Hobby Update – Cattleclysm and Shadestalker

Last year I ran a flying doombull in my Beastmen list but I just used a standard model that I was never very happy with (loved the model but not that the loadout wasn’t represented). Inspired by the numerous excellent conversions that IRO keeps churning out I thought I’d better take a crack at it. 

Loads of great ideas were toyed with (many from the guys on the eefl forum, some even my own). Going with light hearted humour and green stuffing a cape and ‘Robin’ mask, to mounting him on a flying carpet. My favourite was the idea of the doombull being held aloft by a gaggle (flock/murder?) of harpies, either as if he were holding a bunch of balloons (but made of the aforementioned harpies) or them pulling a chariot he was mounted on.

(I still like the balloon/harpy idea – think of a dark version of the animated film ‘Up’)

Replace balloons with harpies and house with doombull

In the end (mainly as I’d never used green stuff or attempted such a project), I chose the easy route and decided to add wings to the cheap doombull model I picked up off eBay. 

I envisioned the doombull ripping the wings off the twitching corpse of the wood elf eagle/warhawk he had just buried his axe into and then Khazbar, using his dark magic, to fuse the still living wings to the doombull’s back. 

The wing colours are quite bright but I wanted another element that contrasted with the large quantity of brown and grey in the army (and they matched the colouring used on the eagles/hawks of my wood elves. Well fancy that, what a coincidence 😉). The green stuff modelling wasn’t too bad (there is a slight quozimodo look to him) and you can see the difference between the left side (which I did first) and the right (which is much better in terms of sculpting). In hindsight I really should have practiced first…

So I present Cattleclysm, scourge of Athel Loren.

With my Beastmen distraction over, I also continued my drive to finish the models needed for my potential wood elf competition list.

A number are currently on the table but the  half painted Stag Lord is quite a detailed model, so I put him to one side and went for a smaller model I had been wanting to paint for a while, the Waystalker. I love the fluff of the ultimate lone stalker. The hunt being everything in his eyes. 

I kept the paint scheme very simple, various greens, browns and the normal addition of fuscia to add the common army element. Washes were then applied and in a rarity for me, I pushed the boat out and even added some highlighting and other touches of detail (I have to point out the toadstools, yes it isn’t groundbreaking stuff but for me it’s pretty much Rembrandt levels of effort 😀). This model did, once again, reinforce that I much prefer painting metal (over plastic) with white base coats. The colours just seem so much brighter.

So I present Shadestalker, hunter of the Tal Shavoc.

Hobby Update – A Fey Enchantress

And so it continues. I present Merilel of the Moon, Highweaver of Tal Shavoc.

By all means not perfect but not my worst effort either. As always I kept things simple with bases colours, washes and drybrushes. The nature of the model actually meant I had to apply several layers especially on the unicorn when touching up after the wash and drybrush of the mane. The blue mane was very much for my wife who has been threatening to paint it with nail varnish for a while, as “who can defeat the power of blue sparkles”… I image quite a few people. I was pleased with how it turned out, though I think I need to further highlight it with temple guard blue as I like the drybrish but want it to be stronger effect.

The fuscia and green colour on most of the model is to tie it back in with the rest of the army colour scheme.

Hobby Update – The trees they’re alive!

It’s been a while since I’ve done any painting, I seem to have just played games recently and any free hobby time was spent  putting together the competition pack.

With that finally completed and distributed and my next game not until the end of the month (and with me using wood elves), I decided I’d better knuckle down and final paint some of it.

Digging through my box I started to catalog what was still unpainted (a fair bit). For time saving I decided to ignore those figures already painted (no matter how dire the paint job). The only question was where to start? Having put together a list for the game I discounted anything not in the army and finally decided to deal with the oldest items first.

Dryads

I bought these back in 4th edition when dryads were a ranked unit and could choose to take different tree aspects each round of combat (a bit like war dancers choose dances now). Some of the sculpts I really like, others not so much.

I deliberately went with darker colours as they represent the primal nature of the forest, even the drybrush is just a lighter shade of brown. Basing was my normal ‘that’ll do’ effort but it’s consistent with the rest of the army. The only thing I’m not happy with is the colour/effect of the foliage on them. In retrospect, warplock green may be a bit bright. I’m going to either have to shade it with a darker green, give it a bit of a green wash or make it stand out further with highlights of moot green. 

Skarlocks wood elf archers

The second item worked on was my very first GW purchase back in 3rd edition when I was a little nipper. They are still some of my favourite wood elf models and I think the designs have stood the test of time.

The thing which hasn’t, is the 20-25 year old paint job (I know it went straight on the lead with no undercoat) and it will need to be redone in the future. However this was about getting it onto the table and so to do that, I just needed to complete the bases. Ok so it’s a bit of a cheat target but gave me an excuse to post a pic of them 😉.

The eagle eyed of you will notice the unit is short 2 models from the original box. The wardancer is in with his dancer kindred and the final archer was appropriated by my mother of all people (she is a keen archer and lord of the rings fan so has taken 1 of every different archer owned and put it in her archery cabinet. It’s s bit odd but kinda cool, to see medals and trophies interspersed with Wargame figures). 

Hobby Update – Last minute engineering

I wasn’t happy with fielding a block of unpainted troops last week. Mainly as, aesthetically, it didn’t look great in the battle report. So for my next list I specifically went with things that were pre-painted.

Running a slightly different variant to my normal list, I realised there were a few things that I would need to paint (and order) before the game.

The first item on the agenda was to paint one of the many primed metal engineers from my endless pile of miniatures. A couple of late nights later and Dolgin Rockfist was ready to be added to the Karak Silvertop engineering core.

This is by far my favourite engineer model in the GW range (and I have quite a few of them) and I’ll admit to it not being my best painting but to be honest it was a rush job (though the photo’s don’t do it full justice). As normal I need to finish the basing. It did bring back to me that I much prefer to paint metal over plastic (in the same way I prefer plastic over finecast). It just has a nicer feel to it.

The second item on my list was to pick up some more artillery bases. A quick purchase off Tiny Worlds on eBAY (they are great for little modelling supplies, very reliable) and I soon received them in the post. A quick paint job later and they were ready for action.

Now technically they are quite a bit larger than needed for artillery bases, which could put me at a disadvantage when using them as it is easier for them to be charged but frankly they look much better than just mounting them on a standard base and if they are placed in the line, the base incorporates the 1″ gap that should be left between units, so you can just from a solid battleline with them, which just looks better.

To put them in scale

Hobby update – Beastpacks/Chaos Hounds and next up.

It’s been bugging me that I had one element of my Kings of War competition army that wasn’t painted and so I finally knuckled down and ‘finished’ off the 2 troops of Beastpacks. 

Lacking inspiration and to ensure continuity with the rest of the army, I followed the same procedure as the wolves in the Stampede. This meant they looked pretty bland (grey with a blue wash and dry brushed) so I added a few extra bits of detail ensuring the scales/spines were green with a bit of highlighting to signify they might be poisoned. 

I still need to base them but at least I now have a fully painted comp’ army.

Next on the painting table list is to revisit the ghorgon/Brutox models and add more detail to break up the brown and then I may even (shock horror) open up the space marine box, as I’ve been reading a number of the ’40k battles’ series recently and this together with the new rule set, actually has me interested (ok quite excited) about trying it out again! I’ve briefly covered/shown part of my paint scheme in a previous post (dark green with tiger stripes on an orange background as the chapter logo). They will of course be a chapter of my own devising but are currently leaning towards being scions of the blood angels, mainly as loving the fluff around their curse and having just finished off the novel Flesh Tearers it reinforced this. (This might possibly change as previously I leant towards imperial fists but found them a bit boring. But that’s the joy of creating your own chapter, you can play a few games and try out the army styles first, especially as it will just be some friendly games at the club).

With the break from the traditional shades of red on the marines, I might the have to paint the Death Company (once bought) red with black crosses as at least then they will tie back to the parent chapter but as a mirror image as in this chapter those with the curse are more revered for having embraced their fathers final wish for vengeance and blood. Those who hold off from the curse see themselves as having the unenviable duty of overseeing the chapter to ensure its continuality for the next generation. A necessity before they can allow themselves to embrace their fathers legacy. Needless to say, with their larger than average Death Company, the chapter operates on the fringes of the imperium and will normally only commit to solitary actions against targets where total annihilation is required. Their home world’s location currently remains a mystery but it is rumoured to be deep within Xenos territory, on a planet previously colonised but long forgotten by imperium records.

Hobby update – Stampede

Curtesy of another Mierce Miniatures purchase (the wolf front and centre) I was able to finally finish my Stampede for my Kings of War herd army (although I realised I need to finish the eyes as soon as the photo was uploaded). Another box ticked in the road to army completion!

Hobby Update – Greater Stone Elemental

On Tuesday I received a little package at work and when I opened it I found one Golem Enano (translates as Dwarf Golem) from the Spanish company Mom Miniatures.

I’m quite a fan of this company. They produce some of the cheapest miniatures available but they are also nice models. This is offset with them having a limited range of models but their dwarf range is a reasonable size and includes one of my favourite purchasable units that can be used as KOW Ironguard/WHFB Ironbreakers.

The model was resin and came in 3 parts, of which one was the base. The cast was pretty good, not in the same league as the models from Mierce but I think this is because the resin is softer. I did need to clean up some of the injection points and file down a couple of odd surfaces but the softer resin actually made this a 5 minute job. I will add that the resin is still hard enough to make this a solid model you couldn’t dent it with a nail, I used metal tools. After the compulsory wash to get rid of any casting agents (or whatever its actually called – memory is failing me!) I glued it together ready for priming.

For this model I primed it with a white base and used a mechanicus grey base. The whole model was then washed with drakenhof blue (what can I say I love this colour combo) and then drybrushed with Stormfang from GW’s dry range. Runes were picked out with Warplock Bronze. These are the one part of the paint job I’m not entirely happy with as they look too pristine so i’ll need to work out how to weather these. In a first, I actually tried to paint some gems! I kept them a fairly simple uniform green and painted multiple green colours starting dark and working my way lighter. Each coat taking up a smaller surface area of the gem. I suppose it’s a cheats way of trying to get a layer effect (unless this is the basic way of layering – i’m probably showing my ignorance here. One day i’ll watch some painting tutorial vids!). I did plagerised one of the example photos on the MOM site and added some flock to the main model, as well as the base, to try and give the impression of a weathered model that had stood still for a millennium before being called to service.

Overall the model was really nice to put together and both fun and easy to paint (the fact I did it all in 2 nights shows how much I enjoyed it). So below are some photos of the finished product including some with one of my normal dwarves so you can see the size difference.