Monthly Archives: July 2014

Historicon 2014

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Why bury the lede?  I placed second with the Captain Whistlelock figure I did so well with at NoVA’s Captial Palette last year.


Anyway, Historicon happened this past weekend!  Due to reasons, I was only able to make it out for the Saturday; I’d have really liked to have come out for the Saga tournament, for example, but it just wasn’t in the cards to do more than the one day.  (In fact, getting down for the single day was somewhat dearly bought, but not making it down wasn’t an option.)

I’d hoped to pick up a couple of things from the vendor room: The Crescent & The Cross, the Fireforge Light Mongol Cavalry and maybe, if I was lucky, somebody’d have Donnybrook.  No luck with any of those, though.  I did spend some getting spun up on By Fire & Sword (I backed their first Kickstarter for the rulebook but no minis, and had already plunked down for a larger buy-in with The Deluge), which turned into a purchase.  I also grabbed a box each of Wargames Factory’s new AWI minis, to supplement the Perry ones I picked up a few months ago.

I ran into Ashley and JC and kicked around with them for most of the day and checked in with Casey (who was Bolt Actioning) throughout the day.

I only played in one game, and it was the large WWI table.

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I had a good time, despite the scenario being somewhat lacking.  (Allies: run across the table! Germans: murder them all before they reach you! )

Next year, I’m definitely going knife-fight someone to make sure I can get out for more than one day.

Anyway, the rest of the disappointingly inadequate photodump:

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Khorne-versions

Heralds

As you might know from reading this blog: my Chaos Daemon army’s full-on Khorne.  That’s gotten less and less effective since the 4E codex, though, so I’ve been progressively mixing it up more and more.  That’s okay: it’s an excuse to convert stuff.

I finished these up what feels like ages ago (though it was probably last month), but just finally got around to sticking them in the lightbox.

Well

Even though this guy is the stupidest conversion (deliberately so) I’ve done in a while, I’m happy with him.  He’s a BLOOD SCRIBE (counts as Blue Scribes).  They’re supposed to be two Horrors on a Disc of Tzeentch, so I did a goofy-looking beastly pterodactyl that feels, just a little bit, Blanche-ian.

Blood Scribe 2

He’s also a total midget.  Apparently, nobody’s actually supposed to sit in that throne; just stand menacingly over it, so the only model I could fit into it was a Plague Monk.

Blood Scribe 5

Blood Scribe 3

Blood Scribe 4

Herald of Desolation

You might remember the Herald of Devastation (counts-as Herald of Tzeentch) I knocked together for last year’s NoVA; I took pretty much the same approach for my Herald of Nurgle counts-as (Desolation), just with a Necromancer model instead of a Chaos Sorcerer.  Nothing fancy: just a headswap and an icon.

Herald of Mayhem

I did something a little different for the Herald of Slaanesh (Mayhem).  No headswap, just armswaps.  Not the most inventive conversion, but it’s hard to go wrong with buzzsaw arms.

Blood Fury

Speaking of lazy conversions: these are my Daemonettes: Blood Furies. Dryads with a bit of greenstuff.

Blood Furies

They painted up super fast, at least.

Workbench Wednesday

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Working feverishly to get this stuff done, but I’m running out of runway: I’ve basically got until Friday and then it’s a day here, day there without much predictability until NoVA happens.

Fortunately, the Soul Grinder’s, like, 95% done.  Just some washing (metals), black on the torso, highlight black, then touch back in some fleshy bits.  Made better time with it than I thought I would.

Then I just need to bang out four infantry-sized models for the base list to be done, and wrap up three larger models (that are mostly done) and three Screamers (which will paint up incredibly fast) and I’m done.

Too Much To Do, No Time To Do It

Where will you be?

I’m definitely in time-crunch stress mode.

Historicon is in two weeks, NoVA is in eight weeks.  Of those eight weeks, I’m on the road for somewhere between four to six weeks for work (and, ever so briefly, vacation).  Effectively: the lead in I have for Historicon is the same as the lead in I have for NoVA.

For the Historicon painting contest, I’ll just have to enter what I entered in the Capital Palette last year (which was, more or less, the plan).

For the NoVA GT, as with last year, my Khornate Daemons are my shortest-path to having a GT ready army.  I’ve got a few models that I need to paint for it, but it should be (just barely) doable with the time I have.

For the Captial Palette: I think I just need to accept that I can’t enter anything this year.  This is hugely disappointing.

As I look back over what I’ve painted since last August… the past year has been hugely productive in terms of quantity of models painted, but that’s come at the cost of quality: frankly, nothing I’ve done is worth competing.  Doing a Saga warband based on a stupid whim in less than a week, for example, is definitely an accomplishment,  but it’s not going to result in any winners.

The plan had been to work on some models specifically for the competition (which worked out pretty well last time), but I just don’t see when the heck I’d be able to do it.  Sure, I could work on something instead of finishing my army for the GT, but comparing the cost of the GT (already paid) to the cost of the painting competition (not yet paid), the decision is clear.

I might get lucky and find time, but it’s not likely.  Better just make peace with it now than add even more stress trying to do the impossible and then seal it with a heavy coat of disappointment when it’s for naught.

Soul Grinder WIP

Soul Grinder WIP 1

I finished building my third Soul Grinder last night.

Even though I have, like, no time to hobby between now and NoVA, the Imp of the Perverse made me want to do a headswap on it. I’d originally wanted to use a Ghorgon head, but couldn’t bits order the horns anywhere.  A Carnosaur head was my fall-back… and I think it’s worked out for the best.

Soul Grinder WIP 2

The original plan was to smooth out the join as skin and then bulk it out with hair, so he’d fit in with these guys:

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Flesh Hound on the left, Blood Render on the right

But the more I look at the model as it is, the more satisfied I am with it.

Soul Grinder WIP 4

The other big thing was the right hand.  The sword hand is boring (I’ve already got two of those), and the claw hand… not right.  I cast around for a bit that would work (the Carnosaur’s hand would be perfect, obviously) but couldn’t find anything that worked well and I could do without buying a pricey model, only intending to saw it’s right hand off.

Finally, I settled on Nethyrmaul, from my mostly-unused Bones tub.  He’s a great model, too, so I’d like to think I’ll paint him, so I ended up casting his hand with Instant Mold and making a couple of casts of it.

The casts turned out rotten, so between cleaning it up and adding the thumb I don’t feel bad at all.  Sadly, where the detail cast best isn’t visible: it’s the back of the hand and wrist shoved into the space of the arm.

Soul Grinder WIP 3

Also, I don’t use my GSI Tentacle Maker enough.  So, there’s a bit of that, too.

Workbench Tuesday

Build mode for NoVA.

Built a Khornate Herald of Slaanesh (“Herald of Mayhem”):

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I’m also working on a third Soul Grinder that’s getting some conversion because why not.  It’s actually coming together pretty well, though:

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