No more silver armour....

Seeing as I failed miserably at posting pics of my previous commission (Grey Knight Draigo feller), I am trying to make up for it with my 3rd one today. As you can see, I experimented with background colours and some feedback would be appreciated if you would?
This fig was not fun to paint, much like Draigo - something about the whole Steel'n'gold scheme and uber detail on the sculpt I think. Glad it's off my desk.
The customer wanted just a good tabletop level based off of the studio scheme, so no freehand.

Interlude 4

*Disaster Strikes!!!*

My camera died. So no pics and not through my own laziness for once. Would offer Phone Camera pics, but that is more embarrassing than no pics.

But work has been ongoing! The Brother Captain Stern commission is about 75% done. 3rd and 4th rounds of highlights need to be applied and then I'll seal the thing. The end.

Plague Marines are likewise 75% done so soon I'll have two full squads of 7. next up for the Nurgle army I think will be the long neglected Blight Drone.

Ebay auctions revenue surprised the shite out of me, coming up with 200% of expected returns on all the old stuff I put up. This is good for me and bad for my paint queue which will no doubt be suffering from new items needing paint jobs thereafter.

I managed to score one of the 1000 limited edition Chaos Space Marines Codex's. A bout of insomnia had me looking up stuff on the GW website and I saw it on sale and not sold out yet, so I snapped one up with the unapologetic intention of selling on again at a profit to further increase my hobby funds, or perhaps to add to the WiiU fund I am contemplating starting.....

Lastly, whilst nosing about the net, searching for UK Golden Daemon 2012 pics, I came across this relatively new and rather well put together blog. (Their own pics from Games Day were rather well done indeed.) Masterminis.blogspot.com also offer painting tips and other advice for those who want to up their hobbying game and purport to cover most of the upcoming major European hobby events in the future. I look forward to seeing what they will post up. Right now, they have a competition give-away thing for the lovely super-duper Forge World Angron mini just showcased in the latest White Dwarf. If you like it and don't want to have to fork out the 50 quid+ for one, you can win one here - http://masterminis.blogspot.com/2012/09/win-signed-copy-of-forge-worlds-angron.html

(I think a post of blogs I follow more than others might be upcoming. Well, sometime in the future at least.)

Interlude 3

Bit quiet around here eh?




Not been totally idle though.



1. Remember those old Rogue Trader Guard I scored and bragged about a couple posts back? Well they have all been clipped from their sprues and sorted into some wee containers I managed to drum up, ready for when I finally get to them. I also added in the other Guard that I’d already owned and I think I should be able to put together about three or four 10-man squads along with some extras to fill out both heavy weapon teams and platoon squad members. Score right?



2. Speaking of Guard, I read in some blog that I was too silly to bookmark about a Guard player who had found an awesomely cheap alternate model to use instead of the $30+ GW Chimera model. The blogger had chopped the gun off the turret (Or maybe replaced the entire turret?) and shoved on a GW gun instead and added a few 40K-esque details on top of that. I only saw pre-paint pictures of the finished tank, but I liked what I saw and the price of the finished piece even more! On top of the blogger’s mods, I plan to switch out the abominable wheels for something more beefy, though have yet to find an affordable option for this. (Prefer a wheeled transport as opposed to tracked, just seems meaner to me.) This is the shop where I plan to buy 4 of these to make my armoured platoon – http://littlegreenmentoys.com/Tim-Mee-Tan-Armored-Car-02-0001.htm and here’s a pic of the piece pre-mod:

3. O and painting! Well yes, I’ve also managed to get some painting in too. The hobby room got flooded a couple weeks back (Along with the upstairs landing.), which was rather annoying and will prove to be an expensive fix I fear. Thankfully only the flooring was affected so I’ve been able to go in and work, though not often due to the fact that my wife doesn’t like going in there with bare floors. But I have gotten some painting done: a. Work on the Brother Captain Stern commission has started and I’ve got the base metallics started. Customer wants a similar scheme to the studio one, so red next.

b. My Raven Guard dreadnought and Captain Sicarius models have been primed black. Doubt I’ll get to Sicarius anytime soon, but the dreadnought has been calling to me for some reason of late.

c. I am close to finishing the paintjob on the Ogryn from the Radical Ordo Malleus team for my =][=munda project. Shading and all sorts is done on almost all areas of the fig, just need to break up the large bare areas of skin with some freehand tattoo’s and scars. The scars are going to represent his former slave status and will hopefully look as though he’s been lashed a good few times. With the tattoos I’m hoping to effect a design that reflects some sort of devotion to the God Emperor with script work or Inquisitorial seal-type imagery. I’m rather intimidated by the prospect though so we’ll see just how well it all turns out. Hopefully will have an update with pictures by Sunday.



4. Someone needs to take down Kickstarter by the way – along with the awesome Sedition Wars KS, I also have found myself putting down some $$$ on the Relic Knights KS with a mate. And now I’m drooling over the lovely Dreamforge plastic Eisenkern trooper boxed sets and Leviathan titan-thingy. It’s a good thing I have the thriftiest budget-conscious wife in the world, else I’d be in the hole terminally if my hobby urges were allowed to have free reign.



5. Lastly, a mate recently found this boxed set from his gaming days of yore. He knew I am a painter and (still) a roleplay gamer and so gifted me it along with a handful of hero-esque miniatures from the same age. Can’t wait to get painting those pig-faced orcs! (After the commission. After the Ogryn. After the dreadnought. Etc. Etc. Etc.)

Again, next update with actual hobby pics will sometime before the end of Sunday.

Interlude 1

No pics today, just a quick update.

Draigo commission was completed last night and customer was well happy, which is good. Even told me I should sell my painting services but I do not thihnk I am even close to that level yet.

Also painted up the commander for my traitor Malcador Defender which I'm quite pleased with. He looks closely like the one on the left in this pic, but different. When I find time I'll post a picture.

Just got to work out how to spray on an even coat onto the tank itself without the use of an expensive airbrush?

Lastly, just to give the last 2 days a shout out in what meagre fashion I'm able:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/coolminiornot/sedition-wars-battle-for-alabaster

Sedition Wars - Battle for Alabaster is a game being put out by Coolminiornot and created by the very talented Mike McVey and Rob Baxter. It's in it's last throws on Kickstarter and looks to have amounted an astonishing amount of monies thus far. Which is good for the backers.
The quility of the sculpts they are releasing with the game looks like will be better than any other boardgames I've invested in and the amount of stuff a backer at the Biohazard level will get is silly good too. Look to their website if you haven't already - http://www.seditionwars.com/ for a lovely mound of background info to get a feel of what the setting's all about. Hope you'll like what you see and jump on board. (For me, the addition of Solo Rules sold me.)

Bathing in Blood WIP

A long time it’s been. Much gotten done, I have not. A break for the soul is good, no?

(Don't worry, my crap Yoda impression is done with.)

Truth be told, it was good to get back into the paint mode again these past few days and I’ve been rolling along nicely. Not on my own projects though, but working to kick out the couple commissions I have sat on my desk.



“Commissions?! Why this bloke barely paints better than tabletop!” I hear you say. It’s true, it’s true. But there’s lazy people out there and for some reason one came to me wanting his figs painted so he didn’t have to. No monies involved though, more bartering for comics and some other things.



So what is it that’s been worked on – well, Draigo, Lord High Pickle Features of the Grey Knights. Now, I’m not one to rant, but I am one to write falsehoods, so let me tell you my thoughts on Grey Knights in general. No, not from a silly 40K gaming perspective, (though that will be included in a wee form.) but from someone who’s been following this hobby on and off since Rogue Trader was first released and I bought my first pack of IronClaw Squats some…. Lots of years ago.



The Grey Knights were first released in White Dwarf as a mythical super-secret part of the Inquisition – a Space Marine Chapter created to combat that which even normal Space Marines had trouble taking down. This is back in the day when the fluff had it that Chaos, the Warp, daemons and other such sticky nonsense were not preached about in the churches and cathedrals of the Imperium. There wasn’t even the slightest whiff of them at all. Space Marines even, knew little to nothing (Librarium aside.) of the Warp and it’s dangers aside from – “It’s bad. Don’t think about it.”. Those who had the misfortune of being in contact were either destroyed, turned into servitors or mind wiped and reprogrammed to serve again from scratch… and that’s just the Legio Astartes! Normal citizens were usually destroyed outright due to the risk of them inviting (Unwittingly or otherwise) a Chaos incursion upon the systems of mankind. Preachers, Deacons, Cardinals and all of the other Ministorum dignitaries just stuck to “Worship the Emperor, despise the Xenos”. The End.



So here we are, with Chaos as the great enemy that only the highest echelons of Man’s military and religious might had knowledge of. Sure the Inquisition were there to root out the evils that went along with Chaos and it’s nasty ways, but sometimes that just wasn’t enough. Sometimes even their nasty torturing, brutal ways couldn’t finish the job – enter the Grey Knights! Space Marines even more highly trained than regular Astartes and e.v.e.r.y o.n.e a Librarian to boot! Powerful enough to take on Greater Daemons and have a chance of winning. They looked like normal marines in Terminator Armour, but with way more decoration and with these kick arse superduper halberds with bolters stuck on – it was awesome! Their army entry was for armies to be able to take ONE squad and just by that, it made them special, elite, badarse.



Fast forward to 2011 or when ever it was the latest codex came out.



Grey Knights… have a codex, an army book of their own. WTF? Weren’t they supposed to be this super secret, rarely, if ever, seen uber elite daemon-hunting force that offered the services of A SQUAD to those forces in the direst need of help against the forces of Chaos??? O, so that’s changed then…. Now they are a whole army of their own and… o right, now everyone knows about Chaos, they fight Chaos regularly without penalty and they get up again to do the same next week. So Grey Knights are now as “Special” as Paris Hilton crotch shots or news that the economy has gone bad. Again.



I no longer like Grey Knights. At all. I don’t like their ridiculous huge storm-bolter-on-wrist armours. I can’t stand how much decoration is emblazoned on their armour. And I can’t help but dislike how GW allowed the codex author to completely take all that was cool and special about them and then to completely feck it all up. It saddens this old 40K fan’s heart, almost as much as when Games Workshop ret-conned my beloved Squats, citing “Space Dwarfs” are stupid – yet continuing to embrace stupid pointy hat Space Elves, atypical Space Orks and other direct translations from their fantasy line.



Rant over.



Here’s a WIP of Draigo per the customer’s specifications. He’s doing the basing, which is fine by me. Just the banner to go.

I've also managed to get a little done on my Raven Guard Land Speeder, but that's a post for another blog and another time. Hope to have another update sometime this weekend!