'nids part 177 - OHNiOOE- Oh Hell No! its Old One Eye

Suddenly possessed with a need to finish Old One Eye [in case I choose him as my special character for Blog War. I cracked on with the Bonewhite and was shocked how quick it all got done.

I pulled out one of the other Carnifex to ensure consistency but couldn't recall the process being so quick on those. The legs take a while but the rib cage was really quick.

And all that's left is the black highlights on claws and hooves, matt varnish, gloss varnish and then Tamiya Clear Red X-27. Seriously this has gone so quick I'm asking a couple of questions - 

1. what have I missed? This has taken no time at all, I must have missed something.
2. why didn't I do this months ago? It was so easy to do and such a quick win!

Sadly, looking at my choices for Blog Wars, I may not even use him! I realised he was just too expensive so I'll probably stick with Deathleaper again and my actual list will be between 80-100% exactly the same as last time. I'm really struggling to do anything kookier than last time. I wanted to reduce the model count - more MCs but that meant swapping out the Manufactorum Genestealers for Children of Cryptus but having asked Alex a couple of questions I realised the army list choices have actually been blown wide open as it now says two detcahments so I could actually run two Flyrants and Deathleaper but I'm just not sure how viable that is. I know the Flyrants are awesome but I still believe it causes problems too as the Flyrants swooping means they're not scoring.

Anyway, Old One Eye is not completely redundant as he will be an extra body on the Armies on Parade board. Fingers crossed I will fit everything on it but this could be the first time everything is shown in one place [aside from the odd model that is incomplete, are 30 genestealers classed as the odd model?]

Imperial Knight - Cerastus in manufactorum pt 9

The Knight has had all it's panels highlighted, this is pre-glaze which has helped to sooth out some of the transitions. I also decided to fill in the black chevrons which has definitely helped me feel happier about them and the rest of the colour scheme. I also added some highlights to the yellow stripes too. I'd only had Mecharius orange on there with a sepia wash and it somehow looked yellow so I didn't want to go extreme highlight. This is just Tau Sept Ochre [still rocking those Foundation paints!]. I regret not having the texture of the red panels but I did paint the stripes a little roughly so although they're not even stippled or textured there is an illusion that the paint has not gone on smoothly

I also painted the pipework on his legs orange, ahead of painting more chevron stripes on it. As mentioned previously I now have to decide on picking out other pipe details. Its a weird thing because I have to choose now as there are chest plates to add later and I won't be able to pick some of them out when they're in place. Which begs the question do I need to do them? If I can't get in there to paint them and they'll be obscured is it worth sweating over what I need to do and doing it?

Like I say, too much time in my own head.

Parts: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 

'nids part 176 - OHNiOOE- Oh Hell No! its Old One Eye

Probably not what you all want to see, me back on the nids but abandoning the Dark Angels for Blog Wars did suddenly allow me a little scope to return to what's familiar. He's also on my To Do List so I don't feel too bad. OOE has been in hibernation for a good while now, having completed the base [except bonewhite chips] and all the base colours and washes. All I needed to do was the chitin, bonewhite, black claws/hooves and SFX. So with the pressure off on the forces of the Imperium I quickly painted all these chitin highlights, but you can see it wasn't all plain sailing as I got bored part way through the vents and stopped, probably did some little bits on the Cerastus

Then I was able to finish the first set off the following night, had another flit back to the Cerastus and then the next night I did all the second stage highlights. I have to give myself some credit that I did those spots on the chitin way back when. Looking at the pic above compared to the one below there's no way just the feathered highlights alone would suffice. The spots just add something extra, break up the carapace and actually draw your eye away from the dodgy brush strokes on the feathering!

The Sything Talons had already been highlighted. There are some Crushing Claws to do but I still have my magnetised Tervigon Claws so I can use those instead.

I'm still very much committed to the Dark Angels and the Knights, so do not fear this is me back-sliding into the digestion pits of the Hive I'm just very conscious that there are elements of the Knight I may yet agonise over and as I've identified on numerous occasions having a variety of projects on the go allows me to direct my efforts on things I can and want to do when other things are beset by hurdles ot overcome. Hopefully then I'll have time to reconcile the issues while sitll being productive elsewhere. For instance I glazed all the Cerastus armour plates the other night - a complete non-job that would have slowed progress waiting for the glaze to dry if all I was doing was the knight. Meanwhile I have questions about picking out details in some of the pipe-work on his torso which I need to answer or just leave as is. Hopefully this detour will help clarify or perhaps jumpstart me to just do it and stop questioning. I think that's the problem with painting, you end up with too much time inside your own head!

1850pt battle report - Dark Angels v Orks

Ben asked me for a last minute game the other night so I took the opportunity to get some more practice in with the Dark Angels and this time borrowed his Cerastus so I could field my potential Blog Wars list

The low down:

• Hammer and Anvil
• Kill points
• Night fighting, won deployment, elected to deploy first and go first.
• Warlord Trait - Ezekiel - Fearless to all units within 12"
• Psychic powers:

1. Psychic Shriek
2. Terrify
3. Shrouding
4. Mental Fortitude

I had my Devastators in my Bastion, this time with an armorium cherub [the Watcher] which I never actually used.

I had Ezexiel taking cover in the wrecked Rhino from the blasted copse, we 'Forged the Narrative' that the Orks had blown up the tank prior to the game starting and the squad were abotu to leave it's confines. The Cerastus had the lead, in front of the other Combat Squad and the scouts while the Plasma Cannon Tactical squad held the sacred shrine. There was only 7 in this squad as I had to drop a couple of member to fit the Cerastus in. One unit of Deathwing and the Techmarine were int he Land Raider the others were dee striking.

Ben's set up, this time with a fair few tank busters.

I was able to wreck one of the Trukks thanks to the Devastators Missile Launchers but then was unable to use the Quad Gun because the target was no more. First strike to me.

Big Shootas managed to get some good field of fire from their vantage points but I'm not sure they did much damage in their first turn [certainly no First Strike] thanks to stupidly good cover saves helped by Ezekiel casting Shrouding and night fighting too. I think the Knight may have taken a Hull Point or two though.

My turn two and the Deathwing arrive and shoot up the back of one of the trukks but not sufficient to wreck it. Ezekiel leapt from cover and raced up behind the Land raider hoping to get in range for Psychic Scream, which he did but couldn't hit!

The Painboys trukk had come down my left flank and the Scouts had not alternative but to assault. They were going to die in the Ork turn with only overwatch to reward their sacrifice, so I may as well assault and get twice my attacks at a better 'to hit' roll. Sadly they failed to do anything more than perhaps 1 wound and were promptly slaughtered.

My disembarked Terminators shot up the Orks nearest so I no longer could meet my charge roll. I also kept the Techmarine with them. which in Ben's turn I realised was a mistake as he could have trekked over to the Knight and tried to fix his Hull Points. I think the Knight was able to wreck Ghazgkhull's trukk though, but it may have taken far more fire than it should have done.

With their ride imobilised the Tank Busters set forth with a couple of Bomb Squigs adding a Hull Point or two to the Knight.

The Dakkajet turned up but I'm not sure he was particularly effective.

Which was irrelevant really as Ghazgkhull was bearing down on them.

Things were not going to end well.

Kommandos turned up and I immediately remembered their burners and just how useless that bolstered 3+ cover really was.

 

 But there was still plenty going on in the middle of the board.

 

Having killed the Scouts the Panboy and krew headed for the Tac squad

The get into Kombat and wreck face.

It seems the Dark Angels were sporting some Apprentice-crafted armour! So the four marines were chopped up with hardly a wound in return.

 

Orks consolidated onto the crashed Aquila.

Ghazgkhull got into combat having shot three of the Terminators. It's one thing to have a full compliment of Deathwing in that assault but just three was never going to hold up against the Orks.

The Knight was charged by the Tank Busters who managed to get another 2 Hull Points on him through various means.

My other Deathwing were surrounded also with one Terminator being lost before the charge. The Techmarine was trapped in the assault too

Ghazgkhull finishes the Deathwing off with ease and moves back up the field.

The Tank Busters blow the Knight up which takes out all but two of their number.

With most everyone dead I decided to call it.

Even with a Knight I feel utterly out-classed with the Dark Angels. I'm not sure if it's early days getting to know them, the fact I have units that are sub-optimal, the wrong tactics or a tough opponent going up against hordes. Bottom line is that although this was a fun game, and we had a right old laugh, the fact it suddenly fell apart so spectacularly was not fun and the army is just painful to use at the moment.

Therefore, I cannot anticipate with any joy taking this current army list to BWX. Sure it's a 'non-competitive' tournament so sub-optimal is fine but if it needs to be sub-optimal it will have to look cool and right now it's neither. So, following this I've abandoned the Dangles for BWX, it will be nids again. I'm hoping to try a different list with more Monstrous Creatures but we'll have to see.

Imperial Knight - Cerastus in manufactorum pt 8

I'm actually not 100% sure what this stage represents, I think this is post sepia wash and if I'm honest perhaps should have stopped here.

However, I carried on with my standard recipe of a Devlan wash after the sepia wash

And pretty much removed the transition between Khorne Red and Vermillion. This panel shading is a bit to harsh for my liking but I'm reluctant to do anything with it.

I don't think it's wrong, just a bit OTT. Perhaps a bit of variety might have helped, not just darkening every panel to the same degree

Anyway, not too much to show, it's slow progress because as much as I love the man cave, as predicted, it requires a certain motivation to nip out, usually around 10-10:30pm and then it's only an hour or 90 minutes before I've got to come back in with the prospect of a 5:30am alarm call! So I'm having real reservations about what I can do for Blog Wars. I'm only hoping I can complete the knight, even then I may have to borrow Ben's Cerastus, so really should be focusing on the Tactical Squad, but all the time I'm reminded that the army isn't complete and as much as I don't want to take the nids again part of me thinks that taking the Dark Angels as is, is nothing short of 'fraudulent'.That the standard I've produced on the nids isn't refelcetd in the Dark Angels, even if that's mainly because it's incomplete. I don't expect to win again, with either army but I do feel as a past winner I've a duty to uphold the integrity of the painting competition, and right now what I can deliver just doesn't cut it.

Parts: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 

40kaddict Towers - Inside the man cave

It's been a good few weeks now since the power was switched on and I started to move my stuff into the man cave. Sadly I haven't had opportunity to share the 'finished' results with you yet. This was pretty much after I moved about 65% of my junk into the shed, what's left in the back room has still to be sorted but although the shed look quite full it still needed another sift of what was needed, what could be chucked and a lot of the storage areas weren't filled or had not been optimised to their best. I'm still confident I'll get it all in but there's a lack of urgency now which is a bit worrying. I will endeavour to make the final transition this weekend and remove all my stuff from the back room so we can look at decorating/moving the dining table inside.

I have to say its a very weird feeling sitting in exactly the same environment but transplanted to a different location, it was so odd I asked my son to sit in the chair to see if he agreed, and he did!

So you can tell there's really no room to play a game in here but it's kind of cosy, I just need to sort out curtains or and tweek the door frame so it's more draft-proof. The weather has just started to turn autmnal, I've had a painting session which was cold but the little electric oil radiator I have warmed things up pretty quick. I'm looking forward to the first cold snap so I can see how chilly it actually gets.

Imperial Knight - Cerastus in manufactorum pt 7

I'm managing to get an hour or so here and there on the Lancer and although I went ahead and put my first set of highlights on it my confidence was immediately shaken by the results. My Vermilion didn't look good. I'd stippled it on and felt it was just not quite right. It certainly didn't sit well with the chevron stripes but they've not had the black added because I'm not 100% happy with the angle of the stripes towards the back of the carapace.

So filled with doubt I girded my loins and shifted my perspective on the results. Rather than be frozen by indecision I decided that the loss of the maroon Khorne Red was no loss and this new stippled Vermilion was exactly what I was after and I'll keep telling myself that until I damn well believe it.

Seriously though, I did realise that I would be applying additional shadow washes in much the same way as I apply them to the bonewhite on my nids. A sepia wash across the entirety and then a Devlan mud wash in all the edges and creases. This way I would blend the areas left Khorne red with the Vermilion and then the next set of Vermilion highlights would show up against the areas of Vermilion that had sepia applied. Then I could use my prepared Red Planet BASE! highlight colours to the pure Vermilion and build up the highlights naturally.

As the principles were the same I became confident again, there's a little part of me that will miss the dark red version that could have been but that exists in another dimension in the multi-verse so I'm sure another me is happy with those results, maybe regretting not going Vermilion but equally comfortable on his space yacht surrounded by his 67 wives, I love those other dimensions where I'm doing really well!

The chest and groin plate have also been brought up to scratch it's quite difficult to keep up with which bits have been done though as some parts will also need washes on the metallics and having not created a tick sheet for each component I'm trying to keep in my head what needs to be done next and which bits are still outstanding, perhaps that list would be handy and keep me on track?

I do like the stippled effect of this craft acrylic, it has rendered it to look a little like hammered iron which is pretty cool for a £1 tube of paint. I'm hoping it'll help with the highlights, making it less reliant on smooth blends but with an interesting finish.

Meanwhile I did see this Knight on facebook. Sadly I forgot the users name after I downloaded it, he was selling it anyway. But I love the finish, particularly on the white shoulder pads, this is also what I was hoping to emulate.

I may have gone a bit lighter on my metallics than this and will struggle with the decals thanks to the stippled texture but PeteB swears by MicroSol so I may get that hoping to mitigate the creases that can form.

It's really awesome though, so I just hope I can do something similar without getting too carried away with highlights as this relies more on shadows from oil washes to achieve depth and dimension rather than artificially highlighting the model which is the way I do things.

We'll have to see how it goes though...

Parts: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 |