Prince on Griffon and other news...

So due to crap weather on days i'd planned on undercoating, my Tirannoc chariot and RBT remains grey plastic and, wanting something to paint, i decided to paint the Prince ofn Griffon model from the Island of Blood kit. Now this model will most likely never be represented as it should in my army die to the crapness of it! However, it will most likely proxy as a great eagle for the far future (until everthing else is bought)

Before i go into pictures, i should share with the world that i traded L.A. Noire in (having 100% it - god these days of summer are long!) and used some of the money to buy a pack of Dragon Princes. I love these models (from the pictures) but they quite finnickey to assemble - either way - they are indeed assembled, and being cooler that the chariot or RBT, have jumped the paint queue.

Another mate of mine has also looked at yours truly's models and realised he too misses painting and so has bought himself some lizzies to paint - queue another gaming buddy!

The Skaven/Chaos mate has just bought a gameboard, so my next update should hopefully be a full on Battle report - attempted in the style of "OnceBitten"

So, the Prince on Griffon - to be fair, i wanted to paint it but didn't want to spend hours on it so i'm afraid there's not much to write home about - it got base coloured and the i drybrush the shit out of it! Liteally everthing was drybrushed! Few touch ups here and there and gemmed and voila - a proxy great eagle ready for my 1k game next week!

Feathers were based in foundation Caltharn brown, washed with chestnut ink and drybrushed up from  Caltharn/Snakebite brown to pretty much Bleached bone.

Blue as ever starts with Foundation Mordian blue, then gets layered up to Enchanted blue.

The white was piss poor grading from asto grey up to skull white...meh

The back end of the griffon and the claws were a 505/50 mix of Snakebite leather and Foundation Iyanden Yellow, washed with chestnut ink heavily watered down, and then successively drybrush highlighted up to Iyanden yellow.

Basecoats:

Washes:

Highlights and based:

And this last one i like purely cause the flash on the cam accidentaly went off and the way it's reacted with the white on the lance makes it lookk like its a magical weapon glowing with raw power!:

General: Prince Elros Nénharma

So i've spent the last couple of days painting the general as i said i would.

I'm quite happy with the results. I've kept to the usual basic colour scheme but put a bit more gold on there than i normally would - he's a prince after all!!

Unexpected Additions

So having gone round my mates house and come out the "Games Workshop closet", he seems to have got the bug again and has re-entered the hobby again. He's decided on Skaven which means a couple of things:

1) We're swapping IoB armies - whilst this is more beneficial to the skaven player as they get the use of many rats, rat ogres andweapons teams. It is of limited use to the High Elf player i feel. On one hand the 7 Swordmasters will perfectly fill the number i wanted. The Prince on griffon will be an attempted conversion into just a "Counts as Great Eagle" which appears to be common place and the LSG will pretty much remain on the sprue - no fucking chance am i paiinting them again! There's also a second mage, which i've had in a previously posted army list, but wouldn't want the same posed mage.

2) I'll have a regular game buddy - This is great for me to get to grips with the rules - even if i know he creates really competitive list and skaven aren't exactly known for their fair play - dirty rats!

He's also given me a few High Elf bits he'd bought for himself many moon ago. This has blessed my paint table with enough archers to fill out the regiments i'd planned and enabled me to create a Mounted general and kit bash a mage on foot.

So even though i said i'd probably paint the RBT next, i'm gonna go with the general and kit bashed mage - The dragon will wait for a while since he's missing a front and rear leg...oh well...

Here's the general and his horse:

Not much in the way of modelling options to talk about here - merely a great weapon and shield.

The mage however was a combination of archer legs, and mage bits from the dragon kit - seemed daft not to use them to be fair!

In other news - i have now finished University and passed which is great news! however, i'm now searching for a job to enable me to pay rent over the summer which is proving to be not so great a prospect! If nothing is heard from nice friendly job people, expect these to be started come Monday!

Spears at the ready!

Wow - ir's been ages since i've posted (a month and a half?!) A lot has happened in that time, unfortunately nothing to do with Warhammer hence the lack of updates!

So it's taken me that long to paint up my next squad! I also managed to get my first game in at my local GW which, rather than create an entire post for it as originally intended, can be summed up with me reworking the entire army list. Couldn't really expect anything better when you're making army lists from the models you've got as opposed ot the models you want.

So anyway...the spears...as they're core, i didn't want to go all bells and whistles on them, foolishly thinking that if i kept the gold out and limited them to purely Blue, White and Mail, then this would make painting them much quicker and i'd again foolishly chosen to paint them all at once.

Ah well. Here's a few pictures of the base colours:

 

I swear, it took about two weeks alone for me to bring myself to apply 20 coats of silver on these! It's SO depressing!! Once the Mordian Blue and Grey were applied i felt a littel better!

Heres the washes:

As always, i feel the washes add more detail and i always kid myself that i'm halfway there. Like the LSG i was going to have to get to grips with painting more white than i'm used to which i'm gonna have to get good at in time for the Archers which are basically wearing all white...

I quit elike how the detailing on the shield and the blue trim has come out on these models. I think i've stepped up (ever so slightly) on my painting of skin on these too (whihc still sucks but meh!) by merely adding a few layers.

To do the skin i now bases with Tallarn Flesh, wash with a heavily watered down chestnut ink, then layer up from pure tallarn to elf. I reckon on character models i'll layer it better, but i kept telling myself "These are only core troops - dont spend too much time on them"

Which brings me to today...all i can say is thank fuck it's half term! I thought it would take me a couple of hours tops to finish off the white, add the gems and base them, and even with the help of the entire Queen Discography playing in the background...it stook most my day.

So here's the finished articles. i'm quite pleased. I reckon next up will be something smaller like the RBT or the Chariot...but the Lion chariot may need chopping up into a normal chariot after the latest rethink of army list!

Reavers are finished!

As mentioned last night, i'd almost finished the reavers and so i wanted to finish them this morning. What i thought would take 30mins actually took 2-3 more hours as i did the gems, touch up's and basing.

Either way they're now finished and i'm really quite happy with how they've turned out. I think they look better in person than i've managed in a photograph and are probably painted better than the swordmasters!

If you're in Sheffield then you should see them this thusday evening at the gaming night on the moor!

Next up, i've just based (glued sand to) and undercoated the 20 spearmen from the HE battalion box set. Having seen that fella's big Ogre unit last week, i think it looks really good to have a nice chunk of models painted at the core of your army (and his were painted very well!).

How do people generally paint large numbers of troops? So far, everything has topped out at 10 which has been fine since thats what i used to paint the ultramarines in. I had originally thought of breaking them down into 2 sets of 10, but now i'm planning on just bulk painting them all at once. Pro's of this train of thought are that i reckon it'll be quicker. Cons being, i reckon i'll be sick of the sight of one colour by the time i'm done! Ah well, bolt thrower after these!

Elyrian Reavers (IoB) and my first taste of a game.

So, two things happened last week:

1) I started painting the Elyrian Reavers from the Island of Blood Kit.
These are really nice models. Like the swordmasters, they're detailed enough to be interesting but not so detailed that it becomes a frustration! Since there's only 5 of them, i've found myself taking a bit longer with them.

Here's a picture showing the basics on. Once again i'm sticking with the GW look for none other than it's simple. Main colours on the model are Blue and White (being a Sheffield United fan. this amount of blue and whit is hard to swallow sometimes). The horse will be black since i want the rider to stand out. Aside from the silver and gold parts and the legs being leather. The only new colour introduced on these models will be bleached bone on the bows and feathers

I always hate seeing a model in this state as it's so one dimensional. Here's the unit after a wash of Badab Black and Chestnut ink on respective parts:

There's more to this unit as explained below and should be up tommorow...



2) I went down to my local GW (Sheffield) and managed to get a taste of the rules with my own army. I wouldn't call it a proper game as such. Basically, guys had already set up a 2500 pt game just as i arrived and kindly allowed me to set up my 1500pt list on one short edge. The other guys were Dark ELves and Ogre Kingdoms. I think this would have been a brilliant game but sadly, the Dark Elves player had to leave on turn 2. Rather nicely, the other fella carried on just so i could get a feel for the rules.

I wont give a full battle report as it was ratehr disjointed and so will just note down the things i learnt this week

Things learnt:
1) Dark Elves - more shots than Pete Doherty at a free bar! Also, mental note: Dont charge swordmasters into big unit of crossbow elves - when they panic, they tend to release death!

2) Ogre Kindoms - Hit. Fucking. Hard! There are some units that i could just never feel bad about dropping dwellers on. These have many of those units!

3) Folariath's Robe - i had this. opponent didn't have any magical attacks. Felt kind of bad. Mage ended up blowing himself up with a miscast of dwellers anyway but food for thought ...which leads to...

4) Dwellers - Fun! Considering my Swordmasters got shot to shit fromt he Dark Elves before reaching anything, i didn't feel so bad about returning this on one of his large units!

Today
So today, i've been adding more to the reavers. I've not managed to photograph the updates as i really wanted to finish them, but between the grand prix early start, cooking a roast and writing a dissertation all week, i'm spent! Hoping to finish them tommorow, so will hopefully have an update on that then. Reckon the spearmen are up next so need to get them based!

Lastly, i intend on heading down to Sheffield GW with my 1500 list again this Thursday (21st) so if you fancy a game - let me know.

Lothern Sea Guard brushed aside!

After two weeks of find time here and there i've finally done it - i've finished these buggers!

I must say, i started off with the best intentions! I did! But half way though i came up with my army list and decided i wasn't even giong to use them! (i'd originally wanted 2 x20 units of LSG - now giong with 1x30spears and 15xarchers).

This was a rather annoying revelation in itself but was compunded by the annoying fact that...these models are annoying as fuck to paint! Seriously! There's far too much detail on them! I never thought i'd say that -but come, these are CORE troups! I didn't want to spend 2 weeks painting 10 damn models!

I managed to trade a shed load of my old Xbox games in this weekend and managed to get 3 new brushes and the High Elf batallion box for my trouble. The brushes are amazing! I didn't realise my old brushes were as bad as they were until i used these new brushes! (Kinda like the drunk who never realised he was a drunk until the day he wole up sober!)

As the HE batallion box set allows me to create my core, my lion chariot and the RBT that only leaves me with needing to buy a mage, BSB model, 15PG and 5 SM...oh and 10 more spears -

...which brings me back to the LSG - i figure after all this trouble - they'll be proxying as spearmen for a while!

So here's the pictures. I've not based them yet and only just finished them so had to try and get good lighting with a bog roll backdrop and a table lamp! I'll post some better pics in natural daylight when they're based!

My challenge now is to somehow paint up the HE batallion and the IoB Reavers in time for a game at easter...any takers?