Fred's 2013 Painting Diary

[Hertsblue]

You can't drink it, Phil! 

[Lord Kermit of Birkenhead]

You can - but it tastes terrible.

IanS 

[fred.]

If you drink blue paint, do you get blue wee? My smallest daughter was much more interested in eating beetroot when she thought she might get pink wee - but was never able to eat enough of the small strips in packs of salad to get to there...


Anyway.

Guns
Finished off six stands of artillery (all GW I'm afraid). And a couple of Elfy bits. (apart from dullcote)

The Dwarven canon can act as allies in KoW to a human army, and get the handy Warsmith who lets you re-roll misses, nice (and very cheesy).

In the background are the two Elven Dragon breaths - these are scratch built using Pendraken artillery carriages - still only at the block painting stage.

Playing WM tomorrow night - 2k of Araby in a four player fest. See if I can remember the rules after not playing for several months and playing lots of KoW in the interim.

[Techno]

Storming Fred !
Cheers - Phil.
(There is (allegedly) some 'safe' chemical you can give someone to make their wee go blue...Something medical students are supposed to slip unnoticed into their colleagues drinks, to give the victim a fright the next morning  ).

[FierceKitty]

Or you can get porphyria, which I understand gives you that side effect, among others less amusing to experience.

[nikharwood]

Those Elven Dragon Breaths are funky - nice use of 40k stuff there Forbes 

(vehicle smoke launchers & Chaos weapon 'ends' if I'm not mistaken?)

[fred.]

Ta Nik.  I'm not certain where the bits originate from, from one of the chaps I game with (and the design was his) They are certainly plastic bitz, the two 3 prongs tubes bits are quite different but one could be a smoke launcher. I have added small bits of brass tubes to the dragons heads as well.

[nikharwood]

I recognise the 'mouths' from when I had a lovely Iron Warriors army, long-since sold (why do we do that?)

You know what I like best though? That you (and others, natch, including me) are still building armies for Warmaster (the game that changed my [wargaming] life)...how cool is that? 

[fred.]

Nik - while my gaming group loves its Warmaster armies and has ridiculous numbers of figures (I think over 150k points last time we added up) we are playing the Warmaster rules less and less. Personally I played lots more Hail Caesar over the last 18mts, and Kings of War recently. What is great though is that the armies based for WM are proving very versatile and playable with these nominally 28mm rule sets.

New Figures
Two small but heavy parcels at the end of this week
No 1 - lots of 6mm aircraft from Heroics and Ros - these were a christmas present from my wife, which had been delayed due to christmas holidays (and me ordering it rather late!!). I have decided to step down a scale for aircraft as the 10mm ones are rather large. By going with 6mm I was able to get ones to cover all my 10mm WWII armies - as well as gliders, tugs and dakotas for the airborne, all for £40.

No 2 - a small but important order from Pendraken - various bits to help round out my Elven and Human armies for KoW. Including lots of rock and tree creatures to round out my Forest Shamblers for the elves. I also bought the dragon rider for the Fantasy humans - which is a really nice figure, which I must photograph, as it is rather hidden in the human range (which I had always assumed was the same figures as the Medieval range).


Forest shamblers loosely arranged to check for fit. The shiney figures are Pendraken ones. Including

DN4 Rockman (the short rock creature)
DN59 Tile Golem (on a square base reaching up)
DN60 Frost Troll
AC26 Boulder Elemental
AC27 Tree Elemental

These figures have been sprayed and painted today!! Which must be some record, just over 24 hrs from door step to painted. They are just drying on their bases so no photo yet.

[fred.]

Forest Shamblers

Got these figures, painted and based - super fast progress!! In part due to the fairly simple dry brushed painted job.



One stand of the large Kallistra ones to do, and a single based one as the Tree Herder - which I want to customise with some extra branches to make it even taller.

FK - you may be right the Romans should be very worried - Teutoburger Wald, the trees revenge.

A question, should the biggest trees have foliage added?

[fred.]

Sylvan Kin

Continuing this weekends progress another 6 stands of sylvan kin, now with added Pendraken Centaurs!



And bringing up to 12 total stands

[nikharwood]

Very nice indeed, Forbes 

[petercooman]

Looks splendid!!

[Duke Speedy of Leighton]

Rather superb! 

[fred.]

Thanks chaps.

I think this gives me most of the KoW units I need for my elves. Time to think about the painting comp...

[Techno]

Great stuff again Fred.
Cheers - Phil.

[fred.]

Painting Comp

Some initial thoughts about entries for the painting comp - I've no shortage of possible entries - perhaps too many options looking at the below list, as I'm likely to want to paint a unit (so 2 or 3 stands) rather than just one stand...

Foot - Pre-20th C. - Min: 3 / Max: 16 figures on a single base, and pre-1900.
LoA
Romans

Foot - 20th C. - Min: 3 / Max: 16 figures on a single base.
German Paras


Mounted - Min: 3 / Max: 10 figures on a single base.
Late Romans (feels a bit last year!)
Republican Romans
WSS Cav

Vehicle - Single vehicle on or off base.
French tanks - started last year, but never got beyond basic block painting.
Various British softskins
Still more British NW Europe armour (3rd year in a row!!!)

Fantasy & Sci-Fi - Anything Fantasy or Sci-Fi oriented, maximum base size of 60x60mm.
Lizardmen
Dragon Rider

Open - Single Base - Anything which doesn't fit into the other categories, with a max base size of 100x100mm.
- could be command stand from any of the above

Open - Army! - Armies, Dungeons, whole table setups, anything!
WSS Armies - nice and colourful
British Desert forces (bit old) - but never fully finished.

The next step is to get some figures out - and get them cleanup and base coated.

[Duke Speedy of Leighton]

I have a dragon rider to do too!
Maybe we should have a paint off (no, you'll win)!

[fred.]

Lemmy, sorry, hadn't seen your comment - a paint off would be cool - perhaps Leon could have this as a category in future, were everyone has to paint the same model! I'm not sure the result between us is a forgone conclusion at all!

The dragon rider is a cool figure, and is completely lost in the catalogue - I also think it must be very hard to cast with the lance running parallel to the neck, but a fair way off.

Painting Comp
Not a lot of progress this week - felt under the weather most evenings then been out or busy with DIY lots this weekend (assembled a desk for my wife, that took the best part of 3hrs - and I'm normally pretty good with flat pack furniture - this one had 35 pieces of wood and not very good instructions!!!)

Went through my figures during the week to pick some out for the comp - discovered just how many figures I have in boxes - a 9l Really Useful box with 4 layers of trays inside conceals an awful lot of figures.

Sorted and cleanup figures for 6-8 entries, and managed to get them sprayed. Blocked on a couple of colours so far.

[Leon]

...a paint off would be cool - perhaps Leon could have this as a category in future, were everyone has to paint the same model!

This is definitely something which I'd like to do, where we'd put together a handful of figures, plus a base, and folk have to put together something using them.  I might bring this in for the 2014 comp.