Warhammer Age of Sigmar - Knight-Incantor (Nick)

Something completely different from my painting station this time! ...something Games Workshop ...something Warhammer!!

Yes, I succumbed to the new version of Warhammer Age of Sigmar and although I was headed down the brand new Nighthaunt (ghosts and gheists) route as is my won't with all things undead in fantasy gaming my first finished mini is actually a Stormcast Eternal from the newly unveiled Sacrosanct Chamber (wizards and other magically attuned sorts).

This chap comes free with the £5 'Getting Started with Warhammer Age of Sigmar' magazine which is a really good deal tbh - or should that be you get a free magazine with a £5 miniature? either way it's a fantastic looking miniature and would normally be £15-20 on his own!

Painting wise the main feature was an experiment using my airbrush for the armour, starting from black primer I used Vallejo Air Gunmetal, Steel and Chrome for zenithal highlights before over spraying with Badger's Ghost Tint Brown.  To be fair I was originally thinking of  much darker, bronze colour but I'm happy enough with the final red copper effect and just need to try for more definition next time.

Amazingly this is also a push-fit miniature, and I defy anyone to tell where the joins are as the engineering is truly remarkable (although I have glued mine as I would for any model).

I always said I would never even consider using Stormcast, being as they first seemed, 40k Terminators dumped in the fantasy world of Warhammer just to sell more of that genre by making it a mirror of the 40k universe.

But things have come along way in the last 3 years though, and this sculpt really captivated my imagination plus I much prefer it to the female one in the Soul Wars starter set - this is looking like the start of a very slippery slope and a return to all things GW!!

It's a long time since I painted anything like this and I had to relearn a style I used to be very familiar with but much less so in recent years.  I certainly don't find it as easy as I did in my youth, but I definitely enjoyed it and it made for a complete change - even if my patience for a finished result isn't quite the saint like quality I used to have!

Beyond the Gates of Antares - NuHu (Nick)

Another small update from me, this time back to Antares again and a NuHu leader and her Nano drone for my C3 Concord army as seen previously.

Seeing as these have been 80% finished for over 2 years now, I though it was about time I filled in the details and finished them off!

Quite a simple scheme to match my C3 'Tango Division', but with a little more attention as befits her status without going too mad.

The Nuhu herself, directing proceedings:

    

...and her attendant Nano drone:

                                    

Also on the bench is my C3M4 Combat drone for the Concord, yet another model that has been 'nearly finished for over 2 years... hopefully that will be along soon, but in the meantime this brings the year's tally crawling up to 49 minis complete and off the 'lead mountain' even though only 15 of them are mine to keep!

Bolt Action - US winter (Nick)

Just a quick update for my Bolt Action US winter army, this time a 'spotter' to go with the M2A1 105mm Howitzer I did last year.

This guy is actually a crewman from the M1 57mm anti-tank gun by Warlord Games which I have yet to build, but as I have two of them for the AT Platoon I'm doing it will be good to mix them up a bit and so I 'borrowed' this one as he's just what I needed!

He has been sat prepped and primed on my workbench (along with half a veteran squad) since I finished the howitzer so it really is time I got some paint slapped on, hopefully the veterans might follow shortly but there are several other 'oddments' on the go as well.

Lion Rampant - bidowers (Nick)

Ah, so the Dark Ages miniatures mentioned at the close of my last post slipped by the wayside for one reason or another and Plan B was put into action for the games at Salute - thanks to Carl for some last minute beg & borrow on that one! (don't worry they are on their way, just not finished... yet!)

Instead I finally finished my first proper unit for Lion Rampant, well two units really as they will mostly be used as bidowers which are taken in units of six.

These guys have been waiting something ridiculous like two years for the bases to get done, and although I desperately want to go back and add highlights and more detail in the faces, I guess it's better to finish some more units to this standard first!

The miniatures are all medieval slingers from Curteys Miniatures, primed with various green and brown sprays from Army Painter, Plastic Soldier Company and even and old can of Russian Green from Miniature Paints for the main tunic colours.  Then matching colours and a few alternative 'spot' colours were used throughout to hopefully create a muted, rag-tag but cohesive appearance.

If you look carefully you might notice the odd instance of a brighter green and yellow, these are my chosen livery colours which you should seen popping up in every unit.

After picking out the hands and faces with Dwarf Flesh, a liberal wash of Vallejo's Sepia Shade 'Dipping Formula' was applied and that was it apart from the long awaited basing.

The bases themselves are deliberately fussy to convey the impression of scrub and undergrowth were these skirmishing troops are most likely to be found, taking advantage of whatever cover and broken ground they can find.

Even though I only had to finish the bases on these 12 (and I may come back to them later), I'm calling them done for now which bumps my yearly total up to 46 completed so far... not that many as we are now into May, but at least I get to keep these ones and it all counts as off the lead mountain!

EXTERMINATE! ...Dr Who Daleks & Cybermen (Nick)

Having finally picked up a paint brush for the first time in over 4 months!!  I'm following Carl's new mantra of posting any easy wins that I can count as 'finished' and no longer on the painting pile.
...whether I manage 365 minis in 365 days remains to be seen, but anything is progress so I won't worry about it too much.

This time I've got the miniatures from the Warlord Games boxed game EXTERMINATE! The Miniatures Game for Doctor Who, featuring those classic enemies and monsters/bad guys - Daleks and Cybermen.

Not really my miniatures as such, these are painted to be used for demo games but they are still off my pile of WIP miniatures so one of those 'easy wins'.

The miniatures are well detailed and crisply moulded and designed to be a good push-fit, although I glued them to be sure.
I tried something a bit different with these and primed them with Army Painter 'Anti-shine' straight over the pre-coloured gold (Daleks) and silver (Cybermen) plastic!  Although nominally a clear matt varnish, like all matt varnishes it has a slight grainy texture which would then hold the washes to follow and show the original colour underneath without any need to use a coloured primer or basecoat.

Here they all are in that 'primed' state:

After the 'primer' and ink wash, it was a simple case of a few highlights before adding details, and they painted up really well - all I needed to do before returning them to Warlord was a few details I'd missed on the Daleks and finish the bases properly on the Cybermen - this was another departure from what I'm used to as I tried the 'Agrellan Earth' texture paint from Games Workshop to create a cracked earth finish similar to the quarry side of the 2-sided battle mat included in the game - after a reddish wash, quick drybrush and sparing application of suitable tufts I have to say I really like the end result!



So with those cheeky little Cybermen Transmats in there that's 34 miniatures finished and off the 'Lead' mountain for 2018, although I'm not sure yet what will be next ...if nothing else I've got some Dark Ages minis needed in time for Salute in just 5 weeks!

Kobolds from the underworld

I've had a bit of a dry spell in February with regards to actually finishing things off. I've got several things nearing completion including terrain pieces, so I still might get a few extra bits finished before the month is out.

I did manage to get some Kobolds completed from a white primed starting point. The models are from Reaper Miniatures. They're great little models and I've enjoyed painting them so much I'm going to add to them and buy a few more to increase the size of the group. I'll be playing Open Combat with them but as the force grows, which will add further options in Open Combat, I can see myself creating a little denizens of the underworld force for Dragon Rampant too.

Table for two...

This post is really a bit of a follow on to the previous mobile plants as I'd got the models shown here on the go at the same time.

First up is a painted MDF table from Second Thunder (my own range in support of Sword Masters in Open Combat).

The initial bare MDF was given a coat of PVA all over to seal it before a thin coat of Screaming Skull (also all over) to act as a base for the washes on top. I gave it a bit of a battered look and feel with washes dribbed and drabbed on along with watered down Screaming Skull from GWs paint range to flick in scratches and scuffs.

Next up are a couple of Reaper Bones Miniatures of scorpions. They haven't photographed very well but to be fair there's not much to them. Just a couple of gribblies to be wary of on any fantasy gaming tabletop.

Mobile plants!

Managed to get three models by Ramshackle done this week. These are part of their plant range that came out several years ago.

I'll be using them as objectives in various games including Open Combat and Malifaux.

May also use them as a magically imbued elemental creatures for magic users too. :)

Two Lions off the lead mountain...

Managed to get two more models off the lead mountain at the weekend.

These two wargames foundry models had been sitting primed waiting for me to paint them for ages. They were very quick to do in successive layers of washes over the course of minutes grabbed here and there over the weekend.

They'll be seeing use in various games involving gladiators including Open Combat.

First batch of completed miniatures for 2018

I've managed to finally finish off a few models that have been hanging around in the work in progress queue for ages.

The first batch is an Irish wolfhound unit for Saga (and other games set in the Dark Ages). There's a champion dude too. The wolfhounds are Warlord Games while the lone champion is from Footsore. These models only needed their bases finishing off and three of them were already done so a easy job to finish.

The second batch is five old 40k Orks from the first edition of the game. These guys are part of of much bigger unit in progress. They were already painted but I added a few washes to help them blend in with models i'll be adding to the collection as I use washes on all models now. The bases needed sorting as they'd been sat for literally years as the nearly finished stage.

So that's 11 models off my lead mountain finally sorted. :)

Beyond the Gate of Antares - Starter Set (Nick)

Well seeing as Carl has finally found his way here, I thought it was time I reactivated my own account ...seems I need to fix some missing images if nothing else!

Anyway here is a post I started ages ago but never published, showing the completed contents of the 'The Xilos Horizon' starter box for Beyond the Gates of Antares all together.

...here they are battling over some previously blogged terrain and the pre-release mdf 'Transmat Station' by Sarissa Precision which was kindly donated to me already painted for running demo games:

Next we have the half-size carry case from KR Multicase, specifically chosen for me to carry the complete starter set and a little room to spare:

The templates sit neatly on top until I'm ready to punch them out, as they're not needed for intro games:

Top layer holding all four squads of Concord C3 Strike Troops:

The 2nd layer holding all the 'spotter' drones and the previously blogged 'rogue drones' objectives and polyhedral dice:

The bottom layer with both squads of Ghar, the Concord C3D1 Light Support drones, d10s' Pin Markers and Order Dice:

A few more shots showing it all neatly packed away, ready for travelling to the next game!

That's all from me for now, so not really anything new (bit of a cheat post really) but I also have lots of 'nearly' finished units and models so maybe, just maybe, I'll be able to follow Carl with some new stuff of my own to show?

Is this thing on?

Well it's been literally years since I posted here. Thought, I'd give it another go and having discovered I still have the login details and this place is still alive we'll see how many months I last this time.

Happy new year to you all!

This year I'm attempting to complete 365 minis in 365 days. I'm using the word 'complete' as I have absolutely loads of Work in Progress (WiP) so there's quite a few easy wins in amongst my collection.

Hopefully I'll get to play some games too :)

Next post from me will be my first efforts towards the 365 along with a bit more details of how I'll be approaching the challenge.