Through the Sea Mist they came...

What's this? My blog posts are just like buses: none for ages and then 2 in rapid succession.

I finally found some time to crack on with my Prussian Fleet for Dystopian Wars. Now those of you who have been following the blog for a while will remember that I painted the fleet quite a while ago. Unfortunately when we used them on the table they were too dark and could not be seen.

Back to the drawing board then! Drawing inspiration from Eddy's and Silverback's fleets I added sea bases and set about lighter colours.

Now the room was a bit dark for these pictures but hopefully they come out all right! The sea has been painted Regal Blue and is to be finished this week with some highlights and washes to bring out the stormy conditions.

The Fleet set Sail

 They all have to be named yet which is my next challenge. I shall delve into the DW backstory for the Prussians and also look back to history itself to gather inspiration. I shall not be naming the battleship Bismarck!

Squadron of Frigates - 3x3 Squadrons in the Fleet

The hulls and steel plates are Codex Grey, the "wooden" effect decking is Mechrite Red, the metallic pieces are Boltgun Metal.

Battleship Ho!

Battleship with Shield Generator

I think they look a lot better than the old dark and dingy ones! Now I need to get them into action again.

Cruisers - 3 of them in the Initial Fleet

So that leaves me with the Bombers and Little Planes to do before next weekend. The Airship will have to wait for now until I've at least had a couple of battles.

Next weekend the Necrons are released and I suspect the lure of the shiny will drag me away again so all hands to the pump this week!

Was that the sound of an Alarm Clock?

They're back...

PX-0967 Army of Necrons

 Sorry couldn't resist cos, y'know, resistance is futile.

Flayed Ones - Happy I have these as don't like the new Finecast ones

 I'll stop now. If not then feel free to Delete...

Wraiths & Tomb Spyders just added

Ahem. I love Necrons. Have done ever since I got a free metal Necron on the cover of a White Dwarf a long time ago (2nd Edition?). I used an all metal army during the first "Codex" which I think was in White Dwarf again and consisted of Lord, Warriors, Immortals, Scarabs and Destroyers.

Then came the first real Codex and I bought the army box so that I could get the Codex early. The army you see in these pictures is the one that was awakened from that Codex. All except the Wraiths and Tomb Spyders which have been painted this weekend: well they were in a box and looking forlorn plus I need the army for Spoils of War Campaign at the end of November!

And then they went to sleep again. They were not too interesting to play at times because the Phase Out rule meant that your opponent usually ignored the mission and just tried to kill enough Necrons to make you lose.

But now they're back. Remember, remember the 5th of November because that's the day the Universe will shake as a thousand billion alarm clocks go off and the Necrons finally awaken from their slumber...

The Dark Eldar challenge continues......

So, I thought an update was in order as to the feasibility of getting the DE done by the weekend.

First up, the unit of wyches and bloodbrides - not much left to do on these, the ones on the left have all had the jade highlight added to the green armour, so probably just the final 5 or so to finish, some touch ups on the Guard equipment that they're leaping over and that'll be the first figures finished.... With 4 evenings to go. Gulp.


This is the next unit of wyches. All washes done and just the red, brass and armour to highlight. I really want to get the wyches all finished because I'm sure I won't get the green armour highlighted on the rest of the army and I think it might just be a tad disheartening if I have to go back and add more paint to everything after the weekend.

Talking of not getting things finished, these are the 20 warriors + Archon. Still need to finish the armour washes on about half of them (on the right) and then highlights to do.

And finally a quick shot of some of the vehicles (there are another 4 in addition to these). My current approach to getting them painting is to stick my fingers in my ears, close my eyes and hum loudly and hope that when I take them out of their cases, they'll magically be finished. Always works that way, right?

I'm still really enjoying painting them and it always seems to be that I have to drag myself to the painting table when I just feel like slumping in front of the TV, but really enjoy the painting once I start. The tournament is definitely having a positive effect as there have now been hours of painting that I just wouldn't have done without the motivation of this weekend. I just need to make sure i don't need a new army every month :)

New Sarissa Stuff

I'd got it into my head that this new laser etched stuff might be good for some other, non building, sorts of terrain. The primary thought was carts for Wild West games as the metal ones I'd seen were too small for scale or too expensive in metal.

HDF would seem to be perfect!

I was right as the nice man at Sarissa Precision kindly responded to my email with this lovely little teaser picture! Nice!

FoW Buildings

I've been rather distracted of late what with the arrival of 'Shell. This is the Gog nickname for my firstborn child so named by the Gogs. Seemed fitting for the offspring of Mr & Mrs Artillery!

This said I have managed to grab five minutes here and there to do a (very) little hobby stuff. I've set up my airbrush finally and used it to undercoat a load of figures and to put the base coat onto one of the laser-etched buildings that I'd brought at Colours. Once dried I finished it off with dry-brushing.

It is a bit dark so I will make an effort to make the next one a lot lighter. When I get round to it.

Foxy Lady

Hello.

Some of you may remember me from the Solo GoG Blog during the first six months of 2011....

.... and then I disappeared. I won't bore anyone with the details but suffice to say that I'm nearly, almost back but not quite yet. Once MAD (40K tournament alluded to by the esteemed Urn) is out of the way I'll have some more time to paint.

Expect November onwards to involve me hopefully getting my mojo back!

In the meantime I have been painting 1 figure and she's nearly done: highlights and the base to go.

Viktoria - Queen of Blades

Meet one of the Viktoria twins for Malifaux. Her sister has been started together with other members of the initial gang (Convict Gunslinger, Taelor, Ronin & Student of Conflict). Once done Von Schill will join them to make a 35 point gang.

Viktoria's Rear

She's usually painted blue but as my goal is to include the Ochre colour in all my Outcasts I eventually settled on using it as her base colour. It has merged a little with the flesh so some highlighting required. I think the blue armour has come out quite nice: very simple Boltgun metal with a Azurman Blue wash. I like simple...

Painting Progress

Ok, so I have been slacker than a slack thing that has been repeatedly stretched when it comes to posting my pics of painted stuff.

Anyway, to make amends here are the latest bits of output.  I always wonder why the figures don't look as good in the pics as they do in real life.

So, in order of precedence, are

Dystopian Wars reinforcements of a couple of Scout Gyros, Big Airplatform and the sexy Ika Submarines :)

Pulp City 4 lovely little figures (can you tell I had just watched the Watchmen with the Harrier figure?)

Hell Dorado - a Female cook that could come from any fantasy novel.  A great figure to paint and looks stunning in the flesh so to speak - very happy with her.

My Dark Eldar tournament challenge

Right, in the picture below you'll see the scale of the challenge that I have set myself. Do you remember those 19 basecoated wyches who were cast asside in favour of painting some malifaux and Pulp City figures a couple of months ago? Well, they're back.


I've entered Nick's tournament and with it looming large on the horizon, I was trying to work out which army to use from the many I have available. Imperial Guard? Too cheesy and disappointing for opponents. Sisters of Battle? new WD codex is totally uninspiring. Dark Eldar? Not painted....


But then it occured to me that they should be painted. They've been sitting around for ages and I've been using a combination of unpainted, old and undercoated figures when playing recently, which frankly is a disgrace to the hobby (unless you're actually painting as you go so each time you play something else has advanced.... Which wasn't the case for me(.


I also came to the conclusion that I never painted an army unless there was a tournament looming to make me do it, so if I didn't do them now it could be years until they were done. So, with a week off in hand (although most of it would be spent with the family) I went for it! The picture you see below is the state of the army a couple of weeks ago near the end of my holiday. There are 19 wyches basecoated with 9 undercoated, 2 venoms with the glue still drying, 20 warriors (3 undercoated) and 1 Archon (I couldn't resist building one after I liked the pose of one of the warriors so much that I had to do a quick weapon swap and promote him!). There are also 2 ravagers and 4 raiders to spruce up to match the new figures.


I'll post more updates as I go along as there's only about 10 days left now...... Yikes!

Some more Pulp City

So, here they are, the latest Pulp City figures to roll off the production line The flash photography doesn't do them any favours, but such is life!

As I mentioned in my last post, I needed more level 1 supremes, so here are two more with 1 unique minion (the zombie wolf).

The sculpt of Red Riding Hoodoo is one of my favourites of the PC line. I also couldn't improve upon the standard colour scheme and I like the light bandages contrasting with the dark skin. I'm pleased with the final figure and the detail is really nice, she's holding a little voodoo doll in her left hand for example.

The Zombie Wolf was.... average. Lots of green stuff to fill the large gap where the left and right side went together and a quick paint job to get it done. 'Nuff said.

Stalker was an interesting decision for me. Technically, he/she is a black panther. But I hate painting black. I tried and really didn't like where it was going, so took the decision that she was now a she-lion as I had some colours I wanted to use which would work for that. Mostly pleased with the final result, although the wash colour was a little strong (but looks fine at tabletop distance). A word of thanks must also go to the Silverback for painting the mailbox which was originally intended as street furniture. The Stalker figure comes with an Incan column to be climbing off, but I decided that might look a little silly in the streets of PC, so I used the mailbox which was the perfect height and the rounded top fitted the leg shape perfectly :) I see it that she climbed up there for a recce and is climbng down to move in for the attack.