Warhammer 40k - Ork Boy (Nick)

Yes, it finally happened, I managed to move something from the half finished to the done pile... and it's only taken me 16 1/2 months since the last one!

What a crazy year it's been and this certainly isn't what I expected to be my first and, so far, only finished miniature to show for it - an Ork boy from Games Workshop.

The inspiration to dig out my 40k Orks came with the release of the latest edition of the 40k rules and the new narrative 'Crusade' style of gaming, which instinctively appealed to both myself and Carl and the way we like to play (when we can once more that is).
I know one of Carl's ongoing 40k armies are old skool 80-90's Orks, which I have quite a few of myself, but I also have a good handful of the newer style Orks even though these too are about 10 years old (but never got beyond a few being built).

With this in mind we decided to have an inter-clan Ork rivalry as the basis for our Crusade campaign, or more specifically as both of us favour the same Bad Moons clan, an 'old' Warboss vs 'new' Warboss power struggle and the 'War of da Teef' was born (Orks use teeth as currency, and Bad Moons are known to grow theirs quicker than other Orks).

As I was effectively starting this project from scratch (even though I already have just enough figures to build the required force), I decided it was an ideal opportunity to upgrade the boyz with the new, larger 32mm round bases and keep all the 25mm ones for something at a later date - might as well bring them up to date while I'm at it?
It was also an ideal opportunity to experiment with Games Workshop's 'Contrast Paints', something which I've been wanting to try and bought into very soon after 'lockdown' came into effect earlier this year.

I started with a brown Zenithal highlight prime using Badger Stynylrez 'Ebony Flesh' primer followed by Vallejo 'Skeleton Bone' surface primer at a 45° angle, an idea I had picked up from a suggestion in one of the excellent Little Wars TV YouTube videos - the idea being that it creates added depth to the 'contrast' effect but with a warmer colour than a standard black/white Zenithal prime (especially important for the yellow colour scheme) but also muting the 'bubblegum' finish often seen with the Contrast paints over their standard base coat.

This guy is 90% Contrast Paints over the Zenithal prime with just the metal being in gunmetal metallic and Strong Tone wash, and the yellow armour receiving a quick Skeleton Bone highlight and Golden Yellow glaze to bring the brown/yellow of the Nazdreg Yellow contrast paint back up to a warmer shade I was happy with - before adding some scratches and chipping, an extra level of detailing for what is otherwise is supposed to be quick paint job but something I felt it needed and quite a focal point of the model.

I also decided to try out my new portable LED Lightbox from Green Stuff World which worked very well I think, and certainly provided plenty of light just where it was needed... I didn't even require my usual mini tripod either.

So one down and plenty more to go, I certainly won't be completing a figure per day this year (much like the previous attempts then!) but hopefully I can get a few more table-ready before 2020 thankfully draws to a close - several are quite close already.

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!

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!

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?

Beyond the Gates of Antares - Plastic Ghar (Nick)

A new year and already some new toys to show you that I didn't manage to blog last year... welcome to 2016, I think it's going to be a good one :)

As promised in my last post, these are the plastic Ghar battlesuits from the recently released starter set 'Strike Vector One - The Xilos Horizon' for Beyond the Gates of Antares from Warlord Games:

I managed to acquire these as pre-production sprues at the Derby show after I had finished demoing the game all weekend, so that I could carry on demoing the contents of the new starter set without having to borrow anything from the guys at Warlord.

These are the six battlesuits that come in the starter set (3x Battle Suit, 3x Assault Suit) and were the first Ghar models to be released... add these to all the plastic Concord shown in the my last post and you can see you get quite a lot of miniatures for your money in the starter set, as well as all the other bits that you need to start playing.


These took considerably longer to paint than the Concord, but a mixture of spray can malfunction, no specific deadline and less confidence in what the finished paint job would look like all contributed... however I'm pleased with the result and again would like to go back and add more detail, mainly the 'plasma' effect which should end up quite strong on these as the battlesuits are powered by rather unstable plasma reactors - hence the many areas of turquoise which is my chosen colour for plasma.

Unfortunately I have been less productive since the rush to get these Antares models painted, but have been working on several different projects - hopefully something will actually get finished soon so I can update the blog again... this time with something of a more historical bent!

Beyond the Gates of Antares - Plastic Concord (Nick)

So it's been far too long since that last post, and Carl still hasn't made it here it seems! (some excuse about publishing his own skirmish game 'Open Combat'  as a hardback book).

I left you with promises of much more stuff to come from that Bank Holiday weekend back in May... well various distractions meant a lot of starts but nothing more to show as finished projects, and to be honest, right now I can't even remember what it was I was working on except the start of my jungle terrain which I showed on our sister blog Tale of 2 Gamers.

So without further ado, here is what I have been up most recently...

These are plastic Concord from the just released starter set 'Strike Vector One - The Xilos Horizon' for Beyond the Gates of Antares from Warlord Games:

I actually painted these for the Derby World Wargames show in October, but wasn't allowed to post straight away as they weren't released. - in fact I painted them in just 13hrs from spray hitting bare plastic to how you see them now as they only arrived a few days before they were needed... quite a feat for me, and way more than I've painted for several years now.

I want to go back and add some markings to the unit leaders and special weapons (Plasma Lance) to make them easier to pick out on the table top as well as improving the 'plasma' effects... but they'll certainly do for now.

You get ALL of these (with a few options) in the starter set, as well as their opponents the Ghar which I will feature in my next post - there is a lot of stuff in the box, it's stuffed full of everything needed to play including the full hardback rulebook!

The 'orange' was a bit of a happy accident as I had Games Workshop's 'Fuegan Orange' ink wash on my desk and really wanted to use it, but I actually really quite like the result and will probably expand the army into a bigger force as an example of what to add to the contents of the starter set - but also to give me something very quickly that I can use in club games and possibly tournaments as and when they might happen.

I also knew black and ice blue would work really well with it, so I didn't have to spend valuable time working out a colour scheme I was just able to get my head down and paint!

That's all for this time, but it shouldn't be long until my next post, as the Ghar are already painted for my demo games and ready to blog.