Oh what a saga...

So I had a week off last week, and while doing jobs around the house and playing my new addiction, War Thunder, on the PC I got some painting done!  First up is a Hearthguard/Hirdman/Huscarl for Saga.  After seeing the fantastic looking Saga battle board at Colours this year, some of the group have been bitten by the Saga bug, so it looks a lot like we'll be getting into it...

This chap is one of the very old Norseman from GW (which have been recast as Vikings by Wargames Foundry, so you can still buy them) and he was a blast to paint.  I had a load of these miniatures lying about unused, so I have around 1/3 to 1/2 a Viking Saga force.  He was undercoated with black spray, so that the chainmail was a simple dry-brush of Army Painter Gun Metal, followed by Army Painter Shining Silver, then a little Nuln Oil in places to accentuate the "folds" in the chainmail.  

The sword, helmet and the metal on the shield used the same paints, I just painted them on carefully with a detail brush.  At this point, I washed the whole model with very diluted Army Painter Strong Tone ink, to give the metal work a slight sepia tone.

The red on the shield and clothing was a base coat of GW Rhinox Hide blended in to the black of the undercoat, then highlighted with GW Khorne Red, and a mix of Khorne Red and GW Balor Brown.  This gives a nice earthy red, that seems to fit a viking model better.  The green is GW Death World Forest, shaded with a little diluted GW Abbadon Black, and highlighted with more and more GW Ogryn Camo.

The beard is a base of old GW Tausept Ochre and the skin was based with old GW Tallarn Flesh.  Both were washed with GW Gryphonne Sepia, then the beard was dry-brushed with the Ochre and GW Karak Stone, and the skin was neatly highlighted with the base flesh colour and P3 Ryn Flesh.

The inside of the shield was based with GW Dryad Bark, then stripes of 1:2 mix of Dryad Bark and GW Steel Legion Drab, which was then highlighted with the Drab and Karak Stone, I did this in a rough "flicky" way to emulate a little wood grain.

I'm really pleased with him, and I have more based up ready for undercoating:

In the top row are three more Hearthguard to finish up the first unit. The two identical warriors will have shields on their backs, it will just be easier to paint them without them on.  Bottom left is a Bondi (unarmoured warrior), and bottom right is the leader of the warband (name to be decided).  I've also got 4 berserkers and another Bondi in a bath of Fairy Power spray, ready to be based up and undercoated.

However it wasn't just Vikings last week.  On our last visit to Firestorm Games, I picked up the Avatars of War "Lord of Pestilence".  He's the first Avatars of War model I've purchased, and I'm really impressed.  There were mould lines, but they were easily removed, and the model went together really nicely.  There's plenty of detail, without going overboard, and the "corruption" was restricted to holes in the armour and a few exposed entrails.  I'm not a big fan of all the pus-filled boils and grunge that most people do on Nurgle miniatures, so this model really fit the bill for me.

This miniature was a joy to paint, lots of small surfaces and clearly defined edges that made blending the highlights in a particularly pleasant experience.  I decided to try something new for the green, where usually I would have gone for a GW Charadon Granite base coat, this time I base coated the entire model with GW Dryad Bark.  This was washed with diluted Nuln Oil - I made sure I covered the miniature, but avoided flooding it, which tends to leave a chalky residue if you're not careful.  For the first highlight I mixed in a little Death World Forest to the base colour and blended it in to all but the deepest recesses.  I then mixed in more and more of the Forest, blending the highlights in until the upper facing surfaces were almost pure green.  From there I mixed in more and more P3 Thrall Flesh and blended this in to the top edges.  Job done and a new(ish) way of doing green, bonus!

The skirt didn't turn out quite as well as the green did, but it's not bad, and not very well shown off by the ropey photograph.  I did a similar thing here as for the green, but used Steel Legion Drab and Rakarth Flesh instead.  For the metallics, I made sure I kept them dull and rusty, using GW Lahmian Medium (which is brilliant I have to say) mixed in with the metallic paints before application, then using some (very) old GW Chestnut Ink and dry-brushing on some of the later highlights.

The symbol on the shield is apparently a corrupted obelisk, although it looks a little like a warped cactus to me.  It was painted in the same way as the skirt first of all, before painting the chain and the hanging trophies.  I've found GW Stormvermin Fur, shaded with Agrax Earthshade and highlighted with Thrall Flesh is a good way of doing dead flesh/zombie hide, I'm going to dig out some old GW zombies to test how it works on a complete figure.  I would definitely recommend Avatars of War miniatures as alternatives to GW character models, they're around the same price, and fantastic figures.  I'll be picking up the "Champion of Pestilence" model next.

So with these guys done, I have plenty more on my plate, including the Vikings above, a group of very old Wood Elves to finish off for a friend (it's kind of a "commission", but I hate that word, so its a "painting job for a friend"), some more Britannian troopers for Dystopian Legions, Dwarves from the Hobbit boxed set, Adora Belle Dearheart for Mrs Walker, more Dropzone Commander stuff, and Empire Greatswords for a funky little Warhammer project new group member Russ Veal has planned for us.

Plus whatever distracts me next.

So not a lot then...

As always, comments and criticism welcome!

Dropping in 3: Falconry

To go along with the Sabres from last post, it's the turn of the Falcons to get some paint.  My small force needed two Falcons (they're the UCM version of present day Apache helicopters), but even two tested my batch painting skills (or lack of them).

OK not really, they were so quick and easy to paint, I got both done in an hour or so, while watching football!  They're tabletop standard with dry-brushed highlights, and like with the Sabres, the small scale, and large number of hard edges on the models means dry-brushing really does work well.  They were painted in pretty much the same way as the Sabres, so a quick recap:

Green:

• P3 Cryx Base
• Castellan Green
• Death World Forest
• P3 Thrall Flesh

Grey:

• Eshin Grey
• Nuln Oil
• Codex Grey
• Pallid Wych Flesh

Once the grey was finished, I gave the top of the model a very light dry-brush of Pallid Wych Flesh to pick out the top edges, and coloured in the insides of the engine exhausts with orange and a dot of yellow.

The last thing to do was the pilots canopy.  I wasn't a big fan of the way the Hawk Wargames guys did theirs, so I tried to go for a dark, orange lit effect.  I used a base coat of Abbadon black, then quickly blended in some Rhinox Hide, then mixed in more and more Squig Orange towards the bottom of each pane of the canopy.

After, I'd sprayed the model with Dullcote, I went back and painted the canopy (sans frame) with GW 'Ardcoat to give it the glassy look.

...and they're done.  The group of reprobates that comprise our gaming group will be at Colours in two weeks time, where I will pick up the rest of the miniatures to make up my force (or I'll buy the two person starter box if it's out, not sure which yet).  My current force list comprises:

UCM Skirmish Roster [494/500 pts]

Armored Formation [248 pts]

Sabre Squad: 3x Sabre, Condor(+Missile Pods) [152 pts]

Falcon Squad: 2x Falcon [96 pts]

Legionnaire Corps [80 pts]

Legionnaires: 2x Legionnaires, Raven A [80 pts]

Special Ordinance [166 pts]

Rapier Squad: 3x Rapier, Condor [166 pts]

This list was created using the very nice force creator app that can be downloaded from here: http://www.dzc-ffor.com/.

(Image taken from the link above)

It's really easy to use, and if you hit print, it will print out the force list, stat sheet, model listing, and a shopping list (if you remember to fill in the database of what models you already have)!  I'm a huge fan of this application and there are a few other companies that could really learn from this.

In other news, I backed the ArcWorlde Kickstarter from Warploque miniatures.  I don't usually do the Kickstarter thing (and I'm very glad I skipped the Reaper Bones one), but the miniatures really appeal to me, and it's nice to support a smaller company.

My apologies for not being active in commenting on other people's blogs, I've recently started a new job at my company, which has been a bit nuts (I guess that's what I should expect when I get promoted), and I've had a load of DIY to do, plus attending this years Fforde Ffiesta (a small literary festival dedicated to the works of Jasper Fforde).  I do however read everyone's blogs that I follow, and you are all doing some fantastic stuff, and given me a lot of inspiration to get on with my own painting.  Hopefully (he says with no confidence whatsoever), I should have some more time to both post and comment now things are starting to settle down.

I seem to recall saying that before...

As always, comments and criticism welcome!

Dropping In 2 - Dry-brush-tacular

So in my previous post, I said I wanted to paint the Dropzone Commander UCM stuff to tabletop standard, so I could get a force up and running quickly.  Usually this plan never works, and I spend way too much time on each miniature because I'm never happy with them.

This time though I may have got it sorted...

I started off with the green, as it was the biggest block of colour.  I used a base of P3 Cryx Base, applied in a couple of thin coats, making sure I didn't obscure any detail.  I didn't bother to put a wash on the green as it was dark enough already, so I moved on to the highlights.  As you can see from the pictures, to get everything done quickly I dry-brushed nearly all the highlights, going in the order:

• Castellan Green
• Death World Forest
• P3 Thrall Flesh

...with lighter and lighter brush strokes as I moved through the colours.

With the green done, it was on to the grey.  I chose grey rather than a metallic colour because I think it works much better at this scale.  It's not intended to be non-metallic metal, just a "colour" rather than bare metal.  I base coated with Eshin Grey (GW had been missing a proper dark grey from their paint range for longer than I can remember), and washed with Nuln Oil, and once the wash was dry, I dry-brushed the highlights, first the old Codex Grey, and then Pallid Wych Flesh.

The last major part left were the tracks.  I used Dryad Bark for the base coat, and washed it again with Nuln Oil.  this was highlighted with Steel Legion Drab and Karak Stone, making sure I caught the bottom edges of the skirts to give the dirty/dusty look.

With 99% of the model done, I gave the top facing parts of the model a very, very light dry-brush of Pallid Wych Flesh, and picked out the lights on the "turret" base.  A quick spray of varnish and they were done!  They won't win any prizes, but they don't look bad for a quick and dirty paint job, and I'm particularly pleased with the way the muzzles of the guns look.

I've got two Falcon Gunships to do next, then it's time to buys some more...

As always, comments and criticism welcome!

Dropping in...

It's been a little quiet on the hobby front recently, with a promotion at work, DIY, WOMAD and life in general taking up a lot of time.

So just to let everyone know that I'm still around, here's a picture of the latest project:

They're Sabre tanks from Dropzone Commander, a little bit different to your usual tank design, but they went together really well, and they're ready to be primed tomorrow, and painted over the weekend.  I'm going to try for a quick, simple tabletop standard paint scheme, so I can get an army up and playable as soon as I can.

Yeah, we'll  see how THAT goes...  ;-)

Rule Britannia!

Over the last few weeks, when I've had the spare time (what's that again?), I've been working on my Kingdom of Britannia army for Dystopian Legions.  I did 3 of the troopers for my last Ancible article (if I can get permission, I'll repost the article here), so to keep the motivation up, I went for a few of the more interesting miniatures in the box.

First up is Major De'Ath (anyone who follows me on twitter would have seen this picture a few weeks back).  The Spartan studio paint job has him in different colours to the rest of the army (an all blue uniform with black webbing), but that didn't really work in my opinion, so I used the standard uniform colours, with some gold trim.

The coat is the most obvious different bit, to the standard trooper, and it's a simple process - a base coat of Steel Legion Drab, shaded with Army Painter Strong Tone, then highlighted with the base colour and Karak Stone.  I think I mixed in a little Rakarth Flesh for the final highlight.

Here he is with the 2 of the original 3 troopers I painted for the magazine:

Major De'Ath is named after a kind old gentleman who used to live next to my grandparents, who actually was a major in the army - a pretty good name I think...

Next up are two of the Sky Hussars:

The idea was to paint these quickly, but me being me, that never happened, and so they came out much neater than I thought they would.  I ditched the red jackets in favour of brown leather - these guys reminded me of "The Rocketeer" (a Disney movie I think) and "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow" so I wanted to capture that look.  I left the trousers blue, so there was still some continuity with the rest of the force.  The brown was pretty simple, a base of Rhinox Hide, washed with Agrax Earthshade, and highlighted with the base colour, then Mournfang Brown and then a little Deathclaw Brown mixed in.  The webbing and gloves were done using the same method as for Major De'Ath's coat.

I'm pretty sure anyone using these rocket packs would get their arse burned, but let's not worry about that.  The rocket packs are simple metal, with some different coloured washes applied in places to stop them looking bland. and the "flames" were a simple transition from very pale yellow, through orange to red and then black - I don't think it matters too much which paint you use, just trying to get the blending as smooth as possible is the important bit.

The smoke was an interesting experiment.  Initially I tried base coating with the old Adeptus Battlegrey, washing it with Nuln Oil, then highlighting with progressively lighter colours the closer I got the ground.  This didn't look right as the near black shadows didn't work with the white highlight at the bottom - it just didn't look like rocket exhaust smoke.  The solution was this:

• Top:  Vallejo German Field Grey highlighted with Adeptus Battlegrey
• 2nd Level:  Adeptus Battlegrey highlighted with Codex Grey
• 3rd Level:  Codex Grey highlighted with Astronomican Grey
• 4th Level:  Astronomican Grey high;ighted with Ceramite White

The base coats were roughly blended into one another, and the highlights were heavily dry brushed on, making sure there was some overlap.  I also gently dry brushed some of the base texture at the bottom of the smoke to give a hint of it dissipating.  I'm really happy with the way this has come out, it actually looks like smoke!

Just to finish off, I've been using GW Lahmian Medium quite a lot recently, and it's really helping with blending, I'm using it in addition to the water as a thinner (more medium than water most of the time).  Mixing a little in with the base coats and washes, it keeps everything nice and matte too - definitely recommended!  I'm going to be trying out Vallejo glaze medium to see how that compares too in the very near future.

My plan to only buy a number of miniatures equal to what I've painted beforehand is about to get blown out of the water, it looks like I'm getting into Drop Zone Commander...

As always, comments and criticism welcome!

The Toad of Truth and a Demonic Hoodie

A few odds and sods (literally) this post.  First up are the two demonic familiars from Heresy that I purchased  back at Salute.  I've named this ugly little fellow "Scrat":

He's painted to fit in with any evil/chaos/nurgle/necromantic warband I could think of, so intentionally dark and dirty.  I basecoated the whole model all at once, and then washed the whole lot with Agrax Earthshade - it's a lazy way of doing things, but it got the result I was looking for.  The flesh was a base of Rakarth Flesh, highlighted with the base coat and Pallid Wych Flesh - the Earthshade wash gives it a nice grey-brown tinge, like something just this side of the grave.  The yellow was my usual Tausept Ochre base, but with the darker wash, and highlighted with more and more Rakarth Flesh.  The green is the same old method with Castellan Green, Death World Forest and a little Karak Stone.  Here's Scrat with Garg as a size comparison:

He's maybe a little big to be a familiar, I like to think of him as an Evil Sorceror's lackey...

Next up is the "Toad of Truth":

Fans of the quite fantastic "Big Bang Theory" (a big favourite in the Walker household) may recognise this as a quote from Sheldon Cooper, which was the start of an in-joke between a few of us in our little gaming group, so once I saw this miniature at Salute, I had to get my hands on it!

Very similar colours to Scrat, the major difference was that I used Kislev Flesh rather than Karak Stone to highlight the green, with a lot of the flesh tone added for the mouth and throat.  I've seen "human" flesh tones used to effectively highlight Orc/Ork skin, so I thought I would give it a go here, and I'm really pleased with the effect. As an additional little detail, I gave the eyes a coat of gloss varnish to finish him off.

Both of these Heresy sculpts are lovely miniatures with HUGE amounts of character, they were loads of fun to paint, and I can't recommend them highly enough.  Also, they've got me back on track to get everything I bought from this years Salute painted before next year's Salute, AND with two miniatures down, it means I have space for two purchases...

As always, comments and criticism welcome!

Bones and a Beastman

In the last ever issue of the Ancible, I wrote an article reviewing a Reaper Bones miniature.  For those unaware, Reaper are reissuing large swathes of their range in white plastic, making them much cheaper and supposedly easier to work with.  In the article I expressed the concern that this new material was a softer plastic than we've come to expect from GW, Privateer or Mantic, and is prone to bending.  On a recent trip to London, I popped into Orc's Nest and they had a good range of the new Bones line - so I picked up an Ogre (one of their original, pre-kickstarter Bones figures), and Michelle the Human Ranger character.

At £2.50 each they seem good value, especially for the ogre - he's a little flexible but nothing much to worry about.  Pinned to a 40mm base, he'll be sturdy enough.  I guess Michelle is still good value for £2.50, but the arms and sword blades would have been enough to make me balk at buying her in plastic form had I known previously.

In the first picture you can see there's a little bend in the sword blade anyway, but as demonstrated inexpertly in the second picture, even a little pressure causes everything (sword blade and arm) to bend alarmingly.  I'm not convinced that the paint will bend as much without some cracking, but I'll put some paint on her this weekend and we'll see how it goes.  I'm tempted to replace the swords with some old Empire swords, but that won't stop the arms flexing.

The Bones kickstarter was really successful, hitting quite a few stretch goals - were people aware of what the miniatures were made of before they pledged?  This would have been an absolute deal breaker for me, and I'm a HUGE fan of Reaper miniatures...

In other news...

I've given myself a new rule - I'm not allowed to buy a new miniature until I've painted one I already have.  Therefore my lead/resin/plastic mountain doesn't actually increase, and it's some extra motivation to get stuff painted.  One of these completed miniatures is an old Marauder Beastman:

"Garg" is not the most dynamic of figures, and he's quite obviously a Marauder sculpt rather than a Citadel one.  He's on a round base, as he'll be another member of a Nurgle(ish) warband for whatever skirmish game I might end up playing. If this plan falls by the way side, it will be relatively easy to transfer him to a square base if needed.  

It's a quick and dirty paint job, with P3 Beast Hide, Stormvermin Fur, Dryad Bark and Deathworld Forest providing the majority of the base coat.  The metals were dry-brushed onto the Dryad Bark, splotched with Chestnut Ink, and then dry-brushed again.

The shield is another Marauder product (Marauder shields were the business back in the day), specifically an Undead shield, but I think it works well for a Nurgle Beastman.  The green was shaded with Agrax Earthshade, and then highlighted with the base coat, and then mixing in more and more Karak Stone.

The skin was washed with Seraphim Sepia, and then highlighted with the Beast Hide, and mixing in more and more Rakarth Flesh. Across the model I glazed on a little Druchii Violet in places to mix up the colour a little, and then gave the whole model a very, very light dry-brush of white, just to pick out the top edges.

His brother Harg (another Marauder sculpt) will be started soon, alongside the first two of my Salute haul.  I'm well behind on my plan to paint up everything I bought at Salute, so I need to pick up the pace...

As always, comments and criticism welcome!

Testing mobile blogger app...

Hi all, nothing much to report due to DIY commitments (laying laminate flooring is not as bad as I thought it would be). The purpose of this post is to test the mobile blogger app, and to let you know I'll be at Games Expo in Birmingham this weekend. A couple of the Ancible team are entering the X-Wing tournament, and I'm going to be trying out some new board games, and doing a little light shopping...

The attached (I hope) picture is of some Victorian British Bobbies I did for another Ancible team member quite a while back. They are for his "Gentleman's Club masquerading as Police" Empire of the Dead faction. The cobbled bases were made with green stuff, and worked really well for my first attempt at that sort of thing - the recipient was happy too, which is the main thing! The miniatures were a royal pain in the arse to paint and put me right off Foundry miniatures...

As always, comments are very welcome! !

Salute Post 2 (Delayed)

Well, it's been a while since Salute, and I completely forgot to post up a picture of my haul...

From the top, I got Ticket to Ride for Mrs Walker as part of her Birthday present.  It's a lovely, simple, yet elegant game that's loads of fun - if you've watched Wil Wheaton's TableTop show on YouTube, it's featured in an episode.  Very highly recommended (both the game and the show)!

The first row of blisters are all from Micro Art Studios.  Two packs of resin bases (which will appear in posts soon I hope), and Moist Von Lipwig and Adora Belle from their Discworld range.

The next row starts with Guillermo, Kaylee and some leather shields from Hasslefree.  Next is a rather stunning miniature from Origen Miniatures, and "Live by the Axe...Zombie Hunter" from Ax Faction.  I got to chat to these guys for a bit which was very cool - I find it more interesting to talk to the small companies, they seem to have more time for people.  You'll also see the Orange special Salute 2013 dice in that row too.

Along the bottom is the Salute 2013 model (which is rather nice actually), and then a couple of Demonic Familiars, Sebastien the Apprentice Mage, and a Wood Elf Sorceress from Heresy Miniatures.

Now, my cunning plan (OK, it's not cunning, and it's barely a plan...), is to get all the miniatures you see here painted before Salute 2014.  Now that doesn't seem much of a challenge, but as you may be aware, I am easily distracted by new things, and my haul from Salute 2012 is probably only 25% completed, so I have work to do, and focus to keep.

There are 11 miniatures in the picture, so I plan to do one a month (with one month off for good behaviour), interspersed among my other projects.

Wish me luck...

Salute 2013

I have to say I had an absolute blast at Salute this year, and I think it was a much better event than last year.  The stands were better laid out and I was able to see much more, talk to people, and it didn't feel quite so manic, even though there seemed to be more people this year.

Obviously the big highlight was the bloggers meet-up, where I finally got to meet the third corner of the Tale of Painters triangle, Mr Michael Awdry from 28mm Victorian Warfare, plus some new people I didn't know before (and new blogs to follow) and meeting up with some previously known reprobates (that'll be you Fran...and Mike...and Ray...).  It was really good to talk games, painting and blogging in general, comparing lead mountains and painting backlogs, and the joy of Oldhammer.

I'll give a run down of my purchases tomorrow (I spent quite a bit to be fair), but for now, here are a few demonstration/participation games that caught my eye.

Like a muppet, I didn't take note of who was running these games, so I'll have to take a look at the event programme when I get the chance and try and work out who was who, and what was what.  I do however know that this one was the Wolsung participation game, run by the lovely people at Micro Art Studio.  There was so much detail on what was quite a small board, it just blew me away.

I'm pretty sure this is terrain produced by Warmill, it's very "Starship Troopers" and would look good for games of Infinity.

These two were lovely Japanese themed boards - a few of our gaming group have Bushido warbands, so I may be tempted to give this style of architecture a go at some point (yeah I know, yet another potential project which will get listed and never see the light of day...).

Last but not least was this rather fantastic Dungeons and Dragons terrain piece.  There seemed to be unpainted D&D miniatures available to buy (I think they were called "Collectors" or something, I don't know, I haven't had much sleep the last week...), which I hadn't seen before.  The purple light was provided by LEDs, which was really effective.

Fran told me I had to post more (he gave me "the look" as he said it), so this is my attempt at posting more.  Hopefully tomorrow you'll see my addition to the lead mountain, with a few comments on retailers and stands and then I'll try posting something I've actually painted recently...

As always, comments welcome!

Going a bit "old-school"

Sometimes the old ones are the best.  That's a statement not usually applicable to jokes, but I really do think it applies to GW Chaos Miniatures (see the Realm of Chaos section here).  I do like some of the newer Chaos stuff, but it all seems too regular - a unit of the new Chaos Warriors is a regiment of almost identical looking, similarly armed soldiers that appear to be marching in unison - where's the "Chaos" in that?  Surely that look of the unit would be more suited to "Lawful Evil"?  Why are Daemons and Beastmen separate armies now?

Just needed to get that off my chest...

There are a few "Oldhammer" blogs (and a forum) out there at the moment, and I love both the idea and the nostalgia.  While I'll never have enough old miniatures to create a valid army, this time last year I thought it would be cool to create some warbands for games like Skulldred and Get The Girl, Kill The Baddies, using some lovely old miniatures, and maybe mixing in a few newer figures that "fit".  My first warband was a group of Barbarians, but I got bogged down with other projects, and never did much more.  The bug bit again, Easter came around, and I spotted this miniature sat around in a box:

He had a ropey old paint job that was probably 20 years old, so I stripped him and started again.  It's a quick paint job, so it has a few rough edges, but I'm pleased with the result.  The "old-school" (I don't like the term old-school very much, but I couldn't think of anything else, and it's at least better than "retro") in the title should give you an idea of the look I was going for, and although the green is possibly a little too jade green for Nurgle, I think it works.  It's a base coat of Caliban Green, washed with Agrax Earthshade, then highlighted with the green and then mixing in a bit of Steel Legion Drab, and then some Rakarth Flesh to finish up.

The leather bits are a base coat of Rhinox Hide, again washed with Agrax Earthshade, and then highlighted with Rhinox Hide and then mixing in more and more Snakebite Leather.  The axe handle is the same, but with Dryad Bark and Steel Legion Drab instead.  The metallic parts are simply Army Painter Gun Metal base, washed with Nuln Oil, Chestnut Ink and a little watered down Dryad Bark.  This was then highlighted with the Gun Metal and Chainmail, with a combination of blending and dry-brushing.

The shield is my favourite bit of the model.  I've never really done a lot of freehand work, so this was a little trial and error.  I tried to combine a lot of Orlygg's tutorial here with a bit of Realm of Chaos/John Blanche style.  It's possibly a little too "regular" (it should have been a little more "swirly"), and the eyes aren't great, but I'm really pleased with it.

So with Krull N'Garth completed, I've been digging out other old miniatures to fit in to the "Soul Hunters" warband.  I have a Sorcerer (a hooded chap with a scythe), a couple of old Marauder beastmen and a couple of old armoured zombies that will make "nice" plague victims.  One thing missing so far is toadstools,  a must-have in all old Warhamme,r so I will get the greenstuff out and get creating them.

How this will all work out as a warband I have no idea, or even if I'll ever get to play with them, but  painting them will be a whole lot of fun.  :-) 

In other news, the Ancible team had a grand old time at Firestorm Games in Cardiff, playing Star Wars X-Wing, shopping and hurling abuse at one another.  My win record in X-Wing has dropped to 25%, which is probably a lot better than most other games I've played, but even in my losses we've had some fantastic games.

It was also really great to meet up with Jeff from Pirate Viking Painting, who I haven't seen for a few years, and just ramble on about life, painting and gaming for a while.  :-)

As always, comments and criticism welcome!

Ancible Issue 20

Hi all, Ancible Issue 20 is now out...

Download Link

The download will now cost you £1, but I hope you will think it's worth it.  I have a couple of articles this issue, a review of one of Reaper's "Bones" range, and Watching Paint Dry is a quick and dirty guide to painting Kingdom of Britannia soldiers from Dystopian Legions.

In other news, we're getting into Star Wars X-Wing (like everyone else it seems).  Currently our group has 2 starter sets, a Millennium Falcon, and a Slave 1 - which are enough for 100 point games.  I hopefully should be getting a starter set this weekend, so we can vary the forces quite a bit.  I REALLY like the rules, especially the movement dials, and the funky dice seem to work really well too.  It's a really nice fast-paced game and it's got a proper Star Wars vibe about it, so it's loads of fun.

I'm a little disappointed that the miniatures are pre-painted, but they are done really well for pre-painted stuff, and Si has worked some serious magic on the engines of Slave 1 and Millennium Falcon, so they look superb.  

If any of you are in Cardiff on Saturday a few of us will be at Firestorm Games having a few games (40K and X-Wing probably).

I ATEN'T DED

Yep, I am alive, just about, and still painting!  As Terry Pratchett fans may have worked out by the post title, I got my hands on one of the fantastic Discworld sculpts from Micro Art Studios, and in particular, Granny Weatherwax:

The sculpting on this miniature is fantastic, and  is very true to the (later) art work from the books (Calendars, Maps, Graphic Novels, etc).  I've been having some issues with Testor's Dullcote recently so she's a little shinier than I had hoped for - I'm seriously considering going back to the trusty Humbrol stuff, as that seems to work better than anything else.  

The colours are all my standard way of doing things recently, so I won't bore you and repeat the details.

The face is fantastic (the photography isn't) and was a real joy to paint.  I love it when the faces on models have so much detail, and the eyes are so nicely defined.

Her trademark boots are another nice touch (the shine actually works here), as are the hairpins.  All in all she's a really nice model, with all the cool details that make Granny, well, Granny.

In other news, alongside a few other ongoing projects and my next Ancible article, I've started on my next Reaper model:

Not made a huge amount of progress yet, but I'm really pleased with the head and cowl - again, it's nice to have well defined eyes to paint.

Gaming wise, I've had a go at Warlord's Bolt Action (28mm World War 2 for those who haven't seen it), which so far has proven to be a fun ruleset, quick to learn and get to grips with.  If I can do a bit of clearing of my ongoing projects, I might be tempted to get some British Paratroopers...

As always, comments and criticism welcome!