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Owen Wilson struggles to work out what to do with his ram-rod thingy... |
Tabletop Apocalypse
Wednesday, 7 April 2021
Warhammer - Empire Helblaster Volley Gun, Averland
Saturday, 3 April 2021
500 Point Warhammer Fantasy Skaven Army (Also the end of Monster March)
It sounds really fast, considering it's 40 models, but I realized early on that I would need to be painting fast if I wanted to actually ever finish a Skaven force. This is only 500 points, but is already 40 models!
I also have Grey Seer Thanquol (below), who I'm using as an ordinary Warlock in this force. It's a really old model, but I think the sculpt is still nice. I did a little bit of a glow effect around his eyes which I think came out really well. It's something I don't do very often, but I wanted to make him look a little bit magical. I've also been reading the old Gotrek and Felix books that feature him quite heavily, so it's fun to be able to use the model. I just wish I had an old metal Boneripper to go with him!
The unit below is 25 Clanrats in a massive block. I wanted to get a good quality finish quickly, so for the whole army, I airbrushed a yellow colour over the whole of every model. I hadn't used contrast paints before, but I basically used the yellow as a nice bright undercoat that I could pick out the main colours over. They're quite detailed models, but by batching them in pretty big chunks of 10 or 15, I made it to the end of the force in good time. Their fur is Gore Grunta Fur Contrast and the blacks are Black Templar. I did do highlights on each part, but it cut down on the middle stages. It was also nice to work with the contrast paints because they're so fluid that they were easy to apply. Whenever I build an army, I have to decide it it's going to be more for play, or more as an art project. These guys are definitely designed for play and are a speed and quality that matches!
And that's about it. It certainly was a productive month - I painted a Dragon, a Stegadon, and 40 Skaven. The best part is that I'm really happy with how everything came out! I have planned to increase the army to 1000, and It's quite achievable. It's pretty much just adding a Doomwheel, 10 Stormvermin, an a few more Plague Monks.
Saturday, 20 March 2021
Monster March Week 3 - Lizardmen Metal 1990s Stegadon ... Stega...done
Monster March is still in full swing. I finished my Dark Elf Dragon last week, and to follow it up I've been working on this metal 1990s Lizardmen Stegadon. After a week of work, the Stegadon is finished!
This is a classic model that means a lot to me as Lizardmen were my first army ever, and the Stegadon was one of the very first models I ever owned. As with the rest of my classic Lizardmen, I've followed the colour scheme I used when I was younger, so the skinks are green and the Stegadon is a fetching dark red.
In the end, it didn't take too long. It was a pain to build though. It's all metal, and I had to pin a lot of the bits - especially the Howdah to make it good and strong. When I was a kid, I mostly just drenched it with superglue and then painted what I could reach. I wanted to do a better job this time, so I painted it in 3 chunks - one for the actual Stegadon, then the howdah and finally the 6 crew.
Well, that pretty much rounds out my Monster March this year. Maybe I'll just try to paint whatever I have about the place as a final pledge for the last week. I'm batching a bunch of Skaven right now, so maybe if I paint enough of them, I might get a final photo. I really should be working on those final saurus though. The horror of having so many projects on the go!
Head on over to Path of an Outcast to see how the other entrants are doing. I have to say, I was shocked to read last week's update as Gav Thrope has joined the event. Exciting stuff!
Thursday, 11 March 2021
Monster March - Week 2 Dark Elf Dragon Complete
It's time for an update on my Monster March progress. I'm happy to say that my first monster is down! It was touch and go for a minute there, but I got the thing done. I still have half my pledge to go (an old metal Stegadon), so this is sort of the half-way point and the perfect time to finish a project.
Overall, I'm really happy with the way the dragon came out. Work may seem to be fast, but it was a flurry of activity. It's been really fun though, as a lot of my work lately has been painting blocks of infantry, so taking some time to work on a big monster was a nice change of pace.
I'm using one of my oil paintings as a backdrop again as it just makes things more fun and brings out a bit of the old fantasy style. It does make the photos a bit busy, but if you're having trouble reading it, just remember it's a big honkin' dragon and you should be fine. Here's a photo of the back so you can see the wings.
And that pretty much rounds out my first project for Monster March! Remember, you can stay up to date on all the action going on over at Path of an Outcast (Path of an Outcast).
Monday, 8 March 2021
Dark Elf Army - 500 Point Showcase
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(Above) Lizardmen burst from the jungle to repel a marauding dark elf force |
Continuing with me fantasy theme, here's another small army that I've been working on recently. Unlike the other projects, the dark elf force uses mostly modern models although I have been using a metal executioner champion as the general. I'm working on some cold one knights and a mounted general to go with them for when I next expand the force.
The army is shown below as it stands so far:
I found it really hard to find good painted examples of dark elves on the internet. Nobody seemed to be doing what I was thinking, and to be honest, I got the impression from looking around that they weren't that popular and got rather shafted in the switch to Age of Sigmar. That said, the Daughters of Khaine range is rather nice.
Probably the stand-out parts of the scheme are the metallic red armour which was achieved with Vallejo Mecha Red. The other thing that's a bit different is the dark blue skin tone. I've always liked drow and thought it might be interesting to do something similar with my dark elves. I didn't want to go pure black with the skin as it wouldn't have combined as well with the other colours I had envisaged for the scheme. As often happens these days, I had a look through my paints and found a pot of Kantor Blue which looked perfect as a base colour for the job.
As with my other armies, I've been preparing these for 5th Edition. I did play against Dark Elves a few times back then, but I never really knew anything about their background. I got hold of an old Armies book, and I've been enjoying reading about them and especially their seafaring background. There was also this whole bit about a big underground sea that I'd never heard of that I thought was very cool. It's also funny how they didn't seem to pull their punches in terms of what was deemed acceptable back then. There's whole passages in that book basically describing how the dark elves like nothing better than taking as meany slaves as they can, tearing out their still beating hearts, eating their flesh and then stripping off and getting busy amongst their bloody remains. It's a little weird that most of them are now "Cities of Sigmar" armies.
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In keeping with their seafaring background here's a sea sickness-inducing tilt shot... |
Repeater crossbows (above) are pretty cool weapons too. I did a bit of conversion with a few of the poses as they come posed to lock into ranks and don't aim by default. I also did a little sculpting and added an eyepatch to their leader for the pirate factor - "argghhh!"
Well, that's about it on this army for now. I do have a lot more models to add and have started on their dragon for Monster March. I don't really need a dragon as there's no way to even fit it into a force until you hit about 2000 points, but the models is just really cool and I couldn't resist! To be honest, I bought way too much stuff for them, but what do you do with yourself when you basically haven't left home for a whole year?
Friday, 5 March 2021
Monster March 2021 - Dark Elf Dragon Week 1
Wednesday, 3 March 2021
Bretonnian 500 Point Army Showcase
So, a few weeks ago, I posted a few photos of my finished 5th Edition Lizardmen force. I did mention that I'd also done a matching Bretonnian force - and here they are in all their splendor! I got all the scenery out lately for photos, so more pictures of some of my old fantasy stuff should be inbound soon.
These guys and me go way back. In fact, they live in constant terror that my childhood self may return to abuse them once more. Luckily for the men of Bretonnia, I felt guilty for my past transgressions and in some kind of lockdown-induced haze, I decided it would be a good idea to finally get them back in fighting order. Many repairs and paint strippings were had by all and this force is the final result.
For those that don't remember or weren't there, these guys were part of the original box-set for Warhammer 5th edition that featured armies of Lizardmen and Bretonnia clashing over what appeared to be a tower, shack and barn. Anyway, they're ready for war once more and I even sourced a metal sorceress to back them up.
The sorceress model was always a very good sculpt, and it's nice to say that time hasn't been terrible for her. For the army, I wanted to capture a bit of the crazed mult-tone that characterized old Bretonnia so they have a few different colours, but yellow, blue and red feature quite prominently. I painted the knights with their own heraldry each.
I also had a go at photographing a battle scene for them with a few skeletons that were marauding nearby. I just hope that isn't a Vampire Lord at the back, or those knights are toast...
This project is now complete - I basically just ran out of models to be honest! I do have some more knights and archers, but I never collected Bretonnia at the time and getting any of the metals now is just painfully expensive. I actually finished this force before the Lizardmen, and I have plenty more of them to be getting on with (Including a Stegadon for Monster March ... hopefully)
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A Bretonnian hunting party is ambushed by Lizardmen after straying too close to a concealed temple-city |