Stevewren

A quick update - This month is going worse than last month at the moment!

Painting and Modelling: March has been a bit of a painting disaster - is it possible the wheels are falling off the challenge...? I have dropped off my model a day target so I need to claw it back somewhere. I managed another 10 chaos warriors for the Nurgle force, as well as the Darkoath Warqueen to act as their leader. She has come out really well and I am super happy with the conversion. I also finished a couple of the Pusgoyle Blightlords. And finally I managed to get through Horrors 20-25, meaning I only need to complete another 5 to have my three units of 10 completed. Lets hope they get done in April! I need to pull myself back on track, or at least get through some bigger models. At the moment I am finding it hard to get the painting time in due to being back at work and also watching the Commonwealth Games! Gaming I managed three games this month, all at the Coalescence Malign Portents event run by Steve Fotte and Jimbo at Warhammer World. I took the Tzeentch, and it was probably a little towards the tougher end of the builds at the event. Even holding back some of the models the Tzeentch are still so strong, particularly in a narrative event. I enjoyed the games a lot however, and the army managed to win the best army award at the event so i got a rather nice GW certificate which is up on the wall. I think if I di another narrative event with the tzeentch force I think it will be more appropriate to roll out the horrors, chariots and warriors rather than sky fires and a lord of change! Aquisitions This month I picked up the Daughters of Khaine book as well as a Changling, but that is all. A good month.... ...however as you can see from the image at the top the Deepkin are coming, and I have my eye on these guys as the next Order army Personal We had a rather fun personal holiday over Easter, taking the boys to Linclonshire and visiting Tattreshall Castle as well as doing a few fun play areas and farms. The boys had a great time swimming and playing in the hot tub too. School is going OK, its getting hectic now that GCSE's are creeping up, but summer hopefully is just around the corner. We managed one basketball game, but we got beaten and finished tied for first on points, but ended up in third due to points differential. I have to say I had a shocker in the final game! I also picked up a rather annoying calf strain that kept me out of running action again. However some regular physio seems to be sorting it out nicely.

Looking great as always. I particularly like the gold. Lots of variation between the dark and light areas.

I've decided to do a little bit of a retrospective and take a look at some of my older armies. First up is my Orc and Goblin force. My first big event was the South Coast GT in 2010. I had only been back playing for about four or five months, and I painted this up as my first army. It was absolutely rubbish games wise, and I spent the whole weekend knocking around the bottom tables, but it was a great introduction to the independent tournament scene. The army got a lot of positive comments and Dan and the guys amazingly awarded me the judges choice award alongside another Orc force. Not bad for a first attempt!

I finished the painting on the dark oath war queen. I kept the pallet very limited and mixed some greens into every colour (except the purple) to see how this would turn out. I'm pleased with the finished piece although the undercoat was little rough, and this shows up in some of the close up shots. For some areas (the shield, helmet and armour) this actually works well, but the cloak could definitely be better if it had a smoother base. The freehand was interesting. I was curious to see how it could look. If I do it again I will plan the pattern out first, but I think the way I did it - white over the green, followed by lots of washes, is the way to go with this kind of muted pattern. I'm going to experiment with it again I think. I'm also going to use the white undercoat again and see what sort of finish I get on a test model. If it is still rough I will stick to using brown or grey undercoats.

(note, this is kind of a retrospective post as I forgot to post it originally!) This week i am attending the Coalescence event at Warhammer World hosted by Steve (@tinracersteve) and James (@jimbo9jimbo), part of the NEO network. For those of you that aren't aware of the event it is a narrative event being run at numerous locations around the world on the same day, and all feeding into a single narrative. I've chosen to take Tzeentch to the event, which gave me a bit of a dilemma as the Tzeentch book is pretty strong, so finding a narrative list that isn't ridiculously over the top was a bit of a challenge. One of the things I have noticed with narrative events is the different ways that people approach the narrative - some people pick a 'softer' army, which I have done before, and I didn't find that much fun. The solution I have gone for is to pick what I think is a strong list, but one that isn't ridiculously over powered, but I have decided to give myself a story and some goals for the days gaming. I have written a little bit of narrative based on one of the armies (or fairly shamelessly stolen) in the Tzeentch book: My plan is to use this as a kind of secondary objective for the games where I have to kill any magic users in the opposition army. I've played against someone before who had a goal for his army which he tried to achieve at the expense of the overall objective, and this was a game that I didn't enjoy at all as he basically let me walk away with the game as he made no attempt to stop me, and I just let him achieve his objective. We basically played two different games and I cant imagine it was overly satisfying for him either. I think its important that both players have the game objective in mind, but a fun secondary narrative goal is also a nice idea. My main aim of course is to have three excellent games and a nice slap up lunch in Bugmans though! So, how did it go....? Well, the event itself was really well run by Steve and James. From my point of view I had three fun games, although the first two were a little one sided for various reasons, but the third game was very good. I played James (the TO) first with his Seraphon. The game started off badly as I did hardly any damage to James's force, but I did manage to get my Harbinger into the Warscryer Citadel which allowed me to really start utilising the Malign Portent options. I had picked the Falling Star option as the narrative was all about seeing the future, which suited my backstory. I then found that for five prophecy points I could give the Skyfires plus one on their hit roles.... ...at this point we broke for lunch, but when we returned the three sky fires went mental and smashed their way through a whole unit of Saurus Guard. I shot the Skink Starpriest to achieve my narrative goal, and that was pretty much the game. The Skyfires go into battle as Zyclaw looks on from the Warscryer Citadel... Second game I played the Ironjawz, and the gentleman I played was a newer player so we spent quite a bit of time discussing how rules interactions worked, and talking through the intricacies of piling in and how to do it to maximise attacks etc. Once again the Skyfires went ballistic, and I also found out the an Exalted flamer does have some uses. The Screamers killed the war chanter early on to keep the narrative going, and after that it became a slug fest. In the end I had 10 Kairic Acolytes left who managed to survive the game due to being so out of position as to be virtually useless, and a single pink horror who managed to cast Bolt of Tzeentch and do the remaining five wounds needed to remove the last two brutes in the opposing force, thus carrying the day for the forces of Tzeentch. The battle lines are drawn... The Screamers assassinate the Warchanter... My third game was against Steve's son Ben who I've known for a while but never played. He had a tough Nurgle force with 20 Blightkings (we both thought James and Steve paid us up !) and a Great Unclean one, and for this battle I had a Lord of Change who had arrived to oversee Zyclaws quest and report back to the Changer of Ways. This game didn't look good to begin with, but I managed to send the screamers on an assassination run to kill a herald and a little bit of clever placement meant the Blightkings got pulled backwards away from my lines, and allowed me to get into them with the Lord of change and the Skyfires. It was a solid game, but eventually the Tzeentch force carried the day once again, however it was not enough to stop the Focus of Death from claiming the overall narrative victory. The Lord of Change goes into the Blight Kings... The guys had done a few awards for the weekend, and Matt Hinton took the Narrative prize. He was rocking a unit of custom Lion knights with their own war scroll which was something I realised I could have done with the War Wagon and the Free People - definitely an opportunity missed! I was lucky enough to take the best painted award for the event. Overall it was great fun day, and I hadn't played in a long time so I was happy to have the three games. I think the army was too strong for the event in all honesty - the three Skyfires were just ridiculous all day long. This is still the hurdle I think has yet to be fully cleared with narrative events - how do you balance the games as people have very different views about what the narrative game should be. To be able to devise a story and battle plan that allows a variety of army compositions is still the holy grail, and I hope the NEO group continue to push the envelope of narrative gaming so we can see how far it can go.

Thats a very unique take on Morathi. I really like the pale tones you have used for the skin. The cloak compliments the pale gold as well.

I'd love to see Adepticon fall in my easter holidays better so I might have the chance of making it out there soon. It seems to be a very friendly event and the armies always look great. Plus I enjoyed Chicago a lot the last time I was there, and it would be great to go back.

I love the scheme you have. Looking forward to seeing more progress on the army.

Yes, I've used them in one game. I was able to buff them up with the Glottkin as well as using the wheel. 20 Warriors went through 30 Graveguard in two turns and lost barely any. They were extremely resilient. I struggled to get them back into combat after the first fight though, although this was a lot to do with the terrain on the table so I think they will need a bit more play testing. Overall I think that there is a lot of potential for using the warriors, either along side or in place of blight kings.

I'm the same as @alexmcgee123 - I'm off to Steve and Jimbo's event at Warhammer World next Saturday. I really want to take a Nurgle list, but I may end up taking the Tzeentch army. I think I'll have to have a look at some lists and see what I can come up with. Maybe I could rock out the Sylvaneth again - they have not had a run out for over a year! No matter what I take I think its going to be super fun, and Warhammer World is always a fun day out

These guys are quite fun to do. I have 20 now, and another ten that are base coated. The shields and weapons are taken from the Bonesplitterz kits. Armor is just a couple of green spray paints and then chipped with silver paint and a sponge. I tend to just paint the rest of the models as quick as possible. The warrior models are old, but they have a certain chaotic charm to them, especially with halberds rather than hand weapons.

I received a Darkoath Warqueen model for my birthday that I want to finish for the Malign Portents painting competition. I decided to try and convert her up a little so that she could lead my Nurgle Slaves to Darkness force. I didn't want to do a really extensive conversion so I did some relatively simple weapon and head swaps. The head was from the Blight King box. The helmet is quite small and if you leave the head off the war queen and cut away the little top knot she has the helmet fitted perfectly over the top of the skull. The helmet looks big, but I think its actually a realistic size - I think a lot of the models with helmets actually look too small, and if the model doesn't have other armour then the helmet should look larger - imagine wearing a motorcycle helmet without any other gear on; it would look very oversized. The weapon swap was easy - I cut away the hand at the wrist and replaced it with a Plaguebearer sword. Because the cut was flat I just used plastic glue to secure it in place. The war queens shield required a bit more work. I had to cut around the shield arm, trim between the straps and then slice off the front of the shield to leave a flat area where the new shield could go. I chose a Rotbringer shield with a distinctive Nurgle design and clipped of the arm on the back and scraped and sanded it flat, and then just secured it with plastic glue again. I used superglue to glue her to the tree stump, and secured the tree stump to a 32mm base with superglue. All I need to do now is build up the base with some filler and drop a rock or two on, then she should be ready to undercoat.

Painting and Modelling: February is over and its been a bit of a mixed bag. I missed my painting target of a model a day, ending up with 24 completed models. Most of these got done in the first half of the month and then there was a bit of a lull. I managed to do some consistent work, but I didn't really finish everything. As the end of the mon th rolled ever closer I had ten warriors that were almost done (just the weapons and the bases to go), and I also completed a Blightlord fly, but haven't done the rider or the wings yet. They should be done soon. I didn't have a model that I thought was worth submitting to the PMP this month either. However I did enter the first part of the Malign Portents painting competition at my local GW in Rotherham and was voted as the winning army which was pretty sweet. For me though it was just nice to be able to support the store and get involved in the event. Gaming I've entered the South Coast GT in May and the NEO Coalescence event on the 17th March that will be themed around the Malign Portents. I will be using the Nurgle army for this. I managed one game which was against the Legion of Nagash using the Nurgle army. I had the Glottkin out for this, and the game started well, but I got undone by the sheer resilience of the Undead force which kept regaining wounds and models despite me killing off the characters quickly. I was impressed with the Nurgle speed and resilience, once again the Glottkin died super fast and I struggled to redeploy the army after a strong initial first two turns. In the end the Legion of Nagash was a strong victor. I was really amazed at how good 40 skeletons Aquisitions I bought the Legion of Nagash book as well as the Malign Portents book and cards. I also managed a good bit of selling on ebay, getting rid of a lot of older models I didn't want to use any more. This all went fairly smoothly - I had to refund one guy who bought a Helldrake that he wasn't impressed with, but I was just pleased to get rid of it. I am certainly in the green for hobby spending so far this year which is good! I also had a successful birthday haul - three boxes of Pusgoyle Blightlords, an Ogroid Thaumuturge and a Darkoath Warqueen. Personal On the plus side I have been feeling a lot better after my illness at the start of the year. I had a great birthday (the wife took me away for the weekend without the boys!), have got back to playing basketball and even managed a few running sessions! I'm nowhere near back to where I was, and of course the snow has hit at the end of the month and stopped a lot of training. It also forced our lease deciding basketball fixture to be postponed which was annoying as I was back and had been picked in the team. Hopefully that will be rearranged soon. The snow was awesome for the kids though and we were able to build an epic snowman as well as take William sledging for the first time. Turns out sledging in Yorkshire is a completely different animal to sledging in Essex when I was a boy!

Update: 11/04/18 Number of models completed = 89 March Worked on the Blightlord Flies and Warriors Assembled 20 bases for warriors and next horror unit (undercoated the warrior ones) Worked on Chaos Warriors (all done except weapons), finished and based one fly, but no rider yet Built the Dark Oath Warqueen with some Rotbringer Conversions added Nothing done Nothing done Nothing done Started work on second rot fly. Finished painting the warriors. Glued the warriors to bases 10 Warriors finished Worked on a yellow pink horror test model Nothing Done Built the riders for the Pusgoyle Blightlords Undercoated the Pusgoyle Blightlords, built a base for a Tzeentch Demon Prince More base work More base work Painted he base and used it to rebase the Demon Prince Played three games at the Coalescence Malign Portents event at Warhammer World. Went 3-0, met my narrative goal and managed to win Best Army with the Tzeentch. Got a rather nice certificate Nothing Done Finished the bodies of the Pusgoyle Blightlords Finished a Horror Test model Nothing done Finished the two Blightlords (no wings, but they will all be done as a group when everything is completed as I need to bust out the airbrush) Nothing done - lost basketball game, finished third in league instead of top Assembled two more Pusgoyle Blight Lords Started painting the Darkoath Warqueen Worked on Darkoath Warqueen Worked on Darkoath Warqueen Worked on Darkoath Warqueen Base Finished the Darkoath Warqueen Nothing done Nothing done April Nothing done Holiday - Nothing done Holiday - Nothing done Holiday - Nothing done Holiday - Nothing done Holiday - Nothing done Nothing done Nothing done Worked on 5 horrors Completed 5 Horrors Undercoated Ogroid Thaumaturge Worked on more Pusgoyle Blightlords Nothing done Nothing done Worked on more Pusgoyle Blightlords Nothing done Nothing done Nothing done Nothing done Nothing done Nothing done Started blending up the skin on the OT Carried on with Skin Went to watch the London Marathon Nothing done Nothing done Nothing done Nothing done Completed red section on OT Completed the blue on the OT

I cant take credit - that wasn't my army!

@endtransmission @kaaras Thanks for the comments on this everyone. I may well have to go back in and have a crack at the other two with these points to hand @AngiesArmies thanks for the tip on the arms. Your flamers look great in the blue scheme too.

I bought a bunch of Tzeentch models from a friend of mine a few months ago, and three of the models were Exalted Flamers. I have sprayed and undercoated the thereof them about nine times so far, and I have not been able to find a scheme or style that I like. The models have a lot of flat detail that doesn't wash well and is tricky to dry brush too. I tried fades from bottom to top of similar colours, colours that contrast, and different tones of the same colour. None of these particularly inspired me, or if they did I found it hard to get a good highlight or shade onto the model. In the end I went with a contrast from a light brown to yellow. I then used purple as the contrast colour for the flames - no particularly inspiring, but it works well. I did the flames all with washes and then quickly highlighted the tops with a white. I really wanted the model finished and in the end I just called it done as I didn't want to continue working on a model I wasn't enjoying. It will look fine in my Tzeentch force, but I really didn't enjoy the sculpt or the painting experience. The pale yellow highlights were easy to bring back using the Lamentors yellow glaze, which I really like for working on yellow. Because I didn't enjoy the model I didn't spend much time picking out details like teeth and more on the flames. I'm not sure spending time on the flames would really make much difference, and I think it would be annoying to try and layer them up. I wonder if I had put the model together there might have been a way to keep the flames separate which may have allowed me to do a better job. This may have made the painting experience better too. I think the two spare flamers may find their way onto ebay in the near future!

When I saw you were packing models in foam I assumed you'd be flying. Particularly with metal models have you considered just using a magnetised box? Nothing rubs against the models, you can magnetise them in movement trays ready to go, it's easy to transport them between games? I used to use a foam case, but once I started to use plastic boxes I'd never go back except for travelling internationally.

I've got some of the Pusgoyle Blightlords to paint up next so I'll certainly look at varying up the greens on those. They also have a few more areas where you can put in extra colours. I agree when the plaguebearers in particular are on the bases they don't jump them! I was a big fan of the goblins too. I'd like to have seen a few more of them!

I drilled out the holes with a 5mm drill bit and super glued acrylic rod into them. I then did the same into the playback on the base. It makes them very secure. Wings are pinned as well as I have seen them pop off very easily.

The man Stag conversion is something else! Awesome concept

I've already bought my ticket ?

Hey Oscar, like I said on the Twitter those Stormcast are some of the best I've seen. I'm not usuallly a fan but I think these are brilliant. I've got to admit I've saved your lord of Affliction photo too, as I've just started working on mine. I hope you keep posting as this is a very inspiring blog. Top stuff

"People comment more if a painting and modelling project is put in the Forum section than the Blog Section" discuss.... it seems like having a forum post for tracking your painting and modelling is better than having a Blog in the blog section. Just scanning down the page there are a lot more comments on Posts. Forum/Blog users don't seem to comment much on the blog section. You get quite a few likes or reactions, but very little critique or feedback from what I've experienced. My answer to my own question would be that if you are working on a project don't put it in the blog section, put it here. Use the Blogs more like a diary to track your own projects, but don't expect as much interaction.