Stevewren

I have an airbrush, but all the stuff I've done on the Tzeentch army has all been done with spray cans.

The colour balance isn't right. The purple is the wrong colour. I could have got away with it if I had used a paler purple, but it would have been better if it was off white, or pale blue fr example. The skin on these was super simple. I sprayed it Macragge blue, then sprayed it again using a pale baby blue (zenithal highlight style) from above/45 degree sort of angle. The highlight was just a slightly watered down lutheran blue and a very final highlight of Blue Horror. I'm very sparse with my highlights these days. You don't need to highlight every little bit. I tend to do hands, faces and any prominent parts (on these I did the chest and top of the feet).

I had planned on taking the Sylvaneth to the South Coast GT this year and doing a display board to compete against Mat Lyons and Stev Foote for the Coolest Army award. However a couple of things have scuppered that plan. Firstly my wife gave birth to our second child and, despite us purchasing a nice little SUV for transportation, there is no way that we can get a display board, two children, an army and and a pram. Therefore I decided I could do a new army! Its February right? SCGT isn't till April! Thats loads of time.... My list for the South Coast GT will hopefully be a Tzeentch army. I'm going to keep the exact build under wraps here for a bit (Sorry), but there were a few things I wanted to include. A lord of change is a must with the new model, and I also wanted to have some of the new Sky Fire models as everyone seems to be singing their praises. So I hopped onto the Element Games website and ordered a few boxes. Now for some advice - paint the discs in pieces before gluing them together! This would have been soooooooo much easier and would have given me a better result. I'll know for next time if I decide to add some of the Tzangor Enlightened. The Tzangors themselves, although they look complicated, actually go together pretty well and paint up fairly easily. I kept all the gold parts straight gold to save time, and I also checked out Vince Venturella's speed painting guide for doing Tzangors (relatively) quickly Here is the test model that I have done so far... You'll notice that the disc is horrendously the wrong colour. I did the discs first and get the colour tone all wrong. These should have been much paler or a completely different colour all together. The purple and blue do not work complement each other at all. Otherwise I am a fan of what I have done so far and I'm looking at the getting the next two done this week at some point so keep your eyes peeled. Let me know what you think of them in the comments below.

Like the rest of the Age of Sigmar community I was really enthused and excited by the new Disciples of Tzzeentch Battletome. I was lucky enough to get hold of some of the Kairic Acolytes which I painted up for my new force. A couple of things that I think are worth noting - the basing plans are to tie in with the rest of my Chaos force rather than having their own unique basing scheme. I'd love to have done a desert themed basing scheme for them as they have a really cool egyptian style look to them. The kit is great - you can make the models up pretty quick and they go together beautifully as you would expect. I used a really simple skin recipe of mourning brown spray, sandro dust spray and a wash of sepia or Reikland flesh shade. It gives quite a nice dark, sun kissed type of skin tone. As these are supposed to be quick I have really focussed on not going back in and adding extra detailing to the skin. I will try to spend the time on the characters and monsters in the list. The shields I kept separate so that I could quickly airbrush on the fade and get them done quickly. I find my airbrush to be a very fickle beast, but when it works it is a real time saver for this kind of effect Once the skin was all done the detailing was finished and kept simple. I used a lot of bright blues combined with purples and whites. As you can probably imagine the biggest time sink on these models is doing the gold trim. There is absolutely no way that these can be speed painted. you have to take care to keep it neat. I have seen on the Warhammer TV that Duncan does the gold first and then paints in the panels, and I can see how that would work, but at the moment I'd rather keep the gold as the final stage.

Cripes! I've just noticed my last post was the 9th January. Not exactly stellar blog updating here. Anyway, lets try and get you up to speed with whats been happening. First off I have some New Years Resolutions for 2017. Lets hope one of them wasn't update the blog regularly.. Rather than listing it all here I have done a fun little video instead which you can view. Enjoy the video and let me know what you think of the resolutions I have set and how many you think I can achieve!

They are armatures from Woodland Scenics - you can find it here Its the Fine Leaf Foliage from Woodland Scenics - you can find it here

So this was the sum total of my painting for 2016 models wise. All in all I was a little disappointed that I hadn't done as much as I would have liked, but I did do four big monsters as well as Drycha, a Maggoth Lord and the Forest Dragon (not shown here) and that did account for a fair chunk of time at the start of the year in particular. I finished off the Chaos Army for the South Coast GT this year, but I didn't really finish the army to a cohesive standard due to some personal issues that came up, which was a shame. I had to do quite a bit or rebasing for this project. I still have a number of Chaos models which I still need to rebase. I finished off the Sylvaneth which was great so I have a full faction of these guys now. They were a lot of fun too do and picked up a couple of painting trophies at Alliance and the Leeds Last Stand later in the year, as well as getting a nomination at the Facehammer GT. I want to add a few more Kurnoth Hunters and some Spites and Tree Revenants, but I think this will be a project that I come back too as there are a lot more exciting things coming along this year by the looks of things My other big win was the amount of rebasing that I got through. I repurposed quite a lot of models from older armies during the year and I had a lot of fun with the new GW Bases, both the normal ones and the Hero bases. I used these for the Order army that I took to Blood and Glory that won the Judges Choice award. I tried my hand at Golden Demon this year for the first time as well, and managed to pick up two finalist pins. I was really pleased with that, but it really showed me that the single figure/competition painting is a completely new ball game. I'm not sure that I would enter again, but I'd certainly attend to see the models as its great looking at such fantastic models. Tournaments were the usual debacle, ranging from the disappointingly mediocre to the shockingly awful. However I always enjoy the social side of the events and meeting new players. I never have to worry about playing friends or people I know as they are all an awfully lot better than me at the game. I did have some excellent narrative games during the year though, including playing Steve Foote on the Saturday of the South Coast GT, and playing Mark Wildman in a terrific Everchosen vs Ironjaws/Orrruk game. Overall I feel like my AoS year has been good, if not spectacular, and I'm hoping that I can have a better year in 2017. I certainly hope to paint more, and I'd like to do a little better in some events, although I know that I won't be attending too many the year. If you want to see moe of my resolutions there is a video up on the Bad Dice YouTube page.

I was able to find a bit of time on Christmas Eve to finish off this model. Glad its finally off the painting table and ready for some battles. The metals were quite challenging. When I've been submitting modes to the Google+ PMP community I have had a lot of feedback about improving the contrast in my golds, so I made an effort to try and do it here. I used GW Retributer Armor as a base that I shaded with Agrax Earthshade. I also used Nuln Oil in the deeper recesses as well. Once it all dried I then went over all the raised areas with Liberator Armor, which is quite bright silvery metal paint. I mixed in a little bit of silver to do a first highlight and then used a Silver Sharpie pen to edge highlight all the sharp corners and edges.

That's very cool. I'm doing something similar with the waterfall, although I had a bit of a modelling disaster with mine! How did you make the water for it?

I can't claim credit - the base model is the Throne of Everblight from Hordes. I'm going to add some AoS banners and sorcerers to the model to fit it into the army.

I've been planning this Warshrine since last Christmas, so I've finally decided to try and get it finished. Originally I had planned to put it in my SCGT 2016 army, but I never managed to get it complete due to personal reasons and so it was left sitting on the painting table. Now that I am working on the Nurgle army I have decided to use it this time as part of my Budget of Sigmar Two Army. However I'd also like it to fit in to the Slaanesh army as well. I have tried to combine the two different basing schemes and also use lots of purple and green. I have reversed the colour scheme from my Maggoth Lord so I have the green tongue and the purple skin rather than the green with a purple tongue. This should tie it in, but still keep it subtly different. The black teeth and claws will also keep it tied in. I can then magnetise the wizards to go on top of the Shrine. Plan is to get the rest of the gold finished tonight, although I can see it taking a while as there is a lot of it to paint!

Hopefully! I'm keeping my fingers crossed!

That's a fairly common story I imagine! Good luck and try to keep the blog updated!

So I was continuing on with the floating islands when I had a bit of a disaster. I finished up the bottom pool with the resin pour, added in all the flock and foliage and was pretty much happy with it. I then decided it was time to start the top island which is when disaster struck. I thought it was sealed up tight, but there were some gaps under the acrylic so the resin all poured down the perspex support into the bottom pool. This led to me to deciding a complete redesign is needed. When I went to unscrew the supports of course the resin had stuck it fairly solid so I have snapped and cracked the whole thing, which is a bit of a bummer. This is the first proper terrain problem I've had, but I have a few ideas about how to solve it. I'm going to need to dremel out the mess on the top section and I am going to cut a slot under the plywood and slide it under island. This way I should be able to do a thin resin pour on the top which I think will actually improve the appearance. Its just going to take a bit more time than I thought! Here is the mess that it made at the top where the perspex snapped off the resin. Here you can see how the Island looks fully painted. I'm pretty happy with this.

I've been finding a lot with painting that you can be minimal with initial coats if you have something else that can distract the eye or the draw attention, so with these guys I used some agrax to darken the nose areas and then dapple around the eyes. It makes the face the focus so the rest doesn't really matter, especially as these will just be standard gaming models. I use this trick a lot on things like monster wings as I find these very hard to paint, so a bit of a pattern really helps to hide a lack of shading or highlighting. One of the reasons I have never got on with Space marines is the fact that their is nothing to accentuate on the armour panels, although I have a few ideas about how I could do it now.

The models were under coated black, then sprayed again with mournfang brown (both spray cans) from the tops and sides to leave shadows. They only have one more highlight which was an airbrushed layer of tallarn sand. This gives a soft final highlight. I use this kind of technique for most unarmoured horses as I struggle to do them with a brush and keep them looking smooth

Played this list yesterday vs an Ironjaws list. Played 2 places of Power and absolutely bossed it. Archaon killed 20 'Ard Boyz, 3 Gore Gruntas, 5 Brutes and a Maw Krusha. Took 0 wounds! 10 Chaos Warriors killed a Mega Boss. 5 Blight Kings killed a unit of 5 Brutes and didn't die! The 2+, 5+, 5+, 5+, 5+, 5+, 6+ on Archaon was hugely fun for me. Not sure my opponent felt the same, but we were practising for Heat 1 so all was fair game! Movement was definitely an issue for me, but I set up to defend my objective and then attacked his with the Marauders and a single Harbinger. Worked like a charm

Thanks - its a cool model for sure. Shame he doesn't get on the board much now days

I'm often part of a story in the games my group play. My role is the rank amateur who's army gets flattened in two or three turns every week. Its really promoting a growth mindset in how I approach games.

First stage drybrushing all finished. Ready for the flock and base coating the pool.

Undercoated and assembled. Didn't break or fall over! Success!!

I've finished the sanding and texturing on the base and the islands. I used some filler to cover the gaps and then used tree roots and branches I picked up on a stroll round the local woodland. These were glued into random holes and gaps using the hot glue gun. I then undercoated the whole thing with black and brown.

Yes it is. You mix it and pour it in. Hardens in a few hours. I'm going to tint it with washes and hopefully nurgles rot as well. It would probably work well for ice. You could certainly tint it with a pale blue to make it go opaque first too.

I'll be using crystal resin for the top and bottom pools as it dries hard and reasonably quickly. I'm going to experiment a bit to get a greenish tint to the water for the first one. The waterfall itself will be done with Woodland scenics realistic water just squeezed down the Perspex and teased out a bit.

That list will be fine for your first event. Good luck getting it finished. Make sure that you post some pictures.