Stormy Teacups

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.

At some point over the past few days, the following thoughts popped into my head in po particular order:

• My wife is somewhat interested in Warhammer
• I have two painted Warhammer Fantasy armies
• I have one of the spiffy Citadel gaming tables that has been used precisely once since obtaining it the day they were released
• I only normally get to play at tournaments
• My wife has never actually played WFB

Clearly then the answer was to challenge the missus to a round of toy soldiers!

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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.

I’m almost to the end of this paint frenzy now, last night I finished the last 7 Horrors and the final 9 Daemonettes making the army complete apart from the two Heralds. I even found time to stipple a pale blue over the Screamers which has improved them dramatically as you can see in the picture below.

Still pretty horrible but definitely better

Last of the Horrors and Daemonettes

Converted Masque

As you can see the Masque of Slaanesh is pretty easy to convert into an Battle Standard Bearer, I cut the double-ended mask off, drilled a hole through the hand and then passed a short length of brass rod through it. The banner itself is from a mounted Chaos Marauder sprue. She’ll be painted up tonight and tomorrow. In progress pictures to follow.

Finally here are the scores.

Points Painted Today : 252 points

Points Target Daily: 200 Difference: +52

Points Target Overall: 1200 Points Painted Overall: 1032 Difference: -168

Figures Painted Today: 16

Figure Target Daily: 10 Difference: +6

Figure Target Overall: 60 Difference: -2
Read the next 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.