Ogres are on the march!

Ok, so as mentioned i've started a new army. After toying with the idea of Bretonians (i wanted something that could make a big splat!), Dwarves (something that could shoot well and be tough as nails) and even Tomb Kings (again...the shooting), i settled on Ogres.

They can shoot, they can hit hard, they have, and i can't stress this too much...really fucking gorgeous models! and they're tough as nails!

So after Gamesday i bought myself the Ogre battalion. I've got two lists i'm playing with at the mo. One is very shooting heavy (@2k pts, i have 2 x 6 Leadbelchers) and one is very much a charge forward and smash list!

So i'm now spreading myself around painting High Elves, Dreadfleet and Ogres and the turn had rolled around for Ogres.

I decided i wanted to venture slightly away from the standard paint scheme (of red pants!) as i always seem to "paint to the box", and since the fluff for ogres is they basically use what they can pillage, i figured that a patchwork medley of colours could work (i wanted to spread the colour love a bit more than just Blue, White and Metal elves)

I did away with my usual Badab Black wash and just coated the whole damn thing in a very watered down Flesh Wash. Aside for the obvious benefits to the flesh areas (duh), it gave the guns a rusted look and the clothing and boots a dirty worn look!

I painted the weapons with Boltgun/Mithril Silver. The Bronze was a bastered to paint! I worked it up with blends of Tin Bitz and Dwarf Bronze which seemed to do the trick as painting pure Dwarf Bronze just looked reallly false and GW Metallics dont paint over each other very well i find!

The Flesh was built up with Foundation Flesh and Elf Flesh building in more and more of Elf Flesh into the mix as a highlight. Had i known what i would do at the end i wouldn't have spent so much on this stage!

This was all good so far, but far too clean for bloodthirsty ogres. I'd wanted to try the whole "verdi-gris" shading on the weapons to get the whole "antiquey" look! I also had seen pictures of the leadbelchers with sooty faces and that made sense...so i tried my hand at that too! Lastly, all the pictures of ogres seem to have a bloody right hand - for reasons i have no idea why...not wanting to look like a prat for some obvious "fluff" reason, i succumbed to the "rule of the schoolyard" and did that too!

Now lastly, the bases...i usually hate this part due to painting them fully on my High Elves. However, i wanted to get a "snowy mountain" feel to them. So i first based them in pure GW gravel (as seen in the above pictures).

I then mixed some Snow flock i bought from my local Railway modellers shop (Rails of Sheffield) with some GW static grass (bout 4:1) and based selective parts over the top. Finished it off with white edging and i really like the results!

 And finally, the obligitary camera flash/guin firing shot...(i like th shading!)

Next up is High Elves turn again and i reckon i need to knock  out about 35 archers....yay!!

Dreadfleet I

So having played a sampler game of this at the otherwise dissapointing Gamesday UK, i succumbed to the siren call and purchased it when i stopped in Games Workshop to merely buy some paints for my new Ogres (more on them in another post!).

I've already played the first couple of scenarios and its great fun but poetic license is already reequired cum Scenario 2 as (those of you who own it may have already found out), it's bloomin hard to get the Swordfysh captain free and off the board in 6 turns!

Anyway, i spent today painting some scenery from it (and counters) and thought i'd share it with you.

This is a shot of every thing i've painted so far:

Here's a close up of the Wind Marker. This goes around the edge of the Seascape in order to denote the direction the wind is coming from! The other side is a Vortex marker for a scenario further on, but as i'm not near that yet, i decided to leave the otehr side for now!

This is a close up of the Turn Marker. It's used to allow your ships to turn 45 degrees to port or starboard (left or right). You get 2 in the box!

I've not taken a close up of the Measuring divice you get in the box. You can see it in the very first picture, but it's essentially an 18" measuring stick  that bends at the 6" and 12" at 45 degrees. It's really cool.

My favourite bit of work from today is the island. In all the pictures, they seem to show an eerie glow coming from the skulls eyes which i've tried to emulate. I've never tried a kind of OSL affect effect before and i'm quite happy with the results

After undercoating Chaos Black, i painted the whole island with a mix of Astronomincan Grey and Chaos Black. I then heavily drybrushed pure grey mixing bits of Skull White into it until it was pure white. I then gave th entire Island a very watered down green wash. A little bit more white wash brush on after this before i put a glob of Dark Angels Green into the eye sockets. I then kinda "Wet-modged" (Trademarked!) this with Goblin Green towards the eye ridges, building a little white into it!

Hoping to try and get anothe risland done tommorow and maybe start painting some flesh on my Leadbelchers!