Return to normality

Thank the gods that’s over!

I love spending time with friends and family over Christmas but as far as I’m concerned the best bit is waking up the morning after knowing that I have two weeks of no commitments other than those I choose to make myself.

Right now I’m relaxing in the spare room slowly assembling the Dark Eldar Scourges my Beloved got me for Christmas, if I’m industrious enough I might even have them ready for next week’s Miniature Monday.

I hope everyone’s holidays will be as relaxing and (hopefully) productive as mine.

Wedding Spawn

For this week’s Miniature Monday submission I thought I’d do something a bit different and show you a couple of models I painted especially for my own wedding eighteen months ago.

When my wife and I were planning our wedding we wanted to make it as unique to us as possible. Since my wife is a professional graphic artist/novelist she designed the lion’s share of the material from the splendidly creepy invitations to the designs on the candleholders. I wanted to contribute in some meaningful way and since I had recently returned to the hobby I volunteered to paint a couple of miniatures to be used as Wedding Cake toppers.

My initial plan was to be lazy and use a Bretonian Damsel and an Imperial Guardsman but one evening as I was flicking through Codex Chaos Marines my beloved started giggling at a photo of two Chaos Spawn and I knew they’d be perfect. Not only that but luckily enough my wife thought this was a superb idea, these are the results:

I tired to include elements of both us in our individual spawn. My one has a small kilt and while my hairline isn’t that bad it’s certainly getting that way! Likewise I made a small version of my wife’s hat out of Green Stuff and netting and coloured the rear tentacles to match what her hair colour was when we first met. Also both models sport small wedding rings on their talons. Also, as a comparison, here’s what we actually looked like.

The Fury of Menasa

After almost four months of building and painting I present to you the pride of the 57th Menasan Armoured Infantry, the Mars-Pattern Baneblade Fury of Menasa.

Hobby Points

CaitoGalenus has posted a remarkable notion on his blog concerning how us wargamers can, in his words, get away with spending time and money on our hobby guilt-free.

You can read about his wonderful idea here.

I for one am definitely a convert.  On an unrelated note I’ll just go and give the wife a spontaneous foot massage, that Macharius isn’t going to buy itself!

Happy Accidents

One of the things I really love about the hobby is the occasional random discovery one makes completely by accident. A good example is my ever growing collection of models I’ve used to test colour schemes, generally I’m happy with most of the results produced but sometimes such results get used in some very unexpected ways.

A couple of years ago I bought a Valkyrie for my Imperial Guard, while I painted this in the colour scheme of the 57^th Menasans I decided to be true to the fluff and paint the four crew in different colours to represent the fact they belonged to a branch of the Imperial Navy. At this point however painter’s block hit, while I knew I wanted to keep the two tone aesthetic of the Menasans I had to make them distinct.

Cue a quick trip to my local hobby store and the purchase of a set of five basic plastic Cadians. I knew I wanted either a grey or a blue tone for my crew so I very roughly painted these.

(L-R) Mordian Blue & Smurf Blue with Badab Black wash. MB & SB with Devlan Mud wash. Fortress Grey and Codex Grey with BB wash. FG and CG with Devlan Mud wash.

In the end I went with the blue and Badab Black wash but you really can’t tell the difference between that and the one washed with Devlan Mud, something to remember for the future.

This left me with one remaining model, since I’d recently bought a box of foundation paints I decided to pick two colours I thought would go well together and see what happened and this was the result.

"I'm a Lonely Soldier!"

After this model was completed I put it on a shelf and forgot all about it. That is until I started my Dark Eldar army six months later.

At the time the new codex was still just a rumour of a rumour, indeed it would be a further eleven months until its release. As such there was little in the way of cheap models with which to test my ideas for Warrior and Wych colour schemes. In the end I decided to use the cheap set of four Craftworld Eldar Guardians and produced the following four options.

While the one on the far left ended up being the basis for my Kabalite Warriors I wasn’t completely sold on any of the others for use by my Wyches. After a few days of unproductive cerebral meandering I happened to glance at the random red and purple guardsman I’d painted on a whim and realised that its scheme was perfect! As you can see below, the scheme survived the transition almost without change.

I often wonder what other random afterthoughts of mine will one day turn into something productive. Can’t wait to find out!

Recent Dark Eldar Additions

Since I haven’t shown any of my Dark Eldar yet on the blog, I thought I post some pictures of my recently completed models.

I picked up the old metal female Archon shortly before the new codex came out.  While I was certain that there would be a far superior model imminent I found this one so characterfull that it had to have a place in my army.

While I’m still working on some old metal Wyches I got for my 30th birthday over 18 months ago, I’ve recently finished my first plastic squad.  Currently I’m trying to paint the older models to fit in with the new ones.

Next week I hope to show off my first superheavy tank and, maybe, some more Dark Eldar models.

A new wargaming blog

Yorkwargamer has started a new blog.  Please send him some love by checking it out here.

Building the ruins of the future

When I first started gaming our terrain was made out of whatever we could find. Hedges were made out of pan scourers, bunkers were cola bottle ends and large buildings were usually converted shoeboxes. It was a more innocent time, a time when – if you wished – you could arm your Space Marines with bows and arrows and Zoats roamed freely across the plains.

I remember when the Necromunda boxed set heralded the arrival of the plastic bulkhead / card floor design which brought our games to quite literally higher levels. It was therefore quite a shock to the system when I returned to wargaming and found the wealth of new plastic kits available.

As I was rebuilding my Imperial Guard into a viable army I decided to invest in a few of GW’s 40K buildings. Since my modelling and painting abilities were still in the process of waking from their long slumber I elected to construct the buildings as shown on their boxes and paint them with a simple black undercoat and basic Boltgun Metal drybrush.

This approach served me well for a year or so but as time went on I grew somewhat dissatisfied and even a bit embarrassed at the rather rudimentary job I had done. With this in mind about a year ago I decided to give them a makeover. The buildings were glued to balsawood bases which I then detailed with sand, slate and various kit parts; I then set to work repainting them to a far better standard. Here are the results.

Basilica Administratum

This was the first one I completed; I kept the scheme fairly simple, a Boltgun Metal drybrush for the walls with Shining Gold painted onto the raised details. After it was finished I washed it in Gryphonne Sepia to give it a corroded look.

Sanctum Imperialis

I wanted to give this a very gold look so after drybrushing the walls in Boltgun metal and washing in Badab Black I applied some Chainmail to the statues before washing them in Asurmen Blue. The raised section of the base was made by building a hill out of modelling putty then pressing a floor piece into the top before it set.

Manufactorum

This was the most complex conversion out of the three. I wanted to create an improvised strong point that had been hastily set up in the middle of a city war zone, something that’s ideal to represent the Command Centre Stratagem in Cities of Death.

I took spare Imperial Guard ‘Dozer Blades and other scrap metal looking parts and set to work making them look beaten and worn. If you look closely you’ll see that I’ve placed a Sentinel’s front armour plate over a large hole in one of the blades. The camo netting was made out of part of a laundry tablet sack then drybrushed with the same colours I used to paint the bases, Adeptus Battlegrey, Fortress Grey and Space Wolves Grey

The building itself was painted fairly simply using a Boltgun Metal drybrush and Dwarf Bronze for the Mechanicus Symbol before a liberal wash of Badab Black was applied to the walls.

The problem I am now faced with is that three ruins do not a city fight make so up till now I’ve been forced to also use my old Necromunda buildings if I want to create a dense urban war zone. With this in mind I recently purchased the Imperial Sector set which I intend to combine with the old Necro bulkheads and a few other bits and bobs to create what will hopefully be something special. I’ll keep you posted.