"Secret" Project....

Remember that "entirely different project" I mentioned in the last post? Well, it did get off the ground...

It's not really all that secret. I'm in the process of putting together an entry for the Conversion Contest in the A5 campaign. The contest is to convert a unit/monster/war machine from one of the campaign army lists. Having been working on the Doomwheel over the last week, I picked a unit from the Clan Skarr list - I can't really say what it is and I can't show any pics until after the contest finishes, but luckily the finish date is 31st January so you won't have to wait that long. Unluckily, that only gives me a week to finish it.

That said, I've made a fair bit of progress so far. There's one bit that I'm struggling with, but in the meantime I should be able to get most of the other parts built by tomorrow. I'm not sure whether I'll have time to paint it before the contest ends (it would be good if I could - extra credit for painted models!), but it will at least be constructed and ready to go.

Most of my other projects have been put on hold while I frantically put my contest entry together. The time constraints also haven't been helped by the fact that my copy of Legendary Edition Blood Bowl turned up on Saturday. Of course, I've spent a fair few hours playing whilst tinkering with the project...

 Speaking of Blood Bowl, I've just got back from gaming with a dramatic (and jammy) win over a Chaos team. 4 casualties (all mine), 2 sendings off (both his) and three touchdowns (two of which were mine, luckily) means I've got another win to report for A5 this turn.

NB: I forgot to post about the fact that I managed to squeeze in a second game of Blood Bowl last week, which was a comfortable 2-0 win against the same Orc team

Lost and Found

You know my post last Saturday, when I said I thought I was missing a few middle rank pikemen? Well, I was right! I found another ten sitting in the original box while I was looking for bitz for an entirely different project (more on that at a later date, if it ever gets off the ground). Good job I found them accidentally, because I'd have never been able to remember where I put them if I'd actually put my mind to it...


Anyway, that puts the total number of pikemen up to 61, with 14 mid-rankers, 7 front-rankers, 6 command models and 34 rear-rankers. Not bad!

Some more painting progress, and other stuff...

 First up, I played my first game of the A5 Campaign last night! Blood Bowl against the other half's Orcs. I actually took notes with the intention of writing the game up in a full report, so I might do that a bit later in the week. All in all, it was a hard-fought 1-1 draw. I narrowly escaped a 2-1 loss, with the Orcs failing to capitalise on three great chances to score the winner in the last few turns of the game. Lucky me...


In other news...

I've had a fair bit of free time over the past couple of days, so have managed to get quite a bit done (for me...)

So far I've touched up the black on about half of the pikemen - 24 down, 27 to go! I probably could have got through more of them but I've been a bit distracted by other things....

Yes, that's right - I've started playing with the Doomwheel I bought about four or five months ago. I've got to say, this is one of the most intricate kits I've ever assembled, and it's gorgeously detailed - a real painter and modellers kit. It will make a great centrepiece model for my burgeoning Skaven army (more on that later).

I've assembled the model into several different sub-assemblies to ease the painting process; the three main sections are the two wheel and the main chassis, but there are about seven or eight other smaller assemblies as well (just to give you an idea of just how many pieces this model has...)

It's now perhaps a third of the way through painting. Everything looks bright and shiny clean, but that will soon change with the liberal application of Devlan Mud! The two wheels are essentially complete, the main chassis still needs quite a bit of work and then the small sub-assemblies (except for the wheel rats) need pretty much everything painting. So far though, I'm having great fun putting this together and painting it - it really is a fab model. I might even look into getting a second one if this one turns out well....

Anyway, what was that I was saying earlier about my "burgeoning" Skaven army? Up until yesterday I had 120 Clanrats, 8 Rat Ogres plus a few weapon teams and characters. Well...now I have 200 Clanrats and 10 Rat Ogres. Oh, and a Ratling Gun. In my defence, it was a fantastic bargain - 80 Clanrats for £25? Yes please! That's 70% cheaper than buying the same figures from GW, and you can't argue with that!


And now for something completely different

Well, it's my birthday in about four weeks (another year older...), and the other half was asking what present I wanted. I told her I'd think about it (in reality, it was more a case of picking which present I wanted most from my extensive wishlist). After much debate, I plumped for the Warhammer: Invasion LCG Core Set. It's something I've wanted to get into for a while now; I tried to pick up a copy at Games Day last year, but FFG had sold out of the Core Sets by the time I got there.

Anyway, a copy of the Core Set is now winging its way towards the Midlands with my name on it. The downside is I can't open it and play for the best part of a month, so in the meantime I'm going to be trawling the internet to find out which Battlepacks I should buy next...

Pikemen

I've managed to squeeze in a few hours painting time over the last few evenings after work, and I've completed the gold basecoat on all the pikemen models. Although it's a bit messy at the moment, a few touch-ups will soon remedy that (I hope). Flesh, black trousers, Red Gore helmet plumes, and then details like bags, armour straps etc. Hopefully it shouldn't take too long - luckily, I've got a fair bit of free time next week so should be able to make some decent progress with them, as well as the characters.

 I've also worked out how many of each model I need to give me enough to field either a 50-strong horde or 2x25-strong units. All in all, I need four front rank models, six middle rank models and two rear rank models. Not quite sure how I'm going to manage that combination. I have found an online store that sells the models individually (at £3 a pop, mind) so that's an option.

As a side note, I'm not entirely sure how I only ended up with four middle rank models when I bought two boxed sets of the Fellowship models plus other random eBay auctions. I might have to double-check my numerous boxes to see if I've missed any before ordering more models...

Da Warpath Advent Challenge, and WiPs

 Advent Challenge

Well, it's nearly a month since I actually painted it but I finally have decent pics of the model I completed for Da Warpath's Advent Challenge! If you remember the challenge was to paint a complete model, start to finish, over a period of 24 hours. I managed it (just) but didn't have access to a camera at the time (except my phone, and you can see the quality of those photos...)


The figure in question was a Spartan Games Greek Hero from their now-OOP "Heroes of Myth and Legend" range:

Obviously the base isn't finished - I'm not sure exactly what I want to do with it, but as it's such a large base I feel like I should do a little extra work on it rather than the standard sand-and-paint. Suggestions welcome!

WiPs

I've been working on a few other things this week as well; the advantage of losing the internet for a week is that I didn't spend as much time browsing, and actually picked up a paintbrush.

Anyway, I've done a bit of work on two characters for my Tilean army. I think these are both great models (and they're pretty hard to get hold of these days as well...) so I want to do a good job. Hopefully they look OK so far.

First up is Lucrezzia Belladonna:

She's not quite finished - I've a few bits to finish, such as facial details, the sword and the horse's caparison. Shouldn't take too long though

The other model is the Tilian Mercenary General, available as a DoW figure a few years ago but no longer on sale:

A bit further behind than Belladonna. I'm not entirely sure how to paint him; I've been looking for pictures of a painted version to use as a reference (I always like to have a reference piece to work with, so that I know how a model is supposed to look!), but as yet I've not had much luck. He doesn't have a horse yet either; I have a suitable model lying around somewhere, but I've not done anything with it as yet. 

I also pulled a few pikemen out of a box:

When I say a few, I actually mean 50....

They're Alcatani Fellowship models, but I don't plan on ever using them as the RoR they're supposed to be. Most of them are undercoated black (with a few untouched as yet) and most of the undercoated ones have had the flesh layer painted already. The three gold figures you can see in the second rank were a pain to paint the gold on though, so I'm thinking I may just splodge gold over all the metal bits and then touch up with other colours, rather than try and paint the metals neatly first time round - it's just too time-consuming trying to paint gold over such large areas! I plan on dipping these with ArmyPainter Strong Tone (I think) once the various basecoats are done.

Anyway, I had originally planned to have enough models for two units of 25 or one big unit of 50, but because of the numbers of different variety figures I currently have (particularly the middle and front rank figures i.e. with pikes down) I may have to purchase a few more a) so that they rank up properly and b) so that they look 'ordered' (i.e. each rank has its pikes at the same level). Curse my OCD!

Animosity 5

In other news, registration for Animosity 5 opened just under 24 hours ago. I signed up to join the Maderasari, the Wood Elf faction in the campaign. Turn 1 starts next Monday I think, so hopefully I can arrange some games to report for when we get started.

Until next time!