I’ve been keeping myself relatively busy with hobby stuff: painting an endless parade of Halberdiers, wrestling with the new GW paints (which are overall pretty good, but change is dang frustrating), and putting models together.

What I haven’t been keeping up with is photographing that stuff and posting it here.  I haven’t been too bad about getting stuff up on Twitter, but that’s not the same (and it’s never up in time for #MiniatureMonday).  So, here’s a quick catch-up post.

Just over the past couple of days, I knocked out two Great Cannons and a Helblaster Volley Gun.  The crews will follow at some point: they’re extremely low-priority, and I’m hoping inspiration for a scenic base will strike.

Just looking at them, it’s clear the Musician’s lance needs to be repositioned; the glue’s already drying.  After I finish the first block of Halberdiers, these guys will probably be next.

This guy was going to go in Monday’s hobby catch-up post, but I took enough pictures of him and I’m happy enough with him that he gets his own post.

As soon as I decided to start running Demigryphs, it was immediately clear that I needed to run a Warrior Priest with them.  A bunch of nasty baby gryphons hit hard, but Hatred helps make sure they hit as hard as they possibly can.

I’d converted up a few Warriors Priests of Manann on foot already (here and here), and was very happy with them.  The army has a disconcerting lack of conversions in it, for the most part.

Originally, I thought I’d use a special character’s horse… but it turns out that none of them are appropriate or any different from the basic knight’s horse.  So, I turned to the unassembled mounted General model in my bitz tub.

It’s a bit heavy on the Sigmarite iconography, so I had to do some shaving: removed the “SIGMAR”s (to later replace with painted “MANANN”s, replaced the moon with a trident, some twin-tailed comets with fish, and a twin-tailed comet hammer with an anchor.

I can’t get enough of these Flagellant heads as Priest heads.  These guys look way crazier and more dangerous than the bald Sigmarites.

The only unfortunate thing going on here is the shield.  Doing that Crown of Manann the first time and such was a huge pain and I didn’t feel like going through that again.  Since I’m not likely to need two Warrior Priests on foot any time soon, I just ripped the arm off the linked Priest and reused it here.

I’ve gotten bogged down on painting the next batch of 5 Halberdiers… but I’m nearly done.  Should be just some Devlan Mud on a few bits, some static grass and the sides of the bases before this group is ready for the Dullcote.

An astute observer might notice that (most) of them are inverted from the last set I did: yellow tops, blue bottoms instead of blue tops and yellow bottoms.  I’m going to try to get something of an even distribution: sticking with the same color scheme, but distributing it differently.  One of the above Halberdier is halved: there will be a mess of those, and probably a good number of quartered troops as well.

When these suckers are done, I’ll take some better pictures of them.  I hope you guys like pictures of dudes with crazy facial hair, pajamas and halberds: it’s about all you’re going to get outta me for the next several months.

In other news, Casey‘s helping me unload all of the LotR Fallen Realms stuff I’ve had collecting dust in the closet.  He’s been a huge help! (And he’s been posting to his blog with a frequency that shames me, so you should check him out.  FYI.)

Finally, looking ahead to the summer, I e-mailed the Quake City Rumble guys my list to get an idea of how it would comp out on the West Coast: it’s distant enough that I don’t want to make assumptions (and one of my opponents at Blob’s Park kept saying things like, “I was excited about playing [on the East Coast], ’cause you guys don’t care about comp…”).

The response was that it would be comp’d low (but not bullshit low), but that I shouldn’t sweat it because “the average list got slightly over a 1 on average from each comp judge.”  While that says to me the scoring system could use a bit of tweaking (which apparently it’s already gotten: they’re on a .5 scale, now) the key take away was “the couple points you might gain changing the list probably isn’t worth the headache.”

That was precisely what I wanted to hear.  I don’t want to take a BS list, but I don’t want to have to change my list substantially: I’ve got piles of Halberdiers I need to be painting.

I threw this guy together last weekend, I think.  I’m experimenting with a second Arch-Lector, so I needed another mini.

He’s the same as the last one: Greatsword torso, Flagellant legs, crazy Flagellant head (they come in not crazy?).  Instead of a boathook, I went with a (Free Company) cutlass.

The shield’s from the General kit: the bird will be painted as an albatross.  The giant KF was a no go, so I scraped it off and did another five-pointed crown of Mannan.  It’s a little small, though (that purity seal screws things up) so I filled the space with a goofy, Mignola-esque skull and stuff.  I’m not entirely happy with it: it’ll do, but I’m tempted to go back in and do a CGL on it.  (The club’s CGL, pronouced “seagull,” and there’s a sea gull right there; why not?)

Anyway, this guy will probably be my primary Arch-Lector (since I don’t expect to always run two), and he better fits my preferred Arch-Lector build.  I’m a huge fan of the challenge build:  Arch-Lector, Sword of Might, Shield of the Gorgon, Van Horstman’s Speculum.  He’s amazing at blunting a very dangerous character and, man, everyone hates it when I tell them what he does: that I avoid fielding insane combat characters makes that taste pretty sweet.

I’m doing a few things with this Empire army that I haven’t really done with earlier armies.  I’ve been meaning to throw together a post about them for a while now.  Behold!  I’ve finally gotten around to it!

More Gap Filling

Obviously I’ve filled gaps in my minis previously… but with rank & file and on certain joins it’s unnecessary.  This time around, I’m using some thinned Liquid Green Stuff (LGS) to smooth over dang near any join where it’d be appropriate.

Platform Shoes

I’ve read before about why it’s important to put your models’ feet on some plasticard, so they appear to be standing on the terrain on your bases, rather than in the terrain.  I’m using 2mm thick plasticard.  For the most part, this hasn’t been a problem, though on a few models the contact points are small enough that doing this hasn’t helped much.  I’m hoping that basing will help with that.

Base Gap Filling

I’m a strong believer in gluing metal bits to your bases to give your models weight and stability, as well as making your movement trays less dangerous.  (I hate when I pick up a tray, something slips, and models go everywhere.)  I just glue the weight to the base.  This time around, I’m using LGS to smooth out any transition or gap between the base and the metal.  This should make the base look sharper.

Zenithal Highlighting

I absolutely get the theory behind it, though I expect that I slap enough paint on my models to Defeat The Purpose.  Still, it’s negligibly easy to do, and helps make details stand out…  and it’s entirely possible it does make some difference.

I finally finished this dang batch of ten Halberdiers.  I could talk about how and why I’ll be tackling them in smaller batches, but I think that’s been covered to death.  Ultimately it took me something like a month to paint these suckers.

So, that’s them.  I’ll be knocking out more, soon.  Later today, I’ll be getting in my first real game with this army.

From Day 1, I’ve been planning to play up the nautical aspect of the Nordland army.  (I’ve already got a pretty clear idea of what my display board’s going to look like.)  Although a general lack of easily accessible, usable nautical bits has thwarted me in terms of converting up most characters, I’ve been pretty determined to make sure that it’s clear that my Arch Lectors and Warrior Priests can’t be mistaken as Sigmarites: they serve Manann.

I’m definitely thinking Aeron “Damphair” Greyjoy, here.

Here’s the first one.

He’s the bottom half of a Flagellant body, with the top half sawn off and replaced with a Greatsword torso.  The shield’s from the Empire General kit: I shaved the skull off and replaced it with a plasticard Manann’s crwon.  The clerics should have portfolio-appropriate weapons, so I converted one of the Flagellant’s scythes into a boathook.  The head’s a Flagellant’s, with a paper crown reinforced with superglue.

Since the last time I really posted, I’ve been stupidly busy: both at work and at hobby.

On top of all that other stuff, I’ve done:

• 20x Greatswords
• 10x Handgunners
• 10x Archers
• 3x Wizards
• 1x Captain of the Empire

At this point, I just need to do up the Engineer and the Arch-Lector.

I ran out of metal squares to glue to their bases: I’ve had to order a heap more of them from Wargame Accessories.  In fact, I had to go on a spree: ordering metal squares, movement trays from Litko and skirmish trays from Back 2 Base-IX.

I’ve been holding off on building the characters, since they’re the most clear place to do conversions and work in the Manann / Nordland theme.  I threw together some wizards (Light and Fire) without any trouble.

Nothing special, right?

Well, I also needed a Shadow Wizard… and they don’t really have any bits in the (otherwise magnificent) Wizard kit.

So, I trimmed the hair off of a Fire Mage’s hair sculpted the hood up over it.

Not entirely pleased with the skull on the staff, but nothing else in the bits box really leapt out at me.  I might take a stab at it scratching up a crystal or something.