The Phoenix Has Landed

In my attempt to put a dent in my painting schedule i've managed to get a Phoenix Mirmadon painted to the point where i can show you a few pictures.  This warjack was painted much like the Griffon using the same spray paint technique to achieve the white armour.  I'm happy with how it has turned out so far.

Amassing the Retribution

Yes it's time to owe up to the large amount of unpainted miniatures i have staring me in the face and give them a decent coat of paint.  The process always seems to be more consuming that it originally does at the offset, however i try not to let that deter me when putting the brush to plastic (or metal or resin whatever it may be).

I'm trying out a new painting technique on the Mirmidons in my Retribution of Scyrah force for Warmachine to try and speed along the painting process a little.  To start with i've given the model a prime of black at which point i coated the entire model's accessible points with Astropath Grey and set it aside to let it dry.  After the model had ample time to make sure all the paint was dry i sprayed the model sparingly with white spray paint from the angle of the light source.  After that the model had a good base colour with shading to work with, I then sealed the model with a spray of matte varnish and touched up some of the details where the white was too strong or not strong enough.

The rest of the model was painted much in the same way i would paint the Mirmidons normally, just this time with the white armour of the model completed in a fraction of the time it would normally take.

This method is not fool proof and the convenience of this method does show on the finished product.  Although the model is not 100% complete, i'll post some pics to see what you think of the zenith spray technique and its results.

And here's a pic of a very sad and mostly unpainted warmachine army looking back at me.

Thats 1 heavy Mirmidon, 2 light Mirmidons, 11 Mage hunters, 12 Invictors, an Assassin, 2 Snipers, A Soulless Unit Attachment, an Arcanist, 4 Archers, Rayvn, Garryth, and Narn

WIP Plagueclaw Catapult Paintjob

Here's a few pictures to show you how the plagueclaw is coming along, now with a few coats of pain and nearly finished and ready for the tabletop.  A few things are left to remain such as some more work on the plaguemonk crew, and the "standard" as well as a few miscellaneous details that need touching up here and there.  I decided to go with the orange rust instead of verdigris to go along with the theme throughout the army, it also adds a little more colour where there are plenty of greens and greeny blues already involved in this piece.  Enjoy!

Pre-Heresy Deathguard Plague Marine

To break up the repetition of painting so many rats over the past while (yes there are more on the way, pictures coming soon), I decided to work a little more on the deathguard army after a inspiration hit to paint Plague Marines that still retained a semblance of their former legion colours.  Of course the armour would be caked in dust and filth, but under all that i wanted there to be a connection to the days when they were once among the emperor's finest.  Here is the result!

This model is from the Havok Plague Marine boxed set, which i believe is currently unavailable, although i'm not 100% sure on that one.  The base colours used on the model were Astronomicon Grey and Knarloc Green, and an assortment of various browns, oranges, greens and yellows.  If there is any interest I'll post a tutorial on how to achieve this look relatively simply, believe me it's a great deal easier than you think!

Scratch Built Treekin Model Painted

A quick update, here are the painted pics of the scratch built Treekin that i posted earlier today.

Scratch Built Treekin Model

After some work i've managed to piece it together, a rather large and natural looking Treekin model.  The majority of this model is actually made with twigs and dead pieces of wood i gathered, all super glued together, with a sculpted face and details made of "green stuff", and talons made of plastic roughly cut with an exacto blade.  Spanish moss, slate and various sizes of sand and gravel were added to make the base and model feel more overgrown.  Here's some pictures!

The model was spray varnished to seal the wood and vine pieces.  5 more to go :) !

Plagueclaw Catapult Conversion

The conversion was inspired heavily by another conversion that was found on the internet using the Orc and Goblin's Rock Lobba model as a basis and an assortment of pieces from the Screaming Bell and Plague Monk kits.  Here' how it turned out.

This was a relatively simple and effective way i find to make a plague claw catapult using some spare bits and a the rock lobba model.  Please feel free to leave any questions or comments.

Skaven Slaves and Rat Swarms

After a few days hard at work i've managed to whip up a few units to show off, one being a work in progress unit of 50 Skaven Slaves, the second be 5 finished rat swarm bases.

First off the Slaves!

Skaven Slaves are a very useful unit to the Skaven army.  They have the strength and toughness of any other skaven core unit and are less than half the points of a typical clan rat.  Being that i usually take units of 40 and up for clanrats, the rule of strength in numbers goes double for these guys.  With a base leadership sitting at 2 they need all the help they can get from the extra ranks of rats, and even with a full rank bonus they're still sitting at a leadership of 5.  Hopefully with fifty models in the unit it will keep them from prematurely breaking.

One of the nasty little tricks this unit has is its ability to deals str 3 auto-hits to all the units around it when it breaks!  I plan to get this unit into combat as quickly as possible, take as many enemies out with their numbers and then have them blow up on the enemy when they're finally finished fighting.  Sounds like a ratty tactic to me.

I'd like to field four units of fifty slaves in games around 3000pts and up, two or three should suffice for anything smaller.  Simply the numbers should scare any over confident general when facing off against the skaven

Secondly the Rat Swarms!

Currently i'm sitting at 10 of these bases... given that they are 5 wounds a piece, move 6 inches and are unbreakable makes these well worth the few points you pay for them.  They arn't a heavy hitter, but seeing as they can now wound any toughness on a 6 they're all the more valuable to take as shock troops.  Fun little models to paint although there isn't a great deal of variation in the models seeing as it only comes with two different types of tiles.  Once again these should serve visually intimidating sitting at the front of a skaven army on mass!

More to come soon!

Amassing the Skaven Hoard

I've decided to dig the Skaven out of hibernation for the release of the new 8th edition rules set that was just released yesterday.  My ultimate goal would be to have all my skaven models painted and table ready in a month, ultimately this is going to be near impossible without a great amount of focus.  So lets start by looking at what we have to deal with.

In this picture there are:

80 or more clan rats,

40 stormvermin

15 poisonwind globadiers

50 giant rats

4 rat ogres

80 plaguemonks

12 plaguecensors

a doom wheel

plaguefurnace

screaming bell

warp lighting cannon

20 night runners

5 jezzails

4 support weapon teams

and a host of Characters

i'd say that 20 percent of it is painted another 10 percent is base coloured, and only about 10 percent of it sits unprimed.

To tackle this project i'm going to have to take it on in chunks, after all taking all of this on at once is much too mind boggling, I usually find the best way to get an army painted is work on painting a unit at a time scaled to a 1000 point army.  So if in 1000 points you would take a block of 30 monks and 50 giant rats then paint those two units and accompanying characters.  Not only does this get models painted, but it also ensures that i'll get some games in with some nicely painted models while i'm painting the rest.

Grey Seer on Rat Bone Ogre

This is a quick conversion i did using some of the pieces i had left over from the plague furnace kit, more details on it later, here's a few pictures!