More Horsemen

I am slowly making some progress on my Chaos Army. These are my second regiment of Marauder Horsemen. I want to get these painted as I have the horses already done. I also think the models are great and as I sculpted the cloaks on these I don't want that effort to go to waste. I have enough Tallarn Flesh now so I can keep going with these guys. Hopefully they will be the next regiment finished.

Back to Warriors

There might be a few WIP shots over the coming days. I am working on a huge amount of projects at once. I am just painting what I feel like at the moment rather than slogging through a massive regiment at once. I glued a few spare warriors together last week and I sat down to base coat them over the last few days. It took far longer than I though. Basecoating is annoying! It always seems to take longer than it should. I washed these in a few places and built back up the base coat. This is the first time I used the Nuln Oil(GW) where I could compare it to Badab Black(GW). I have noticed that it gives a lot stronger coverage. The armour on these guys has come out much darker than the previously done ones. As these are a completely separate regiment I don't think it is that noticable.

I armed them with two hand weapons as I didn't have enough halberds and painting the shields takes far too long despite looking great. I might eventually do a second regiment using the lances from the Chaos Knights as Halberds. I have fourteen, I guess another ten or so should be enough. I can't see regiments of Chaos Warriors being taken in much bigger blocks than twenty five.

A Questionable Lady

I more or less got this Rotten Belle finished over the weekend and I did a few touch ups yesterday to finish her off. Again I am happy enough with how she came out but once again there are a few problems I see. I also tried a new thing which has me confused. Yellow is a colour I don't use often as it has terrible coverage. I undercoated the whole model in yellow so this for once wasn't a problem. I went very pale with the colour and again I should have had a better eye for the contrast. The skin again came out fine especially the face. I added a few rotting patches on the skin this time. Basically I added some thin patches of red and green glazes in two or three places on the skin. I think the knee is just about visible in this piture.

The new technique I tried was some transparent clothing. I have seen it painted a few times last year in competition standard models, especially one by Marike Reimer. I tried this on the forward leg here in the picture. I don't think I did it correctly though. I painted the entire stocking in a mix of the base flesh tone and white. I then shaded the area with the basic flesh tone. I then highlighted with more white until I achieved a colour that is just beyond a usual colour for flesh. With the skin tone being pale to begin with and using white as the clothing colour I think I was fighting an uphill battle. It is a technique I will have to play with a little more so I can understand the mechanics of it. I think planning it out a little better will help as I can pick colours and tones that work better.

Rotten Belle

I managed to get a decent amount of painting in over the weekend and made a lot of progress on various projects. I find I can get really overwhelmed if I have too much stuff on my desk at once but so far no problems. I painted this rotten belle deliberately in a colour I don't often use, green. I wanted the dress to be really pale and as she is a zombie I went pale for the skin too. In the end it is an interesting scheme as it is far brighter than I thought it would be. The skin came out quite well especially the face. The model is quite expressive and that makes it really easy to pick out the areas for shading and highlights. When I get a really plain face, like the recent gripping beast stuff I painted, I can't do much with them. Models like this and the marauders though are really easy to paint the faces well on. I still have the base to do but I need greenstuff to sculpt the brickwork effect I want to have so for now these ladies have to wait to get their bases done.

I guess I need to consider having a lot more contrast in these models. It is a little late as I am almost finished the yellow belle too but for the red or pink on I think I can get that in there and really make the pale colours pop a little more. Contrast is something I always struggle with. I tend to chose a base colour and work from there. I rarely consider mixing in different colours to achieve interesting and striking shading contrasts. I think with the green here I could have used a purple or brwn to get the shadows to really stand out. I am still happy enough with how she came out.

Traffic Light Ladies

Despite the fact that I have four Khador Warjacks,Chaos Marauders and Chaos Warriors on my painting desk assembled and base coated I decided to start something else. I have played some Malifaux over the last few weeks and yesterday I picked up the Rotten Belles. Rather than continue with some cavalry I though I would get these done first as a break. I painted them without realising it in a wonderful traffic light scheme. I undercoated them in these colours as it saves time trying to cover over black. Foundations paint helps but it can still take a good few coats for red and yellow to come out nice and even. I am going to try to get some of these finished while I also progress with the Marauders. Thankfully I managed to get some Tallarn Flesh at the start of the week. Old Fogey at Hobbyhorse sent me some. So now I can make some real progress with my Chaos army without fearing that I will have to change the colour scheme halfway through!

Chaos Spawn Regiment

Here are all my finished Spawn ranked up. As I discussed before I don't know how to use these. I think they are fairly suitable for any of the roles. I avoided the tentacle beast look deliberately so that they were much closer to true humanoid. The addition of some armour and weapons also helps separate them from that look. I guess when it comes down to really making out the army I will see what to do with them.

Chaotic Cannon Fodder

I have been making a lot of progress it would seem. I had six normal marauders left to paint and over the last few days I got them done. I also managed to do some finishing touched to their twelve brothers. The last time I painted these was in November 2010. They have been sitting neglected for over two years. I think at this pace I will have the army ready for ninth edition. I don't know if I have rally become better at painting but these six seemed to go really quickly. I have managed to paint a lot over the last twelve months so I guess the improvement came in speed rather than technique. I won't complain about that, regular readers will know I have motivation problems if things are progressing slowly. Now I have to dig through the various boxes to see if I have enough Marauders to complete the two regiments that I have at the moment. I also need to start sourcing heads from the mounted marauder models as I defintely don't have enough of those bulk out my small regiments.

I still have a little work to do on the banner.I want to find a slaaneshi symbol/sigil to add to the top. I guess there may be some in the new hellsteeds(?) box. Hopefully I can spot some online to buy. I also want to paint up the fur on the banner a little better. The darker fur on the outside it too plain lookin and I will need to give it some more work to get some strong contrast in there. I just don't want it to become too light something that is easily done.

Completed Slaanesh Horsemen

The Slaanesh Horsemen are finally finished and ready to be hidden in the painting cabinet again! At least this time they shall inhabit the same shelf as the rest of the painted Chaos models. I need to pick up the book sometime so I can actually calculate what I need for an army. I started painting these guys when I came to Germany first and this was in the last year of seventh edition. I had designed, built and sculpted everything along an MSU style army which worked wll the few times I used it. However eight hit and if you read back through the blog and my various posts on eigth editon and this army you will see that the fact I had to change everything really put me off the game. It didn't stop my buying everything to convert to eight edition though.

While I don't know if I will get back into Warhammer Fantasy I do want to make progress on this army, at least for the time being. I know having a functional army would make me a lot more enthusiastic to play at least. Once I figure out what exactly I can salvage from the old army and what needs to be added I can decide. As always least effort for most reward comes to mind. If I have very little to do then I will glady do it! Sadly I bet I need to do loads.

The Last Spawn

I managed to paint again this weekend and I got this Spawn finished. I have four now done and I think that is enough. I am still not sure if I will use these as Spawn or as Trolls. I haven't looked at the latest book but I am assuming Trolls and Ogres are still in there. I would be very surprised to see them removed. The new Dragon Ogres really look awesome but I won't be buying anything for a while at least. I have enough to paint and I can resist the new shiny syndrome I think. It is great to see that the Dragon Ogres once again resemble the current Ogres models. They haven't done that since the early nineties! They have also massively increased in bulk. I remember when they used to fit on a cavalry base comfortably. It does lead me to wonder what is to be done with older models like that. Should they be rebased as it does have a massive effect in gameplay terms. Yet base sizes are ruled in such a way that you play with what they came with. A regiment of cavalry sized based Dragon Ogres would be far more effective than the current ones! I have seen a lot of models, especially monsters become outdated in my collection. I have a Chimera that came on a cavalry base and giants that came on standard 50 x 50 sized bases. It would be a pity not to be able to use these anymore but they seem to have no space in the modern game.

Beer Two!

Once again here is a poor shot of my brew. The difference between this and the last one is pretty apparent. This one came out really pale and yellow, exactly what I was looking for in the style. It should be representative of an India Pale Ale. This brew is still sitting in the fermenter for another week or so and then I will bottle it. It is much stronger than the first brew coming in at 6.75% alcohol. That fits with the style. It is also a lot more heavily hopped. I used Northern Brewer and Cascade hops for bittering, flavour and armoma. Hopefully I got this balance correct! While there are a lot of receipes out there most of them are from an american audience and are geared towards the supplies that they can access. I am fairly restricted here in Germany as the home brewing culture hasn't taken off. Good beer here costs about 55c a bottle and so it is actually a lot more expensive to brew your own. There is one store that offers a decent selection or I could order from the UK. The postage costs from there are fairly high so only a bulk order is worth it. That means that for the time being I must be satisfied with a more alchemical approach to my brewing. I am approximating malts and hops to approach the receipe but I can't really claim to be following any.

This time I am really hoping that the yeast drops out so that I have a nice clear beer. Next weekend I also have the proper tasting of the first brew. Last night the Hobbybrau group got a taste and it went down fine. The true test is the less drinking cultured gaming friends. If they like it then it is a bigger success. I will take some decent photographs to show how it came out in the end. It is currently inhabiting most of my fridge cold crashing. The cold crashing is used to get all of the yeast to settle to the bottom of the bottle and it should clear the beer up within a few days. Hopefully it goes down well amongst my friends. I don't want to be left with two crates of beer I have to drink all by myself!

Anglo Dane Warlord

This is the last SAGA model for a while. I have had enough of the Dark Ages, that itch is now scratched! I am glad to have three warbands complete and I look forward to getting some games in with them. The local gamestore has asked me to run a demo day so hopefully we get a few more players interested. That may spark my interest in painting again but I have a lot to explore with these three warbands first. I put two models on this base as these came together in the army deal I bought. I often find that at a 28mm scale the Warlords base is really empty. Putting two models on the base fills it up nicely without over crowding it. I didn't know how to paint the dragon banner. The cross hatching came out much better on the back as I made it closer together. On the front it is too widely spaced and didn't come out great. I was too lazy to fix it...

Slaanesh Horsemen

Here are the last two Marauder Horsemen for this regiment just in time for Valentines Day. Thankfully I had the horses already painted so I didn't have to slow down to paint those too. Horses take ages to paint. I don't mind the large surface areas as these are easy to highlight. I don't like them because they just take an age to do. I went with a few flagellant heads in this regiment as they are excellent and convey the theme quite well. I also stuck on the back banner as I though it fit with the unit. I have half an idea there is some artwork similar to the model in an old chaos book. I painted on the slaanesh symbol as it is easy to do and I wasn't inspired to try my hand at something else. This army doesn't have an banners as yet so I didn't have anything to go on. Once I get these all varnished I will get a group shot, if my camera obeys. It doesn't like to take group shots I have noticed! I am wondering what to paint next, a spawn I think as he is already constructed and awaiting paint. Hopefully they are better in the new book as I have four of them.

Over 100 Models Already

I figured out today that I have already painted over a hundred models this year. I shocked myself a little when I realised this. I am really setting a blistering pace. These Anglo-dane warriors are the last rendera bases I have and I ordered a hundred. I thought I would have a lot to spare but my box of gripping beast models seems to defy physical space and have no bottom. I see the finish of this warband to six points and another six point band in there easily. That still leaves me with spare models. I must have bought an amazing army deal back when I got these almost ten years ago. Some of these were more or less painted already I have to admit. Still there wasn't a single completed model in the army so I am pretty proud of hitting a hundred in six weeks to tabletop standard. If I keep this pace up I won't have anything at all to paint by the end of the year...

Only Eight More

Maybe playing more games of SAGA would help me get through painting these guys. Only eight more to go! These ones here are my third batch of warriors. Again I lost motivation for freehand while in the midst of painting them. I just don't like the effort that good freehand takes to do. I can spend almost as long on a single shield as I do on the model and while it is most definitel the most visible part I don't think it is worth it. Sometimes it is hard to think that this is just a tabletop standard model, I don't need to go overboard! Thankfully I have only eight more models to go.

More Marauder Horsemen

I managed despite brewing my latest ale to get some painting in this weekend. I really want to make progress on the Marauder Horsemen. The regiment is now two thirds finished! I improved the flesh colour a little but once everything had dried I still think it is much darker than what I was going for. The contrast just isn't there. I don't want super dark shadows as that really shows the poor sculpting of the muscles. Instead going for really pale skin and yet some starker highlights really softens those bulging biceps. The next ones should be better, I know I really need to add in a few more final steps with bleached bone to bring up the tone and contrast. It is interesting to slowly immerse myself back into some technical painting. A lot of what I have done recently is by rote. I really have to pay attention with these guys which is nice, at least for now!

Here is a shot from behind to show the cloaks. I sculpted these a long while ago and they came out fine. If I was to redo them I would make them a little longer like I did with my Chaos Knights. Those cloaks took ages but they look really well. I only wish those models ranked up better! I didn't do the customary darker stripe down the middle of these like I do with most of the other cloaks I have as I just wanted to do something simple and get back into the swing of it. I still thenk they came out fine and add a little character to the models. I wish they came as standard rather than having to sculpt them myself... They can take about an hour each to do as far as I remember for the larger and better ones.

Success, Beer!

Here is a poor shot of my first beer. I will make sure to get a better one once it comes out of the bottles! It is still not finished yet but it is getting there. It tastes somewhat like beer, though it is still a little bitter for my taste. It is now sitting in the bottles conditioning. It needs to sit in the bottles to develop carbonation naturally and to settle out fully. It was still a little cloudy going into the bottles and I probably should have held off another week efore doing it. I think that would have helped a lot of the yeast to settle out. I guess we shall see what the result is and I will know for future brews what exactly to do!

Patience is one of the most difficult skills to learn when brewing I think. I started the whole process around the fifth of January. The beer then sat until the start of this week fermenting and maturing. Now it is in the bottles conditioning. I have set the 15th of this month as the first taste test. I am meeting up with the local Hamburg Hobbybrau group on the 16th and I want to know what to expect before I serve out my beer. The bitterness may have mellowed a little which would be good. I am not a fan of sweet beers at all, I love bitter bers. I did however accidently double the amount of bittering hops I was supposed to put into this brew. I am today setting up the next batch, a slightly more ambitious India Pale Ale. Fingers crosed all goes well!

Some Malifaux

I managed to get my first game of Malifaux played this week. I normally play Warmachine via VASSAL on Tuesdays but this time I got the chance to play against the designer of the Malifaux module. I have to say I liked the game. The cards were an absolutly compelling mechanic as you can easily predict the chances of what you can do and what you can draw. There is still a lot of luck but being able to cheat fate by dropping cards out of your hand is very intriguing. It does seem to me that everything so far was balanced. The density of the terrain and the ability to move around and interact with it was excellent. On the module the artwork for the buildings can be manipulated so that the models can move around and change levels. I guess on the tabletop the terrain has to be specifically built for this purpose but I am all up for that! So far the game is really appealing to me and I will have to resist buying something next time I am in the games store. I played the Arcanist faction with Rasputina and she seemed to have a nice depth to her gameplay- The faction or at least so of the abilities remind me of the Circle Orboros for Hordes.

If you are interested in the module you can find it here. There are also some tutorials on Playing Online, Killing Models and Using Counters. There are a few more tutorials and they can be found here. I will most defintely be playing a few more games in the coming weks.

Huscarls and High Command

Here are my quickly painted Huscarls. I wanted to put a whole lot more effort into these models but I was getting bored and distracted by all the other models on my desk. These don't have shields so I got through them really quickly while listening to the Foundation series by Isaac Asimov. I often find that a good book can help keep me motivated to paint. As I can't listen unless I am painting I am forced to paint if I want to hear what happens next. I got most of the next six warriors done already and the army finally feels like it is coming together. I have also been painting away on some more Marauder Horsemen so I really feel like I am making progress. I have been painting so much over the last few weeks I am finally having to reorganise my painting cabinet to see where I can squeeze in some more models.

Despite all my painting efforts I have been getting in far more board games recently than wargames. Dominion has once again proven really popular amongst my friends and I think I got about six games in recently. Now that Privateer Press has announced High Command I am quite excited. I like deck building games when they are done properly. I also like living card games. I am curious to se what innovative mechanic that they have come up with to differentiate this game from the slew of other similar ones. I really hope they are not just relying on the intellectual property to make it succesful. I am guessing that PP will have a big hit on their hands if they can keep the pressure up on the release schedule, similar to what Fantasy Flight do with Warhammer Invasion and A Game of Thrones. Sadly I have to wait until autumn to get my hands on the game!

More Danes

I am really not enjoying painting these anymore. I don't know if I have caught the chaos bug but I seem to be more motivated to paint them than these models. I think it comes down to the shields. The freehand rapidly becomes annoying. I skipped it on the last six and I only did a few of these shields before I gave up. I just want to get these finished. I have at least managed to get a few games in of SAGA. They were excellent and the Jomsvikings really proved to be tough. I rolled over my opponent twice when I used them. The Aanglo-saxons are much harder to play with but they are fun!

The game is quite interesting but really different from anything I have played before. I have had three different opponents on the tabletop and they all have struggled to play. Every turn despite what may be best they load up their abilities section of the battleboard and then have almost nothing to activate. The army stalls close to where it deployed and I am able to swarm all around them. I think new players focus far too much on the abilities and forget that they need to manouver just like in any other game. I wonder if anyone else has had the same experience when teaching others?

Marauder Horsemen

As a break from painting Anglo-Danes I have brought forth some relics from my cabinet. I started the Marauder Horsemen about three years ago but I never got past a preliminary basecoat. It took me a while longer than I thought to get these done and so I just concentrated on two and got them finished. I have huge piles, like everyone else, of unpainted or half painted stuff. I would slowly like to work my way through all of this and not buy too much this year. Getting a restart on my Chaos army would be great as I have about five unopened boxes of stuff for that army. Hopefully it is enough to get an actual functional army together!

I kept these guys in a similar style to my other marauders. It is hard to match them all together as there has been a huge gap in painting. Looking at these in comparison to the older ones I have done I can really pick up some differences. The skin tone isn't the same. I managed to achieve a much better colour before. I guess I just worked the colour better and to a higher contrast. I will have to keep tha in mind as I go forward. I am using up the last of my Tallarn Flesh(GW) but soon I will have to switch over to the Cadian Skintone(GW), I am not looking forward to that.

More of the same

Looking at the recent pictures of the Marauder Horsemen I noticed that the horses look really washed out! I should invest in something better than a ten year old digital camera sometime! Aat least the riders came out decently. I am again painting them or at least finishing them in twos as it makes it much easier. I basecoat all the models at once and get them to a good standard in one go. I then split them up and do the highlights and finishing details in pairs. It helps in that the highligh paint doesn't dry out on my palette as it would if I tried to do too many at once and I also get to learn from the previous days mistakes and problems. It certainly is a little slower overall but it is constantly churning out finished models at least. I have a regiment of cultists I want to start on soon and I will probably do them in a similar manner.

The Saga Continues

The wonderful winter weather in Hamburg has kept me fairly enthusiastic to paint. It seems that the weather can't decide if it should be springlike or more the heart of winter. This morning I was greeted by a massive snowstorm that thankfully didn't last long. A few hours like that and the city would have completely shut down. I am rapidly running out of bases from Renedra and so I have made up a four point SAGA warband that uses them up exactly. I have loads of miniatures left it seems but no bases for them. I am hoping that I can pick up another set at Tactica in a few weeks. I am also waiting on the basing material, the hobby store assures me it will be available soon! I am getting tired of painting these models. As mentioned on the Madhouse Workshop some of the models are fairly poor, especially the metal vikings. The unarmoured models are fine enough. These are the first of twenty four warrior models that will make up the bulk of the warband.

A Neglected Spawn

I am not exactly sure why but it seems I am currently back painting some Chaos models. I think it is due to the sheer number of pictures of the new Chaos models that have been floating around for the last week or so. This spawn has been lurking for quite a while in the back of my abinet and I thought as a break from all the historical stuff I could paint him up. He isn't quite a classical spawn. I wanted him to look a little more like a massive mutated warrior than a tentacle beast.

Almost everything in the army has a cloak and the spawn are no different. However the cloak has started growing from their back rather than being a piece of clothing. I am happy that I got the burning armour to come out pretty much the same as I did before. It has been an age since I painted something for this army and so I was worried I wouldn't be able to match stuff. So far so good. I don't know if I will bother though with really diving in and finishing all of these off. I am making no plans at the moment and just painting what takes my fancy. I can at least stretch to the second spawn I am sure!

Flesh Comparison

I have started painting one of my old Chaos Spawn models today and I was wondering what I would do to match the tones I used over two years ago. None of the paint I used is still commercially available and so I am fairly stuck. I used Tallarn Flesh as the skintone for my entire army. I pulled out all the skintones I had and put them side by side to compare. It looks like Cadian Skintone is the closest. Has anyone else come up with something closer to Tallarn than this? The change in tone would be quite drastic and I imagine that when highlighted the results would be significantly different!