Weekly War Report #4: Much Completeness

This week past has been a bit odd, real life-wise, and so I've mainly just been concentrating on finishing up some things from the basing shelf. Thus, this week its just a showcase of finished models because its the end of Fractional Progress February.

I did get one game in, my first Fantasy game of the year. I dusted off my Lizardmen for a 2,000 points bout against Matt's High Elves. I got trashed. I'm not a man to blame the dice but the simple fact is the Lizardmen are designed to tear things apart in close combat and my charge rolls were just not ideal. Still, better luck next time.

On to more substantial progress:

Let's start with the smallest thing first because my camera just wouldn't focus on them (the odd blue shadow, however, is just going to be in all this week's pictures, sorry-pardon), a pair of Genestealer Cults Familiars from the Broodcoven box set.

Still, at least the picture manages to capture the one effect on these I'm actually proud of (mostly they're just my standard Tyranids colour scheme but littler) and that's the murky white on the right-hand Familiar's loincloth achieved through drybrushing Pallid Wych Flesh into partially dried Agrax Earthshade over a Rakarth Flesh base. There's probably nowhere else to use this method in the entire army but it came out a treat.

I'm also trying something different for the Cults' bases. Right now they're an adjunct to my Tyranids but I want them to be an army of their own down the line. I'm thinking of a desert world theme and that's what I'm going for here. I think the base colour works but I'm not sure the Rhinox Hide rim works. Still, its the one part of a model that can always be easily repainted.

As to their larger cousins of Hive Fleet Jormungandr, first up we have a model it has taken my simply ages to finish, the Tervigon (again, apologies for that odd blue shadow that keeps cropping up, I can't work out where it came from):

A good boy, a round boy, I'm sure you'll agree. Once again we return to my constant shilly-shallying over whether to undercoat these miniatures grey or bone because this was done with the Zandri Dust spray and the carapace has come out better here than on any other model. However, I had to spend multiple painting sessions getting a consistent grey on the skin. Worth it, though.

I also polished off a small unit of Genestealers with scything talons and rending claws. This is the first large unit I've finished for the Tyranids and I love how the colour scheme works.

The Marines Malevolent Deathwatch Kill-Marine is done.

This was a pilot model and now I have the methods down I really want to step up production on the rest of the unit. The Stormcast Eternal-themed golds are really good, I was surprised to discover. They looked rather thin in the pot but they went on in one coat over the black. It was also nice to get a good, consistent yellow on the shoulder pad. Props once again Pop Goes The Monkey for his excellent 3D printed Deathwatch shoulder pads.

Finally, we have the cutest herald of plague and despair...

… the Beast Of Nurgle. I love its silly little expression, its little wave as if its just pleased to see the people its going to kill. This model was so much fun to paint and yet so easy. The different areas of colour are so well delineated. I also tried a new pale flesh method on the belly: Rakarth Flesh, Reikland Fleshshade and a Pallid Wych Flesh drybrush. I think I might try it on my Dark Elves down the line.

Anyway, that's Fractional Progress February done! I've completed twenty-three models and that's more painting than I've done in a good long while.

50/500 Challenge Hobby Tracker

Death Guard and Nurgle Daemons: 1 model / 2 power

Deathwatch: 1 model / 0 power

Genestealer Cults: 2 models / 0 power

Lizardmen: 6 models / 30 points

Tyranids: 13 models / 31 power levels

Total Models Painted

23

Tyranids are now 31 power strong, that's more than halfway to hitting the 50 power target. Obviously, the Kill-Marine doesn't constitute a complete unit and the Familiars aren't worth power levels so those projects are still at zero but that's still models finished so they count.

Weekly War Report #2 (Fraction Progress February week 2)

Excuse the drop in picture quality from this morning, its taking me time to work out how to get best results from my best friend's photography set-up (shout out for Matt for the lend of his spot lamp and scenery). So, this past week's hobby: another week of a surprising lot of hobby for a man intentionally taking it easy:

Gaming

Over the weekend I had a couple of games. First, my entrance into Dave J's Necromunda campaign sending my Goliaths to loot the territory of Matt's Inquisitorial Warband. I lost and ended up with about half my gang out of action. Hopefully, this week's game will end with somewhat better results.

I also got to debut my Tyranids on the tabletop, first against Matt's Death Guard in a take and hold scenario where I just about managed to squeak a draw and then against Tom T's Valhallan Imperial Guard where I lost quite conclusively, conceding with a whole four models remaining on the table.

An entire mantlepiece of my finest troops

A big burst of energy over the weekend saw me finish off a lot of the projects I had in progress last time. At time of writing the sand is still drying on the bases so, hopefully, I'll have some, all or less of them finished in the next couple of days. The only things on the shelf not previously showcased last week are these funny little fellas...

… a pair of Familiars from the Genestealer Cults Broodcoven set. They were rather fun and quick to paint and I look forward to running them out on the tabletop (I wasn't sure what they were for and left them out of the list last weekend).

Underhive Hustle

For a start there's my Goliath gang. The progress so far is basic and messy and inspired more by a need to get just some sort of paintjob started for my first game than anything else.

The main armour colour for the gang is Stegadon Scale Green because I liked how it looked on the 'Eavy Metal Orlocks in this month's White Dwarf. The rest of the models are giving me some trouble. Surprisingly for big, beefy bastards on 32mm bases these are amongst the most finely detailed and complex models I've ever had to paint. There are so many belts, buckles, metal implants and rivets on them. I mean, I can't argue against the value for money as these ten miniatures account for more than a thousand points and that's whilst pretending the two lads with stubguns and spud-jackers are juves instead of full gangers.

Its A Bug Hunt!

Reinforcements for my Tyranids continue apace with a bunch of units getting their grey layers finished, which isn't terribly visually interesting but here we go...

Its mainly Cults stuff because they were, to me, the surprise breakout characters of the first two games. They were only in there to fill up the 100 power limit but I found them surprisingly fun to use. I've painted their industrial armour using the same method as the flesh on the 'Nids which will probably be the only shared design element between the two armies (except for the models that have carapace).

Now My Watch Begins

Having sent the test model, the Marine Malevolent with the heavy thunder hammer to the basing shelf its time to get to work on the rest of his squad. 

Eagle-eyed readers will notice that one of them has a Chaos Space Marine Raptor head with horns. This is because he's a Black Dragon, a chapter with a geneseed mutation that makes them grow bone protrusions out of their bodies as they age. This team is built around Marines from the shiftier, less trustworthy chapters, the ones other chapters are suspicious of.

They're also joined on the painting table by the Blood Ravens Librarian from the Kill-Team Cassius box set who is probably my favourite sculpt from the unit.

The Big Lad

The Great Unclean One is getting closer and closer to done. There are some small details I'm trying to work out how to do like scabs. I mean, the flesh itself is the darkest grey available from the Citadel paint range so I'm not sure what I could do for scabs since I can't go darker. Skavenblight Dinge, perhaps? Aside from that, progress here has been fractional as I tidy up some of the drybrushing and made a start on the metallics.

Green Energy

Finally, some Death Guard. First off, I'm continuing to progress with the Blight-Hauler which now has a start made on its metallics. The silver that's on there is basically finished sans a little highlighting and the rather flat Balthasar Gold will be worked up to bronze. Looking at the photo I realise I have actually missed an entire bit of trim on the top of the left wheel arch which I'll have to go back to and I do need to fill in some more areas, like the spiked on the weapons, silver.

And, having proved to myself that these methods work on a large scale it was time to apply them to some man-sized models with the Easy Build Plague Marines. These are really cool models but they are so encrusted with details that I keep finding things that I missed like the fly symbol on the champion's right kneepad.

Hell, if nothing else, posting all these pictures really makes me notice the mistakes I've made in time to fix them, eh?

Weekly War Report #1 (Fractional Progress February week 1)

It makes an awful lot of sense, knowing me, that the moment I decide to take things easy hobby-wise I end up doing more painting in a single week than I managed in the whole first month of the year. If nothing else it proves that shorter, more frequent hobby sessions are doing me more favours than trying to block out an entire evening for this stuff.

Nothing's finished (and I still haven't done the basing on the Hive Tyrant and Tyranid Warriors) but I have got a surprising amount of stuff done:

Hormagaunts and Genestealers

A friend once told me that the two most important attitudes an artist can cultivate are “good enough” and “screw it” and I'm starting to get it with the Hormagaunts. They were an experiment in undercoating with Zandri Dust spray and the finish came out all wrong. The grey flesh took layer after layer, the ink and drybrush didn't take quite as well on the carapace as I'd like... and I'm done trying to fix them. They're Hormagaunts, they're small, there'll be two dozen others and no one is going to look at them as individuals so I'm just going to do a final pass on detail work and call them done. You can see in the singular example how the inking has splodged here and there, especially on the gun. I'll fix what I can but I'm calling time on them and letting them be what they'll be.

The Genestealers, who were undercoated grey, came out a lot better even if it did take a layer or two to get the Zandri Dust to take on the carapace. Between them and the still-incomplete Hive Tyrant and Warriors I feel I've definitely nailed down the colour scheme for Hive Fleet Jormungandr even if my interpretation of the artwork violently disagrees with 'Eavy Metal.

Tervigon

Yes, I know there are some parts missing from the middle legs. I bought this one off eBay and I think that's why I got it for such a discount. As you can see from the base, this one was also undercoated Zandri Dust like the Hormagaunts and somehow the carapace has come out a lot better. I'm genuinely unsure why, especially as I didn't have the trouble with the grey flesh I had on the Hormagaunts, either.

A little more experimentation is due so for the moment I'll try undercoating the small stuff grey and the large stuff Zandri Dust and see how it goes.

Plus, literally all this model needs is some tidying of the grey around the gill things on the legs and I can start basing it.

Deathwatch Kill-Marine

A single test model, this one, as I tried out the methods I'll be applying to the rest of the army and road tested the first of the 3D printed shoulder pads from POP Goes The MONKEY (that is actually how he spells it). This one used a Marines Malevolent shoulder pad which fit perfectly over the shoulder connector, took the undercoat relatively well (it needed a little touching up) and the detail is crisp and easy to follow with a brush. It looks practically indistinguishable, as you can see, from something GW would produce.

I also think I've finally cracked yellow, a colour second only in infamy to me to white itself.

Myphitic Blight-Hauler

This is a pretty typical example of what I'm getting done in spare moments on busy days: getting the larger areas of models blocked out. So the Blight-Hauler now has all its green and flesh areas finished and when I have more time I'll go back and do the more detailed work like the silver metallics and brass trim and so on.

Also, its nice to be working on this model because it is so damn adorable.

Great Unclean One

Significantly less adorable but no less fun to paint is the Great Unclean One, again mainly just having finished the larger areas that I could achieve mainly through drybrushing. Actually, what I really like about the Nurgle Daemons and the Tyranids is how well they take to my drybrush-heavy techniques.

I'm not convinced the Screamer Pink guts work as well against the grey flesh tone as they do on the green-tinged flesh Warhammer TV used in their painting tutorial but I'll wait until I have them inked at least before I decide whether to repaint them or not.

Beast of Nurgle

Finally, and back to the cute side of Nurgle, this has been my favourite model to paint from the whole batch. It was a bit of a nightmare to put together because the connectors are so non-standardised and the manual is no bloody help but the finished product is so very worth it. It was also a good test model for some new methods I wanted to try out to diversify the look of the Nurgle Daemons like the Rakarth Flesh / Reikland Fleshshade / Pallid Wych Flesh method on the underbelly.

Other, less visually interesting, progress

I've built a Goliath gang for a friend's Necromunda campaign and I'll be having my first game this weekend; my Imperial Knight arrived from eBay as well as an alternate head piece for it from Shapeways so I'm going to start working on that conversion in the coming week; and, I undercoated my Adeptus Custodes Captain-General Trajann Valoris and a Furioso Dreadnought.

So, all in all, a successful first week. 

Completed models for August

My big push to finish old projects in August didn't do too badly: 36 models. Its not a bad total even if a lot of them just needed a few final details and basing to complete them but the motto around here is “Progress is progress”. I finished thirty-six models this month and that's a better total than any month this year.

And here they are...

Already showcased earlier this month are the Dwarf Runesmith and Tomb Kings Necrotect. I'm proud of my work on both even if I'm not sure I could properly replicate the skin method on the Necrotect. Its a couple layers of Athonian Camoshade over Rakarth Flesh which sounds simple but when it comes to inking as a final layer there's a lot of atmospheric stuff that can influence the final effect and I laid that ink down on a particularly hot day. Still, worth trying again for my Liches and Royal characters.

I finally picked out all the fiddly metallic detail on my Angels Of Redemption Captain (aka Legion Praetor in Cataphractii armour). I went for a copper effect rather than gold because a) I wanted to test out a bronze method (that I later decided not to use) for my Death Guard and, b) it felt a little more “antique” than glorious gold. I know Heresy stuff should look more glorious than “modern” 40k because it was the golden age but sometimes what feels right is more important than what is right.

Anyway, I loved painting this guy. If this runs to an army (maybe, maybe not) then I definitely want to use more of the antique armour marks. The particular colours of this halved scheme are quite forgiving and I love how the bronze contrasts with both armour colours. I also, hopefully visibly if my meagre photography skills holds out, managed some recess shading that came out well on the white and okay on the green. I am usually the “lay it on with a trowel” sort when it comes to shading, it has to be said.

I also finally cracked grey basing! Turned out, thank you How To Paint Citadel Miniatures 2012, to ink it Nuln Oil to get a good contrast with the drybrush (which was invisible before).

Next, we have a full unit of Dryads and my Branchwych finished up. Unfortunately, my camera seemed to take particular exception to focusing on these models, I think it might have something to do with the colours and how they contrasted with the background. Like the Runesmith and Necrotect these ladies just needed a few last details picked out and their bases done. So maybe this doesn't seem too big an achievement but it now means that more than half of my Sylvaneth 1000 points army is painted including my Warlord. I am literally nine models (my Treeman, Kurnoth Hunters and Tree-Revenants) away from actually completing all the models I have for this army. Also, its a big block of infantry finished for my Wood Elves. Double achievement!

Shout out to my friend Matt for insisting I mix up the colours of leaves and such in this unit which kept me interested during the most boring phase of the unit. It also gives the unit, which is very brown, some nice visual interest when they're arranged in a block.

My colour test Plaguebearer (now complete) has been joined by a trio of Nurgling bases just to reassure me that the colour scheme works on more than one model. Lesson learnt, though: the horns on the Nurglings are very delicate and I snapped more than one during the drybrush layer. I'll be more careful next time but otherwise the method is quick, simple and looks like it'll look good on the whole Daemon contingent for my Death Guard.

Also on the Death Guard front, the first six Poxwalkers finished. I'm painting them in small batches of a couple od designs at a time simply because there are so many differences between the sculpts that doing all twenty in one go would probably be more time-consuming and horribly dispiriting. They aren't the best paintjob I've ever managed but I suspect doing these guys “well” would not worth the time so I went simple with it.

Speaking of things that are hard to paint in a batch, I've decided I have to do the metallics and finishing touches on the Dark Imperium Plague Marines singularly. This also meant I could experiment with the metallic colours on this miniature before committing to what I'd lay down on the rest. I like the finished effect...

… which I then applied to my Helbrute to see how it came out on larger models. Again, it looks good. It takes ages because of how much armour trim there is on Chaos models but that would be true of literally any colour I used and I just feel lucky that I largely used pure Balthasar Gold on one layer to finish the models. I decided I just did not have the patience to bring it all up to Sycorax Bronze as I did with the Angels Of Redemption Captain.

(P.S. If you notice the Helbrute is missing components on its arms... it was an eBay job and came like that but I quite like it anyway.)

Anyway, now I have momentum behind me which wrestling commentary tells me is the all-important factor in future success so I feel confident going into next month and my Tale Of 1 Gamer project.