Doc Salvage

I painted this because a wonderful friend wanted it for his Cyberpunk Red RPG campaign, and while I usually find it easy to say good things about most models, this is an exception. But first let's do the painting ...

• Armour. Dark Sea Blue is the base for body of the armour, with Greenish White to highlight up. 
• Undersuit. Black and Dark Sea Blue, washed with thinned down Wyldwood contrast paint.
• Panels. The white panels start with Greenish White, then were glazed down with Akhelian Green which is really more blue than green.
• Blue strips. Magic Blue, shaded with Akhelian Green, and highlighted with Greenish White, then a final glaze of Akhelian to make it a little blue even in the brightest points.
• Lights. Medium Orange, shaded with Vermillion then a couple of very small highlights with Greenish White.

It's reminiscent of early Kickstarter tabletop game project models. I'm sure the sculpt looked fine in a 3D package, but the model in hand is bad. Depressingly bad. The mould lines are a mess, and evident everywhere but the plastic material is so soft and pliable you can't correct it without making it worse. The pose is poor as it hides the chest, the most interesting part of the model, behind a weapon of mediocrity. Detail is lossy, rounded, lacking crisp definition and no interesting detail.

An exercise in frustration, and I'm glad it's finished. The fact this was sold with eight Vallejo paints for ~£25 is an indicator of it being a cash-in on the Cyberpunk name rather than a model selling for its quality. Here's a midway shot where you could see model before the stupid gun hid everything.

With the legs already in a moving forward pose, it would have been nice if the gun was lower, to show off the torso. But it's done and we move on to the next!

Dwarf Militia

Dwarf militia unit for Kings of War. Hard to believe I started this project three years ago then let it languish, but that's very me. One benefit of the KoW system is not having to remove casualties from a unit, so creating dioramas for units is viable and that really appealed to me.

I wanted it to feel ragtag, as though they're throwing armour on to protect their village, so it's deliberately a mix of various companies' models. There's old GW dwarfs and a ton of the Mantic ones, and some resin scenery from a terrain kit. There's no unifying paint scheme, with different shields and patterns on display, and even painting approaches differ, with NMM used on shields and smaller details, and metallic paints on weapons and helmets. With that said, cream and blue are the overall army colours, and present here in greater quantity than others, which would make sense for smaller family houses in a larger kingdom.

There's a limited number of poses with the Mantic dwarfs, and they're oft maligned as a result. I think the kits are well made but it definitely takes a little imagination to create sufficient differentation to avoid monotony. That will be an ongoing challenge through the army, but I welcome the challenge ... or at least I do at this point.

You can see multiple dwarf casualties propped up on the floor, with their fellow militia protecting them. There's a couple of dwarfs at the back ready to leap into the fray, or just looking after their stalls!

Dwarf Cannons

Another project lurking on my desk is my Dwarf army for Kings of War. The cannons are fun models, but the wood housing for the guns is very flat has almost no detail or grain pattern.

I painted up the three cannons and tried to make them a little more interesting by painting it as though it was a heavier wood grain on the front panel and wheels. While the cannons are all identical, the centre gun has some foliage atop it, as it though it was rushed out of a barn to defend the town. Affectionately known as Ol' Mossy now, it's my favourite of the three.

The Mantic studio paintjob (below) demonstrates how boring the housing is as a sculpt. I'm surprised they opted for brown and more brown as a colour scheme as it does nothing for the model, which is a shame as it's quite nice. How brown? I feel like I've loaded up Age of Conan again after all these years.

Kovach The Devoured

This handsome fellow from Die Hard (https://diehardminiatures.com/product/kovach-the-devoured-chaos-champion/) started as a one-hour speedpaint (last image on this post). While I was happy with the overall colour choices, I felt the model deserved more, and had the idea to improve the OSL with a lava(?) sword, because that would be fun, albeit ridiculous.

Adding lots of yellow and orange atop the armour helped make it more interesting to look at, as it was a little flat beforehand with just the blue and green metals.

As mentioned earlier, it started as a one hour paint. Quite a bit changed after this, as I realised the glow should come from the base of the sword, and the shiny armour wasn't working.

 

Orc shields

There's tens of thousands of painting tutorials. Almost all of them will be better than this, but I was asked by a couple of people for a step-by-step on how I've painted my shields, and was happy to oblige. It's also a useful way to track what I'm doing as a repeatable process on my army.

We're going to cover brushes, paints, process and future changes I might make. 

Let's start with the brushes because they're important. You don't need small brushes for the majority of detail, and it will slow you down to use small ones! While I have a 00 Series 7 for the final details, the majority of the work is done by these two horror show brushes to the right of it. They have not been loved, but are fantastic for this sort of project.

 Paints

• Vallejo Leather Brown 
• GW Wyldwood Contrast 
• AK Dark Sea Blue
• Kimera Magenta
• AK Ochre 
• AK Greenish White 

Process

Basecoat shields in Leather Brown, metal elements in Dark Sea Blue, and suns in Magenta. All you want is a consistent coat of paint as a starting point.

Wash everything in thinned down Wyldwood Contrast paint, except the suns. I applied it a little heavier on some shields than others just for variety. Don't forget that the symbols will be glued to them later so they don't have to be perfect. The goal is hitting any recess area that the paintbrush won't reach in later stages.

Take a big flat brush, and a 1:1 mix of Greenish White & Dark Sea Blue with almost no water added, and drag and stab it across the dark blue areas. The idea being I have my light source top left so the darker areas will be bottom right. Ensure you run the brush along every edge in a rough fashion. This isn't drybrushing, or stippling per se, it's just ensuring paint goes on the surface to create rough texture and start to build a sense of battered metal.

Using my round brush, I now add a very messy glaze dragging the brush upward to the top left corner ensuring I'm only catching raised surfaces and not going in the recess. This just helps to ensure the finish isn't chalky. 

Same process again but 2:1 mix of Greenish White & Dark Sea Blue this time. I swapped to a round brush and focused more on the upper left quarter of the pieces for most of the paint, but then ensured I brightened up areas like tusks, any edge facing upwards. Still a very ugly stabbing and dragging motion and not a lot of water.

As before, then a glaze of this over the top again. 

Now the fun part! I swap to the small brush and just using Greenish White, edge highlight the upper edges. Add a few random drags, stabs and then we're done.

At this point I move to the suns and using the Ochre apply the same approach with a lot of heavy stabbing and dragging from the top left. One nice feature of any yellow is that there's a bit more transparency than other colours, and over a pink or magenta it creates a nice warm tone. 

Now onto a 1:1 mix of Ochre and Greenish White and the same again, but a smaller area. Really focus on that upper left corner. By this point you should have more reds in the bottom right, then moving into an orange tone where the magenta and ochre overlap, up to a fuller yellow ochre, and now some whiter highlights.

Finally add a few touches of just Greenish White on the edge of tusks, horns and such. You don't need a lot of paint, just a stroke or two to catch an edge and make an interesting angle.

Done! Total time taken was 70 minutes for these, including pausing for notes and photos, and drying time. I plan to sit and do all the others in a single batch after this, and think the process will only take a few hours in total for everything. These aren't painted to win competitions, it's just to add character to an army, in a way that's fast to replicate across dozens of shields. So many shields. What on earth was I thinking.

What Would I Change?

There are two possible changes for the future.

• Making the dark areas darker. My colours aren't very dark so there's scope to go back in places and push up the contrast by using more Wyldwood to darken areas.
• Weathering. I plan to do a lot of rusted and weathered armour and weaponry, and could bring some of the oranges from those elements into the symbols on the shield in the darker areas.

Orcs & Goblins begin

Another army for The Old World? I know, I know. However, to get table time with my Chaos Warriors, they need opposition, so I started picking up models last year. This is another of those old armies I've always fancied but couldn't face painting due to the numbers required but somehow here we are, with a Orcs & Goblins battalion box assembled over the break between Christmas and New Year. I'm an idiot.

 

And a work-in-progress on my first test model! 

 

New Recruit (https://www.newrecruit.eu/app), has fast become my favourite army list builder, and I used it to write up a basic list based on the Orcs & Goblins battalion box. It's not a legal force yet but it's helpful to gauge the mix of models I'll need to add through the year to round out the force. My interest is rule of cool rather than whatever the current tournament meta is, as I play infrequently enough to make that a non-requirement.

Speaking of cool, I also have the awesome shaman sculpted by Brian Nelson.

 

(Not my paintjob, but the first reference photo I could find) 

 # ++ Main Force ++ [706 pts]
## Characters [65 pts]
Orc Weirdboy [65 pts]: Hand Weapon, General, Wizard Level 1, Battle Magic

## Core [461 pts]
Goblin Mobs [117 pts]:
• 20x Goblin [5 pts]: Hand Weapon, Thrusting Spear [1 pts], Shield, Light Armour [1 pts]
• 1x Boss [7 pts]
• 1x Standard Bearer [5 pts]
• 1x Musician [5 pts]
Goblin Mobs [117 pts]:
• 20x Goblin [5 pts]: Hand Weapon, Shortbow [1 pts], Light Armour [1 pts]
• 1x Boss [7 pts]
• 1x Standard Bearer [5 pts]
• 1x Musician [5 pts]
Orc Mobs [227 pts]: Boss [7 pts], Musician [5 pts]
• 30x Orc Boy [7 pts]: Hand Weapon, Light Armour, Big Un's [2 pts]
  Standard Bearer [5 pts] (Magic Standard)

## Special [180 pts]
Orc Boar Chariots [90 pts]:
• 1x Orc Boar Chariot [90 pts]: 2x Orc Crew (Hand Weapon, Cavalry Spear), 2x War Boar (Tusks)
Orc Boar Chariots [90 pts]:
• 1x Orc Boar Chariot [90 pts]: 2x Orc Crew (Hand Weapon, Cavalry Spear), 2x War Boar (Tusks)