Whispers of Autumn

  I've been chipping away at the edges of my lead mountain, painting a batch of archers and plotting my next move.  I've therefore not had any finished work to show off, so thought I'd post some signs of the seasons.

 

  A wasps nest, built stealthily in an old stump near a flowerbed.  Some creature had attacked it in the night, perhaps mistaking the buzzing for that of bees and expecting some honey as a reward.  I can only imagine the stinging retort they endured.  We found this hive structure with some survivors picking over the ruins late in the day.

 

  I went out for my walk on the hill and deciding to dip down across it somewhat, and found a swathe of rosebay willowherb.   A common weed, but seeing it visited by bees, moths and butterflies gladdened my heart.

 

  Some little signs of the season winding down are appearing.  This is the largest patch of Lords and Ladies berries I've seen round about here, usually I only find one or two hiding under a hedgerow.

  Conkers growing in the trees.  The leaves are not turning, but all the horse chestnut trees around here seem to be afflicted with a virus that causes the leaves to brown and shrivel prematurely.

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  I've thought that I will start writing - if not full reviews, then at least, my impressions of books I have read.  I have been delving into modern Weird fiction and horror after being fixated for the past decade on the early 20th century.  There seems to be a tight knit community for such things and I would like to broaden my horizons and become a part of it.

Warmaster: Chaos Marauder Infantry Reinforcements!

Finally!

  I made the mistake of splitting my efforts between two units and of course that means the work goes half the speed, not twice the speed...

With these two Chaos Marauder infantry units I finally have a fully painted, legal Chaos army that could go up to just shy of 3000 points!

  When I was prepping this unit I'd bought second hand, I noticed that there were two command strips, and a missing rank-and-file strip.  Not discouraged, I decided to put both command strips together on the command stand.  Let's just say it's a unit with very high morale?  It actually looks fine as these early sculpts were very generous with alternative strips and so - the two variant command strips look pleasingly different to the eye.

  These units were some of the earliest that I had prepared; half glued to stands, other half glued to lolly sticks for ease of painting.  But they had also sat on my desk or windowsill or languished in a box for the longest time.  At least a couple of years, in fact.  It is immensely satisfying to see them painted up and to be moving on to the next thing.

Warmaster: Final Chaos Chariot Unit

Finally! I have finished my third and final Chaos Chariot unit for Warmaster.

I am going to proxy Dragon Ogres as chariots for a 2000 point army so I can have 6 full units of them.  Because I'll be damned if I can be bothered painting/glueing one of these nuisances again! 

The final result is lovely though, if I do say so myself... <3

My migration to new acrylic paints continues.  Several "old" GW paints have bitten the dust, the latest being the old "Dwarf Bronze" I have used with a verdigris effect for all of my Chaos.

Here you can see that paint alongside the GW replacement called "Hashut Copper" and thankfully it appears to be a perfect match.

I don't have a huge amount of Chaos left to paint before I can field a legal 2000 or even 3000 point list but it's nice to know that I'm not having to search high and low for a crucial pot of paint!

Warmaster: The Progress So Far...

I have had several requests for full army photos but I don't have a proper camera or lightbox set up which causes some challenges.

Following some hastily googled tutorials, I whipped up something with printer paper which is what I've been using for my most recent photos. A bit of jiggery pokery in GIMP or Photoshop and the results are much better than the plain ones I've done in the past just on my work table.

First of all is my Chaos army:

 Barely managed to fit it all into a shot on my phone camera but it looks pretty nice all lined up!

In total that is:

1 Chaos Dragon
2 Hero and 2 Mage stands
4 Chaos Hounds
1 Chaos Spawn unit
3 Chaos Warriors
1 Chaos Marauder unit
3 Chaos Marauder Horsemen
1 Harpy unit
3 Dragon Ogre units (To be proxied as Chaos Chariots)
2 Chaos Chariots
3 Chaos Knights


Then my High Elves, which have been on the backburner for far too long!

So far these consist of:

1 High Elf Dragon
2 Hero and 2 Mage stands
2 High Elf Repeater Bolt Throwers
4 Silver Helms
2 Chariots
2 Spearmen
2 Giant Eagles

Still struggling with getting the basecoat > layers > finish transitions correct and that really derails me.  Really need archers and horse archers but I need to completely clear my desk and do it one stand at a time as that seems to help me nowadays.

Warmaster: Chaos Marauder Infantry

  Finally, after sitting on my work bench or in a box for about two years, I got around to finishing a single unit of Chaos Marauder infantry!

 These are very detailed units and I had a lot of trouble wrapping my mind around painting them.  Sometimes with the really detailed GW Warmaster sculpts it feels like you're painting 28mm forces and not 10mm forces!

  My previous Chaos forces are so covered in thick armour that I never needed to paint a flesh tone.  For these ones, however, I used the new GW Bugman's Glow as a base flesh tone, then after the Agrax Earthshade wash, the old Dwarf Flesh and finally Kislev Flesh to finish it off.

  I neglected to add a design to the banner as... I forgot.  Also it is so busy with the chains and skulls I don't think I could add much detail to it!

  I am very proud of the results.  I was hoping to paint two more units this month but I was so sick of the sight of them that I veered off course to start painting my third and final Chaos Chariot unit instead!

Warmaster: Chaos Marauder Horde

Some people seem able to have a hundred models on their table at the same time, and diligently batch paint the whole lot.

Seeking to imitate that productivity, I have attempted to do the same with my Warmaster, but have met with limited success.

10mm painting is so fiddly that without the "hit" of seeing a unit finished, you feel like everything you're doing is stretching out forever when you try to paint multiple units.  At least, that's my feeling of it right now.

In any case, here are 3 finished Chaos Marauder Horsemen units, which I believe have been sat on or near my table for a good two years. :-X

Warmaster: Chaos Chariots and High Elf Eagles

Latest efforts!

My second Chaos Chariot unit, finally figured out the way to put the riders without them looking drunk and falling atop one another.

I also finished a second High Elf Giant Eagle unit.  For this one I tried to raise the central figure up by mounting it on the plastic lion head ruin piece you get with the Warhammer 28mm White Lions set.  Didn't quite work but at least it still fits in the little figure boxes I have!

I painted them up to look like Harris Hawks based on a pleasant experience I had with birds of prey at a small centre near where I live:

http://theancienttrack.blogspot.co.uk/2015/09/hawk-walk-feathers-fur.html

Modelling: Vallejo Basing

I am often asked how I do the bases for my models at all scales.

When I first started getting into modelling and gaming, I made a lot of mistakes.  My first basing attempts were good old PVA glue and Games Workshop sand, with green stuff used to smooth out bumpy metal bases glued to plastic stands.

This was fine but didn't have much variation, and was quite hard to manage on smaller scale areas, with "bald" parts of the base being a problem, or sand glueing to detailed parts of models, needing careful going over with a knife to shift.

I used this as the basis of my first models for 40k, Infinity and Epic, before stumbling on the Vallejo basing materials.

Vallejo make several different colours / consistencies of this product, but generally speaking you should think of it as ground pumice/rock suspended in a wet resinous material.  It's a bit like what people have made for themselves using polyfilla and railway ballast for years in the modelling world.

It was this article from DakkaDakka that made me really want to give them a go:

Vallejo Pumice Comparison

I took a couple of pictures of what the material looks like wet on the bases of my models.  Above you can see some Infinity 40mm bases.  I glued some plastic sprue to act as ruins/girders as they are such large bases and need "filling" to please the eye.

Then I took Grey Pumice, which is my favourite material due to the thick, sculptable texture, and used a Games Workshop plastic Texture spreader to ladle it out and spread it evenly over the bases.

It's a bit tricky to tell how it's going to dry, so making deliberate peaks and troughs is not very intuitive.  However, it works much better than any sand or grit on PVA in terms of being able to shore it up to chunky based models, making a smooth transition between the plastic base and where the model is glued, making it look more natural.

The stuff is so thick that you can actually drop little plastic, resin or stone basing parts on top of it, give them a little tap so that they are buried in it and leave them to dry.  I use bits of slate to give the surface some variety, and here I've used a couple of Warhammer 40k bits like grenades or ammo clips just to add some interest.

It takes a while to dry, so I usually pop them in the airing cupboard overnight.  If you want to do something really thick, you can wait until it dries then put another layer on top, but once you get the hang of it, you probably won't need to do that on normal bases.

I have used it on my SAGA, EPIC, Infinity, Warmaster, my terrain, and I'm really glad I did!

Warmaster: Chaos Reinforcements!

At last!  A unit I bought two years ago sees the light of day, and the business end of a paintbrush!

Chaos chariots are really a "no-brainer" in a Warmaster Chaos list.  For only 5 points more than Marauder Horsemen they get a plus 1 bonus in attacks per stan; the same as Monster unit types, and a lot cheaper than a magic item that accomplishes the same feat.

At first I thought it was surprising that I didn't see more of them, even before The Great Dying of 2013, when official production by Games Workshop ceased.

Then I tried glueing and painting the bleeding things!

I have never had so much trouble with a warped piece of metal.  The chariot space is barely big enough to include both riders, who have such tiny bases they are near impossible to keep upright.  The chassis is warped and the heights of the horses are off so that it needs a firm hand and lots of superglue to ensure it doesn't look like it's hovering in mid air or veering drunkenly off to one side.

They ideally need to be painted separately then glued together, otherwise your paintbrush will find it impossible to get to the nooks and crannies on the horse army and chariot faceplate.

All that said, they are essential, so I'm glad I've painted one.  Have another one half way through painting, and one in pieces which will be a project for later.

In the meantime, I finished off my third Dragon Ogre unit!  Now, Dragon Ogres are 250 points each, and exist alongside other expensive units like Chaos Knights (200 points) and Chaos Warriors (150 points).  The fact is that I think I won't ever use these as they are in a normal game, so my idea is that the 3 units I've painted will be proxies for Chaos Chariots.

In a 2000 point list, the maximum amount of Chaos Chariots I am allowed is 6 units.  If I have 3 official ones and 3 Dragon Ogre ones, that seems like the most efficient use of the models I have, as Chaos Chariots are pretty rare to find at decent prices, much like Chaos Marauder Horsemen.

Warmaster: High Elf Spearmen 2

Hurrah!

Another Warmaster unit finished, this time my 2nd Spearmen unit.

I'm still hand painting the shields, but a star is a lot less work than the calligraphy style of an Elven Rune. 

The one on the banner is a lot easier to do as there's enough space to be forgiving to mistakes.  According to the Warhammer: Uniforms & Heraldry of the High Elves, the rune is Edra, which stands for "Laughter, the cruelty of Fate".  This feels appropriate considering my dice rolls...