Saturday 6 January 2024

Milo, Xuya, Klom & Bob

Over Christmas we played a lot of Zombicide: Black Plague. It's beeen a favourite of mine for years, but the kids are old enough to play and enjoy it now too. Through the year I'm aiming to paint the heroes we play to a tabletop level. Nothing fancy or too precise, but just better than bare plastic - so a couple of hours at most on each piece, and approximating the card art.






Monday 1 January 2024

Happy new year

 Here we are in 2024. We made it, well done.

2023 was probably the worst year of my life from both a personal and professional perspective. I won't dwell on the negatives, other than to say we're through it and I hope never to repeat the experiences, but it was a year where I was reminded how fortunate I am to be surrounded by so many wonderful people.

With that done, let's move onto the goals for this year ...


40k: Saim Hann Eldar

Yes, it's finally time to get these moving! After spending time in 2020 and 2021 collecting all the old metal Eldar, I started them in early 2022 then put it on hold in a fit of pique when GW released new plastics and suddenly everyone was excited by Eldar, and I sulked. Apparently I'm a grown man.


Kings of War: The Midden, Dwarfs

I spent a lot of time building these but painting halted and I'm excited to get round to finishing them. They are repetitive sculpts, but with a few donations from good friends I've mixed up a few elements to break up the monotony of the seven sculpts in the box. The fact you can field a legal unit of 20 with only 16 models, and don't remove a model from the unit, gives great scope for vignettes.

Age of Sigmar: Hammerhal Aqsha, Cities of Sigmar

I was enamoured with the release, and ... well, you know the story. Man buys box, man builds box, man stops and moves to another project.


I have other plans as well, but with far less structure currently. So let's start here and see where it takes us.

Tuesday 26 December 2023

Ork Nob

This was painted across two evenings after coming back from SMC. It's not a coincidence that my enthusiasm for painting waxed after three invigorating days with thousands of fellow hobby enthusiasts. 

The interesting part of this is probably the shoulder pad. After a friend showed me an old ork artwork, I added some hieroglpyhs. The surface isn't big, and my painting isn't that precise, but it was fun to add and has given me ideas for other models in the future.






Sunday 24 December 2023

Biel-Tan Farseer & Weapons Platform

This was a Secret Santa on our hobby Discord. Trying to match the recipient's scheme was incredibly difficult. I only had two blurry pictures of models in a transport case to work from. Are they Biel Tan? Mymeara? Damnit. 

Educated guess took me toward Bien Tan, but I noticed my recipient had used more teal colour on cloaks, so I leaned into that, added some gold and yellow details and there we go.






Saturday 25 March 2023

Rank and file dwarf army

Recent quietness is simply that. Quiet. Work has been time consuming, as have a number of real life activities. While I've been working on projects, there isn't anything finished to share yet. But in the spirit of posting something so I don't forget ... I've started a dwarf army for Kings of War. The system appealed to me for a few reasons:

  • I had a hankering for a rank and file army, and with no Warhammer Fantasy system available at the moment, this came to the fore.
  • The rule set is well regarded for pick up and play - it's one rulebook for everything.
  • The units' damage isn't measured by removing models, so every unit can be its own diorama! How exciting.
  • Last point is worth reiterating again. Every unit can be a fun story.

This is the progress to-date of the unit bases (and spares) and the scenic bases they'll all sit on when not in play. It's going to be a ruined dwarf town. Here's my work in progress in reverse order and you may wish to scroll to the bottom and walk up to the latest.


Bottom left corner is my test piece that's usally a step or two ahead of the rest to try out ideas before committing them to the rest of the pieces.

Browns on the earth. There'll be a lot of static grass added later, but it still needs colour underneath that.

Zenithal priming just to help with tonal variation.

I love the Rubble City basing from Fenris Games, but wanted to add a little more detail on steps and around bases to make it feel integrated. Lot of cork, gravel and sand thrown on over PVA and superglue.

With the display bases done, onto the unit bases. Also a few spares made up.


There's a simply joy to priming everything and unifying the materials. Also helps to bind the finer textures together.



Keep adding PVA and sand until happy. With hindsight I went a little OTT here, so a lesson for future display boards.




Can't have too much PVA!

More texture with cork and gravel to hide the flagstone edges.


Texture and different surfaces is important, so I used a patterned roller to add flagstones.


Found some nice civilian fantasy village terrain pieces which will make an appearance on the board when everything's finished.

Balsa wood edging around the tiles to keep them in one piece. 123 blocks just to get nice neat edges. You can see me testing a couple of the unit base sizes to ensure they'll fit properly.


PVA the whole surface then glue the resin scenery on top and leave overnight to stick properly.

Basic foam squares of 24x24cm contstructed. Three will fit in a nice row on a double-width bookshelf.




Wednesday 15 February 2023

Ogryn Slave Gang


 

 

 

 

 Well, they won't win beauty competitions any time soon but I really like these models. Another project that's been sat on the desk for months in a state of half-completion, and it was nice to see them finished. It's a slimmed down version of how I approached the Ogryn from my Golden Demon entry last year, and a much more tabletop level as a result - but it was fun.

 

 

 

 

Tuesday 7 February 2023

Mugruk Da Watcha

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I painted this as a secret Santa present and was quite pleased with the results. In particular, the textures were great fun, especially considering how flat and smooth the stone and wood surfaces started. The one major error I made was getting lost between deciding if it should be a centrepiece for a gaming table or a display piece, and it ended up as a compromise. If it were a display piece, the edges would have been much darker to draw the eye in, and if it were a gaming piece, the edging should have been better defined.