LIES! LIES AND SLANDER!

Yeah, its been a while since I've posted. And still no pics of new work. Well, dear reader, I've still been painting, just not so much with the sharing. Dennaghra is done (but not based... yet) and Skarre is getting there. I've also received a shipment of fun paints for painting rotting skin as well as all of the bonejacks for the Dennaghra list. Looks really fun to play.

Here's the list:

Army: denny3
Faction: Cryx
Army Points: 497/500
Victory Points: 17

Warwitch Deneghra
Nightwretch
Nightwretch
Nightwretch
Nightwretch
Nightwretch
Nightwretch
Skarlock
Pistol Wraith
Pistol Wraith
Bile Thralls (7)
Gorman Di Wulfe, Rogue Alchemist

As I said, I'm super curious to give this a whirl. I plan on visiting buddies in Chicago in march, so I should get a chance to try out it on certain unsuspecting Menites. Colin has a low opinion of Dennaghra. I'd like to see if I can change it.

Precipice of Peril!

Since the last post, things have been moving along. I have not one, but two deathrippers painted and based. The red and gold scheme I'm using looks great with the slate/beach bases I'm using. The pistol wraith in the 'current projects' list is almost done. Just a bit more detailing and then it gets coated and affixed to its already made base.

So, what about the Dark Angels. Well, some news there as well. I received my linebreker squadron. Its awesome. But I'm so burnt out on painting vehicles that I just can't go ahead and finish the razorback. To that end, the razorback (as well as all of the remaining dark angels) have been put on the back burner for the time being. Not that I or anyone who knows my habits are surprised. I start projects all of the time that get sidetracked. Its how I keep from getting too bored with painting and take a long break.

So, I finish the wraith tonight/tomorrow and start on my overpaid mercenary, Gorman. On a related note, while trying to get his base pins set, I accidentally shredded part of his leg. With unusual sculpting skill, I was able to repair him with some greenstuff. I am curious to see how it looks.

Picture of some finished models should be up soon.

New Doo-dad

I've added a painting progress thing on the right hand side.  It has the number of painted points out of the total number of points that I own.  My Khador stuff isn;t included out of a need to not bum myself out and to further help me forget about the Motherland and how boring it can be.

The Deathripper seems to have taken precedence over the Razorback.   That's not to say that 
progress has stopped entirely on said tank, but the Deathripper is very close to completion (excluding the base).

So. Tired. Of. Green.

There, I said it. I am so tired of looking at all of the stuff I have to paint green. However, I shall push on - due to the cool factor of fully painted Dark Angels and a promise to the little lady. As you can well imagine (based on my past expedience and this post) the Razorback is taking a bit longer than I'd like. All of those Forgeworld panals add a high degree of detail I hadn't anticipated.

However, I am going to intersperse some Cryx stuff that I have into the job list.

I just got all of the P3 paints that I need for my bonejacks, so I'll start there. I've got a Deathripper on deck. Its coming along very nicely (granted I’ve only worked on it for an hour or so).

ATTENTION:

If you have not tried the P3 paints, do so immediately. They are incredible.

That is all.

Leadership

The command squad is finished. Took a while, but I spent a bit more time on them due to their 'elite' nature. They look snazzy. I'm fairly happy with the way the apothecary turned out and really happy with the standard bearer. This crappy picture doesn't do them justice.


Next on the agenda is the razorback these guys ride around in. I've already primed the main body. The forgeworld panels and the greenstuff-work look pretty good. Last time I worked on a tank, I got it done in like a week. Lets see if I can repeat that feat.

Then, I'm pretty sure I'm going to finish the rest of the vehicle pool (Rhino #2 and a landspeeder). Thus leaving me with a mere 10 man tactical squad. Then, its time for Cryx.

False Alarm

My second blog is a bust. I just couldn't make it interesting to read - let alone interesting to create.

I've got the heads on the last two command squaders. I've also made a good start on their backpacks. You should see some pics of new work soon.

Rotary Tools

About 3 weeks ago I got a Dremel. I had wanted one for a long time. So, when Angie got a job, I celebrated by getting something we could both enjoy: A Dremel Stylus.

Pretty neat, huh? Its cordless which is awesome. AND it's comfortable to hold for long periods of time. A bunch of people on the privateer press forums suggested this. If they're reading: thanks.

Just a few quick hints that I've found people commonly mention:

• Don't operate the Dremel at high RPMs when working on a model. High speed = high friction = lots of heat. White metal and plastic have melting points well below what a Dremel can produce at the contact point.
• Buy the quick change collet kit. The various Dremel tools have a number of collet size requirements. The orginal collet is a bit tedious to keep changing all of the time.
• Do not use the Dremel for pinning. See the heat issue. Also, you have much less control with the Dremel (vs. a pin vise) and could easily hurt yourself or the model. Though grinding/cutting the brass rod seems OK>
• Make sure you have the right attachments. The Stylus comes with a mixed bag of goodies - not all of them usable until you have the quick change collet. Additionally, things like the drum sander bit are sold separately from most of the drums.
  

I haven't had much cause to use this yet. I've done a bit with some base modification. Mostly I've just bored holes in random things.

Lightning Round: Vol. 1

Ok, I'm gonna start a new super speedy update format. I'm just experimenting with this, maybe I'll start using it more often - like when nothing super good has happened, but there are lots of little updates - especially since I got really tired of posting boring progress pics.

Here goes:

Lightning Round:

- Progress on the command squad is moving again
- I pre-ordered a Linebreaker Squadron for extra tanky goodness (its also cheaper to get three from GW rather than 2 from forgeworld - to the tune of 40ish dollars. Limited time only.)
- I am playing around with the idea of starting a second blog (unrelated to table-top gaming)
- Team Fortress 2 is pretty sweet.
- Team Fortress 2 crashes on me. A lot.
- Hordes: Evolution is yet another quality expansion book from Privateer Press.
- I went back and fixed some typos in the blog.

Our Regularly Scheduled Programming

Old business:
- Irusk's grind spell cannot affect non-warjacks. I didn't really win the Amon game. Shit.

New Business
- Colin and I played one more game of Warmachine: Sorscha vs Severius. I lost.
- Colin has left for Illinois.
- Painting has resumed - more on this in the future.

Yeah, so last week has taught me that I am woefully out of practice with Warmachine and that I am positively bored to tears with Khador. I won the first game on the back of bad rules interpretation and lost the second on the back of bad roles and bad army management. Colin has gotten very good with his Protectorate army and I salute him.

My position with my Khadorans is fairly representative of my gaming habits. I get drawn in by some big stompy guys and then get bored when the big stompy guys don't meet my expectations. This happened with my chaos army in the days of yore, my chaos bloodbowl teams and, now, Khador. In all fairness, Khador is actually a well made and balanced army. The problem lies with my latent love of swarms of things, the undead and being sneaky.

For those of you who don't know: Khador is the neo-cossack faction in warmachine. Lots of guys with fur hats and lots of big stompy warmachines - just like the Russian army in WWI & II. There is also this fun old and new working together angle. There are mortars, snipers and guys with blunderbusses fighting alongside armed peasants, spearmen and mounted knight type guys. Amazingly, the army maintains a visual solidarity.

Unfortunately, the army is fairly straightforward to play: absorb casualties, smash enemy, repeat. There are very few sneaky tricks that I can see and most of my units are expensive in points. If I took the time, I could fill in my ranks with more unit types that I don't own and learn some good tactics, but I've still only found one warcaster that I can actually claim to like and I am extremely jealous of other people's hordes of guys, arcnodes, overt synergy and dirty tricks. Everything that Khador does is out in the open for all to see - smash stuff (except for the old whitch, who I can't figure out (as mentioned) and fear assembling).

It also doesn't help that the paint scheme I picked for the warjacks is abysmal. Colin pointed out that I have McJacks early on. He was right. Its like I got them out of a goddamned happy meal.

So, its time to finish my dark angels, and move onto a new and different Warmachine army. I will come back to my first Warmachine army, but not for a while.

Nope: With Battle Summaries

Yeah, so about that "getting the command squad done and maybe some other stuff".
Status: FAIL!

Didn't even get close. Got super distracted with the Orange Box. I bought it for TF2, but got hooked on the Half life 2 series. I can rally only roll in TF2 on Thursdays (due to noise and availability) and have only had one such unclaimed Thursday. HL2 is much quieter as fay as my noise making and easy to start and stop.

As I was saying, I didn't start a land speeder, didn't partially assemble a rhino and didn't finish the command squad (still got 2 of the 5 left - but a good start on the remainder). Once Colin leaves, I can get started on finishing 1000 points of dark angels.... and move onto some Warmachine.

In the meantime, Colin and I have played a couple of games. We've so far got one game of 40K and one game of Warmachine. This post may be long, but I'm going to discuss the battles:

Warhammer 40K - Dark Angels vs. Dark Angels - 1000 pts

A really fun experience. I hadn't played 40K since junior high (during 2nd edition). The game has really improved. Everything was streamlined and made a hell of a lot more sense than I remembered it making.

So, zee battle: Even though we were both rockin' the same Chapter, Colin and I had radically different armies. I went with a mechanized battle company force (lots of APC mounted footsloggers and a speeder) and he fielded his Ravenwing force (15 bikes of various types and a couple of speeders).

The battle went fairly quickly and fairly evenly. I had a hard time damaging his extra toughness guys, but had a a good selection of heavy weapons I could bring to bear on him. He had all kinds of mobility and lots of meltas as well, but I had some close combat punch.

Despite lower fire density, Colin out-shot almost every turn - my squads were getting chewed up quite quickly. Sameal (spelling?) was also a super quick plasma cannon-sized headache. Things started swinging back when my command squad engaged his flanking bike unit in melee. Man did that suck for him. 6 bikes gone to my company master and two surviving command squaders. The company master took out 4 by himself on the charge. That was pretty much when both of us decided to stop messing around with shooting and get stuck in. His remaining bike squad slaughterd one of my squads and Sameal started the process of chewing through my other squad. This would actually prove to be his undoing as her got bogged down and my company master, fresh from the bike massacre got stuck in and killed Sameal as well. Colins last turn saw him melta the previously undefeated company master into dust.

End result: Draw. I had more victory points (due to every vehicle I had managing to survive the game intact - super lucky), but the margin was very slim and had we gone a 5th turn his remaining squad and attack bike would have likely shot me to death. Tons of fun though.


Warmachine - Khador vs. Protectorate - 500 pts.

Another good time. Lots of beer involved.

Colin (protectorate) had been rockin' a 'Jack heavy force with Amon lately and decided to keep on keepin' on with it. I decided to use Irusk and some Iron Fang pikemen - largely because I guessed which caster Colin was gonna use.

The game went well, a little bit of rules lawyering on my part (sorry - but you DO need LOS to charge), but pretty good. Colin mispicked his force a bit, I mispicked mine to a lesser degree - but misplayed. All in all a very sloppy game for me. 'Course, I hadn't played in 5 months so I'm just happy I put up a fight.

Colin expected me to roll with Sorscha so his troops were aimed at her high-speed shenanigans. I dipped waaaay to heavily into ranged attacks (I always forget about safe passage). I also sacrificed my Pikemen by getting them stuck in to0 early. One of my mortars got stock in the middle of no-where and my all-star singing and dancing sniper team was almost totally ineffective. Not to mention the total uselessness of my lone warjack (who would later meet his fate at the hands of some crazed knights). Luckily, the Ironfangs did some damage before they got waxed. On a happier note, one of my mortars did some good work when it inexplicably managed to kill a couple of Exemplars with the bond of brotherhood up.

On Colin's end, he had a large number of good jacks and some great synergy, but not a lot of back up plans. He also subbed out an arcnode at the last minute. He played a pretty good game. His only real mistake was using the focus off of a wrack in the middle of his guys and misjudging its capacity to cause death. It went up in a holy explosion that took out what was left of a Choir, his reclaimer and a Dervish's arm. Luck-wise, his feat turn was less than steller and a crucial miss on a chain attack cost him an important charge.

At the end, I was down to a pair of mortars (only one anywhere near a useful place) Irusk and a pair of increasingly useless mercs. I won in the end thanks to some boosted magic attacks on Amon and a failed tough roll. I won, but only beacuse Amon sucks. Not really a savory or deserved victory. I played like shit and got lucky. But such is Warmachine.

Misspellings and Such

Wow, looking back, I have a number of glaring misspellings in the titles of my blog posts. Soory 'bout that.

Right now I'm trying to get as much of my Dark Angels done as i can before Colin arrives on the third. I'm working my way through the command squad. I hope to get started on a Land Speeder and maybe partially assemble a rhino. Maybe.

Maybe not.

Company Master Rimmon

Here he is (in all his glory). I named him Rimmon. Rimmon was also some demon or another. Fun fact: also the name of a science ship in Star Trek: the Next Generation. Dunno the exact titel, but its the one where Geordi has the cool probe interface and meets aliens pretending to be his lost mother.


As you can see, I've gotten better with my photographing. I owe it all to this forum thread:
http://www.privateerpressforums.com/index.php?showtopic=5813.
Pretty good and easy to follow advice on how to make your models NOT look like a dried out cat turd on a bad stretch of road.

Movin' Along

Finally finished up my Dark Angles company master. He took about two days longer than I expected due to some pretty good things, actually. Angie got a job, so I spent much of my weekend (thurs-fri) celebrating. On a side note, coffee flavored tequila is a bit odd (not my purchase), but pretty good overall.

I am extremely pleased with the company master. I'm just waiting for some dull-coat to try before I re-shine the metal bits. Pictures should be up soon.

Glazes: the basic concept

No walk-through on my end. Yet. There's still a great one on Brushthralls though. Check it out.

Anyway, the basic principle of using glazes to highlight is that instead of doing big, bold swaths of color (or god-forbid dry-brushing), you do big swaths of not-so-bold color. To clarify: instead of using undiluted paint and either creating big chunky highlights, needing to feather everything to a high degree or mixing a billion shades for a gradient you can cheat and do more with less.

Adding glaze medium to a paint, does a number of things: it adds fluid to the paint without getting the weird color separations of pigment you can get from water AND it makes the paint transparent (based on how much glaze you added - more glaze = more transparent). As a bonus, if you use the Vallejo glaze medium (which I do and recommend), it acts as a drying retarder allowing you to use two brush blending very easily.

Basically, you build up layers of lighter and lighter colored glazes (I'm talking color, not transparency here) to create highlights. This is often called "layering". The transparent nature of a glaze, means that some of the color underneath the glaze will show through. This allows you to build a very subtle highlight very easily. You don't have to use two-brush blending, but if you don't, you run the risk of having clearly defined patches of color with a distinct border.

Luckily, the glaze medium acts a drying retarder and keeps the paint wet for a while (consequently, drying times go up, so be aware - you will have to wait at times for paint to dry before you can add another layer of highlight). and allows for easy blending. This will help get rid of distinct color borders.

There are some other things you can do with glazes, but I'll go into those later. As for now: get some Vallejo glaze medium and read the tutorial on the Brushthralls site:

http://www.brushthralls.com/glaze-medium.html

Glazes: prelude

or somesuch...

I'm making good progress on my company master. All of the shading is done and most of the highlighting is as well - at least on the main body, that is.

Every once in a while, I notice myself in a painting rut - using the same old techniques, and the same old colors. Other times, I'll be stuck on some perfectionist rampage and insist on highlighting every detail - sometimes ones I can't even see. I have been making an effort to shake things up when I notice this so I don't get bored and put the brushes down.

I was staring at my unfinished rhino a few days ago and started having this overwhelming dread at the prospect of two-brush blending every highlight on the model. It was downright sickening.

I really like two-brush blending, its a sweet technique. Unfortunately, it takes forever. So long, in fact, that often the paint I mixed begins to dry out. I usually try to add water or more drying retarder, but I end up changing the consistency of the paint and, often, spending way to much time mixing paint. By this point, the highlights are too boxy and I have to go back with a glaze of the base coat to touch up lines.

So, I put the Rhino down and hit the internet. Dunno exactly what I was looking for on Brushtralls, but I found something. This article on glazes saved my life. No joke. I was reading it and the note about using the same techniques as the cloth on armor. An idea formed. I painted up a scrap model and did a quick test with my Dark Angel colors.

It. Was. Awesome.

It looked just as good as my feeble two-brush blending (haven't quite mastered it yet) and took half the time. I quickly finished the Rhino with the new technique and moved on to my company master in record time.

I have found, that glazes are great, but once you add in a little two-brush blending on more complex colors it gets better. And there I was, a new technique and out of my rut.

Post moratorium = over

Yeah, so I haven't posted in about a month. Sorry. However, comparatively vast progress has been made. My 10 man tactical squad has been finished as well as there sweet, sweet ride.


SO, this is squad Valafar. Valafar was/is a demon who appears as a lion. Fairly appropriate, but mostly cool sounding. All space marine squads have to have a cool name - its the law.

It took forever to get the squad done, but not the Rhino. I gave up on two brush blending for my rank and file stuff and started plating with glazes for the purposes of highlighting. I gave this a whirl about halfway through the Rhino's highlights. I just couldn't keep two brush blending - especially when it didn't seem to be worth the effort. The results were very encouraging. I will be be switching to this technique for the rest of my rank and file Dark Angels AND I will explain how to do highlighting vie glazes in the near future.

For right now, I am trying to get the command troops done.

Space Marines, ATTACK!

Well, got the 4 marines in progress to the end of said progress. Bow I have a table legal combat squad (+1). I've started work on the next batch. Should be fun, as I have an older pewter heavy bolter to work with. After that, its time for the sweet, sweet ride.

Also, my ebay auctions have been rockin' pretty hard. I have the next tactical squad and Rhino on he way. Woot.

Guys (Who Aren't) Dolls (They're Marines in Fact)

Smell that? That's the smell of progress mixed with another grainy photo... but overpowerd by a terrible title. My bad.


I've go the backpacks for these bad mama-jamas based. Gonna try to bust those out tomorrow.

I have also recently received an alternate marine to convert into my company master. i was kinda unhappy with the way I had modeled my old one in comparison to the way I was planning to build his command squad. He was all shooty with a combi-plasma gun and his squad was all assualty with a powerfist, power sword and two meltas. I decided I needed to change that.

So, I picked up a Black Templar Sword Brethren:


i've started a little of the conversion work. Mostly filing off Templar iconography. I've also removed the right shouldar pad (his right) for replacement with a platic Dark Angel one as well as to get easy access to the head for removal.

4 Heads in a Duffle Bag

Aaaaaand I'm back. Sorry about the wait. Got sidetracked with having nothing worth posting about. But that is past. I have now finished and attached 4 pairs of arms to 4 bodies - with much consternation (did GW test fit the marines' before they released them? Or am I retarded?)


I am now working on some heads to go with all of this. Heads are easy, not much detail to pick out past highlighting and very few colors involved.

Also, this week is "Bad Movie Title Pun and/or Joke" week. The title of each post will be some modification of a movie title that fits the status of my progress or Helpful Handy Hint.

We Interupt Our regularly Scheduled Progress...

For a visit from Angie's parents. Got a little bit done. Not much. Unless you include eating a bunch of delicious food. Also, I got my command squad and Razorback. Wooo! So without further ado shots of two marines in progress.


I am fully into the next two sets of arms and really looking forward to heads.

(Lack of) Progess [Le Sigh]

Yeah, the title says it all. Got caught up trying to glue a pair of arms on a marine - it took half an hour before I finally removed the gun from the arm. I was having all kinds of issues with positioning. Specifically, I couldn't get the arms to match up to cradle the weapon properly and all kinds of stuff.

I did however prep the next two arms. I decided to paint the weapons separately and attache them when the arms are ready to go on, rather than pre-painting. Hope this works out.

And AGAIN superherogameland has sent my order to the wrong address. That's two diff'rent orders in a row.

My Disdain of GW Decals

I hate 'em. There, I said it. They suck. They have all kinds of failings.

1.) They're too thin. When they dry, the color of the paint the decal is on shows through. In my case, green - so everything looks green. In the case of red decals, it looks pink.

2.) They have too much 'flash' around them. Yep the decal's borders extend too far past the actual art. When it goes on, there is this large, ugly band around the decal.

3.) The decals specifically meant to go on shoulder pads aren't shaped for it. So, when it goes on, the decal intedned for a curved surface (that is actually made for flat surface) bunches up and further looks like shit.

I have found that in order to make the decals look acceptable, I have to trim the flash around the image and then stick it on. Once its on, but still wet, I trim off any remaining flash. Once its dry, i then paint ove them using the original image as a pattern. I wouldn;t even bother at all, if it weren't for all the ridiculous freehand that would entail.

Oh, right.. progress update. I've got three of the four arms done. I'll finish the last one tonight and then start the next batch.

That is all.

Hghlights and Such

Man, I am really scraping the bottom of the barrel for titles. Maybe I'll get lucky once I move on past this con-sarn-it tactical squad. If any one missed a fuzzy photo of some boring parts in progress yesterday, here's one for today:


I've gotten the first highlight on the green done and all of the gray. Tomorrow I'll get the green done and start work on details. At the very least, I plan to have the left arms finished - decals and all.

OOH! And now a fun surprize! I am acutely aware that showing pictures of various marine parts is boring. So here is a photo of one of my more recent Khador models.

This is my converted Destroyer. It also happens to be my favorite. The yellow color is not nearly as out-of-control as the photo suggests. Chalk it up to my ineptness with my camera. Anyway, this little guy has seen his fair share of battles.

Delayed Arms Shipment

No pictures today - it just be another boring shot of some arms. The graininess of the primer is proving to be easy to work around, but it's still flaking off and getting into things.

My Rhino and veterans boxes are delayed. Apparently it was too much trouble for the people at superherogameland.com to read my shipping address and copy it exactly onto a shipping label. Go figure. According to the tracking info, the correct address has been found. I'll see my package on Monday. Woo. Oh well, not like I was gonna be able to start any of those things yet anyway.

It also turns out that I don't have the parts for an apothecary yet, either. Gonna need to grab a command squad box for the sole purpose of grabbing one arm and one backpack. Probably get that when I order a Razorback.

[bitch, bitch, bitch]

Full Bodied Flavor

Awesome! I got the torsos done earlier today. Got 'em glued to the legs as well. The models are starting to look like actual marines.


Now, I've begun work on the arms. Taking a bit of a departure on how I'm gonna do them. Gonna do 'em in pairs rather than as a a run of 4 of each part. So, I've got two sets of arms primed and started.


Sorry for the blurriness of this shot. I ran into a bit of trouble on the priming, though. For some reason, large areas of the primer came out 'grainy' and textured. had to sand 'em a bit. I ran into a bit of this on the torsos, but I was able to overcome. Bow, looks like I've maybe got some bad primer. I'll have to switch from my Armory White to my Citadel White.

The torsos are rockin' along pretty good as you can see:


All the big stuff is good to go. Just a final highlight on the green and detail work on the eagles. Then into arms.

I've also got a Dark Angels veteran squad box and a Rhino on the way. Once I get this squad done, my guys have transport and some leadership. The chaos lord, while fun and exciting (and a pit expensive in parts) is a speed bump in my already slow pace. He's shelved.

Yesterdays post and Marine L'eggs

I got drunk last night and missed a post. Sorry to make your collective worlds less fun and filled with updates about my tedious progress.

Moving right along: I finnlay finished the 4 pairs of legs I was working on. They're also affixed to my custom bases.


Now, I can start work on the previously mentioned, totally normal, disembodies torsos.

Hopefully these wont take as long. They're already primed and I have today and tomorrow off from work.

All Quiet on the Western Front and HHH #2

Lets see... worked on the 4 pairs of legs AGAIN. Weeee. Got all of the main highlighting and touching up done. If I'm lucky, I can be done by tomorrow and have the legs glued to bases. Just gotta do purity seals and company markings. No update picture as a third boring picture of legs might be too much boringness.

HOWEVER, we have

Helpful Handy Hint #2

All of the pictures of the aforementioned legs have shown them to be attached to a wooden thing. This wooden thing is what i think is called a painting rig.

Pros:
It makes base coating a breeze and is a handy way to store a bunch of parts while working on them. You can pick the rig up and get to all kinds of hard to get to areas (for a more even coat) and it keeps works in progress offa the grunge on the work area while keeping the paint safe.

Cons:
It's really only helpful if you do a lot of pinning, like me. This is because you have to have a length of rod attached to the model in order to set it in the rig.

Construction:
Simply get two lengths of dowel rod (or whatever wood you have - square rods would work too) and screw them together in a 'T' shape. I found that it was helpful to pre-drill the hole before screwing the rods together - prevented splitting. It was also helpful to do a little notch on the top of the 'T' for stability. Once its built, simply drill a number of holes on the surface for sticking rods in.

Boring Progress Update

Worked a little on some stuff today. Saturday and Sunday are usually a wash as far as progress goes. I have a weird work schedule and so I work on these days - much earlier than the rest of my work week. So, I get home Butt-ass tired and then take a long nap - further confounding my internal clock.

Anywho, I dull and gloss coated my artsy-f artsy chaos base (its like the last picture - only shiny!) and worked on some highlights for the continuing saga of the Dark Angle legs. The rack of disembodied limbs is kinda started to seem grotesque. I must finish and move on to perfectly normal disembodied torsos.

Based in Evil

The Dark Angel squad has officially slowed to a crawl. I highlighted a little bit on the gray and tweaked my highlight scheme.. thats about it. I've been fairly distracted with the Chaos Lord as well various naps to and Hercules: the Legendary Journeys viewings.

I also contemplated how awesome the 20 man Black Templar crusader squads are. 20 dudes is a lot of dudes. All kinds of close combat stabby action. Give 'em a chaplain and they get all fearless and super stabby. I may have to explore this later.

What I actually worked on today was the base for my Chaos Lord. There was a picture of it a dat or two previous that showed the 40mm base with the green-stuff rolled onto it and the star pattern cut into it. It is now fully painted and awaiting some dull coat and then layers of gloss coat to look all marble-y. So far I'm really happy with the way its been going.

(this is a fairly dark picture of the base - its a tad brighter and more vibrant in real life)
I think I'll finish the Dark Angel legs I've been procrastinating on and then paint the Chaos Lord.

Naughty Bitz

Well, I haven't really worked on my Dark Angels in a couple of days (though I did touch up some shading). However, I have made great progress on my Chaos Lord - actually, most of it yesterday as I didn't really work on anything at all today. He's ready to be primed once the green stuff fully cures. then I can move on to painting him up proper.

I'm extremely happy witht he way he's turning out. The actual conversion process took the better part of a day - due to hand tools. If only I had a Dremel. (note to self: buy Dremel at earliest convenience).

I decided to try something new with the base. I rolled some green-stuff across the top and carved a suitably evil pattern in to it. My plan is to paint it all marble or metal like and then make it glossy. Might be coll, might not. We'll see.

Have a chaos-tastic day!

All the parts for my Chaos Terminator Lord Of Tzeentch arrived today. So, now I have a new project. Should be fun. I got the idea from a games workshop online article. (here: http://uk.games-workshop.com/convershunklinic/40k-thousandsonsterminator/)

I really like the conversion, so I decided to try my hand at it. I'm going to use most of these bits:









(click for larger pics)

Into something resembling the model in the aforementioned article. I may even use some privateer press minis as well. I really like the ephemeral ghost elf and sword of Goreshade the Bastard.

I'm pretty sure the ghost-lady will end up being a familiar and I may end up sing the blade of of this guys weapon instead of the Ubshabti glaive. Who knows.

I've already cleaned the metal parts with some Simple Green and water to get rid of the mold releasing agent. So now I begin to modify parts (instead of finishing my tactical squad project.) The initial process of modifying the various parts for this conversion my result in multiple updates a day - for progress's sake.

For the record here is a list of all the stuff I got for this project:

• Chaos terminator head 5
• Chaos terminator Champion head 1
• Chaos terminator power mace
• Thousand Sons head sprue 2
• Thousand Sons bolter/cloth sprue
• Chaos vehicle accessory sprue
• Grey Knight terminator 2
• Grey Knight terminator storm bolter 2
• Grey Knight terminator nemesis halberd
  
• Grey Knight terminator shield sprue
• Ubshabti Glaive 2
• some 40mm bases.
• Goreshade the Bastard blister
  

Progress update and Helpful Handy Hint #1

Lets see, I've made a little bit of progress since last post. Got the remainder of the base-coating done on the legs and I've started shading. I might do more tonight. At any rate, my weekend starts tomorrow (technically today), so I'll have a couple of days to maybe finish the legs and move on to torsos.


Not much to look at I know, but you can kinda see some of the shading on the gray. I'll start touching that up once I add Shadow to the green.

On another note, I've gotten a better handle on my camera, and the pictures are starting to turn out much better. Still have a bit of graininess to purge and I'll be good to go. Now, on to...

Helpful handy Hint #1
So, whether or not anyone reads this, I'm going to start sharing some of the tricks I've picked up and find the useful. I'm no expert but, hey, I cans till share my insights.

For the first Helpful handy Hint, I'm going to talk about Tamiya Smoke. This stuff is great! It's best use is for making metal look all neat and weathered. Before I found this stuff, I used to use GW armor wash or black wash to take the edge of of metal paint's shininess and to add depth to armor and the like. This stuff is waaaay better at doing that.

Its a lot more transparent than inks and a little weird to work with at first (due to its thickness) and takes a bit to dry (about an hour), but its well worth it. Just dab some of this on over a metallic base coat and then highlight once its dry and you're set. You can re-apply to get darker and darker shades. Smoke is basically just a better way to make metal look good and operates on the same principals as washes and inks. I honestly don't know what I did before I found this.


Quick note, make sure you buy the acrylic version of the this. Tamiya makes some enamel paints as well, and they need special cleaning supplies and don't mix with any water-base paint you may be using.

Paul is the big winner

First of all: Congrats to Paul for realizing one of his secret desires. Way to go on the first comment to this blog EVER.

2nd: some pictures of my recently finished Dark Angels veteran sergeant. He's pretty much the pattern for robed figures in my army as well as the pattern for plasma guns and a number of other fancy, more elite unit type stuff.



I still haven't gotten the hang of photographing my minis yet, so bear with me on the wildly varying levels of color and focus. The left and center shots are the most accurate in terms of color. The symbol of the 7th company on the knee is hand painted, though smaller than I think i like.. or not. dunno yet. At the very least, I'm a fan of how it came out as far as shading and shape.

As of now, I'm working on painting the rest of the squad in batches of 4, piece by piece. The custom bases are done for the next four, and know the legs have been started.

Web 2.0: my experiment

I've broken down and decided to start a blog. Now I have a place to whine about my life and post spooky pictures of myself. Well, not really.

Mostly I'm just going to talk about my gaming hobbies. Right now, I'm going to focus on table top gaming and miniature painting. Hopefully, I'll get off my ass and post pictures and do tutorials and post links and and and... At any rate, I'll try to keep my piece of the blogosphere (sadly, a real term) focused and free of angsty musings.

Here is my first picture for this site and my current project:


This is a marine from my in progress Dark Angels army for Warhammer 40,000. This is a series of views of my test figure. I like the way it looks, so this is the pattern for the regular marines. I also have a robed sergeant done. Pics to follow at a later date.