Making a Start...

A bit of a break from the scheduled programming (i.e. Wood Elves...) but an update nonetheless! Somewhat ironically, the first painted figure of 2014 is...a High Elf. Teclis, to be precise, painted for the Asrai.org Miniature Exchange this year. The figure is now safely with it's intended recipient and so it's safe to show pictures.

I also received a model in return, a winter-themed Wood Elf Spellsinger. At least this is one Wood Elf I won't have to paint! 

Many thanks to my painter (Rab) for the model.

Meanwhile, progress on my own Wood Elves is proceeding slowly but surely. I'll update on where I'm at soon.

More Goodies!

Another bunch of stuff I picked up on sale, this time from Wayland Games' Halloween sale. You might remember the 40mm Greek Heroes I posted up at the very beginning of this blog (if not, you can read about them here), and these are the rest of the set. I had no real plans to buy these beforehand (story of my life!) but the price was too good to resist - the combined retail price, as you can probably work out from the stickers on the blister packs, should have been around £45 (the Skeletons alone are £35, plus the Minotaur for £7.50 - I estimate Jason would be around £4/5). In the sale, I picked the lot up for the grand total of £12.84!

There are four different packs of Skeletons: 3 Spear-armed Skeletons, 3 Sword-armed Skeletons, 3 "Thracian" Skeletons (armed with Spears, but wearing just linen tunics) and 3 "Heroes" (with helmets, armour and swords). 

Then of course there's Jason, who is a suitably heroic-looking Brad Pitt-esque hero. He'll team up nicely with the three Greek Heroes I've already got.

And no Greek adventure would be complete without a Minotaur. This is only a "lesser" Minotaur, but it's a good looking figure nonetheless.

All this has given me vague ideas for a 'Jason and the Argonauts' themed skirmish game at some point. Whether that will ever materialise is anyone's guess!

Howdy!

Well, it's certainly been a while. More than a month since my last post - oops! I'll try not to let that happen again, but I can't make any promises...

April was a slow month, May was even slower as progress crawled almost to a dead stop. I do have a couple of things to show for it though

I began working on a few Dr. Who figures, just as something different. A few basecoats here and there coupled with some washes. Not much, but every little helps. I'm in no rush to finish these, so they can comfortably be left on the side until I fancy picking them up and doing a little bit here and there.

I also picked up the Envoy Vanguard deal from Crooked Dice. These great-looking alien crustaceans will make perfect villains for a whole host of games, 7TV not least amongst them. As with the Dr. Who figures, they've just had a couple of basecoats so far.

In other news, I've signed up for Asrai.org's summer contest - a Tale of X Gamers where each entrant builds and paints a 1000pt Warhammer Fantasy army over the course of three months. I'm going to be using it as motivation to continue with my Skaven in an effort to get back on track with my painting and modelling. More on that in the next post!

On the 15th Day of Christmas!

Just a few quick snaps of the model I painted up for Da Warpath's Advent Challenge on Thursday. The challenge is to paint a complete model, from start to finish, within a day. I picked a Witch Hunter (Mordheim) model I've had sitting around:

Still a few details that I'll go back in and add when the mood takes me, but that's what I got done on the day.

I've also signed up to paint tomorrow's figure. I had originally intended to paint the Marco Columbo figure I picked up earlier this year, but after an accident and ensuing wrist injury at work yesterday (followed by another accident and exacerbated wrist injury at work today...) I think I'll stick to something simple instead. I don't know how difficult painting will be (typing is bad enough...) so I don't want to take on a model that is too detailed and complicated. I'll have a quick look through what I've got undercoated already, and pick something simple. It might end up being a Clanrat or similar plastic Skaven. The upside of that is that it will get me in the mood for getting back to the rats...

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!

Greeks, Butterflies and Vampires!

So I got started on a few models today.

The Greeks:

These are from Spartan Games' "Heroes of Myths and Legends" range, which has been 'temporarily discontinued' as far as I'm aware. The only reason I've got them is because I happened to notice them at games night last Thursday, the owner had reduced them to half-price and just couldn't shift them (hence why he had them, even though they're no longer in production). Lacking any Dystopian Wars models to buy (my cousin bought the last rulebook, the git) I picked these up for something different to paint.

The top model is the one I'm planning on painting up for the Advent Challenge on Thursday. They're nice models; the pictures don't show it, but they've got a lot of good details. 40mm is a scale I've not toyed with before, so the Advent challenge will be an experiment in more ways than one.

Syl-Iriah:

Great model - as soon as I saw it, I knew I wanted it (plus I had a 25% discount on my next Raging Heroes purchase - i.e. this one - due to delays with the release of the Asharah and Eleriel & Alaniel models). Lovely detail, the model fits together beautifully and it's both lithe and delicate whilst imposing and powerful at the same time. The wingspan is pretty impressive as well - this is "only" the Heroic version, and it still stands at 50mm high and about the same wide. It will look great as a Spellweaver in my Asrai army, if I can do a decent job with the painting.

Asharah:

This model, compared to Syl-Iriah, is an absolute pain. It's fiddly, relatively poorly cast and a pain in the ass to put together; literally every part requires pinning because otherwise it would simply fall apart. Not that I wouldn't have pinned it anyway, but compared to this Syl-Iriah was an absolute breeze despite (at first glance) being the more 'complex' model. The poor casting is disappointing; it's still a very impressive looking model but, compared to the master renders that Raging Heroes show on their website, the model has lost so much detail and sharpness. It's most noticeable on the head; the facial features are ill-defined and almost "blurred". Not to mention that the mould lines are some of the worst I've had on a metal model...

I'm fairly sure the 'problems' with Asharah are due to the fact that this was the very first model Raging Heroes cast; it's clear from the differences between the Asharah model and Syl-Iriah that Raging Heroes have come on in leaps and bounds both in the way they design and cast their models. Clearly they have learnt some lessons from Asharah.

One thing that plays in Asharah's favour (and Syl-Iriah's, incidentally) is that she comes with a lot of options; there are three head variants (Vampire, Elf and Chaos-y helmet) and I think six different arms (two swords, whip, spellbook, shield, staff). I've assembled Asharah as a Vampiress complete with sword and shield (which are being kept seperate for painting).


Anyway, that's all for now. One of the Greeks (most likely) will get painted fully on Thursday, if everything goes to plan. As for the others, I'll hopefully get some time to work on them over the course of the next week, although work will unfortunately limit most of my time up until Christmas Eve, and then Christmas will of course be all I can think about!