Dark Elves - I actually painted some miniatures!

Yep, as the title says, I actually painted some miniatures!  These are for my fledgling Dark Elf army for Age of Sigmar, which is actually more fun that I initially gave it credit for.  Having played a game or two, I promptly went out and bought a metric tonne of figures for it, showing my usual levels of restraint when a new game appears on the horizon.... First up is the bulking up of my Spearelf unit to the maximum 40 elves, because if you're going to go, then go big

Nice and simple red and silver colour scheme and quite an imposing sight for their enemies.... I've stuck to the square bases (don't judge me) as most of them were already on square bases and this means I can always use them for other mass battle games should I feel the need.  And GW are even faffing around with basing for 40k ("use whatever feels appropriate") so I'm fairly happy they won't ever become unusable.  And I get points for being old skool.

Alongside them go the first of my entirely new units.  This is a unit of 20 Xbow elves.  I picked the models up from ebay and some of the helmet crests have broken off..... but I actually think I prefer them like that so I may have to break the rest of them to match.

More red and silver to keep the theme going.  The eagle eyed amongst you will note only 18 in the photo.... the standard bearer still needs a decal or two and one of the Xbow elves needs a new magazine so they're still loitering on the painting table.

Next up is a couple of heroes to lead them into the fray.  These were a rather special and very unexpected gift from the BFG after I gave him the Stormcast Eternals that I'd got from the starter box and so I wanted to get them painted up quick sharp

In the new rules, the sorceresses are the main leaders of the troops ( a cynical gamer would suggest that this is due mostly to the fact that GW don't have a fighting leader not on a dragon in their current range.....) so she was painted red and silver to match the troops.  The assassin was really rather good fun to paint and I'm pleased with the muted red armour and highlighting on the black cape.  He may eventually end up on a larger base to stop him toppling over in a light breeze though!

Warfare 2016

Junt and I went to Warfare at the weekend. Same old traders mostly but it was nice to see that Blotz were there. Annoying as I’d just put an order in with them two days earlier but nice to see them in person to have a chat to. Of course I came away from their stand with a few bits that I’d not ordered.

I was looking for paint racks so it was also good to be able to get my chosen ones from the nice peeps on the Warbases stand. Some paints and other bits and bobs and I was done. Junt kindly brought me a gift of some skips to add to the scrapyard and they are really lovely. Ta Junt!

  

Saturday night I obviously had to put the new acquisitions together. The Blotz stuff went together like a dream as did the Warbases and the water tower from Sarissa. The skips took some drilling for the side lifting points but they should look really good once painted. I'll be doing heavy wear and tear effects as skips get so bashed up.

Sunday and Monday night were spent finishing off the Static Caravan, which will be the scrapyard owner’s residence, and painting the two benches I got at Colours from Warsenal.

 The Blotz order I put in last week arrived at work (always get stuff posted there) and I’ve popped them together already.

Had one casualty unfortunately. I might, if I get the chance, mention this to Blotz. It was my own fault but it could be prudent for them to edit their instructions to include a special mention about sanding down the lamp post stems prior to trying to slide the other bits on.

I have also managed to nearly finish prepping the Pulp City figures and I only have two left to do and I’m hoping that I’ll get them done tomorrow. Then they’ll all be ready for the next sunny dry day so I can undercoat them in the carpark. I won’t hold my breath given what the weather has been like lately.

With the Caravan finished I moved on to the cargo containers from the TTCombat ship and they all received a two colour dry-brushing last night to start them off. 

There’s a fair bit of lettering on them which will take a while to paint and then they’ll need weathering and bashing up a bit. Shouldn’t take too long but it ain’t gonna happen tonight as the X-Wings are fuelling up for a sortie this evening. It’ll be the second nights gaming this week!

TTFN

A rather special gift - Horus for Hope!

Every year I take part in the "Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge" (AHPC), which sets wargamer against his lead pile and awards points per figure/tank/otherworldly monstrosity painted.  Simple as that.  The camaraderie engendered by the challenge is a great spur to keep productivity up and entering it the last two years has done more to reduce my unpainted pile than anything else.

One of the fun things that is encouraged is the setting up of side duels.  A gentlemanly/ladylike agreement to see who can paint the most of a certain era and the winner receives a painted figure from their opponent.

Last year I entered into a duel against Greg from the "Fawcett Avenue Conscripts" blog to see who could paint more 30k Heresy era figures in any scale.  Now Greg's painting level is amazing and he can really churn through the figures, so I expected to be soundly trounced!  Fortunately, the butterfly curse that affects all gamers hit Greg in the middle of the challenge and he started painting Team Yankee figures and tanks and so I managed to win the challenge by painting more Wordbearers than is probably healthy.... When it came to name my prize I asked for a delegate from the Sons of Horus to go to war alongside the Wordbearers as I was very impressed with the Sons of Horus figures Greg had painted for the challenge.  So without further ado, here he is

My plan is to either use him as part of a command squad (Horus having sent him to keep an eye on the fanatic Wordbearers) or in smaller games as a medic for my large tactical squad as the encouraging words blasting out of the vox casters ("Horus for Hope! Horus for Hope! Give me an H.... Give me an O....") will do enough to lift the spirits of the wordbearers to see them fight on, even though greviously wounded in body.  Here he is with his intended squadmates and Chaplain

 

Unfortunately this chap drop podded in a little late from the Wilds of Canada Prime to join my recent trip to Warhammer World with the Wordbearers, which was a fantastic trip

He'll definitely be going next time though.

 

A small update.

I didn't get to do any hobbying last night as Urn and Junt came round from a game of Zombiecide: Black Plague. Great game! I think I discovered a broken combination last night as I had Cadance, an archer type, armed with a cool bow and extra arrows giving her re-rolls.

Absolutely devastating! She had over 100 experience by the end of the game! Anyone whose played a Zombiecide game will know that this is a high kill count. Broken, like I said, but fun to do. I don't mind this in Zombiecide as there was definitely a point in the game where things were far from certain.

Got a tiny bit of tinkering done at lunchtime so two more figures prepped for 2017 and the mission to paint 365 figures in a year. Tall order but I'm feeling up to the challenge!

Iron Train (or doom train if the mood takes me) & the figure I'm going to use for Tritonius.

TTFN

Next up is.....

...the last part of the first incarnation of the scrapyard:

The Owners caravan.

A cracking kit from Sarissa which is a good size for the price. I'm not a huge fan of the large base but it's nothing to really moan about in the greater scheme of things. It'll need some sort of texturing and I might take the opportunity to add some small bits of trash. I might even have a stab at sculpting some black rubbish bags to pile up near the porch.

This was dry-brushed with a dark brown then a bubonic yellow brown followed by bleached bone. After that I used a Vallejo Ivory to finish the main colour. I want it to look old, worn and weathered so I didn't add a pure white as the final layer. A quick bit of masking and the pale blue strip was slapped on.

It still needs weathering and wear and tear adding but that shouldn't take to long.

Lunchtime was again fruitful.....

As I managed to prep the figures I am going to use as Ace of Wraiths and Tangent for Pulp City.

TTFN

Prime advertising space....

...can be hard to come by!

Finished the billboards last night and.....

.... also the Site Office for the scrapyard.

Plus a couple of more 'counts as' Pulp City figures prepped at Lunchtime. Hellsmith, Arquiro, the Gentleman (or Sovereign) and Androidia.

TTFN!

Next Up.

So with the main buildings totally finished for the city set I can turn my mind back to padding out the city with extra bits and progressing the stuff for the docks. So over the weekend I got to start painting the scrapyard office, the dock crane and three billboards that will sit nicely on top of the buildings.

They were all fairly quick and straight forward to paint and I soon found myself on the embellishments. The Scrapyard office will be pretty heavy with graffiti and there will be some on the billboards but in my mind neither are places that would attract fly posters. The crane is getting neither graffiti nor posters as it just doesn't seem to fit visually for me. I haven’t painted the graffiti on the advertising boards yet but I am hoping to do that tonight as well as put on the billboard posters. Given the warpage of the prints, I am of a mind to cut the big posters down into equal sized bits much like the real thing. Hopefully that will cut down on wrinkles.

  

It has been pointed out to me that the little office needed more weathering and last night gave me the chance to do that whilst I did it for the crane and billboards.

I’m still plugging away at the heroes and villains for Pulp City on my lunch hour.

TTFN!

Finishing touches.

So all that is left to do on these buildings is the posters. I’ve seen some other buildings where people have added fly posters and they look really good. It is something you could go mad doing but again, like the graffiti I didn’t want to overdo it.

I got a bit of wrinkling on the large pieces but nothing that I'm terribly upset about. On the whole the varnish worked well to seal in the posters.

So most of the buildings have got a couple band posters and there is one political one. As well as those there are some themed ones in the petrol station, comic shop and wall menus in the fast food joint.

I just need to work out what I'm going to work on next.

TTFN!

I've gone 'n' done a Banksy!

The desire to embellish my city buildings for PC was always there but the execution was the sticking point. I was worried that I might ruin what I’d done so far and correcting areas when they’ve been dry-brushed is a real pain.

Urn kindly printed me some coloured graffiti onto transfer paper as it was my intention to use those to add some character to the buildings in addition to the posters that were going on. However the transfers just didn’t cut it and ended up being mothballed.

My fall-back position was to use the same technique used recently for the corpse outline. Good old tracing paper and pencil. FYI….it works a treat for graffiti! I’d printed a load of designs onto paper and it was simple matter to transfer these to the buildings. I choose a “less is more” approach as I could have covered the buildings in graffiti but I thought that would end up looking a bit too cluttered and I am only shooting for a touch of character not gritty urban realism.

 A few simple ‘Tags’.

I also wanted for the graffiti to reflect some aspect of each of the pieces. As such I found something that I thought would be the sort of thing cheeky street artists might choose to add to their improvised canvas.

Marvin hanging around at the back of the comic shop.

A Fawkesian Che Guevara seems suitably anti-establishment enough for the side of the police station.

Someone would seems to prefer KFC!

Can you name the film?

There were a couple of other ones but these were the main ones and I was quite pleased with how they turned out especially as the stencil style ones transferred fairly well and remained identifiable. Well, I think they are!

A few more figures prepped for Superhero gaming today and this evening I will be turning my attention to adding the posters to the buildings and varnishing to seal them and the paintwork.

TTFN!