Wednesday 29 August 2012

Much distraction

Or maybe just lack of motivation?

With only 3 termagants left to go in the unit I find myself stuck for motivation. And doing lots of things to avoid painting. Looking at movies - Avengers was good, browsing the internet for random things - Sean Bean has died in over a quarter of his roles, reading books - Would you like to buy a goat? (Bonus points if you can name that reference) and even catching up on my ironing.

Although this weekend coming I have much miniature stuffs planned, so I am hopeful that it will kick me back into my painting schedule.

I have pre-ordered the new 40k starter set and am trading the chaos in my set for the Dark Angels in my friends set. Even though I play Chaos, and the miniatures look quite pretty, they just don't feel Tzeentch to me. So looks like I get Chaos miniatures by another name in the Dark Angels.

I did see the promo for the live action Rurouni Kenshin movie and thought that it looked pretty cool. Hopefully we will get a local release for it, or otherwise it might be fan-sub ahoy!

Doing well on kickstarter - only 4 things still remaining, which is good.

And Games Day is on in a couple of weekends and that should be enjoyable. Wonder if that will also help to boot me back into a painting mood once again?

Yikes, much rambling there.

Hopefully an update with pics of miniatures on Friday.

Cheers.

Monday 20 August 2012

A new week, starting new

Well, I had another successful time with my painting over the weekend.

Another 4 Termagants were finished. 13 done now.

The last termagants are now ready to be started. I have not even undercoated these ones yet, that will be tonight's task as I head towards a hopeful end of the week and with the termagants being all finished. But with the last 3 termagants come the first of the batch hormagaunts, the first to enter the line after the test gaunt.

No photos currently, as Blogspot seems to be playing up a little for me. I will rectify that later with the next WIP shot, although it is not terribly exciting as it is just the plastic assembled miniatures.

What will the week hold in store for me? Hopefully some painting and maybe even some distractions.

Cheers.

Friday 17 August 2012

Almost 1 minimum size unit done

Which means that I have 51 points fully painted now.



So only another 448 to go.

I also made a small amount of progress on the next 4 termagants and assembled the first of the Hormagaunts other than the test model.



As an army I think they are starting to pull together well. The colour scheme and the fairly neutral basing make the models stand out a little. I have not set them up on a tabletop yet to see how they look, but it should be Ok. That should be another advantage with the neutral basing scheme - should not stand out too much on most generally coloured gaming boards.

Back to it I guess if I want to have these ones done by the end of the weekend.

Cheers.

Wednesday 15 August 2012

More from the vault

Well, it is Wednesday once more.

So here are a couple of older miniatures, continuing with my Howling Griffins.

First up, Captain Von Bek of the fourth company.



I did reasonably well with this model. He passed the local level of the Golden Daemon contest and through varying degrees of miraculous occurrences made an appearance at the finals. Didn't place or get in the highly commended but I was stoked that it made it that far.

Then onto the first assault squad.




These don't have the chapter symbol on their shoulders. I managed to make a mess of the print your own transfers and never got around to going back and trying again.

I should also say that when I say they are the first assault squad, the other is languishing on sprue with the remainder of the battle company.

And a quick update on the current project - I should tonight finish the next 4 termagants for my Tyranid force. So then I can start on the next 4. Which means that I am going to have to return to the joys of assembly once more. This time with the Hormagaunts. Hopefully they are a little easier for me.

Cheers.

Monday 13 August 2012

31 Points

All painted!

Excellent. So that is 5 Termagants and 1 Hormagaunt done.

Only a short update post today.

Progress over the weekend was good. I finished the Termagants that I was working on, and got the next lot with all of the white done.


So now it is onwards to their carapace and finishing these four as well.

I hope to have these ones done by Friday. And on Friday I will post a picture of the painted parts of the army as it stands on that day. I am hoping for around 51 points completed.

My painting rack arrived as well today in the post, so I now have somewhere to store my paints other than the box that they were all in. This should help with visibility and hopefully also cut down on my occasional duplicate colour buying as I misplace a paint in the box.

Cheers.

Friday 10 August 2012

Surrounded by Termagants

And a completed test genestealer.

This week has seen some good progress on Splinter Fleet Wendigo. The test genestealer is complete, and the bony carapace was not as hard as I thought it was going to be.



Then we have the assembling of the Termagant unit. So all 16 are now assembled.



Yes, that is only 11.

4 are in the process of being worked on.



And the final one is fully completed as it was the test Termagant I showed on Monday.

I didn't meet my goal of 4 miniatures a night of assembly this week, however did get the unit fully assembled. I think that I will try to work on assembling a unit prior to the unit being started or almost ready to be painted. Otherwise I am going to have all of the miniatures assembled for this project before I even have half the termagants finished. Well, maybe all the termagants finished. The assembly is not my favourite step of all of this.

And if I assemble it all prior to painting, I might be tempted to just leave it all not painted and start to game away.

So the total painted points for my force remain unchanged at 11. Will the 4 in progress termagants be finished by Monday? I hope so.

Cheers.

Wednesday 8 August 2012

Distracted by...

Kickstarter.

Not sure if you have seen Kickstarter. It is crowd funding, so how this works is if you think that a project has legs, you can back it and pledge money towards funding it.

The good thing? They only take your money if it is fully funded.

The bad thing? So many cool projects.

Let's look at the things that I am currently either watching or backing...

Relic Knights...

Morland Miniatures

Reaper - Bones miniatures

Super hero card building game

More generally awesome miniatures

Anime Greek and Norse goddess game

So there we go. And most of them are funded currently. So what does this mean, other than me being quite weak of will in the face of shiny new things?

Not much really.

Well at least this distraction requires no real effort on my part, and once I decide to pledge to a project it just happens in the background. Which does leave time for me to paint more miniatures.

Good news on the miniature front? The first 4 termagants are going well, however my assembly is not going so well. But as it seems to be taking me around a week or so to paint 4 models, the assembly is keeping pace with that. I currently have 8 termagants assembled and unpainted and the next 4 waiting on the sprue.

Well, pics will follow on Friday.

Until then I leave you to it.

Cheers.





Monday 6 August 2012

The edge of the shadow

A reasonably successful weekend of painting occurred. Not only did I get a few of my test models finished, but I also dug out a box of Tyranids. Hurrah for saving money. It is quite scary what I have lying around in wait for the unwary miniature explorer.



So I hear you ask, what did I get done? Well I completed both the test Termagant and the test Hormagaunt. Oh, the ankle snapping hormagaunt. The join between the base the the foot is very small on this model and just while painting it I managed to break it. I am not too hopeful for how these miniatures will go in gaming regarding breakages, but I am being optimistic that they will go well and not snap more ankles than a heroine in a pulp adventure novel.






I also started on the test Genestealer. This is being a little more problematic for me, as the fading for the blue is going to be less defined. It was easy enough with the other models as they have defined plates to paint this on, but the 'stealer has more of a ribbed carapace so I am still working on how to get it there. But that is the point of the test models. In my 500 point list the 'stealers have the talons as well as the claws, so the real models will look a little different. But practise is always good.




I also assembled the first 8 termagants for the army proper. I still have to have a go at some of them with the liquid greenstuff to fill some gaps, but that should be Ok. The assembly was quite time consuming with cleaning all of the models up, but I figure if I can do 4 a night as well as some painting I should have the lesser tyranids all assembled within two weeks. Then a figure if I get a warrior a night done, there is another week or so as well as painting in the mean time.



So the shadow of splinter fleet Wendigo slowly progresses, and so far stands at a mighty 11 points. So only 488 points until I finish painting this batch.

Yikes, I have my work cut out for me still.

Cheers.

Friday 3 August 2012

Dwarves and 'Nids

The Dwarves are done! The final four of the grumbly bearded ones are now complete.



I am not really happy with the black stripes on the shield there. They are not really straight or evenly spaced. One of these days I might go back and redo them, but for now I am glad that these models are done. I enjoyed painting them, but could not see myself painting a whole army of dwarves, for any system.

But in the new project? Splinter Fleet Wendigo has made a small start. This is the first test model. The skin is done and I tried a couple of different techniques for me and also experimented with a wet palette. I really like the wet palette. Prior to this, even when thinning my paints with medium they were drying out quite quickly on my palette. This has solved that issue for me.

I have also tried thinning out my paints quite a lot more than I usually do. This has enabled me to get a much smoother coat of paint. It does mean that I have to do several coats to get the same coverage, but it seems to be worth it at this stage. Will I still feel the same way after painting 44 models? The jury is out on that one, because only time and practise will tell.



I tried mixing the carapace colour out of Skavenblight Dinge and Black, with a 2 to 1 mix. This didn't really give me as dark a colour as I wanted, so I will try again with a 1 to 1 mix. I am not sure how this will go with fading the colour out to blue, but that is what test models are for. I have a second termagaunt and a hormagaunt to test on as well before I decide on my final colour scheme. But I am very pleased with the grey / white skin colour so far.

The weekend will hopefully see more progress made on the trial models and I should have a reasonably finalised scheme to put up on Monday.

Cheers.

Wednesday 1 August 2012

Distracted by

Puppies!

Well, I am back home again. Had a fantastic weekend. Lots of good food (so much good food!) and I was introduced to my friends new puppy.

Fortunately for the most part I was immune to his cuteness and only had to stop him gnawing on my shoelaces a couple of time.











But what is coming up in the future for miniatures? Well, firstly it is to finish off the Dwarf Kings Hold dwarves.

Then, as promised a new project (and abandoning the Revenants for the time being).

I have a friend who has decided to start playing miniature war games. So after much discussion they picked Warhammer 40,000 to play. Many games were considered and options provided. After the game system was chosen, the next choice was to pick an army. Eldar narrowly won out over the Dark Eldar.

So what does this have to do with me? Well in the spirit of the new rules that were released a little while ago I have decided to start a small painting / gaming challenge with them. And I even convinced another friend who has played for years but rarely paints to participate as well. At least in the painting side of it.

So how is this going to work? Well we each start out with a 500 point force.

When looking through the mountain of unopened boxes that I have, I decided to do something completely different. I am going with a Tyranid force. This is the starter set with 16 Termagaunts, 16 Hormagaunts 8 Genestealers and 3 warriors.

Hang on, that is not enough for a 500 point force I can hear you say. Where is your HQ? Well, that box will be supplemented by an additional warrior in the future to become a Tyranid prime. Then if and when we decide to expand the challenge to 1000 points, the prime will become one of the second group of 3 warriors.

With the decision made of a force, then it is down to the name and colour scheme. After deliberating this, I am calling my new splinter fleet  - Splinter Fleet Wendigo. They are going to be painted in a light grey / white with black to ice blue fade on the carapace. Black weapons and orange eyes. Will see how it looks after painting up some test models.

So the Howl of the Wendigo campaign will soon kick off with Eldar, Chaos Space Marines and Tyranids participating.

And I fully intend to post up our starting army lists followed by painting updates and Battle reports at some stage to show off my tactical ineptitude for all to see.

Cheers.