A short break

I decided to take the a little break from painting Trolls this week. I may be on a deadline but I'm chugging along nicely with the army as a whole and I needed a bit of a pallete cleanser.

I'm also waiting on a few more models to arrive before my final push on the army, so it's all good.

Anyway I finally managed to get my Masque painted. I've had the model knocking around for a few years now and she was the only model I had unpainted in.my AoS 4 test game the other week, so it made sense to get her done.

She turned put very nicely I think. A lovely change of pace. I'm still getting used to the fact that my new phone camera picks up more than my eye can when I'm painting. Some of the highlights and layers are looking a little rough when I post the pics on here, but I have to keep reminding myself that it'll look fine when on the table!

If nothing else it's a nice little push for me to improve my skills!

The other thing I've been doing is cracking on with the terrain I've been meaning to do for my local club for a few months now, but kept getting distracted from:

It's a much simpler paint job than the Masque. I've just been drybrushing whilst watch stuff on YouTube. Strangely relaxing in an almost zen way.

It turned out pretty nice considering how simple the scheme is. Just Skavenblight Dinge over a white spray, then drybrushed up with white.

Got a few more bits I need to get done too, but it won't take too long now I've started.

All in all it's been a pretty productive week. My next batch of Trolls should arrive in the next few days, then it'll be back to the ground ready for October. It's been nice taking a little break though, plus having my hobby mojo properly returning has been wonderful. I'm going to ride it while I still can!

I'm back!! (hopefully)

So as usual, I've been utterly terrible at keeping up with this blog. I've been in a bit of a hobby funk recently that I've just gotten over, so hopefully I'll be getting a bit more to show you guys soon.

I did manage to get these guys done for my AoS Slaanesh though:

These Blissbarb Archers have been sitting unfinished on my desk for about a year now. There was so much detail on them that i was a little daunted so i kept putting off painting them.

I recently saw a YouTube video though that made them look a lot simpler than I thought, so i decided to give it a go. It certainly wasn't as easy as they made it look! I'm glad i gave it a try though, as in my opinion they're some of the nicest results I've achieved on anything for ages!

Posting them up here has actually made me realise I could probably do with going over the base trims with another layer, but that's easily fixed. 

I particularly love the skin tone I achieved for them. It really gives a nice, unnaturally pale look to the whole unit which I'll definitely be transferring to other projects.

All in all these guys have really given my hobby mojo the kick up the arse it needed and I'm pretty psyched to get working on other bits. I definitely want to see if i can get more of my Hedonites churned out whilst I'm in the right mood for it, but I've also got some Old World bits to be working on too. I'll post more once ive decided what it'll be.

Until next time, happy hobbying!

Monster Progress!

I think I need to stop making hobby plans for when I'm holidays. After everything going spectacularly wrong when I was off in February, then not getting much of a chance to do much in March, I was looking forward to using my 12 days off last month to get some seriously hobby done.

Fate on the other hand, had a different ideas. My glasses broke the day before I was due to be off, leaving me with a two week wait for a new pair and being unable to work on anything. I'm starting to get the feeling that I'm cursed!

Anyway, after that delay, I'm starting to get back on track and actually got a substantial amount finished:

My first Keeper, Shys'ell the Magnificent, is finally complete. She's taken me far longer than I even want to think about tbh, but I'm ridiculously proud of how it's turned out. The insane amount of layers really paid off. 

There's also a magnetised shield for her that I need to paint up, but that can come later. I'm at the stage where I'm just happy not to be working on her any more!

Not that I didn't enjoy painting her, it's just possibly the longest I've ever spent working on a single model and I'm definitely ready to move onto other stuff. Luckily, I also managed to get my other big piece finished around the same time:

As I mentioned a few posts ago, I've been painting Morty for a friend alongside my Slaanesh stuff and to be honest I was a little surprised at how long it took me to get through him. I thought the Keepers would take me longer, but there's an insane amount of detail squeezed in there. 

I also really do love how he turned out though, to the point where I consider it one of the best pieces I've ever painted! My friend loves him too, which is even more important. I'm looking forward to having him stomp my poor Slaaneshi force into the ground with him in the near future!

I am feeling a little burned out on big monsters though, so I'm going to leave painting my second Keeper for a little while before coming back to it. Instead I'm going to focus on something completely different.  I have something in mind, but you'll have to watch this space to find out what it is. 

I'm also doing a non-wargaming painting commission for another friend, which I may or may not show on here. That will influence what I work on though. Whatever I choose will be reasonably small scale until that's finished. 

Quick Update

I've had a pretty productive week. The thought of Covid restrictions possibly lifting in the UK soon has really driven me on to try and get my Slaanesh stuff done. It'll be nice to finally be able to get a game with someone outside my support bubble! 

As a result, I've put in a fair amount of hours painting over the past few days and nearly completed my first Keeper:

I'm quite proud of how it's shaping up, even though it took absolutely ages to get the layers down on it. It's times like this when I can understand the attraction of buying an airbrush!

I just need to finish up the hair and paint up the cape and it'll be ready to go. I'm hoping to get it done this weekend. Then I've got the fun of doing the second one!

That's it for today though. I'll post more soon.

 Stay safe and happy hobbying! 

Monster Mash

Remember I mentioned in my last post about how I've had a really crap couple of months? Well things got even worse from there. Without going into too many details, I really needed to cheer myself up and had some birthday money burning a hole in my pocket, so I decided to break my self-imposed rules on hobby purchases and treat myself to some models.

Just a few 'little' bits. To be fair, it's stuff I've been wanting for ages and I needed the dopamine hit which comes with a plastic crack delivery! 

The Keeper of Secrets is a model I've been after ever since it came out. It's such a gorgeous sculpt, but I've just never gotten around to picking it up until now. I just hope that I can do it justice with my painting skills.

I got it assembled pretty quickly. I even started painting it:

I don't thinking I've done too badly for a couple of evening's worth of work. Still a long, long way to go though. 

I'm actually quite proud of how the layering on the back of the skirt is shaping up. It's looking a little rough atm, but it's heading in the right direction and it's not normally something I do well on a large scale. Even as I write this though, I'm coming to the horrible realisation that most of my hard work isn't going to be visible once I attach the outer cloak. Sad times. 

In between layers on that though, I've been working on something a little more... unusual:

I wanted my second Keeper to be a bit different to my first one, plus I wanted to create something which paid homage to the classic 80's Keeper, whilst still working in the modern game. Thus this abomination was born!

If someone had told me I'd be spending part of this lockdown sculpting thigh high boots on a sexy cow Deamon, I'd have laughed. Yet it seems I've reached that particular stage of craziness.

It was actually pretty simple to convert. Working from the AoS Ghorgon kit, most of it was created using my leftover bits from the 'proper' Keeper. I'd say that trimming the Keeper claws to fit over the existing wrist guards were the most complicated part of the process. That was more time intensive than hard to do though. 

The boots themselves were pretty easy to create. I just smoothed off the lower legs, attached a hoop of plasticard to form the top of the boot, then built up layers of Green Stuff and Liquid Green Stuff to form the rest of it. Fairly basic, but I think it looks effective. 

Looking at the photos, I might go back later and add some more bulk around the ankles, but I'll have a think about that. I've got a lot of work to do before I get around to painting it. 

Oh and finally, as if I didn't have enough big models to be working on right now, my mate's also asked me if I could paint Mortarion for him. Like a fool, I agreed!

I'm not entirely sure why I accepted the commission, especially as I've got three big models to work on already sitting on my painting desk. I guess I just wanted a different style of model to work on for when I want a break from painting Slaanesh stuff. The Keepers are going to require me to carefully build up many thin, smooth layers, whereas Morty lets me do something a bit more grimy and 'grimdark', as well as have fun painting a lovely sculpt which I'd never buy for myself. I may regret my madness, but so far it's been fun to do.

I've actually made some decent progress already:

It's not the best of photos. I'm still getting used to photographing big stuff in my light box, but it'll do for now. I'm going for a much grittier and down to earth colour scheme than I normally see him painted in. It's taking bloody ages and there's obviously a long way to go yet, but I'm happy with how he's shaping up so far. 

As you can imagine, pretty much all my hobby time right now is being poured into these three models. It may make for some very repetitive future updates, but at the rate I'm going, I should actually get through them reasonably quickly.

This ended up being a much longer post than expected, but that's not a bad thing. It just goes to show how much I can get done when I get bitten by the hobby bug!

 I'll post more soon. Until then, stay safe and happy hobbying! 

Knights and Daemons

It's a few days later than I planned, but I'm back with my promised progress post.

I had a pretty productive Birthday hobby session. I managed to get all the transfers down and finish off the squad which I wanted to get done. It took far longer than I expected, but I suppose that's what I get for doing custom heraldry for every unit in the army! 

Anyway, may I present Intercessor Squad Autereus of the Crowned Blade Brotherhood, Golden Knights chapter. Done and dusted:

I'm really quite proud of how these turned out. I'm enjoying really taking the time to put the love and care into the army which I feel they deserve. It was also a lot of fun working working out squad markings and the meaning of all the symbols in the context of the wider background of my Chapter. 

It does mean that my marines are turning into a far longer term project than I anticipated, but I don't mind. It really lets me indulge my inner world builder. 

I've decided that I need a project that's a bit more of 'quick hit' alongside it though, so I don't get too burnt out from my slow progress. Because of that, I decided to dust off my  Slaanesh Deamons and get them up to scratch. 

I shelved them originally because they were pretty terrible under 8th Edition and I was putting a lot of effort into an army which was losing every single game. I've always been a very casual player and not cared too much about that kind of thing, but it was still pretty demoralising. 

Fast forward to now though and apparently Slaanesh is pretty good under 9th. About damn time, in my book. Typically it happens just as we're not allowed to go out and game though!

Naturally I'm planning to be a hipster about the whole thing and point out that I was playing Slaanesh before it was cool. I can't really do that when my army is only half painted though. That brings me nicely back to my side project. 

I've decided to spend some time to finally finish up my deamons. I've actually gotten off to a pretty good start:

That's fifteen brought up to a standard I'm happy with, painted over the course of roughly 6-7 hours, split across a weekend. 

That's not too bad I'd say. At that rate, I reckon I could get the 60ish Deamonettes I own done in a month or so. Of course this is me we're talking about though, so it's likely to take longer than that due to my tendency to get distracted. My point is that it's a pretty quick scheme considering the amount of layers involved on the white skin. 

After that I'll need to buy some of the new kits, as my two Keepers of Secrets have been demoted to Deamon Princes due to size changes, plus I'm wanting Syll'eske and a Contorted Epitome. That's really not too much of an issue, considering how the new plastics are so gorgeous. It does, however mean that I'll be breaking my self imposed rule on not buying more models, but I've had such a crap couple of months, I can probably bend the rules a little. I reckon I deserve a treat to cheer myself up a little bit. Plus I've been tearing some pretty sizable chucks out of my backlog recently, which was the point of the exercise in the first place. 

Enough rambling though. I can definitely feel my hobby mojo starting to return and it's been great to get a decent sized post up for the first time in a while. I feel like I'm going to be quite productive in the next week or two. I've been wrong before, but watch this space. I should be back soon. 

Stay safe and happy hobbying! 

A plethora of progress

 I've been pretty busy over the last couple of days. I've decided to push on with my quicker method for doing my Deamonettes, mostly because I want a chance of being able to game with my Daemons force at some point in the foreseeable future. I surprised even myself a little with how much I've gotten done though!

That's 30 Deamonettes finished over two night's worth of hobby sessions. Not bad at all and I'm pretty pleased with how they turned out. I'm so happy in fact that I'm actually considering leaving them as they are rather than going back later and improving on them later.

I also got a couple of Heralds finished too. I decided to give these the full treatment on their paint jobs, seeing as they're characters.

These actually came together really quickly, both in one sitting. I think it's down to them being such lovely sculpts. The Enrapturess in particular was a joy to paint, even though she was an absolute arse to put together. Hopefully the mere fact of her existence means that Slaanesh is going to be getting some love soon too.

I also managed to sit down and finally finish up my Eschers:

It was only a few odds and ends that needed doing, but it's still nice to have them done.

The Ultra Violets have had mixed start to the campaign, winning one game easily and losing the other quite heavily. I somewhat underestimated the power of Cawdor and their massed flamers! I managed to crawl away with no lasting injuries though, so that's always a bonus. Next time I'll be facing them on an open field rather than Zone Mortalis though, so hopefully I can get some revenge!

All in all I'd say that I've made a healthy amount of hobby progress in the past few weeks. By my count I've netted 62 points of positive progress, inching my closer to my goal of positive figures. 

Hopefully I can keep this flow of progress going, as I've got my eyes on an upcoming project that's going to knock quite a big chunk out of that. More on that later. For now I want to knock out a few more Slaanesh models before I get too distracted by other things.

Quantity vs Quality

As I talked about in my New Year post, my goal for this year is to only play games with painted models. That's a great goal to aim for, but it's thrown up an unexpected quandry, which I want to talk about today.

My mantra when painting over the past couple of years has been to 'up my game' wherever I can. I used to be able to churn out entire armies in no time at all, but quite frankly in hindsight, they looked like garbage. I've been making a real effort to change that recently and have been trying to really improve my painting skills.

Without tooting my own horn too much, I think it's been working well for the most part. I'm certainly a lot prouder of what I've produced of late and I've had comments from several people about how much I've improved as well.

The thing is that improving my quality takes more time. Pretty obvious I know, but that's kind of at odds with what I want to achieve this year. To give you an example, my scheme for my Slaanesh Daemons looks like this:

They look great in my opinion and are exactly how I want the entire army to eventually end up looking like. the problem is though, these five models took two or three hours to get to this stage and I need fifty of them just to make my Daemon army playable.

Now compare those previous models to these:

Granted these aren't finished yet, but these took roughly an hour to get to this stage, painting mostly with washe. That's a fraction of the time it took me to do the first five, but they still look pretty decent in my opinion. They still need another layer of wash on their claws, but they're fairly close to being done. They look good as a collective group, but they're nowhere near as high quality. I'd consider them a mid-level tabletop standard.

 

The question I'm finding myself asking is, do I want to compromise on the overall standard of painting to help clear my backlog quickly and be able to play games with my Daemons, or do I take the time to bring them all up to a higher level?

I'm sure it's a question we've all found ourselves asking ourselves from time to time, hence why I decided to make a post about it, so I can hear other people's thoughts on the matter. 

 

I'm going to think this over for the next couple for days, but I'm currently leaning towards mass producing them. I can always return later and 'top them up'. Getting a shift on with my rate of finished models seems a really solid idea, especially with new projects on the horizon calling to me already.

What do you think?

A little diversity...

I've made a decent amount of progress over the last couple of days, but I'm afraid you'll have to wait a little while longer before I post it up. I've got a new phone arriving with a much better camera, so i'm waiting until that arrives before I snap some photos of what I've been up to.

In the meantime I just wanted to quickly share something that I'm rather proud of.

I wanted a little more diversity in my Necromunda gangs, so I had an experiment with painting darker skin.

I'm actually rather shocked at the fact that I've been in this hobby over 15 years and this is the first time I've ever attempted to paint a non-Caucasian skin tone.

I think it's a trap a lot of gamers fall into. The vast majority of painting tutorials out there focus on lighter skin tones and most people don't even consider doing anything but that, despite the massive diversity that must exist in a setting like the 40k universe.

Anyway, this was actually pretty quick and simple to do and I think it's produced some fantastic results. I started with a Rhinox Hide basecoat over a white spray, then layered Skrag brown on the raised muscles and finished it with a Seraphim Sepia wash to tie the two colours together. The clearly defined muscles and lines on the model made this really easy, but it'll be interesting to see how this works on a model with softer lines like my Eschers.

My job was also made a lot easier by the fact that I didn't have to worry about the face thanks to the mask I've decided to add to all my Cult gang.

So there you go. A really easy method to produc darker skin tones. Next up will be trying to apply this to some of my Thousand Sons, as canonically most of them come from the Egyptian/Persian region. I've got to actually focus on some of my Hobby Challenge pieces before I do that though, so that might be a while off yet.

Happy Gaming!

Slaaneshi Side Project

In my last post I was feeling pretty positive about my painting points. I should have known it wouldn't last. I went down to my local gaming shop for my 30k campaign game on Monday night, not intending to buy any models. I picked up White Dwarf while I was there and saw that they had the rules for Chaos Cultists for Necromunda in there. My resolve crumbled almost immediately.

Less than 20 minutes later I bought a box of Witch Elves to kitbash into Slanneshi Cultists!

(My usual apologies for the awful picture quality. I'm getting a new phone this week, so this should improve very soon!)

It's an idea I've had for ages, but I've never really gotten round to creating. I've always thought that the Sisters of Slaughter heads on the Tzeentch Acolyte guys from the AoS range would make for some really creepy looking Cultists and after a rummage through my Necromunda bits box, it turned out that I was right.

Now you might think that buying a £30 box just to use the heads is a little wasteful. You'd be absolutely right in that thinking. Luckily I do have a use for the rest of the box. I'm intending to make use of the rest of the kit to make some Death Cult Assassins when I revisit my Inquisition, so they won't go to waste. Technically I'm getting two completely different sets of models from one box!

This little distraction shouldn't take too long to finish, so it'll make a nice side project for me.

What do you think of them?

  I also managed to get a couple of photos from my game.  I've realised that I take loads of photos of my games, but never seem to get around to posting them on here. I'm going to try and fix this in future.

  The first photo was taken moments before I was denied an honourable duel with his commander by the hail of Bolter fire from the Tactical Squad hidden in a building off-camera to the right!

The second captures the moment where my Breachers bit off a little more than they could chew!

I think you can pretty much infer the result just from looking at these two photos. It was good fun though, despite the thrashing my XVth Legion received. Michal's always a great opponent and much amusement was had at my appalling luck and his dishonourable tactics.

After a few games at the 1500 points stage, I'm feeling my campaign list is somewhat lacking in power compared to what it keeps going up against. It's a little annoying, but this can't really be helped. Thousand Sons armies tend to be quite points-intensive and I was forced to improvise a little to make use of what I had available. I should be able to fix this when the rosters expand to 2000 points though. I just need to make sure I get what I need painted in time.

Slaaneshi Thoughts

I had a rather nice surprise when I woke up on Friday morning in the form of new Dark Elf models being revealed at the Las Vegas Open. I was genuinely excited for a moment. Dark Elves are my main Fantasy army and it's always nice to get new models, especially ones as beautiful as these.

Then I remembered they were for Age of Sigmar: a game I have zero interest in playing after what they did to the Old World and the 25 years of background associated with it. If anything was going to tempt me in though, it would be these. They really are gorgeous sculpts.I might even pick some up to add to my 8th edition Druchii army.

Despite having no interest in the gaming system, this reveal still got me thinking. Dark Elves and Slaanesh have always been closely linked in design and imagery. Granted DE have always had a healthy dose of Khainite influence thrown in too, but the resemblance is there to see, especially in older models.

It's been pretty clear for a while that GW doesn't know what to do with Slaanesh. Being the god of Sex, Drugs and Rock n' Roll, the subject matter he/she/it covers has been rather at odds with GW's more 'kid friendly' leanings in the last decade or so.

Putting aside the fact that their IP is built on a universe where murder, plague and genocide are par for the course, Slaanesh has steadily been getting less and less attention from GW. This was especially obvious from the recent codex release for Daemons.

The question is: how do they reconcile the classic look and imagery associated with Slaanesh with something a bit more family friendly? I think this release is pointing the way.

Witch Elves have always been scantily clad berserker women. The 6th edition models were literally dressed in just shoulder guards and a loincloth. The plastics a few years later weren't much better. It's why I was surprised that they focused on updating the Witch Elves before the rest of the Elf range.

I think GW needs to take a look at what they've done to 'modernise' the look of Witch Elves in this release and apply the same line of thinking to their Slaanesh range. They need to remember that he/she/it is the god of all excess, rather than just being about sex and pleasure. Imagine an updated Slaanesh focussing on pride, gluttony, envy and all the other deadly sins besides lust. It would be something quite glorious to behold.

I would really like see the followers of the Youngest God get some love within both the CSM and Daemon ranges. It's rather galling not even to be able to buy a complete box of Noise Marines for my Emperor's Children atm.

What do you think of these releases? I'd also be interested in hearing your thoughts on the direction GW should go with Slaanesh. It's certainly a thorny issue.