lightning in it, and generally rock and be cool. More to come on that one :) And tomorrow maybe I can prepare some pictures if I take them when it is light out. I want a gorilla pod + a *good* camera:)

Oh, and I want to work on those cool Eldar models I have as well. Gotta do that! Found this awesome Alaitoc paint scheme guide. But I will start out with a darker blue, sponge on a slightly lighter blue, and then an even more slightly lighter blue. But I want to keep it subtle.

Rhupert Carvolo - Piper of Ord

2009-05-28T13:33:00.010-05:00

This is another Warmachine post. I will get by to the Falcon soon. I think it is that darn camo pattern that is making me hesitant to continue that project. Stippling is teh hard!

What I have done on the other hand is painted my first ever Mercenary, the very cool Rhupert Carvolo - Piper of Ord. Unfortunately it's not my mini. For no less than three reasons. First it's quite a useful solo in Warmachine, second it's a very nice model indeed, and lastly because it is the best mini I've ever painted! I am a little big pleased with myself :)

So here comes the pictures, I'll add little tidbits as it progresses from bare metal to model.

And we begin with just metal, and a good portion of green stuff. I wanted kind of a swampy / hilly kind of feeling and I just played around. The mini should be stuck in it pretty hard by now as it is logged into the green stuff.

Spray painted black, without complete success. It's quite hard to get an even coat that isn't too thick. I've obscured details far too often with thick paint and I am pushing myself hard to make sure I have less and less primer on. I don't think I need to prime it that hard really. And I've heard cool rumors that the Formula P3 paints actually covers so well that you can use it instead of primer. Wouldn't that be wonderful? Well, I actually would like to use an airbrush to coat with, I am plans to buy one in the future :)

Worth noting is that I for the first time when it comes to a metal mini decided to paint - assemble instead of the other way around. To get the glue to stick properly I painted on liquid mask in key places before I primed it. That way I just had to get rid of the mask when it was time to assemble :) If you don't own it, run down to your friendly local game store and buy a pot of liquid mask. Go now, the blog will be here when you return :)

Here you see my masonite board that I use for painting. It's quite good! Give it a go if you don't have a good painting "basis" or whatnot. You also see the pipers pipes being painted golden. I love painting stuff gold for some reason *cough* Cygnar *cought*.

And... rouges do it from behind!

I looked around the good old i-net for inspiration and I saw a range of different versions of the pipes. I opted for Vallejos London gray and then bone white, and finished off with some ogryn flesh wash. Here you see some bone!

Here's some bone from the front. I've laid down basic colors with a flesh color for the, eh, ehm, pig stomach thingie that the air goes into? Whatever it is, that's the color! Then green for the coat and dark brown for the pants. Our Piper is quite woodsy! And before I forget about it again, there is suppose to be a print from a warjack in the greenstuff, just that it is quite hard to make out :( Cool idea, epic fail. Maybe I'll get to incorporate it in some future model. I did use the foot of a hunter to press down though, so that part was at least authentic :)

And another rouge piccy..

Our piper is one serious rock star, look at all the light! Yeah yeah, that's just a crappy way of saying "bad photography dude!", but I can't be faulted for trying:) I have gently drybrushed the hair and beard with London Gray and I was really really pleased with the result. It looks far better IRL than on this picture. I was thinking of washing it with black, but nah, I decided against it. It would have made it too dark, not good.

Rouge! Should point on that since the last picture the old guy has gotten his skin painted. I used an unholy little mix as the flesh color I have is far too light. I have had problems with skin in the past and the quality is at least rising. Who knows, one day it might look like *gasp* skin!

Well look at Carvolo now! He's got a bunch of highlights and washes and is starting to look a whole lot better. The little armor piece on his right arm now has a metal color with some rusty looking stuff on there as well. I also did a london gray + light bluegrey highlight + mithril metal scheme on his arm and washed it aplenty with black wash. Turned one super! And yes, he is standing on three pots of paint :) Also note the little blue thing hanging from his belt. I *had* to have something blue on there didn't I? *cough* Cygnar again *cough*

I come back to this angle, I am now starting to wish that I was painting a female mini. Hmm. I do have Epic Haley that is primed white, maybe I should paint her soon :)

And now Carvolo's got a sword! I was quite pleased with the sword, I went for a kind of rusty, used look. Reading the fluff and everything I got an image of an old man, that doesn't take good care of himself. I just wonder what awful thing that has happened to him. Maybe it's somewhere in the fluff!

And now with not one but *two* arms! Looks a whole lot better put together. And the green flock adds to it as well. I wanted to go with a swampy look, but I also wanted to have fake water in the little *puddle*. That did not happen. Maybe it will in the future! If someone tries it, I recommend trying to get a little brown or green or blue or something in the fake water, when it is completely transparent it looks a big gel like. I will have to experiment in the future!

More blurry pics!

And a Rogue :)

The guy just looooves the lime light!

The hair, the toes, etc. I like the details. Got nice details but not the insane orgy of details as I am used to from Cygnar minis.

And to finish it all off, we go Rouge!

That's all folks! If you want to see the mini in real life it can be seen at my (!) friendly local game store. It's not *my* store, I just go there and spend far far faaar to much money. Oh which store you ask? It's Game Maniacs in Katrineholm, Södermanland, Sweden. If you can, come on in and take a peek at it. Yeah yeah, I am proud of it, I will admit that much :)

You don't know where it is you say? Well, try http://www.gamemaniacs.se and then I am sure you can find your way:)

Oh, and it took my about 10 hours or so to clean, base, paint, assemble, spray purity seal, and be done with it. I am *not* a speed painter for sure, but it still goes much faster than before :)

Eldar Falcon Grav-Tank Pilot

2009-05-23T16:48:00.003-05:00

I've painted more of my Falcon now. This time I went for another of the "inside" pieces, i.e. the pilot. I want to go with the open clear canopy look as it looks more "natural" to me, and thus I had to paint the pilot.

I don't know how most people do it, but I glued the little piece behind the head of the pilot to the chair-like piece and then I painted the three separate pieces before I glued all of it together. I did notice exactly how little paint do like glue. Not much room for error there! Had to do a little touch up even.

I went with a pretty basic paint job. First I used a dark blue for the cabin, a medium one for the suit, light blue for some of the nifty details, and a blue was over all of that. The hands and forehead got a good mix of red leather, tan skin, and white which ended up being maybe the best skin color I've produced thus far. Maybe I'll use that on epic Haley and epic Stryker :)

And here are the pictorial evidence of my madness:

And again:

The pictures turned out way better than the poor Gobber (to my defense I did try using my parents camera instead of my piece of junk and that might have made the different, still really hard to photograph minis!) and I really do have to take a new pic of him. Maybe I'll try to make that really nifty base I am thinking of and then I got a great reason to shoot the guy!

But back to the Falcon. I might just do the gunner as well now as long as I remember how I did this dude. I guess I am trying to focus on everything but the stippling of the outer hull. My tests did go, well, bad, awful, painfully bad. Totally sub par! Not at all the look I wanted. I really wish I could get a very detailed intro to stippling. I get it that you are suppose to use a brush and push it down and twist, but it honestly don't get that good when I do it.

I wanted to try to use some kind of sponge instead, and I tried it, but without any good results. I will give it some more goes soon though. I want to get a really smooth several shades of blue look. What I don't want is to make it look like a bunch of color blobs with too much color difference between. The Eldar doesn't strike me as a bunch of guys that would botch the paint job:)

Good thing I have some Orks now to try painting some insane stuff:)

Until next time, signing off...

Magnetic attraction

2009-05-23T11:55:00.003-05:00

I've decided that magnetizing my models is a good idea, so I found some helpful stuff on the web that I thought that I could share for the heck of it:

http://awakeningynnead.blogspot.com/2009/02/tutorial-magnetic-eldar-weapons.html
http://saimhann.blogspot.com/2009/05/magnetize-your-miniatures-with-mini.html
http://saimhann.blogspot.com/2008/12/warhammer-40000-building-magnetic.html
http://www.arhicks.co.uk/gallery/gw/gw_image_falcons.php
http://www.librarium-online.com/modeling/a-guide-to-swappable-weapons-on-eldar-vehicles-271.html

So if you stumbled upon this page by mistake, google search, or whatnot, you might just find some useful info via those links. Enjoy :)

Field Mechanic Bodger

2009-05-20T18:57:00.004-05:00

My Falcon project has been standing still for a few days, but my next piece will definitely be pilot who I plan on completing before I take the next step. Lots of stuff to paint and a really cool model. But what I have painted on the other hand is one green bodger. It ended up quite different from PP's own version and it sure looks different to say the least. After looking at the PP pix though I thought that maybe I should change the color of his pants to blue. Also damn I can't paint cool leather at all! Maybe I will be able to do so in the future:)

Here are some very very blurry pics:

On the last image you can see my painting "plate" or whatever it's called. It's a piece of "masonit" (whatever that is in English, masonite or something perhaps?) that is hard and has proven to be quite useful. I use it for a small variety of purposes, the most important one keeping my parents tables safe(r) :) And what you can't see is that I forgot to paint his teeth, I so gotta do that tomorrow! Upon closer RL inspection I also see that I need to touch up a few minor problems. But all in all it looks pretty neat, for being me who painted it, and the pants actually looks OK, so no bluification. This is the first of the bodgers I've painted so now I have my little "bodger prime" to use as a refence. We'll see how that turns out :)

The little bugger is also very unbased. Something I might change in a way I haven't done before. I got really inspired a few weeks ago and decided that I wanted to make the bases look like they were in a warjack factory. Or possibly just have some extra 'jack parts that they had dropped. And I did have some luck as No Quarter #22 features pictures of 'jack factories! One idea I have is to use a glass fuse (5mm x 20mm) and cut a whole in the base so I can get it lower in as I can't cut it easily and I want it to sit at an angle.

To get that effect I have decided that I need to use some green stuff to make the base slightly higher so it doesn't look so out of place. I have also thought of removing the metal part on one side and simply put some different colored cotton in there to make it kind of smoke/electricity looking. I also have some cog wheels in the pipeline to add to another base. Maybe some wiring on another. I hope to have some cool looking bodgers with a field mechanic that I can field in the future. I do need to take a long *hard* look at those trenchers though, as I'd like to see if I can't make some good use of them! So much painting, so little time :)

Next time I hope to have some Eldar Falcon progress to show, but there should be regular Warmachine updates too, and hopefully I can get some better picture quality even with my unly bad camera!

Embarking on an adventure

2009-05-18T16:27:00.004-05:00

I started out painting minis sometime during February 2009. I have painted 806 out of 1385 points worth of Mark 1 WARMACHINE Cygnar. It takes a little time but I can whip them up to table top standard and play with them. I do enjoy painting them a lot though, even more than playing most of the time. I tend to loose more often than win when I play, but when I paint I always win :)

That being said I have embarked on a new journey. I have bought my first plastic model, my first model purely intended to be assembled and painted for fun and not for gaming (even if it might end up in games in the future). This lot fell on the Eldar Falcon Anti-grav Tank. I chose it because my local game store had it, it's a plastic model, and I enjoy the Eldar models. I wanted something very different from the very detailed Cygnar models.

Next I got the parts off the sprues and dry assembled the whole thing to get a feel for the model. I also got terribly confused about the possible additional weapons. I do have the Eldar Codex, but it doesn't really feature good pictures of what different weapons looks like for the Falcon. I do feel a general confusion that lies over Games Workshops products. I look forward to Privateer Press new "Forces of..." books to see what they might come up to. I also feel a frustration to the point of wanting to write me own ultimate "Codex: Eldar" that is clearer and more logical. Go figure :)

So I decided that I wanted to paint my Eldars in some kind of official colors, or rather base it on official colors since not all of the models are represented in official colors. I settled for Alaitoc. It's a deep blue with yellow details. I haven't fully decided on everything yet, but that is the basic theme. It is pretty close to what I have for Cygnar, plus it reminds me of my home country a bit. I did decide to go with a few metal parts though, so they will get done in gold instead of yellow.

I will keep the canopies clear and paint the pilot and gunner. I just find that niftier and while they do have details they are far from the most detailed I've painted so I want to do a good job and make them look as cool as I can. I will also keep the back door operational and paint some of the interior. Not yet sure if I should keep most of it black, or go with painting it yellow inside. Not many will ever look at the inside of my Falcon, but that's not the point. I will know which makes all the difference.

Having cleaned off all the plastic pieces with a knife, which took me several hours, I put the pieces into three different plastic bags to keep them separated a bit better. I realize that I have to be very thoughtful when I do start to actually glue things together, as otherwise I might do things in the wrong order and really screw up. So slow moving is the key here. I am starting with the main fuselage and the three big pieces which looks like this:

So pretty much just plastic there. I decided to quickly paint at least something today, so I chose the inside part that I wanted gold colors on. I realized that I probably need to paint a few more areas before I am done with it, since it will be hard to reach parts, but either way it turned out quite neat. I was happy with the result, which is something like this:

The metallic golden should go well together with the dark blue patchy pattern. I do have to think about how I want to paint the details as well. Some seem to just paint it as if it was a big area, while others pick the details out and paint them in a different color. Saim Hann goes all red for instance. But I kind of want to make some of the details pop a bit more. We will just have to see where I take this :)

I am also thinking long and hard about the blue pattern. I've read two ways of doing it, one where I mutilate a brush and kind of drab the color onto the surface, and the other I take a drybrush brush and push it down on the surface and then rotate the brush. Both seems to work, neither seems to quite make the pattern I want. I don't want the color patterns be that distinct so I think that I will use colors closer to each other, no really bright blues for the pattern, and I might just try some kind of sponge for it. I realize that I need parts to try this out on before I pain the actual plastic :)

The future will have to tell what happens!