Blood Bowl - Yellow Elves

 The Elves are progressing! What amazes me is that back in the day the very thought of paintin 16 figures at once would have killed a project stone dead for me but nowadays this is the way I feel I need to do it if I'm going to get any of them done. far better to do ten at a time and have ten complete than do one.

 

These have all been painted whatever Vallejo Yellow came in my paint set, Sun-something-or-other no doubt. They've had a wash of thinned Maccarius Solar Orange and then Gryphonne Sepia and I'm beginning to feel happy with the tone. 

 They've also had brown applied to the skin areas, this'll be the base for all my skin tones. I have a number od decisions [G.O.D. help us all] to do with hair and towel colours. I was thinking of matching them to their positions but I don't fancy having all the linemen with grey towels - boring!

I am going to be intorducing black into the models too. The top and bottom belts are going to be black as well as the two outer 'straps' on their kilts. That way I'm getting in the stripey effect of the Haffenheim Hornets, should I use them as such.

I will also have to look at the face guards, leave them yellow or do it orange or black? Knee pads also need to be either black or left yellow - do I want a carbon copy uniform or a bit of variety in what is black or yellow?



Here's a little update on the above pics although it should be hard to see given the completely different lighting conditions. However, this is the last two figures to have a highlight of yellow applied over the Sepia shading wash. Honestly it's a nightmare painting round all those suds and Blitzers are the absolute worst with them on arms and legs. G.O.D. bless catchers they've hardly any. Think flesh next, then black and finally highlights. This is going well.

What's new today?

Just to let you know what's been going down amongst the other stuff I've posted. Last Sunday was a Warmachine tournament day at my local friendly neighbourhood gaming club and us 40k'ers were invited to help cover costs. I got a game in with Rob and his Whitescars, minus the bikes! The pic below is from our previous match but I will have a battle report to follow, after I've finally shared my previous Tournament efforts. The Fall of Arminius reports are coming soon.

I hope you're not tired of these reports. The hobby aspect continues and I'm enthused to do more so I can play more but with the new graphics card installed I'm returning to Dawn of War 2 and enjoying that campaign now that it's running at more than 4fps.

I also got in a good game against Roy and his Imperial Guard last night. No pictures but I may discuss some of it as it was a thoroughly rewarding match. I had a Warrior and the Mycetic Spore left but it was a draw on turn 7, turn 5 I was winning on the objectives! Will keep posting content but must try to do more hobby, although the new 'nids are coming along.

GW - "thanks, but no thanks!"

Did you ever wonder in the early 90's what happens when you contact GW and ask for help with your GCSE Craft, Design and Technology project? Of course you did, we all did and here's what happens:

In tidying out the loft the other day I finally decided to chuck some of my old school work. Really why am I still hanging onto GCSE coursework that's 21 years old? Anyway, we had pretty much free reign to do what we wanted and I wanted to combine my project with my love of gaming so planned to do a gaming club, complete with individually themed games rooms.

There was a Dark Future room complete with a front end of a car smashed through the walls, a Space Hulk room with alien infestation on the walls made with hot melt glue and ping-pong balls in the scale model. Most portentous of all was the Fantasy Battle room, actually called Warhammer World and the walls were lined with polystyrene carved to look like a castle's battlements. Now I'm not saying they eventually stole my idea, I asked for their help in the early stages so nothing had actually been done but I'm thinking now the postcard may have been their way of ensuring I can't claim it was all my idea, but this is Warhammer World:

http://hexus.net/gaming/previews/pc/6251-exclusive-warhammer-mark-of-chaos-how-rts-game-shaping-up/

and we all know the truth now don't we ;)

Blood Bowl - Skaven

Skaven in the garden, and rats in the shed, how appropriate. Actually I don't think it's rats, I think it's mice as I can't find any rat droppings but gnawing has gone on and they've moved the poison I put down to a more 'accessible' location - nearer to the door which I think they are managing to squeeze through. So small rat or mouse in my book. Anyway, this is just a record of the two Skaven figures I am going to have to sacrifice from my Mongrel Horde mixed chaos or underworld team to go in my straight Skaven team.

The pink came out really rather well, I hope I can repeat that when I get round to the Horde. I'm also a fan of doing a large portion of my skaven Albino. It seems there aren't enough of those in the Warhammer world. I will definitely be doing that, 

The Thrower too has some nice blending but this time I decided on a ginger rat, they must have them what with all that cavorting with warpstone ;)

The grey is quite nice, part of me feels sad this is now gone under a Red Oxide undercoat. I'm hoping this will be a perfect base fro my Orange Skavenblight Scramblers. Not sure it'll allow me any gingers but I'm hoping that the orange and black colour scheme will scratch the itch of my 'Hallowe'en' theme from way back in my Squat days but of course I did plan on doing that on the Orks from Assault on Black Reach, good practice then int it!

Eldar Swooping Hawks or Diving Eagles?

Despite my Son's on/off passion for 40k he does have some very particular feelings about it. He's often coming up with new 'rules' and ideas for the game. Clearly ones that make any kind of balance laughable but then aren't we already at that point? One thing in particular he's opinionated about was how he wanted to paint his Swooping Hawks and his Striking Scorpions too. He wants his Swooping Hawks to be the same colours as Golden Eagles, or remeniscent of them. So I've gone about Red Oxide priming them and we've used Iyanden Darksun on the wings and 'beaks', he then decided the shoulder pads could do with a coat of yellow too, fair enuff!

Next step will be to pick out details and areas that will be metallic for painting initially black. Once that's all done we'll do a Gryphonne Sepia and Devlan Mud wash to try and make them a bit more brown and obviously bring out all the shadowed areas

Hopefully we'll then be able to add in some highlights on the armour plate bits, bring the level of finish up a bit from the Guardians hes done which are just basecoat and wash, it's the next step for him. Frutratingly I'd hoped he would have done more than this in the hour and a bit I was out visiting my Aunt one Sunday. Two of the Hawks had their wings and beak done already so he only had to do 4 including the Exarch.

Perhaps the issue is I'm now 'involved' again in his painting so he doesn't feel confident enough to continue on his own. It seems I can't win in this situation and pretty much every night he's clamped to the PC playing some 3D virtual world game where everyone looks like a Lego person.

Anyway, if he doesn't get them done it'll be 'nids in June!

Blood Bowl - Elves

As mentioned I've started my Elf Bloodbowl . Officially they're elves but I'm going to run them as a Wood Elf team though I still need a Treeman to round out the squad. The decision will be to play them as the Haffenheim Hornets or the Codillion Clarions as I've prepped both their endzone markers, though I understand these aren't used on the new card pitch - pah!

The fact is I know I've got a few more elves knocink around, I'm positive I have the 'Daniel-san' karate kid kicker with headband and the Blitzer [which will be wardancers] with the Ice Hockey mask. A lot of these were gifted to me by a school friend, one of those friends who spends your life alternating between between being spiteful and best buds. I spent a period of time being the butt of his taunts, I'm not entirely sure why him calling me "barnacle" was so bad but saying it in the middle of assemblies didn't go down well. Still, old wounds and not really how our friendship was left. He offloaded all his gear onto me and ironically was partly responsible for me meeting my future wife.

He knew her and she asked him at one of the rock nights we used to attend who was nice he could introduce her to so he introduced her to my brother! Which I din't get because he doesn't really know him. Anyway, she recognised my brother as a mate of her ex so she didn't want to go down that road, or so my brother told me. Of  course a few months later on New Years Eve when she came up to me, drunk as a Lord [or Lady] and said she fancied me and then at some point "do you know *insert ex'es name here*" I went "No, never heard of him!". The rest shall we say is history, so I'm kind of grateful for more than the elves off this guy ;)

Getting back to the elves, did you notice the elf thrower with the stumpy foot!

Carry cases, my secret shame

With more than a few weeks under my belt now at my local friendly neighbourhood gaming club there is one aspect I'm still struggling with and one that even at this early stage is open to a little good natured banter from the guys. I've obviously put in a lot of work on my son's 'nids. Something that's not been lost on folk if the many admiring comments and praise are anything to go by.

What is problematic is that 'nids die, quickly and in droves and sometimes I think it's rude to spend time putting them back in the box when I should be paying attention to my opponents move etc. Anyway this is my largest gaming carry case. Originally from Trago Mills [if I recall correctly] this drill case was pretty cheap.

With some foam in place it's quite spacious and handy...

OMG [and you know I don't use that lightly] WTF [even less so]. If I were to say this was tidy you'd still be appalled, me too. I have some other small boxes that can take around 20-30 termagants at a time which are handy but it's all the Stealers and those sodding Gargoyles that just go all over the shop that really screw my 'filing' system up.

So I thought I'd look at some alternative solutions on ebay and came up with these ideas instead of a bespoke gaming storage system that may cost the earth and deliver pretty much the same result. I was quite surprised these two bargains I found.

£1.99 Delivered from Germany, with FREE Postage!
RECYCLED PLASTIC MULTIPLE SHIPPING BOX 420x305x110 mm NEW

5 Boxes for £4.29 with FREE Postage and built in handles!

5 x Women Plastic Stackable Shoe Storage Boxes Clear Transparent 30cm*18cm*10cm

And to pad it out just one of the many eggbox sales on offer

10 Sheets, £4.39 with postage

Egg Box Foam 8" x 6" Profile Foam x 10

However, when I was tidying out the loft so we could have some more insulation fitted I stumbled across an old 'portfolio' I had to keep all my magazine and software products I worked on over the years. I'm never going to use this for that purpose again so really I may as well find a way to repurpose this for my current gaming needs. Now I was sure these were quite expensive nowadays, I can't recall them being OTT back when I got it from Argos but a quick search on ebay reveals they're actually cheaper than I thought - £22.89 [with FREE Delivery]. Seems like a decent alternative if you're in the market and the other budget ideas above don't float your boat.