Skarrifaction... Cryx Style.

My modelling surge continues. This time its my second 'caster, pSkarre.

I was looking forward to painting this model since I started back with mark 2. Mainly because I saw the studio version and wished I was that good. 

It was the face that really captured the look for me, which I knew I had to do my best to match. When I came to paint her, I started with the face, knowing that if I did a good job, it'd spur me on to do a good job with the rest of the model. 

I got as far as almost the last highlight and realised I'd make a mess of the model I was looking forward to most... one second base coat later and I started the thing again. The pictures here are of the second try. 

OK, so it's no PPS fluffy, but I'm kinda proud of it. I've never painted in enough detail to paint a model's make-up before, so that's a first for me. 

What I took from the experience, is that when painting character models, where you only get one shot, sometimes its much better to have two. 

One of the things I like about painting Warmachine, is that I can keep a consistent army colour, but it seems easy enough to use different colours on specific models and they still fit in. 

On skarre's cloak here, I wanted to get across the sea faring aspect, in that, she's a pirate. I think the blue tone I've hit does well for the sea theme. I probably wont use it again, but I think she'll still fit in with the purple of the rest of the army. 

Anyway, that's plenty of rambling. 

Gonders

More Warmachine, The Lord Exhumator, Croe, and The Glamorous Assistant!

I think I've got my painting head back on for the start of 2012, thankfully. I'm starting to settle back in to the privateer worlds and games too, I've given the mark 2 practise games some hammer recently. 

Based almost entirely on the model, I bought my first none starter box caster for the cryx army, and I'm determined to learn how to use him, despite several defeats so far. 

So first up, it's Lord Exhumator Scaverous. 

I tried The Osl method from the Cryx Faction book on his face, but I'm not overly pleased with the results to be honest. I think I'll stick to my method in future, a la the slayer from a couple of posts back. 

Playing games with this guy has been hard so far. I suffered 7 or 8 crushing defeats in a row with him over the last 3 weeks or so, but I managed to claw back a win a couple of days ago. This has boosted my confidence enough to carry on running him, at least for a while longer. 

After a few games running him with Black ogrun and a handful of 'jacks, I realised to get anything out of Scaverous I need units with some serious synergy to support the big guy. After scouring the lists, I hit on the idea of taking Croe's Cutthroats, as I can use telekinesis to get those back strikes Croe's gang love so much. Also, a nice change from painting purple.

Finally for today, the guy no 'caster should be without, a Scarlock thrall. Admittedly, I painted him in a hurry to get him ready for a game a couple of weeks back. If nothing else, the soul looks good!

There's more coming soon, Including a review of the new gaming club I've started to attend, and the second part of throgmorton and swift's!

Gonders

Cryxian Re-enforcements, Reaper Helljack and Black Ogrun

Now Christmas is out of the way I've finally found sometime to crack on with some modelling and painting for the cryx army I'm trying to build.

So far, I'd just painted the starter battle force box, but I've since ordered a handful of stuff to get me started on an army proper. I'm still very much trying to get my head around the mark 2 rules, so I've just started by browsing battle college and taking what caught my eye, that I hadn't taken in my previous cryx army a few years ago.

So to start with, I bought a new heavy, just to give me options. I've gone with a reaper because i wanted to see how useful it is with it's upgraded drag rules from mark 1. So far its only been as disappointing as it was the first time, but i have time to work on that.

To carry on the theme of dragging folk around, I bought a black ogrun boarding party. I figure if I can get a decent amount of board control between the two it might be able to open up some options for assassination runs and so forth.

Even though they look like monkeys, these models were great fun to paint. I also only realised warmachine units come in 'model A, B, C...' to late... 

In other news, I've found a couple of local gaming nights that I plan on starting to attend, so hopefully I can get some games in and train my mind to play the game again. The first meeting I'm going to is next week so I'll report my results in my next blog! 

Til then

Gonders

Warmachine Terrain: Throgmorton and Swift's, 'jack repairs while you wait!

So these last couple of weeks while I've been waiting for some more Cryx to turn up, I 've been planing and have started building some terrain to play Warmachine over.

I want to make a small company holdings, somewhere in the countryside, though I'm not sure where. I think it's going to be a labour 'jack repair shop and surrounding area. perfect place to skirmish over. so I've started the first of two or three buildings that will make up the property. Firstly, the living area/office building:

Just built from foam board, balsa and my cryx starter box, box :-P Not the highest quality I know, but hopefully it'll be game able. Just a test to see how difficult it is to make buildings.

After this, I knocked together some fences and a gateway for linear obstacles.

The fences are going to get plasticard metal sheeting over the top half of the front and some rivets for extra steam punk.

 Next is the framework to the workshop building. I'm aware of just making 3 big line of sight blocking chunks of terrain, so the workshop is going to have a wide open double door at each side to stop that effect. It will also have a removable roof so models will be able to get placed in and out easy enough. This will probably mean a degree of interior detail too.

This is all so far. Hopefully more to follow!

Gonders

The Nightmare Empire, Warmachine Cryx.

New project number 3... So it appears I just can't settle into a new painting project. Everything I start ends 3 models in and I've just not clicked with anything recently.

So this is, yet again, the start of something, probably quite small(I am going to get my copy of skyrim later today, after all), a cryx army for warmachine.

As a gaming group, we've not played warmachine for quite awhile. We used to play mark 1 when it was getting big a couple of years back, around escalation to superiority era, and we enjoyed it a lot. I was a cryx player then and it appears its dyed in the wool, I'm getting back to it. since then I've sold my army so, I'll just have to rebuild it now.

Over the last couple of weeks this little Deathripper has been painted and stripped about 6 times, as I've struggled to find a colour scheme for them. I feel with cryx you kind of have your hands tied a little bit with having to have green necrotite furnaces, so I think your colours have to match that a little.

So purple is the answer. I've painted this Deneghra much better than I did my last one, who looked a bit bit like a lady of the night... 

 
I've also has a bit of a experiment with this whole 'OSL' that everyone is on about now. My first attempt, but i think it works a bit.

Well, that's as far as I've got so far. I'll really try my best to keep it going this time, I promise!

Gonders

Warning! Hobby Stamina: Know your limits!

I'm sat here now, in front of my PC, on a night I had specifically put aside for painting, with my current project sat on my other desk, the paint mixture going dry. I had vowed to myself I was going to make progress tonight, yet I'm not doing.

The reason for this? My painting stamina has given up on me. I've realised, and I don't think i can be the only one, that my body can only take so much painting in one night. If this is an amount of time, or a certain amount of painting done, I don't yet know.

Perhaps how much you take depends on factors, such as tiredness, will to finish the model, etc etc. This evening I've been painting this wave serpent for my upcoming Eldar army:

This is exactly how the thing is still sat, the layer of highlighting, half finished(you'll notice the closer faring, nor the turret or the shield projectors are as light) in the other room. Before I put it down, my highlights were getting careless, fatter, not as neat, generally all over the place, as I realised I'd had enough.

I understand how much you can take in a sitting will vary from person to person(I know some peoples Hobby stamina runs out when their finger is removed from the spray can button), but treat this as a warning! Unless you want fat highlights on your curly tanks,

KNOW YOUR LIMITS!! 

Gonders

Dire Avengers. I could get used to this.

I've made it to the second set of models for my theorised Eldar army. An order with my first 500 points turned up Saturday so I got straight into it to kick start the project.

 The army i have planned is light on infantry. Mainly as it was always where i came unstuck painting several failed eldar armies in the past. So I'm going to paint infantry, then reward myself with a vehicle, or similar, and hope to keep motivated that way.

I'm fairly happy with how these guys turned out. Though they did take a long time to get like this. I discovered painting eldar eyes is a nightmare of a task. 

Also, my photography skills are found somewhat wanting I realise. I'll try my best to correct this!

Til next time,

Gonders