Stormy Teacups

I’ve been busy; back in August I was part of Team Wales for the European Team Championships in Montreux. Then there was some work stuff and then I went to the US for a two week holiday. Thus it is that I’ve just got around to reporting on the ETC as well as updating with a new figure that I finished just before heading off on holiday.

The ETC is a hardcore team event where you bring your filthiest list or you go home. I played it back in 2009 with Team Ireland and this year I was invited to play for Team Wales at relatively short notice as they needed to replace a last-minute cancellation.  I thought I was lucky when the Welsh asked me to use a Warriors of Chaos army as it would mean that I could use an army that I already had rather than paint up a new one in a hurry. Unfortunately, the particular niche that my army was intended to fill in the Welsh lineup required a fairly specific build and I ended up having to paint up almost everything I needed anyhow. The only parts of my existing army that I could use were my Sorceror on a Disc, my Chaos Knights, my marauders and my Chosen (which were pulling duty as halberd armed Chaos Warriors in this list). I had to paint up 50 more Marauders, 11 Chaos Warriors with Halberds and a mounted Chaos Lord of Khorne to bring the army up to spec and this was bolstered with a Hellcannon borrowed from one of the other Welsh team members.

Somehow, and with significant assistance from my wife, that lot got painted up in the three weeks or so that I had before the event and I took off to sunny Montreux. That part of Switzerland is a beautiful place and Montreux itself is particularly stunning.  I was staying at a Youth Hostel just down the lake shore from the event hall and my walk to and from the tournament every day was just incredible. The ETC itself is held over two days with three games on each day. Our first game was against the Greek team who were a good tip for the winners’ podium and so we weren’t expecting to take much away from that. Sure enough we got destroyed – my game vs their Dark Elf player ended 16-4 against after a methodical demolition job. The Hellcannon did well to eat a War Hydra in close combat but that was the only real bright spot for me. Next up we played team Norn Iron and I was feeling good about this as every time I’d played them in previous events, I’d won. Sure enough, I blew through their Dwarf player and scored 15 points for the team. Our final opponents for the day were team Netherlands where I got schooled 20-0 by a Vampire Counts player.

After a hard day of wargaming we headed into the town where we quickly realised that Montreux is not for people like us. Unless you are fabulously wealthy your entertainment options are going to be extremely limited. We sat and had horrendously expensive pizza and then sat on the beach drinking spiced rum until the small hours. The whole weekend was blisteringly hot and, as the town is sheltered by the mountains, there is no wind so the air stays warm even at night.

The next day we were ready for more punishment and we were drawn against Team Belgium to kick off. I played against a Dwarf army that was practically identical to the one I’d murdered on the previous day except this time everything went wrong for me. Another 20-0 shoeing ensued. After the Belgians we were drawn against Hungary where an Empire army proceeded to pull my army apart and then jump on the bits. Some horrendously bad dice sealed the deal and handed 20 gift-wrapped points to my opponent. I don’t like to blame the dice too much in games because generally losing due to dice means that you are leaning on luck rather than good play to win, however this was about as bad as I’ve ever had and I’m not sure that I could have done things differently. My Sorceror failed 7 leadership tests in a row and fled off the table, 8 out of 10 Chaos Knights failed a strength test and were killed by a Dwellers Below, 34 attacks from halberd-wielding Chaos Warriors of Khorne scored 4 hits and no wounds on the Arch Lector, two hits from a mortar killed an entire unit of Marauders in a single turn. Stuff like that. Finally we were drawn against Team Scotland who ended up beating us narrowly and me handily. By this point there was nothing to play for for either team so we all kicked back and had  a relaxed game. I played another Empire army and, once more found that I had no way to protect myself from his magic and warmachines. Still it was a fun game and we’d hit our team goal of not coming last.

In the end we came 24th out of 28 teams and we were thrilled to win the award for most sporting team. We celebrated with more spiced rum on the beach then I bade farewell to Captain Matt and the rest of the lads and headed back to the hostel. I took a lot of pictures over the weekend; pictures of Montreux can be found here while pictures of armies and miniatures from the ETC itself can be found here.

After my adventure in Switzerland I had a couple of weeks before I was off on a real holiday to the US. In that time I managed to finish painting up an HQ choice for my Grey Knight army. The figure is Castellan Crowe but I will generally be using him as a standard Brotherhood Champion and attaching him to a Razorback squad. Following my experiments with the armour of the Grey Knight Terminators, I decided to try a different tack for Crowe. His armour is heavily shaded and highlighted with Charadon Granite and Vallejo Ivory respectively. Rather than leave the silver areas flat and highlight the edges, I chose to accentuate the curves of the armour plates by painting in the sharp reflections and then contrasting these with deep shadows in a non-metallic metal style – although I was using a metallic colour as a base. This was much more successful than the Terminators were although it was time consuming to achieve. Originally his sword was blue but I painted myself into a corner when I was doing the banner and needed a strong colour that would contrast with the blue field of the banner and so I repainted the sword yellow and repeated this for the chained blade on the banner itself. The runes on the blade were done in blue and a weak object source lighting effect was added by means of a blue glaze. The other detailing was done to match the Terminators except the cloak which was painted a pale yellowish brown to complement the sword and had a triple stripe painted on the hem with some freehand lettering added.

More pictures of Crowe are on the Grey Knights gallery page.

I’ve been pretty busy over the past few months, the game I’m working has passed the feature complete milestone and is about to hit beta so there’s been less time for painting and gaming in general. Despite all that I’ve had a chance to crack on with a few bits and pieces including the start of a new army project. This time I’m doing a 40k army as some of the new guys at work are keen to play with round bases for a change. A string of happy coincidences meant that the discussion about starting 40k happened just before my birthday which fell 2 days after the release of the new Codex: Grey Knights. I’ve never really been a fan of Marines as an army to collect but the new Grey Knights are simply extraordinary. I bought the codex, a bunch of the new kits and then barely had time to paint them, hence it’s taken me until now to get the first elements of the army completed.

The first thing I completed was a squad of Terminators. In previous incarnations of the army, Grey Knight Terminators were the mainstay of the force. This isn’t as true as it once was but Terminators as a troops choice is still an appealing prospect. There are a lot of options in the box and the codex lists a bewildering array of builds for each terminator in a squad. I thought about magnetising them but figured that I was probably going to field them as a mostly vanilla squad so I gave them a mixture of free upgrades and left it at that. The arms were painted separately on some of the figures as the two-handed weapons are held in such a way as to make painting the figure difficult when they are attached.

I wanted to try and experiment with different ways to paint Marines and the method I chose for these wasn’t entirely successful in the end. To start with I airbrushed them all Chainmail, then I sprayed in some Charadon Granite/Badab Black into the lowlights. I’m trying to do a similar effect to non-metallic metals but using metallic paint while still keeping the extreme contrasts between highlights and lowlights. Once the lowlights were sprayed into armour joints and the lower facing areas of plate, I started to shade with Mithril Silver and Vallejo Ivory. This part was done with a brush rather than with the airbrush. I hatched Chainmail across the plates to smooth the lowlights a little and then built up the highlights on the upper surfaces before applying a glaze of Enchanted Blue to smooth everything out and to break the harsh silver. Finally I added the extreme highlights in white and ivory.

Next up were the Nemesis Force Weapons and I was pretty excited about being able to do these superfast with the airbrush. “Haha!” I thought, “no tedious blending for me!” I masked half of each side of each blade and went to work then repeated the process on the other half. Unfortunately the tape I used lifted the paint off which meant that I had to do so much tidying up with the brush that I ended up practically painting the entire blades by hand anyway. They started off Mordian Blue and then had Ultramarines Blue painted across the flat of the blades before the shimmer patterns were painted in with Ice Blue and Skull White. This is easier than it looks, it’s just time consuming. Very thin paint and very fine strokes in a diagonal hatching pattern are what you need with a few lines outside the main lighting area to provide some relief.

With the blades done it was time to finish off all the detail. The gold was painted with Tausept Ochre before a thin coat of Vallejo’s Oro Glorioso was applied over the top. Then a wash of Brown Ink defined the details before the individual letters and other details were then picked out with a Mithril Silver/Oro Glorioso mix. The Stormbolter casings and the pauldron shields were painted with Scab Red and this was highlighted with Tallarn Flesh mixed with a little Blazing Orange. Heraldic patterns were painted on in Skull White and Chaos Black. Someone senior at GW – I seem to remember that it was Alan Merritt but I may be mistaken – once explained to me that red, white and black are ‘good fascist colours which is why they are used so much for the Imperium’. Regardless, they provide a very bold scheme to make detail pop so I reserved their use for heraldry.

The bases are resin Ruins bases from Microart Studios. I bought a bunch of them in all the sizes I’d need for a Space Marines army so I have some at 25mm for power-armoured marines, 40mm for Terminators, 60mm for Dreadnaughts and a couple of 120mm oval bases for a Stormraven and a Dreadknight. As the army has a low model count and every figure is elite, I could justify putting everything on a special base. These were painted Charadon Granite and then drybrushed in Graveyard Earth and Codex Grey.

Next up was a Razorback as a way to test vehicle painting with the airbrush. Again, this was sprayed Chainmail and then the Charadon Granite/Badab Black mixture was liberally sprayed into the angles between armour plates. Successive thin coats of Chainmail were then sprayed in blend these lowlights in and I did a few passes with Mithril Silver over the upward facing plates. Then the recesses in the tside armour were masked off and Scab Red was sprayed in there as well as on the cowling for the lascannons. The red was highlighted in the same way as for the Terminators’ Stormbolters and then I wen to work with some freehand. I want the Grey Knight vehicles to look baroque and covered in battle-honours so I painted in a chapter symbol on one door along with some gold scrollwork on the red recesses. The gold was shaded by painting thin lines of black and white around it to make it stand out from the red background and I took the oppportunity to abuse my classical education with some cod Latin on the scroll and the side of the lascannon housing (‘Lux ex Umbra’ means Light From the Shadows). One front glacis was painted with heraldry that will eventually match a Strike Squad Justicar  and the other got a numerical designation in accented gold.

The lenses  in the cupola were painted in much the same way as for the Nemesis Force Weapons, thin hatching patterns of Ice Blue and Skull White over a Mordian/Ultramarine Blue base.  Some final highlighting on the edges with ivory and the tank was done. I didn’t paint the interior on this one but I may well do for future tanks. I have a half completed Stormraven which has got as far as a detailed interior and a basecoat on the outside so far, any Landraiders will also have detailed interiors for sure.

Overall I’m enjoying painting these more than I expected I would, the figures are gorgeous and by stretching myself with the ‘true-metallic metal’ technique I can learn more about painting through these. I haven’t got the technique down properly yet but I have a few more squads to paint and I’ll keep experimenting with each one.

You can see more photos of the finished Grey Knights as well as some work in progress shots on this gallery page.

Today I pretty much finished my Tzeentchian Warriors of Chaos army for Warhammer Fantasy Battles. There are a few things that may get added some time down the road, but there’s nothing that it’s missing. I have two unpainted Spawn along with a handful of Warriors and Knights that are still on their sprues that I could add and at some point I may work on a Warshrine and maybe convert up some Chaos Ogres if I feel the urge but I’m not in any hurry to do so. My next project is beckoning and I want to draw a line under this one so here’s a look at the army I spent most of the last year building up.

Originally this was part of the 8 armies initiative that I was doing along with some friends from work. The idea was that we would all build up WFB armies together and play against each other as well as enter some of the local tournaments as a group. Progress has been spotty for most of the people involved and, while most people have at least a couple of units painted up each, no-one except me actually has a playable army. I’ve ended up with about 3000 points of Chaos Warriors with a strong Tzeentch theme and visual connection so I’m scoring it as a win. Some of the units have been showcased here already – particularly the Chaos Knights and the Army Standard Bearer but most of the army hasn’t been photographed properly until tonight so here is the rest of it as well as some writeups for the more interesting pieces.

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The newly minted Warhammer players who started their first armies in the middle of last year have been regulars at my painting table, drybrushing skeletons, washing Clanrats and agonising over exactly the right shade of turquoise for Dark Elves. Back in November it was Jan-Eric’s birthday and boxes of Skaven were well-represented amongst his haul of presents. I bought him a Doomwheel and also gave him a painting voucher, I offered to paint any one Skaven figure for his army. He didn’t have to think about it for too long before simply handing the Doomwheel back with instructions to do what I could with it. So, this is another centrepiece figure in a long line of things I’ve painted for somebody else.

Firstly I started by figuring out how I was going to tackle it. The Doomwheel is a very complex kit which is practically impossible to paint once assembled. I don’t particularly like painting parts separately though so I tried to work out what the smallest number of lumps I could make it into was to simplify the painting process. It turned out that this number was twelve. The central frame was the largest piece with the driver installed, and the rest were mostly single components or very small assemblies. Everything was then undercoated white and I got stuck in!

Firstly I painted all the metal parts with Chainmail, all the wood with Scorched Brown and the outside frame was painted Mechrite Red for now. I then painted Dwarf Bronze over some of the parts that I wanted to be bronze or copper. Golds and bronzes don’t cover well so I find that it’s best to paint a basecoat of silver on first then to paint the bronze or gold colour on top of that. I put some base colours onto the driver and the crewman to see what worked and settled on a fairly plain red, grey and green scheme for them both apart from the driver’s leather armour which was painted with Graveyard Earth.

My view of the Skaven is that they aren’t particularly concerned with keeping their stuff in pristine condition, nor so they worry too much about tetanus so the next step was to dirty up the metal. First I washed it all with Devlan Mud mixed with a little Badab Black to patinate it and give it an overall grimy look before highlighting it up again. Next I applied layered glazes of Snot Green and Gryphonne Sepia to all the bronze  areas, in total I applied four of these glazes alternating between the two colours to get a nice deep colour. Finally I highlighted with a touch of Shining Gold mixed with Chainmail. The silver metal was given a single glaze of Snot Green and then two coats of Ogryn Flesh before being rehighlighted with Chainmail. Finally I attacked it with Blazing Orange to create rust spots. For this step I simply dabbed it on erratically with the point of a brush to create randomly shaped blobs along the centre of the metal areas. This was then shaded where necessary with Devlan Mud painted into corners and crevices. Blazing Orange looks far too bright on the palette but it is pretty much the exact shade that actual rust goes when applied to dark metal.

Next up I decided to tackle the various bits of Warpstone and for this I figured I’d try my hand at some object source lighting effects. Essentially this is where you paint on the reflected light from a point source to provide the illusion that it is actually emitting light. Firstly I painted the Warpstone chunks themselves, these were straightforward Goblin Green with Sunburst Yellow and Skull White highlights along the vertices. Then I got to work on the reflected light. Shining a coloured light onto something changes the colour of that thing to a combination of the two colours (the colour of the light and the colour of the object that it’s shining upon). This works exactly like mixing paints – which is handy for figure painters! There are curved bars around the four smaller pieces of Warpstone, two on the front and one on each side bar. The inside surface of each of these was overbrushed with Goblin Green and then highlighted up to pure Sunburst Yellow. I also used the lighter shades of these highlights to highlight up the inside of the central framework where the big chunk in front of the driver would reflect onto and around the open slats in the boiler thing that the driver is connected to. This makes it look as though there is greenish light seeping from whatever hellish machinery lives inside there. If I’d been clever, I’d have foreseen that I would be doing this and would have extended the effect to the inside surfaces of the wheels as well but I’d already stuck the wheels on by this time and it was too difficult to get a brush in there reliably thanks to all the spikes. Never mind.

The wood was washed with Devlan Mud and Gryphonne Sepia before being drybrushed with Graveyard Earth and Codex Grey. In the photos it comes out a little pinkish but in reality it’s a much darker and grubbier brown. The red metal was also dirtied up with layered glazes and washes before having bits of Chainmail applied to it to represent peeling and chipped paint. I tried to imagine where Skaven crewmen might have worn down the paint and gave those areas an extra highlight of Mithril Silver to represent the shininess of constant use. The rest of the exposed metal was carefully glazed with a Badab Black/Gryphonne Sepia mix.

Finally I assembled the rest of the pieces, painted and flocked the base and presented it to its new owner – who was very pleased with it. I am also happy with the way it turned out although I am kicking myself for not being able to finish the object source lighting properly.  It’s a fine tabletop piece and I’m sure that Jan-Eric will get a lot of use from it.

You can see all of the pictures associated with this project on this gallery page.

The winter tournament season is back on track again with back-to-back tournaments at Konstanz in the last two weekends.  Seetroll ran their ‘Grosse Spieletag’ last weekend which featured WFB, WH40k and various CCG tournaments as well as random boardgames happening spontaneously around the venue while this weekend was the Warhammer Fanatics’ tournament run by a local club. These were my first experiences of 8th edition competition and the first proper tests of my new Warriors of Chaos army. Unfortunately I didn’t get any usable pictures from either event but I’ll be updating soon with a general look at how my servants of Tzeentch are coming along.

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The eight armies project that we started a few months ago has slowed to a trickle. While everyone is still keen to crack on with their new forces, various distractions such as house moves, long visits from family and a greatly increased amount of work to be done at our office have conspired to limit the amount of time we can sit down for a few hours with a bottles of plastic glue and jars of paint. Nevertheless, time marches on and the tournaments that we were aiming for are now alarmingly close. In fact there’ll be one next weekend which will be the first test of my new Warriors of Chaos and then another the weekend after. The first of these tournaments is a doubles game with each player bringing a 1500 point force. I’ll be playing alongside Mario and his Tomb Kings if all goes well and my army at least should be completely painted for then.

This figure and twelve Chaos Warriors are the only parts of my list that weren’t already painted. I’m confident that I can crank out a dozen warriors in a week so it was a relief to finally declare this guy done and move on. It often happens to me (and I’m sure every other painter in the world) that I’ll start working on a figure and it just won’t come together. The figure will then get sidelined while I work on other things and sit partially done on my painting table for ever – let me tell you about my Dwarf Rangers that probably need less than two hours work to finish off but have sat in a case for four years. This figure was one of those that I couldn’t get on with at first. It started off as simply the normal metal Chaos Lord on Daemonic Steed figure with no modifications. I liked the figure but had no clue how to paint it – especially after I finished the rainbow-hued Chaos Knights regiment that you can see in this update.  Somewhere along the line I decided that I needed a mounted battle standard bearer and this figure seemed an obvious place to start from. The conversion is very simple; the hammer was cut off right above the hand and was replaced with a spear from the Marauder Horsemen sprue. The banner itself and the banner top also came from the Marauder Horsemen and I swapped the head for one from the Chaos Mutation sprue.  I also decided that I didn’t want the steed to be a Daemonic Mount but instead to be a ‘normal’ Chaos Steed so it got rebased onto a regular cavalry base.

When it came to painting this figure I really had no idea how it was going to end up. In the end I pretty much just threw paint at it until I could see something worthwhile emerging then tidied that up. Originally the armour and barding were to be a pale rosy lavender so I started with a bright pinky-blue basecoat and glazed it with Hawk Turquoise. That didn’t work so well and I ended up repainting it in a greyish purple which ended up getting highlighted and declared good enough. The horse was going to be black with flamey accents but that didn’t look so good with all the detailing on it so it ended up a chestnut colour instead with reddish hair. Finally the banner. I painted it blue then yellow, highlighted that right up and then sketched in the freehand design in the centre using Black Ink. Once I’d got something I was happy with I blocked it in and highlighted the pattern. At this point I realised that somehow I’d finished it. This was a nice surprise so I built up a taller base from smaller square bases and greenstuff to help him rank up properly (he overhangs the sides of a base even more than the plastic Knights do) and slapped some varnish on him before I could talk myself into doing more. He’s a little fussy and there are some messy areas but from 3 feet away he looks fine.

The full Warriors of Chaos Gallery is available here.

Two updates in a week? Truly some foul sorcery is at work here! Actually it’s a side effect of being off sick from work for a reasonably long time, I’ve had time to crack on with painting as it’s one of the few things I can still do while I convalesce.

Anyhow, the latest addition to the collection of painted figures is this unit of Chaos Knights. My Warriors of Chaos army has a Tzeentchian theme to it and for me, the standard black and brooding colour scheme doesn’t really work. Additionally as these are amongst the most elite warriors in the army (actually they are pretty elite compared to most things in any army), I wanted them to be individualistic and unique. So it is then that I decided to paint them each with a different colour palette to show their status as the warrior nobility in the warband. These are really nice models and come with a variety of options for heads, shields and weapons – more than enough of each to avoid any duplication. They are also big, the barded Empire warhorses as used by the Knightly Orders for example are about two-thirds the size of these monsters. You will need to take care when assembling them and when attaching them to their base to make sure that the unit will rank up (mine doesn’t) as they overhang significantly on both sides of the base. I’m expecting that I will buy a second box for a larger unit (hello 8th edition!) and they will be planted at the extreme backs and fronts of their cavalry bases so that they can rank up between these. That’s something for another day though.

The first figure I completed was the champion. Actually he may not be the champion after all as I’m still somewhat undecided. All of the figures that aren’t carrying a standard or a horn could reasonably be used as the champion as they are all distinctive enough. This guy at least has a lightning charged sword which may tip things in his favour. He’s painted over a white basecoat (they all are actually) with Orkhide Shade which was washed with Thraka Green and then highlighted and glazed with a variety of greens and purples to get a nice rich effect on the armour. The horse is Thraka Green over the white undercoat and then highlighted and tidied up with thinned down Goblin Green and Skull White.

I did the sword purple with purple lightning all over it and this is a cool effect that’s easy to achieve if you take it a step at a time. First paint on very thin lines roughtly where your lightning will go, these can be quite broad and should be about a half shade above the base colour – the same sort of difference you’d use for a highlight. Then you highlight the centre of these lines in a slightly more erratic way so that the highlight follows more closely the final line of the lightning itself. After this you paint in the lines of the lightning bolts in a very pale colour,  I printed out some photos of lightning to use as a reference for the way that it forks and flashes to and fro. These lines need to be very thin and some need to be  painted in as almost invisible wisps in very thin paint. Finally take some pure white and highlight parts of the line, major branches and so forth. It’s time consuming to do it properly but it looks really nice.

Next up was the Bone Knight. I put this guy together specifically thinking that his weapon, shield and armour detail would look good in bone. He’s done in my normal bone style which is yellowing and aged looking rather than stark and white. It starts off as Snakebite Leather and gets highlighted up with Bleached Bone and Skull White. His horse and the detail trim were painted grey and the mail barding on the horse was given a pale bronze effect by washing Chainmail with Gryphonne Sepia and then highlighting with a mixture of Mithril Silver and Burnished Gold.

I tackled the standard bearer next, and I’d decided I liked the idea of a yellow knight. Blue and yellow are traditional colours for Tzeentch and I wanted to feature them both. I didn’t want this guy to look like a Tonka toy though so I kept the yellow dirty by painting it onto a Snakebite Leather base and highlighting with Bubonic Brown and Golden Yellow in a hatching pattern rather than as a smooth highlight. The banner was done on a base of Hormagaunt Purple and highlighted up with various blues. Finally a starfield was painted on with a Tzeentch icon painted in as if it were a constellation. I may redo this later as I’m not 100% happy with it but it’s good enough for the tabletop at the moment.

By now the end was in sight and I went for the musician. This was the blue one to balance the yellow standard bearer. The base of Mordian Blue was give the same treatment as the green armour on the first knight although this time using blue and purple washes and glazes. It was highlighted with Ultramarine Blue and curlicues painted in with very thin Enchanted Blue on the flat parts of the armour and shield. The metallic pieces were painted Mithril Silver and then washed with successive layers of watered down red, blue and purple inks. They were then highlighted with Dwarf Bronze and Burnished Gold. This was an experiment that I had no idea on how it would end up but I’m happy with the result.

Finally I tackled the lancer. My Chaos knights will all be fighting with hand-weapons but, in the interests of making the unit look less uniform and also because I really liked that particular weapon, I equipped one with a big choppy lance. This guy was originally going to be white but I decided that this would be too bright and so it ended up a very pale dove grey. This is Codex Grey with a Devlan Mud wash and then highlighted up with Fortress Grey, Space Wolf Grey and Skull White. The horse is Devlan Mud over the white undercoat and then highlighted with Graveyard Earth and Kommando Khaki.

You can see more pictures of the Knights on this gallery page.

I bought a portable photo-studio and as a test of its capabilities I decided to photograph my Cryx Warmachine army. These pictures are taken with the same camera as all the others on this blog – it’s a Panasonic Lumix DMC-LZ7 of about 4 years vintage. This is a reasonable quality camera falling somewhere far to the south of a DSLR but a couple of steps above a basic point-and-shoot. Mostly the problem I’ve had with photography is lighting the subject; ambient light is too dark while spotlights and the camera flash are far too harsh. Previously I’ve got around this problem by using the inbuilt camera flash with some thick paper held or taped over the bulb to diffuse the flash. This mostly works although the results can be pretty variable.

I’ve wanted to improve the quality of the photography and short of dropping a couple of thousand Euro or so on a decent DSLR and a macro lens, I figured that lighting would make the biggest difference to my set up. It turns out that I was right. I found a ‘Portable photo studio’ from an eBay reseller for £28 and I’m very happy with it. Basically it’s a folding lightbox with two separate 500w spotlights and a camera stand. The whole thing folds neatly away into a sturdy polyester case which includes pockets on the outside for the lights and other hardware. It couldn’t really be described as professional quality gear but for change out of thirty quid it seems like good value.

So anyway, having taken delivery of my new toy, I was eager to play with it! Here is a quick run through my Cryx army for Warmachine. I picked Cryx for the same reason that I ended up with most of my armies – I really liked the models. While I was working for WAR in Dublin we had a short office campaign that took place in the cellar beneath the company HQ, I did reasonably well there and found that I quite liked the way that the Cryx played on the tabletop as well. Since then I’ve taken them to a bunch of tournaments here in Germany with varying amounts of success, generally I find that I either get a caster kill fairly quickly or I lose.

These figures were mostly painted over the course of a couple of months approximately two years ago, they are definitely table-top standard rather than display standard and some of them are showing signs of battle damage. To begin with, our campaign only allowed units from the Prime (Mk.I) book and Escalation, since then I’ve only added the Nightmare to the army. Thus the army doesn’t include any epic Warcasters, nor any of the character or ally units such as Cephalyx. I will eventually add some of these (in fact Lich Lord Asphyxious is on my painting table at the moment) and I’ll write them up as separate projects as they are done.

All that out of the way then, let’s take a look at the figures.

These two are my most commonly used Warcasters. In particular I like to bring a stealth-heavy army with Deneghra leading it. I’ve tied the army together by using a fairly limited palette of dark grey  and corroded bronze with green and pale grey accents. Silver metallics are used sparingly and mostly as contrast. The bronze colour is a custom mix of Tin Bitz, Chainmail and Shining Gold, this is then washed with a custom ink mix of Dark Green Ink, Chestnut Ink and Black Ink before being highlighted with Burnished Gold and glazed with Hawk Turquoise. The grey is mostly Shadow Grey highlighted up. For some figures such as the Skarlock Thrall the grey is applied over a dark brown basecoat to provide deep shading.

Green is used for the detailing in the steam engines for the necrotite glow. This starts as Goblin Green, washed with Dark Green Ink and is then highlighted with Scorpion Green and Skull White to produce a glowing effect. A similar pattern is used for the thrall runes on the Bane Thralls’ axes.

Of course the centre of any Warmachine force are the ‘Jacks and mine is no exception. My force includes a Reaper, Slayer, Nightmare, Stalker and five Bonejacks of various types based on the Defiler hull. These again use a mid-grey main colour with metallics for the exposed machinery and various spot colours. The Reaper that you see above left features runes in Scab Red on the hull and weapons, other ‘Jacks have patterns painted in with a slightly paler grey this breaks up some of the large, flat surfaces and also helps to identify them on the battlefield.

Finally then the army is rounded out by a selection of Thralls. I love the damage that Bane Thralls can inflict and I’m also a fan of the problems that Bile Thralls can cause the enemy, they are awesome suicide troops and no sane opponent will let them get close. I have a Machine Wraith which I love the figure for but which hasn’t really worked out for me on the table so far, my sole Pistol Wraith likewise has been a disappointment. I suspect that this is a case where adding a second one would make a huge difference in the effectiveness of both types. My favourite solo however is the Bloat Thrall, this thing is just horrible and attracts a lot of attention from the enemy. Painting it was a lot of fun too.

Check out the whole collection on the Cryx gallery page.

Yet another figure that I’m painting for someone else. It’s a change from working on my Warriors of Chaos army at least. This one is for a friend who wanted a Belial figure but didn’t have the confidence in his own modelling skills to convert one. I had a bit of a cast around, realised it wouldn’t be too tricky and promptly volunteered to do it for him. There’s quite a nice version posted up on the Games Workshop website that I used as inspiration although mine ended up being quite different as you’ll see.

To begin with I started from Lysander, Captain of the Imperial Fists’ First Company. This is a popular choice for Belial conversions as it’s an ornately armoured Terminator in a fairly dynamic pose. The first thing to do was to remove all the Fists’ iconography which was pretty straightforwards – there’s a fist on his gorget and one on each tasset. These are simple to remove. I also cut out the hand part of the fist shape that makes up part of the head of his Thunderhammer. One of the requirements was that the figure should have interchangeable weapon loadouts. As he’s a Terminator this is a piece of cake – all you need to do is have the relevant weapon arms and magnetise them. In Belial’s case he can have either twin Lightning Claws, a Thunderhammer and Stormshield or a Power Sword and Stormbolter. As I don’t collect Space Marines myself I don’t have a stock of bits to scrounge in so I also bought the Dark Angel upgrade sprue which provided the Power Sword, Stormbolter, Storm Shield and some other small parts. I was also sent a pair of Lightning Claws and shoulder pads by the owner of this piece. Right away I had a problem; I had three left arms and only two left shoulderpads – these are the ones that have the Crux Terminatus sculpted on. One was integral to the Storm Shield arm and the other was the plastic one that I was sent along with the Lightning Claws. I solved this problem by cutting the left Lightning Claw and the Power Sword arm off just below the shoulder, magnetising them and then attaching the shoulderpad to one of the orphaned shoulders which then received two magnets (one to attach to the body and one to attach the rest of the arm).

Originally the plan was to give him a hood but I couldn’t make the hood work with the Terminator armour no matter how I tried. It didn’t look right coming from inside the armour and it didn’t flow well around the head if it was outside. Eventually I scraped off all the greenstuff and left him with just the half-cape that’s part of the Lysander figure. I added some Dark Angel iconography on one greave and the gorget by taking some of the small icons from the Dark Angel upgrade sprue, filing them flat on one side and then gluing them on to the armour. I also Dark Angelsed up the Thunderhammer by sandwiching some greenstuff between two of the helmet wings from the sprue and sticking that on where the fist used to be. The wings on his back are from the Warhammer Fantasy Empire General set, there’s a standard top which is a robed and winged skeleton carrying a scythe. All of that except for the wings were cut away and then the two separate wings were greenstuffed together and moulded somewhat to match the back of the armour. The Empire general also gave up his two handed sword which replaced the one from the Dark Angels sprue.

Once the figure was built, it was time to get on with painting it. To begin with I painted on a thin basecoat of Snakebite Leather all over the armour. I like to paint bone as yellowy, old bone rather than bleached white as it’s generally done so I start with quite a dark colour and work up from there. In this case I highlighted up with various mixtures of Snakebite Leather, Bleached Bone and Skull White. The final edge highlights are pure Skull White but the blending in between is mostly Bleached Bone. The green parts started with a base of Orkhide Shade and went through Goblin Green, Scorpion Green and Sunburst Yellow while the red was a base of Mechrite Red with blood red and Golden Yellow for highlights. I’ve warmed to the foundation paints recently, previously I never used them at all but I’m liking the depth of colour I can get with them even though I almost always start from a white undercoat.

The main problem I had with this figure was working out what colours to do the details. Particularly things like the purity seals, which are generally done with red seals and parchment tassels. In this case the red seals would have been lost against the red eagle on the cuirass while parchment tassels wouldn’t show up well against the bone armour. Eventually I decided to do them gold with greyish parchment. The cloak was another area that got redone once I realised my original plan wouldn’t work. I had planned to do it green and cream to match the Deathwing and the Dark Angels primary colours however this didn’t go well. Cream on the inside was too close to the armour colour and it didn’t frame well as a border colour. In the end I painted the inside green with a red border to tie in with Belial’s old company colours (argent a bend sinister gules). This heraldry is repeated on his back banner, his left kneepad and on two of the right shoulderpads.

These problems are why I like to ‘sketch in’ a figure before I start to work on highlighting and fancy work. Very often something that sounds sensible in your head doesn’t translate well to the actual miniature or you’ll realise that you’ve overlooked some detail that requires you to change your plans. You’ll see that the work in progress shots from the gallery are quite rough, there’s no highlighting to speak of, many of the lines are wobbly and there may even be blank bits. Once I’ve got a better idea of how the final figure will look and I’m happy with the scheme then I’ll tidy it up, work on the shading and add in the fiddly detail.

I played around a little with some non-metallic metal effects on this model. The sword on the back banner as well as the Power Sword and the bayonet on the Storm bolter are all done with slightly different nmm techniques. The back banner is done as shading with a chrome effect – very dark areas next to very light areas to suggest sharp contrasts of light. The Power Sword and bayonet on the other hand use a hatching effect to suggest a shimmering reflection on the blade.

Finally the base is from the 40k basing kit. The large pieces are a shade over 40mm across so I had to trim it down to size, the feet are pinned into it and then it was glued onto the standard 40mm round base.  It was painted black then drybrushed with Graveyard Earth, Terracotta and Fortress Grey before small clumps of static grass were added to break it up a little.

It’s getting posted off to England on Monday, let’s hope the new owner likes it!

You can see all the in-progress and final pictures of this figure in the gallery.

Shortly before Christmas, my local game store received one of the new plastic Tyranid Trygon kits for display purposes. As it happened, I was in there at the time and casually mentioned that I’d like to paint one but wasn’t going to buy one just to paint. The manager told me that I was welcome to paint the display copy once he’d magnetised it and so I ended up painting a modular Trygon/Mawloc.

Jakob spent some time magnetising each of the different options to make them interchangeable and this is mostly pretty straightforward. Each arm has a magnet in the ball joint and there is a corresponding magnet in the sockets. It’s worth spending some time here to make sure that the magnets in the arms are at a good angle. Each arm overlaps the one above it to a degree and thus needs to be splayed out a little to clear it. If you put the magnet in the same position for each arm then they won’t fit properly. The tail has a pin as well as a magnet and each tail tip has a magnet and a hole drilled in it to accept the pin to ensure that it lines up properly and doesn’t twist. The complicated area is the head as there are a lot of optional parts in a relatively small area and these need magnets in different places. The mandibles can be attached just like the arms as they have a simple ball and socket joint on each side but the two jaws present problems. The contact area for each jaw is quite small and the Mawloc mouth part is pretty large so needs a solid connection to hold it in place. Jakob was able to make the regular Trygon jaw fit by putting a magnet in the cavity within it which connects with one inside the head. These are some distance apart but with sufficiently powerful magnets, the attraction is enough to hold the jaw in place. The Mawloc mouth parts however don’t have a convenient space to hide a magnet in as they are spread open with no solid sections. My suggestion was to not magnetise it at all and have two pins running backwards from the back of the jaw into holes drilled in the head section to hold it in place. Jakob however used flat magnets greenstuffed to the back of the jaw and the front of the  head. I still think my solution was better but Jakob’s works although it needs a bit of cutting and greenstuffing to make everything fit. There are also different carapace sections for the top of the head but there wasn’t enough room to fit yet more magnets in the head so Jakob picked one and glued it in.

Once Jakob had assembled and magnetised the kit, it was handed over to me for painting. I sprayed it white and then deliberated on a colour scheme. Jakob wasn’t a fan of the standard Leviathan colours of purple and white and I think the Behemoth red and blue scheme looks too busy so I compromised on a purplish-brown with pale green scheme as a good contrast using non-standard colours. Tyranids are composed of two main textures: chitinous armour and ribbed flesh, I chose to make the armour dark and the flesh pale. To start with I painted all of the flesh areas with Rotting Flesh. This was then washed with Thraka Green and then highlighted with Rotting Flesh again. Once that was dry I glazed it with Enchanted Blue before applying final highlights of a Rotting Flesh/Bleached Bone mix. As this is quite a large model and there are lots of extra bits, this took some time.

The chitin was painted Scorched Earth initially and then washed with Asurmen Blue. This gave a very dark and warm purple that was almost black. I highlighted this with Leviathan Purple in small amounts of Skull White before glazing it with Lich Purple. Final highlights were in Warlock Purple mixed with Tentacle Pink. Highlighting chitin is relatively simple although it’s time consuming when dealing with the number of separate plates on the Trygon (plus all the different claws, mandibles and so forth). To start with the highlight was pretty subtle and was applied towards the trailing edge of each individual plate. Then the lighter highlights were painted on very quickly in thin lines down from the middle of the plate to the trailing edge. As the highlights get lighter these lines become shorter and more closely spaced, this provides a smooth highlight while keeping the chitinous feel. Finally edge highlights were painted around the vertices. The flesh inside the jaws was painted Tentacle Pink and washed with Leviathan Purple before highlighting with Bleached Bone, this provided a sufficient contrast with the rest of the model without making it look unnatural. The eyes were done in blue and painted as gems instead of irises and pupils.

The whole thing took me a while due mostly the sheer size of the beast. Highlighting that much flesh and that many plates is fiddly and time consuming even with a big brush and thin paint. Still once it’s together it looks pretty impressive.

Check out more pictures including work in progress shots on this gallery page.