Gnarlhorn Satyr

He's done! And what a joy he was to paint. Seriously, this was a very fun model. A good level of detail for a large model, with surfaces allowing for some experimentation.

I've noticed that more dramatic highlights and shadows can really help a model pop. There's definately a fine line on what's good and what's overdone though. I'm still too conservative in my contrast level I think, but maybe that's just me. I experimented a bit more with higher levels of contrast between the shadows and the highlights and I think it paid off well, especially on the leathers.

Two-brush blending is really useful in small areas. Now that I've gotten more used to the mechanics of it, I'm starting to use this technique more automatically. Even on fairly small areas (like Gnarly's righteous six-pack stomach muscles) it works quite well.

Tattoos are fun. They were intimidating when I was first learning how to do them, but later on now they are becoming a blast. Fixing mistakes on tattoos is a little painful, but the process is pretty easy. I found that sketching on a piece of paper ahead of time is vital, along with using just a touch of flow aid, but thinning paints with water is not very helpful.

Painting the fur was an odd thing. Normally I work based on the texture, but the sculpting of the fur doesn't provide a good clean cutoff for where the fur ends. I had to "improvise" a little in how I did it. This time, it worked out much much better than the warpwolf I did before.

Overall, I'm quite happy with how this turned out. Some of the blending/shading on the skin could have been better. On the flipside, the horns worked out great. Using multiple washes and careful drybrushing really brought them to life. It helped that they are sculpted so beautifully.

Well, enough rambling. Once again, it was a pleasure to paint another circle warbeast as a break from my usual stuff. I might post this one on CMON just to see how it rates since I haven't posted one there in quite some time.

Battle: Will the real Midwinter please step forward...

This latest battle was a rather interesting twist. Lance and I played a 750 point battle where each army had to contain 15 vps of warbeasts or warjacks. I can honestly say it was quite entertaining. Probably the best part was the very high level of discussion around various points in the battle where there were opportunities for assassination runs. [Warning: There's some proxy action in the pics, since some of the models being used are on my desk still being converted/painted]

The Lists:
Lance: Epic Morghoul, 2 Cannoneers, Bronzeback, 2 Kreas, Drake, Paingivers (6), Agonizer, Feralgeist, Swamp Gobbers, Midwinter
Me: Epic Feora, Guardian, Reckoner, Crusader, Devout, Revenger, Redeemer, Chior (6), Vassal, 2 Wracks, Gorman, Midwinter

I chose eFeora primarily for the bonus movement she gives to her battlegroup. The jacks were mostly just an assortment of things I felt like playing. Including Midwinter was primarily for testing him out. I was pretty undecided about him before.

Highlights:
* eMorghoul's feat is still very nasty. I hates it! The fact that he can charge into the middle of my army, blind everything, and then teleport back to safety just makes it ridiculously frustrating.
* Marching in a jackwall worked really well. With the choir to prevent shooting at the jacks, it really put a pinch on Lance's list.
* Midwinter was awesome, on both sides of the table. For Lance, he prevented a fairly certain assassination run by me on eMorghoul. For me, he launched a lovely chain lightning into a Cannoneer which then bounced and hit a paingiver and the feralgeist, killing both.
* The Agonizer was again a real pain in the butt. Between the Agonizer and Midwinter, it creates a very heavy suppression against jacks and casters.
* The bonded Redeemer was awesome. It set many things on fire, doing bonus damage to eMorghoul, Midwinter, the Gobbers, and several paingivers. I'm totally sold on the Redeemer being standard equipment with eFeora at this point.

Outcome:
There were several points at which assassinations almost happened, mostly notably the end where eFeora made a mad dash, teleported into melee with eMorghoul, and unfortunately just missed by 1 attack on killing him. Then it was a simple matter to finish her off.

Next time:
I'm really looking forward to fielding Midwinter with Aiyana in the same list. I'm betting that it will make for a very ridiculous suppression field.

Gnarly (part 5)

Time to base old Gnarly.

Here are the steps to making this base.

1) Cut out a hole for the water. I drill an outline of holes in the base to make it easier to cut. Once cut, I put angled cuts around the edge so that it sloped downwards.

2) Cut out a piece of balsa wood to form a floor of the water pool.

3) Mix up some green stuff and fill in the pool. I basically rolled it into a snake and outlined the bottom of the hole, then squished the balsa wood onto the bottom. Then using color shapers, smoothed the green stuff in the hole to sloping edges.

4) With the leftover green stuff, I created a couple mushrooms. I just roll bits into cones, then stick a piece of brass rod into the bottom of the mushroom cap, then use color shapers and smooth out the fingerprint lines from the green stuff. [insert time while green stuff dries]

5) Cover base with white glue and lay down a layer of fine sand. Squish it down real good, then tap away excess. [insert more drying time]

6) Once dried, the sand was base coated with Battlefield Brown, then a heavy drybrush of Beast Hide, then a light drybrush of Rucksack Tan. I also painted the side of the pool Cygnar Blue Highlight to represent the outward facing water, and did a light drybrush of Wurm Green on the sand where the pool forms to give it a mossy sort of look.

7) I picked out a couple sufficiently rock-shaped pieces of bark from my basing bits and base coated them Bastion Grey. Then I white glued them to the base, shaded with a controlled wash of Armor Wash, and did highlights with drybrushing of Trollblood Highlight, and then lightly with Underbelly Blue.

8) Next I filled in the water. To do this, I mixed up a small amount of EnviroTex Lite. It's a 2-part resin mix that makes great simulated water. I added just a very tiny touch of Turquoise Ink. They key here is adding very very very tiny amounts at a time and mixing to get a sense of the opacity before adding more. Then I carefully poured it into the pond basin, using a small wooden stick to spread it to the appropriate places. I left it for about 10 minutes (enough time to update this entry) and then exhaled gently onto it to remove the bubbles. [again, insert more drying time, for the last time]

9) At this point I departed a bit from my usual techniques and did a thin red ink wash on the sand of the base to give it a slightly more earthy tone. In hindsight, I should have started with Bloodstone probably.

10) I white glued down a bit of simulated moss I've had for a while. I got this stuff from the model trains section of some hobby store long ago. I "drybrushed" this with Ember Orange to give it a more fall look. This stuff is pretty soft and delicate, so I had to just pat it down rather than the typical vigorous drybrushing technique. I gave it an extra and lighter pat down with Cygnus Yellow.

11) I white glued down some green flock to simulate moss. Mainly I did this so that when I pin the Gnarlhorn to the base, there won't be an unsightly gap between his feet and the sand.

12) I made painted the mushrooms. I started with a base coat of Skorne Red, then two-brush blended Murderous Magenta, then Beaten Purple. Then I used Trollblood Base to paint some spots and the stems. Then a simple matter of pinning them to the base.

13) I painted the edge of the base black to tidy it up.

And there you have it... 13 "simple" steps later and bam! The only real concern I have about this base is the purple mushrooms might create a bad visual dynamic for the Gnarlhorn once he's on it. We'll see. From just holding it up in front of him it doesn't seem too bad. I'm waiting until tomorrow though since I'm going to give it a final look over with Lance before sealing and pinning him to the base. Important tip here, if you use water effects, such as EnviroTex, DO NOT seal with matte coat over it. It will totally ruin the effect. I discovered this the hard way when I did the Totem Hunter.

Gnarly (part 4)

One more update. Done painting. Just need to work on the base. Here's the notes:

Leathers: highlight Rucksack Tan plus Bloodstone, further highlight Rucksack Tan, careful Armor Wash shading in the recesses

Loincloth: base coat Meredius Blue, wash Coal Black, highlight Meredius Blue, shade further Coal Black, shade further straight black.

Eyes/Gem: base coat Coal Black, highlight Meredius Blue, further highlight Arcane Blue. For the gem I added a tiny dot of MWH.

Not a great photo, but I was rather pressed for time this evening.

Picture Work

This is long overdue. I read this tutorial a couple months ago. It's a phenomenal tutorial, and hopefully will remain there for the foreseeable future. Anyway, I've transitioned over to using Picasa, and it has definitely helped. That coupled with using the lightbox image display has really felt like a significant upgrade to the picture aspect to my blog. I've definitely discovered that lighting is 50% of the challenge to taking good photos of miniatures. I'm still working on refining my setup. Once I get something I'm happy with, I'll post again. Until then, happy painting!

Link Dump Tuesday

Taking a page from the JIG site (a favorite distraction of mine), I'm doing a quick link dump, and minor project update.

These Bane Thralls were posted on the Privateer forums by Dead Dogg (of Brushthrall fame) and are seriously making me want to paint my own Bane Thralls, which are sitting in the drawer next to my desk.

I came across this basing tutorial the other day which is wicked cool. Lots of basic to mid-level information, but covers a wide variety of basing options in a single place.

I'm currently wrapping up painting the Gnarlhorn, slowly poking away at my 5 Revenants, and tortuously getting the Nyss assembled for this month's showdown challenge. The Nyss are an enormous pain to assemble cause of the many tiny parts. However, they are very cool models and highly configurable, so I'm not going to be doing any conversion work to make them all look different like I did with the Revenants.

That's all for today. Hopefully tonight will be highly productive.

Battle: Testament vs eMorghoul

Quick battle report from last night. No pics unfortunately. 750 points of Skorne vs Menoth action. Here's the line ups:

Me: Testament, Reckoner, Guardian, Devout, Vassal, Choir(6), 2 Seneschals, 2 units Knights, Rupert, Aiyana&Holt, Gorman.
Lance: eMorghoul, Cannoneer, 2 Kreas, Drake, 2 Savages, Brute, Paingivers (6), Bongrinders (6), Gobbers, Totem Hunter

I won the right to go first and boy am I glad I did. I ran right towards the center of the table with my jack wall, put Knights on either side, and braced for the Skorne advance. The game quickly turned into a battle for the center of the table, with my jack wall amped up on spells and effects. In the end we had to call the game on time: I had destroyed a significant portion of Lance's force with minimal casualties and had eMorghoul on the run, but just couldn't leverage enough attacks at the top of round 4 to kill him. On the other hand, my positioning had prevented any sort of counter-attack from eMorghoul of any significant strength.

Some highlights:

• eMorghoul's feat is (still) bad business. Again he caught large swaths of my force, dramatically limiting my options. This time he caught my caster, which made things really nasty.
• The Cyclops Brute is a huge pain in the butt to take down. He's got enough def, arm and damage that it requires some significant slugging to finally bring him down. Last night it took Holt (boosted from Aiyana being in melee as well), a Seneschal (who missed his second attack), and 2 charging Knights (getting attacks from the back to bypass the shield).
  
• Soulstorm didn't even get used this battle, although the Testament's Dust-to-Dust spell is pretty awesome. It's also nice to note that Ashen Veil stacks with Choking Veil from the Reckoner.
• The real stars of the show for me were the Knights. 2 units of these guys means no lost love when a couple go down. There was also some chiorboy abuse by the Testament, since he gets soul tokens no matter who destroys a protectorate model.
  

Gnarly (part 3)

More updates since yesterday. Getting close to done now. Here's what I did:

Armor: Shading with Molten Bronze, highlights with Quick Silver, additional shading with straight Armor Wash

Hair: Base coat Ironhull Grey, drybrush Bastion Grey, drybrush Trollblood Highlight, drybrush Frostbite, wash black

Leathers: base coat Bloodstone + red ink, wash umbral umber,

Tattoos: Exile Blue + Armor Wash, very very thin wash Midlund Flesh to "bury" it




Next things to do are highlight the leathers, then I've got the gem, eyes, and loincloth. I should also start thinking about how to base it.

Gnarly (part 2)

Made quite a bit of progress in the last few days. Here's the notes on what I did:

Horns: Thick wash of Jack Bone, thin wash Gun Corp Brown, drybrush MWB, light drybrush MWH, very thin wash umbral umber, highlights with MWH.

Armor: Base coat Cold Steel (over the black), thin wash green ink + flow medium (to darken the insets of the plates, Solid Gold base over the Cold Steel, medium wash turquoise ink + armor wash.

Chainmail: Drybrush cold steel, wash armor wash.

Next things to do include highlighting and shading the metals, and replicating the process from the horns on the hooves.

Showdown: Shifting Gears

Well, due to my abysmal failure in the previous showdown challenge I set for myself, I've decided to take on something a little more reasonable. I'm not giving up on Cryx, just setting it aside for the time being. Instead, I'm going to focus on my mercs for the next 4 months. Now, obviously there's some serious cheating in this showdown challenge as I already have a fair amount of painted mercs. My goal here is to bring my Highborn contract of mercs up to a legitimate 1000 point fighting force, rather than the ragtag collection I have currently. This will both give me a solid merc army, and provide enough extra bandwidth to finish up some other projects I've been wanting to do.

For August, I'm aiming to paint up 10 Nyss Hunters, to give me the this starting 350 point force:

• Fiona the Black
  
• Gudrun the Wanderer
  
• Aiyana and Holt
  
• Rupert Carvolo
  
• 6 Sea Dog Cultists
  
• 10 Nyss Hunters
  

If I get really ambitious, I might pick up 6 extra Sea Dogs and paint them up specifically as themed cultists for Fiona, but that's optional. As of right now, the Nyss are sitting on my desk, still in the blister packs. They are quite configurable little models which is both exciting and terrifying at the same time.

March to the middle, and punch each other in the face

Last night I played in an epic battle against Lance. This was, once again, a ridiculously fun game. Here's the line up:

Lance: eMorghoul (freshly acquired from Comic-con), Gladiator, Cannoneer, Rhinodon, Cyclops Savage, Drake, Krea, Paingivers (6), Bonegrinders (6), Gobbers, Feralgeist Me: Madrak, Champs, Krielstone Bearers (6), Stone Scribe, Blitzer, 2 Imaplers, Axer, Totem Hunter, Fell Caller, Gobbers, Alten Ashley

Basically, in the words of Podthrall Shane recently, we met in the middle, and punched each other in the face until it was done. It was a serious scrum in the middle of the table. I have to admit that I very much enjoyed the brutality of it. Here are some highlights:

• The Totem Hunter charges the Drake, kills it (gaining a totem), the Feralgeist jumps into the Drake, and the Totem Hunter uses his remaining buckler attack to kill the undead Drake (gaining a second totem).
  
• Impalers once again bend the rules of probability and score 2 out of 2 crit slam hits, keeping the Gladiator out of action the whole game.
  
• The Rhinodon pasted the Blitzer in a single activation, with fury to spare, creating an unfortunate vessel for the Feralgeist.
  
• eMorghoul charges the front line of champs, teleports behind them, feats (catching half my army), and manages to survive the counter-attack after that. His feat is nasty nasty nasty!
  
• A solid NQ Challenge plan was foiled by a sub-par initial dice roll on the Axer's attempt to slam eMorghoul. In hindsight, I should have slammed one of my own guys into eMorghoul rather than slamming him directly. If the slam had succeeded (needed 13 on 4 dice to hit), the Totem Hunter would have been gaining a 3rd (and very impressive) totem.
  

In the end, eMorghoul made a valiant assassination run on Madrak, but he needed just a tiny bit more oomph to make it. After using 1 fury to shutdown transfers and tough, he had 2 remaining fury to make 3 attacks with, needing 6's to hit and doing an average of 12 damage per hit. True to statistics, he hit 2 out of 3, did 12 damage on the first hit, and Madrak had the scroll to ignore the second hit. We called the game at that point as it had become academic.

Playing Trolls again after so long was a lot of fun. Remembering the fury mechanic was not as hard as I expected, probably from playing against Skorne so much. Madrak with Champs and Krielstones is always entertaining too, watching my opponent try to sort out how to actually hit and kill them.

Gnarly (part 1)

I started working on the Gnarlhorn for Sean yesterday and figured I'd snap a pic of the progress, along with the particulars of how I did what I did (not that it's really that spectacular).

First, I primed in white. It was just easier. I've still got mixed feelings about using white instead of black on this model, but it's clearly too late now. It has helped for doing the flesh, but has introduced an additional step for doing the armor.

For the skin, i decided to go with more of a human tone rather than a darker leathered tone. Primarily because it gives me more contrast range to work with, without having to go super dark, and I also feel it will make a better match with the more beaten tarnished gold color I plan to aim for on the armor plates. The skin so far is the following steps:

1. Base coat Midlund Flesh.
2. Add some lines of MWH. The idea here was from Matt DiPietro's post on the Ask the Studio thread about how he added texture to the skin and horns.
3. Medium-thick wash of Bootstrap leather.
4. Some two-brush blending of Battlefield Brown on the lower regions of the muscles.
5. Thin wash of Ironhull Grey and Umbral Umber.
6. ...next steps are to add some highlights to the upper regions of the muscles, and then some additional shading work.

The armor is pretty basic so far. Fill in the recesses with Necrotite Green, then a wash of Iosan Green, then another wash of Gnarls Green. Both washes have a touch of flow medium in them to hep them flow into the recesses. Then I carefully went over all the raised portions (the parts to become gold) with slightly thinned black. The black is to help with the metals once I start them. I'm still thinking I might do an ink wash on them, but it's undecided at this point.



Please note, this pic is my first attempt at moving towards using Google's Picasa and Picasaweb for my photos. I'm still working out the kinks, along with the lightbox image display kinks. If you encounter problems, please leave me a comment so that I know.

Showdown Update: Taking a Break

Life has really hit me like an avalanche lately. I was clearly unable to keep up with my Showdown challenge, plus I'm experiencing a bit of burnout now. So, I've decided to at least take July off from the challenge. I may take next month off as well, and resume in September. For this month, my goal is to get the Gnarlhorn painted for my friend Sean, and do some maintenance stuff on the blog. Specifically I need up refine my photo setup, switch to using Google's Picasa, and create a handful of reference pages on this blog. I've also been backfilling posts that were overdue, namely the Harrower and the Pistol Wraith. Speaking of pictures, here's a (not so great) group shot of the Cryx models for the first month's challenge.

Battle: Fiona vs Skorne

Last night Lance and I battled and it was, well, rather lopsided. I decided to give my new Cryx a break this time and try out an experiment with my mercs. I had listened to a recent Podthralls episode (#146) where they ranked Merc casters and it got me interested in trying out Fiona again. Here's the lineup:

Me: Fiona, Nyss Hunters (10), Sea Dogs (6), Aiyana & Holt, Rupert, and Gudrun
Lance: Hexeris, Bronzeback, Arcuarii (6), and the Totem Hunter

Early on, Hexeris presented himself as a target, but I was unable to capitalize due to some extraordinarily bad dice rolling. However later, I made 6 out of 9 tough rolls which was also a freak of statistics. Overall though, it felt like Fiona was keeping things under control most of the game. It was really a poor matchup between the lists due to 1) Hordes really doesn't work well until the 500pt level, and 2) Fiona's discord spell made for bad business against those Arcuarii that are weapon masters with reach.

The key features of my army were using Nanokian Brand on the Nyss to let them shoot through intervening models (making them lovely little assassins), and using Teglesh Mark on Gudrun to turn him into a fairly indestructable arcnode.

From the Painting Desk: Magnetic Bases

CAUTION: The Magnets discussed in this post are NOT child-safe!

A little something simple from the painting desk. I've seen alot of discussion on the PP forums about using magnets to secure models into metal cases rather than using foam trays. I was at first skeptical, but I decided that given the pile of magnets I now had in my drawer from the failed Egregore experiment, I'd give it a try with this Cryx army. This tip is, to say the least, suprisingly good. I've added magnets to the undersides of the bases using just glue (no greenstuff) and then I have a small piece of sheet metal that I plop them on. It works great. As long as I don't jostle it too abruptly, they hold perfectly still and can even be suspended sideways and upsidedown without a problem. Below is a quick pic of one of the Witch Coven and the Harrower bases with magnets on them. Notice that the Harrower has a single magnet, and yes, it's strong enough to hold the model to the sheet metal upsidedown. I'm totally a believer and will be ordering more magnets.

For reference, the magnets I got are Neodynium Rare Earth magnets, 1/16" thick, 3/16" diameter. The magnet on the Harrower was a sample that the place I ordered from threw in for free which is 1/8" thick and worked perfectly for the large base. I haven't tested on medium bases.

Pistol Wraith

I was working on this one in parallel with the Harrower and managed to finish him up a day later. I got some good inspiration on him from the PP forums. The glow effect worked out pretty well I think. I liked the overall effect, and this model is really a majestic one to paint.

Harrower

Wrapped this bad boy up finally. Behind schedule, and the last item to fill out the 350 point Cryx challenge. All the practice with washes really helped accelerate getting this one done. It took alot less time that heavy jacks normally take me. It's not a great paint job, but I'm happy with its table presence. Something to note though, this one was a real pain to assemble.

Witch Coven of Garlghast

It's amazing how some things seem to just linger and not get finished in a timely manner. I just finally wrapped this group up. The witches have been done for probably 3 weeks now, but it took me a while to get them based and then the Egregore was a whole mis-adventure. I had a grand scheme of using magnets to make the Egregore float, but that didn't pan out. It was just too much weight and required too many magnets to make it feasible. In the end I had to strip all the magnets back out of the core and then start over. I probably wasted 10+ hours messing around with it but I'm glad I did. I'd have been kicking myself later if I hadn't at least tried.

The bases added a fair amount of work as well. Huge thanks go out to BobbyBrady from the PPS forums for the help and advice on how to make this style of bases. I spent a fair amount of time experimenting to find a good reproducable method of making these without spending too much time. In the end I'm very happy with how they are turning out.

These models are a huge departure for me in my normal style. I did alot of "NMM" type of work here, some of which is arguably metalic looking. Great learning experience, even if it didn't end up looking very metalic. The blades at least look metal. All around, I had a good time painting these models, and feel like they are up to the quality I'm trying to reach in my showdown painting push.

Group shot:


Egregore:


Witch 1:


Witch 2:


Witch 3:

Skarlock

Terrible pictures. Just terrible. It's a shame too, cause the model really is decent. I'm thinking that in the near future I'm going to have to completely alter my photo setup to a more static location instead of just setting it up as needed on my desk. I'll probably convert to using picasa at the same time. Anywho...

This model was very fun to paint. I did alot of washes (per my Cryx theme) which made it go fast. I even included a little OSL work around the swirling soul trail which worked out better than I expected. The basing was a new project for me, making lava bases. Again, too bad the pics are so terrible. I should really get around to dealing with that soon.

Showdown Failure

Well, my painting showdown for June has ended in a partial failure. I got 10 of the 13 models finished, but ran out of time. I'm hopeful that I'll be close to finished by the end of the week. However, not to be disenchanted with the showdown concept, I'm going to press ahead and begin my July target anyway and try to get caught up. In addition to finishing up my June work, I'm going to add the following models for July:

Terminus

Cephalyx Slavers (Slaver + 9 Drudges)

Pistol Wraith

Revenant Pirates (4 more to round out the squad)

This actually puts me above 500pts by giving me 3 extra pirates for when Rengrave presses dudes into service.

Lightbox Test

I'm experimenting with using the lightbox javascript for image display. I'll be updating this post as I continue to experiment.

Source for the lightbox javascript.

Steps:

1. Download the stuff from the above site
   
2. Modify paths within files
   
3. Upload files into my google pages (http://pages.google.com/), since I can't add the files to this blog directly
   
4. Add the 'rel' tag to image references... per the example below...
   
5. Discover that my images are way too big and need to be cropped down for this to really be useful
   

Additional notes about using picasaweb to host images and how to embed them into sites was gathered from this blog. Basically to reference the images, there's a finite set of possible resolutions that can be referenced in the link, which are: 72, 144, 200, 320, 400, 512, 576, 640, 720, 800, 912, 1024, 1152, 1280, 1440, 1600.

Captain Rengrave

My final push to meet 350pts in a month isn't going so great. Here's Rengrave, finishing out the pirate half of the points. Overall a pretty mediocre paintjob, but I wasn't going for my best. After finishing it, I have mixed feelings about this model. It has marvelous details (coat, tears, barnacles, sword details, 4 pistols, etc), but the pose of the model is obnoxious. I would have preferred something a little more upright and menacing. Here he just looks like a sneaky pirate thief. In the 3 games I've played with him so far, he's always out in front, kicking ass and taking names. He deserves a pose that says to his opponent "Go ahead! I dare you! Shoot me!" Anyway, that aside, this model was more practice in using washes for me.

First 1k

Last night was my first 1000pt game and it was awesome! I totally got smoted, but it was very entertaining and educational. I played against Jeff from my LGS.

Forces:
Jeff: Cygnar - Darius, Haley, 2 Centurions, Thunderhead, Ironclad, Lancer, Sword Knights, Trenchers, Junior, GMCA, and Strangeways.
Me: Menoth - eFeora, Bart, Castigator, Revenger, Devout, Freebooter, Mariner, Daughters, Zealots, Aiyana&Holt, Rupert, Vilmon, 2 Seneschals, Eiryss, Chior, and Vassal.

Mission:
We played the standard Cygnar league mission for this week so that Jeff could get league points.

Outcome:
I got smoted. Even though I was the "attacker", Jeff had me pinned down and slowly took me apart. Darius' feat also put a serious hurt on my day when he repaired everything. I also had a couple of key failed dice rolls (pushing the Seneschal into range to walk up and take out a Centurion for example, and then missing a chain attack slam on the T-head that would have slammed it into a building and undoubtedly destroyed it). Overall though it was a seriously fun game.

Hindsight:
I should not have built my list specifically to go after the mission. Also, playing at the 1000pt level means the second caster can just be support. Going with Bart gave me some interesting options, but since I was going second, I simply wasn't able to properly leverage those options.

Showdown Painting Research

I've been cruising the Privateer forums lately looking for ideas on how to paint the Cryx models I'll be working on eventually. This post is a bunch of links of things I found interesting...

The glowing effect on this Pistol Wraith is very cool.

I love the runes on the tabbard of this Denegra.

The lava bases for these Witches are superboss. I'm totally going to try to make lava bases like these. Here's a link to a post where he explains how he made them (post #7).

The Brushthralls Ironthrall challenge for Revenant Crew conversions is excellent and gives me ideas of what to do for adding more Revenants to my unit.

First Showdown Battle

Lance and I had our first Showdown battle of our 350pt lists!

Me: Witches, Skarlock, Rengrave, Revenants(7), Harrower
Lance: Old Witch, Berserker, Doomreavers, Manhunter, Yuri

Let me first say that when 8 weaponmaster advance deploy on you in a 350pt game, it's rather intimidating. However, my cantankerous band of Cryxians was up to the chore. The Revenants did alot of shooting, and then alot of dying, and then alot of coming back to (un)life, but overall did a good job of blocking and clearing out the doomreavers. Then they got a charge on the Berserker and their deathstrokes took it out. The Harrower took out the Manhunter and Yuri (with some assistance from the Witch's Imprison to space them out), which gave it soul tokens to experiment with it's gun later on. The Witches were excellent support in this game, but Rengrave stole the show, pressing 3 Doomreavers into the service of his Revenant Crew. In the end, the Old Witch got unlucky with an attempt to assassinate one of the Witches, and then that Witch turned around and stabbed the old bag. I have to say, being on the delivery end of Cryx was very entertaining.

One thing is for sure, with Rengrave on the table, I need to make up some more Revenant models to have on hand for when he presses dudes into service.

From the Painting Desk: Showdown Update on Witches

Just a quick update while I have a few minutes. The Witches are almost done now (except for Egregore which is not even assembled). I decided to go fully NMM with them, and so far the results are not terrible. Actually, I'm quite happy with the look myself. They aren't top notch quality for me, but overall this whole experimenting with washes thing is going great. A major departure here for me was using white primer for them to make the armor washing easier to get rolling.

As for the Painting Showdown status, model-wise I'm doing pretty well, but work-wise, I still feel behind. Even if I finish painting the witches tonight, I'll still have a ways to go. I added a Showdown Status listing to this page to keep track of where I'm at easier. It's going to be pretty rough getting the remaining 4 models all done in 12 more days. Not to mention that I've got a 1000pt game on Monday that I need to prep for still. I will say though, the showdown is keeping me very focused on painting and getting stuff done. Even though I'm doing alot of experimenting, it's more focused on speed painting techniques, so I'm still cranking through pretty fast.

Revenant Crew

And now... undead pirates! I finished these guys yesterday morning, but with Father's day going on, I didn't get a chance to post sooner. These were a blast to paint. They represent a significant departure from my standard painting techniques. I used alot of washes, and some pseudo-NMM techniques. These were relatively speed painted. I've found that using washes is not only a very quick technique, but coupled with 2-brush-blending can produce pretty decent results with alot less effort. I'm dedicated to continuing to use these techniques for the rest of the Cryx models that I plan on painting.

Showdown Woes

Well, I didn't finish the Revenant Crew on the weekend. I still have 2 left. I'll definately finish them before this coming weekend, but I still feel behind schedule. It's going to be rough getting 350pts fully painted within a month. I'm not giving up though. If I can finish the Revenants and Rengrave by the end of the weekend then I'll be about halfway done (model-wise) and will feel more on track. Here's some planning updates in the meantime:

I've primed the Witches in white! *GASP* I labored over this for the last few days and finally decided to just try it out. I'm heavily experimenting anyway with these Cryx models so why not do a little more experimentation. The white base will make painting healthy looking skintones easier probably. All things considered, they should go pretty fast. I haven't used white primer in a while, so this will be a good re-learning experience.

I started assembling the Harrower. This thing is crazy. 13 pieces, and with it's big long spidery legs, it's going to be a real challenge to get on a base. I need to just keep tinkering with it over the next week. I'll inevitably end up painting it in pieces.

The Egregore is going to be a serious experiment for me. I'm going to the game store today to pick up some rare earth magnets and I'm going to make an honest attempt at making it float. I'll post more about that later once I get a prototype put together.

Well, that's it for this morning. Hopefully this will be a productive week for painting and I can get back to something that feels "on schedule" for being done by the end of the month. The great thing is, I'm already thinking about the next round of painting and what sort of models I want.

From the Painting Desk: Showdown Update on Pirates

Well, I'm over halfway through the Revenant Crew now. 3 are complete and the other three have metals and flesh all done. Below is a terrible pic, but it gives a rough idea. The painting style on these is a noticable departure from my normal style. I'm experimenting alot more with washes and alternate color schemes when blending. I've also tried to use inks a bit more here as well.

I'm hoping that if I can get the Revenants done tomorrow, I'll be on a good pace to finish all 350 points of models before the end of the month without too much trouble. I even squeezed in a game last night against Lance!

And now for something new... The Painting Desk

The following are a pair of pictures of my test model. I've had this model for a while and it has many many layers of paint on it at this point. I use it for experimenting with new color combiations and painting techniques. Typically ones that I'm not willing to throw on a new model. Eventually I'll need a new test model, but this one has proved sufficient up till now.

Today's experiment was with oxidized/rusted metals. I tested these out on the sword blades. The top one follows fairly closely a tutorial from the Brushtralls site on NMM oxidized bronze. The lower one is just a concoction of my own creation. I'm thinking of using these techniques for the metals on my Cryx models. For my own reference, here are the two techniques:

Top blade: base Menoth White Highlight, thick wash Rucksack Tan, thin wash Sanguine Base, thin wash Battle Dress Green, very thin wash Umbral Umber, thin wash Arcane Blue (in selected places)

Bottom blade: base coat Cold Steel, wash Bloodstone, thin wash Vallejo Smoke, stipple with Khador Red Highlight, edging/blending Pig Iron

Studio Showdown, Local Style

Inspired by the Studio Showdown articles in issues 17 and 18 of No Quarter, I've decided to follow suit and try to paint 1000 points of Cryx over the next 4 months. Given my life schedule (and getting sick with the flu today) this is going to be a tall order. However, I've convinced a couple buddies to join me in the showdown for moral support.

For my own showdown, I've got a couple tweaks to the parameters:
* First, all models are to be selected based on being interested in painting them. This is not about fielding a kick-ass rules-based army. It's about fielding a kick-ass looking army. Left to my own devices I'd keep working on pirates and protectorate due to my completionist mentality. However there are some majestic Cryx models that I'd love to paint, so this gives me the perfect excuse to do so. It may not end up being an effective force, but I'll have a great time painting it.
* Second, all models within the faction. No mercs to fill out the force.

As for a schedule, here's the plan:
June: base 350pts, 1 caster
July: additional 150pts, plus 1 more caster
August: additional 250pts, plus 1 epic caster
Sept: additional 250pts, plus 1 more epic caster

For my first 350pts, I've selected the Witch Coven (85pts), Capt Rengrave (28pts), 6 Revenant Crew (77pts), a Skarlock (16pts), and a Harrower (125pts). This gives me 331pts which technically leaves enough room for a necrotech and 2 scrap thralls, but I've left them off because I'm not particulary keen on painting them and will probably use the 19pts for something else in the next round.

Well, time to get crackin here. I've got alot of painting to get done!

Eiryss (alternative sculpt)

Fresh on the heels of Kubla, here's Eiryss, in all her alt sculpt glory. There are 3 key things here that I tried out that I had not done before:
1) The cloak (although hard to tell in the photo) was a big experiment for me. I tried out a technique of using a warm red tone on the upper highlights, and deep blue tones for the shading. The purple made this an easier exercise, but the effect was rather intriguing. It gives the cloak a strange sort of color effect that I'm still not sure how to characterize, but I do like it. The cloak has a much more dynamic color to it as a result.
2) The blade got a litle extra attention. I used some blue highlights along with working the metals in my normal way, thus creating more of a hybrid between metal and NMM effect. Not particularly good, but an interesting experiment none-the-less.
3) The mushrooms were just a random experiment. I'd seen them on bases before and decided to give them a try here. They turned out ok for my first try. I may have to search around for a tutorial to see if I can gain any additional tips.
Overall, a fairly pleasurable model to work on. The face came out unusually well for my skills which I am stoked about.