Monthly Archives: June 2011

Painting Progress 20110625

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Not much progress over the past week: I’ve been just too dang busy with work and such.

I did manage to put the finishing touches on a batch of 5 Plague Monks: I needed to knock out a Musician and Standard Bearer and, at that point, I might as well do a few more and get 5 done.

I’m still in the mood to paint Plague Monks, though, and it’s been a while since I’ve tried doing things in a large batch… so I hit 10 with an airbrush.

We’ll see how they go.

I also bitz ordered a skeleton and a swordsman to pull together a model to experiment on.

About as soon as it showed up, however, I decided that all of my living dudes would be based on Free Company models, rather than State Troops models.  Still, it’ll be something to play with colors on.  It’s mostly a swordsman with Skeleton equipment and Karl Franz iconography shaved off.  I sculpted a little skull on his chest… it’s not great, though.  Need to practice that sort of thing.

Finally: if you want some Cygnar for Warmachine or Circle Orboros for Hordes, you should buy my stuff!

Auctions wrap up Sunday night!  (Need to pay for Storm of Magic + Sylvanian Levies somehow, right?)

W: Empire Advice

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I’ve got the percolation of an idea for a new army, directly inspired by this guy:

I painted him up a couple of years ago because 1) that’s one badass model and 2) I was working through how to achieve the bloodless skin tone I use on my Daemons.

I’ve got some work to do making the fluff make sense, but the short version is Sylvania-as-Empire / Stirland.  Basically, an Empire army themed to the tone and style of Sylvania.

The idea would be that I could play around with models I really like the look of (Vampire Counts), without having to play Vampire Counts (I don’t want to paint a billion Skeletons).  An upshot would be that I could, if the spirit moved use the same models in a VC army if I decided I want to.  It’d be fun to play around with conversions with Empire, VC, and Mantic parts.

I’d also like to be able to run a more varied, flexible army: with real shooting, access to cavalry and monsters (as mounts, I guess) and book lores.

The problem is: I know nothing about how the Empire plays.  I’ve played against them once, and that was editions ago when I was learning Fantasy.  I’m not sure I even begin to understand how to play Fantasy outside of a very specific loathsome, verminous context.

Scanning the internet for “Tournament Empire Lists” isn’t terribly helpful just yet; never mind that they all seem to involve a lot of Priests, which is something I’m not opposed to, but don’t want to use as a foundation for the army (since it’s all Castlevania’d up).  Also, though I’d like to play an effective list, I don’t want to play a dickbag list (we’re not talking High Elves, here! :D ).

So: rap at me.  What do I need to know about what works and doesn’t work with The Empire?  Where’s a good place to get more info about it.  Any thoughts?  Advice?

This might not go anywhere… but if it does, I’d like it to go in an informed, considered fashion.

Unloading Warmachine / Hordes!

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After a fairly prolific couple of weeks, it’s been dead around here.  We’ve had house guests, which has done a solid job of breaking my stride.  Hopefully, I’ll find it again this weekend.

I’m about halfway through painting another 5 Plague Monks, which is significant, because that includes a standard bearer.  At this point, standards are pretty much the only actual new-new painting need to do… and boy, do I hate doing them.  Nothing I ever do with them feels inspired or satisfactory.

More significantly: thanks to help from Casey, I’ve finally begun selling off my Warmachine / Hordes stuff.  I haven’t played the game in years (since 2008), and it’s time to move on.   So, I just (last night) put a bunch of stuff (Cygnar and Circle Orboros; most of it pretty well painted, IMHO) up on eBay.

If that’s something you might be interested in, I (and my next 40K army) would really appreciate it if you took a look at what I’ve got up for auction!

(I’m still a huge n00b to the eBays, so I’m pretty nervous and excited about how all of this is going to work out.)

C’mon, really?

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Called the local GW on the way home from work today to see if they had any square 20mm slottabases in stock: I’m rebasing the Skaven and need some more for the Stormvermin.

The guy said, yeah, they had them in stock.

So, I went out of my way* to stop by to pick them up.

“Oh, we don’t actually have any in stock.  But you can order them right over here…”

I turned around and walked out.

If I wanted to order them (and I’ll have to), I’d have done it my damn self.  I stopped by because I’d been told my immediate need for slottabases could be filled.

I’m trying to decide if this guy was just a complete idiot who wasn’t up to the task of turning around and looking or if this is some equally idiotic plot to get me to put $5 worth of slottabases towards the store’s sales.

I’m also considering calling GW and complaining.  It’s not a big deal, but this guy was either too dumb to answer my question or he flat out lied to me about the answer.  On second thought: he was a black shirt.  I am going to call.

* Not terribly far, but in Northern Virginia traffic, “not terribly far” is still “far enough.”

Finished – Plague Furnace

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After more than two solid weeks of painting, I’ve finished the dang Plague Furnace.  Lesson Learned: do no assemble and play with complicated Skaven models for a year before deciding to paint them.  I mean, it still would have taken me weeks to paint, but it would have been much, much easier.

The Plague Priest came out great looking.

As did the crew.  One thing I need to point out: the Plague Monk closest to the center of the Furnace has an extremely strangely sculpted face.  It’s just weird.  Parts of it are clearly skull, parts of it are clearly not, and the transition between the two is very unclear.  I found the ‘Eavy Metal jobs not very helpful in figuring out what to do with it.

Ultimately, I gave him a face-melty thing.  One side of his face is skull, and the other side looks like his skin’s sloughed off.  Very happy with how it came out, considering what a pain it was.

Some of the non-ratty details.

And the model from each direction.  I’m extremely happy with it; definitely time well-spent.

While the varnish was drying on that, I set into doing of the more tedious, but necessary tasks for the army.  I finally repaired the Doomwheel banner that just barely made it through the Golden Daemons.

Not perfect, but screw it.  There’s about an inch of paperclip pinning this thing.

I also started rebasing some stuff, from a grassy base to my cavern-style bases.  I’ve got 12 Gutter Runners, the Grey Seer, a Mortar and 25 Stormvermin to do.  I’ll also either have to rebase about 25 Plague Monks or repaint them.  Since this is going to be tedious, best to do it in chunks.  So, I did the Seer and the Gutter Runners.

That puts me here, in really great shape!

Skaven Display Board Planning

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I’ve decided not to do Armies on Parade with my Daemons.  It’d be nice to do, and I think they’d do well… but I can’t bring myself to build a second display board for them.  I mean, blah.

While waiting on some wash on the Furnace to dry, I broke out the graph paper and started sketching out the plan for the Skaven board that I do need to build.

That’s the penciled, rough layout.  The board’s 2’x2′ (maybe if this stuff is done time for Armies on Parade, I’ll enter my Skaven). 

I’ll be planning to mount this to the same breakfast tray I use with my Daemon board, which means I need to account for where I’m going to bolt the board to the tray.  That’s what those nipple-looking things are: where I’ll drill through the board and then disguise it somehow.

Planning to have a tiered hill fill the back left quarter or so.  I’ll try to make it look natural, while making sure I’ve got 5″-6″ on each tier (so I can fit a ranked unit on it).  The back right will have a few stalagmites and a river will run down the right side.  Characters (who aren’t surfing on a Plague Furnace) will be gathered around a block of warpstone or a well (like this) or something.  Alternatively, I could scoot everything forward and build a neat looking, rickety bell tower I’ve been noodling over (using the Warp-Lightning Cannon frame and a left over Screaming Bell bell) in the middle.

Here’s the plan, with details inked in.  The shape of the tray’s in red.

Thoughts?