Weathering Practice

A friend of mine generously donated the use of one of his Rhino's so I could practice a few weathering techniques.  The vehicles used by his 13th company space wolves have seen a lot of abuse of the last 10,000 year,s so I got to go a bit crazy with the rust effects.

Commissar Yarrick Completed

After having the model for 11 years I have finally completed my Commissar Yarrick.  I got the model along with the Steel Legion boxed army in 1999 and just never got around to putting paint on it until now.  All things considered I'm rather glad I waited.  My skills prior to the last few years weren't up to the task.  It's a very detailed model and I hope I've done it justice.

Finished Daemon Prince

I finally managed to find something I was satisfied with as a base for the Black Legion Daemon Prince.  I picked up a vinyl floor tile and broke it into pieces.  The sloped piece at the back is there to support the tail as well as add a bit more interest to the base.  The base was then primed white, washed with Asurmen Blue, and sponge painted Skull white.  Overall a very easy process with some excellent results.

Dark Eldar Warrior

Painted a quick test model for a friend's Dark Eldar army.  My goal was to create a scheme that looked decent and was fast and easy to replicate.  I'm reasonably pleased.  The armour turned out looking rather blood splattered, which was the general idea.  I'm rather disappointed with the loincloth, so I'll need to come up with an alternative for that.

 

Best of all, the model only took about 20 minutes to paint not counting waiting for paint to dry. Here's hoping the owner is pleased.

Winged Daemon Prince

I've finally gotten around to starting in on a Be'Lakor model that I've had sitting around for quite some time.  It will be an addition to my friend's Black Legion army.  I'm rather pleased with its current state.  The sword turned out exceptionally well.

I haven't started in on the base yet.  It will be some sort of snow base, but I need to find something to put under his feet to raise him up a little.  This older model isn't quite as large as the new one and I'd like to make the size difference a little less noticeable.  I should have the base finished in the next day or two, provided I can find what I'm looking for.


In the next few days I expect to be finishing up a Jain-zar model for another friend as well as another small figure and hopefully finishing pinning together a few war walkers and wraithlords.

On Fighting Daemons, Battle Report

Here's the promised battle report against my Daemons.  I hadn't originally planned this battle as a How-to on beating my daemon army, but that's rather how it worked out.  Not much suspense regarding the end result but hopefully the process will be at least somewhat enlightening.

On Fighting Daemons

I've been playing my daemons a lot lately and doing fairly well with them.  Even during my draws I usually kill more of my opponents army than they do of mine.  My army is reasonably powerful, but I'm really winning more games because of my opponent's inexperience than any other reason.  Daemons are relatively uncommon around here and people just don't know how to defeat them.  So in the interest in having more tactically challenging matches I'd like to share some thoughts on the best ways to defeat my army.  I will be following up on this article with a battle report demonstrating some of the ideas as soon as I get the pictures straightened out.

Daemons Battle Report 2k

I took my 2000 point Daemons army to a tournament last Saturday.  I have a lot less confidence in the 2k version of my list than I do in the 1750 point version.  The extra 250 points really doesn't get me all that much.  I get 3 sets of wings for my daemon princes and 2 plaguebearers with icons.  Not exactly a substantial difference.  Still, the army performed reasonably well, getting me second place overall.  The wings I created for the princes also turned out reasonably well.  I wasn't able to get the join with the body as seamless as I wanted, but the magnets worked out pretty well.  I'd be even happier if I could get them to stay flat, but I've had no luck with that so far.

Plans for the Near Future

I've got a couple major projects I'm working on for the next couple months.  The first of which is expanding my Daemon army to 2000 points for a tournament later this month.  I'm currently planning to add wings to my 3 daemon princes and another group of 5 plaguebearers.  The plaguebearers are an easy addition once I find someone who has them in stock.  The wings are going to be a bit more challenging, but I'm hopeful I'll be able to get them finished in time.  I have even found the perfect wings for the project.

Kill Team battle report

A local store was running a kill team tournament that I decided to attend recently.  I like kill team.  The fast paced games can be a lot of fun, and the skirmish scale makes for totally different strategies than normal games of 40k.  The store was using the standard rules out of the Battle Missions book, but disallowed the use of vehicles and added a 45 minute time limit.  They also added an additional goal to the mission, to get a massacre you needed to have one model in you opponents deployment zone when the game ended.  The previous Kill Team tournament that I saw was extremely lopsided in favor of Dreadnoughts and the like, and they wanted to avoid that.  I chose to run my orks, mainly because I have the force I want completely painted.  Ork's low leadership is a bit of a disadvantage in Kill team, they leave pretty much as soon as they start taking break tests.

Tournament report

On Saturday the 23rd I brought my completed daemons to a 1750 point tournament at my friendly local gaming store.  I ended up finished towards the bottom of the pack but more because of the missions than anything else.  The tournament was being run by a new guy..... who has a lot to learn still.  I'm still a little pissed about the end results.  Hopefully he either gets his shit together or they replace him.  I know a few of the other players talked with him and the store owner a bit after the event, so I'm hopeful that any future events will be handled better.  Anyway, on to the report.

2-week army build, Part 5

Finished army and Test Games

Finished army:

This photo is actually from the Saturday, the day of the tournament.  I was rather scrambling on Friday after getting home from school to get the last couple things painted and didn't have time to take pictures that day.  I'm rather pleased with the end result though.  I'll get some close-up pictures together when I have a little more time.

2-week army build, Part 4

Made a lot of progress today.  Finished the last group of Plaguebearers, got all the main areas on the Daemon Princes finished, and finished up the second Great Unclean One.  All that's left is the two groups of Fiends, and some detail work on the Daemon Princes.  After that I'll go through and do some touch ups and pick out the details I skipped over on the first time through.  I should probably go ahead and repaint the first Great Unclean One as well, but I don't think I'm going to have enough time ti get to that before the tournament on Saturday.  Oh and I need to go through and add something to the plaguebearers weapons so they don't look so plain.  I'm currently considering using a similar rust effect to what I've been using on my Orks.  Not sure though.

2-week army build, Part 3

The last of the models I need for my army arrived today, and a flurry of filing and gluing ensued.  I managed to get them all assembled and all of the mold lines cleaned off.

Things are progressing nicely, though the to-do list is still pretty crowded for the time I have left.

To-Do list:
Prime the new models
Add magnets to the Daemon Prince's bases for wound counters
Paint the bases that remain
Paint the last unit of Plaguebearers
Paint the Daemon Princes
Finish the Great Unclean One
Paint 2 squads of Fiends
Finish the weapons on the first two groups of Plaguebearers

Definitely a lot to do, but I think I can manage by Saturday if I stay focused.

2-week army build, Part 2

dProgress continues.

I have now painted one squad of Fiends and one squad of plaguebearers.  All the bases for the army have been made, many are still waiting on priming and painting however.  I am still waiting on my 3 daemon princes, 8 remaining spiders, and 5 additional plaguebearers to arrive.  They should be here on Tuesday.  My goal for the next couple days is to prime and paint all of the bases, finish the second squad of plaguebearers, and paint the second Great Unclean One.  Wish me luck.

2-week army build, Part 1

My local store is holding a 1750 point tournament on the 23rd of this month that I've decided to attend.  I've been getting a little tired of playing my Guard and my Orks and wanted to try something different.  Namely a more elite army.  Chaos Daemons is what I've chosen.  The biggest problem is that I've only got one model painted for my chosen force so far and less than two weeks to go.  I'm going to go for it and try to get a force ready in the time I have left.  Here's what I've got so far.

Dark Eldar

Am I the only person who thinks the new Dark Eldar raider looks like the skiffs from Return of the Jedi.

I have the urge to create a jabba/star wars dark eldar army now.  Paint it all in desert colors and create Boba Fett as my Archon.  Not that I'm going to do such a thing, just thought it'd be funny.

Chaos Terminator Lord

I painted a Chaos Terminator Lord with Lightning claws for a local painting competition a few months ago.  I am very pleased with the end result.  Happy enough I'm still tempted to paint up an army to match.

On Blogging

For the last few years I've had a lot of free time.  I've been out of work waiting for worker's compensation to get their act together and figure out what's going on regarding my injury and ensuing settlement.  During that time I started painting a lot more as well as spending a lot of time perusing various blogs looking for ways to improve my techniques.  Thanks mainly to those blogs, my painting skill has improved dramatically.  I started this blog mostly because I appreciate the knowledge those other sites have shared and want to give back to that community.

I found one of my first models while digging through my piles of bits and wanted to show how much I've improved over the years.

Here's one of my first Skaven next to a Terminator Lord I painted for a local competition fairly recently.  Notice all the chipping paint on the Skaven.  That's right.  No primer.  I firmly believe that almost anyone can become a good painter as long as they have a willingness to learn.  Here's a thanks to every person who's been willing to share their techniques with me over the years.  And here's to hoping others can learn a little from me by reading this blog.

Painting for Others

I love painting miniatures.  It's an activity in which I can lose myself for hours on end.  This fact combined with my current state of persistent poverty has led me to start painting miniatures for my friends in place of purchasing them gifts.  So far, this has worked out wonderfully for everyone.  I get to paint something away from my norm, and my friends get a well painted miniature to add to their force.  These models also give me a chance to experiment with new techniques in a setting where they aren't required to perfectly match with an existing force.  I will usually be given some color guidelines and then let loose on the project.  I have pictures of some of these that I'd like to share.  Hopefully I will eventually be able to get photos of the others so I can share them as well.

Speed Painting IG Veterans

My Imperial Guard force is my longest standing army.  It was started back in 1999 with the Steel Legion boxed army that was released with the Armageddon campaign, and still consists of mostly all metal figures.  I have begun slowly adding in plastic minis between working on my other projects.  The main additions are the veteran squads which provide me with much needed melta fire, since a meltagun was never released for the Steel Legion line and I have no interest in converting some.  I chose to use the cadian plastics to represent them, but swapped out the heads for ones made by Pig Iron Productions that have gas masks.  I dislike the helmets on the stock cadian models.  They are much too large for their heads in my opinion, and the gas masks fit much better with the ash wastes theme of the Steel Legion.

Ork Wierdboy

I picked up the Ork wierdboy model back when GW released it in January of 2008 purely based on the look of it.  I loved the thought of grots trying to hold back the rampaging Ork Psyker as warp energy courses through his body.  It's a shame his rules are so weak.  The total absence of consistency makes him virtually unfieldable in a competitive environment.  Some of his powers are quite useful but even with the re-roll you can never reliably get the power you need when you need it.  I'd consider him to be a lot more useful if one of his ability let him use the power of his choice.  As it stands he's mostly just a bench-warmer that sits in my display cabinet and get ogled by the kids whenever they are in my office.  I am pretty pleased with how he turned out however.

The largest modification I made to the model was to chop off the grot swinging off his right side.  While I appreciated the thought of one of his keepers failing to hold him back and getting swung about by the enraged psyker, I felt the execution was rather lacking.  The grot looked rather silly and the position of the chain looked extremely artificial.  And so, it had to go.  My original intent when I bought this model was to add some lightning shooting out of his right eye, but after drilling out the eye socket and screwing around with various wires trying to make something that didn't look retarded, I gave up.  Hence the gaping hole where an eye should be.  I plan to eventually replace the socket with a glass bead painted bright green, but that's a project for down the road.

I painted him primarily for use in a 500 point casual list I put together when I first started on my orks.  Over several games he performed with adequate mediocrity.  He killed a few things, but never really managed to do anything all that impressive.  It was a lot of fun to set off his random powers though.  I figure I'll continue to field him in casual games just for the joy of teleporting around the board and occasionally blasting stuff with auto hitting weapons.

And the Warhound is Finished

The Warhound Titan is now officially complete.  I'm quite happy with the end result, especially considering when it was handed to me it had a rather crummy paint job and had just been knocked off a shelf by the owner's cat.  It's impact with the ground had left it in rather poor condition.  In addition to the expected chipping and general damage from have never been sealed or primed, several parts were broken.  The spot where one of the weapons connects to the arm had been broken out and lost.  I rebuilt that using epoxy putty over an armature of heavy gauge wire to give it strength.  This required a fair bit of care to ensure that the arm would still be movable.  The Vulcan Mega-bolter arm had been snapped in two, so I put a pair of two inch brass rods in it for support and glued it back together.  Two of the spines on top of the main body were broken off completely.  I'm not sure if they were lost or not, but I didn't have them when I put the beasty back together so they were left off.  I also built a circular base for it out of 3/16" tempered hardboard, and pinned it's feet to the base in the interest of it not taking another tumble in the future.

The Orks take a Field Trip

I brought my Orks to their first tournament this past Saturday.  It was a 1500 point event.  I chose not to take any pictures because with my limited experience with the army and its large numbers of infantry I was worried about having enough time to complete games.  In the future I think I'm going to try to take photos in the interest of learning from my mistakes.  I ended up finishing fairly poorly, but had a rather good time.  It was, if nothing else, an excellent learning experience.

Shoota Boyz

I've been spending a lot of time painting Orks for the last two months and I've made some good progress I think.  My currently completed force consists of:

Big Mek with kustom force field
Wierdboy
30 shoota boyz
19 slugga boyz
3 killa kans with rocket launchas
11 grots with runtheard

And I have nearly completed a further 11 shoota boyz, 8 lootas, and 3 more killa kans.  Overall good progress and I'm very pleased with how they are turning out.

 

I've chosen to go with an olive skin tone and lots of rust effects to tie the army together as a cohesive whole.  My photography skills still need some work, but I'm getting better at it.  Future posts will discuss the logic behind my color selections and discussions of the techniques I've used to get the army painted quickly.  I've finally gotten a small photo booth set up in my home office so I can get pictures of units as I complete them.

I'm currently working on an old Warhound Titan for a friend of mine.  It's the old armourcast version.  I'm trying to make it look as good as I can, but it's a rather cartoony looking model and looks rather dated.  I'll throw up some pictures as I get it a bit closer to completed.

My First Post

I suppose my blog title deserves some explanation.  It's based on a quote from the Ork codex that I found hilarious. Apparently the Meks need to keep the Burna Boyz busy so that they won't set the other boyz alight to watch them do "the burny dance".  Since Orks are one of my major ongoing projects I decided that a title referencing them would be appropriate.  I'm looking forward to sharing my progress on this and other armies as time goes on.