Stoneward and Woldstalkers

I would like to have a more Hallowe'en themed post for the day that is in it. Hallowe'en is not really celebrated here in Germany so I am celebrating it by playing Hunter: The Vigil tonight. The session should see us finishing our current campaign, unless my players are being particularly dumb. I am still progressing on the remnants of my Circle force. The Stoneward was thankfully handy enough to do despite the fact that I made a mess of his cloak. I fixed it a little but it still is far from perfect. I mixed a brown glaze improperly and ended up with a really streaky effect. The Wwoldstalkers were easy enough to get done once I sat down and concentrated some effort on them. Now I am working on the Sentry Stone. It is simple but the Mannikins are a real pain. I will try to get some photographs of the WIP up tomorrow. Then I am wondering what I should do next. Tharn Wolfriders or a Wold Guardian?

Friday Showcase - Warpwolf

So it has been a remarkably slow week of painting. I am not sure if it is the grey german skies or what but I struggle to be productive when I sit down. Again I guess it is because I am flitting between a number of projects at once. At least I have pictures of old stuff I can show. This Wwarpwolf has been photographed a lot. I have posted him before on Privateer Press and Wwarhammer fora but I have never managed to take good photographs of him. So here he is finally somewhat properly photographed. He is still a little over exposed but with a darker model like this it isn't as apparent as with the menites. The large white models lose all definition and shading when I photograph them with my current set up. Thankfully it is fine with my darker Circle.
I painted the warpwolf in the same scheme as shown in the Brushthralls article. As with the Argus the guide was great and following the steps really improved my painting one hundred fold. You learn where and how to place the highlights. After following that I was able to begin to apply this to other models. I still struggle with cloth and armour in terms og where exactly to place highlights but I really am pretty good now with highlighting flesh areas. As this is often a large proportion of a model this really helps. I don't know if the other guides are as good but I really recommend anyone considering panting Circle in the future to check it out. It can be found here.

A Tale of Three Gamers - test colours

One of the most important things when starting a new army is to test the colours you want to use for it. I can't stress that enough! If you don't test the colours it will be far too late once you have finished a few ranks to go back and try something else. So next week sees the start of the project and I don't want to be jumping in to anything without having made my mind up with how to do it. I have started Orcs before and after I painted about one hundred boys I realised that I hated how I did the green. That army is now and probably forever will be residing on a shelf. It is just too much effort to strip them and start again and its too much of a pain to finish off the army seing as how horrible they turned out. Once burned, twice shy!

I know Gar is pretty happy with the colour scheme of his Dwarves as he already has a number of them painted. However I have never really painted a beastman before. I have somewhere a beastman warband for Mordheim where I painted them in flesh colours, emphasising the men far more than the beast. They came out fairly well but it isn't something I wanted to continue throughout a whole army. So instead I went for a khaki toned skin. I actually think the colour is called Khaki. It is from Vajello. I think it is fine but maybe too light. I haven't been able to get much of a change in the tone towards a flesh colour. I will paint a second guy to see if I can manage a darker tone to the skin areas. I still want it to be generally like I have it here but with a little more apparent contrast. I went with a neutral green for the robe. It adds a nce contrast to the skin without being overbearing. I was thinking I could go for red but that might be too strong. Maybe when it comes to doing other regiments I can mix it up a little. The weapons are fairly dark. I mixed black and bolt gun metal for them. I think this is still a little lighter than I had intended and I will try on the next Ungor to get it right. The horns are where I think this model fails a little. Well the paintjob not the model. I am not sure if I got them right at all. Looking at the models on the box these are generally done in grey. I don't know how that might end up looking but I guess I will try it out.

So next Thursday we will all have here what we are committing to painting for November. It is the first month so I am guessing nothing too ambitious!

On the Desk

So this was a bad weekend for painting. I managed to get a lot of stuff worked on but at the moment I am lacking motivation to get things finished. I have quite a lot of projects on the go at once. On my desk at the moment I have fifteen different units from five systems. So finding some focus amongst this chaos is not going to be easy! This week I want to focus on getting through the backlog and clearing the desk so I am free to start with the Tale of Three Gamers next week. Thats pretty ambitious but lets see what I can manage! Getting the sentry stone finished would be great but I am not enjoying the mannikins much. The bone grinders I have while nice are a pain to paint. Nothing that I have built is really calling to me. I guess most hoobyists are in the same boat though?

Friday Showcase - Gorax

Continuing on from last Friday here is another of my Circle Orboros models, this time the Gorax. It is the old ugly model but that was the only one available for a long long time. I really don't know what Privateer Press were thinking when they allowed this through. The new one is awesome and someday I will have to go out and pick it up. For now however this is enough. I went with a yellow tone for the skin as I wanted to do something a little different. It came out okay. I was still learning the rudiments of highlighting back then and now it shows. Sadly there was no Brush Thralls article to follow like I had with the Argus. He turned out fine in the end however and he can proudly stand amongst the rest of my Circle force, at least in terms of the paint job if not quite from a model point of view.

A Tale of Three Gamers

Together with two of my good friends, Alan and Gareth, I will be beginning a new Warhammer army soon! The three of us have been playing Warhammer Fantasy together for close to twenty years. I am a bit hesitant to actually count back the years as I know I will be shocked. Twenty is a fine round number and I am sticking to it. We started in a small club in our hometown and eventually migrated to Dublin and the Irish tournament scene. Nowadays we are all living apart from each other and never get to really play like we used to. Its all about tournament builds and nasty combinations whenever we do get to play. Over the last few weeks we got to chatting again and of course it was mainly about Wwarhammer, one of the common threads we all share. We discussed new armies and various developments over the last year. When I was home last week we got to chat about starting a new Warhammer project, inspired in part by Heelanhammer and in part by the old White Dwarf and now web series. So from November 1st we will be doing a "Tale of Three Gamers" here and on a few of the popular fora.

As much as I wuld like to start where I began all those years ago with a Goblin army I will be doing a Beastman army instead. The plan is to paint 300pts a month and within eight months we will have a decent 2400pt army complete. We will also do some terrain at the same time so when we do eventually get together to play we have something to accompany the armies on the table. The first model I intend to paint is this old albion giant. I bought this a long time ago when he was new. It was a cheap way to pick up two giants back then when I had a goblin army. I will make some small conversions along the way as I think I will use him as a Ghorgon. The head can definitely be made to look more bestial and the weapon might need a change to suit the cleavers the Ghorgon has. I would also like to add some armour to bulk the model out slightly, even some shields and chainmail should help. At the moment he is really thin and scrawny, he doesn't look like a T6 monstrosity.

I will try to preview all three lists next week. They are guidelines and very much subject to change as the project develops, especially if new books come out. Alan is doing a Spartan inspired Chaos army while Gar is doing some additions to his already massive Dwarf army. He still has so many core units to do that it was easy to still make up an army from them. Strangely none of us are revisiting the armies we started with. Alan has always played Dark Elves while Gareth started with Beastmen. So you can look forward to a good chunk of Warhammer content here over the coming few months... that is as long as we can all stay motivated, the biggest challenge when it comes to painting an army!

Wold Stalkers, underway

I have had the Wold Stalkers and Stoneward models on my desk for what seems like an age. I picked them up second hand from a friend at the Miniwar Hamburg club. Now that I have my Circle army here I thought it might be good to get them done. The fact that they are complusory for a Baldur tier list helps. Despite the fact that they are tiny I haven't been making good progress on them. I think my motivation is a little low and the heavy preparations for my World of Darkness game this week haven't helped either. Here is the first finished model. I just have the Stoneward underway so maybe once the weekend comes I can make some progress and get these finished! It would be nice to have as much of the Circle forces here finished before I start my next big project, but more on that tomorrow!

I want your soul

So I am a little spoiled at the moment for painting. As I brought so much back to Germany I have a huge amount of half finished projects on my painting table. The first model I pulled from this was a menite Reclaimer. I have had him since he came out and I only ever half painted him. Aa few hours the other day finished him off. He is not really up to standard but thats fine it suits the rest of my menites. I am looking forward to using him in battle, the extra focus always helps. I am assuming that they are as useful in this edition as the last. I have checked out the High Reclaimers theme list but having thress of these on the board just doesn't make logistical sense. I could be wrong but on paper at least it seems like they will be getting in the way of each other and I won'r be getting full effect from any of them.

Two Crusaders, Two Styles

I managed to bring some of my Menoth 'jacks back from Ireland finally. Putting them side by side shows a big difference. The photograph isn't that kind to the newer version of the Crusader painted near the start of this year. While technically it is better it really doesn't look it. Strong bold highlights can really make a model stand out and the old Crusader defintely has them. The mace is interesting to see. The blending on the new one is much better and more subtle. However the old one just looks better... I can't bring myself to stripping the old one so I guess he and his comrades will get to remain as they are. They do stand out a lot from the others on the same shelf.

I am very impressed that the banner on the crusader which is simply some plastic glued onto the carapace armour managed to remain there without any pinning while being hauled from Ireland to Germany! Its a nice little touch to the 'jack adding some character. The scroll on the shoulder is nice too inspired a long time ago by 40k. Its nice to see that the character 'jack has this touch too!

Friday Showcase - Argus

As I said yesterday I finally managed to get my Circle army over to Germany. My girlfriend was delighted that I brought what she calls the Stickmen army over. It is the only army I have painted that she likes, everything else passes across my painting table without remark. Now that I have them here I have a chance to take some decent photographs of them. Over the next few Fridays I will post a showcase of the army, probably one of the best I have ever painted!

This is the first model I painted for my Circle army. I followed the wonderful Circle Battlebox in ten days guide the brushthralls had. It can still be found online here. I followed it fairly closely as you can see from the model. Following this guide improved my painting immensely and I figured out a lot of techniques on these models. Looking back now I can see where I could make some improvements but I am still really happy with the Argus. The highlights on the skin for instance turned out a different shade than I thought they might but still they came out fine. Having a reference, step by step, to paint with is excellent as it shows exactly where you need to place the paint. I still think the Brushthrall articles are the only place to go when painting Warmachine or Hordes battleboxes.

Sadly a lot of the units I painted at that time consisted of eight models so I need to start ordering the models to bulk them up to ten models. That means I have to figure out a lot of the receipes I used none of which I recorded...

Moshar the Desertwalker

I picked up Moshar a few months back second hand. He has been sitting on my desk looking at me for a while. I started him as I wasn't really inspired to do anything else and after a solid afternoons work this is the result. I have used Moshar twice, thanks to Vassal. I really like him though I am not that great with him. The salt pillars are excellent and when I feel up to it I will creat some models for that. Finding something to act as a base is the only deterrent at the moment. I don't want the bother of cutting stuff out. I guess I will have to though. Anyway I like the caster a lot and I intend getting some practice very soon with him.

I will be bringing my Circle force back from Ireland this week and I am hoping to start using them again. I really hope that I maxed out my units before as I don't want to have to go back and add to them. There is no way that I can get the style the exact same never mind the colours. The Tharn are going to be the biggest problem as I just don't do flesh tones like I did for them before. I am really eager to get painting on these but I will focus on just getting what I had bought but never painted done. My Khador await and are getting impatient. I think the main unit to get done are my Tharn Wolfriders. I have no idea what that unit is called. From what I remember I have the unit built and base coated. That should expedite the task, hopefully. I guess it will still take a while to get them done. I also have a few other things to catch up with like Stonewards(?) and a Wold Guardian. So I should hopefully have some of them up over the coming weeks. I will photograph my older Circle models and post them up too, maybe as a return of the Friday Showcase.

Dreadstone Blight - Done

Finally the saga is finished. As I have some holidays at the moment I decided to sit down and get the Dreadstone Blight finished. I have had the model sitting hidden for a while but as I am planning on getting my own table constructed soon I thought I should finish some of my terrain off. I think the sheer volume of skulls here put me off a little too. I didn't fancy highlighting them all. In the end I just made a vague attempt at highlighting them and then I drybrushed over this. Its fine, though an up close inspection will show a lot of problems and missed pieces. As I also have the Witchfate Tor I took all of the heavily skull decorated pieces out and put them in this model instead. So hopefully whenever I get to the big brother of this piece I won't have so many skulls to do. I really hate painting skulls and while I think in some cases they are fine on the terain pieces, GW does overdo it a little!

I did all the metal pieces on the tower with pigments. However I added them on with water which is terrible. Here you see the door which has since been redone with turpentine and pigment. It is a little heavy but once it gets varnished the effect will be reduced. I also did this with some of the chain pieces and I did a little rust trail under them. I guess it may be better to say I overdid it. I think the varnish should reduce the strength of the effect. Its quite obvious at the moment. I really don't want to go back and repaint anything here.

So the final picture. Here you can see how I wasn't so inspired with the wooden floors. I gave them a Snakebite Leather (GW) base coat and then just washed them with a brown wash. I had put some green on to represent moss but it didn't survive the washes. If I was to do this again I would try to make the wood look older and more weathered. I think a greyer colour for the wood would be much better. The bright and vibrant colour I have doesn't give quite the correct effect. If ever I get to the Witchfate Tor I will do it like this. I guess before I get to that model I should start playing Warhammer Fantasy again...

SMS Rache - Prussian Dreadnought

So I finally got the Dreadnought done. Well actually I just noticed that I missed out on doing the portholes. I will get them done next time I sit down with a Dystopian Model. On detailed and large models like this it is pretty easy to miss stuff. I have lost a little of my enthusiasim about painting these as I haven't managed a game yet. The models are fun to do but when there is nothing other than the painting to enjoy well then it starts to become a chore. I still have a few models to paint that I will get done over the coming weeks but I don#t see myself investing much more until I can be sure of getting some regular games in.

Nomad - complete!

It is hard to get a good photograph of the Nomad while managing to keep his sword in the shot. Hopefully this one is fine! I am really happy with finally finishing the Nomad. I had shots of him posted here as a WIP a while ago. When I made such a mess of the Talon I stopped work on the Nomad and was a bit disheartened. However I spotted a picture of the Privateer Press Mariner and I noticed that the colour scheme wanted was similar enough. So this is what I ended up with. The grey is very nicely highlighted, in my opinion, though the photo does not really show this too well. I concentrated on the edges and raised areas of the armour plates and with some black lining everything came together well. The weathering was the standard salt technique pimped up a little with some extra highlights. This makes the weathered areas stand out much more and looks far better than what I managed on the Talon.

The gold areas came out nicer than normal too. I tried a different blend of colours and this came out very nice, especially on the chimney stack. It is simply Brassy Brass (VJ) blended with Shining Gold (GW). It washes out the stronf mettalic look until the final levels of the blend, and it blends easily! I will be definitely adopting this method more. I haven't decided if I will be using it much with the Khador 'Jacks as there isn't much exposed metal on them. I guess it would go nicel with the green scheme I am considering.

I am looking for a second hand Ironclad now to convert into a second Nomad. It is the chassis that matches the best. I don't want to have my two Nomdas in the exact same pose, something which is hard to avoid with the stock model. Using a modified Ironclad will really give me a nice looking alternative without too much effort.

Red Leader, this is Gold Leader

I pulled these super tiny flyers out of the packet last week and I thought they were going to be simple to paint. They really are not despite the fact that they really are tiny. I am impressed by the sheer level of detail on these models. I really didn't do them justice but it gets annoying everytime you go to paint something and you find more details. I didn't even realise these had a cockpit until I was painting the engines. Thankfully the obligatory six are done... While they were not difficult to paint they are a little time consuming. My Prussian fleet is growing steadily and maybe soon I can get a game in...

And now for Something Completely Different!

Well it is the second time I have had something completely different up on the blog. This has to be the strangest though. I found an elf miniature that was hanging around unpainted since my last DnD campaign and I decided it was high time he got painted. So I went with something I haven't tried before, blue skin. I think it came out fine. It is exteremly blue at least! I was inspired by the Malifaux Gamelins I saw over the weekend. I never really paint with blue and I wanted to try it. I guess this guy can be a drow or something? I am sure they have blue skin, well maybe blue tinged skin or something. I kept the clothes in a neutral grey colour so that they wouldn't offer too much of a contrast. I also shaded them differently than normal, with a grey galze. This came out better so I think I will stick to it. The swords were done simply just a blue wash over an already black washed metal. So now that he is done I want to play DnD... too bad it just isn't popular here in Germany.