Dozer Complete...Finally!

There isn't much difference between this and the last WIP pic, I just wanted to post some better pics of him. He is easily the most fun model I have painted for my Trolls, love the fig overall. The only thing that is a bit "off" with him is how insanely big he is. He is basically halfway between my Mauler and the Mountain King which is crazy. Although, with that being said all Trolls, including the re-sculpts of the Scatter Gunners and Warriors are all a larger scale. Bearka for instance is about as big as a Troll Axer if you could take him off the Bear.

Jarl Complete!

Even though I finally have the finished pictures of Dozer I figured I would give everyone a break and post something new. Below is Jarl Skuld, one of my favorite Troll casters both in regards to his model and to his rules. I really like how dynamic the posing is on this model, especially in comparison to some of the other figs. I am looking forward to finishing some more of my other Casters, although lately I find I am just having too much fun playing Epic Borka and I can't really seem to move on from him. Also, I am currently working on my unit of Warriors which is maybe the most painful thing I have tried to paint for Trolls. I *must* finish them before I move onto anything else lol.

Dozer and Smig WIP #3

Okay, so this isnt much of a "WIP" as he is almost finished. I have a few touch ups to do as well as finishing his base, other than that he is mostly complete. I gotta say he was one of the most fun models I have painted in a long time. All his details were so big and bold, lots of large areas to work with. I am starting to get really happy with how the rust effect is coming along for this army. Almost becoming second nature doing it. The green also is a nice splash of colour which I am going to incorporate into the Warriors when I start working on them to help make them stand out against the Fens and Scatter Gunners (which look very similar to each other). This weekend I will bust out the light box and take some final pics of Dozer. I have a few other smaller projects to post shortly as well.

Dozer and Smig WIP #2

Over the weekend I got in another good chunk of time. I finished the last of his main body and both his arms. I also almost finished Smigg (little troll riding his back) and the main gun. I *should* be able to finish him after work over the week and have the final pics up by this weekend. Been tonnes of fun so far.

Dozer and Smig WIP #1

I got a good 5 hours of painting over the weekend on this guy. I decided like any of the bigger models I have painted I was going to paint this guy in sections. One of the really nice things about him is how seamlessly his joints fit together, so its a non issue keeping him in pieces. The first thing I am going to finish is the main body. Once that is done then I can start adding all the extra pieces like his cannon and Smig. Here are some pics of the initial round of WIP shots.

I am hoping to get some more work this week, specifically on the armor. Once that is done it will just be small details and finished.

Privateer Press is Upping Their Game...

When trying to get friends (specifically 40k friends) into playing Warmachine/Hordes the single biggest gripe is how bad the models look. I will be honest that is why it took me so long to get into WM myself. Now that I am into the game my biggest gripe so far has been how impossibly terrible the materials they use for the models actually are. The metal is fine, its metal although sometimes how they fit or where they decide to break a model up leaves much to be desired. The plastic though...ugh. It's so terrible. Mold lines everywhere, normally across major detail, like around the mouth of the Storm Troll for example. That is all changing, and fast.

With Privateer Press's most recent release they have started using a new Resin for single characters and GW style hard plastic model kits for their large models. Both are massive jumps in quality versus what they used to employ. I recently picked up the new Dozer and Smig character Dire Troll. Check out how incredibly crisp this model is right out of the box. Virtually no clean up (small bits here and there).

With all my other Dire Trolls (especially the EBDT and Mulg) I had a couple hours worth of clean up and putty work just to get them to fit together and cover up the huge gaps were pieces didnt fit. Not this guy. Dry fitting him has almost no gaps. I will need almost no green stuff to actually complete him. I am going go paint him in stages starting this weekend (more pics). I am super excited that this is the direction Privateer Press is going as it looks like all new kits are this quality.

Legion of Everblight: Beast Test

Here is a quick follow up to the post I did last Thursday. I put in some time to try out a beast for this painting style. It's one of their light beasts called a Naga. I kept in line with the black and white scheme while pushing the blood effects out of its mouth. In an effort to give it a bit of colour I also added some red/purple ink around the spines at the top of end of its neck and around its face. I also took a stab a final look for the base, which I am actually very pleased with especially from a colour stand point.

Thinking of Starting Something New...

I realized recently that I am actually coming up on the tail end of my Trolls. I only have about 25 models left to paint (one big unit of 15, a couple small 3 man units and a few casters) so I have started thinking about what project I want to do once this one is done. I have a few in mind and have even posted a couple articles on those projects like these Retribution of Scyrah models ( http://legiominimus.blogspot.ca/2014/07/retribution-of-scyrahtake-2.html ). After playing a few games with them I don't know if the army is for me. This is also true for the aesthetic of that army as I find it kind of boring.

Recently I came into a few Legion of Everblight models. When looking at the army its a blend of Dark Eldar and Tyranids so one would think it would be a natural fit lol. I like most of the models and I also really like the rules for the army which is a much more established force than the Retribution is. I thought a long time about how I wanted to paint them. I knew I didnt want to do something too similar to my Tyranids (so purple and brown was right out). I also try to do a new technique with every army I do. So, with that in mind I thought it would be really cool to do what I call a "Sin City" army. One that is almost entirely black and white, with bright red blood effects and a tiny amount of spot colour all staying in the same overall dark tone. Below is my first test model. I haven't totally decided on the bases at this point but the overall look of the model is exactly what I was going for. I am also working on a light beast which I will post later this week.

Storm Troll Complete!

It's crazy how much nicer the newer Troll models are compared to the older ones. Case in point is the Storm Troll (new) vs. The Slag Troll (super old). The only thing that sucks about this guy is the plastic material that PP uses. It's hands down the worst I have ever used for any type of model material. The mold lines are out of control and for some reason ALWAYS in the worst places (he has one going around his open mouth for example). Ah well. This guy was pretty easy to paint, but then again, I love painting the beasts, it's the units that I dread lol.

Tyranid Reshoots...

I have been looking through the blog at a bunch of the older stuff I posted and I cant help but see how dated most of my original pictures are. Most of the pictures were taken with my old iPhone 3GS...so yeah, not great. Here are a few of them with my revised lighting set up. While a massive improvement (I feel anyways) I still have a bit of work to do. Over the next little while I am going to start updating my Nids and my Dark Eldar.

Long Riders Complete!

Both the Scatter Gunners and these Long Riders were painted for a tournament I did a few weeks ago. While I didnt do great for my overall record (Bearka failed TWO assassination attempts!) I did manage to snag best painted. I really enjoyed painting these guys and sadly they took less time to paint than the Scatter Gunners. I am slowly but surely knocking down units and beasts for this army bringing my fully painted total to 196pts, which I think is pretty good. I only have one large unit left (Warriors...14 models...ugh). After that its just 3 man mini units and casters. I want to get this army to 100% before I move onto anything new.

Scatter Gunners Complete!

Been a long time since I last posted but rest assured I have been busy at work. I finally got my lighting set up sorted out and took a few pics of the most recent things I have finished. First up are one of my least fave units in the entire Troll Blood army...Scatter Gunners! While I love the idea of them in game I gotta say they are just terrible rules wise. Played a bunch of games and they did sweet fuck all lol. Ah well, what can you do?

The Protectorate Crusade

Finally got to take some pictures of the finished based Protectorate force. Of course its not finished yet. I have some random lead to paint still, warjacks, pSevy, more deliverers etc.

BUT this is a force I could field and have fun with.

And in case you're wondering where the big kahuna is, I'm still working on him, but have become a bit bored with painting tan for a while, so shall be focusing on my FOW US Airborne force for a while (and some my Carthaginian Gauls, Australian WW2 jungle troops etc. etc.).

He's big, he's in pieces, and he's slowing getting done..

Fear and Basing in Las Vegas

Ghoulio has been giving me crap for ages about how I need to base my Warmachine stuff.  There is a reason I have up until now not done it. Fear.  Fear of screwing up my carefully (and slowly) painted figs with a crap base job.  Back when we started this nonsense, everybody used to use bright green flock.  Everybody was apparently fighting on a golf course.  I even flocked my Tallarns this way for YEARS (http://legiominimus.blogspot.com/2011/03/vendetta-ogryn-chimera-and-tallarn.html).  Then I realized that the days of flock were long gone.  Happily it was relatively easy to fix them (http://legiominimus.blogspot.com/2011/04/tallarn-110th-redux-battlegroup-ptolemy.html) by simply painting the flock like dirt, throwing on a couple of stones and bob's your uncle.

But with the Protectorate, I wanted to go further.  I wanted the rocks to sit IN the dirt and not just sit on top of it like pebbles.  I also wanted to try my hand at static grass, something I haven't used before.

So to get over my fear, I decided to do test basing on 1 unit and make sure it looked fine.  I have chosen my Wracks, for no reason other than they had nice big bases with lots of places to try things out.  Below is a step by step of what I did.

Here you can see first glued on the seashell rocks onto the base, and then put on some fine sand, the idea being that the rocks would "protrude" out of the ground a bit.  This *kind* of worked, but the rocks still looked like they were sitting on top.  So I put down a second layer of sand.  This worked, but almost too well.  Now the rocks were buried. Not a bad look, but I think next time I'll angle the rocks so that part of them sticks out and the other part is under dirt.  Something to try.

Painting the entire thing black, and then painting the bases bestial brown, followed up by a leather lighter brown for highlights seemed to work. Well.  I followed this up with a very light drybrush of light tan.  I wanted the dirt to look like dirt, and not sand like I did for my Tallarns.

The next step was to highlight the rocks.  Using Adeptus grey as the initial highlight and then Fortress grey seemed to work well.  Of course GW seems to change their colors every year or so who knows if these colors are going to work.  Black + dark grey + light grey.  Boom.

Seeing Ghoulio's awesome white lines to demark the front and back of figures, I decided to copy this.  But I was worried that I would screw up marking the "half way" point, so I printed off a bunch of circles and marked with pen the appropriate line. Worked quite nicely I thought.

Call me a spaz if you like but it worked nicely, and this particular group of circles will work for all my figs. 

  

So now everything was ready.  I dull coated the models NOW, as I've heard that static grass doesn't like varnish.

Using the "small dabs of glue" and really mash the grass onto the base with WAY more grass then you're going to use.  Press it firmly with your finger and shake off the excess.  It worked out perfectly.

The only complaint I would have is the grass looks a little dark (especially in these photos), so that leaves me with a dilemma. a) Use lighter static grass (I have golf course green as well), or b) highlight the dirt more so that the grass has more contrast.  I think I'll go with b).

Either way, since everybody except the Big Kahuna (Judicator), and a few other solos is done, I'll start basing this weekend methinks.  The fear of static grass is gone!

Hunters Grim Complete!

For my Trolls I have been doing the basic army at a fairly brisk pace. It's not that I am "speed painting" them, I am just working at a pace where they look decent...but I am not taking forever for one guy. What I am doing instead is really putting that effort into the Warlock models as I really want them to stand out, and the Hunters Grim are no exception. I tried doing some two brush blending as well as just taking my time on everything. These guys took pretty much all week of painting fairly regularly. I decided to do something different with Grim's skin just to help break everything up.

Brun and Lug Complete!

Here are the next batch of Minion Solos for my Epic Borka army. It was really nice taking a small break from Trolls to paint something different. I really enjoyed painting these guys, especially Brun as Lug (the bear) was just fur and metal. I think doing an entire Dwarf army would be super cool lol. All that is left for this army is painting 5 Long Riders and its done! After that it will be time to finish off my second 50pts list so I can finally start playing in tournaments.

Lanyssa Complete!

Still plugging away at my two tournament lists for the Trolls. For my heavy armor list I have a few "Minion" solos (both for looks and because of what they do for the army overall). The first Minion is an elf named Lanyssa. She adds a bunch of utility to the list plus I thought the model looked really cool. The last benefit to her is I can use her in either my Ret list (they are incredibly limited as to which Mercs/Minions they have access too) or my Trolls. Because of that I decided I would just paint her in my Retribution of Scyrah's colours but did the basing of the Trolls so she fits in either army.