What's on my palette?

Bless me readers for I have sinned, it's been just over 4 months since my last confession and I just need to evaluate where I'm at to keep track and focus.

 

To be fair  I did a 'Where’s my head @', my Hobby Season Review and the To Do List, so they cover some of what What’s on my palette achieves. That said there’s a lot coming in the last quarter of the year. The biggies were Fluffageddon and Armies on Parade, the sad news is that unfortunately I’m not going to make Fluffageddon. The same day is one of the infrequent Southport Floral Hall Rock Nights. The wife wants to go and as it’s harking back to our early days together, where we’d rock out to the likes of Skid Row, Ozzy Osbourne, Faith No More and many others I’m not about to disappoint her by not getting back in time [literally and figuratively]. Hopefully some of my gaming crew will also be at the Floral as we always played and partied hard back then, given we all went to these things. In fact that's were I reconnected with them way back in 2012. Not to mention our last visit in 2015:

I’m really disappointed not to get in on the first Fluffageddon, Alex was always keen to point out those who’d been to Blog Wars from the beginning so I was imagining Matt would do the same. It would have also made a good recce of the Outpost in case future From the Fang events happen there. However, that did leave a bit of a hole in my Winter tournament schedule but luckily there seems to be a wealth of alternatives. Caledonian are holding a number of events over the next few months, both one and two day tournaments. Additionally Wargames has a couple of events, 40k GT heats and there’s also Armies on Parade, the calendar looks a bit like this:

• Autumn Onslaught 9th October - Element Games
• Armies on Parade 15th October - Games Workshop
• 40k Store Championship 22nd October - Wargames
• Heat 5! 40k GT 29th & 30th October - Element Games
• Fluffageddon 12th November - The Outpost
• Caledonian Highlander/Unbound 19th & 20th November - Element Games
• Winter Warm Up 18th December - Element Games
• Last Chance Open 40k Tournament 14th & 15th January - Wargames

Obviously I’m not going to all of them and this is not everything that’s going on nationwide, there are plenty of other 40 GTs happening but these are the ones I was interested in and trying to fit them around my wife’s work. The end result is I’ll be attending Armies on Parade and the Caledonian Highlander. The Caledonian is new to me, hence why I chose Highlander, I’m not sure the Unbound is my bag and luckily Liam and Ben are going to go too. It’s two days, which I’m less keen on, I prefer just a one day event but it fits around home life and as the wife has given me a pass I’ll make do. I’m particularly intrigued about the army lists that can be made with the limitations but I’ll be taking the nids and as it’s only 1500pts and 3 hours to play I think it should be quite relaxed. The only thing I need to worry about is perhaps making my Acid Spray for my Tyrannofex, I'm in two mind between it and a Carnifex... We may also look at Wargames in January but that’s a long way off just yet.

AoP is a different matter though as that's just over 4 weeks away. I still have to prepare a couple of things to be happy with my display:

• Imperial Knight Paladin
• Imperial Bastions
• Quad Gun

This is the bare minimum, I'd hoped to add in  some of the Deathwatch but I'm realistic that's highly unlikely even if I did want to simplify how I paint them so they're quicker than my Ravenwing. I just don't have it in me to compromise and rush them... Still the Paladin is progressing and I can limit my efforts just to the one set of weaponry so I can then shift focus back to the Bastions and pick up the remainder after Parade day.

 

To that end I'll be setting myself a new schedule to keep these tasks in mind. It's a rough guess on how long I can allocate to each part and if I complete them ahead of schedule so much the better.

The tale of 5 Kill Teamers [or 4 Kill Teamer and 1 cheater!]

I don't know what celestial alignment occured to get 5 of the hobby crew in one room but we only went and done it. Ben hosted Liam, Otty, PeteB and myself for a night of Kill Team, even more surprsing when you take into account PeteB has moved over to Age of Sigmar! So we set up on a 4'x4' playing the Supply Drop mission.

Ben chose the typically orky position of facing off against everyone in the middle of the board. Nobs on bikes and his tank busters.

Otty brought his Inquisition Force and it was round about now he realised he'd cheated and brought a HQ - his Inquisitor. We let it pass on the udnerstanding that he would never live it down, forever!

Liam brought evil space pixies.

PeteB had some Chaos Space Marines hiding in a shoe box, next time I imagine it'll be Khorne Daemonkin. I brought four Ravenwing bikes and my Sniper scouts, with a Missile Launcher.

We rolled off for who went first, I think it was Liam, PeteB, Otty, Ben and then myself. Realistically it was a nightmare to follow what was going on for a coherent battle report. Pretty much everyone scored a 'first strike' [First Blood in their first turn] Liam took out PeteB's lone Missile Launcher marine in the tower next to him. PeteB picked up a valuable supply drop and we all seemed to target and kill a specialist so we were each 2 or 3 VPs up each by the end of turn 1.

Personally I was able to take out the nearest threat to my scouts - the three Chaos Marines. Then I charged my Ravenwing at Ben's bikes. I'd killed one biker with the plasma gun then the Warlord charged his Warlord and was cut down in overwatch which thanks to Ben's Warlord trait netted him 3 VPs for almost no effort and left my army worse off than I'd hoped. Other amusing things included Liam's Venom getting stuck on a crater [or immobilized by Ben's bomb Squig] meaning his Incubi had to foot slog across the board. Otty's Servitors kept on getting mind-locked so hardly advanced out of their DZ

My Scouts remained pretty much steadfast for the game, while PeteB was morale checking quite early on. His shooting seemed to be always spot on but his 10,000 year old ammo couldn;t wound for toffee. While my Ravenwing entered into combat with an Ork biker, we had 3 rounds each at combat with me getting 1s and 2s to hit and then getting 5s for Hit & Run it was ludicrously comical. The deadlock was only broken by a Deathcult Assassin getting in on the melee and killing both parties!

The end result saw Ben, who was currently out of reach on at least 10 VPs being tabled, so he was out of the scoring, with Liam also with no models on the board. We then got points for other forcess that routed or killed. Otty was the only faction not to rout so PeteB and I got 3 VPs each bringing us both up to 9 and Otty was on 5 but got 4 VPs for the other factions.

That left the three of us in a three way tie for first place with PeteB and I taking a moral victory as we did not cheat :) Bottom line we had an absolute blast and we were done by 11:30. A great night was had by all and although it;s crushingly bad when any model dies in this game it's also highly amusing. Everything is so valuable, the stakes are so much higher and although a 5-way game skews the game into weird territories I think it worked out OK. I'll look forward to our next game.

Imperial Knight - in manufactorum pt 14

With the Land speeders in the bag it's about time the Imperial Knight got finished. It's been pushed ot one side for far to long, granted everything else were perfectly valid contributions to my armies and my hobby exploits but they really have been avoidance tasks. Which is odd because as I actually start doing more on the Knight I can literaly taste how quick I can finish this thing. Sure it's not goign to be done next week but it seems straightforward and certain elements once done - patina, will have a massive impact on progress.

Anyway, greens and highlighting the banner.

Weapon options.

Carapace and the back of the banner, which was roughly dry-brushed to get cross hatched lines to make it look like fabric.

Pauldrons, I'll need to do all the battle damage before I do the verdigris. But before all of that - heraldry markings...

Choice of helmets, the one on the right is traditionally the Gerantius faceplate but I can't decide just yet.

I gloss varnished the access hatch and banner for some decals

and I'm a little disenchanted with the results.

The construction mark has warped thanks to the decal softener. I did keep re-postioning it thoughso it's partly my fault. I just couldn't get it to align in the dead centre of the hatch with it's top and bottom parallel to the window and edge. I'm also dubious about the big 'red thing' drawing attention to itself on top of the carapace. Hopefully some battle damage will tone it down.

And this! Well I always assumed it fit in this side of the banner - it does not! I had to trim off the bottom and replace it with the triangle  to make it fit. Some shading did help but as soon as I applied Lahmian Medium on top, to tone down the glossy decal finish, it rehydrated the pigment and washed it off. I'm hoping some subsequent coats will help.

Bottom line the whole project has become a bit schizophrenic, flitting from visions of the 'the end is in sight' to 'couldn't care less'. I'm sure it's not helped by fatigue but it's becoming less appealing to do. That said the other night I was not going to work on this at all and managed to put in an hour or two and get one leg and the waist completely weathered. When I get the second leg done that'll be about a third of the model complete, which is awesome butt tempered by all the other hurdles yet come. I've no doubts on the painting it's just elements like the decals, I'm half a mind to do an alternative banner...

Parts: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 |

Dark Angels - Land Speeder Typhoons - moar shots

These are the 'cinematic shots' i.e. the ones with a shedload of filters on to try and make them more interesting. Unlike my pic of the Dark Talon I'm not sure if there's any improvements but I always need some pics on my phone for various social media platforms so it's always worth doing.

Sure all my other To Done! pics are in the cloud but for 'reasons' it's nice to have some stored locally too.

These actually look really ropey, nevermind.

There seems to be a bit of a furore over the use of Prisma, certainly on Facebook folk are getting pretty steamed about it. Personally I think it adds another dimension but there's a knack to it and certainly little benefit of using it on WiP shots with all your hobby table in the back ground.

I can definitely recommend dialling back the filter sometimes, it helps bring back definition of the model but retains the artistic styling.

I could imagine this being useful in making a 40k comic, if I had the time I'd do it I'm sure some bright spark will take the idea and run with it though. Certainly make the headlight OSL work though.

Anyway, hope you enjoy the pics.

GW on the TV

We've all seen a big change in GW recently, from their embracing social media, push for more games and return of Specialist Games, but when was the last time you saw them advertise on TV?!

That time is now (according to the wife, who just sent me this picture).

Dark Angels - Land Speeder Typhoons - To Done!

I'd been holding out for the weekend to get my To Done! pics done. I make the fundamental mistake of using natural light and with autumn approaching that's going to be in short supply. I've a plan to fix that though so 'bear with'.

I wasn't overly impressed with the pics but seeing them now they don't look too bad. In fact it's these pics that are convincing me I've done a half decent job on them. In fairness I should have taken pictures alongside the rest of my Ravenwing to compare the consistency, you can definitely see brighter and more highlights on these than the Dark Talon, but it's a smaller model with more edges so there would be more going on.

I'm still dubious about the orange missiles, but I've used orange throughout for grenades and missiles so I felt compelled to stick with it. Consistency is hugely important across the force, despite huge variation in the three wings and a riot of detail competing for attention so long as some things remain the same it ties all the disparate pieces together.

I plan to get at least another Typhoon to complete the squadron. If I ever do another unit I'll mix up the edges a bit so that there are red borders elsewhere - I don't imagine I'll have more than the three Typhoons so that element will be transposed on a different part of the model.

The jets turned out OK, I haven't added any gloss varnish. Liam brought me to task on its use as a glow effect. Whereas it may be appropriate on the white bits the rest isn't. I may well add those little bits at some point but for now I've just left it.

The Book turned out OK too, I could have done some more illumination on the page but I struggle with this sort of thing so it looked all right in the end so I'll take it as a win.

The Ravenwing pilot is called 'Maze' after the nickname for the demon Mazikeen in Lucifer, well it had to be a short name to fit on the plaque ;) Both marines had the Ravenwing symbol painted freehand, the gunner's is a bit ropey because I was painting it through the speeder frame but I think they pass muster.

These guys had markings moulded into their shoulder pads so the winged skull was a bit easier.

I also put the company number and squad tribal markings in to break it up although I think I should have stuck with one direction. The gunners eyes are a bit wonky but only if you look dead on, which is difficult as the heavy bolter obscures both eyes. They're so small though and such a pain I think they'll do. This pic does seem to suggest the highlights are too extreme, I may look to be more subtle with my Deathwatch and in turn make them easier to paint...

Just a shot of the complete underneath

So close to being completed in last Season, but I really sabotaged myself in that respect. Nevermind it's all done and I look forward to adding them into my existing force. I think they'll easily replace my Deathwing with a few more points to spend. I think they'll give me more long range firepower with potential to hide in my back field and should they last sneak around stealing objectives. Anyway, my first Big Purple Stamp of Approval!

MOAR Red Planet BASING

With the completion of the Land Speeders, with only photos to take, I'm transitioning to my next project, qwhich will no doubt be the completion of my Knight. However, I thought I'd go via Red Planet BASING the Genecult. With my patented process I keep thinking to myself about how they're in fact more orange than red and getting dangerously close to the ridiculous red-highlighting-to-yellow-to-white I used to do way-back-when.

But, as I'm fond of pointing out on the Red Planet BASE! facebook group there is far more diversity in the Martian basing style than people give credit to, evidenced by the variety seen in the group. Anyway, there's still a lot to do on these bases. I have to pick out all the wreckage and debris, render those metallics and there are also various pieces of panels I can add more colours to to fit my original Genecult rubble bases. You can definitely see where I've tried to reign in highlighting the centre of the base [where a shadow logically would be cast] but I can still be over-zealous with the final Pumpkin highlight. We'll see how the extra elements break it up and then there's even the Bonewhite chips too... The rest of the models will be then on pause while I do the Knight but I may flit between it and the Aberrants when I get bored. The rest of the hybrids are compromised by all the various elements to paint but the Abberrants look reasonably straightforward once I reconcile the skin tones and mutations with Hive Fleet Gorgon's colour scheme.

Prior to this I'd also finished my bike bases. These are now ready to drill for pinning the Ravenwing Black Knights/Command squad.

Lastly I finished up the Deathwatch paradoxically I'm looking forward to painting them but no desire to begin. The Knight is calling, it deserves completion and these Johnny-come-latelies are not going to interfere.