[Charity Work] Farrow Brigand

Its been a tough month for painting, just not had the time/energy I needed to do anything meaningful.

I have done a small 40K unit that I will post eventually, but in the meanwhile here is something I painted for the Orange Crush army, which is a charity drive that I have taken part in for the last two years.

Each painter paints one (or more) models in an orange theme, which is then put into a 50pt list, which is then raffled off for food hunger programmes.

I decided that, rather than make his clothes orange, I wanted him to be an orang-utan esque piggy with orange fur.

If you want to try to win the army, then you can go here and bid for it.
http://www.razoo.com/story/Thrallharvest2012

[Personal Work] Cryx Solos

End of the month (or start of the new month) and time to put up my entries for the PP forums painting challenge.

Each month I have to paint 5 points of models for my army. I've made most months, but skipped at least one... its amazing I can barely get five points done in one month, but what can you do.

These guys took a swim in the paint stripper and are nice new schemes. I'm starting a new colour scheme for my Cryx and the Pistol Wraith is the first of the new scheme. Still need to iron out a few kinks, but he's good enough for the table.

Oh, and no the blue smudge on the back of the bloat thrall is not supposed to be there. Need to clean that up before I varnish him.

Hope you like them.

 

[From the Workbench] Bloat Thrall

I've been plugging away at my repaint of the PP bloat thrall for a few days now. There is so much flesh to this model that its quite an intimidating one to paint.

Still lots of work and some clean up to do but he's slowly coming together. Not sure how well he will turn out, but he's never really fielded at the moment so he doesn't have to be top notch.

So, here are some shots as work was carried out on the mini.

Enjoy...

[From the Workbench] Super Dungeon Explore

Due to turning 29 this month, my wonderful missus picked me up a copy of Soda Pop Miniature's Super Dungeon Explore. A cool retro 8 bit gaming style board game that comes jam packed with miniatures.

One of the things that is of note with the game, is that this is a taster of what is to come from the Soda Pop Relic Knight's Kickstarter as that will ship with similar plastic miniatures.

I had spoken to a friend who already owns the game and he felt the plastic was similar to that used by Privateer Press, which troubled me a little as I am not the biggest fan of the fibrous resin like nature of that particular medium. I would argue the Soda Pop plastic is a little tougher (perhaps due to the die used) and cleans up a little more cleanly than  the PP stuff I have encountered so far.

I still had issues with mold lines, as well as some burring of the medium. I mitigated this to a large amount by using my X-acto knife rather than my files for the bulk of the clean up. Hopefully once I give them a scrub and undercoat then any rough areas will be hidden.


There are a few nasty gaps that will need to be filled, though I am tempted to focus on the heroes and key boss monsters as the massed critters will probably not suffer the same scrutiny as the larger pieces.



I'm planning on a fairly decent level of painting, but no clever blending or excessive shading as there are lots of models to get through and ultimately this is a board game not a minis game (well, its kind of both).



I'm hearing worrying reports that the plastic may have changed for the expansions, and they come pre-assembled, which never pleases me and is on of the reasons I can't get in to Dust for example. Rackham learned the hard way that gamers and modellers like as pure an experience as possible when it comes to building models. However, I can sympathise with Soda Pop as this is a board game and I am sure for every dedicated modeller like me, there are more guys and girls who just want to get the game out and get playing.



Hopefully once the expansions finally hit these shores I can give a personal opinion on the changes that may have been made.

So, here are the assembled Kobold mob. This is one of two you get in the box, along with a mob of dragon spawn, their daddy Dragon and 9 heroes. (Well, 8 and a giant bear). So this represents about 1/4 of the contents of the box. Not bad value.

I love the aesthetic of the Kobolds. There are four basic grunts (each with their own rules) as well as the wizard leader and a Troll overlord to test the heroes. I could see me picking up a whole unit of these to use in D&D or fantasy battle games if they were not so monopose. Still, I now have a decent sized set of generic goblin type figures for any future RPG sessions.

I should be getting my first game in over the next few days so will be back to report on how the Kobold mob fares. I might even get some paint on them if I am really lucky.

[Personal Work] Candy and Cola - Soda Pop Miniatures

This is a competition piece I have been working on for a few sessions now. All told there is about 20 hours work in there at the moment, but I want to revisit when I have some time and tidy up a few bits, as well as add some extra details.

The main concern for the piece was the flesh, though I still need to find a way of smoothing my paint out a bit more.

Plus my whites are terrible!

But its done, and each mini painted is a lesson learned I guess.

Golden Thrall win this weekend - Cross Games Tiers for Fears

Played (badly) in a tournament this weekend, didn't do so well, but picked up gold in the painting.

Tom (the TO) took some pics and this one really caught my eye.

Its quite moody (the light was low down there) but the blending is starting to work on the DJ at least. Need to paint some new casters and solos though, I have learned a lot since painting some of these models.

Games Day Miniature - part II

I came home to find a nice little box from GW waiting for me.
Sure enough it was my replacement GD marines, hopefully there would be a usable cast in there somewhere right?

Wrong...

Not going to say much beyond that even a cursory glance showed there were major issues, and after a good look, they were both beyond redemption.

Pictures speak a thousand words right?

First Finecast Model - Games Day Marine

I don't really play GW games any more, and I don't really buy GW models any more, but I love John Blanche's work and when I saw this year's Games Day model I was pretty sure I would end up getting one somehow.

In a stroke of luck a friend of mine was going to be there and agreed to pick on up for me. Result... or so I thought.

I've been following the Finecast issues since inception and was looking forward to getting my hands on one so I could make my own mind up about the quality of the material. So far, I have little positive to say.

Here are the shots of my miniature, with most of the flaws highlighted (though I found more after taking the shots).

The main issues for me are the holes/bubbles in the chin, shoulder rim and chest plate, as well as some odd detail loss on the eye cabling.

Then you add in the bubbles that are all over the model, and the bent angle to his sword and its clear this model is a reject.

I've sent two emails to GW with pictures so far, with no response. Time to pick up the phone and see if I can get a more positive result.

I really want to have this model in my collection, so am going to chase this for as long as it takes.

Hopefully a positive outcome in a future update.

Golden Thrall

Just a quick note to say I have opened up a sister site to this blog covering my painting competition The Golden Thrall.

http://thegoldenthrall.blogspot.co.uk/

Please check it out , images from the past years winners will start to appear on the site soon.

Thanks.

[Personal Work] Finished Cannon Crew

Well, its been a fun ride, and now the first of my Rev cannons are done.
Zombie Han Solo will hopefully bring sharpshooting skills to bear and they will do me proud on the battlefield.

One more to paint, and I guess I should repaint my Captain Rengrave as together they make for a pretty decent shooting unit.

Enjoy.

[Personal Work] More cannon work.

Been plugging away on the crew some more. Hopefully one more session and they will be ready to base up . Then I get to work on the second one...

This guy makes me think of Han Solo for some reason.

And the Michel Jackson fan.

This is team blue by the way... team red will follow.

[Personal Work] Fire the port cannons.

Been plugging away at some stuff for my Cryx force. I'm finally admitting that I need some firepower as the old tactic of run across the table and hope to get to the other side no longer works so well.

These guys are critically undervalues, potential RAT 8 ignoring LOS and remove from play makes them a lot better than people give them credit for. I've got two on the go, but this is where we are up to so far.

I love painting pirates, and its been fun trying to up my metals on the cannons. Still need to add some weathering, but its getting there.

[Commission] New Piece

Its been far too long again, but I am back again with some new work.

Here is a piece that I have recently painted for commission. A higher level than my standard as its a character, though still not top end.

Its been an exciting few months, managed to get out to GenCon again and was thrilled to pick up three bronzes and a silver in the P3 painting competition, as well as winning the speed painting events for both Privateer Press and Wyrd Minis. Not a bad trip out all told.

Will post some pics of the Gencon stuff later.

[Personal Work]

I'm not dead!

Sorry I've not posted much recently, work, life etc has got on top of me... usual excuses.

So, to kick things off again, here are some pictures of some of my recent personal work. More pictures to follow after this weekend. I'm off to my first 16 man tourney of the year, and the next few weeks are going to be pretty busy on the event front, so might pick up some more trophies if I am lucky.

I have a cool comission that I need to get cracking on, but until my 50pt Cryx list is done, I can't really focus on anything else, so you will have to wait for that one.