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Stevewren

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  1. Stevewren
    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.







     
  2. Stevewren
    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
  3. Stevewren
    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. 
  4. Stevewren
    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! 




















      
  5. Stevewren
    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. 

     
     
  6. Stevewren

    Coalescence review

    By Stevewren,

    (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. 
     
  7. Stevewren
    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. 
  8. Stevewren

    Darkoath Warqueen

    By Stevewren,

    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.  

  9. Stevewren
    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! 
  10. Stevewren
    Update: 28/02/18
    Number of models completed = 70
    February
    Worked on a unit of Nurglings (tidied the hobby room a bit and got some models ready to Ebay) Completed 3 Nurgling Bases Prepped 6 Screamers (undercoated), built and undercoated bases for 3 Plague Drones, 2 Blightlords, 10 Blue Horrors, 6 Screamers, Built 4 Objective Markers, Assembled 3 Plague Drones.  Worked on the Screamers Completed 6 Screamers


    Finished a Feculent Gnarlmaw and 5 Chaos Hounds. Played first game with the new Nurgle Battletome - lost to Death! 
    Finished 5 Pink Horrors
    Started working on Plague Drones Completed 3 Plague Drones
    Bought Malign Portents Book and Card and entered the GW Malign Portents competition Undercoated some shields Holiday! Holiday! Holiday! Holiday! Holiday! Worked on some Chaos Warriors and an Exalted Flamer Finished an Exalted Flamer
    Nothing done Nothing done Worked on some Chaos Warriors Birthday - received 4 boxes of Pusgoyle Blightlords, an Ogroid Thaumurturge, and a Darkoath Warqueen Assembled two Blightlord flies Nothing done Worked on Chaos Warriors Worked on Chaos Warriors Nothing done Snow Day! Did some Chaos Warriors (again!) January
    Worked on 2 blue horrors (not based yet), assembled 10 pink horrors Spray primed 6 pink horrors Spray primed 4 pink horrors and zenithalled the first 6 Nothing done Completed 5 Blue Horrors Nothing done Completed 5 Blue Horrors
    Nothing Done Completed 20 Brimstone Horrors and 10 Plague Bearers


    Started working on Horticulux Slime More work on HS No painting, but I did get my list written for the Warhammer Age go Sigmar Heat 1 3 games of Warhammer at Heat 1 (bought the Maggotkin Book, cards, and Tzeentch cards) 2 games of Warhammer at Heat 1 - finished 13th and won best army
    Nothing done Nothing done More work on Horticulux Slimux More work on Horticulux Slimux More work on Horticulux Slimux (I'M SEEING A PATTERN HERE...) Worked up the base for HS Completed Horticulux Slimux
    Built 3 Nurglings Nothing done Nothing done Nothing done Nothing done - Hospital Nothing done - Hospital Nothing done - Hospital Nothing done Worked on 5 Pink Horrors, Primed 16 Chaos Warriors, Built a Lord of Affliction and Blight Lord Primed 3 Nurglings, 10 Blue Horrors, 8 Chaos Warriors, Built some bases, Finished 5 Pink Horrors
     
  11. Stevewren

    Blightwar all Done!

    By Stevewren,

    After my bout with real life disease I have actually finished the whole of the Nurgle half of the Blightwar during my recovery. I managed Horticulux, the ten Plaguebearers, three Nurglings and three Plague Drones, and I have managed to throw in a Feculent Gnarlmaw as well just for fun. I'm going to take them down to the Rotherham GW store tomorrow for the Malign Portents painting competition. As part of my #365challenge I was wondering how close I have been getting to having at least one of each Maggotkin Unit. I'm well on the way to achieving this, although my issue will be finding the funds for two Great Unclean Ones and also getting two more of the Maggot Lords. 
    Here are the Plague Drones in their finished state: 



     

    So I took these down to the Games Workshop in Rotherham today for the first month of the Malign Portents painting competition. I was impressed with the quality of the other entries. Having been down for Armies on Parade and other events I haven't been blown away by the standard, but this seemed to be a little better. There was a very nice Moonclan Grot force, some good looking Khorne and Ironjawz forces.
    Month 2 is a Harbinger so I'd better pick up the Darkoath Warqueen!





     
  12. Stevewren
    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! 

  13. Stevewren
    "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. 
  14. Stevewren
    This was very much a fun little aside from painting models. It goes together fast and you can have a lot of fun with bright colours, washing and drybrushing. My next task is to come up with some variants on this. I played my first game with the Maggotkin Battletome yesterday and I got plenty of trees out. I'm not sure you need any more than 3 or 4, but it would be nice to have some variation. I think I can afford one more of the official model which I can convert with some Sylvaneth parts, and then use a couple of sylvaneth trees which can be put on a same size base and then modded with mouths, pustules and bells to represent a Gnarlmaw. 
  15. Stevewren

    Cheeky Nurglings

    By Stevewren,

    These were a fun little speed paint. The Nurglings were primed Caliban green and then zenithal sprayed with Deathguard green. I then dry brushed them quickly with a mix of Organ Camo and White before glazing the whole model with Waywatcher Green. This gives a really nice vivid green colour. I then went back in and washed the recesses with Athonina Camo Shade and Nuln Oil. I did all the eyes, mouths etc at this stage too. Once this was dry I painted the tongues with screamer pink and then watered down a mix of screamer pink and wild rider red which I used for all the sores. All of these got washed with Drucji Violet. Blood for the Blood God went on all the sores and they were highlighted with white to make them look glossy. Horns were Rakarth Flesh and a quick highlight with Palyd Whych Flesh which I also used for the teeth (just a careful dry brush with very little paint on the brush). The most time consuming part was dotting all the eyes with yellow. 

    One thing I did with these was not to base them. I usually use the cork  bark for the bases, but because of how these models are made I didn't want to do this as they wouldn't sit flat on the bark well, so I went back to the traditional way of sanding afterwards and then brush painting the base. This is very annoying! I will try not to do this again. It is much easier to make the bases first and then attach the models to them. When you get a somewhat dubious looking join you can just go in with the foliage and use this to cover up any of the gaps that you may ave left. 
  16. Stevewren
    Painting and Modelling:
    January has ended and its been an interesting month. First off I've hit the target of a model a day, painting 46 models so far in 2018. These have been a mix of units and a character. Horticulux Slimux has been by far the most interesting of the models I've done. He was really fun to paint, and there is a lot of detail that gives the model character. I was pleased with the final outcome so he will be the model that I will submit to the PMP End of Month review run by @Vincent Venturella to see what they say about it. I decided not to put everything I do up as some of the things I intend to paint will be done quickly. The units were for my Tzeentch and Nurgle forces. I managed 10 more plague bearers, which gives me 30 now, and I finished some Pink, Blue and Brimstone Horrors. I also made good progress on getting models built and undercoated ready for next month, as well as getting some thinking into my army for the South Coast GT this year where I want to do something for the Coolest Army Award that they do. It will be a Maggotkin Army of some description. 
    Gaming
    I had two tournaments planned for January, Heat 1 at Warhammer and the Sheffield Slaughter, my local GT. The Heat was great fun and also very successful. I managed to qualify for the final with a 3-2 record combined with some good soft scores. In the end I finished 13th, which is probably my best finish ever at a large two day event. I was also fortunate enough to take the Best Painted award at the event with the Lords of Change Tzeentch list. I was hoping this good run would continue into Sheffield, but unfortunately I had to pull out from the event. 
    Aquisitions
    I bought the Maggotkin book when it came out along with the cards, and I picked up Sloppity Bilepiper, the Scrivener ad the Lord of Blights. I also purchased a Pusgoyle Blightlords Kit. I managed to sell the Stormcast Host from the Blightwar Box, so the money from this and the refund I got from the Slaughter covered the costs of what I bought. As usual l also had to stock up on 32mm bases and Tajima 1 got some business from me as I ran out of a few tufts and grasses. 
    Personal
    Bit of a rough one. I got ill before Christmas and haven't recovered throughout January. I've had several days off work, which is unusual, and in the end it got quite serious as I was admitted into hospital at the end of the month suffering from what turned out to be Pneumonia. This has led me to another week off work. I have also missed an important basketball game, and I was also training  for the Manchester Marathon which I have now deferred until 2019 as I will not have done the training required to run a time that I would be pleased with. Overall this has been really disheartening as I enjoy sport and being active and not being able to do things has left me feeling a bit down. I would rate January about 3/10 in terms of a good start to the year. Lets hope things improve in February!  
  17. Stevewren
    I built Horticulux Slimux as soon as I got the Blight War box when it was released, but he's been undercoated and sat on the painting desk since then. However with the release of the excellent Maggotkin battletome I decided he should be the next model (no.31) in my painting challenge. I have to say that he has been fun to paint so far, but I have also spent more time on him than I expected to. I started off working on Horticulux himself. Normally I'd go for a dark green as he is supposed to be an old plague bearer, but I knew that I was going to paint Mulch quite dark so he needed to be a bit brighter to stand out. I used a base coat of Ogryn Camo for the highlights along with Palyd Wych Flesh. Once id done all the highlights I glazed the whole model with Waywatcher Green and then Lamentors Yellow which gives a really vibrant bright green. Because I'd done the zenithal prime I had a lot of the darker areas already done so I could just glaze and shade over these sections with dark green and purple glazes to get some depth into the recesses. Once I'd finished the skin I went in and quickly picked out the details on the bone, wood and the eyes (I left the pupils out as the GW one looks a bit bonkers with the pupil!)


    Once i'd finished the rider I started working around him with the rest of the details. One of the things that its important to be aware of on this model is that there are a lot of different elements, and it would be easy to get carried away and have everything painted in lots of colours. What I tried to do was keep the pallet of colours limited, but that then makes it hard to  get variation unless you vary the tone of the colours. I also wanted to play around with the finishes. I started with the shell which is a very dark purple that I made from black and Naggaroth nightshade. I then dry brushed up the details with straight Naggaroth and then added in some Palyd Which Flesh (PWF). once it was dry I could highlight the extreme points with PWF and then covered it with And Coat to get a shiny reflective effect. On the tree I worked purple into the brown so that it would tie in with the overall scheme as well. 
    That just left all the details around the tree (there are a lot!)
    All of these were either yellow (to match the eyes), purples or greens. The only bit I'm not sure with at the moment is the tongue in Audrey2 - the red may need to be glazed with more purple, or maybe repainted green. 
    I'll hopefully finish the painting this weekend, and I still need to add a base...

    Speaking of which I managed to make a start on this tonight. I had a large piece of play bark which I was going to use, but the curve on either side were too extreme for the model to fit on - Mulch is quite wide and has a very flat base. So i grabbed a saw and cut the piece in half so that I would have a large flat surface to position the model on. I superglued this onto the base and then added filler and a second piece. Once this was dry I sanded the base in sections and then left it in the drying cupboard for a few hours. Once the PVA had set I then superglued a selection of skulls under the lips of the rock to. I'm not sure what to do around the area where the plough will go. I think the plan might be to have natural vegetation and tufts towards the front of the base and then some more natural aquarium plants at the back where he has been plowing the earth. I also think that there could be some space for a fe Nurglings to go on the base in a few areas if I decide I have the time. 

    I had time the other evening to finish the model off. To keep the scheme going I used the same light green on the top half of Mulch. I did this fairly quickly using dry brushing and a bunch of washes. Once this was all dry I was able to go in and add some mottling to the skin. I then glazed in the green and yellow to get the bright green look. The bottom half was done in Kabalite Green, which I washed down with a lot of blacks and green shades. I picked out a few of the muscles quickly and then mottled the skin again. I like this technique because you can focus the patterns on the raised areas and it works as a highlight that draws in the eye. I then picked out the details of the mouth which was a fun job. 
    The base was painted separately. I sprayed it Rhinox Hide and Zandri Dust, then picked out the skulls. The whole thing then got drydrushed with Terminatus Stone before I picked out all the skull highlights. I then glazed these with some greens to tie it all together. I then applied all the tufts and grasses around the base to blend the whole model together. 
    Its been a fun model to paint and I hope you've enjoyed the write up. 



  18. Stevewren

    Look back at 2017

    By Stevewren,

    This is a photo of all the models that I painted in 2017: 
    The year got off to a solid start with the Tzeentch release. At the start of the year I didn't own any Tzeentch models at all, but I was looking for a new project for the South Coast GT and I was fortunate to get some of the Acolytes to work on. I painted 20 of these, and I have another 20 that are partially done. The kit is great though, so I used them to as the base for 20 Maruders. I fleshed out the army with 6 sky fires, a Tzangor Shaman and 4 Lords of Change. This took me up to March, and it meant I had another 2000pt army completed to add to my collection. one of my goals for 2018 will be to add to this army. I'd like to run some more horrors and also have a unit or two of Enlightened on Disc to go in for a more fighty force. Later on on 2017 I started on this and have added 10 Brimstone horrors so far, as well as a unit of Blue and Pink Horrors. I also got a Gaunt Summoner which I spent a bit of time working on - I'm extremely pleased with how he came out. 
    I spent some time painting a few Nurgle models as well. These were mostly converted for an army project that I started but never finished. However it looks like the start of 2018 will give me some exciting new editions to go into this force. If the new Battletome is competitive then I may try to paint up and actual net list of Nurgle, but if it isn't then I can have some fun adding models as and when. in 2017 I have done 20 Plaguebearers, 10 Warriors, 3 Beasts of Nurgle, a Lord of Plagues, a converted Harbinger of Decay and Festus. I was a little frivolous with my spending this year so I have the remains of the Blightwar box that I can add to this force along with any new models from the upcoming release. 
    And finally, and some what randomly, there are three warhawk riders that I had sitting around for ages. I have a large Woodelf collection and I have a lot of older or unfinished models that I really want to add in and rebase, so I like to do a few of these as little projects throughout the year. The first of these for 2018 will hopefully be the Sisters of the Thorn. I have the steeds completed for these ladies, but the riders have been in an unfinished pile for over a year now. I think they have deserved to be moved  up the painting queue. 
    And of course I also did an awful lot of terrain this year. Preparing for Blood and Glory was very stressful and at times I was really down about the whole thing, but the tables and terrain I managed to complete looked spectacular. I'm not going to put the photos here as they can be found littered throughout the blog, but that was a good 4 months of hard labour and I now have 9 high quality sets of table terrain that I can pull out when friends come over as well as having it ready for next years events. Maybe I can add another table or two if I feel motivated...
    Overall I am pretty pleased with the amount of hobby that I got done this year. Lets hope next year will be just as productive. I'd love to see how everyone else thinks they have done so pop onto the 2017 retrospective thread here and/or start thinking what your 2018 goals could be and post them too. 
    Have a terrific 2018 everyone! 
  19. 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.  
  20. Stevewren
    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! 


     
     

  21. Stevewren

    Tzangor Shaman

    By Stevewren,

    Earlier on I posted an image of the original Skyfire model I painted. I have finished the Shaman to go with them now as well. This was a super cool model to paint. Came together really quickly and I was really happy with it. I cut a few corners to speed up the painting so areas like the robes are just the undercoat with no touch ups, just a few edge highlights, and there are a lot of areas that are deliberately not painted (under the disc, underside of the robes etc. As this is a relatively quick gaming army I am trying not to get caught up on all the details, but I still want it to look neat and tidy. 
    One of the things I did was to paint the disc in sections this time which was an awful lot faster and easier than trying to paint them once they were all glued together. 
    I enjoyed using one of the Shattered Dominion Hero bases for it as well as I have a few still lying around. 
    I am most pleased with the feathers on this guy. I think they came out really well and hopefully it can be utilised on the Lord of Change which is up next...


     
     
     
     
     
     
  22. Stevewren

    Dark Elf Sorceress

    By Stevewren,

    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. 


     
  23. Stevewren

    Festus the Leechlord

    By Stevewren,

    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!



  24. Stevewren
    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. 
      
  25. Stevewren
    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.  
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