24 Mar 2018

The Slow meander to GoGX continues

Once upon a Snow Day.

You have to love the UK and our inability to deal with snow. There was a rush on milk and bread around where I live so much so that the Co-Op was actually out of stock until the replenishment lorry could back up the slope to their delivery door.

The Snowpocalypse has truly arrived and as at least one flake had managed to lay on the road I opted to "work from home". Ahem.

After 5 weeks without a full weekend thanks to a work project it was just nice to sit down, kick back and paint again. Here then are my latest additions to the SilverFox Challenge and no this is not the GoGX army yet...

First up we have a Khorgorath. This chap represents the Khorne Bloodbound faction and has been sat base-coated in red for a very, very long time.

He's part of the original starter set and stands 70mm tall. There is a huge amount of skulls and bones and I opted for a slightly muted highlight as otherwise it threatened to overpower the other colours!
I decided at the last minute to give his eyes a blue glow as I couldn't see his face in among the bones.
And I tried out some blending with the purple and red skintones. I'm quite pleased with the results. Thank you Duncan :-)
Next up is a Skaven contraption called a Warpfire Thrower. It's basically a flame thrower with more magic. It also has the ability to explode if I get too carried away when using it... good old Skaven. I opted for a nice yellow warpfire with green smoke because, well, because I could!
 
The Skaven themselves are painted with the usual Grey and Purple outfits. I like purple.
 
And finally I managed to get the Vulcharcs completed so they can join the Kairic Acolyte squad and cause pain to magic users.
I kept the feathers green so that they match the feathers in the bird handler's head (yes those feathers are in his head!).
You only need 1 in a squad but the boxset came with 2 so what the heck eh?
I've put them temporarily on flying stands held on by blu-tac whilst I come up with a more permanent solution.
 
So there we are then. More AoS goodness or Chaosiness...

What's the tally now then?
(The birds don't count as they are part of the already scored Kairic Acolytes)

b/fwd 810
Khorgorath 80
Warpfire Thrower 70

Total 960 / 3650 or 26% complete!

Days since the challenge began 93
Target points after 93 days = 930

Still on Target!!

I have a couple more models to finish before I begin GoGX. Back soon!

SilverFox

19 Mar 2018

Progress from the weekend


I've managed to finish off most of the Pulp City scatter stuff which pleases me immensely. Its been sat around for a while now and it is good to get it done and dusted.


Next up is the Mechanicus Galvanic Servohaulers. Lovely kits! They've had a good dry brushing of Tin Bits and some bronaze to start and then a odd bits have been picked out with Oily Steel. Onto the bodywork next to add some colour.


The additional scatter stuff has really helped the tally as well.

Purchased:    86

Painted:        -138

Net:              -53

Happy with that!

TTFN






16 Mar 2018

-39

Woot!

Bins and Cones finished! 39 pieces done is great for my tally.


Purchased:  85
Painted:      -101

NET:           -16

Very happy to be back in negative numbers again. I've got a couple more purchases in the not so distant future, namely the next two Nef which are imminent and also a gang for Shadespire.......apparently. Not sure how that happened.

Oh yeah. Someone mentioned new figures and I jumped on it quicker than a cat on a keyboard.

I've also got a little bit of scratch building to do as I have road works lighting and railings, Cones and also skips but I really could do with a dug up hole for the stuff to go around. Shouldn't take longer to cobble a bit of broken tarmac together.

What next? More scatter for Pulp City. It's quick and really fun to paint the random items like a broken TV and a bullet holed fridge.

Can't wait!

TTFN

15 Mar 2018

Heroes, Villains and some everyday folk.



I’ve started putting together the Sylvaneth at work in my lunchtimes but it’s going to take a while so I’m all fired up to get a few more things painted at home whilst that progresses.

Painting the unique figures is a real dose of fresh air that I do enjoy every now and then. It lets you go a little further on a figure than you normally can.

Hence these two.



I couldn’t resist with Mr Patriot. I’d starred at him for a while unwilling to commit to a boring dark suited hitman type thing. Not sure where the idea came from but I was sold. It took me longer than I would normally spend painting a figure but it makes me smile so was worth it!
The camo cape was fun as well. I kept the rest of her plainish to emphasis the cloak.




Gotta have some people living in Pulp City!



  
These two big uglies have been sat unfinished for ages so it is a pleasure to get them completed.


Clearing this lot off of the painting queue was nice and I enjoyed the pulp city vibe so decided to try and get some of the loose scatter started as well. They shouldn’t take long.




So 14 figures finished changes the tally for the better.

Purchased          85

Painted               -62

NET                   23



TTFN

5 Mar 2018

"There are no Wolves in Newbury" - only rats!


Hi all, WolfGeezer here, popping my blogging cherry. Although now that I have discovered the existence of this site I see there are several references to me and pictures of my models on here going back years. I have been persuaded into joining this GoG X challenge, which will be the first of any such challenge for me, so figured I should start with a quick intro post.

While I love playing all these games since J introduced me to all this stuff about 13 years ago, it took me a couple of years to really start to enjoy the painting. I loved the list building, deployment strategy, on the fly probability calculations, responding to the opponents plans and of course the fickleness of those dice!

Painting itself seemed to take way too long to get end products that I still really couldn’t be proud of. How I wish I had Duncan Rhodes to guide me like my 10 year old son has, rather than making it up myself. Unlike most of the guys here I have largely remained a one trick pony wolf. Starting with a Space Wolf Ven Dred and Rogue Trader era Grey Hunters, my collection grew to about 15k points in 5th edition. With all the points reductions for Wolves since I suspect it is still around the same even though I’ve probably got another 5k in old points.

After 3 or 4 years I picked up a Tau army through a couple of Ebay lots, added some new shiny (some of which made it out of the box, none of which have actually made the gaming table) and the whole army has probably only seen 3 battles. Perhaps they would have seen more action if I had changed my tactics from shooting once then charging. I can still remember how much Jamie laughed the first time I used them, charging them in against his plague marines to pretty much zero effect. I've almost built a White Scar army, used once to table Jamie's Necrons to a number of cries of broken aimed towards my flyers. I picked up the base of a Custodes army just before this challenge was announced, so given Tau and Wolves will have new releases this year I fully expect them to remain in the box until at least 2023. 

The primary tale I expect to tell on here this year is not of Wolves, or Tau or White Scars, but Skaven, my one and only AoS army. While not part of the original GoG adventure I have been brow beaten encouraged to join in this madcap plan to paint 2000 points. I start a little ahead of the rest in theory as I have a number of models basecoated and some are even half painted.

However, my rate of painting is 10-20% (Ed - it's not that high) of these guys so a major challenge for me and I’m not yet ready to start as I still haven’t finished my biggest ever project - my Forgeworld Warhound Wolfhound Titan. That needs to be at least mostly finished before I start the Skaven and has itself exhausted most of the goodwill of my wife over the last 2 months as I take over the dining table for the weekend and my son who doesn’t understand why after 5 minutes painting I wouldn’t want to play Football/Carcasonne/Yahtzee/Chess/Monopoly or preferably being shot by him in Stars Wars Battlefront or racing him in Forza (whatever number it’s up to now?) The next post will cover my Wolfound as I think he deserves one, but for now here’s some of the Skaven boxes that have been calling me for the last 5 years that I have been ignoring up to now next to the WIP Titan.
   

30K terminators and a dollop of Dystopian Legions

I put these terminators together in Aug 2015 and they have been languishing in a foam tray ever since. They represent the start of another push at getting more 30K stuff done and some games played. I love the setting but we’ve given it a woeful amount of time especially in light of the number and quantity of forces we have.

These were put together from Scibor bodies, Anvil heads and shoulder pads and GW terminator arms. I liked the chunkiness of the Scibor bodies and thought they looked good as prototype Terminator armour.

I’ve done heavy battle damage and wear on all my previous 30K stuff so these took a similar pounding from the sponges to distress them. I like the look of it on the power fist knuckles. Looks like they been smacking the crap out of stuff!





I’ve also been getting all of the DL stuff undercoated and it all stands ready now. Sadly they weren’t paying attention and the GoGX Sylvaneth army slipped into the queue in front of them. I still do intend to get them to the table this year.




The termies have helped my Net tally but the recent Sylvaneth haven't. Figures for the year are now:

Purchased: +85
Painted:      -48

Net:            +37

I'll need to concentrate on the Sylvaneth over the next few months to ensure that they are done to deadlines however I am still determined to get the bulk of my unpainted 30K stuff finished and make good inroads into the DL & PC stuff.

TTFN.

4 Mar 2018

Hat in the Ring for GoGX

I was enjoying an evening in my hotel in Budapest. Work was over finally for the day. Room service had just delivered dinner and the Merlot was going down a treat.

Then my ipad pinged as a message came through: "GoGX is a Go"

I like to think that this code phrase sparked a sleeper cell in to action and off I went on a journey of discovery and intrigue... but that's not what happened. What actually happened was "WTF is GoGX?".

You see when I travel my personal mobile stays on airplane mode or as we like to call it "Don't call me Shirley" mode. Anyway Jabber is not available to me so I was oblivious.

Of course I signed up immediately and in an effort to finally paint all the stuff on my shelves I've opted to, er, well I've decided to, erm... look the simple matter is I want to do an army that isn't Chaos so yes I've gone for a completely new army... sigh...

The Daughters of Khaine.

And I can't even show you any models as I don't own any! The Battletome has just been released so I'll be getting to grips with that once I'm back from my next trip to Budapest. Lord knows what the GoGs will have signed up for by the time I get back...

Anyway I'm officially in and looking forward to getting to grips with the good guys who worship the God of Slaughter... um. Right.

Tzeentch comes to the SilverFox Challenge

Well hellooooo Bloggerland!

The SilverFox Challenge continues apace although that pace has slowed recently due to work travel. That said it looks like it's about to go a bit mad around here as someone mentioned GoGX...

But that's another post entirely...

Here then are the next entries in the 2018 Challenge! And today we're going all Tzeentch. Well except the last chap but more on him soon.

First up 20 bases of Brimstone Horrors. Love these little guys as they were so easy to paint. My aim was to try and present a carpet of flame rolling towards the enemy and I decided against trying to paint the teeth etc as they would distract from the overall effect. That and I wanted to get them done quickly!
 




And next up we have one of my favourite units so far to paint: Kairic Acolytes. These are foot soldiers of the Disciples of Tzeentch faction.
The skin was the piece I wanted to get sorted first. I opted for a base of Rakarth Flesh and then 2 washes: 1 with Sepia and 1 with Reikland Fleshshade. I'm pleased with the results.
 
Next came the armour and loincloths. Blue is the traditional colour for Tzeentch so was a natural choice. There are actually two different base blues involved although not easy to see to be honest...
The face masks went through a couple of colour choices before settling on Gold. I haven't washed them down at all as I wanted them to be shiny and standout.
 I'm pleased as well with the way the parchment came out on the scroll.
The weapon blades started pink and have toned down through the use of violet washes and white dry brushes. I opted for these colours as I get bored painting leadbelcher weaponry.

This is the command squad. You'll note the lack of banner. And no musical instrument. These boys can't take those staple members of the command squad and instead have a piece of parchment and a bird-handler. The bird is, er, not here yet. He's out somewhere...
The shields took a bit of working out colour wise. Again I didn't want to overpower the rest of the model so opted for black. I've used a couple of coats of Gloss Black Wash to make it a little more shiny. The leadbelcher rim and decoration has not been toned down either.
 "Do you have time to discuss our Lord and Saviour: Tzeentch?"

The big stick is a Glaive. No I don't know what it does either! I'll find out when everyone else does.

And now the one who isn't Tzeentch. In fact he's not even Games Workshop.
One of the bonus rounds in the Analogue Challenge was Childhood. My Dad introduced me to Spaghetti Westerns when I was a kid and I've loved them ever since.
The music of Ennio Morricone is second to none when it comes to film scores and my first LP was the soundtrack to the Dollars Trilogy. 
 So here is good old Clint Eastwood as the Man with No Name. Il Buono.
I took a few liberties with the colours as I don't paint historical figures.
I don't have a game ready for him so he'll be a nice display model for now.
And yes he does have his cigar!

B/Fwd 520
Brimstone Horrors 80
Kairic Acolytes 200
Il Buono 10

Total so far 810 / 3650 or 22% complete!!

Still on Target...