The Gouged Eye: Blood Bowl 1989...

As something of a test for painting my Marauder Orc army I've just painted up a second edition Orc Blood Bowl team in an attempt to recapture the style of the original (Old-bowl) style of bright colours that typified the game in the late 80s and which is a world apart from the grimy style I've tended to favour over the past 10 years of so (who knew I had a style!). Here's how they turned out:

There were a few basic ingredients for what I considered to be Old-school enough:

• A white undercoat
• Bright colours
• Black lining
• Black base edges (I could have gone for Goblin Green but that didn't work for me)
• (perhaps most important) painting fast, as a 16 year old in 1989 I'd generally finish whatever figures I bought on the same day as I got them home. For this project I allowed myself five days.
• Oh, and I found one original pot of citadel paint, a bright yellow that I used to dot their eyes!

The paint scheme was very simple indeed:

Red: GW Khorne Red, GW Mephiston Red, GW Mephiston + GW Wild Rider

White: GW Space Wolves Grey, White

Flesh: GW Warboss Green, GW Thraka Green Wash, GW Warboss, GW Skarsnik, GW Skarsnik + Screaming Skull

Metals: VMC Oily Steel, GW Badab Black Wash, VMC Oily Steel, GW Mithril Silver

Browns: GW Scorched Brown, VMC Saddle Brown

Black Lining: VGC Black Ink

Bases: here I used BlueinVT's basing method - VMC Khaki, AP Strong Tone, VMC Khaki, VMC Buff. The grasses are GF9 Parched Straw and Spring Undergrowth. There's a really excellent description of basing on Blue's blog here: http://bluesmarauders.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/hello-all-over-last-couple-of-months.html

As a treat, and as a partial gift from one of my earlierst BB opponents, I got hold of a second edition pitch and painted it up in the same colours as the bases:

I'm still wondering if I should paint up the skull in the centre. Feedback so far seems to say... maybe!

The Lord of the End Times...

It's taken over two years but finally my Warmaster Chaos army is finished. More accurately, I've got it to a playable 2000 point army, there are about another ten units left in the lead mountain (and at some point I'd like to replace the daemons who are standing in for Marauders too). Here they are, ready to shed blood in the name of their despicable gods...

You might just be able to tell that this lot are led by none other than Archaon himself. It's a figure I've wanted to paint for ages. Here he is, in true GW style I stuck him onto a suitably skull-laden base:

With this lot painted I'm hoping to get on with the Grey Knights for a while but I am rather tempted to get on with my Man O War Empire fleet (and buying some Chaos ships hasn't helped much either....).

Oh, and is it just me or does the sign of Chaos Undivided look rather like the Union Jack?

Blood for the Blog God...

Here's the latest addition to the army, a unit of mighty, if tiny, Chaos Knights for my Warmaster army:

And here's a picture of them with the rest of the army:

 

I think that lot comes in at about 2000 points. Next on the paint station are two units of Warmaster Ogres and then I'm going to revisit the green harpies you can see in the picture - they're going to be far less green and far more black and red to tie in with everything else.

Nurgle, Nurgle, All Hail tiny Nurgle...



Painting on holiday means just one thing, Warmaster! This time it's the turn of some Chaos Daemons that I bought with the intention of using as quick-to-paint stand ins for Chaos Marauders in my Mortal Chaos army. It turns out that they are quick to do, though I'm not sure my scheme quite does the miniatures justice as they're really nice sculpts with lots of fun detail, much of which I've largely ignored. Anyway, here's the test strip lurking amongst a pile of dead beetles that I found in the garden today.

Purely for my own reference, the speed-paint scheme went like this:

1. Spray Chaos Black
2. Paint everything Coat d'arms Olive with a massive brush
3. Sword Chainmail
4. Red bits Blood Red
5. Horn Kommando Khaki
6. Base Graveyard Earth
7. Wash everything Devlan Mud
8. Wash swords Ogryn Flesh
9. Highlight horn Kommando Khaki then Bleached Bone
10. Highlight flesh Olive + Camo Green
11. Eyes white
12. Boils etc Rotting flesh

Really quick and, I think, pretty effective. Some of GW's very bright static grass should bring them out a little more, I'll post pics of the unit once they're based to see how this works out.

 

 

 

Micron pens...

As you'll see, I've just merged three blogs into one here, bringing together more of the stuff that currently lives in my games room, and hopefully this will breath a little life into the blog and that the blog will, in turn, breath a little more life into the much neglected painting and modelling I would like to be getting on with.

Today's attempt to move things forward was the default 'spend money' option, this time I've bought myself a Micron 005 pen (£3.85 from ebay) that I'm hoping will make it easier to write some text onto my Grey Knights:

I'll post a review of this thing when it arrives.

Over the next few weeks I'm hoping to get on with far too many projects but my priority ones are:

Grey Knight army (1750 pts)
Imperial fleet for Man o War
Gyrocopters for Man O War Dwarf fleet
2 units of Khorne daemons for Warmaster
2 Autocannon emplacements for 40k (now that they're so useful).

More soon...

Nurgle's recipe book

Before I forget, here's a note-to-self about colour schemes.

Beastmen & Chaos Warriors

Flesh = Scorched Brown, Bestial Brown, Vermin Brown
Green bits = Catachan Green, Gretchin Green, GG + Rotting Flesh
Hair = Scorched Brown, Badab Black Wash, Scorched Brown highlight
Orange = Scorched Brown, Hot Orange (V), Orange Fire (V)
Horns = Scorched Brown, Codex Grey, Fortress Grey (V)
Gold = Shining Gold, Brown Ink, Shining Gold
Metal = Chainmail, Badab Black, Chainmail
Leather = Scorched Brown, Dark Flesh (V)
Chaos Warrior horns = Graveyard Earth, Scorched Brown, Bleached Bone, White
Bases = Graveyard Earth, Devlan Mud, Graveyard Earth, Bleached Bone
Varnish = Gloss (V), Semi-Gloss (V) (painted on)