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  1. Lightbox

    The Drake Queen & the Terracotta Sentinels

    By Lightbox,


    The Drake Queen
    Not many can claim an ancient bloodline said to be intertwined with that of dragons but the Drake Queen is one such being. Regardless of the truth to the mythos she claims as her heritage one thing has proven true, that she bears an affinity for both earth magic and for bonding with draconic beings. Her title is self given and as it stands there seem to be no links of her to any form of royalty nor does she have any lands beneath her rule, she lacks people who follow her and possesses no family to call upon for aid but even so she is a formidable leader due to the Terracotta beings that form her warbands raised from the earth with almost as much ease as one might breathe. These earthen constructs often seem to take shaped similar to the large and powerful forms of the Stormcast Eternals and it is often the case that the Drake Queen will take to battle alongside stormhosts bringing her earthen constructs and allied stormdrakes to bolster the efforts of Sigmars chosen.
    Whilst she often may appear to her enemies as but a simple human woman with naught but a blade and ornate looking armour once battle begins with a flick of her wrists and a string of incantations a great Terracotta draconic beast bursts forth from the ground striking out with claws and fangs at her foes with heavy swings in great contrast to the quick and graceful movements of the queen herself.
  3. Lightbox
    My goal of 9 varanguard is nearing completion... 4 of the 6 i was building are finished! Decided one unit will have daemonforged blades, I know they're kinda crappy but I love the sculpts and I can always count them as ensorcelled weapons sometimes too. That will give me 6 spears and 3 who don't care about charging (If I need someone tough to objective sit)

    I've also done more work on the slaughterpriestess, couldn't find a good head with hair to hold so instead she's torn out the spine too!! I'm very happy with it

    And finally I have almost finished my lord of slaanesh on foot, some escher legs gave a lovely punkish slaanesh feel may have to shorten the sword though but I do love her dancing esque pose 


    All in all I'm really happy with how this lot are coming along
  4. Lightbox
    Hi there!
     
    Some of you may have noticed that I attempted a 31 days of hoby challenge in December. You'll also notice my blog has far from 31 entries. The objective of this challenge was to work on hobby for at least 1 hour a day, though as I knew I'd be at my girlfriends at least 1 weekend in December I added the rule of if I miss any days I make up for them with extra time on other days. Now I did not manage this challenge at all, but honestly? I've learnt one hell of a lot from trying it and I'm going to share those lessons.
     
    POSITIVES:
    So lets begin with the positives I gained/learnt from this challenge:
    1) It gave me motivation: Now this is a big one, normally I have 0 motivation to paint because honestly I find it very intimidating at times. I'm still not used to batch painting or doing lots of models so as much as I love painting a hero or two any squads are instant turn offs because I'm too used to spending hours per model. This challenge however gave me the motivation to attack my unpainted pile and frankly really helped, which also moves me onto point 2...
    2) It broke it down: What I'm saying here is basically that doing only an hour or so at a time was the best thing for it because it taught me that no, I don't have to spend an entire evening doing painting or modelling. The hardest thing for me is fitting hobby around my other time consuming hobbies and the fact I generally don't have weekends available to myself as much anymore as I'm often visiting friends or doing tabletop rpg's with my girlfriend and some of our friends. The fact that I got to experience the idea of just doing small chunks each day actually really helped remove the intimidation factor and let me still do gaming or other stuff in the same day.
    3) I learnt how to batch paint: This came from having to try and get 10 kairic acolytes ready within a week for a big game. It also taught me I hate batch painting but that's another story. I also coincidentally learnt...
    4) I learnt that I don't have to paint every model like a hero: This mostly came from doing the batch painting but I finally actually got myself to try just doing bare minimum quick and easy tabletop standard. And y'know what? It looks pretty damn good in a game and isn't hugely different from my nicely painted heroes. Go figure!
    5) I learnt that I still love doing conversions: But y'know whats even nicer than those conversions? Getting to start painting them and seeing them start coming together.
    6) I learnt new techniques: From this challenge I got to try new things and techniques especially when painting my varanguard and archaon, most notably for archaon I got to try my first time doing a flaming sword. And goodness I think it came out spectacularly well! I also learnt that nuln oil over gold armour is probably better than reikland fleshshade for getting those shadows/shading in. Freehanding eyes and face makeup is still hard but good to practice too.
    7) Most importantly I learnt that it's okay to fail: I did not manage this challenge and frankly? Who cares! I did this challenge in order to give me the motivation to paint and try and just start getting into a habit of doing some hobby. And honestly? It worked! Even now it's over I finally have that itch to want to get stuff painted, something I never really had before and I'm super stoked about that. Just gotta make sure it lasts  But at the end of the day I learnt a lot and had some fun, and that's really the point of challenges isn't it? It's to give yourself a new way to enjoy things.
     
    Now there were also some negatives unfortunately:
     
    1) I found it sometimes became a chore: Having the forced 1 hour a day both didn't work and sometimes demotivated me, I would also feel crappy when I missed days which also didn't help. I think it's good to try and set time to do painting each week but you need to allow yourself to be flexible else you'll struggle to fit it all in.
    2) I still couldn't stick to a single project: Whilst this was initially done to try and finish my kharadrons I had I ended up quite quickly swapping to painting up my chaos force because frankly I felt like it and kinda enjoyed it a bit more. I've always been bad at sticking to any one project for an extended amount of time and alas that doesn't look to be stopping anytime soon.
    3) I got ill!: A big issue with this was being too ill to paint for the first two weeks of December, meant that I missed the early motivation and didn't manage to get it into habit.
    4) I couldn't manage it consecutively: As you'll likely see from my blog posts I was unable to do that many days which whilst it's okay to have failed still feels kinda sucky. But I know I cannot paint every day, just need to try and do at least once a week I think.
    5) I learnt I still don't know how many days are in each month: You'll notice some blog posts are 31 days and some are 30 days. Apparently I am still a child and can't remember month days  Though tbh that's always been a thing for me...
     
    All this being said whilst it did highlight a lot of issues I have when it comes to army projects and painting... I am glad that I tried the challenge because as I said earlier I've really gained some motivation from it and some new insight. Frankly I'd like to put the challenge to you guys as well. Can you manage an hour of painting each day for a month? Maybe try it and see what you learn/gain from it. If nothing else it's a great excuse to finish some of those models you really want to see painted  
     
  5. Lightbox

    Kharadron Ironclad

    By Lightbox,

    Slowly but surely my work on my shadow pirate kharadrons continues currently with my ironclad. Unfortunately my ironclad and frigates were bought fully assembled so are proving a bit of a pain to paint. But we're getting there at least.
     
    Almost done on this one, need to drybrush golden griffon to dull down the gold a little as golden griffon is paler and less bright. Then just crew and little details.

  6. Lightbox
    So good news today. Even more work has been done on the ironclad! And once I get it finished and my special base done it will be ready to set sail at the head of my fleet!
    Look forward to seeing this beauty rising up through the clouds soon!
  7. Lightbox
    Recently I took my Kharadrons to a doubles tournament in run by the @Hampshire Hammerers in Winchester with @Azamar and as such I had to get my 1000 points painted beforehand! It's my first force I've actually got painted and I'm really happy with it It's been super nice to play with fully painted models too!! We ended up coming third out of four teams which meant we lost out on the coveted engraved wooden spoons (Boo) but I managed to win favourite/best painted army! Which I'm quite pleased with.

    My opponent on Wednesdays club game (where I took these photos) also let me take some nice shots of my units vs his painted ones. So enjoy!

    Now to just do my board for armies on parade!!
     
  8. Lightbox
    And whilst my madness is still in full bloom the labour of love that gave it it's method is nearing completion. And it's really coming together!
     
    My only issue is it's had to be more angled than I'd like to fit within the height bounds of the 'realmgate' but with the clouds it looks like it's rising up magnificently out of them! And I'm quite proud

    I'm pretty proud I've managed to achieve this just gotta trim the clouds for the base and then finally add on my energy arcs from the gate itself to give it the proper appearance of having just materialised into the realm, bursting forth from the massive gateway to soar through the clouds before dropping down onto the foe to rain aether death upon them!!
     
    Ahem... Anyway here's a WIP of the energy
    Using the creeping vines kit with the leaves cut off for them. Will possibly need to cut them down a bit further but should look good
  10. Lightbox
    The first piece of my new idoneth project is coming along very nicely! Still not finished as i need to add more washes, highlights and then do my base.
     
    The idea is they're from outer realms of chamon and so the transmuting magics have begun to affect them, causing metal to seep into their bodies, replacing limbs and the like. Almost like a metallic infection.




  11. Lightbox
    So whilst for Vindenspite we have the wonderful crimson watch, the deadly gunslinging sisterhood of elite shooters their numbers just aren't enough to fill out the entire armed forces for Vindenspites attack and defence, and the Chosen and Silent Ones are far fewer in number still, as such the bulk of the Vindennian armies are filled by those of the Crimson Guard, all the brave, daring or downright crazy soldiers who train in different roles to create a well rounded force, though most of Vindenspite are skirmishers and rogues there are those who take the roles of disciplined heavy hitters, the Greatswords of the Crimson Guard.
    Below are some pictures of the WiP greatsword squad along with some painted pictures of the Frostqueen







  13. Lightbox
    So soon I will be running a narrative path to glory campaign with 3 friends. Our general will be made using Anvil of Apotheosis and we will each get 4 starting picks/rolls from our tables.
    The armies so far are looking to be:
    -Soulblight (Myself)
    -Lumineth
    -Ogors
    -Undecided (Choosing between FeC, Slaanesh & Soulblight)

    I rolled for my starting choices so I end up with:
    -20 Zombies
    -5 Grave Guard
    -1 Corpse Cart (Yep, rolled corpse cart instead of vargheists or blood knights... just my luck XD)
     
    So in order to make it feel more like a narrative campaign and not just 'regular matched play but with a story' I'm trying to come up with battleplans where the goal isn't just murder-death-kill / sit on an objective. I feel if the battleplans themselves lend well to telling a story and giving goals that can be a bit more fun than just competitive it will help keep everyone more in that story and fun focused mindset. I'm definitely taking a lot of inspiration from things like mordheim and malifaux with some of these ideas.
     
    Campaign wise I'm hoping to write the story in a way where players won't just be fighting for glory but trying to achieve goals to gain more political sway back home in order to get more supplies & reinforcements to better help them achieve their special end goal so to that end glory points will be renamed 'influence'. I've also opted to add in tiebreakers but may choose not to use them as a draw is probably fine for narratives.
     
    Battleplan 1: Guard the caravan!
    Synopsis: Supply caravans are an important resource in these parts and guarding one can get you a nice payment to help fund your campaign as well as show your bosses back home that you're competent enough to guard any supply caravans they may send you. You've managed to score a job guarding one such caravan passing through but you've caught wind of an enemy force doing similar, you'll likely have to fend off an ambush from them but if you're smart you can send one of your own to disrupt their caravan and supply lines.
    Objective: Guard the caravan as it passes from its entry point to its exit point, keep it defended from bands of enemy raiders. One player takes the role of defender and the other attacker (roll off, whoever rolls higher decides which to take first) the defender must protect the caravan until it reaches its destination whilst the attacker must do all they can to destroy the caravan! Once the caravan has been destroyed or reached its destination the game ends, players then swap over the role of attacker and defender and play again. The victor is whoever can keep the caravan alive until it reaches the exit point, or if neither player manage this then it is whoever keeps their caravan alive for the most turns. If there is a draw then the players will battle it out in a tiebreaker.
    Extra's: Caravan will be made up of 3 or so sections. Each one will have a set amount of wounds (probably 10-20?), allocate wounds to the back carriage first until it is destroyed then work your way toward the front one carriage at a time. The caravan will be able to pass over any models in front of it and will deal d3 mortal wounds to each unit it passes over in this way, if any models prevent it from completing its move they are moved to the side (1" away) as they are knocked out of the way from the trampling caravan. The caravan will have a cannon on it that can be fired in the defending players shooting phase with the profile of (20" range, 2 attacks, 4+ hit,3+ wound, -2 rend, d6 damage). The attacker has to destroy all 3 sections.
     
    Battleplan 2: The sympathy vote
    Synopsis: You need better reinforcements if you are to win your campaign but alas the higher ups back home are being stubborn and do not feel the strength of your foes is enough to warrant such extra assistance, as such your advisors have suggested a cunning plan. If some of your forces were to be decimated in a fight against one of your foes then it would show just how dangerous they were and you'd no doubt gain the influence and reinforcements you'd need. Though you must be careful as the enemy could be hatching a similar plan, you could risk bolstering their forces in the same way if you wipe out their army by proving too big a threat.
    Objective: Both players must fight to lose! The objective is to have your army be defeated in battle but keep your general alive and unwounded (after all who else is going to tell of the crushing defeat?) but you must avoid defeating too much of your enemies force lest they also garner a sympathy vote from their superiors though a swift defeat of their general will scupper any plans of that! The victor is whoever has lost the most units at the end of battle round 4 and still has their general on the battlefield, if one player has lost their general then they will be the loser regardless of how many units they lost however if both players have lost their general then it will be a draw and both forces will be required to battle it out in a tiebreaker.
     
    Battleplan 3: Framed for murder!
    Synopsis: Your superiors back home are not the only sources of supplies for your army, the area around has many settlements of various races, some of which you can probably convince to support you if you provide them a common enemy. You have managed to convince them to send an emissary who you have then managed to convince/coerce/gangpress into fighting alongside you in the next battle, but you know that an emissary being killed by your foes would be enough of a catalyst to convince or threaten this settlement to send you aid by giving them that common enemy, though you must be wary of your foe trying to do the same with other settlements.
    Objective: Each player secretly writes down a unit in their army, at the end of battleround 3 each player reveals which unit they wrote down, if that unit has been slain but the opponents secret unit has not they win the battle and gain that sweet sweet influence however if both or neither players have had their units slain then it is a draw and they must battle out in a tiebreaker.
     
    Battleplan 4: Breakthrough!
    Synopsis: Your army is tired from marching and you need to find somewhere safe to rest but disaster! An enemy is spotted blocking your path, you must do all you can to break through their lines and press on to safety, as soon as one unit breaks their blockade their lines will be in enough disarray for everyone to get through.
    Objective: One player takes the role of attacker and one defender (roll to determine who picks), the attacker achieves victory if they manage to move one of their units wholly off the opposite table edge. The defender wins if they have prevented this by the end of the 3rd battle round.


    Tiebreaker 1: The Arena of grudges!
    Synopsis: Your foes have thwarted your attempts and you theirs, the only way to prove who is the victor is to battle out in the local arena of grudges, after all a victory here in front of the crowds could gain you the influence you otherwise were cheated out of!
    Objective: Each player selects a hero to be their champion, these heroes will then battle in an arena and whoever survives is the victor, if somehow neither hero survives then the match is forfeit and noone is declared victor.
  15. Lightbox
    Boy I am excited about free cities getting a book, from the start of AoS I've loved the idea of humans, aelves and duardin all working under the same banner and even wanted to do a dragon age grey warden colour scheme for them too! (Plus griffons fit that). Having gained a newfound love for shooting as well as melee due to playing a lot of Kharadron recently I have decided to finally build up my dark riders and outriders, hopefully adding some mobile shooting should be fun and I'm excited to see how/if they're both improved in the battletome.
    One of my favourite things about outriders are the gunblade swords, it's a shame the little pistol attachment doesn't really have rules though. My plans going forward are to get myself some greatswords and possibly another steamtank or see if one of the monsters will be good come the battletome. However since I'll most likely pick greywater fastness I can see steam tanks doing well...
    I'll also need to pick up some rocket batteries to throw fire and thunder at my enemies from afar!
    Hopefully weather will permit me to start spraying models soon and I'll be able to start painting them.
  17. Lightbox
    So finally finished (besides her base) the horse mounted version of my vampiric big boss Cassia. Still not sure on a full name though I'm sure I'll think of something! (Any ideas do let me know!)
     
    And of course it wouldn't be Cassia if she wasn't covered in the blood of her victims... She will be getting her inaugural games in tomorrow as we practice for our path to glory firestorm campaign and I will try to post some battle reports here. Hopefully with pictures though most will be unpainted alas... (Sorry, it's a long process!)
     
    Anyway here she is in all her gory glory!



  18. Lightbox
    So recently I finally finished the energy arcing for the realm gate on my ironclad! I'm incredibly happy with how it looks. 

    I also redid the skin, hair and shadow doppleganger on my admiral and I'm much happier with the results!


    I just need to finish the base on her (also the pics don't really do the model justice I think, it looks better in person)
  19. Lightbox
    Today I finally began my project for my shyish themed bretonnians (who will be taking some mousillon inspiration) and began it in style with some grail knights!
    These are mostly the more modern plastic brets (will have fancy nice shield paintings) and a baron to lead the squad! (We'll ignore the fact there's no squad sgt rules ) whilst making him I accidentally broke his sword when getting it off the sprue! So decided ****** it he's getting a cool broken sword and I'll give it a story. He's also gonna have a nice horse once my green knight horse is stripped (got horse but no rider secondhand)



     
    I'm still working on the lore for the kingdom of blackreach but so far it is a kingdom in shyish where all its lords and ladies are skilled in necromantic arts and worship 'the lady of blacklake' who may in the future be getting an avatar model for her (likely using the stats of the avatar of khaine with a prophetess to awaken her) It should be a fun project all in all
     
    Next steps are to sort out some metal knight errants I have and get my secondhand knights of the realm stripped 
  21. Lightbox
    So today I had a lot of fun painting up my vampire to sit on her zombie dragon
    Need a good surname for her but I'm getting there. Then it'll be onto actually creating some background for my soulblight army. She's already going to have the nickname of 'the bat queen' for employing large use of her bat-like gargoyle followers (counts as fell-bat conversion, pic below) and of course regular bats (gonna have to get myself bat swarms just because they can be useful for protection)
    She will also have a horse mounted model that will be painted up later but I'm proud of how she's turned out. Good fun applying the blood too obviously she's just a messy eater.





  22. Lightbox
    So anyone who knows me is going to read this title, let out a laugh and say "What? Lightbox paint to a deadline? That'll never happen!" and well... I mean I do have a track record that would prove them right but regardless I'm making this pledge. Even set myself twice a month phone reminders to keep up with it.
    THE PLAN:
    So I'm deciding to start a new conversion project for this one and that projects theme is going to be: SEA AELVES!
    And I don't just mean idoneth... i mean various aelves in blues, greens and turquoises led by a badass mermaid. Now I bet you're wondering "Lightbox how will you make a mermaid?" WELL BEHOLD MY AMAZING MICROSOFT PAINT SKILLS TO SHOW YOU THE MOCKUP OF HOW I PLAN TO DO IT!!
    May alternatively use a demonette head or greenstuff some hair onto it. Colours will of course be BLUE and frankly if I can build it with just the one fish tail I'd prefer that to the 7 billion.
    She will likely be joined by a mix of idoneth and wood aelves as I have some of the latter and I do actually plan on using semi-converted idoneth as the bulk of my force. But it should be fun to play with the colour pallette and get a really nice blue army as I haven't painted something like that in a long while
    I'll try and keep my progress updated on here and hopefully we'll see this project go from amazing MS paint edits to real life well painted models!
  23. Lightbox
    So I have the issue of I have done no work on my freeguild since Friday because motivation... (and also monster hunter with friends + assignments got in the way) so that's a pain... gonna make sure the remaining 10 guard I need are built up tonight. And will try and get stuff at least sprayed the basecoat.
     
    I always struggle getting things painted, and I suppose the fact I've been basically dragged into doing a game with my least put together army with only a week to try and prepare anything for what is going to be a difficult game (My opponents all only really play khorne so can build really well whereas I have played freeguild like... for one path to glory campaign) Is a really big pain!
     
    At least come Saturday I can drown my tears in pretty van saar and just start focusing on necromunda and 40k for a bit. Will probably try and play less games of AoS till I can get some painting done, I'm also getting really bored of fighting khorne armies right now (they always feel the same to play, they move forward and charge and ignore battleshock. Give me an opponent that can actually do more than just combat phase me to death and tank)
     
    I'm just taking a cannon & a volley gun to upset them whilst one of my teammates will be taking a cannon and lord ordinator who can buff the ****** out of both of us. If I'm gonna be forced to keep playing khorne I'm going to introduce them to their least favourite phase... SHOOTING! And I'll rock tempests eye so I can hopefully get extra gun shots.


    At least Gunther and his gun are built. Everything else I can fill in with other stuff easy peasy. The big guns are the important bits for upsetting khorne players
     
    At least I'll get to see how well 20 guard tank a charge. Though no mystic shield wizard might be a pain... hopefully my phoenix temple ally can help me out there.  
     
    I'll see what I can push myself to do tonight. Though my order army has always been intended as a stuff to work on when I feel like it sort of army and not anything I want to rush to get table worthy. Will try to remember to do my battle report though. Unless I lose horribly, then all my notes shall somehow accidentally disappear  (just joking... probably)
  24. Lightbox
    Vindenspite is home to all manner of people, from righteous warriors to dubious scoundrels, from cocky duellists to cunning tacticians it truly is a city of different people all united by a desire to survive and flourish. Though even in such a melting pot of people there are still those who are looked upon with scorn, fear or pity. One such individual is the woman known as Adalia Neverfall, the woman who should be dead many times over, the woman who most believe is damned, the woman who's innermost demon towers behind her manifest for all to see.
    Adalia was once a normal woman within the city, possessing a keen Mercantile eye and a strong right hook though eventually like many others she awoke to the dream of the Glimmergate. In the dead of night she stood before it, her eyes meeting the swirling energies the held the future of her fate. She hesitated for a long while, she was no hero or anyone special really... but the gate had chosen her and she knew she had to answer its call. With a deep breath she took her steps into the gate and vanished.
    It was years later when she finally emerged, though for her it had been but days, such is the potent magics of the glimmergate. She had been forever changed by her experience, where once stood one now there were two; the elven girl many had known and this new beastly monster that towered behind her, a horned creature of muscle and magic far unlike any beasts that had come to the call of the chosen. There was a darkness that lingered in the back of her eyes, one that unnerved all who saw and caused many to believe she had been possessed by some malevolent force within the gate. It was only her new ability to call forth the fabled blade of fire, Incandescence, that stopped her from being run out of town for it was a sign that no matter what forces she now shared her soul with she had at least emerged as some form of chosen from the Frostflame glade.
    Adalia's new powers didn't end there, she had gained a strange form of immortality for whenever she was slain in battle she would rise again later in a burst of flames like a phoenix being reborn though every time she did the beast that tailed her seemed to grow more ferocious. Noone could decide whether she was blessed or cursed but all gave her a wide berth, avoiding her out of fear and mistrust.
    On the battlefield Adalia fight alongside her beast with an otherworldly harmony of fury and strength, each part of the duo fighting together with such skill as if both shared the same mind like puppets held aloft by the same strings.
    Nobody knows how the story will end for Adalia but many believe that either one day she will either die permanently or lose herself to the beast she is forever linked with.
     
     
    In game Adalia and her little (big) buddy will be an anvil of apotheosis character.
  25. Lightbox
    (So to clarify the title big Jim is what I lovingly named my incarnate champion in divinity original sin 2 with my friends. Which is also where Adalia comes from, this was very much my attempt to bring the pair into my AoS army as one of my common opponents is one friend I play DoS2 with)
     
    Here is the finished models for my outcast Vindenspite character Adalia and her beast, once painted they will share the same base. I will also update the warscroll I had been working on for them to fix mistakes and make it a little more interesting.





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