Finding the character of an army

I know I started an army list review compared to what I was taking to tournaments back in fifth but because its Saturday the missus is out with the girls playing bus stop bingo all day (a game that involves carnage) and Liverpool play tomorrow I've got the day free to paint.

I've spent a lot of the week thinking about what I want this Wolf army to be. My last army was a typical baby blue based on snow with some nice shiny gold, they certainly looked like they'd just come off the parade ground but only a parade ground where the Amourer was missing a few fingers and possibly two eyes.

Just before I stopped playing I had painted a few pre heresy models which included a Contemptor with the new airbrush I had had. I based coated them with the normal chaos black spray and then used Vallejo model air German grey to give them an undercoat with a highlight of Vallejo model air light grey. I was really pleased with the results so I'm going to use that basic recipe but take it a step further.

This week I have been really impressed with a couple of videos I've watched the first I had seen before (link here) showed a style of painting Thirteenth company Space Wolves obviously the more pre heresy feel that I want. I really like the way Lester paints I'm taking a lot from this.

The other video I watched and this is the link the to the first part was about weathering a tank by OrcPainterNerd. I really enjoyed watching this video from start to finish. I want these wolves to look embattled, they've been stuck on a planet surrounded for months and had their resources slowly eroded and this shows in their armour. Of course they are Imperial so their armour is in a better state than the Death Guard but its still looking shabby.

I've decided to use some of the techniques from the video mixed with a scheme close to the one in the thirteenth company video so where does that leave me.

My 10 blood claws are all built and pinned to for ease of painting.

I have started off with a coat of Vallejo Satin Varnish because the weathering video suggested that it allowed paint to adhere better. Next step was a coat of chaos black, I would have preferred to undercoat skull white but I don't think it would have had the required effect.

The next stage is to spray around the models especially areas that would get scratched more with a mixture of Vallejo model air gun and aluminium, as in the weathering video this is going to be quite haphazard but as said I'll be concentrating with feet, hands and lightly everywhere else.

After that I'm going to go to work with the Weathering fluid I have bought, a light coat should give the required results.

I think that's as far as I will get today so look out next time for some pictures (I can't promise high quality)

Off my painting table this week.

I've painted up a few new models for my Alaitoc Eldar.  I've done 3 Jetbikes, 2 Vypers (the models are old but great) and a Crimson Hunter. I know Vypers and possibly the CH are a little fragile and difficult to play but I've had some thoughts.

Firstly, how about Crystal Targeting Matrix on the Vypers? That should give me a 12" + 18" move then fire, I can rush down the flanks of the board and then hit side armour. Even the shuriken cannon is good for this. Or maybe a 60 point Bright Lance platform, BS4 is nice after all. The Starcannon is also interesting. Anyway, all weapons are magnetised so I can try some combinations.

Jetbikes - well, they're even better now so why not.

And the Crimson Hunter is just a beautiful model. If a little more NATO than Eldar :)

The next time I decide on such large areas of bone and/or yellow - I need a voice in my head to tell me to stop! I'm very pleased indeed with the stippled blue though, so much so that I'm using this style rather than edge highlighting on all my new stuff.

I'm thinking of running an Autarch with either a unit of Hawks of Spiders to give me the ability to alter reserve rolls. This thing is fragile but VERY deadly.

No weapons yet, trying to decide whether to them bone or something else at the moment. Also, I have the base to do, plenty of space to do something interesting...

The Hall of Miniatures at Warhammer World

Just a quick post today. Last weekend I went over to Warhammer World to pick up some stuff, which I'll be blogging about in the near future, and I thought I'd take a minute to head upstairs and see what was on display in the Hall of Miniatures.

I was quite surprised to see that the Dark Angels exhibition was still on despite the recent Codex Daemons release but I was very pleased to see loads of my old favorites still on display up there. Here are a few pictures.

New Paint Teaser trailer from GW

Games Workshop have just released a new teaser trailer on their home page simply titled 145. Given the recent link reported on various blogs I suspect this relates to their new range of paints.

You can see the vid here

And here's a link to Faeit212's original leak of the new range.

Review - The 'Eavy Metal Masterclass book

So while in town today I saw this (I also saw a Eavy metal box for 20 odd quid that constituted a metal pencil case tin 2 paint brushes and a couple of small tubs of medium, Jesus) and decided to have it just because I have stopped getting white dwarf but always enjoyed the master classes.

The book itself costs £18 and is about the thickness of a codex. Every page is colour which you would expect from a book on painting. The book contains 13 master classes, mixed between 40K, Fantasy and Lord of the rings (which I don't think anyone in the world actually plays).

The master classes themselves are just what are shown in white dwarf, lots of details and of course top class painting. There are certainly some techniques such as their one for painting parchment and their technique for painting glassware that I will certainly have a go at but there are others that aren't great.

So all in all would I recommend this book? If you don't get White Dwarf regularly then yes however if you do then there is really little point.

On a side note picked up some liquid green stuff a couple of weeks ago and used it to put together my Contemptor and a squad of mark III armour marines, I am going to go out on a limb and say its the best thing GW have released in the last few years.

How do you paint? - reader advice wanted

Since come back into the hobby I have never found a comfortable way of holding my models when painting them, I generally blue tac them on to the top of an old paint tub but this isn't the most secure of bases so I am looking for advice that over the next few months I could put into use?

Looking forward to seeing your replies

Learn through doing - airbrushing continued.

So I am still trying out things with the airbrush, just simple things to begin with such as simple highlights and basecoating and the results have been good (still no pictures unfortunately) however the issue I have had is still with cleaning, I can't get the thing as clean as I want so I decided to go for one of these.

I watched a few videos including this one from the same guy as before and it looks like it it can hopefully solve some of my problems.

At the moment on my painting table I've got a Contemptor, I really enjoyed putting the model together and I made sure I pinned it. I haven't really pinned much together in the past just trusting the the glue but harsh experience has led me to know that super glue just doesn't cut it when it comes to resin.

Like the drop pod I base coated it in Vellejo model air German Grey and then put on a highlight of model air light grey, I then hard highlighted it with GW fortress grey.

For the Gold I base coated with a watered down scorched brown and then put on a coat of shining goal followed by a highlight of burnished gold.

So far I am really pleased with the result

Airbrushing - an introduction

So as Fudal predicted Santa Russ came to visit on Saturday night and brought me an airbrush.

I'd done a lot of research on them over the past couple of months and all people were telling me that I needed to spend 300 quid to get a decent set up however knowing me and my ability to drop a fad quickly I decided that I would go for something cheaper so if I enjoyed it I could eventually upgrade. I went to Arcane Scenery and model supplies for my airbrush set up and so far I am really happy with it.



There are some really great videos on youtube to help first time airbrush users but for cleaning tips this was the best one I found. Cleaning your airbrush is the key to keeping it going for a long time so it was one of the skills I wanted to get right to begin with.

I found that a lot of it no matter how good a video is trial and error, I needed lots of cleaner, lots of kitchen roll and plenty of cotton buds, I did take his advice and get some of the nylon brushes and the the thing I have found most tricky is cleaning during use for colour changes, do you really need to make it spotless or just spraying clear?

Later in the week I will post my first picture which is a drop pod I had lying around.

He's so fine!

Just a little update on the progress with the Orks so far for this weekend's Doubles Tournament. No word on list tweaks so far but we're play-testing this Thursday so I'm sure we'll be able to iron it out then.




First up is two eveng's worth of progress on Ghaz



Pretty happy with him right now. Lots of detail left to paint but I can live with him as he stands now for gaming purposes. Probably just worth noting that he is the first Finecast model I've purchased and I have to say that the cast was perfect, cleaned up really easily and primed without incident. The pole supporting the back banner is a little flimsy but I can't see it being too much of a problem (famous last words!).

Next is the Lootas.



Again table-top quality at best, still plenty of detail to go over but I've only got an evening's worth of paining left to get the next guys done ...

... The Kanz!



Just a couple of washes so far to colour these guys up, still a bit more I want to do before they hit the tables this weekend.

Hopefully I'll be able to post another update before the weekend with a final army list and the "completed" Kans so stay tuned.

Da Bolts - 11 down, 1 or 2 to go!

I've reached a stage with my Orc Blood Bowl Team where I htink I can put them to one side and say "they're finished", pics below all constructive criticism greatfully accepted!







Now on to the Turn, score and re-roll counters ... and possibly another Lineman and Thrower :)

Da Boltz Progress Update

I got a little time this evening to kick off painting my Orc Blood Bowl team. The Black Orcs have been undercoated black as they are heavily armoured and I want their skin tone to be significantly darker than the rest of the team to really differentiate them. I dry-brushed the armour areas with Boltgun Metal and then block out the skin areas with Orchide Shade.



The Blitzers, Linemen and Thrower are undercoated white and then washed with Badab Black followed by two washes of Thrakka Green. This is the standard way I paint my ork flesh and I really like how it turns out.






Stay tuned for more!

Pics from the Bughouse

As the original pictures I uploaded were a little on the small side, I have reloaded them. Hopefully they are a little clearer this time!

If you like my work and would like to see more (or even pay me to make some scratchbuilt models for you!) then please let me know.

The basic model:

Undercoated:

Finished:

Clipped Wings and Magnetic Doors

It's been a long time since I pre-ordered my Storm Ravens, in fact since then I have traded one of them in for more Tyranid models to complete my 1500pt force! Only one though because I always knew I wanted to field at least one at some point in the future.

On my return from a short trip to Berlin earlier this week I decided that the time had come to put the Storm Raven together. It's a pretty easy kit to work with and it went together really well, the only slightly tricky parts are the struts on the cockpit covers for both the pilot and the gunner, I think the clear screens are going to be tricky once I get to them.



Also in its favour is how easy it is to magnetise the weapons on the turret. If you do not fit the bar designed to hold the guns onto the sides of the turret, a 4mm hole is left on either side which is the perfect size for one of my little magnets. With this taken care of all you need to do is drill a hole in the weapon to fit a magnet to the guns, I didn't bother with the drilling and to be honest it looks fine without recessing these magnets.



To magnetise the side door options I did what I usually do which is to take a length of sprue just wider than the door aperture, build up the ends with discs of sprue to give you some relief from the hull. I glue the sprue into place across the doorway and then glue a magnet onto the centre of the piece of sprue. In this case it was very difficult to tell whether or not I would be able to just glue the other magnets to doors directly or if they would need to be built up in order to connect to to the magnet in the doorway. In order to ensure I didn't mess this up I used some grey-stuff to fix the magnet in place on the door, this way if it was not close enough I could move it around and build it up as required. As it turned out I needed to build up the magnets on the doors quite a bit so I would say to anyone else that you do not need to move the sprue too far back from the hull if at all.



I wanted to leave the canopies clear so I had to paint the pilot and gunner before completing the assembly, I'm also trying to work out how to magnetise the front facing guns but I may just not bother with it an use blue-tack to secure them to the assembly.







Anyway, that's all for now. I'll be continuing to work on it this week so I'll try and keep you all updated.

Fluent in over 3 million forms of communication?

It's been a while but I'm finally ready to bring you another update from my painting table! I've recently settled on a list for the very imminent Blog Wars tournament and it included a unit of Sanguinary Guard which I have never played before. I have bought a box previously but I mixed them in with a box of Death Company bits to make an Honour Guard squad. So here we are with a relatively vanilla unit with a pretty much standard colour scheme.

Construction of the models was pretty straight forward with only the banner bearer giving me any trouble, firstly I had to carve the "Blood Angels" text off the scroll on the banner, then with the position of the arm I had to fiddle with the shoulder pad to ensure the jump pack wing would fit in on that side. Other-wise it's a really easy kit to put together and you can get some great poses out of the models.

In terms of the colour scheme I was going to go with a completely standard look but Mick commented last week that he liked the wings black as they were only primered when I first play-tested them last week. So I did a few layers of grey drybrushing on them then washed it all back down with Badab Black and I'm pretty happy with the out-come.

I also tried to do a white to blue glow effect on the Jump Pack engines to tie in with the blue eyes and power weapon glows. It didn't turn out perfect but I'm not unhappy with the result for a first attempt.

Anyway, enough of the preamble, take a look at the pics and let me know what you think. Only the banner is a WIP, the other models are finished.











Lastly a little close-up of the wings and the Jump Pack glow:

OW-ch

As you can no doubt tell, WoW still has it's claws well and truly sunk into me. I'm unapologetic about it, I really enjoy the game but I will say I'm not as addicted as I was in my previous stint with the game so I'm definitely keeping up my hobby, even if I'm not really contributing to the blog as much as I used to.

You may also be aware that this weekend the Claws and Fists guys will be heading up to Mansfield to compete in 1st Company Veterans' Open War 15 Tournament. This is probably the highlight of my annual tournament calendar and will the the 4th time I have attended. My first showing in OW12 was something of a learning experience for me which saw me coming in dead last, after 3 very enjoyable, if unsuccessful, games. The next two Open Wars went a lot better and I was able to finish in the top 3rd(ish) on both occasions.

In line with my “resolutions” for this year I'm hoping to place well again and finish with two wins out of three. The field is strong as always but if I can get off to a good start I'm at least hopeful I can achieve this goal.

As is customary for every lead-up to a tournament I have experienced so far, I have spent pretty much the whole of last week painting in a mad rush to get the new units I've been trialling painted. Here's a day by day record of my progress:









The last pic was taken on Wednesday so I have plenty of time to get the last details done. I'll post a full army pic with the inevitable battle reports!

More posts tomorrow with the army list and then game updates on twitter throughout Saturday.

Stay tuned!

I need your help

Looking for a method to paint rotting flesh and rusty armour for a project. Your help would be grateful Claws and Fists readers.

Help me Claws and Fists readers your my only hope.

So which dragon prince colour scheme should I go for Blue or Red?

Setting goals? Not too SMART!

I've not written a “resolutions” post so far this January and I had no intention to, but in planning this post that's exactly what it's turned into. So why fight it?

Thanks to my very understanding wife, it's been a bit of a 40k weekend this week, which, given the fact that it's the Caledonian Open next weekend just makes my missus even more awesome. So, on Saturday I had the dubious pleasure of being schooled again by our very own TheBaron, his Orks easily steamrollered my Blood Angels. It made obvious the very real gap that I will have to bridge if I want to be competing at the top tables of the tournaments that I attend. Fortunately for me, at the moment I think I have more fun in the lower leagues, however I'm going to set myself a target of improving on my tournament results of 2010 which were as follows:

Right at the start of the year I played in the Gobstyks Tournament up in Lincoln where I finished 5th out of 20 players, a result I was very pleased with. It consisted of two big wins over 'nid players, early adopters of the brand new codex, and a big loss to Harry and his four Battle Wagon Ork list o' doom!

Next up was Warp Storm 2 at Maelstrom where I placed a slightly disappointing 15th out of 22. This time I was the early adopter taking along a cobbled together Blood Angels list which I had never played before. This, we all know, is a recipe for disaster. I managed to scrap out a result from the bottom tables but by no means was a competitive force on the weekend, I lost to Daemonhunters, IG and Blood Angels, beat Orks and Eldar and tied a game with Eldar.

At the end of May was Open War 13, this was only a few weeks after Warp Storm 2 so I decided to go with a list I knew and took my Lysander/Sternguard Space Marines list. I love Sternguard and have pretty much had them in my main list since I started playing again in September '09 and while I'm not great with them I knew the list a lot better than I knew the Blood Angels one. The result bore this out and I finished 18th out of 70 players, drawing to Daemons and IG players and tabling another Marines player in the last game to shoot me up the rankings in the last round.

My last tournament of the year was Open War 14, this time no Special Characters were allowed so I decided to take some Assault Terminators to bulk up my list, I finished 19th out of 66 players and my path through the tournament was similar to OW 13. I started off with a minor loss to Harry's Orks, having played them before in the Gobstyks tourney at the start of the year I felt I had a better chance this time round and I managed to keep it close but his weight of numbers got me in the end. My next game was another narrow loss to a Blood Angels player, I absolutely mullered him but took my eye off the mission and gave it away, fortunately the amount of kill points I took kept it close. Finally, everything went right for me in a game vs IG which I won comfortably and again I jumped up into the top 20 (just!).

With those four tournament results recorded in 2010, RHQ ranks me as 47th in the UK (I checked this time guys). Now what this actually means is highly debatable as our very own contributors TheBaron, Simo and the boss-dude himself, ClawsandFists are ranked 111th, 344th and 392nd respectively and I am not a better player than these guys. However a goal I'm going to set myself for next year is to improve my tournament ranking in 2011. But perhaps more tellingly I'm going to set myself to goal of winning more than half of the games I play in any one tournament in 2011 and just to qualify that, the Tournaments I intend to enter this year are the Caledonian Open, Open War 15 and 16, and Warp Storm 3, so no easy rides.

Obviously I'm not going to be hugely upset if I don't achieve this, the target is aspirational as I'm not a particularly “hardcore” player, neither am I very tactically astute, non-the-less I will be pleased if I can achieve either one or both of these goals.

In terms of hobby related targets I think the following picture of the current state of my painting desk sets the scene nicely:
You can see here the gist of what I intended to accomplish in 2011. On the left of the pic we have a few odd yellow Marines units so I'll no doubt the tweaking and adding units to what I consider my main army. However the bulk of the right of the picture is dominated by Ork Boyz perfectly reflecting the fact that I intend to finish painting my 1750pt army plus a few extra units to take it up to 2000pts worth. Also in the pic tucked away along the top edge is evidence of the project which may roll into 2012, my Nids. I hope to have 1750pts purchased and built before the end of the year but the painting is likely to take me into next year … still you never know when the muse will strike!

In terms of definite hobby targets for 2011 it's got to be to have a fully painted, 1750pt Ork force, and to honour this commitment I have already started painting the Boyz again. In fact the nine Boyz you can see in the middle of the pic with the white bases will be finished this week and that leaves just another 11 models until all of my Ork Boyz are painted, that just leaves, my Killer Kanz, Lootas, Deffkoptaz, Kommandos, some form of Nobz (Bikers or Mega Armoured), Grots and a Trukk! That's what's so disheartening about Orks, I thought I was doing well with just under 100 Ork Boyz painted there's still so much to do!

Watering down your paints

Its one of the main rules of good painting and I have to admit its something that I don't do and should.

Most of the time I just take the paint from the reservoir in the lid after a good shake up.

This post is really a plea for help, I'm looking for peoples advice on what to do with paint thinning, do you just use water or some sort of agent? Do you water them down on your palette or in a mixing pot? How many more coats do you find you need to use once watered down?

Painting my LC Terminators

Something Gav and I have chatted about is the lack of painting tutorials in the blog. This may be because neither of us rate ourselves as sufficiently good enough painters to be offering others advice! However I think it's good to share and as I decided to paint up my Lightning Claw Assault Terminators this weekend, I thought I'd take a few photos along the way and share with you how I do it. Now please note that I'm in no way advocating this as they best way to do it and I would welcome criticism from anyone who wants to post a comment. I'm really trying to improve my painting but it's a tricky thing to do in a vacuum so I appreciate any constructive feedback.

First things first, my chapter (Dorn's Lament) are Yellow with Red shoulder pads. In order to get the yellow as vivid as possible I start with a white undercoat and I use the Citadel spray can, I just like it and feel comfortable applying it. I'm painting three models together, normally I'd do a whole squad at a time to ensure consistency of colour but in this case I only need 3 models to complete the squad so that's all I'm doing.



After leaving the models to dry for at least a couple of hours (I left these guys overnight) I apply the yellow base coat which is Iyanden Darksun from the Citadel Foundation range. I thin it down 50-50 with a 10:1 mix of water to a product called “flow release” which you can get from any art supplier. I used to thin my paints with plain tap water but I just think that this gives a better consistency to the paint and it flows better from the bush, could just be a placebo effect though!




Next I cover the shoulder pads and purity seal wax with a coat of Mechrite Red, again thinned 50:50. As you can see from the picture above this mix dries rather patchily over the white undercoat so I add two brush-loads of Scab Red to the thinned Mechrite Red on my pallet and go over the base coat of Mechrite Red. I find this second coat is enough to get an even finish and I put it on as soon as the first coat is dry.



I use the same mix straight on the eye lenses and then coat all the black and metallic parts with Chaos Black. I find that Chaos Black is pretty thin right out of the pot so I tend to only thin it 70:30. I usually mix way too much of the black so I cover the bases at the same time as this step.



Next up is Dheneb Stone for the helmets and any parchment on the models



The last base colours needed here are a coat of Charadon Granite on the Crux and any other details I want to be a stony grey and a mix of Vomit Brown and Bronzed Flesh (50:50) as a flesh base. Dwarf flesh is probably better but I don't have any at the moment!




With all of the base colours on the model it's ready for washes. First of all I apply Gryphonne Sepia over the yellow and Dheneb Stone parts and Badab Black over the Charadon Granite parts.



I leave the washes about an hour to dry then I put a 50:50 mix of Boltgun Metal and Chaos Black on the metallic details which I then highlight with Mithril Silver.



Now for the Claws! I do a very rough graduation, leaving the base of the claws black then layering on Mordian Blue, Enchanted Blue, 50:50 Enchanted Blue:Space Wolf Grey and then edge highlighted with pure Space Wolf Grey.



Next I finish the base by dry-brushing with Space Wolf Grey and then I paint Graveyard Earth round the rim, two coats is usually enough. I also dry brush the Granite details with Space Wolf Grey as a highlight.




Finally the helmets and parchment are highlighted with Bleached bone followed by a Skull White edge highlight. The Sergeant's face is highlighted with Elf Flesh and then washed with Ogryn Fesh tone it down a bit.

Bada-Bing and we're done. When I have some spare time I go back and highlight the yellow areas with Iyanden Darksun and Bleached Bone but I think the models look fine without this stage so as it stands I'm happy with them as table-top quality.