Joker Crew WiPs

I haven't done much else on my Joker crew just a little work on the henchmen. I mentioned in the Red Hood post that I picking up some Army Painter paints and this was why.

I thinned down the jumpsuit orange and shot it through the airbrush. Orange has pretty shotty coverage and these will need to be hit at least once more to get adequate base coat coverage but it does look like it is the "right" color for prison jumpsuits. I will most likely be using this color a lot in my BMG painting as I intend to paint all of Joker's clowns pants this color and will probably use it on Zsasz and the lunatics as well.

I know this post wasn't all that exciting but trying to get back in the groove of posting so figured I'd throw this up here. I have begun working on some of my scatter terrain as well seeing as it feels like the game required a nice amount of terrain to keep gun at the appropriate power level and give the table a proper Gotham feel. 

Templecon Painting Log Update #8

Merry Christmas Eve y'all. I'm writing this blog post while I wait for the little guys to be fully asleep before Santa puts stuff under the tree. I had a fairly productive beginning to this week. It was fortunate I was able to get stuff done early as the rest of the week will be pretty much shot for hobby time what with Christmas and travel and what not.

After my last blog post it was only fitting I got this gentlemen done. All that's left to do is black out the rim of his base and put some grass tufts and static grass down. All the grass will be done on the army at once. 

I assembled a unit of hammer dwarfs, primed them, did my three color airbrush for grey armor, and started to sponge on the battle damage (after this photo was taken). These fine fellows will most likely be in my Ossrum list. 

Alexia1's risen. I decided I wanted no part of actually painting the risen and that there would be absolutely no time to paint them so ghostly was the only way to go. I did a multicolored airbrush and based them. All in all I am pleased with the quick and dirty results for all 20 risen and all that's left to do is black out their bases and obviously the grass like the good captain above. 

Lastly I primed the nomad from the last challenge update and did the first color of grey on the armor plates. I didn't have time to do the highlights when I did the hammer dwarfs which is why he is lagging behind them. 

Not photo'd: I basecoated the flesh on the old metal unit of drudges, started the grey sections of the earthbreakers arm plates, did a little skin work on Rhupert, and a few other minor things which aren't jumping to mind at the moment. OK my wife is telling me the boys are out color time to get to work. 

Merry Christmas all and hopefully Santa leaves you all that shinny new toy you've been looking for!

Templecon Painting Log Update #2

Week two in the books and still not a single model finished.....great start, eh? Once again despite not finishing any models I did get down to the cave for a couple quick painting sessions. The majority of the work came from one session and with the airbrush and some grey paints. Here are the fruits of those labors:

Durgen was painted with the grey triad I plan to carry over to many of my mercenary models with armor. The model was painted with the airbrush first covering the plates, then at a downward 45 degree angle, then from directly above. The colors were P3 greatcoat grey, VMA USA grey, and VGC stonewall grey. The color was then knocked down a little applying a very light coat of GW Badab black via the airbrush as well.

Whats a dwarf 'caster without the dwarf journeyman warcaster Thor ;) Same grey triad as Durgen.

MacBain! Same grey same application.

Tac to keep Thexus and Durgen (hopefully) safe. Yup same greys.

Started to block in the grey on the galleon. So far just P3 greatcoat grey but need to improve the coverage in a few places before I move on. 

A converted nomad. This model had been started previously with the grey triad but I started to black out some of the model in preparation for the application of metal paint. 

Lastly (but certainly not least) the two unit of drudges for my Cephalyx force had their skin blocked in with the airbrush. This was pretty sloppy but the other colors around the skin are dark and should go on very easy and cover the over spray with little to no issue. 

Cephalyx Skin Test

After putting my painting log to paper I decided it is time to start testing out some paint for my Cephalyx army. I took the bloat thrall as the test piece for my Cephalyx skintone. The bloat thrall is one of my favorite models in the PP range. I'm not exactly sure why I like this mini so much but I have always loved it. I have one bloat thrall for my cephalyx army and, while I am not sure how much actual table time he will actually see, he seemed like the ideal test subject. I was able to sneak a peek at the digital Cephalyx book and borrow some of PPs recipes and I plan to adapt some of them to my style/needs.

I basecoated the skin via the airbrush with a 1:1 mixture of P3 Ryn flesh:P3 Cryx Bane Highlight. I then washed the flesh with a wash made of P3 Sanguine highlight and P3 Traitor green. I think this was roughly 1:2. I then added a few drops of P3 Thornwood green and washed this in some of the deeper folds. My initial plan was to highlight via the airbrush with the original base color but I'm fairly please with my results up to this point so I've decided to proceed with the mini and I can always come back later if needed. In the top picture you can see that I've started to black out the sections that are going to be metal and just haven't gotten to the back and legs yet. I will be adding some blue and purple washes around the metal plugs to simulate bruising to add some more visual interest but I will have to finish the metals before this step. If all goes well the rest of the way with his skin I should be able to proceed with the monstrosities.

Sturgis, The Corrupted

When I got my kickstarter minis two days ago I would have told you that you were crazy if you thought dead Sturgis would be the first mini I assembled......and I would have been wrong. As part of the Vengeance release we have been having 25pt tournaments every Friday night with coins available every night. While this is not the traditional way people do book releases it has kind of become a tradition in our meta and in the past has turned into some large events.

 

I played my trolls Thursday night at the other FLGS so I wasn't planning on attending the Friday night event but after receiving a few texts from Les and Adam I talk with the wife and decided I was in. I picked up my Khador coin the first week (have the Khador coin from every book release) so I needed to decide what I was going to play. I jokingly said dead Sturgis to Adam and he convinced me I should and that I could borrow some of his stuff. Here is what I came up with:

 

Sturgis The Corrupted (*6pts)
* Ripjaw (5pts)
Bane Riders (Leader and 4 Grunts) (11pts)
Bane Thralls (Leader and 9 Grunts) (8pts)
* Bane Thrall Officer & Standard (3pts)
Pistol Wraith (3pts)

 

I am sure I could have come up with something better but I really wanted to try out Adams Bane Riders and giving them stealth is never a bad thing, right? Ok I decided I was going to play now lets get assembling:

 

Parts all laid out ready for cleaning/ assembly. The mold lines were not that bad but as you can see lots of tiny flash from vents (I assume)

The Corrupted all ready to roll. The left wrist connection point is very tiny so I highly recommend pinning this. I didn't pin due to time restraints and it has broken off at least twice already.

 

So you may be asking what do you mean time restraints? Why didn't you have time if you were just assembling the mini to play and that's it? Well...... I was texting with my Canadian buddy Mr. Bell AKA Northblade and he convinced me (didn't take too much) that I should try and get him fully painted before heading to the store. I had maybe two and a half hours before I had to leave for the FLGS but said what the hell lets give it a go. Due to the basement flood I have paints and supplies all over the hous right now so I had to scramble to find everything. It looked like I was going to be grounded before the flight even took off as I couldn't find any of my primer but I came across some grey Vallejo Surface right when I was about to throw in the towel. I'd say it took a good 30 min of my time away finding my supplies and get set back up.

Sturgis primed grey and standing next to a Dragonforge Designs Lost Hemisphere base (for motivation)

Corrupted metals basecoated. I did a mix of VMA gun metal and rust (metallic) to achieve this color. As this was drying I had to leave the house to go get my son off the school bus so that cut another 20min or so off my time.

Drybrushed the metal with VMA steel, then added some gold trim accents with VMC brass, then filled in some plates with the original corrupted metal base color.

Painted the pants with P3 Rucksack Tan and the boot covers with P3 Bootstrap Leather. As you can see the weapon hand snapped off (this was #2)

The last thing I was able to do before I packed up and headed out was basecoat the cloth in the mid-tone from the Reaper Master Series muted purple triad. I forget the name of the color at this time.

 

It was a decent effort and I am pretty happy with the progress after about an hour and a half of paint time. As you can clearly see there is a bunch left to do still but I should be able to bang him out pretty quickly once I sit back down with him. I think if I had an hour more before heading to the store he would have been "finished". I ended up going 2-1 at the event. The game I lost I tried to assassinate Butcher one. I tried to shoot him with the pistol wraith and missed. Tried to hit him with a boosted parasite (needing 8 on 3d6 since he wasn't iron fleshed) and missed. then charged him with 4 bane thrall grunts and two axe and missed all six attacks :o Well guess that wasn't meant to be. I know people don't think Cryx Sturgis is very good but I have to say I had a blast playing him. Playing Cryx again may have had something to do with it but I really like Sturgis and had a good time. I'd say the highlight of my night was in game one Les jammed mini-feated zealots into my army. I teleported Sturgis into the middle of them and feated killing ALL but one of the zealots! It was glorious. OK that's all I have for now hopefully I'll have a finished Sturgis for y'all to see soon.

Grim2 Redux

As part of my renewed painting interest I have decided to get back to The Hunters Grim and get them some serious (for me) table time. Sometime I have an easier time getting rolling on a mini starting from scratch versus picking up a previously started mini......so with that in mind Grim and some scouts had a date with the Purple Power. Mugg and Crump were spared as I am happy with their current state and should be able to pick up with out too much trouble.

Into the "Dip"

After their 24 hours soak and a quick scrub

Pretty clean. The mini had a few mold lines I missed previously so I was able to clean them up quickly before heading to primer

 

Blocked in some of the base colors with the airbrush then blacked out the stone and metal sections. The pants are P3 rucksack tan and the coat is P3 bootstrap leather. The plan for the pants is to do dark brown stripes with the rucksack. We will see how that goes.

 

I will be bouncing back and forth between Grim and the beasts I posted about previously. There are a lot of shared elements so I can hopefully assembly line some of those to enable me to get the three beast and The Hunters Grim done in fairly short order. I also need to finish up Grissel1 here soon.

 

Ranged Reinforcements (WiPs)

While Templecon was a bit of a dud for games played I have to say it has me fired up again to paint my trolls and to try and get more games in. I have been working on lists again, listening to podcasts, watching videos of games at http://endgamegaming.net/ (couple of our guys had games recorded too bad they were both loses). While listening to the latest episode of Lost Hemisphere Radio my good buddy Mr Bell aka Northblade brought up (at least I think) a really good point about seeing painted armies on the table and how they just seem to enhance the game experience. Since I am riding a wave of excitement right now I decided to keep pushing and trying to get more of my trolls painted. The current minis being worked on in the cave are a trio of beasts I have been meaning to start/finish for some time.

Not a bad little battle group. Throw in an impaler and you are all set ;)

 

Here is a bomber I had converted a little back by Rob Hawkins. I wanted him to have the mauler back and head so he looked a little more feral/menacing. I think Rob did a great job of pulling that off. He sculpted the pyg to be hanging off the quills which were sculpted to look more like the classic mauler. So far I have blocked in some of the base colors (skin, leather, and wood grain) via the airbrush. I then went in and blacked out all the sections that will be rock or metal with traditional brush. As you can see there is plenty of overspray of brown onto the skin but I will cleaning this up with brush after I drybrush the rock sections as this too will "mess up" the surrounding skin)

 

 

Next up is a classic blitzer. I think this mini has so much character and I like him better than the plastic multi-beast blitzer. The pyg with the slugger has a large pin that will slot in nicely once the two sections are finished being painted. This guys is a touch further along than his bomber brethren as I have drybrushed his rock section and cleaned up some of the surrounding skin. This work is not new but I figured I'd add him to the post since he will hopefully be finished in short order with the rest of these beasts.

 

Last but not least is one of our newer beast the storm troll. I have seen this gentleman popping up in lists and would like to give him a go. Out of the three beasts in the post I have done the most work on him in the last few days. I basecoated all sections of the mini and the skin/fur have received their shade washes. Next I will drydrush the fur and wash the two leather sections and metals. The skin highlights will be next (following my traditional elemental skin tones Slag,  Pyre, and Winter) and I am playing with the idea of doing all the runes on his skin in arcane blue and edge highlighting them with arcane blue/marrow white mixed. The bumps on his belly and arms will be my traditional troll magenta still....I think.

Ok so that is were we currently stand. hopefully I can keep riding this wave of painting mojo and bang out some more minis. The really trick will be finishing some units :/

 

Borka!

Title says it all. In a post prior to Templecon I was said I was trying to get the Rob Hawkins Borka conversion finished prior to leaving for Rhode Island. While I never got a chance to play him (see Templcon recap post) I am happy to say I was able to finish the big guy prior to making the trip. Here are the WiPs of the Kegslayer from the days leading up to Templecon:

Primed with black Vallejo Surface primer via the airbrush

Blocked in the base colors via the airbrush. Skin is my trollblood blue mix, fur is P3 trollblood highlight, leather is P3 bootstrap leather

I decided to try something new on Borka and paint the fur with a snow leopard pattern. I was a little worried going into this but followed the tutorial from a NQ GnG. When I went to bed after finishing the fur I wasn't too happy with it but upon second examination in the am I was very happy with the result and that I took the chance.

I also did the snow leopard pattern on the fur coming out of the gloves.

After cleaning up the base colors I washed the skin on Borka and pGrissel with my standard skin/metal wash

Different angle of above photo

Skin highlights. Also washed the leather sections and basecoated the metals.

Since I was working on my new Borka I took this time to touch up my old keg carrier. I reworked the keg and his skin.

Painted the tartan in Cygnar blues. I attempted to paint the tartan pattern from the trollblood forces book but didn't have time to get it right so just repainted it blue for now.

Detail work

Picked out the runes on the skirt with P3 hammerfall khaki

DONE! I have to say I am very happy with how he came out and in only 2 days. The matte varnish I used, after this photo, knocked down the highlights a little more than I would have liked so I may go back over him with satin varnish to see if I can bring some of the highlights back.

While she didn't get finished 100% pGrissel was very close and did get used three time at Templecon. I need to finish the red scarf and light brown tartan and she will be done too