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If you go down to the woods today...


HadrielCaine

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Ok, so the woods and the old world are gone. I've put my woodies on rounds and am getting involved heavily in Sylvaneth. It's been a while since I had a plog, RIP warseer :(

The arrival of TGA gives me a platform again. So I think I'll document my #roadtoRAW2016 here, I always found painting forums to be a great source of motivation and inspiration... so here goes!

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Spellweaver on Unicorn

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Orion

These guys made up my original force, which I'm now expanding:

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The lighting in my current flat is HORRIBLE so apologies for the terrible photograph. They're much better IRL.

More soon!

 

A

@hadrielcaine

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Thanks @ThereIsOnlyJoe, any events coming up? It'd be great to see you again, Clash? Realms at War?

So I've made quite a lot of progress (new forums and upcoming events are always a good source of motivation for me!) with my two characters (or two versions of the same character) for Realms at War 2016, which is being hosted by @Mitzy@Thornshield et al in November. Which is AWESOME, except I can't run any special characters. So I might have more painting to do than originally planned. Dragons ain't cheap.

Essentially you get a free 'hero level' character in your army and as his fame (and reputation) increases he is replaced with a 'legendary' version. Effectively he ranks up during the weekend as part of the narrative event... I need to get cracking with some backstory for him, unfortunately that will involve reading some of the truly dreadful AoS fluff. I hope to be pleasantly surprised. Maybe giving him a lick of paint will give me inspiration, and a name for him too...

Here's how I got on making my two miniatures for RAW2016:

firstly I got my hands on an unpainted, unaware Glade rider

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Then I smashed it up and carved chunks (the saddle) out of it

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Next I mocked up the new torso (he's a centaur btw... in his legendary form anyway!)

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The next step is to cover your desk in as much detritus as is possible, this was actually relatively difficult as my massive Wood Elf bitz box (bag) is in Yorkshire, a few hundred miles north...

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Something I'm bad at is documenting things. Which I need to improve upon really. But it does mean that when I get inspired I carry on until I'm finished, I'm like this with work too. I'm bad at free time. This hobby helps. So here's the fully assembled Aspirant because I took a 'break' from the legendary to consider the components, and built an entire model as a break...

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For the record he's pretty complex. The legs are from a Dark Eldar Kabalite Warrior, filed off spikey details and repositioned significantly (NB do not pin dark eldar legs. Its doable. But DAMN. Tears were shed) The torso is the spare Tree Revenant one you get in the set, the sword arm is the one that would other wise fit the Scion's (champion) torso. Which is handy as I am using the Protector glaive on the Legendary so they have the same shoulder mark/ tattoo. The tabard is then built using the cape from the Glade Rider sacrifice. I love the original Orion and Waywatcher models from the early 90s with all the leafy cloaks and things. I carry this motif through on a lot of my miniatures. This is done by supergluing oregano and mixed herbs onto the model directly. This is a normal thing that adult humans do, I checked. The head is from a Dark Elf corsair (I think, it was actually on the Kabalite Warrior I chopped up...) I did some sculpting for the shoulder plate and added a few details from the Tree Revenant kit (I cut the gems and icons from the Scion and the Musician as I'm not using the parts in the second 5 as I plan to field 10 of them). He got a back up weapon in the form of a knife from the Kabalite warriors too, although this one was actually from the aforementioned Glade Rider. Finally the bow is from either a glad guard or another Glade Rider, either way it was just a torso that happened to be in my paint tin! The secret is to canibalise abandoned projects and models you're just not going to use/ paint again.

I need a coffee. I'll post the update of the Legendary and the two together in a bit...

cheers

A.

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Sweet caffeine. I ended up doing some painting this afternoon. I'll put pictures up in a future post. Maybe this evening. For now lets look at construction:

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For the legendary version of my character I settled on the torso from the marauder on the chaos chariot (always baffled me why both riders got warrior stats...) I clipped off the shoulder and pinned the Scion's Protector Glaive in place. I also covered the right pectoral with a thin layer of greenstuff and then pressed my scalpel vertically into the surface three times to emulate the tattoo/ markings on the Tree Revenant torso I used for the Aspirant. To cover the join and to give a further sense of motion, as well as harking back to the loin cloth of the other model, I added the Scion's tabard, I bent this back on itself to further emphasise the miniature's desired appearance of motion.

The idea of the pose is that he's bursting from a Wyldwood/ the leaves. This meant I also had to reposition the legs on the steed itself. I find that a bit of hot air from a hairdryer and some manual bending usually does most of the work, but, as anticipated one hoof broke off (back left FYI). This served my purposes anyway as the Wood Elf steeds are extra spindly. I drilled into the back left leg and right through the hoof. I then drilled through a piece of random plastic (used to be a black orc torso, is now a tree stump after trimming) and into the base. I ran one long piece of paper clip (I use these almost solely for pinning these days as they're effectively free). I finally resculpted the cloth binding around the fetlock (horse's ankle) so that it matched the other three limbs. I also pinned the left arm too, this was necessary as it needed to support a metal hawk/raven, which I believe is from a Reaper miniature (thanks @Dangermouse425 for that one). 

With complex conversions like this I pin almost everything. Its heartbreaking to knock time consuming gaming pieces off table to see them shatter into a thousand constituent parts. Trust me. That's why everything in my Terminator army was magnetised...

The head I've elected to use is from the Dark Eldar Archon, not sure why I have that lying around, although I had a Dark Eldar army I never owned that model. I clipped off the horns and replaced them with the stag-esque horns from the Tree Revenant Scion (he's been very helpful). NB: as a happy coincidence the face sculpted on the helmet looks quite a lot like the Orion/Green Man icon from way back in the 90s, like the icon on my spellweaver's staff in the first post. This was accentuated by adding the stag horns.

The avian shoulder guard is a nice echo of the Aspirant's one sleeve of armour, but as an upgrade befitting his new status as 'legendary' I think its either from the Phoenix guard or the rider of a frostheart. I do quite a lot of commission work so my bitz box has a fair range of things...

I sculpted a few straps and clipped out a quiver from a Glade Rider to match the Aspirant, I also carefully trimmed the hand of a spare bow from the Shadow Warrior/ Sisters of Averlorn (/the Watch) which I had left over from building my Waywatchers. Straps and buckles are quite fun to sculpt it turns out.

As with the Aspirant I added Sylvaneth icons clipped from the Tree Revenants where I could afford to lose them (primarily command miniatures), I also filed the Chaos Star on the stomach rondel from the Marauder, for obvious reason. I might attempt to free hand a rune on there!

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In terms of basing I generally use bits of twigs I find lying around (or when hunting for pokemon...) and use the same oregano and mixed herbs as for loin cloths etc. I've used the same little rock with a rune on it for both miniatures' bases as I think its a nice visual tie. The same character defending the same forest at different times. 

Here are both characters for reference/ comparison:

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I've really enjoyed building these guys. I think I'm going to call him Skarloc Swiftstride as a nod to the ancient ranger character from the 80s, I think Aelves would probably have naming traditions that honour their dead forebears and it also references my reluctance to give up on the Old World and Athel Loren.

Do let me know what you think with any comments. I've started painting but have to go out this evening so any suggestions will of course be considered.

Cheers

A

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Thanks @Ademo, it was one of this 'I wonder if...' moments. I always vary my undercoat to suit what I'm painting. Biggest single change to my painting quality in the last few years I think.

Speaking of painting:

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I tend to use a variety of paints from different ranges. I'm using a lot of Vallejo and Army Painter (washes) at the moment with a few select GW paints and some Coat D'Armes pots too (very close to the 80s/90s citadel paints). I base coat areas until I get inspired by a certain bit or detail then tend to work on that until its done. It isn't an especially scientific way of doing things... but it works and keeps my interest well enough.

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With the centaur I wanted to pay attention to using markings and dappling to blend the humanoid torso into the equine lower section. This involved layering splodges of various browns, flesh colours, white and brown and flesh washes. Its still WIP but I like where its going already.

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I then got distracted by the Aspirant as it struck me that he actual has a face (not a helmet/ mask) and I fancied painting that. So I worked on him extensively.

 

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I used reikland flesh (GW) over a base layer of Vallejo's basic skintone. I threw army painter soft and strong tone at the different leather areas too.

At this stage the centaur got a bit more TLC as well:

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This morning I had better light again and picked up the aspirant once more. Looking for a smooth finish for once as this is a one off model:

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The skin was done by slowly adding more of the Vallejo foundation white to the basic flesh tone in really watered down layers. I added some definition back in using tiny amounts of Reikland flesh shade. For the face I used leviathan purple to give some depth to the eye sockets and dotted the pupils with Dryad Bark (I think) I always use a dark brown instead of a black on miniatures. I also built up the highlights on the blond hair and leather using the white to lighten my browns before washing down the armour with Strong Tone (army painter) and the hair with soft tone (which was then rehighlighted, almost up to white.)

The sword was painted a base grey and washed with Nihilakh Oxide  from GW. I then drew thin lines of white back over the top to define the NMM. This involved some wet blending and multiple thin layers. 

For the bow I base coated it in Russ Grey (old shadow grey) then lightened with successive layers of white, all the bows in my army are white.

I had also used Nihilakh Oxide for the tattoos/markings on the torso.

That's as far as I've got thus far. More to come!

A

 

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No takers? Pressing on! More painting. The Aspirant is now complete!!!

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From where I left off I mostly just added more layers, deeper shading and final highlights to the same colours as before. 

The big decision came in working on the foliage. I use three Vallejo greens on my all wood elves: Golden Olive, Light Green and Luftwaffe Camo

With this miniature I wanted him to stand out a bit so I decided to do some free hand leaf patterns and filigree on the cloth areas.

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The trick here was to higlight and shade the cloth after doing the free hand so it seems intrinsic rather than an after thought (I used to pride myself on the free hand banners on my WoC so it has been nice to stretch those muscles again)

From there it was a simple matter of basing the model, using the same greens to pick out oregano leaves, finishing gems and totems with the effects paints and adding clump foliage and flowers. I use Gale Force 9 clump and at the moment I have flowers from Gamer's Grass. Although they're a bit paper-y and not as good as the ones I used to use (forget the stockist sadly)

A few more angles of the finished elf:

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Skarloc Swiftstride is done!

Thoughts? Questions?

I'm excited to move on to the Legendary... but I have a plan for some Wanderer/ Sylvaneth themed Realm Gates too!

Watch this space

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  • 1 month later...

@Nixon @pgmason Thanks for dropping in!

The last month has seen me fielding 1000 points at Fast and Furious in Leeds brilliantly run by @Soup Dragon et al. And then this last weekend down in Cardiff for the final Clash of Swords run by the wonderful @Mo Ashraf I've won 6/10 competitive games and got a painting nomination at Clash so not a bad innings.

Here's my force for 1000 points at a practice game down at Angel Wargamers 

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Here's some of my army at Clash:

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As you can see in the final image I knocked up some objective and spell markers (shield of thorns, mystic shield and bridge of shadows)

Sadly this wasn't enough to win best in Alliance: Order but I was chuffed to be nominated anyway.

It is now November (in case you hadn't already noticed) so I'm gearing up for Realms at War, the twitter updates from @Mitzy @Jimbo @Thornshield and Steve Foote are looking good. I've finished up my legendary:

 

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(foliage added to the base since photos taken...)

I've also finished off another archer, can you ever have enough? thanks @Dangermouse425 for the model!

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All that remains is to paint a few Wildwood Rangers; the unit size increased to 10 from 5 so I have too many banners and musicians

Oh and I fancy a different Treelord. I'm looking for either old metal Durthu or the metal Treebeard from LotR as a starting point.

Let me know what you think!

 

Adam

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So RAW 2016 is just around the corner now. Just over a week to go. @Uberjay and I will be discussing our preparation and armies in the build up episode of Hard 6 podcast and in Episode 22 (already available!) we talk about our experiences of Clash in more detail.

Thanks everyone for dropping into this thread and commenting. Its very motivating indeed.

@Jimbo I'm going to try to get even more new stuff done in time for the event so watch this space!

@ElectricPaladin Thanks, I'm glad you like the colours, my last army was a very monochrome Warriors of Chaos force so its been fun to explore something more vibrant/verdant.

@Warboss Gorbolg the only issue I have with the centaur is I now want to do all of my wild riders like that...

@Routasydän I've really caught the Sylvaneth bug, so I'm hoping to do some more!

@Payce well- the buzzing of notifications made me smile so keep clicking like :P

@SoulQuake I'm going to be branching (haha) into more Order stuff too but keeping the forest theme I think going forward. There are a lot of archers left though!

 

Now. Progress:

 

I decided I wanted to move away from using the plastic GW treelord, I just don't like it. I know its a beautiful model but it looks wrong in my head. So instead I picked up the old metal Durthu from @Bishmeister (thanks dude) and blended it together with my Drycha, I'm not going full Sylvaneth yet and RAW doesn't allow named characters- I'm saving money in the short term honest...

I GSd some extra branches over wire armatures (also provided by Bishmeister)

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Until the model looked kinda like this:

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please note the sculpted runes on the forearms to cover the honeycomb and the extra bark on the left thigh!

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And after that I gave him a lick of paint. I tend to do models in one sitting. Especially with Sylvaneth, I like to do wet blending and allow brown and green glazes to pool and mix before doing further highlights, it feels more organic...

And here it is:

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He'll be coming out to play next weekend at RAW!

More soon...

 

Adam

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  • 4 weeks later...

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