Turragor

I think I most like the idea of letting community event results dictate the broad strokes of the fate of the realms (ofc the exact setting for those events are dictated by the team at GW) and then all the minutiae - the small and large characters and how exactly their story played out against that community determined backdrop - is perfect fodder for the black library writers.

Actually moving forward in ages I think is sensible and could be interesting. It's quite a contrast to the old GW which was, as far as I understand, very much a snapshot or like tv episodes in a long running tv series - where changes were kind of narratively reset at the start of the next episode for the most part. Then ofc eventually ended for fantasy and here we are. But moving forward in ages with large sweeping changes to the lore or setting could be intersting.

I started painting my Lord Aquilor as he'd lain about undercoated in parts for too long. I took my sweet time to start with then realised I wasn't doing it for contests or display (not by design anyway) so sped up in the end and rushed out a finish. This is often how I like to paint things when I've no goal when I start painting. I enjoy the flow of paint, taking my time and then I get bored and want to move onto a new model! Anyway here he is:

That looks like either a 'frilly sucking tentacle' or a 'long hairy ear to me'. I also don't think they'll rename the franchise in ages - maybe I misunderstand you. I think they'd stick new editions or large worldwide events under the "Warhammer Age of Sigmar" brand so Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Malign Portents/ Warhamemr Age of Sigmar: Age of Iron. It doesn't make business sense for them to change the brand (logo, all older branded materials) to Warhammer Age of Iron and then on for example Warhammer Age of Death, Warhammer Age of Frilly Sucking Tentacles, Warhammer Age of Long Hair Ears.

I don't know how there can be so much knickers-in-a-twist drama when I bet no one has their paint backlog cleared.

There's quite a few there that'd fit the undead / bug reimagining if they go with nerubian-esque vibe.

I entered my Beastclaw raider army into armies on parade and got a silver : October was a pretty good hobby month!

The text snippets that come with these are absolutely part of the fun: So for my money you've got 'ancient hero', 'cryptic' - it's undead. Flying machine though? That image has an insectoid look about it. Undead riding animated husks of insects? Think of WoW 'nerubian' which, funnily enough, are often named crypt lords or crypt fiends. Edit/ you know like this kinda thing:

Got em done, just on time for tomorrow. They are pretty decent standard actually. Not just tabletop - my version of it I suppose - but high tabletop. They just need some metal highlights.

No problem! Hope it helps you get a force done up fast. I'll be done with these to good tabletop standard this week so it will have been maybe 2 weeks for 30 which is a good rate. Mostly evening painting as I don't really have time until then. I'd say maybe 30 to 40 hours.

I think the terrain tweak discussion is moving far away from rumour now into the territory of our old friend 'Mr. shooting is too strong'. It's true though, almost all terrain rules that don't involve LoS are going to just be a buff to shooting. Unless you've got some kind of cavalry subway system.

Sure. It's mostly about speed with these and if I were to do it again I'd do a few things differently to reflect that (I'll give you my improved ideas instead of what I actually did). 1. Skin Get a good basecoat of white (corax white undercoat or what have you). I didn't get great coverage so I had to paint the skin rakarth flesh then shade it a bit wasting lots of time. Shade the skin with diluted (with a medium rather than water) rakarth flesh. Should provide the all the colours you need for tabletop on the skin. (You can choose your own skin tone ofc, I just didn't want the tanned look from more fleshy tones). 2. Hair and beards Use guillaman blue glaze on hair and beards. Use a different shade near the roots (I chose purple, red or green would also work and give very different feels). Dryrbrush very light blue and then white near the tops. 3. Bronze Use dilute dark green blue (like incubi darkness) to paint all the areas you want to be bronze. Then overbrush light copper or bronze (I used sycorax bronze) on those areas. You want some of the blue to show through but not a lot. Shade the areas after with the likes of agrax. 4. Iron/steel If steel paint bright silver and then wash with dilute black wash. If iron paint darker metal and wash with brown or black (depending on your desired end look). 5. Cloth I'm prob doing light purple. Pink also works. So would dark blue, leathery brown or green. This is a secondary accent colour and frankly nearly any colour would work. 6. Runes Gold and then a red wash is my recommendation. Anything else is lots of work for tabletop. Annnd that's about it! I've done steps 1 - 3 so far and then based. Got 4 to 6 to go. Then there's all sorts of little improvements I can make before the next time I want to use these guys. Highlights would be in order on the skin, cloth, runes and metallics for instance!

Change of pace (for a little tournament) and back to the SCE army with some allies. Never painted this many models as 1 batch before. Lots of new things learned here so far. They are probably 70% to where I want them to be (tabletop):

This is amazing advice and I gotta experiment now. I might also try to find the best way to do an intentional 'whiteout' effect in the snow... ...sounds cool but wasn't what I was after!

I could probably try a different lighting setup - it's tough to get it right! Or I could mess with the photo in photoshop but I'm not really an expert at that

A long time since I last posted but I've been chugging along with a few projects and forgot to update this - oh well, no one is bound to keep their own little forum painting area up to date! It's a great motivator though! Here is the last model I finished for my Beastclaw Raiders early last month, the Frostlord Keekee Macka: He is ready for his close up now:

If I were GW I'd be doing it now just to wind up those who cannot be happy when others get something and interpret all rumour pics as their own faction:

This is GMM studio's work right?

Y'know at first I was all "wtf is this @Aryann guy talking about, he's such a whinge" but now I get what he means. It's not that these aren't cool boxes that you can maybe get some nice discounts on. It's the theme. I for one can imagine a theme you'd apply that'd make each work in its own right using a few conversions and some fine, fine colour schemes but the box uses the models they have already so I can feel that mismatch idea. Further, new models with the new aesthetic will always be cooler than reboxings (no matter how cool the blend). At the same time, there's no reason to imagine a cool reboxing precludes the release of an even cooler new, aesthetically different faction. So there's that!

I meant for SCE of any sort. Small warband and up. It's just an unattractive box. I am afraid you cannot defend it, though you may try. Would you not want a bit of weapon or equipment choice (provided by most of the other boxes) and options that come from the full warscrolls when building a skirmish warband? If anything it's more of an issue in a small warband game than in a full scale army. That said I am not super fussed, I wouldn't be the target of said box. I am just noting that any player who wants to start skirmishing with SCE would do well to avoid it. That is of course unless warbands are cookie cutter with no variation. Or there could be a bunch of extra paladin and liberator parts in it!

Stormcast one is a bit of a joke. The good - Looks like prosecutors are not the starter pack ones (so you can build javelins) The bad - Starter pack rets and libs. There IS a retributor prime (sweet mercy how many did they make!) I don't know the price (which might change things) but I wouldn't recommend that box to a player looking to start SCE. Edit/ Saw price now - 40 British Clams. Awful imo. 10 extra for the regular start collecting (which still inflicts you with the scourge that is a snapfit retributor prime but anyway) gets you 5 proper libs, the same 3 prosecutors, and a celestant in place of the knight questor. Its about half the price of the original boxset but has only about 50% of what the stormcast half contains.

For me the style of painting doesn't match the GW 'eavy metal studio team They don't do the extreme white glint highlights that I know of (offhand) and have that 'eavy metal look - less artistic... for want of a better word. This is more the Forge World team - specifically maybe bgarciafenix (instagram acc name). Check out the bloodbowl paintjobs for comparison. Soo bloodbowl? 30k? Lord of the Rings?

I guess it doesn't really matter. I have the models to field any weird combo of skirmishing stormcast and don't need extra value boxes.

I bet one of the snapfit retributors is a prime. People don't have enough snapfit retributor primes.

Not fly.