Let's Play Catch-Up

 It's been a few years and we've had a global pandemic in-between.  So let's catch up.

Sneaky skavenses.

I rarely do commissions or work for other people. Occasionally though, I'll do a favor for a friend.  These are the models for Spiteclaw's Swarm for Warhammer Underworlds.  My housemate wanted a sort of celestial aspect to the skaven, and for them to be albino.  I don't remember what colors I exactly used to paint most of them, only that there were some Reaper skin tones and some Citadel Contrast colors involved.  Pretty sure I used a light stain of Carroburg Crimson for their pink noses.  I know for certain that I used Macragge Blue as the base color for their cloth.  There was a lot of shades and washes involved if I remember correctly.  I'll also mention that they definitely look better with eyebrows painted on.  It's a subtle detail on these particular models but it's a hill I'll die on, like painting rivets on Space Marines.

Tying it into what's happening in life now, same housemate has the skaven half of Echoes of Doom.  I believe he said that he'd like to paint them something similar to this.  Which is cool but also a bit stressful for me because, as I mentioned, I don't remember how I did this.  He's also new to painting miniatures and I didn't use 100% beginner friendly techniques.  In fact I kind of experimented a little to get the white fur and albino skin to look right.  These models were done circa mid-November 2019, for the curious.

Winning.

There was a painting contest at Moxie Games again (great place; definitely visit it if you ever find yourself in Columbus, Georgia).  This time we were allowed to modify the model.  The easy-to-build Sequitors were supplied as the base model.  Anyone who has seen my place in-person knows that I hoard leftover pieces, so I had spare parts from a second Star Drake I had assembled.  I heavily modified the Sequitor to replace the head, weapon, and shield with the leftover parts from the Lord-Celestant options of the Star Drake kit.  I put the model on a nice scenic base from Games Workshop and threw a few extra skulls on it.  It's a custom Knight-Questor for my army and it looks much sexier than the official model in my opinion.

A buddy of mine saw me working on the model one night and told me he hated it.  Mostly because he had entered the painting competition too and wanted to win.  There were a lot of neat entries and I seem to have deleted the photos I took to save space.  But in the end, I won.  The photo is from April 2020, though I think the painting competition was in January or February.  It was definitely before the pandemic lockdowns happened, since Georgia and Alabama were both hit hard by the first wave of COVID-19.

 Late in 2019, I managed to finish painting Severin Steelheart, another model from Warhammer Underworlds.  This was quickly followed by the other two members of the warband; Angharad Brightshield and Obryn the Bold.  Not really too much to say since they're pretty standard fare for my Stormcast Eternal collection.  I'll just say what I've said elsewhere; my color palette for Stormcast is really a desaturated version of the Hammers of Sigmar color scheme.

Angharad Brightshield

Obryn the Bold

Severin Steelheart

Archimedes-class Walker from Dystopian Wars

 

 

 

 

 

With the Pandemic lockdowns, you might think that I'd get a lot of painting and modeling done.  A lot of fellow hobbyists thought the same.  Instead what I experienced was a sort of depressive state where all I really wanted to do was Something Else.  It's a hard feeling to describe, honestly.  I briefly started painting my old Dystopian Wars miniatures, resulting in a crab walker painted mostly with Contrast paints.  Contrast paints work pretty well for those ship scale models, in my opinion.  Throw some drybrushing on and they look pretty decent for a fairly low investment of time and energy.  Now obviously there is some layering; the missiles on top and the steel elements like the frame around the yellow bridge canopy.  There's likely some copper or brass that was layered on as well.  The base was textured with pre-mixed grout, one of my go-to tools for adding texture to the base without paying Citadel prices.  This was painted sometime in June.

Kary the Marilith

By October 2020, Moxie Games was willing to start up paint competitions again. I admit I misunderstood the rules as they said one Large Wizkids D&D model.  I thought it meant the creature itself was Large size in the game rules.  Nope, they meant things like the Frost Giant models.  Still, I think the marilith came out nice.  I apologize for the terrible photo.

I rushed her a little bit, as I had to get her done and turned in before I flew back to California for my brother's wedding.  Honestly, the Nozlur's Marvelous Miniatures line is lousy to work with.  The soft PVC they're made from is impossible to straighten and the mold lines similarly impossible to clean.  They're great if you wanna just paint some stuff to put on your game table, but I'm probably spoiled by the quality of resin, metal, and hard plastic models.

My COVID output was pretty slow; slower than usual anyway.  I don't know what possessed me to buy a Chaos Space Marine Start Collecting box, but the models were cool. With the benefit of hindsight, I think Chaos Marines are fun to paint because they're all individuals for the most part.  That is, they have a lot of details that vary from model to model.  Sure they've got many of the same weapons and such as each other, but the details of those vary pretty wildly.

Stupid sexy Black Legion

This was also an opportunity to experiment with a color that I haven't given a starring role to since painting Raven Guard for a friend back in 2006ish.  Black.  The problem I had with black as a primary color element is that it is really hard to figure out how to shade it.  How do you get the shadows to read as darker than a pure black color?  The answer I discovered that you don't basecoat in a pure black.  I based these bad boys with Citadel's Corvus Black and gave them a dark grime and shade with Secret Weapon's Armor Wash.  Sadly, Secret Weapon was a victim of the pandemic supply chain problems and folded up shop in Summer 2021.  You can make a fairly decent approximation of Armor Wash by mixing Citadel's Basilicanum Grey and Skeleton Horde in a 2:1 mix.  Add Contrast Medium as you see fit to control the pigment intensity.

In the end, I decided to wait until the 9th edition codex for Chaos Space Marines was released to continue work on them.  Which is Soon as of this writing.

Virus-bomb survivor, colorized

I've tried to organize and redo my Horus Heresy-era stuff from time to time over the years.  I found some of the Ultramarines hiding in paint stripping fluid when I moved and it's honestly a bit amazing how some of the paint just refused to slough off. I have no clue what sealer I used, but it was probably Testors Matte Lacquer Sealer given what I was using in 2016-2017.  Mind you, these guys were sitting in the stripping pot for a few years.

I'm aware that a new edition of 30k has dropped.  I'll  write about it in-depth in another post.  I'm just going to say that I drew up 500 point army lists for both my Ultramarines and Thousand Sons.  A small point list/game? Heresy!, I hear you say.  My thought process was to start with a small list to learn the new edition's rules.  Given I have to buy some parts for my tiny Ultramarine list and nothing at all for my Thousand Sons, the Thousand Sons will be first on the docket.  That's 21 models in a 500 point 30k list; by comparison my SM list for 9e is just 12 models.

As a side note: I finally got rid of the bazillions of Orks my brothers gave me. If you're reading this Conor, hope you're enjoying them.  I also shipped off most of my unpainted Primaris Marines off to a good home, since I wasn't particularly enjoying painting them up as Ultramarines.  Probably something to do with having so many of them for 30k.

Lord-Exorcist

After a second move (within the same twelve months no less), I worked on some more Stormcast Eternals. I managed to finish the Lord-Exorcist that I'd kind of half-assedly worked on a few years prior.  I continued the trend by half-assedly working on a Knight-Incantor.  It's like that sometimes.

I did eventually get back to Primaris Marines.  I'd picked some up to build a tiny Crusade force.  Funny enough the original models were misplaced during the move and I ended up buying a second 500 point list.  One of the missing models was the Gravis Captain from the 8e Dark Imperium set, which at the time was going to be an expensive thing to replace.  Then two things happened.  First, I found the models that were MIA, including the Gravis Captain.  Second, Games Workshop released a much nicer version of that same Gravis Captain.

I derived the color scheme for the Imperial Swords (as I am calling them) from Taarna's get-up in Heavy Metal.  They're a custom chapter, obviously.  The initial group of models are two squads of five Heavy Intercessors, a Gravis Captain, and a Redemptor Dreadnought.  Everybody is helmeted because I haven't found any female heads to my liking.  Yeah, they're female, deal with it.  There's no particular reason for it other than I like the idea of warrior women.  Their successor chapter tactics are Duellists and Rapid Assault, reflecting what I imagine is their preferrence for mobility.

Ultimately though, I burnt myself out on painting them.  I'll try tackling them again in a few months, I suspect.  I'm more excited about my Maggotkin of Nurgle at the moment.

The Imperial Swords in progress

One of the things I try to do is challenge myself.  You'll see it later in this post with the Warped Painting Challenge that was run by the Bridgeville Warhammer shop.  But in December 2021, I set myself a different sort of challenge; speed-painting.

A little background.  My mom had accumulated Christmas ornaments over many decades; some hand-made, many store-bought.  But the they were all tied up in the family memories of Christmases past.  Well, thanks to the LNU Complex Fire, 50ish years of accumulated Christmas mementos were wiped out.  So when I heard that one could get a clear plastic bauble to store the 2021 Christmas miniature in, I thought I'd paint up the Red Gobbo and his buddy Bounca for my mom.

Utilizing mostly Contrast paints, I got the whole thing done sitting at the Warhammer store in about three hours.  That's definitely a record for me.

Let da revolushun begin!

I feel like this post has gone on long enough.  Stay tuned for Part 2, I guess.