Yearly Archives: 2021

Weekend Workbench

Spent this weekend working on some Battletech. Starting with 8 was, in retrospect, a mistake: too large of a batch… but it’s the contents of the starter A Game of Armored Combat box, so it did feel like the right way to tackle it.

It Came from the Lightbox: Sons of Behemat

This is possibly the most precipitous one of these I’ve done. Orcs? Done and sat around for months before photographing. Giants: like only a third done but in the lightbox.

I’m blaming the fact that life kept me from really focusing on the Kraken-Eater, which made finishing him take forever, so I’m eager to just take a break from the project. I’ve got another two Mega-Gargants and four regular Gargants to work on. They’ll be getting different skin tones, so I’ll work on them in a different batch or batches.

Also, these guys were especially frustrating to paint, as they were some of the last models I built before getting new glasses so: so many gaps, so many poorly smoothed/rough spots.

There’s some stuff I’m very pleased with here: I think I did a great job doing volumes on the skin and cloth, and I think I did a good job of adding textures to the surfaces.

The first Gargant I’d painted was specifically intended to go with my Ogres. So I figured I’d paint one to go with my Orcs (I don’t know if that’s actually an option, but whatever). So this guy’s pale and has some LotR Troll bits that make him look a bit more like an Ardboy.

It Came from the Lightbox: Kryptboyz

I started working on these guys back in January, and mostly finished them back in May… (just in time for the list I’d painted to be made wholly invalid in AoS 3E).

When I picked up the Soul Wars box, when AoS 2E came out, the setting started to click a little for me. (I still don’t know that it’s really there for me, but at least there was something.) One of the things that had lodged in my brain was that every faction was kind of in every Realm, and that those Realms would theme those factions. For whatever reason, the idea of Shyshian (Death Realm) Orcs* stuck. (Later, I learned that this was definitely a thing, called Kryptboyz.)

Didn’t do anything with it, of course: I assembled, then sold off, the contents of the box and maybe played a demo game of AoS 2E in between.

But, stuck at home during the Quarantimes, I got the bug and did the thing.

I wanted to go for a pale, albino orcish flesh, and settled on bluish black to contrast it. Because the point of the thing is that flesh, I had to track down some extra heads so my Ardboyz could be helmet-less (and my champions helmeted) instead of the other way around. I also commissioned someone to design an orc-y scythe head I could print to use on champions and heroes.

I’m pretty happy with them.

This list won’t go in 3E, should I ever get the chance to play it, but I’ll likely fill it out with a Mawkrusha or two (one of which will be lightly converted with a Terrorgheist) and some Brutes.

* None of this “Orruk” nonsense. Ugh

Workbench

Change of plans: these Warmaster strips are straightforward… but slow going. After spending what must have been a month and half’s worth of hobby opportunities on Gargants, I need some easy wins… so I’m going to knock out the last few models needed to get my Crimson Fists playable instead.