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I have always loved elves, ever since I got into the “traditional” high fantasy settings in my pre-teens. It started with the Lord of the Rings and Warcraft III when I was 12 or so, and it has sort of persisted In the background as a preference all of these years. I just find the idea of a tragic, fading race of obsessive personalities fascinating. Now that I’ve found myself struggling through a rocky stretch of my adult life, it has brought me quite a bit of solace to indulge in my fantasy whims whenever the opportunity presents. I’m starting this thread to record my slow, hopefully methodical progress of meditation through painting, dwelling largely for now on my love of fantasy elves. The Daughters of Khaine are such beautiful models, and yet so small and fine. The dynamism of the sculpts and the lithe sensuality are wonderful, but my god they are hard to do justice with paint. I have tried to start things off on the right foot, or wing, here: Apologies for the potato resolution. Next up, I am making a start on repainting battleline. This girl needs to be redone in nmm and get her base updated.

Your models are terrifying. I honestly feel disturbed by the lore and modelling - it’s very original, even compelling. I’m not sure if this is a compliment 😶 I would definitely read more of this. The free hand on the demon wings is also impressive.

I’m sorry you just triggered the resident Night Lord. The emperor is a corpse god wallowing in the fruit of his folly. In his blind arrogance he doomed humanity to a slow death over millenia, ensuring the eventual triumph of chaos. Death to the false emperor!

I have heard that color shift paints are really meant for airbrush - get a black gloss undercoat and then airbrush thin layers of the color shift.

Hear, hear! Conga lines are unthematic and (I think) the rules should provide guardrails that don’t encourage this as the strategic play. Big unit blobs are likely also the bane of painters who want to play. Painting the same dude 30x2 times is pretty boring, unless you are really into the meditation thing or “lower the bar.” It doesn’t matter if you are a pro painter or new to it, it’s extremely tiring painting the same model to the best of your abilities over and over again to the same level. It is unfortunate that many battalions are so restrictive around unit choices and encourage spamming blocks of the same thing. I would love to see: More viable unit choices within factions More flexible battalions Less incentive for giant blobs of units across the board. Sure, allow it, even encourage it for select factions, but maybe not for 90% of them Rules that don’t lead to the evolution of conga lines in play

Cool insight, appreciate this. Off topic, but I imagine its much harder to train a person to fight this way (relying on reflexes, timing and dexterity) than to train them to have the strength to wield a larger shield and fight in formation. Its probably appropriate that the “army” armies of mortals would be reliant on these “more easily learned” tactic, but elves, being elves, can master the alternative approaches to defence at the rank and file level. Nevertheless, my objections are purely on the basis of cost and painting effort.

These guys look suuuuuuper fun to play. The boss man really enables their mobility significantly.

I would say cost is a factor, as well as painting eyes on the girls. Every. Damn. One. I say this as someone who has painted 20 pairs of eyes and boy I can tell you that tiny models with tinier eyes is a bad combo. If they were an elite army, I'd be down, but alas. Also, if they put 20 aelves in a box I would expect a price hike. Knowing GW, it's more likely that everything else will get priced up to DoK levels instead of vice versa. "They're just spoiled by the ease of entry for all the other armies, we should make things more even for pricing."

I think that makes sense. Might give it a go today!

I am struggling sith my chaos marauder scheme. It feels off but I am not sure what to do about it. A WIP I think it needss more definition? Maybe edge hilighting and more saturation on some spots. It’s been annoying me for the last few days because I don’t have a vision for this unit yet.

I like the first one, but think you can position the legs more so he has some more lateral momentum. I think the 2 handed pose coneys the feel of impact/bracing better, whereas the one handed pose looks more like flexing 😄

Awesome! I am also in the building/chopping mode. I’ve spent my last half dozen hobby hours making some Tzeentch Marauders. I probably have another half dozen hours to go of filling gaps and stuff, but really looking forward to painting them! Have to find a suitable banner and make a greenstuff drum too. My Lord of Change still needs work but the building has been a nice change of scenery. Might finish him off in September.

Hmm... after some chopping and posing I think some of the larger Corvus Cabalists are too big for 25mm. I think I will have to run them as Darkoath heroes instead. Matched play allows for conversions right? Like, if I put a shield on a big Barbarian lady and base her appropriately I can call her a Darkoath Warqueen? (We’ll say she is otherwise equipped appropriately, with the exception that she’s carrying a rough double edged blade instead of a real axe?) EDIT: also, from a cost perspective this is getting steeeeeeeep. At this rate I’m getting 5 or 6 marauders for every Corvus Cabal set lol, which comes of to 6 USD a Marauder. Adding the 3rd party shield bits brings that up to a little over 8 USD each. The things one must do to avoid having to use derpy sculpts that need updates...

How are people’s July’s shaping up? We got 1 week to go! @Kramer how many crossbow stormcast do you have left? @Eldarain hows that elf eizard coming along? And @hughwyeth you working on the enlightened? Props to @Kamose for that big bundle of bray love. Yours truly has a tzaangor mutie to finish. Almost there, just all the metals left... ... And starting to work on next month’s challenge, converting a bucketful of Tzeentchian Marauders!

Yea, i figured why would anyone complain if I’m disadvantaging myself? The conversion is nothing fancy. I’m chopping up the Corvus Cabal and arming them with shields. Many of them look fine as is, although I’m looking forward to squeezing out more mileage from the kit and turning some of the monopose big models into believable marauders as well. Here’s the first buddy I put together. He’ll certainly fit on 25mm, but some of his buddies are less compact.

Hey all, I’m curious how flexible people are with base sizes when gaming. I don’t game much (ever?) but hope to play more in the future. Here’s my dilemma: I want to kitbash my own Chaos Marauders Chaos Marauders come on 25mm bases I suspect if they put out a new kit (the Marauder kit is really old and derpy) they will use 32mm bases Similar infantry (Kairic acolytes, the Khorne basic dudes I can’t name) come on 32mm bases Orks in 40k got rebased to 32mm in the past, and they didn’t even get new models Also, the size of my kitbashed guys are a bit big for 25mm bases Incidentally, I also made a bunch of greenstuff press molded bases at 32mm and would prefer to use them instead of making a bunch more bases for 25mm - but this is really a short term factor My question - is this likely to be legal for matched play? Is there any advantage to having a larger base that vould lead this to be concieved of as cheating? I could probably base my guys on 25mm bases and be fine with that, but it will be especially painful if they go and change base sizes on me in a year lol

But what if I rolled other successful hits that are not 6s? Do they also end with no effect, or do I get to proceed with wound and saves for those other successful hits?

How does chainfire amulet work with multiple attacks? It says that on a 6, the attack sequence ends and you don’t make any to wound or save rolls.Does that mean that if I hit 3 times, if one of the to hit rolls is a 6, the other two successful hits are ignored? It seems to read that way, although if that is the case, it would appear to be extremely mediocre for a ranged general like a Lord of Change with rod.

Getting there with bigbird. I think I need another month to finish, because of all the bits and bobs on him to paint (pouches, legs) but I anticipated as much and was only aiming to get all the main colors filled in for this month. Probably going to take a break from big bird for a week and paint some more battleline now.

My clippers have had the springs broken for years so I’ve actually gotten used to using them with 4 fingers to manually open them 😆 its actually no big deal to me now and would probably feel weird if I got a new set! EDIT - to do the 4 finger approach, grasp one handle between your thumb and index, and the other can have your middle and ring fingers wrapped around it. You open it by spreading your index and middle fingers apart. The cutting power comes from your thumb, as before. Also, as a tangent - when purchasing hobby supplies don’t limit yourself to Citadel! They can be more expensive and lower quality in some cases.

I wish running pinks didnt require painting 50 models at a minimum. Also from a cost perspective, running mortals is sooooo much cheaper. The idea and mechanics seem really cool, but I think I would break from the cost/effort.

I haven’t read any old lore (only got into the hobby recently) but I agree that the current tomes are written in a very flat manner. There’s no mystery because things are described in a really black and white manner - I didn’t have to guess at the Morathi and Khaine relationship because they just spelled it out. Your description of the old army books sounds really compelling!

The oil paint is thick and creamy (insert unintended inuendo) and needs to be thinned down. I bought the water miscible kind so that its easy to clean brushes, but you don’t want to thin it with water. Instead I used Gamsol, which is a replacement for Turpentine and Mineral Spirit. You thin it down to desired consistency - I have been thinning it down to consistency of a shade paint. And no, my experience is that the oil paint thins into an extremely intense shade. I’ll post a picture the next time I use it, but it is literally the bluest blue I’ve seen. Like, it is raw, undiluted color, no gray. Adding more thinner makes it more transparent, but doesn’t change the hue. Of course, eventually if you keep adding thinner i imagine the hue becomes undetectable... If you want to experiment you need: A thinner (mineral spirit, gamsol, etc) Color of choice (I picked up winsor and newton, there are lots of reviews online for other brands) Something to hold your paint (I picked up a plastic pallette with some wells, and small dish shape could work) A brush (not your kolinsky sable brushes, they will get wrecked. I used a cheap synthetic with a flat head) There’s a guy who uses oil washes to great effect on youtube, you can learn more (search NJM miniature)

I think he looks great. I also like that he has a nice head sculpt. Re: Big bird and oils, here’s a look. I don’t know if this is obvious in the photos, but the post oil situation has much more intense colors. BEFORE : AFTER: it’s more obvious with the blue - my bad photography and the lighting situation don’t really capture the yellow very well and make it look kind of washed out. I glazed lemon yellow and french ultramarine here. I’m mostly using it as a glaze now, at the end to enhance the colors. The advantage over acrylic washes comes from ease of cleanup, and the fact that most miniature washes seem to be desaturated. (I’ll caveat that I only have some washes from GW and Secret Weapon Miniatures; but for instance, Drakenhoff nightshade and Reikland flesh just aren’t very intense of colors)

Ok, oils are amazing. The colors are super bright. I should have tried these sooner. Blending is waaaaaay easier since they stay moist on the model. It seems to be any easy way to amp up the saturation. Ill post pictures later. One thing Im not sure of is going over them with acrylics later. Supposedly the oils will shrink as they slowly cure, so traditional painters always add oils on top of, but not below, less fatty paints (acrylics for my purposes) to avoid cracking. I can see this being tricky since I’m not conifident about doing highlights on oil yet. Probably need to get a zinc white oil paint and try it out, I only picked up a blue, yellow and magenta this time.