The Salamander Army Takes Shape

 I had to have a bit of a break whilst we had our kitchen redone - my painting room was he room chosen to be “the studio flat that we all lived in whilst the work was being done, so the whole room was just full of stuff and meant all of my paints had to be packed away…..

But that’s all done now and so I got out the salamanders again as the striping and starting painting had happened before all of that.

Anyway, I settled on a nice and simple paint scheme as I have waaaaaaay too many figures and scenery waiting for some attention. So decided that I wanted to get these done and on the table quickly. First up, a grey primer for the salamander warriors and onto painting sticks as I was going to multibase them

The scheme relied on contrast paints, washes and a bit of touching up

Pleased that I was getting through the rank and file nicely, I started on the fun, flamy elements of the army. First, a red undercoat for them

A Phoenix, three flame elementals, three flaming bird thingies (not sure that’s their official title) and a bigger flaming bird thingy for a hero.

Once again, I was keen to get these done quickly, plus (and most importantly) I’m rubbish at actually doing flames on models, and so decided to go a little more abstract on the flames, as shown in progress pics below

Steady progress being made for once and next up is some more painting and onto the basing!

A New Project - Kings of War Salamander army

Well, it’s been a very long time since any of us posted anything here. The usual reasons posted on any hobby blog which hasn’t been updated for a while apply, but also a more personal and sadder one. One of our stalwart gaming group passed away at the start of 2020 and frankly he was the one who was keeping the blog going.  We all took a bit of a knock from that and still miss him terribly, but I’ve now decided that I should get back on the blog, partly as paying my respects to Nat as he’d have wanted us to get painting (he was always, quite rightly, telling us to paint and play instead of buying more things!) and as a diary of what I’ve done.

So, what am I starting with? Why a complete army for a game that I’ve never played of course!

Kings of War looks like a very good game. I’ve become disillusioned with age of sigmar and 40K for a number of reasons, with the main one being that I can’t fit a game into an evening anymore. But I do really like the sci fi and fantasy genres so I’m moving over to trying the games produced by other companies, including the Mantic stable, which look great and seemed designed to fit into an evening’s play.

Idly scrolling through eBay (and yes, I do count searching specifically for “Kings of War army” as “idly scrolling”!) I happened across a large, but very badly painted salamander army for auction….. I stalked it for a few days, telling myself that I already had too much stuff and didn’t need it…… and then obviously pounced at the end when my willpower crumbled away in seconds. But it was a bargain!

Here are some pictures of the unboxed win

As I’d hoped, it just needed a bit of work, but nothing looked unsalvageable. I decided that I’d paint strip the bigger, posher resin green models for the most part (I was pleasantly surprised to see that the resin stuff produced by Mantic is lovely these days, easily the match of other producers), but that I’d just overspray the rank and file salamanders with undercoat and go from there. I reasoned that the larger models would be more visible whereas the rank and file would merge together more. And it would have driven me a bit bonkers having to paint strip everything.

Into the bio strip….

Happy with how things were going, I started painting, which I’ll update next time.

Random distractions

My efforts have been somewhat lacking in direction following the completion of the Mustafar set so I’ve been following my muse and just picking up little bits that took my fancy.

After finishing the scrap cars for my pulp city scenery collection, I thought I might do some of the other little incidental bits as some of them have been hanging around for years. First off were some generic bits including tables, chairs & beds. Quick and easy!

I got a TTcombat arcade a couple of years ago. I’ve not painted the building yet but the idea of painting an arcade machine tickled me.

Random build. WWII sentry post.

 

Colours was at the weekend and this mdf kit caught my eye. Rickety and characterful. I’m looking forward to painting it!

 

All this contemporary scenery stuff got my juices following for a bit of superhero gaming so we broke out the town for a game.




YTD 308

Scrapyard additions

I've not done any work on my Pulp City scenery for ages despite having collected and painted loads of it. I still don't actually consider it ready as I've not added any vehicles.

I three years ago (gulp!) I brought two 28mm resin cars to add to this set. I'd deliberately not painted them yet as I'd intended to try and do some cheap moulding from them to make some car parts to add to the scrapyard part of my scenery collection. Of course that was the plan but I'd not gotten around to it.

I ended up having a free hour at the weekend and it struck me that it could be a fun and slightly messy thing to do with the kids...so out came the tin foil and plaster to give it a crack.

I wrapped one side of the cars in foil, gently starting with the roof and carefully pressing it down around the body of the vehicles. There was no way to avoid creases but I wasn't too worried as they are meant to be junk! The surplus foil on the sheet was rolled round to add some support to the mould for when the plaster was added.

I extracted the originals fairly carefully then gave the foil a poke and a prod to deform it. Then the plaster was poured and left for an hour. I wasn't sure at this stage but hoped that they would come out okay.

I wanted to protect the edges of the plaster at the base as I suspected it would chip easily there. I thought the best way would be to mount them on some plastic basing material which also meant I could use the sand to help them look like they were buried slightly.

Just paint after that to finish them off. Simply bit of weathering and they were all sorted.

Now I just need to paint the proper vehicles!

YTD 287

TTFN

 

Mustafar or Mars?

I finally finished my lava world scenery set!

Using a great basing tutorial I had found, I made some drop on scenery tiles for the lava. They took a lot of painting as there was numerous layers to build up the lava effect. Pretty pleased with it tho'!

As it was modular I decided to add an extra tile so it could be useful for AoS as well

YTD 284!

TTFN 

Random diversions

Quite randomly I felt the desire to paint some tanks. So I did.

Then a quick endless spell the next night!

YTD 270

TTFN

Preparing for WAR!!

Plans are afoot for a massive AoS game in November and these sorts of things always light me up with the desire to add new units to expand my forces.

I'd gotten a cheap plastic Dino from Ebay ages ago and even slapped some spikes and bling on it with the intention of using it as a Dread Saurian. Well....that was the plan. Instead its been gathering dust and adding to my self-induced stress over the amount of projects I've started but not finished.

Talk of battle changed this and I got busy!

I'd also found an ebay seller (Tabletopengineeruk) who sells alternative Razordons. I'd wanted more but the GW price is toooo high! These 3D printed ones had a good design and came in at a good price, 3 for £14.00! Bargain!

I've loved my Razordons in game. It is really satisfying when people charge them and they manage to get off their instinctive behaviour shots at their would be attackers. Given the shots they put out the chances of blunting a charge are actually favourable!

I'm hoping to see these on the table this week!

TTFN

Tally YTD 267