Sea Dog 1

First of the Sea Dogs (after the mate). The pics are kinda washed out on this one since he's so much whiter than most things I photograph in the lighbox with this background. Overall the Sea Dogs are a blast to paint. Just the right level of sculpted detail to allow them to be quick and yet have plenty of character. I'm getting braver about painting stripes now too.

Freebooter Sorceress

In contrast to pretty much everything else I've shown here, this is not a Privateer model. This Freebooter model is something my wife asked me to paint for her, so I put it into the queue and finished it just the other day. I spent alot of time on it and am relatively pleased, although this model felt cursed. She kept losing her arms, and at one point I dropped her off my painting desk (which is 4' high) and onto the hardwood floor. Miraculously she merely fell apart, and no paint chipping or damage was incurred.

Parallel Projects

Lots of stuff going on lately, and unfortunately painting time is at a premium. However I'm getting lots of projects moving and/or completed lately. Here's an update on painting/miniatures projects:

Display Case Enhancements: A couple years ago I bought one of the Ikea Detof display cases, which I have to say, for the cost, has been a wonderful investment. It's provided a great way to store and display my miniatures... until recently. I've got enough paintined stuff now that it has nearly run out of space. So, my wife made a quite clever and remarkably obvious comment of "Why not add more shelves?" So, this weekend I got some additional glass shelves cut (because Ikea doesn't sell the shelves individually), and some metal rods. Using some florist wire to suspend the rods in place, and then some 2-part epoxy glue, I secured the rods in place. Then a few rubber washers around the rods and BAM, 2 more shelves added securely and easily. The project probably took me about 2 hours once I had all the materials.

Troop Transport Options: I've been having a little frustration with laying out trays for my Army Transport case. I've got the small one that only holds 8" of trays, which I very much like, but it does create some challenges around planning trays flexibly. I saw a post on the Privateer Forums by bugbait_nz where he shows some custom trays he made. This gave me an idea to make some of my own trays. So after some hunting, I found a nearby store that sells foam (interestingly named House Of Foam). My plan is to create some half-sized trays similar to bugbait's so that I can have more flexible configuration options. The foam is ordered and should arrive next week.

Painting: I did actually get some painting done. I'll post those pics next as seperate posts though. I'm slowly working through my Sea Dogs, and hopefully will have them done by next weekend. This weekend though is full of entertainment (Cirque du Soleil and a Superbowl party).

Sea Dog Mate

Well here's the Sea Dog Mate, leader of the squad. These Sea Dog models are very fun. I especially liked this model because it has just the right level of detail to make him both fun and fast to paint. Now to get the rest of the squad painted!

The Crushing of a Lifetime

Played a 500pt game against Eric tonight and I gotta say, I got crushed. I mean really smoted.

My List: Kreoss, a Reckoner, a Castigator, a Crusader, a full chior, 2 paladins, Vilmon, and 2 wracks.

My Enemy: Grim, an Impaler, a Blitzer, a Fell Caller, Alten, 3 Long Riders, and 6 Pyg Burrowers.

My Casualties: Everything except the Crusader basically. I got Kreoss into melee with Grim, but just couldn't land enough hits to put him down.

My Tactical Error: I switched the chior to Infuse from Safe Passage, opening the door for a bunch of shooting, from a primarily shooting army.

My Regrets: None. I drove my army straight at the enemy, spending half the game with most of my models on the other side of the board. I charged Kreoss into melee and played balls out. It was my intent from the beginning of the game. I could have played a brick and slowly marched across the table, but this was definately more fun.

Epic Feora 2, Skorne 0

Battled Lance last night and pulled out another victory! This time it was 750pts of eFeora goodness against Zaal and his Skorne cohort. I've been very happy with eFeora now that I've sort of "got the hang of her". I've found that a balanced force really helps alot. Last nights army consisted of eFeora, a Crusader, a Repenter, a Redeemer, 2 Seneschals, Vilmon, a Paladin, Knights Exemplar, Daughters, Cleansers, a Chior, Grogspar, Rupert, Gorman and 3 wracks. The battle was, for the most part, a really good scrum around the middle of the table, but in the end I wore down the Skorne force. Here's some highlights:

• Skorne Immortals with Zaal's "double STR" spell are crazy dangerous. They whacked Vilmon easily.
• The Skorne Cannoneer is bad business, laying out template blasts and boosting damage against poor Gorman. I had alot of problems with putting my stealth models near non-stealth targets.
• The Crusader was a rockstar, taking down a Titan Gladiator in one round while benefiting from the Chior's Infuse and 3 focus. I think both Lance and I were suprised actually.
• The bonded Redeemer was quite amusing for handing out fire. Even though I never used eFeora's feat, the fire was quite effective at causing some general concern.
• eFeora's Escort spell is just plain boss. The +2" of movement really makes the SPD 4 jacks a viable choice, and jacks like the Redeemer and Repenter can really benefit from being able to move 7" and then take their attack.

All in all, a very fun game, and further confirmation that eFeora is a good caster for my play style. A nice balance between troop and jack support makes her a real favorite for me.

Paladin of Menoth (Alt Sculpt)

Wrapped up the Paladin today. This was the alternate sculpt version. I definately like this pose better. I opted for a green scheme instead of red for this one to make it easier to distinguish them when playing. He's one of a few green schemed models I have for Menoth now. The green probably could have been a little deeper in color, but I like the tone better than what I've done before. Definately not a primo job, but I'm happy. It felt good to get back in the saddle after almost a month and a half of no painting.

I picked up a box of Sea Dogs as well as the magnificent Aiyana and Holt models, so although this model marks the "fully painted" mark for my Menoth force currently, I've now got about 200pts of unpainted mercs to get working on.

Victory for Ashlynn

Played a very entertaining game against Eric on Wednesday night (geez I'm behind on blogging). It was a 500pt Mercs vs Trolls rumble. My rather unconventional list consisted of: Ashlynn, a Nomad, a Freebooter, Gorman, Herne and Johne, Hawk, Grogspar, Doc, 2 Bokurs, and Alten. Yes I realized later that I broke the Highborn contract later by including Grogspar. In all honesty though, for the first time he was inconsequential to the game. Eric had Grim, an Impaler, an Axer, a Mauler , Champs and Gobbers. I think there was something else, but it slips my mind now.

The first couple rounds were mostly just advancing and a couple minor exchanges. The Gobbers did a superb job of protecting the beasts and Grim from any potential reprisal. The third round started off as a disaster for me. The Axer charged in and took off both arms from the Nomad, and then the Champs charged in, and the champ leader (with the Mauler's Rage on him) single handedly cut the Freebooter to pieces, much to my sadness. Then Grim feated and it looked like I was gonna get pinned down. Fortunately, Grim used the last of his fury to cast Return Fire on himself. My only option was to go for the throat. Ashlynn walked out of melee, and exacted revenge on the Champ leader, but more importantly, opened up a lane of movement. Then she popped her feat, catching my entire force. Next, Gorman moved through the open lane and tossed Black Oil and Grim. Unfortunately he missed. I had counted on the penalty to def to help, but in the end it didn't matter. Grim's feat was positioned between himself and my main line of solos, which I then used to my advantage. I moved Hawk forward a bit, and then her Bokur charged Grim. Despite standing in the Gobber's cloud, Ashlynn's feat gave the Bokur enough bonus to land his first 2 strikes and cut Grim to ribbons. Definately a win from some lucky positioning and rolls. I can't complain too much about my dice. There were a couple snakeyes rolls, but the Bokur's rolling made up for it in the end. Hats off to Eric though for putting me in a really tight spot. He'd have been hard pressed to kill me in the next round with Ashlynn's feat still active against him, but he'd definately have put me away in a couple more rounds I suspect.

Warpwolf Extreme

Here's the final pics for the Warpwolf Extreme. Basically the only stuff done since the last post was flocking the base and sealing it. I added a couple size comparison pics that I took from earlier on in the project.

WWX: Leathers

Worked over the leathers. It took longer than I expected, mostly just cause of basecoating them. Here's the rundown how how I did them:

* Base coat: Rucksack Tan
* Wash: Skorne Red + Brown Ink + Battlefield Brown
* Wash (thin): Bloodstone + Thamar Black
* Minor black touchups
* Highlight: Rucksack Tan + touch of Skorne Red

I also did the eyes and the metal strap hooks. Those were pretty straight forward, although I don't think the eyes turned out so great. I might redo them later.

WWX: Pokey Bits

All the teeth, spines and claws are done now (mostly). There's some blacklining left to do, and some minor touch-ups, but those parts are pretty much done. This is something I went a little overboard on. I started with Thamar Black, then worked through Battlefield Brown, Rucksack Tan, Jack Bone, Menoth White Base, Menoth White Highlight, and finally pure Morrow White. It takes a long time, but I've been pretty happy with the results.

WWX: Getting Better

I've finished the bulk of the skin work now. There's a few cleanup spots, but in general it's done. The steps I added after finishing the fur were mostly to add some highlighting with Coal Black through Ironhull Grey. Then I added a couple very very thin washes of Coal Black through Thamar Black over the whole thing to bury the highlights a bit. This was a technique I learned from practicing wood grain and bone texture and I think it works well here as well.

The model still looks kinda dumb to me at this point, but hopefully once I start filling out the rest of details it will look better. I'll probably keep working tonight, but this was a good point to stop and take a picture and chronicle the effort.

Victory Against Skorne!

Just a quick report. Played against Lance last night. He had a Hexeris list and I had a Testament list. It was the first time I played the Testament. He was recently painted so I figured I'd give him a try. Overall he was ok, but his feat round was pretty ridiculous. In the end I had lost have my knights and a couple chior, but had taken out 4 Ferox, a Bronzeback, Paingivers, a Gator, and most of the Bonegrinders. Admittedly, Hexeris did some of that work for me with a Deathbringer that caught some other stuff. Here's the highlights:

• Grogspar continues to be awesome. His slowburn screws up alot of plans.
• The Testament's feat was crazy good.
• Hallowed Avenger was very handy. I used it to get the Guardian further up the middle and block off some charge options for the Titans.
• Seneschals are just crazy ridiculous. Nothing like getting a chain attack slam on a Bronzeback and knocking it back into a Titan Gladiator to screw up a whole mess of stuff.
• The Guardian continues to be one of my favorite jacks.
• The Agonizer is frustratingly good at removing options.
• The Titan Gladiator's animus is also frustratingly good at removing options.
• Daughters continue to be a favorite unit for me. I especially loved having a little flanking unit of Vilmon and his harem full of Daughters and Hawk.
• Ferox are not fearless, and failing a cmd check can make or break a game. Putting terror on my knights was an amusing way to add more danger to the Ferox charging them.

Well, I'm hoping to get at least one more game in before I leave on my long vacation to Canada. In the mean time, I need to get refocused on painting again. I'm so close to fully painted!

WWX: The Line Between Fur and Skin

I've started working the furs now. This is the point where the model is in an in-between state and I get frustrated cause it looks sucky. I'm basically hitting the fur areas with a base coat of Trollblood Highlight, and then catching the sculpted fur bits with highlights of Frostbite and then Morrow White. I've also used some Ironhull Grey and Coal Black to blend and smooth the transitions between the fur base coat and the skin. I'm about 30% done at this point and need to take a break to go out, but figured I'd snap a pic anyway. I'll probably get back to it more tonight. I'm thinking that I'll need to do a couple very thing washes of Coal Black of even just straight black to bury the fur highlights a bit and tone it down.

WWX: All Your Base!

Spent this evening working on the base some more. It's mostly done at this point except for putting some static grass and flock and such on it. The remaining work was pretty straightforward:

* Grass base - This is just Iosan green as a base coat with a couple washes of Ordic Olive and Battlefield Brown. My goal here isn't to make it look great, just to provide enough base so that when the static grass and flocking go on top, it looks decent.

* Rocks - Very easy. Just Trollblood Highlight as a base coat, followed by a wash of Ironhull Grey and then highlights of Frostbite.

* Skulls - These I tried something new. Base coat of Jack Bone, then a wash of Vallejo Smoke, then highlights of Menoth White Highlight.

I also put down a base coat of Coal Black over all the skin and fur. After a couple of discussions, I'm going to try to make the skin black and the fur medium grey. It's going to be a stretch for my skills, but it's all about painting like I have a pair.

Grissel Bloodsong

Grissel marks the fully painted mark for my trolls. I'm now down to just my alt sculpt paladin left to paint. Looks like I'll reach fully painted before Christmas!

There's a couple key things I want to highlight before signing off for the night. First, I'm very happy with how the overall look of the model turned out. It wasn't the best paint job, but I was focused on practicing overall color balance, and specific effects. This one isn't perfect, and the sculpt itself didn't help, but I feel like it worked out ok. The leathers, metals, and wood grain were things I wanted to practice new techniques on too, and they panned out ok I think.

The second item is my photo setup is getting better. I tried out a bunch of different paper backdrops and found that paper is just too reflective. So now I've got a medium grey felt and that seems to be working quite well.

Cork Bases

Just a quick post.... I decided to experiment with using corkboard for basing. I picked up some cheap cork tiles from the local craft store and followed the excellent tutorial from the Brushthralls site. Here's the end result, which I am quite happy with given the amount of effort needed.

The corkboard I used is actually pretty decent quality, which has plusses and minuses. It did result in a rather flat-topped rock, which looked somewhat unnatural at first. So, I added some moss to the top and that seemed to really help the overall look. Probably next time I'll use more moss and put some on the sides, as well as put together 2 "levels" of cork.

WWX: Suit Up!

This is going to be a massive project. I started painting the armor plates today and it really hit me how big this is. The model itself is huge, which is causing a couple problems, not the least of which is the sheer amount of brush strokes needed to get the whole thing painted. However, even more annoying, is holding the model is a problem. It's heavy enough that holding it much has caused primer to rub off in a few places. So, to combat that, I've glued and pinned it to the top of an old Testors spray can. Hopefully this will let me hold it safely and still be able to get at the parts I need to get to.

The armor plates are pretty straight forward. First I did the insets, starting with Necrotite Green (3 coats to get a nice smooth undercoat. Next I did a wash of Wurm Green. Then I started doing shading working from Wurm Green through Ordic Olive, then to Cryx Bane Base. I decided to shade rather than highlight because the inset plates were simply easier to shade into the recesses rather than try to blend highlights into the centers of the plate areas.

Once this step was done, I put down a base of Pig Iron on the plates, then covered that with Brass Balls. I find that a base coat of Pig Iron really helps when adding yellowish metallics so that it doesn't take as many coats of paint to get good coverage.

I'll probably do some additional work on the metals of the plates, but I'm exhausted tonight, so I'm going to give it a rest for now.

WWX: Primed and Ready

Primed the WWX this morning. Here's a pic, just for kicks. I started painting the armor plates tonight but honestly didn't get very far. Just filled in the base coat of green on the plates. I can already tell this is going to be a monstrous project.

WWX: Smoothing the Longcat

I picked up the WWX from Lance today so that I could finish up the last bit of sculpt cleanup and prep work. Most of the work was done already with a couple exceptions. There were a couple join spots that needed smoothing, especially at the waist. Also the right hand and teeth needed to be attached. Anyway, the remaining cleanup was pretty easy. Here's a couple pics...

This project is a Christmas present for Sean, so I'm saving all these posts as drafts until such time as the gift is given. I'm going to once again try to take as many pictures as possible and document all the steps as I go.

Victory... sort of...

I played against Eric last night, finally. It's been a long time since either of us played, so there was a fair amount of amateur hour going on. I totally forgot to feat and pull focus from my wracks. Eric totally forgot the extra dice from Liquid Courage when he did a run on Kreoss. In the end, we were getting short on time so he made a run on Kreoss with Borka. If he'd remembered the extra dice, he probably would have killed Kreoss. As it turned out, he came close, but Kreoss lived and then delivered a mighty beatdown on Borka. My dice did some mild betrayal at a couple key points, but overall I can't complain too much. Eric did a good job of defusing my first-strike plan. Very fun game though!

Last night's game illustrated a key point to Warmachine/Hordes: The game is complex, and if you haven't played for a while, it's easy to forget all the intricacies of the models. Timing and special features are a key to the game.

Some highlights from my side of the table:

• Fielded Hawk for the first time and she was awesome! She whacks champs good! She's like a super Daughter of the Flame.
• Fielded the Sunburst and it was, for the most part, innefective.
• Fielded Grogspar, and he continues to rock.
• Borka's feat round + Liquid Courage + Fell Caller's Inspire is just ridiculous.
• Calvarly can be dangerous, but I spend alot of effort maneuvering to avoid them and thus negate alot of their value.

Project: Transport

I'm going to start a new sub-project... building a better carrying case. I'm rather inspired based on a post from the Privateer boards. I've been using the Army Transport case for a while now, and I like it, but I have a couple issues:

1. I have the small case, cause the larger cases are... well... large. I like the size of the small case.
2. The trays, although very protective, are 1 per level in my case.
3. It's hard to make a tray that will fit lots of models, and a varied set of models. Maybe there's a secret art to it, but I seem to have optimized my trays to specific models too much, and now I can't really store other models in those trays.

So my plan is simple: I want to create some trays that are essentially half-sized to the normal foam trays I have, and make them so that the models can stand upright (to avoid foam rubbing against the model's paint, and make the slots a little more flexible in terms of what models will fit. I've already got a pile of cardboard, so the real first step is to find the foam.

Testament of Menoth

This week's installment is the Testament of Menoth. I'm glad to get him done for a couple reasons, not the least of which is I love this sculpt. It was however, a little challenging to paint. For some reason I just couldn't find my groove until I was about halfway through. I kept struggling with what order to paint the various sections in. Eventually I had to just set the model down, examine the whole thing, and make a tactical plan of how to go about painting it. This was very uncharacteristic for me. Typically I just intuitively work my way through the model without having to think too much about it. The most tactical I usually get is to just make a list of all the remaining small details. Anyway, once I got organized, it was a pleasure to paint. I'm really looking forward to fielding him, if I can ever get a game in. *sigh* It's been probably 6 weeks since I played last, but that's another model.

Something specific to note on this model is that I took extra time and care in "shading" the metals, particularly on his weapon. This is one of my goals for the next few models. I'm also starting to get a bit more of the hang of the 2-brush method, although I still have a long ways to go (as evidenced by the poor blending on his black robe).

Link Dump

Just a quick post, more for my own tracking than anything else. Below are a couple interesting links that I didn't want to lose track of.

Tiny Magnets! - These little guys seem like they could be real useful for a whole variety of applications.

Kublacon Painting Competion 07 - These are the pics of the winning entries from Kublacon07.

First Mate Hawk

Here she is, in all her pirate goodness. Hawk was somewhat challenging to paint due to her dainty nature, but overall was a pleasure. Painting smaller models like this is definately challenging and sharpening my skills.



Here's some notes of things I put extra effort into, or tried a new technique:

• The leathers were something I put more effort into than before. I used to use one layer of paint, one of ink, and then maybe a highlight if I felt ambitious. For these I went a little further. The lighter brown used Bootstrap Leather, then a wash of Battlefield Brown, then three highlight layers of Bootstrap Leather and Rucksack Tan. The darker leathers were a base of Bloodstone, then a wash of GW Skaven Brown ink, then 3 highlights of Bloodstone and Khador Red Highlight. It was more work for sure, but I'm very happy with the results.
• The blades of her swords were done with multiple highlights of various metals, all the way to pure Vallejo Metal Medium. Highlighting and working metals is something I definately need alot more experience with.
• I specifically tried to work hard on her face, all the way down to carefully painting the eyes and shading the lips with a touch of a fleshy pink color.
• Purple is a color I've never really worked with, and this model presented a nice opportunity for that. Of course, it also lead to a rather "Joker"ish look to her, but I'm ok with that. Overall the purple worked pretty well, using Beaten Purple, Carnal Pink, and GW Hybrid Purple ink, and of course some Thamar Black.

I'm now down to 3 models left to paint. I totally enjoyed painting this pirate, and am looking forward to getting some more to paint. For this model, I designate her as "unbounded" for time, and just to keep working on until I feel that she's really done to my satisfaction. This is in preparation towards the Kublacon painting competition next year. I'm not expecting to win, but I'd like to feel like not a shmuck putting one of my models in the competition. I'm sure I'll be posting more about that in the near future.

Krielstone Scribes

I think I've finally found a methodology to painting squads that keeps me from getting too frustrated. Rather than working by color, I work by element, completely shading that element before moving to the next one. This served me pretty well working on these guys. It also helps to pick larger elements at the start if possible. For these guys I did skin first, then main leathers, then weapons. By that point they were 70% covered in paint. Anyway, it's nice to have these little buggers finished. This leaves me with just one troll left, and 4 models total unpainted.