Stormy Teacups

This past weekend I was in Münster for the European Team Championships. I was there as part of Team Ireland’s WFB force after being recruited at Warpcon back in January. As those of you who have been following this blog will know, this event was the reason I needed to collect a Daemons of Chaos army at short notice (those of you who haven’t been keeping up can read the story of sleepless nights preparing 1400 points of Daemons in a week in the previous seven or eight updates).

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My daemon army was finished and now I needed to see how it would work on the tabletop. So off to sunny Warrington I went for the Four Nations ETC Warmup tournament. I was part of Team Ireland and we were up against Team Norn Iron, Team Scotland and Team England. My recent experience with high-level tournament play has been patchy at best. I was at the 2008 Irish GT (where I came about 20th) and the last major tournament before that was probably a GW staff tournament back in the late ’90s. To say I was rusty is something of an understatement.

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Woo! I got everything finished last night finally. This was despite feeling distinctly crap when I got home from work and taking a nap till 9:30. The Heralds aren’t finished properly but they are complete and will be more than ok for the tournament tomorrow. I’ll be flying to Manchester this evening straight after work and heading over to Warrington. Expect a tournament report on Monday.

Overall, I’m pretty happy with how the army came out. The painting standard is on the low side of acceptable but it’s all complete and mostly pretty neat. It’s going to get tidied up and completed between now and August but I don’t feel too bad about putting it on the table this weekend.

The complete army

Almost at the end now. I took some time last night and sat down to paint without rushing as I want these last two figures to be of a much higher standard. I doubt I’m going to have time to really go to town on them but they will be neater and closer to my regular standard than the others. I’m also highlighting and shading rather than simply inking everything.

Slaaneshi BSB in progress

Front view

Tzeentchian Herald in progress

There is still some work to do on them and I’ll not be going too crazy on highlighting and detailing but they’ll stand out nicely I think and shouldn’t be too hard to finish to a basic standard tonight. And with that. I’ll be done!

Read the final update here.

Yesterday was another evening mostly spent preparing things. I stuck together the last of the Daemonettes and the Horrors including the converted command group, converted my Masque of Dlaanesh into a battle standard bearer and assembled the Skarlock. I was going to convert him to be more Tzeentchy and less Cryxy but he’s not easy to cut about due to the flowing ribbon thing that goes from his hand all the way around – replacing his hand with something else woudl require finding some way of either removing that ribbon entirely or working it into the conversion which I’m not really up for trying at the moment.

I did get some painting done however, I mostly finished the Horrors, they just need some detailing and basing and I put the main shade on the Daemonettes. Both of those units should be finished tonight leaving me with two days to do the two Heralds which should be enough time to do a better job and maybe even tidy up the Screamers too.

Here are some pictures:

Musician and Standard Bearer for the Horrors

Mostly complete Daemonettes and Horrors

Painting with inks

Some people have asked me about painting with inks and how to avoid common problems. Firstly I think it woud be useful to talk a little bit about what inks are and what they are not. Firstly, they are not simply thinned down paint as a lot of people seem to believe, they are a very dense pigment concentrated in a thin medium. Those of you who use Citadel colours should note that there is a marked difference between the old citadel inks and the newer range. The old range were true inks while the newer ones are designed to be used as washes and tints rather than as inks. This means that the newer ones aren’t as pigmented and have different covering properties – mostly they have a much higher surface tension meaning that they cover more evenly and don’t flow off the raised areas as much as inks tend to.

Painting with inks can save you a lot of time as the colours will tend to shade themselves meaning you can save a couple of steps with a single coat. On the other hand, you’ll be dealing with a much reduced palette and inks don’t mix together very well – a darker colour will completely overwhelm a lighter one.

One of the common issues that people have is that the heavily shaded effect you get when you paint the inks on doesn’t always remain once they are dry. There are two separate points here that contribute to this.

Firstly don’t paint inks onto primer. Undercoat sprays leave a very porous primer coat on a figure and this will soak up the ink really well leaving you with a flat pastel effect rather than the shading that you wanted.  Paint the inked areas white (or whatever other base colour you’re using) first and apply inks onto paint instead.

Secondly, inks take a long time to dry – especially if you’re slapping them on as a wash. In that time they’ll do what gravity compels them to do and the excess (which is what you’re using for your shading) will run off. You need a secret weapon to make them dry before this happens. I use one of these:

Additionally note that for very strong shading effects or for particularly deep colours, you may need to apply several washes to an area to get the right depth of colour.

Hopefully that helps.

Anyway, here are the latest scores, as I said above though I should be back on track by tonight.

Points Painted Today : 0 points

Points Target Daily: 200 Difference: -200

Points Target Overall: 1000 Points Painted Overall: 780 Difference: -220

Figures Painted Today: 0

Figure Target Daily: 10 Difference: -10

Figure Target Overall: 50 Difference: -8
Read the next update here.

Well I’m still pretty sick but not bad enough to stay at home instead of going to work – besides I need to skip out early on Friday to catch my flight to the UK so I have to be a Good Employee for the rest of the week.

I got the Horrors done last night. Like the Daemonettes they’re pretty basic. I gave them a basecoat of Tentacle Pink thinned with Magenta Ink then washed them with Leviathan Purple before picking out some details (teeth and tongues mostly). I’ll add a picture later as the batteries in my camera gave out before I could photograph them.

Tonight will be the last of the Daemonettes – 9 of them including a command group – and I’ll also stick the rest of the Horrors together ready for painting tomorrow. That will leave me Wednesday and Thursday to do the two Heralds, which hopefully will be enough time to do them to an acceptable standard.

So the running scores then are as follows:

Points Painted Today : 120 points

Points Target Daily: 200 Difference: -80

Points Target Overall: 800 Points Painted Overall: 780 Difference: -20

Figures Painted Today: 10

Figure Target Daily: 10 Difference: on target

Figure Target Overall: 40 Difference: +2
Read the next update here.

Yesterday was a pretty bad day, I’ve been sick with some kind of flu so I’m low on energy and finding it hard to concentrate. I spent most of yesterday and this morning curled up in blankets on the sofa which has put a serious dent in my productivity for the weekend (it’s also why this update is later than normal).

Despite that I got the Screamers and Flamers done by mid afternoon today and I put together half of the Horrors – I would have done them all but sticking Horrors together is pretty much the opposite of fun and the battery on my dremel needs to be recharged again.

This latest batch of daemons are pretty horrible and they are definitely on the list for repainting before the ETC proper in August, they will however do for the 4 Nations.

I liek kullurz

I expect I’ll be able to blitz the Horrors tonight as they’ll be a lot easier to paint than to assemble.

Points Painted Today : 390 points

Points Target Daily: 200 Difference: +190

Points Target Overall: 600 Points Painted Overall: 660 Difference: +60

Figures Painted Today: 12

Figure Target Daily: 10 Difference: +2

Figure Target Overall: 30 Difference: +2

This looks pretty good so far but I need to finish the Horrors tonight to stay on schedule.

Read the next update here.

When I stopped work on Thursday night I had 20 Daemonettes in various stages of completion. Yesterday I managed to finish them all off to a standard that isn’t too embarrassing which puts me neatly back on target.

They certainly aren’t going to win any prizes and I’ll definitely be tidying them up between the 4 Nations event and the ETC proper but:

1. They’re painted
2. The paint is very thinly applied so I can easily overpaint them later if needed or even just respray them

Girly daemons

Here’s a close-up, as you can see it’s predominately inks with some very basic highlighting.

Today I’m going to tackle the Flamers and the Screamers with the big paintbrush and stick the Horrors together. My plan is to try and get the units out of the way this weekend so that I can spend some time on the Heralds during the week.

Scores on the doors:

Points Painted Today : 270 points

Points Target Daily: 200 Difference: +70

Points Target Overall: 400 Difference: -130

Figures Painted Today: 20

Figure Target Daily: 10 Difference: +10

Figure Target Overall: 20 Difference: On Target!

Read the next update here.

Yesterday was spent mostly sticking stuff together and throwing inks at things to experiment. As a result I didn’t actually finish any figures yesterday so the stats for today will look quite bleak. Despite this I’m actually still on target as I got stuck into a block of 20 Daemonettes which should get finished tonight. If I can pull that off then I’ll be on target for the figure count even if the points target will be low still.

After spending most of the evening with my Dremel I’m seriously beginning to dislike the Tzeentchian daemons. I wasn’t overjoyed at the cost (25€ for three Screamers was bad enough, Horrors are likewise wallet-crunching given that you need 3-4 boxes for a useful unit) but the figures themselves are a right pain to stick together. Lots of very small contact areas on fragile pieces makes pinning an absolute requirement and much harder than it needs to be. I didn’t even get started on the Horrors as my Dremel needed recharging after tackling the Flamers and the Screamers.

Still I got a fair bit done on the girls. I had 8 Daemonettes that I’d used as a colour test that were about three quarters done so I sprayed up the rest of the two boxes, painted them white again (inks don’t like being painted directly onto primer) and slapped some watered down Leviathan Purple ink over them. I’ll detail them up tonight and then they’re done.

So to recap then, the current score is as follows:

Points Target: 200 pts

Points Painted: 0

Difference: -200

Figure target: 10

Figures Painted: 0

Difference: -10
Read the next update here.

So I’ve been invited to take part in the European Team Challenge as a part of Team Ireland in the WFB competition. This is an insanely competitive tournament where every member of the team has to have a different army. As the last guy on the team I got what was left and, not being able to take my Dwarfs I was looking at a new army. Chaos Mortals were my first choice as I have a lot of those unpainted already (won in a raffle at GW Blanchardstown), they were taken though and my second choice of Lizardmen was also gone. Looking down the list of what was left, I picked up Chaos Daemons as the one I wouldn’t mind painting up in time for August.

So it is that I find myself here. The Lord of Change was a present from an Irish friend who realised he would never paint it. It was quite old and partially stuck together but was otherwise pretty much untouched. I chipped all the old glue off it, attacked it in several places with my Dremel and then dove straight in. Continue reading