First Steps to the Dark Side

So... I ordered me some Warmahordes stuff...


I feel kinda dirty, but in a good way! I still don't love the overall aesthetics, the very cartoony stuff is kinda hard to swallow when you're used to the GrimDark. That said, I really love the open attitude Privateer Press shows and they know that the customer and the thusly the community is king, instead of the quite puzzling attitude we have been getting from GW the last... 20 years?

I have only played one game thus far, but I like what I'm seeing. The Warmachine scene in my area exploded recently when the local game store decided to expand their stock with non-GW miniature stuff. Apparently my town had a whole bunch of closet warmahordes people, and now both my club and the FLGS is packed with disney monsters and hydrocephalic robots.

I feel good things coming from this step, If you asked me a year ago if I would start to play this, I would have given you a whole hearted "Fuck No!" I guess I was wrong.
Now if PP-Eu's distribution people would come back from vacation so I could get me my gators, I would be grateful...

First Impressions: Plastic Tzeentch Sorcerer

So, the Slight Breeze of Magic is upon us, well, upon the poor squarebasers at least. I haven't heard much about the rules except "more magic? lol", and frankly I couldn't care less about that. What I do take interest in is the new direction GW is taking with the four new plastic sorcerers. I kinda goes completely against their usual MO of only making this kind of specialized figures in metal (and now in finecast). The models come in the new clamshell blisters, similar to the finecast ones.

The first thing that struck me when holding the box, is how cheap it feels. I bought it at MSRP, which is not that much I guess, but it is just a tiny plastic sprue in a flimsy box with a shitty paper insert.I guess that's not really important though, the model is. I just can't shake how stupid I felt for buying a quarter of a troop sprue for that much money.

"HAY GUISE?!"

It is pretty much a snap-fit model, zero options, one pose, and the feet are completed by adding the base, ie, the toes are cast into the base. GW made a very good mould for this, as expected, almost no visible mould lines and the injection points are well placed as to not ruin the model. The model is quite plain though, very little detail, and just from looking at the sprues, the other three sorcerers where pretty much the same. I get the same feeling as with the Wargames Factory Troopers, just too plain to live up to the standard GW usually keeps with their plastics. I must say I really like this take on Tzeentch though, the face, the birdy pose. Very chaosy and evil and not as cartoony as they have been lately.

"Cut my life into pieces, this is my last reso-*shotgun mouthwash*"

If I played Fantasy I would probably pick one of these up, the model as a whole is nice enough, and if I needed only one I could accept it only having the one pose. While it isn't a big issue, the moulded base with the birdman's toes is quite pointless.

It remains to see if these four sorcerers where an anomaly, or if we will see more of these simplified character models in plastic. If they could add more detail, this could be a cool way to release named characters in the future, especially if they keep up adding this many characters to the new codices

Golden Demon Spain...

Slayer Sword winner GD Spain 2011.

I wonder if Spain takes the prize from France this year for "Most awesomely painted stuff". There's a lot of minis from GD11 Spain that's just jawdroppingly stunning. I especially liked the diorama of Sigmar on his throne. Or no... I take that back... I can't decide which one I liked best.

Check them all out on Volomi'rs Blog.

Emperors Champion, finished.

Click for flickr. See if you can spot all the dust on my sensor.

 So, here he is. The Emperors Champion! I wouldn't say I've spent enough time on him. But really... there is just a time when all your patience is spent and you just want to do something entirely different. Like getting wasted on alcohol instead of acrylics...

The mushroom thing that's been going on? The word champion is quite close to the swedish word for mushroom, champinjon. So it's been the standing "joke". Not that it was especially funny, apart from finding new words for all the post headlines.

First time I've tried out working with non metallic metallics. I can't say I'm especially fond of it. It looks good from one certain angle. The illusion is really there. And then you move your head and it looks kinda weird. Almost like when you take off your glasses while watching a 3D-movie.

All in all I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out. The model in itself is awesome, and there are no dead spaces you need to "hide" or anything like that. It's just "paint". The exercise in painting black was especially fun, if you find frustrating to be fun.

Originally I had a pretty blueish black, so when highlighting that I added more blue. The problem was that the blue I chose was pretty cold, so when the final highlights came on it looked really really off since the cold hue made the illusion that it was further back.

Color theory 101

The warmer highlight kinda pops out more than the blue (cooler) highlight. Even though the cool tone is lighter than the warm one the illusion of it being lighter is kinda diminished. Something I – with I don't know how many hours of color theory classes – really should've thought of. But when the urge to paint grabs you, you just go with the flow!

I'm gonna hit it with some matt varnish later today (especially on the base). So if you spot anything you think I should correct, now is the time to do it. I'll go and submit it tomorrow!

The Battlefoam Jared Allen foundation bag

Battlefoam (Makers of the only bags worth having, you can quote me on that) is auctioning out a 432 that's been all over the current warzones. Protecting minis and our freedom! (Now I'm gonna lose half of our readers...) And signed by a bunch of people from all around.

First I must point out that this auction is for the bag listed and all proceeds go to Jared Allen's Homes for Wounded Warriors charity.  Jared's charity is a non-profit organization created for the sole purpose of raising money to build or modify the homes of America's injured Military Veterans. H4WW helps to build or modify homes so they are handicap accessible and comfortable for our wounded vets.

The sum the bag goes for will also be added to the donation to the Jared Allen foundation. Double-bonus! Now if you cannot bid on it (I wish I could, but... ) spread the word. It's for a really good cause. And if you can bid. Bid!

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=260810923021


Oh yeah. Photos of the Emperors Mycel tomorrow!

I've finally decided to stop painting on it and consider it done. Let's hope the GW-Stockholm crowd likes it as much (I wanna win, whatever it is you win. Perhaps a finecast bubble or something... ). Although I've sneak peeked on some other submissions and well... I'm in for a stiff competition.

During the week I got some of the stuff I ordered from Heresy Miniatures. They're having a sale now, so I couldn't resist getting a Thrud (fond memories of old White Dwarfs when the ran the Thrud comics) and Boris Mk. 2. So I've gone from looking at "Paint it black"-tutorials to "Paint skin"-tutorials on YouTube...

Emperors Boletus, WIP #3

I'm getting to the end of mushrooms to use in the headline. Thankfully I'm at the end of the Emperors Champion as well. Yesterday was a frantic base-painting & -building session. Pigments, oils, weird solvents, and it all ended up with me doing some old school drybrushing and washing. It's just so damn hard to get proper contrast with pigments alone. No matter that it's more "realistic".

The Vallejo washes acted up as well, leaving weird residue when dry. So they're now officially on my shit-list. I've added plain distilled water to them instead of the regular gunk I use (Liquitex Flow Aid + 95% distilled water) when thinning. No difference. I've even gone so far as to add two agitator balls to the bottles just to make sure that they're mixed properly. No luck. Back to home made ones and GW-washes.

So anyhow, the champion... Still some stuff I have to fix. The buckle on the front is on top of the prio-list now. The blending is just not as smooth and it got kinda grainy >_< Tomorrow perhaps, I'm all exhausted after re-painting the sword like a 100 times.

The pipes are gonna get some green gunk flowing out of them. I'm slowly slowly building up the "flow" with water effects. It wont cure faster with the use of a hair dryer... bummer.

Forgeworld <3 Kromlech A kannon and it's krew

Once upon a time I bought the Kromlech Feldkanone 48 from the Kromlech Ork War II range. Yesterday I got some really weird itch and felt like painting the kannon. Only God knows how many months later... (you do the math)

The rust stains was made by first spraying the entire kannon in some rust-ish colours and then applying some Vallejo Liquid Mask. After that I did a pretty regular paintjob. The kannon itself got some sort of russian-green and details were painted by hand.

The good thing with this, compared to hairspray, is that you can actually hand-brush stuff without activating the hair spray layer. The bad thing is that the liquid mask (it's more or less liquid latex, same stuff you use for make up) is pretty hard to remove without damaging the layer underneath. Use caution.

Tried out some different techniques on the grots as well. I wanted them to look more like Paul Bonners grots. So they got rosy cheeks and noses. I kinda like it, they look cute with that pink on them! Next up is grots with lipstick!!!

Hopefully I'm in Orkebro playing Dvaergakungens Fæeste by the time you're reading this. Expect a full on, two-way, DV/DA, review during the week.

Until then...

Emprahs Enokitake, WIP #3

Click for bigger @ Flickr

I made like 40 track links yesterday. Then I realized it actually was holiday and spent the reminder of the evening drinking beer, high on glue (seriously, what is in that Testors Model Master?) and browsing Dakka Dakka.

Today I awoke, fresh and with a mission to finalize the paintjob on my Emperors Champion. At least to the degree that I can attach him to the still drying base. Before adding weathering and touchups. It doesn't come out too well in the photos but there is a dark / light side to him. The left is visibly much brighter. But I guess I will have to add to it even further in order to really make it stand out. All that when basing is done. For now I'm pretty much done with this one.

Tomorrow will be fun. Back in Orkebro for some test playing of the Dwarf Kings Hold. Boomos baby-son is gonna be the "Counts As" Dwarf King! I'll be myself... counts as undead that is...

I hate indy-links...

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to glue two tiny little teeth to the track links. You will need sixty-six tracklinks. For one side of the tank!

I hate indy-links!!! :)

Actually I was supposed to paint the Emperors Psilocybin, but the not-so-friendly modelling shop had just gotten a VK1602-kit when I happened to pass by. So now I'm stuck with modelling-/painting-ADD. I guess it will be in the cupboard soon. With the Pz IV, and the Warhound and the droppods and the orks and the renegade guard and the everything else...

Oh, and do not forget to clean the teeth before gluing them on the track links. Of course you will need to clean the track links as well. And fill with putty since they have punch marks on them... -.-

Emperors Champion, WIP #2

Blurry photos, but meh... Tried out NMM but I'm not totally sold on it. On some parts it looks pretty good, but figuring out where all the indirect / specular highlights would appear is kinda giving me a headache.

Redid, or refined, the blending on the tabard thingie today as well. The line on the bottom looks kinda "alone". So it'll probably get some sort of decoration like the crusade crosses or something.

Oh, and the new 40K Radio episode is out, and they really make fun of all the hilariousness in this thread over on Dakka. I LOL'd...

EDIT

Redid the "buckle" to look more polished. I kinda want to put a cross on there... or some sort of symbol. The aquila perhaps?