Imperial Knight - Cerastus in manufactorum pt 11

A nights work? I struggle sometimes to reconcile how I feel so much satisfaction for so little output, but I made a damn decision, actually I made two, so that's definitely satisfying. I decided to have a crack at some damage and to do the white stripe on the chest piece too, and they were the right decisions. The battle damage is all freehand, no sponges just making choices of where to put damage. That may come back to bite me as I'm sure it'll look contrived somehow, but the results [even if the highlights are a bit mixed up] speak for themselves. This just went up another level and I can't wait to do more. Yet I have to wait, as I need to add on litanies and any decals or freehands first so I can then add further battle damage over the top of it. But it's really broken up the highlights of the panel, which where a bit rough and patchy in places and this helps draw focus away from the deficiencies.
And the stripe too came out much better than expected, I'm also thinking of putting the white Metalica decal below the stripe, I think that would work really well if I can also manage to tone the white down a bit.

To add to the 'extensive' progress I made in one evening I also weathered my pylon [ooer, missus!]. I only did one of them and a teleport homer and although I'm loving the effect I think I've gone overboard in some places so it looks less like weathering and more like there is some kind of St Elmo's fire surrounding the pylon. That isn't a bad thing really as I could imagine the energy discharge doing just that, but it's both effective and dubious[?] at the same time. It's mentally jarring at the very least, it just makes me question what I'm seeing that's all, I like it I just don't know exactly what it's conveying. Not that it matters, it is what it is and now I just have to patina the other 4 markers.

The only other question is do I add some lighting effects on the emitters? They would be yellow/orange like my Tactical squads plasma coils I've got to add some red lighting effects on the teleport homer beacons which I'm hoping will help me come to terms with the lighting I'll use on my Ravenwing but I don't know if I should do the glow on these... so much for being decisive!

Well, to prove it wasn;t a one off I made another decision the following night. I started work on some chevrons on the Cerastus right shin guard. I used my one of ever-handy coffee stirrer sticks to set the width of the stripes. I think I started penciling in the line just below the horizontal leaf on the central bronze reinforcement. I didn't want to go through it and luckily the stripes seemed to fall quite evenly spaced.

Given house Raven is predominantly black as an accent I chose that as the dominant colour. I then filled in the alternate stripes with my still remaining watered down Mecharius Solar Orange.

Then Iadded watered down Tau Sept Ochre which doesn't look particularly yellow in the pot but looks positively lemon here. I tried to be a bit rough with it to allow some of the underlying tones to show through but in comparison to the crapace stripes this is much more opaque. I will add a very thin highlight on the top edges of each stripe and then use washes to try and tone it back. I'm hoping thte shading will increase contrast so I don't have to do too many highlights. I do really like the texture that's still apparent from the Vermilion craft acrylic, that's definitely a regret I didn't do the carapace that way and instead went straight to the chevrons.

 

You may also just note there is some litanies on the left of the shin pad, I should have taken some pictures as I'm less impressed with the results. I did some Valejo Heavy read before I applied Bonewhite. This was to ad a bit of shading  and although I usually do light-grey litanies I thought sticking with bonewhite would help tie some of the colours together. I even highlighted them a bit but I think the extra painting has reduced the sharpness and details. Hopefully I'll get better at it and then the battle damage will obscure the worst of my efforts ;) So although slightly disappointed [yes, I am my own worst critic] this was good progress and highlighted areas that will prove challenging.

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

Blog Wars X

Today is Blog Wars X, I can't say enough how much I enjoy this event and appreciate all the hard work Alex From the Fang does in putting on the event. When I started back into the hobby and met up with my mates and they were desparate to attend Warhammer World I really enjoyed the experience but it is costly, the tickets and accommodaiton is one thing but it's not just the price it's the time overhead too. You're away from home for two nights at least and getting back from Nottingham on a Sunday can be quite late.

Obviously for me and my mates the North West Gaming Centre is practically round the corner, I know  alot of people have to travel much further and I can sympathise with that but the tickets are considerably cheaper and it only being a one day tournie means you still get at least half your weekend at home with the family. And the raffle is also pretty cool, not that I've ever won anything in that but I've made up for it obviously in other ways and there is always that chance - it could be you!

Alex has stated ext year there will only be one Blog Wars, with the fledgling tournament Fluffageddon taking the November spot. Fluffageddon was originally set for September just gone but didn't have enough interest. I know I struggled to fit another even in between BW9 and X but I've every intention to jump onto it in November 2016 as I wish I could have been involved in BW1. We may well look at attending a Warhammer World event in March/April too as it's been far too long since our last visit but for right now I'm looking forward to todays competition, BW11 and Fluffageddon.

I'll let you know how we all got on as soon as I can, have a great weekend.

Terrain is everything - 'Tis the season to pick up your trees

A few years ago I picked up a bag of model trees from Dobbies, our local garden centre [and craft shop]. They only have them in the run up to Christmas as they're for making your own Christmas scene with miniature revelers and holiday nik-naks. I've not seen them the last couple of years but it might have reurned to my local store, or yours should you know of a Dobbies nearby.  I've noticed online other garden centres do stock them also.

Now I haven't had chance to go this year but I'm hoping they're back in stock and just thought I'd remind folk about them. The set I got was 21 pieces from a company called Lemax for £13 which I think is good value. Clearly there's at least two that are just a bit too big, they're the same size as my 40k outpost that got bigger! but great line of sight blockers for a Trygon!

Of course they weren't going to fit with my table so I decided to paint them - undercoating them all in Red Oxide primer and then repainting them in shades of yellow.

And here's the finished result:

'nids part 179 - CARNIFEX!

Quick one [hopefully], as promised [or is that threatened?] here's the Carnifex Brood photos.

Really chuffed how conisistent the painiting has become the only real differnce is the slime base on the second Carnifex, which, with hindsight, is a little inconvenient as Carnifex 1 and 2's bases match up really well.

Nevermind, the Hive devours on.

I'm really liking Carnifex now, there's something about the model that's cool I can understand why people end up with nine of these things despite the leg positioning making the posing options relatively limited.

I'm pretty certain that if I wasn't careful I'd end up with quite a few more, which is daft as currently I think I'd struggle to fit more than three in a list.

I do like the way I can bunch them all up, as if they needed to huddle together like kittens, big monstrous all consuming nightmare inducing alien killing kittens!

Right, that's enough nids for now.

Back to the Cerasatus Knight!

Blog Wars X Tyranid Army list

As I've seen a few other blogs post their BWX army lists I thought why the heck not. Having abandoned the Dark Angels as a bad idea [and also unachievable given timescale and rate of progress] the nids will be there yet again. I'm reluctant to enter them into the painting competition, having won last time, but Alex said it's not a problem and I honestly think there will be lots of competition for the top spot as I know Liam and Otty's armies will do really well alongside the usually high standard of entrants. But I know it's an issue for some and money is involved so I'd rather not be 'that guy' when I don't have to be. From recent experience I know whatever good will I generate from people enjoying the army is easily lost when the competitive side gets involved so I;d rather just display it and try and promote the blog this time.

So, here's my list, I was apprehensive about the new double CAD option at first, it was only in the last few weeks when I was asking some questions of Alex that he pointed out it was possible that I could take two CADs, I was still under the impression it was not possible to have two of the same faction. So I created this list and finally able to run [swoop] two Flyrants, which I haven't been able to do at Blog Wars since the old Codex, which obviously had the Doom of Malantai who was everyones favourite Special Character but he was an Elite choice so made 2 Flyrant HQs easy. Nowadays all but one of our Specials are HQs so twin Flyrants was difficult. 

I've dropped the Manufactorum Genestealers because there were too many models and I needed to shave points. The Children of Cryptus came in instead, slightly more durable, less board presence and ability to affect how your opponent deploys [I so love messing with people's heads before they even put models down] but they are Ob Sec which is pretty valuable. Overall I wanted more MCs, less body count. Obviously they 30 gaunts counter that but there are only 52 models in total so hopefully my games will be a little quicker. I was able to shave a few points off by dropping some Hive Guard I was going to take and instead replace their four T6 4+ saves with the Mawloc's six T6 3+ saves. Now I'm not sure if it'll be anymore effective, it may not even turn up in the game and he is notoriously and literally 'hit and miss' but I like my model and who knows he may work well with Deathleaper this time. I also dropped my Tyrannofex but I'm pretty sure the twin Flyrants and the Tyrannocyte podding in the second Carnifex or even the transporting the tunneling Rippers should I feel the need the Carni's are better starting on the ground will allow me more board presence. I don;t have any weapons higher than S6 but I suppose there's always assaulting with the Carni's too. Either way I think it's a fun list for me, maybe not too nice with the 2 Flyrants but it could have been worse if I had Crones and Harpies. Anyway, bring on Saturday.

'nids part 178 - OHNiOOE- Oh Hell No! its Old One Eye TO DONE!

With a bit of a push to finish OOE for Armies on Parade I surprised myself how quick he came togethe. To be fair I repurposed my Tervigon Crushing Claws, he is the uber Carnifex afterall so I will have to finish of the standard Claws at some point.

 

However, someone did mention on a forum they'd used Haruspex claws to represent OOE so I fancy doing that as well at some point.

I also want to pick up another set of Fleshborer Hives so I can run three dakkafex although I do like this stripped down version so I probably need to do another set of Scything Talons as well. I do like the motion in this pose but I do feel I need one that's more upright, rearing up, which obviously goes against my only three Carnifex directive.

And I've three spare heads to finish off as well, two bio-plasma and one toxic tongue, no real reason for doing them, I just wanted alternative options.

I'm at least a little happier with his skull now, the carbon skeleton is still odd butI added some more Tamiya Clear Red X-27 and I think it works better now.

It reminds me a little of the Alien Resurrection hybrid.

A close up ohis back and patterning.

Probably the easiest MC I've painted in a long while. So glad I took some time to interupt my Imperium efforts with this. I've ended up completing something I had on the books, enjoyed the process and have returned to the Imperium with renewed vigour. Definitely something to learn from to add to my arsenal of tricks to raise motivation. I've done this before and been aware of the benefits but repetition with the same results is confirming the efficacy of this approach

And my first Big Green Stamp of approval, yeah, don't forget folks hobby Season is for all year, not just for Christmas ;) I've another set of pictures to follow of all three Carnifex together, I hope you don't mind.

Support your local blogger - If it wasn't for ones

It's been a really long time since I asked folk if they wanted a little spotlight on their blog from my blog. I thought it'd help them out and also provide me with something to share when I didn;t have any content but sometimes it took just as long to write a post about their blog than perhaps writing a Battle Report, well, not that long but it eventually become something easier to not do than do.

But I decided to at least crack on with some of those who orginally asked post  Frank O'Donnell of http://ifitwasntforone.blogspot.co.uk put his name down and he's always been a big supporter and commenter ont he blog so I decided it was about time I showed him some support in return. His blog has changed quite a lot and recent posts suggest he's given up 40k [is that still the case Frank?] but that doesn't mean there isn't a host of 40k content on the blog you can't still access. 

You can also enjoy his many current posts on other games and there's also a whole host of interesting terrain building articles in case you're hankering for some hobby inspirations. So please do check it out: http://ifitwasntforone.blogspot.co.uk

What's on my palette

Bless me readers for I have sinned, it's been over five months since my last confession. Obviously I was a bit busy with Man Caves, Dangles and Lancers but what now?

 

I've blog wars in a few days and as I'm no longer taking the Dangles they've pretty much gone off the boil. However I will not foresake them but I will be refocussing my efforts. First up I'm going to finish off my Teleport Homers/Energy Field/Objective markers. They're on my To Do List, so they're sin free and given I'll be weathering them up with Verdigris it will help build confidence for the weathering ahead on the Lancer.

The Lancer is the next priority. I need to be decisive about choices to be made and crack on with him. He could be so close to completion if I manage to put in some concerted effort in getting him done.

 

I will also fish out the Tactical Squad, see if I can crack on with them and perhaps finish up on the Bastions while I'm at it. Again these are potentially 'quick wins', I mean they're not, I'll obviously take forever doing them but they're considerably more progressed than a lot of other projects so it feels liek I should be able to finish them up quick[ish].

No real surprises here but it's what comes after that's the big question and to be honest I don't know. Of course I do have my list of things to do but I'm not looking at that as priority order. I do have the second Knight to paint but I still have to full magnetise him first which I think may be a Winter job, y'know prepare stuff during the cold weather ready for a Spring surge.

One other thing I want to get better at is 'brevity'. I was recently at a seminar where the head of Government Communications highlighted brevity as extremely important nowadays. We live in a society where twitter and it's 140 character limit has shown that people don't want tomes of text. He quoted Mark Twain

“I didn't have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.”

And I know I'm guilty of doing just that, which is odd as quite often I find myself railing against other people doing just that. I've talked abotu this before and 'micro-blogging' but this time I'll endeavour to be more succinct [as I'm failing to do right now ;) ] Anyway, if I get the hang of it it should make the blog better maybe help other bloggers too. Towards that end if you didn't know of it already and I only looked it up recently I'd advise checking this out if you needed convincing of brevity TL;DR.

5+ Happy Blog Day

I usually add a Legion heraldy badge to celebrate my Blog Day, but in this case I couldn't really find a decent White Scars Legion badge. Then I looked for Dark Angel 5th Company badges and many of those images I found were just pictures from my blog, of my own 5th Company marines! However, I did find this Blood Ravens banner which I thought would do.

Anyway, 5 years a Servitor! Who'd have thought? I know I've posted quite a few arbitrary milestones recently but I think we can all agree this is the big daddy, the non-arbitrary measure 5 years of solid blogging. Sure the 1,000 posts one is important too because a five year blog with 5 posts isn't much to shout about and the followers and comments are also fantastic measures of how people feel about the blog which helps lift it beyond just shouting into the the void.  But 5 years! That's like time man! Time spent chatting about little plastic men.

Looking forwards though I can't see the blog ending, I worked out I had about two years worth of miniatures to paint, or more like three or four the speed I paint. I'm a little sad this year will deliver the least amount of posts since I started but the Winter slump hit me hard and hobby progress was more important than blogging about it. In time I think I'll try and get a bit more feedback from you all about what you like, don't like, what I can do to improve things; not saying I'll act on it or anything but the best of intentions and all that. Feel free to start the ball rolling, criticism equally appreciated I know I waffle on, not sure I can stop it but if it really is too much sometimes I'll aim for brevity as it makes writing the darn posts easier anyways. So thanks for popping by and we'll reconvene in 2020!

Armies on Parade 2015

PeteB and I dropped by GW Southport on Thursday to drop off our stuff, even with 45 minutes to set up I still couldn't fit everything on to my board that I wanted to. I think there's at least around 40 Termagants and my Gargoyles that didn't make it and it could have been displayed a little better but hey, the Manager does have to close up of an evening! Sadly I was in such a rush so didn't get to take pictures of PeteBs Eldar :(

Funnily enough I'm not sure this is as impressive as I thought it would look, does that mean I have to get me some more bugs? I think so and if the latest rumour about some new treats in January are true I may well treat myself, not so sure about the potential new Stealers, however much I love them I think there's plenty better value options and I do have those 30 still to paint, but Biovores and a possible Gargantuan - I'm in!

One other thing of note was just how compact I've been able to make my nids, this must be the least amount of bags, boxes and containers I've ever taken for the most amount of miniatures, goodness knows how I'll get it all back in.

Anyway, I've no idea how the event is going, what with being in Paris and all but I'll certainly let you know how things went and if you had a Parade today be sure and drop a link to any pictures in the comments.

Imperial Knight - Cerastus in manufactorum pt 10

As I reach double figures in the Cerastus in manufactorum series I do worry that it feels this has been dragged out a bit, although I'm aware progress has been well recieved and I appreciate all the comments to that effect. However, as the blog is less scheduled at the moment each post is pretty much 'this is what I did last/the other night'. Otherwise I'd have collated two or three sets of pics together in which case the blog would be less 'little and often' and more like once a week. Anyway, this was last nights progress and yes Monkeychuka the OCD kicked in and I had to paint some pipes, and now I want to paint more. I think a couple of bonewhite ones might break up the mass at the front, but I'm not sure if I should have done shtis after doing the verdigris as it may well screw up some of the pipe detail...

And this is all you see once the chest plates go on...? I kind of want to break up the colours on one of the plates, either by diagonal bonewhite stripe through the middle of the red, or halving it diagonally with yellow/black chevrons, what do you think?

I also got his undercarriage piping done, these match up with the ones I did for the Dark Angels Scouts. I did miss those two tine pipes on the back of hiships though, wil lhave to do those later. It does conjour up images of it being bitten on the arse by some kind of poisonous striped snake though!

The head has pipework stripes too.

And here's it together. I'm getting very close to the point where I have to start building the courage to do the verdigris. I know this will raise it another level but it's still a big risk but I've got my Reaver Titan out for reference. Although I didn't go quite the same red I can still be as economical with the verdigris as I was with the epic scale miniature - allowing real metallics and weathering to share the spotlight.

And I also managed to do remedial repairs on this Broodlord, I'd dropped him, breaking both his right arms off and chipping the spine vents. I used the opportunity to bring a few more reds into his liver/brown fleshy bits and will fix his tongue next.

So, steady but not amazing progress but this is the amount I'm getting done at the moment. I did really enjoy the session though. The other night I'd noticed that the computer desk feels a bit clammy so I've decided to always have the radiator on when I'm in the shed over the winter. It's not likely to keep the potential damp completely out of the shed but I think regular warmth can at least mitigate any problems. It was really cosy though, and it had started to rain so it was just a really nice place to be. When I decide to finish I switch off the main lights an put on a little spotlight which is much more pleasant and feels like a wind down [from the hectic high-adrenaline stakes in figure painting!].

Anyway, tomorrow the family and I are off to Disnelyand Paris, our first holiday abroad. It's only for four days but hopefully we'll have a great time, all of October is Hallowe'en themed. I should have still prepped a load of pictures from my Armies on Parade board that I set up last night at GW Southport but if it takes a couple of days to hear back from me don't worry, I've not been crushed under a mountain of old White Dwarfs. Have a great weekend, au revoir [yep that's all my GCSE french right there!]

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

'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 |