Dose O' Hobby 12/13/10

The army is coming along much more quickly than I had anticipated, which has freed my up to do some conversion work. First on the list is my Steam Tank, which I have replaced the main gun with an old metal Helblaster Volleygun barrel:


The main body of the Steam Tank was done with a drybrush of Chainmail, the gold/bronze engravings and designs wheredone with a mis of Inca Gold (from FolkArt) and Dwarf Bronze. The shields where painted in various provinces' colors, namely the colors of Altdorf, Nuln, the Ostermark and Talabecland. I filed down the top and bottom parts of the gun barrel to allow it to fit in the slot for the cannon, then used Green Stuff to hold it in place, and covering any places where the Green Stuff was visible with ribbons from the Brettonia Knights of the Realm kit, and painted the wax seals Hawk turquiose. When I finally get the entire army done, he color tieing it all together will be turquise, as the various state troops units are all from different provinces, and have different color schemes, namely the purple and yellow of the Ostermark swordsmen unit, my recently finished unit of Halberdiers, which are painted in red and yellow, the colors of Talabecland, and my another unit of Halberdiers, which are blue and grey, from Middenland., see below:


And finally, I've added a Warrior Priest of Ulric to the army, replacing one of the Sigmarite priests. He still "counts as" a WP of Sigmar, but I felt that he would help explain why a body of troops form the Ulric-worshiping Middenland be in a mainly Sigamrite army. I based him in white, then painted the armor in two layers, first Darf Bronze and then Chainmail. The hair is Sunburst yellow, which was then brushed over with Calthan brown and then brushed over again with Sunburst Yellow, and his skin is Tallarn Flesh. The Fur cloak is white, which was then layered over with Astonomicon Grey, then White again.




*As as side note, every unit in the army has been washed using Miniwax Red Oak wood finish, which I am using to speed up the painting of the army, as it really brings out detail without too much work. Normally I would stick to washing and highlighting, but I have had to use dip on this army just to get it finished in the short amount of time I have.

Dose O' Hobby 11/5/10 (War Altar Conversion)

Only two months till Coastal Assault and I am hitting crunch time to get my army done. With that in mind, I decided to do a time consuming and costly conversion, because painting 100+ models is not anywhere near enough work for. I've based it off of the Screaming Bell kit. Here is a work in progress, I have the thing in three parts so far:



I used a base of Krylon's plastic primer (Brown) on most of the thing, followed by washing the wood in Miniwax wood stain (Red Oak 215). The metal bits are the usual Dwarf Bronze, with the exception of the spiky metal halo around the bell, which is FolkArt Shining Gold. The Arches are based with Astronomicon Grey and the ropes are American Buttermilk. The Griffin is FolkArt Shinning Gold. I'm planning to finish up the first layer of paint on the whole thing, then do highlights an detailing after the tournament. I shaved off all the Skaven iconography by first cutting layers of plastic off, then filing the surface smooth. U cut off some of the spikes, but kept others, the reasons for doing so being A) I didn't want to waste three hours filing off all the spikes, and B) I think it makes sense that there are spikes , to prevent anyone climbing up on the thing (the damn thing has cut me like three times so far, those plastic spikes are really sharp.)

I've also done some modeling on the poor bloody infantry, making my Battle Standard Bearer from bits from the Flaggelant, Outrider, Greatswords, and Zombies kits. Having realized I am basically running a Witch Hunter themed Empire army, the BSB is a crazed preacher, holding up a pole with a strung up heretic (also, he has a gun):


I've green stuff some tatters of what was once a banner, and I plan to paint over it with the phase "Somit gen ketzer", which translates into "Thus unto heretics", apparently, as my German 2 skills have left me and I had to use a translator.

I've also worked on some more unit filler to try and get the most use out of the smallest amount of models. Here we see a Goblin and a Man wrestling in a tree.

This is going into my halberdiers unit.

As for the promised Battle Report, I don't have one. The first play test of my tournament army was against a dedicated Dwarf gunline, using the Battle for the Pass scenario. Suffice it to say I never got across the board.

Dose O' Hobby 11/20/10

With Coastal Assault approaching at breakneck speed I am struggling to get my army fully painted and based. I have set myself to attempt to finish a unit per week, so we shall see how that goes. Here is the first complete unit, a thirty man Swordsman Regiment, "The 8th Mark Wardens", changed from the "8th Mountaineers" who will be my Halberdiers regiment. I am trying to give each unit some character, so the 8th gets to use one of my many unit filler bases, as well as the Unit Champion being made from the Empire General kit.



Also, here is what my list for that tournament is probably going to look like:
LORDS:
Arch Lector, AoMI, War Altar, Hammer of Judgment, Van Horstrum's Speculum: 305
Wizard Lord, Lvl4,Armor of Taurnus , Dispell Scroll: 270

HEROES:
Warrior Priest, Heavy Armor, Shield: 96
Warrior Priest, Heavy Armor, Greatweapon, 98
Captain, BSB, full plate, shield, 85
CORE:
30 Swordsmen, Full Command, 205
Detachment: 15 Halberdiers, 75
Detachment, 6 Handgunners, 48

30 Halberdiers, Full Command, 170
Detachment: 15 Halberdiers, 75
Detachment, 6 Handgunners,48

30 Flaggalents, Prophet of Doom: 310

SPECIAL:
2x Cannons: 200
Mortar:75
30 Greatswords, full command, 330

Rare:
Helblaster, 110

My main concern is that all my lords and heroes are somewhat vulnerable, so I will probably be tweaking this list. I will be posting part-1 of my Empire troops analysis, and expect a battle report on Sunday, with an update on the Road to Korpslieb on Monday.

Dose O' Hobby, Wednesday, October 12th

I've finished one unit of Ogre bulls, as well as a Gorger and my Tyrant, see below:

And my Gorger. I used a Chaos Black base, with Dwarf Flesh, followed by Elf Flesh, a wash of Ogryn Flesh, and then Baal Red on the hands and mouth. The Face has a wash of Leviathan Purple. The hair is Dessert Yellow, washed with Leviathan Purple.
The cloth bands are Dessert Yellow, and the loin cloth is Scab Red.



Check out this poorly focused image of my Tyrant!

I used the Minotaur champion model from the Beastmen set, used some Green Stuff to sculpt rags on his legs, and add some armor and extend the wrists to fit the giant axe. My Ogres technically live in the Empire, and as such, I've added some Sigmarite and Ulirc fetishes, mainly the hammer pendant and the sculpted white fur and claws. He uses the same paint scheme as the basic Ogre Bulls, just more armor.

In other news, I'm trading my entire Skaven collection for Dorfs, so if anyone wants some IoB High Elves, comment on this, we will make a deal.

Dose O' Hobby,Saturday, October 9th

I've now finished four ogre bulls, and have eight to go. The painting was done in the same manner as on the test model. For the bases, I drybrushed Graveyard Earth onto them, then brushed some Elmer's Wood Glue onto the base, then plopped a bunch of felt grass unto the base, shook it while it was upside down, and repeated, till the top of the base was covered. Then I placed blotches of crazy glue on the base, and poured some Galeforce snow on it, shook it, and after it dried, layered some more glue unto the snow mounds, and poured more snow. Sorry that I couldn't get a better picture of the Standard, but my camera will only take blurry photos of it, for some reason.




In other news, I've also purchased the Space Hulk card game, which should be pretty fun. I'll post a more in depth look of the mechanics and gameplay later.

Dose O' Hobby,Wednesday, October 6th

My ogres actually arrived yesterday, buy I lost my house key, and had to wait for someone else to come home and open the door. And some bad fish yesterday gave me food poisoning.Anyways, here they are, I'm basing the in Chaos Black right now, and will start painting them either today or tomorrow.






And here is my Butcher. For those not in the know, Ogres don't get wizards, instead they get "Butchers" and "Slaughtermasters", which are Level 2 and Level 4 wizards, respectively, with their own lore "Gut Magic", which I can best describe as a more dangerous lore of Beasts/Life. I used Green Stuff to make a skull mantle (that blob of stuff covering his face), as well as filling out the gut, making an apron, and some guts on his sword, and I used the Standard Bearer arm, and glued on a skeleton form the Kroot set.

Dose O' Hobby, Sunday, Oct 3rd

Righty-o, as the more astute of the readers may have noticed, the alleged last BT for the tourney is not up yet, nor will it for a while, I think. However, as tommorow is Game Day, I will have an Empire vs. High Elf one up. Anyhow, here is the stuff I've been working on.

This is why I love Guard kits. All you see in this model was mix'd and mash'd from the Command squad. A cloak army from the sniper, the chainsword hand from the Standard Bearer and the las-pistol from one of the veterans. The vox-bead/rebreather thing comes with the kit also. I think it gives a great example of a Guard officer overall. Pomp and kinda overdressed, but also scarred and dangerous looking. I'm gonna really enjoy painting this guy. Next we have what is likely going to be my 400 point Combat Patrol army.

Yessir, 400 points of footslogging goodness. I can't think of any other army except Orks and 'nids who can field 56 men in a 400 point game. Going to try them out this Friday.

In other news, my Ogre battalion box comes in the mail on tuesday. I'll have a few built for the nest dose.

Thanks for reading.

Dose O' Hobby 10/29/10

This is a new feature I'm debating weather or not to add. Basically a tri-weekly update with what I'm working on. Lets see how everyone likes it.

Here;s a picture of what I worked on today. Finally managed to get to work on the Cadian battleforce, and painted some more BT's, as well the High Elf mage.


I wanted to make each squad of the Heavy Weapons team look different, so I added minor details on each. I also figured that a dedicated heavy weapons team would likely have some sort of sergeant, so I added the power sword/augmetic arm to the lead team, as well as a muzzle extension to their autocannon, though I left the autocannon un-glued , so that I can swap them out for Lascannons in case I face any MEQ armies.


The Black Templars, as always, are very easy to paint, to the point where I didnt use highlights. A base coat of black, sevral thin layers of white, some scab red, and BOOM they are done. Now the mage was ,uch more difficult. It has an infuriatingly high level of detail. However, I must say I enjoyed the cape. More on that in a bit. I really wanted to keep a cool color motif, so I stuck to blues, silvers, the like. Even the cloth isn't white, i mixed a small amount of ultramarine blue into my white paint, so it is a very subtle shade of powder blue in the right light. I made the helmet gold to blend with the warm tan-yellow of his skin, and to attempt to draw the eye there.

And here is the cape:

I really enjoyed painting the cape. I started with an airbrushed layer of white paint, followed by a heavy drybrush of ultramirne blue. When that dried, I applied a lighter layer of Folkartbrand cobalt, leaving the darker ultramarine in the recesses. With that done, I used a metallic cobalt highlight along the crests of the cape's folds, and I really like hot it turned out. I'll likely be adding gold designs along the edges for some contrast.