Lord Carver WIP

Well it looks like this month's painting challenge that I set for myself is off to a bad start, on hold for now and likely to be pushed back to later this year. Sorry about that. I'm waiting to hear from my LGS about whether or not the rest of the Cygnar guys that I ordered from them are going to arrive anytime soon. Otherwise the only progress I've made so far was in successfully tracking down my missing box of Stormblades. So yeah, not good really.

Sure I could have started this past week on the Cygnar stuff that I do have, but instead I decided to hold off until the rest of the miniatures arrive. I'd rather wait and try this again in a few months, than start now but not be able to finish because half the models are on back-order. I'm actually kind of curious to see if I could do this challenge, so I'm willing to wait until I am better prepared before trying this again. Oh well… it's lame, I know. Feel free to call shenanigans on this. I only hope that regular diceRolla readers have by now become conditioned to such disappointment. ;)

So in the meantime over the last couple of days I've been painting this charming Farrow from the Thornfall Alliance for Hordes. In case you're not familiar with the model, this is the Minions warlock Lord Carver, BMMD, Esq III.

"ManBearPig is real. I'm super cereal."

Realizing that my chances of getting the Cygnar army painted this month were worsening with each passing day, I was ready to move on and start painting something else, anything else. I've had Lord Carver for about a year or so still in his blister pack and this seemed like a good time to paint him. I've got no other plans for collecting a Farrow Minions army so I'm painting this guy just for the hell of it.

I get a real kick out of this miniature. I love the pose, so serious for such a silly subject, and his cape is more than sufficiently swoopy. :) I had lots of fun painting that part of the model, though I'm considering going over it with a red glaze to knock the orange back a bit. Then again, maybe I should just leave well enough alone. Nothing wrong with it I suppose.

Swoopy.

I haven't settled yet on what I'll do once I've finished painting Lord Carver. I feel at this point, even if my Cygnar order were to arrive in the next day or two, that it would no longer be a fun experience trying to blast through painting all of them just to make the goal I set for myself. I'm content to save 'em for later. I have a few other things sitting on my painting desk that I could work on but right now none of those older projects hold much interest. I'll think it over and see if anything jumps out at me. So until next time... happy painting and gaming!

Old Bloggers Never Die

Nope, I'm not dead yet. :) Trying my best not to fade away, either. I'd say it's therefore time for a little bit of updating.

After staying busy throughout October, my family and I then hit a rough patch at the start of the current month. Nothing too dire, mind you, but stressful enough to kill most of my hobby and blogging motivation for the past few weeks. Normally painting is a great relief for me but I was in too much of funk to even pick up a brush for a while. Fortunately everything seems to be working out for the best now and I've started to get my hobby-groove back. Yippee!

Thus with the will to paint having been restored I finally got down to business and began working on my Sea Dog for the charity auction Project: Orange Crush (Hunger), part of Foodmachine 2011. (You can see my original post about getting involved here if you like.) I finished painting my pirate this past weekend and I'm really pleased with how he turned out. I had planned on keeping this under wraps until the auction goes live but I'm simply too excited to wait that long. Therefore I'm going to hold off from showing any further photos for the time being, though I cannot resist presenting at least one shot of my contribution to the effort. I'll have plenty to say later on about painting the miniature and the project itself, but until then here's the first look at my Sea Dog:

While painting my pirate I also spent some time thinking about the hobby in general and what I would really like to be doing with it. To help me out I reconvened my war council so as to determine the best use of my hobby time. After some discussion concerning various army projects and the different game systems with which I've been experimenting, it became apparent that I have not adapted to my new environment and instead I have continued on as if I were still living in a hobby wasteland. Despite moving more than six months ago to a much more gamer-friendly city, I have been slow to take full advantage of these new opportunities.

Once again I had allowed side projects to take precedence over my painting time, neglecting what I had initially intended to focus upon after moving to Asheville. While I am still very keen to get deeper into Dystopian Wars, Infinity, Malifaux, and Flames of War, there is just no way these other games can compete locally against 40k with regard to the availability of opponents and the potential to play games on a regular basis. I was starved for gaming in Charleston, yet now it would be no problem at all for me to play a few games of 40k every week should I choose to do so. I have been dissatisfied however with the state of my armies for quite a while and so, in order for me to get back into proper 40k-gaming form, I have decided to rededicate myself to working on my Raptors Space Marines.

Ideally I'd like to have 1500 points worth of Raptors painted by the end of this year. From there I will continue to expand the army with the goal of having significantly more painted in time for the release of 6th Edition. I always feel like I'm caught flat-footed whenever a new edition comes out and so this time around I want to be prepared as much as possible by having an army I'm happy with painted and ready to go as soon as the new rules drop. And in the meantime, if all goes accordingly, I'll have something I can take to the FLGS so as to enjoy these waning days of 5th Edition. That's my plan for now at least and I'm starting off by painting a squad of sniper Scouts.

The last thing I want to mention for this update is that starting tomorrow I will be doing another little giveaway for those of you Following my blog. I'll most likely post the details sometime tomorrow night (November 24th) though I'm not exactly sure when due to it being a holiday and the potential for post-turkey lethargy. At this point I just want to give everyone a heads-up in case you're interested. It's going to be a simple random drawing so all you'll need to do is check in occasionally to find out if you've won.

Okay, that's it for now. I hope everyone is doing really well... happy painting and gaming!

Spawn of Halloween

Once again in celebration of Halloween I'm passing the night away painting something scary. Of course few 40k players will find anything at all frightening about a Chaos Spawn. But with rumors now circulating about both Chaos Legions and Chaos Renegades in the works for Sixth Edition, maybe there is cause to hope that Chaos Spawn won't forever be a waste of points. They're a fun unit to paint and very thematic as well, it would be a shame not to make them a viable choice in at least one Chaos book. Is that too much to ask?

Spawn that don't suck, now that's scary. :)

I built this ugly fellow a couple of years ago for the planned revamping of my Chaos Space Marines army. I don't foresee putting much effort into that project until I have a better sense of what the army will be like in the next edition of the game. I'm excited about the early chatter but it still seems too far out to take anything seriously. In the meantime I'm content to wait and only occasionally paint a Chaos Spawn in supplication to the Dark Gods.

May they give us a Codex worthy of them. Ia! Ia!

A heretic can dream, right? Oh well, back to painting... Happy Halloween, everone!

Follow Your Blisstonia

After a few more setbacks over the last week concerning my nascent Chaos Daemons army, I've decided to put that 40k project aside for now and return to more familiar ground. For whatever reason I couldn't get my Slaaneshi mojo working so instead I have switched back to the Blisstonian 9th, my Simpsons-inspired Imperial Guard regiment. Also at this point I would much rather spend my time painting than building another army. I still want to do the Daemon thing but that can wait as it is not something I want to rush or do half-heartedly. Thus onto my beloved Blisstonia...

When I was last working on these guys I had become bogged down with the very first penal squad of the army. I may have to rethink their color scheme or at least change my approach to painting it as I remember those Guardsmen not being very much fun. In the meantime however I am going to begin by painting Techpriest Smithers and his squad of servitors, the Drones of Sector 7G. This seems appropriate too in that they were the first unit I included when developing the theme for this army. I'd also always planned on painting them in a different set of colors from the rest of the army, so that way I can work on them without knowing exactly how I will proceed with the main portion of the Blisstonian 9th.

As evidenced by the extremely early WIP photo seen above, I only sat down to begin painting these servitors a few minutes ago. Therefore I am eager to get back to it while I still have time this evening. Hopefully I can get more done on my Blisstonians than I did with the Slaaneshi daemons before I once again change directions. Despite how fickle I can be, that still shouldn't be too hard considering how little progress I actually made on the Chaos Dameons. Hmm, maybe Tzeentch would have better suited my hobby temperament after all.

Happy painting and gaming!

Pericles Class Fleet Carrier WIP

I'm still magnetizing the turrets for my Covenant of Antarctica ships, now having placed 20 magnets of 40 total, but I feel I need a break from dropping magnets and swearing. Therefore I have also started painting my first big ship for Dystopian Wars, the CoA Pericles Class Fleet Carrier. It is a lovely model with lots of neat little details to discover as you paint. So far I've had a lot of fun working on my Dystopian Wars stuff and this one is no exception. In fact I suspect these larger ships will be even more enjoyable to paint than the little guys. It's off to a good start at least. :)

The hulls are washed and dry so I'm ready to begin picking out all the details. Due to the funky design of this vessel I plan on painting almost everything before assembling the launch ramps and command bridge. I can't imagine trying to paint the interior of the ship if it were already glued together. Yikes!

Okay, back to painting....

Witchling Stalkers WIP #2

I'm right now waiting for some things to dry so I'd like to do a quick painting update. I am back to work on those Witchling Stalkers for my Guild crew and so far tonight I've mainly focused on the greenish glow coming from the creatures' eyes. My recent experience painting the flyers for my Covenant of Antarctica fleet was apparently good practice for this and helped me sort out how I prefer to build up the blend of colors. This time though I took the green mix to an almost pure yellow to try to make the colors glow even brighter. I'm not positive but I think this was also my first intentional, albeit crude, attempt at OSL painting... yikes!

I may give the eye glow one more highlight with a little spot of white added in to try to make the color really shine, but otherwise that area should be finished. Along with working on the eyes, tonight I'm also doing some initial shading on the Witchling Stalkers' tattered rags and robes. I am therefore still not very far along with these weirdos but nonetheless I hope to finish them off in the next couple of days.

Okay, it looks like everything is dry enough now so it's back to painting these miniatures. Phew! After a day of toddler-based insanity it feels nice to relax and chill out with my paints and brushes for a little while. :) Goodnight!

CoA Tiny Flyers WIP

I've hit a couple of snags tonight while working on the Tiny Flyer tokens for my CoA fleet. Due to an early mistake I had to change my plans for these little buggers and I'm not as thrilled with the revised color scheme. Nonetheless I will continue on with it and perhaps plan on picking up a 30-pack of flyer tokens once they're released which I can paint as I had originally envisioned. Initially I had wanted to the flyers to be based on the same blue scheme as the rest of the fleet but have instead opted to paint them in a mostly metallic set of colors.

The Tiny Flyers deployed by the Covenant of Antarctica are quite different from those of the other major powers in Dystopian Wars as they are in fact remotely operated drones. They thus have several notable differences in how they function in the game. Further the CoA cannot make use of any Torpedo Bombers so that all of their drones are classified as either Fighter Planes, Recon Planes, and Dive Bombers. I am using the color of the central coil as a means to distinguish each of these types of tokens.

Fighter Plane

Dive Bomber

Recon Plane

The ten Tiny Flyer tokens that I get to include for free with my fleet I have chosen to organize into the following squadrons: two squadrons of three Fighter Planes each, one squadron of three Dive Bombers, and lastly a single Recon Plane that is its own squadron. I primarily chose that arrangement of flyers however so that I would have at least one example of each type of token to paint.

I'm a little anxious about how this batch of flyer tokens will turn out but fortunately they don't represent too large of an investment in either time or money, especially as I would have wanted to buy a pack of flyer tokens anyway just to get their stat card. I do still hope that I can salvage these ones as I could then use the differently painted tokens as a way of further distinguishing my squadrons. Plus I have a feeling I'll like the revised color scheme more once I am further along with the tokens. That in turn is good motivation for me to return to painting them right away. Goodnight!

Witchling Stalkers WIP

I thought I was going to have more of an opportunity to paint today but with family commitments it wasn't to be. But hey, at least a little brush time is better than none. Therefore over the last couple of hours I've started working on my three Witchling Stalkers included in Sonnia Criid's Guild starter box for Malifaux. It took me quite a while before finally settling on how I would like to paint them, and if I can pull it off I think I will be really happy with how they turn out. We'll see what happens though as there's still much more painting to do on them. At this point I've only managed to put down the first layer of color onto these models so there's not yet much to look at... but it's a start! :)

Those are some creepy looking dudes, I like 'em a lot. I'm going to paint for a little while longer tonight as I do not know how much more hobby time I will have during the next few days. I will be busy having fun with my family and so probably won't have much of a chance to work on miniatures. I hope everyone has a fun weekend ahead. Happy painting and gaming!

CoA Bombers Almost Done

Well it looks like I'm now really close to finishing my Ptolemy Class Bombers, and with a little more time painting I should be able to knock 'em off. This will be the first squadron completed for my Covenant of Antarctica fleet, plus the three squadrons of frigates are not far behind. I'm happy with how the color scheme is working out on these models but I do expect it will need some modification for the other ships in the fleet. For now though I just want to make the orange and green areas on the bombers glow brighter and perhaps give the metal parts a quick highlight. At that point they should be finished and ready for their actual flying stands.

I don't know what I'll paint next for my Covenant fleet once I've completed the squadrons of frigates. I am interested in magnetizing the turrets on the remaining ships but I'm not too sure how I should go about doing that. I have however picked out what I want to include for my first 1000 points which I will use to learn how to play this game. Since I already have the starter box and a fleet carrier, there wasn't a lot of room left to include more units. Conveniently by adding a single blister pack of Icarus Class Medium Flyers, due to be released only a few days from now, I'd reach that 1000 point mark.

So here's the initial list that I'm building towards for my CoA fleet:

Aristotle Class Battleship (185)

Pericles Class Fleet Carrier (130)

3 Plato Class Cruisers with Inventive Scientists (210)

3 Diogenes Class Frigates (75)

3 Diogenes Class Frigates (75)

3 Diogenes Class Frigates (75)

2 Ptolemy Class Bombers (110)

2 Icarus Class Medium Flyers (140)

10 Tiny Flyer Tokens (free)

1000 Total Points

That's the current plan at least for my Covenant of Antarctica fleet. Presently though I am content to relax and work some more on the bombers before calling it a night. Happy painting and gaming!

Ptolemy Class Bombers WIP

This evening I began painting the next batch of models for my Covenant of Antarctica naval group. The last time I worked on this project I painted a squadron of Diogenes Class Frigates as a test of my color scheme, so in this group I have included the remaining six frigates from the starter box. I'm even more excited however to have started painting my two Ptolemy Class Bombers. I believe it was when I first saw the concept art for these weird flying machines that I knew which faction I wanted to collect for this game. Thus I wanted to paint them right away once I had my colors sorted out.

It's still really early in the process but I do like how the split color scheme looks so far on the bombers. Unfortunately I didn't do as good of a job this time creating a gradient between the colors on the set of six frigates. I did not space them out as much as I should have when priming them so that the blue paint would blast sideways onto the ships to either side, almost completely covering over the bone-colored undercoat. I'm fairly sure however that on such small models this will hardly be noticeable except when viewed from close up, if even then. Also I am happy to learn this lesson at this point rather than later on when I'm painting the bigger, more impressive ships. :)

Alright friends, that's all I have to report this time out. I've been waiting for the first round of Gryphonne Sepia wash to dry on these Covenant vessels, and it appears to have now done so. Therefore please excuse me as I go back to work on my fleet. Goodnight!

The Return to Naggaroth

Since my return to blogging and hobbying, so far this month I've focused almost entirely on new projects, and in most cases these have been for new games as well. I did post once or twice almost a year ago about assembling some Skorne models but otherwise this has been all new ground for diceRolla. It was therefore a surprisingly pleasant return to the familiar for me when I unpacked my Dark Elves earlier this evening. They've been stuffed away basically since finishing the tournament at Adepticon so it was nice to take them out of their foam and let them breath the fresh air.

After working so intently on the Dark Elves for much of the start of the year, post-convention I was initially relieved to set them aside and tinker with other interesting miniatures while I prepared to move to North Carolina. Having gone through my hobby hiatus and then having right away started a bunch of new army projects, now that I'm at last getting back to my Dark Elves it seems like I've bridged the gap between my hobby activities from before and then after the move. I feel refreshed and am excited to return to painting my treacherous Druchii friends.

When I left off working on these Dark Elves I had been scrambling to provide everything in my 1000 point army with at least a first coating of paints. It was a close call but with DrGabe's help I made it just under the wire, even receiving a higher painting score than I had expected. A few of the units are somewhat further along but the majority of them have received only that initial round of color. As the general of the army I spent some extra time working on the Sorceress so I suspect finishing her could be done rather quickly. That's likely where I'll start up again, although painting the War Hydra is very tempting to me.

The Cold One Knights pictured above were DrGabe's contribution to my late night paint-a-thon leading up to the tournament. It's impressive what he was able to achieve with just four hours to paint and a little Jack Daniels to keep him motivated. :)

While I finish painting the first 1000 points of my army, I will also plan how I want to expand the army beyond what I already have. Although it was only four games, the tournament I participated in nonetheless was still helpful in giving me a better sense of how my army functions and where it needs to be strengthened. First off I plan on increasing the size of the Black Ark Corsairs unit by the remaining five models that I own, though I can easily envision taking it up to a size of 25 or 30 Corsairs. I also want to add a second unit of Repeater Crossbowmen as the first unit performed well when tested in battle. They were admirably reliable killers.

Another core choice of troops that would be very helpful I think would be just a basic unit of Dark Elf Warriors. They would act as a dedicated bodyguard unit for the Sorceress and likely not be meant for use as one of the primary combat units of the army. In my tournament games I kept the Sorceress deployed with the Corsairs thinking this would help keep her safe from sniping. Instead as the Corsairs were my main combat unit this put her far too much into harm's way and, thanks to a couple of brutal miscasts, proved on occasion disastrous for the Corsairs as well. Therefore having the Sorceress safely tucked into a unit of cheap Warriors, from whence she can cast her spells with reckless abandon, seems like a good way to go. Hmm... a Master to carry the army's Battle Standard should also be another early addition.

So while I consider all these options and decide what to add to the army next, in the meantime it just feels really good to be talking Dark Elves again. I think it was helpful for me to take a little break from the Druchii after Adepticon to avoid burning out, but I am now definitely happy to be returning to them. Having reviewed the army and where I left the project, I am ready to get back to it right away.

Happy painting and gaming!

Diogenes Class Frigates WIP

Today I started painting my first models for Dystopian Wars, beginning with a squadron of CoA Diogenes Class Frigates. Initially I'd planned on trying out a different color scheme on each of the three ships in the squadron. I really liked the first paint scheme that I tried however and so I proceeded to paint all the ships the same way. There are some more details left to work on and a few areas that I need to clean up, but otherwise they're close to being finished. What you see in the pictures is a good indication of the look that I'm going for with my Covenant of Antarctica fleet.

I'm really pleased with how these three Frigate have turned out so far and they've been fun to paint as well. Another nice thing is that the color scheme was very easy to do as most of the work happens in the priming stage. I may have to modify my approach somewhat when it comes to painting the bigger ships, but for now it's encouraging to think that I might be able to finish this fleet fairly quickly. The Frigates are indeed rather simple models so perhaps I shouldn't expect to much at this point, but I can be optimistic at least.

Dystopian Wars is another game that I am quite excited about playing and I expect that will help keep me motivated to paint my ships. After today's experience however I don't thick motivation will be a problem when it comes to getting my fleet painted. I look forward to finishing this first squadron so that I can promptly begin work on the next set of ships. Thus far I'm really encouraged about this game and am happy that I decided to take a closer look at it.

Okay, that's it for now... time for more painting. Goodnight!

Captain Homer and Mojo WIP

Last May I spent some time working on one of my most drawn out painting projects, Captain Homer and Mojo, and posted an updated about them here. After writing about the progress I'd made, I went on to spend another evening or two later in the month working on Homer and Mojo before once again setting the pair aside. While the painting itself had not advanced very far, the noteworthy accomplishment was in finally attaching Homer's head to his body. Woo-hoo! Having left the last time with Captain Homer still in a headless condition, tonight I thought it would be worthwhile to update this project, even though it's been a while since I actually sat down to work anymore on it.

Before gluing on the helmet I finished bringing the white areas of power armour up to a pure Skull White. I tried to keep the paint thinned enough so that the white wouldn't buildup too much, but I then wasn't able to entirely prevent it from running into some of the darkened lines which define the various armoured segments. I'd like to tidy that up somewhat, in particular on the should pads and a few other more noticeable places. Otherwise I plan on leaving the rest as is due to the likelihood that trying to fix anymore would just lead to new mistakes in need of further correcting.

Once I was satisfied with the white areas around Homer's collar, backpack, and should pads, I evened out the yellow of the power armour and added a layer of highlighting on top of that. I would save the final round of yellow highlighting, however, for after having glued in place the helmet. This seemed reasonable to me should the final positioning of the helmet would alter which lines I wanted to emphasize the most. Additionally the blue legs are now either finished or else close to it. They could probably use one more pass of highlights so as to pick out the uppermost edges of armour as they catch the light. Lastly Captain Homer's power sword is the result of lots of trial and error until I finally had an effect that looked decent enough to me. Well, so long as I didn't look too closely it seemed alright. :)

At the same time that I was working on Captain Homer, I also made some more progress on his buddy, Mojo the Helper Monkey. At this point everything is blocked out in the basic colors and has received at least one round of shading and highlights. I'm rather pleased with how his face and other fleshy bits turned out. He seems to me crazy and dangerous, just the way a monkey with a flamethrower should look. There's still some highlighting and detail work to do but I think this monkey is close to finished.

I don't know when I'll return to work some more on Captain Homer and Mojo. One reason I've been hesitant to go any further is because I haven't yet finished planning out the design for Homer's back banner. Also I'm nervous about freehand painting a design onto such a relatively large area... that a mistake there could really botch the whole thing. Nonetheless I'm pretty sure that once I have the details sorted out to my liking, I will be ready to paint the banner if only to have that particular step behind me. And besides, how hard could it be to paint a big donut and some beer cans?

So that's all I have for now with regards to these two miniatures. Hopefully it won't take another three months before I'm ready to put together the next progress update on them. I'm not getting my hopes up, though, as these guys seem to have become permanent residents of my WIP shelf. Nonetheless it would be really nice to finally move on to the next batch of Stonecutters. Ah, someday... someday.

Goodnight!