Stevewren

I wanted to get a few units done over the holiday period and so far I have completed some more Plaguebearers which is convenient timing looking at the new models that are coming out in a few days time. I quite enjoy painting these guys as green is a colour I enjoy doing due to the amount of variation in tone you can achieve. Plus spray cans do a lot of the work for the scheme that I have been using. I like dry brushing on some paler green to lighten these guys up. I'd like to add a couple of the new great Unclean one models and do them in a nice pale green scheme. Now on a different note I painted 10 brimstone horrors and I'm not sure that the paint scheme is quite as successful as I would have liked. I got some great feedback from a friend on Twitter who's painting I have always admired. He said that they sat too much in the arrange midtone range so lacked contrast. On the next ten I'm looking to bring back more of the yellow and also highlight the faces in a more traditional way to bring out some of the detail. I think that I tried to keep the fire too realistic in the scheme I picked, and that clearly hasn't worked, so next I'm going to take Mikey's advice and bring a bit more of my own thinking into the models. Stay tuned to see how they turn out.

Thanks I like your thinking on 'need vs want' I'll have to think about how I phrase things! I certainly 'needed' to do the warhammer achievements terrain, but you're right about everything else. I could easily have done other things. I certainly didn't want to work on anything for a little while, but when I got back into painting I didn't really have anything that really inspired me. However the new Nurgle models that have been shown on the Warhammer Community blog have certainly got me wanting to drop some of my Tzeentch plans and get cracking on some of the Nurgle models I have assembled but not painted yet. We'll see how 2018progresses

Great effort still mate. The variety of things you get done always amazes me. I'll be doing a review of my 2017 goals at some point - it was pretty much an unmitigated disaster!

It was based with Zandri dust and then washed with sepia. Almost all my highlighting is done with Palyd Wych flesh, but I tend to keep it very watered down so that it stays fairly transparent. You can layer it all up easily though.

Recently (since Blood and Glory) I have really struggled to get my hobby mojo back again. I think I burnt myself out getting all the terrain ready. Also painting and modelling the terrain is very different to painting models, which is my real love. However trying to get back into painting has been a bit of a struggle recently. I've reworked the hobby room now, but its been a bit chaotic and trying to find time has been hard. Coupled with the lack of motivation means I've found it hard to get anything done. So, what is the solution....? Firstly I went about fully reorganising the room. I then got out a bunch of half completed projects to tackle. Some of these are for my Wanderers Army, then there are some units to go into the Tzeentch force, and some more Nurgle models that are being done in the hope that a new Nurgle battle tome will be forthcoming. For the Wanderers I have been planning on doing some Warhawk Riders for a while. I finally got round to finishing these off. I have had the riders done for ages, but I needed to put the hawks together. I assembled the whole model and then taped off the plastic rod so I could spray up the rest of the models. Once I got the pale underbelly done and the top I just went a bit crazy with lines to add the texture. The painting is mostly done using very thin paint and washes. You can work really quickly as long as the brush has a good point. I didn't worry about the texture on the model as a guide. I just used my own feel for where the feathery effect should go. My Nurgle entry is the humble Plaguebearer. I have done 30 now which is a good number of battle line models, but I think I probably need to do another 30! This doesn't really fill me with excitement The models themselves aren't too painful to do though. I tend to do a two tone base coat and then wash the models and dry brush them up. I can then easily vary the greens on the model to get a lot of variation in the units. After this the models get finished relatively quickly as its just a case of picking out the horns and some pustules, and then doing the gore with Blood for the Blood God. These still need basing though. For the Tzeentch I need to increase my Horror numbers. I have the three lords of change which are all different colours, so I thought it might be nice to paint up matching horrors in the same colours. I have done the ten green ones so next up is the 10 red ones. I have base coated them brown and Mephiston red and then quickly layered on some Evil Sunz Scarlett. The beak, claws and tongues will all be picked out in white, and the red will have a final highlight of Tau Ochre to hopefully set it off and not make it too orange. The Blue Horrors have just been base coated blue and then had the highlights brought up to a bright Palyd Wych Flesh. I like these models a lot, although they are a lot smaller than I expected. All I have left to do after this are thirty Brimstone Horrors and the army will be ready for Sheffield Slaughter and Heat 1 at Warhammer World. If you have had your own Hobby Wobble let me know how you got over it in the comments!

Also what was the model he was painting? Not one I recognised, but could have been one of the 40K marines.

This was model that I painted for my old High elf diorama. The sorceress was a protagonist in the middle. I enjoyed painting a female model, and I spent a lot of time working on the pale flesh tones. The sculpt is pretty good so I was a able to put quite a lot of care into the face. It was possible to put quite a lot of work into the eyes and mouth. I kept the flesh tones and the whole overall model a very pale pallete. The hair was brought up to a very pale purple, and I used a lot of purple into the gold as washes to keep the colours balanced.I also used Palyd Wych Flesh, both as the main highlight colour for the hair and as the main colour for the robes. If I was to redo the models composition again I'd definitely consider a different colour for the blood pool as I think that the red is too strong and vibrant and isn't balanced anywhere else in the model.

After the final push for Blood and Glory ended I decided I needed to get back to painting some miniatures and make sure I hadn't forgotten how to do it! I'd started working on a Festus model a while ago as part of my Nurgle force that is slowly growing in size. The first thing that struck me was how small the model is. He really doesn't stand up to the new models that all stand a good head taller. To solve this I stuck him on one of the Hero Bases that GW released last year, This certainly made him look more imposing! I tried to keep the base in the brown spectrum and quite muted, and I made sure to keep the tones similar on the poor victim that is drinking the potion. The browns on the staff and the back pack were varied more. Accent colours were the blues and purples that are dotted around the model on all the bottles and mushrooms. I painted Festus using a lot of green washes and also tried to bring a lot of yellow tones into the face to match the nurgling and balance them out with the green parchment on the top of the staff. I also used some bright green on the tentacle. This was probably the bit f the model I rushed the most and am the least happy with. Overall I am happy with the model, but wouldn't consider it my best work. there were a lot of areas that I rushed and a lot of small details that I just didn't give a lot of time too as I wanted to get him finished so I could crack on with some more Tzeentch models!

I've long been an admirer of the Table Top World terrain - it always appears to be excellent quality and well detailed terrain. Some of it is very expensive, but they have a few pieces that are more reasonably priced, and one of these is the Windmill. It turned up quickly and was well packaged, with all the pieces securely packaged inside the main building section. The casting quality is very good as well, and there was barely any clean up needed. I had a plan for the base that I wanted for the windmill, which was to place it onto a step which was surrounded by some of the excellent ribs from Gary M on Twitter. You can see here how it would be situated. It was important that there was a lot of space around the windmill as I had a little plan for it, so raising the height seemed like a good idea. In the photo below you can also see some the other death terrain pieces in their earliest stages and showing how I generally lay out terrain at the beginning of the process. Once I had cleaned up the Windmill I started on the conversion process. I ordered a very small motor from Pimroni that had a rotational speed 14 rpm. These come pre geared so all you need to do is add a battery pack to them. I ordered a 6amp circular battery holder from Ebay to power the motor and this was attached simply using a few wires and a terminal block. It didn't matter which way the batteries are connected to the motor - all this does is change the direction the motor spins, so you really can't go wrong. Mounting the motor inside the windmill was slightly more challenging. The top of the windmill is cast separately which is a good start, however I had to drill out the hole for the spindle to go through. I replaced the spindle with a small piece of wooden dowel which I drilled on a centre lathe to ensure the holes were located accurately. I drilled a small hole all the way through so that the sails could be mounted and pinned to one side and the other could be pushed on to the spindle of the motor. I then mounted the motor on some hard board and glued it into the top of the windmill. Once I'd done some testing to make sure that everything worked well I glued a ring into the top of the windmill to allow that to be rotated as well. To paint the windmill I used some spray paint and gave the whole thing a few cots of dark grey, light grey and white to pick up a lot of the raised detail. I sprayed the top brown, and didn't worry too much about over spray on this as it would just add a bit of variation on the stone. Once it was dry I washed the whole thing with various different colours and made sure to dry brush the whole thing. This picked up all of the great texture on the model . I was able to selectively wash various stones with blues, green and browns which just adds a nice amount of variation on the piece. I then carefully sprayed the windows with a bright acid green paint to do a glow effect. The Sails had to be painted by hand and took a bit of time, but I didn't spend a great deal of effort. Once this was done I was able to finish mounting the model onto its base. Overall I was happy with the colour scheme and the overall look, and hopefully it will be well received by players at the event this weekend.

That is a strong colour scheme. Great job. I have an ironclad to paint so seeing finished ships gives me some real inspiration.

Using Scheme Cards is an idea that has come from Malifaux, and these cards were the ones used at an event in the US run by @David Griffin. The cards were developed with help from Tom, and Vince from Warhammer Weekly and they were kind enough to send me a copy over for use at Achievements. These cards will hopefully serve two purposes. Firstly they will allow both players to score up to 3 points in each game by completing schemes from their hands of five cards. This makes up the Tertiary Objective. However it is in players interests to score as many schemes as possible across the weekend as these will be the tie breaker used at the end of the event if players are tied on Achievements.

I cant wait for this - my first tournament since this years South Coast GT!

Top showing from @Chris Tomlin in 4th place with the Ironjawz! Really well done.

Yeah, I should have tried that. He got smashed up by some flying big stabba dudes. It was a bit of an army mismatch though.

My Fatesworn Warband is a little different: Allegiance: Tzeentch Leaders Archaon (700) - General Units 30 x Chaos Warriors (480) -Hand Weapons - Mark of Chaos : Tzeentch 5 x Chaos Knights (160) -Ensorcelled Weapons - Mark of Chaos : Tzeentch 10 x Chaos Marauders (60) -Axes - Damned Icon - Mark of Chaos : Tzeentch 10 x Chaos Marauders (60) -Axes - Damned Icon - Mark of Chaos : Tzeentch 1 x Chaos Gorebeast Chariots (100) -War Flail - Mark of Chaos : Tzeentch 1 x Chaos Gorebeast Chariots (100) -War Flail - Mark of Chaos : Tzeentch 1 x Chaos Chariots (80) -War flails - Mark of Chaos : Tzeentch 1 x Chaos Chariots (80) -War flails - Mark of Chaos : Tzeentch 1 x Chaos Chariots (80) -War flails - Mark of Chaos : Tzeentch Battalions Fatesworn Warband (100) Total: 2000/ 2000 Points I'm going to try it out tomorrow night against the evil Bonesplittererz. See how it goes I'm expecting it not to be great!

I was fortunate enough to pick up Gold when I entered at Warhammer World a couple of years ago so I know what a challenge it can be to get an army and display done, especially if you are defending an award you won last year! Best of luck. Do you have any photos of the army that you did last year? I can't believe you are giving yourself only a month to do it though! I'm annoyed I can't enter again this year, but all my scenery will be at Blood and Glory so I can't even drop a display off for the weekend.

Having a Freeguild Army myself with a lot o the units you have talked about I found this nice and informative. I should really get mine all rebased so that I can play> I'm looking forward to using the General on Griffon as I never got to use him in during the End Times of 8th Edition Warhammer. Its a shame the Demigryph Knights don't do much - I have nine of these that I would really like to use again. Good luck in your tournament.

Great work. the Manticore conversion is fabulous.

For each table at Warhammer Achievements I want to have a map on each table that shows the scenery rules and the secondary objective for that table. Here is the first example that I have put together. To set it up I laid out a board on the living room floor and then stood on the chair with a selfie stick to get the aerial shot. After that it was just a case of importing into photoshop and adding in all the rules and fancy graphics stuff to make it look professional. Hopefully the players will appreciate the work! In the end it has taken 6 months to do all the tables and the maps, and its been a bit of a grind in places. However I am now very excited about getting the tables all laid out on the Friday of the event to see how it all looks.

Last couple of weeks I've been working on the terrain for the a table I want to set in Ghur. I've been trying to think of new colour schemes for the scenery for the tables as this is Age of Sigmar and there is no real reason to keep things traditional. For this set I decided to use a brown scheme, but throw in some yellows and reds for a lot of the detailing. Scatter Terrain These were made from some of the the terrain that was donated for the event from Garrisimo on Twitter that he had 3D printed. I was able to blend everything in using polyfilla. They are large enough to block line of site for single models and also can't be charged over so will help with dictating charge lines. Plateaus These were made from a Cork Bark tube which I cut into three sections. I glued them down to bases and then filled them full of expanding foam. When this cured I chopped off the excess using a saw and then covered the top in polyfilla and sand. I used the shattered dominion pieces to make the details on top to try and show that there used to be some sort of old civilisation or city here. Numinous Occulum This is just the regular GW kit (which can be a real pain to assemble!). I wanted this to be a ruin from past times, so I built up a rocky outcropping base for it to stand on. The stairs were cut from blue foam and then slotted into a gap, and the rock front was made using Cork bark pieces that I cut and glued on with hot glue. Once that was dry everything was blended together with sand and filler again. Painting was done using Plasticoat Chocolate brown spray that goes straight over the blue foam. I then used a combination of cream and yellow spray pint to get the shading effect, Then everything was dry brushed with Terminatus Stone. The shattered dominion pieces were base coated Khorne Red and then the washed with Athonian Camoshade. The yellows were done using Zandri Dust and Dorn yellow for a quick highlight. Serpents Lair This will be the main damage dealing piece of terrain for the the players to be wary of: "Serpents Lair: Any units that run, charge or retreat within 6” risk getting poisoned by the snake. Roll a D6 – on a 3+ the unit takes D6 Mortal wounds" This was made from a piece of fish tank scenery and the cave entrance came from an old Snake Mountain playset that I bought cheaply on eBay. Everything was chopped to size using a bandsaw and glued down with hot glue. I used a mixture of cork bark pieces and play bark nuggets to blend and hide edges, and then the piece was, as usual, covered in filler and sand. The snake was another part of the old toy that I just glued in place. I should have filled the gap down the centre, but I was a bit lazy with this. After that it was just painted quickly. It still looks a bit toy like, but I don't have an issue with this for terrain. Serpents Altar The main feature of Snake Mountain is the big snakes face. I chopped this out and then surrounded it with Cork bark before painting it up. I think I might go in with the air brush and give it a nice glow round the eyes. In terms of an in game effect I think it will give a nice little area effect for attacks, maybe a mortal wound on any wound roll of a 6 along with regular damage as the players invoke the serpents power for some added poison to their attacks! The pictures below show the stages of building up the terrain piece!

These are great - my only critique is the basing - its very much in the Games Workshop style, but on such large models I think there is so much more you could do to add interest, particularly now with the creeping vines and skull packs, as well as all of the different tufts and grasses that are available. In terms of the painting I think that you have clearly got the hang of highlighting and blending effectively, but now you need to consider colour choice and position more. For example on the Treelord you can create a much more effective composition by repetition of the spot colours in more areas. As an example above you could use the ice blue from the loin cloth on the claws, head dress and ends of the spirals on the staff. Hopefully this will give you some ideas for your next army

Thats a great little comparison. You've made some massive strides with your painting. The glade guard looks excellent!

This is a great write up Nico. I'm also very impressed with the army. Its looking extremely Tzeentchian with all the colours! Do you have some photos of Kairos on the clock? I've been considering a Fatesworn Warband army for Sheffield next year, although I suspect that it won't be quite up to the standard of yours - I'm hoping to have Archaon lead it as he hasn't had a run out for a while.

I thought a whole bunch of sky fires would be good for the siege games due to their flying ability. Plus I think a whole flying Tzeentch army is very narrative and thematic...