Friday, August 27, 2010

Tutorial : Mantic Skeleton Warrior

The first set (of many to come I swear!) of Mantic Miniatures arrived last night. I was so excited that I built up a 20-man unit right away. Here I will go through a step by step on how I painted my Mantic Skeleton.

Before I begin, I must first explain why I have chosen to paint my skeleton as such. And the choice of undercoat and painting style.

Most would opt for a white/bleached bone primer for their skeletons. However I went with black as I did not want to spend too much time painting over the cloth and armour sections. As you can see, the mini is 70% armour & cloth (as in the case of Mantic Skeletons). Therefore I decided it would be more time efficient to use black as it would have already created the shade I needed for reverse black lining (will explain more later).



1) Here I have undercoated the mini in black.
2) Next I fully painted the bone areas with astronomican grey.
3) Devlan Mud was carefully washed into recesses and areas that needed to be shaded. I realized that spamming washes usually produced undesirable and messy outcomes. So I made sure no wash got onto areas I had no intention of shading.
4) Skull white was then painted onto all bone area. Making sure to leave not only the recesses alone but also some parts still in astronomican grey. This allowed me to have a Devlan Mud (deepest), Astronomican Grey (mid-tone) and finally Skull white (highlight). By doing this I have created a 3 tone shade for my bone areas in one go.

The cloth was then painted with Liche Purple. Carefully leaving the recesses with a black line to create a layer of shade. This is where reverse black lining comes into play. Normally you would paint an entire area a certain colour once. Then go back to painstakingly apply a thin black line in between shades. I have always found this method much more time consuming (not to mention mad stable hands/skill) to execute well. It just seems so much easier to leave to black line in there. Thus reversing the process and saving you that additional 2-3 steps.

5) Next up is the armour. I fully painted these areas with Chainmail. Once again leaving a thin black line between colours. All armour areas was then washed with Badab Black to shade and add dulling tone to the metal areas. No further highlighting is required. The metal parts were complete in 2 simple steps (utilizing reverse black lining in the process too of course).
6) A mixture of 50/50 Liche purple + Bleached Bone was used to highlight the purple areas.
Adeptus Battlegrey was used to highlight all black areas.


7) Finally I based the miniature and tried using Clump-Foilage for the first time in my hobby career. And I must say I am very pleased with the results!

There you have it. A completed skeleton warrior in 7 -steps.

~In case you have not noticed I went for a "white & clean" look for my bone. Instead of a darker brown to bleached bone look. I wanted to have a very "fantasy" look and I have always been extremely impressed with people who have "clean" undead armies. Instead of the usual "I just crawled out of the grave/mud look".

Although some might argue that this looks too comic-like and unrealistic, well to each his own. We are playing a Fantasy game after all!

Batrep: BA vs Nids

Another game at 1000 points. This is to prepare for the Tournament!

Blood Angels belongs to Daniel - cool 300 army.

Head on over to http://picasaweb.google.com/enrgie/NidsVsBA#


Do leave your comments on either Picasa or here!

Thursday, August 26, 2010

Army Profile: Necrons- Skanwy

Updates:
Added Necron Lord on foot- 6th October 2010.

Introduction:

I bought my first Necron battleforce in Hong Kong at a shop called Fun Atelier. That was in December 2007. They've been sitting in the 'tomb' aka my shelf since then. I decided to paint them up and get them on the gaming board end of 2009.

The Necron race have always been a point of intrigue for me. I always wondered what happened to all the personalities, emotions and capabilities of independent thought the race possessed before they were turn into machines. And now that they are machines/ robots, do they still feel on the inside?

And have they come to regret the price of their immortality? (Seeing that their vengeance on the Old Ones have long since come to pass and grown cold) And do they have free choice in any way? And to also quote the title of a novel by the renowned author Philip K. Dick: "Do Robots Dream of Electric Sheep?" :)

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HQ
Mephet'ran (The Deceiver)

The being that made it all possible for the Necrontyr. This dude has alot of names. I do like his fluff. I have been using him in all my games thus far. He is a beast in close combat, and his ability to Deceive and Misdirect are as invaluable as they are entertaining in effect.

Destroyer Lord

Basically a Necron Lord mounted on a Destroyer platform. This allows him to zip around the battlefield like a jetbike. I have not used him in battle before. I would still arm him with the Warscythe and probably a Phase Shifter for an invulnerable save. I'm still tempted to give him a unique name haha!

Necron Lord (Lady)

I finished painting up the Tomb Queen today (6th October 2010). A joy to paint as its such a beautiful model. She will be my Necron Lord on foot. She was a favored general of Mephet'ran the Deceiver in millenia past. Hailing from the Har'akir System of the desert world of Aegyptos, Tomb Queen Tahira awakens to bring the Young Races to heel.

Troops

Necron Warriors


The ONLY Troops choice in the Necron Codex. These were once citizens and soldiers of the Necrontyr, now just Arnie lookalikes. They are still great troops with good toughness and a decent armor save. I mostly use them to hold objectives. Pictured above are my 3 Troop choices, 30 Warriors in total.

Fast Attack

Destroyers

The Destroyer cadre. I find them very effective in laying down a torrent of high strength suppressive fire at the enemy. I also find myself using them primarily to stun, shake or if lucky, immobilise vehicles. Pictured here are 10 Destroyers.

Scarabs

My Scarabs, all 12 bases of them. I find them really cute in a way. Uses are mainly to tie up the enemy in combat or speed bump. I have not tried hunting vehicles with the little beetles yet. They have good cover saves and number of attacks though.

Heavy Support

Have not had an opportunity to use them as yet. I would want to include 1 or 2 in games above 1000 points. I speculate they would be useful for making We'll Be Back rolls and add a bit of punch to help out my Warriors if they do get charged. Plus they can also give birth to Scarabs :)

Thats my Necron army for now. I'm still considering getting a Monolith, if anything just for the model, which looks spectacular. I have no Elites choices at the moment. The Necron elite minis are all metal and appear to have wallet denting potential, so I'll keep a raincheck for those too haha!

Cheers and...

Let the Red Harvest begin!

Tuesday, August 24, 2010

Saturday, August 21, 2010

WIP Celestial Wizard & Ballhead Knights

Some updates of my Empire!

Here is my 2nd wizard in the works. I'm done with the flesh. Next is to highlight the cloak. With the airbrush! Heheheh.....

My Ballhead Knights are distracting me too much so I answered their call and went ahead to paint them alongside my Wizard.

It took me awhile to decide on the colour scheme for them. Initially wanted black armour with white trimmings but decided not to as it would mean I could not have black horses. Too much black and no contrast makes the whole model look too boring.

So I went about looking at real pictures of knights and found that almost all of them were simply in heavy armour and almost totally just silver.
Thinking it would be cool to try and paint up a majority silver model. I went ahead and simply did all metal parts, simply silver.
Before Badab black wash.
After Badab black wash.
I'm quite happy with the results and can't wait to highlight the silver back up to it's bright and shiny glory!!

Friday, August 20, 2010

Batrep: Chaos vs Nids - Take 2

This is the 3rd Game I played. Same opponent from my previous Batrep but different mission. Crazyrat (Youcai) was playing Chaos while I played my 1000 points of Nids! 



Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Batrep: Chaos vs Nids

Second battle I played this time vs CrazyRat. This was a 1000 point game in preparation for the tournament in Sept. Played the same list I played against Beef Nuggets in the previous battle report. 

Head on over to the Picasaweb link below for the full report: http://picasaweb.google.com/enrgie/ChaosVsNidsKP#5506196627015507410

Do drop your comments on the pictures too!


Wound allocation issues on BOLS.

During the last battle with Raymond's Tyranids. (which was also my 3rd 40k game) I came upon this issue.

My Leman Russ unloaded its full fury upon 2-3 Warriors (prime included) and caused a total of 5 instant death wounds. And no one died. Only to take some wounds. (with the help of cover saves or special saves)

Bols have an article on this very issue.

And yes this really is cheating. (much to my disgust as I found out in my last battle!)

~Don't worry I'm not pissed or anything. Just that I like to play friendly and relaxed so when a rule seems super twisted (till it makes no sense) I tend to get a little upset.


Monday, August 16, 2010

Batrep: IG vs Nids

In anticipation of my Tournament this Sept - 1000 points, I played a series of battles with the guys at my place.

This is the first of the three. Go over and take a look!


Saturday, August 14, 2010

Completed Grey Wizard.




The first of the priority figures gets finished!
Since he is a character I decided to just highlight everything and complete it. No intention of going back to paint him!

Next up. Celestial Wizard!


Friday, August 13, 2010

WIP Grey Wizard

Finally found time amidst my busy schedule to paint up my Empire army.
This time I rewarded myself after finishing my 30 men Spearmen unit by spending precious painting time on a character.

Here I present to you my WIP Grey wizard casting a shadowy spell from his Pokeball!



~What's left of him is his Staff and the shadowy skull. I don't think I am able to pull of the puff of smoke effect properly on the skull. Anyone with advice on how to go about doing this?
Any help is appreciated!

Monday, August 9, 2010

Bowling Ball Knghts.

Here I have the first 5 (of 15) Knights of the Empire with Great weapons.
I made use of the remaining bits in my Empire General box set to create the Champion and the Standard bearer for this unit.

I really did not like the existing knights heads as they were too elaborate (and I just wanted my unit to look different!) and using bare heads was just too easy a way out. Plus it did not convey the heavy armour they are supposed to be in. They already did not have shields. If they had bare heads it's hard to consider them heavily armoured knights.

So I scoured my bit boxes hoping to find enough head to make a unit of 15 knights. And I remembered the Blood Bowl artwork showing many of the empire guys in very round and plain looking helmets. So I stared at the millions of Cadian heads I had and thought what if I shaved everything down?

That's what I did and now I have the perfect heavily helmeted knight heads for my unit!



~Although they look a little too plain but I think it would look good as a whole when painted up!

Saturday, August 7, 2010

WIP characters of the empire.


Here you can see the beginnings of my miniatures dedicated to Papa JJ. There are 2 wizards built from the wizards plastic box. As you can see I dabbled with some green stuff to built slightly raised bases for my characters to look dramatic from!

One of the will be a Grey Wizard and the other a Celestial wizard. How did I end up with these two you might ask? Simple. To keep in theme with the colour scheme of my army. Dark and black.

Why no Lore of Death you might ask? Sure it is one of the darkest of them all. However the dark and evil image coming out of an Amethyst Wizard does not fit into an army of good men. So I opted out for it.

The Grey wizard fitted in nicely, supported by his Lore of Shadows my shooty army should be able to benefit. And the Celestial wizard will be represented by a nice dark night tone to him. And the lore of heavens is always good to have in the army.

~ The other limbless miniature belongs to my General. have not got round to him yet. Next up General then the Helstrom RB! Till then!!!

Thursday, August 5, 2010

WIP: Hive Guard

After the run of Airbrushing, I started work on the Hive Guard - middle sized creatures with T6, so they will remain on the table for a long time! This justified me painting them first!

You will notice that I have blocked in the main colours. I will have to go back and complete the 1st layer of highlights for the carapace, claws and weapons. Usually that will be enough to put it on the table and I will stop there until the rest of my army is completed to a similar level.

Wednesday, August 4, 2010

Completed Spearmen of Nuln.


Here I present my first completed unit for my Nuln Empire army for 8th Ed.
This unit sure took longer than I initially planned (don't they all?) and I am glad I finally can put it aside and work on other stuff.

Namely the foreign contingent that has arrived from the kind contributions of Papa JJ fromDicerolla. As promised these group of guys will get priority painting. I will be working on fixing them up from tomorrow onwards so look out for that post real soon! Now I need to decide what kind of wizard the two will be......





~ Technically speaking they are not completed. I would say 90% done as I have left the black clothes to highlight (highlighting black is a pain!). Other than that I think they are good to go onto the tabletop!

Oh yes, any suggestions for which 2 lores I should choose for 8th ed Empire?

Tuesday, August 3, 2010

Tyranids - Airbrush!



Finally got my hands on Melvin's airbrush set and I started working on basing my Nids in Bleached Bone. BLOODY FAST!

Terrain Inspiration: Sabol



These guys are amazing. Look at their terrain collection and work: http://www.sabolstudios.com/sci-fi-terrain

Just to whet your appetite before we do our own!

Monday, August 2, 2010

Mantic thoughts.



I'm sure by now many of you would have heard of this relatively new company offering alternative miniatures to our favourite GW game systems. But over the weekend the guys at Mantic have dropped the bomb on their own game. Which is written by Ex-GW ruleswriter Alessio Cavatore.

This is all very exciting for me. In fact, the last time I felt so excited was when I discovered 40K after tinkering with Gorkamorka. Although we may all be so used the the GW rules, I feel that this would be a nice and refreshing change to the game I have stuck with for so many years.

On top of all this Mantic offers their miniatures at almost a quarter of the prices we pay GW. That's right. You can pick up their warhost (GW equivalent of Battalions) for 25GBP. That works out to about $1SGD per model.

Of course I cannot argue that some of their miniatures cannot compare to the VERY HIGH quality of GW models. Alot of the newer ones like the Ghouls & Zombies surpass the GW models! And did you see their Dwarfs? Lovely! The same can't be said for their Elves though, which I honestly feel is downright ugly. The look like 1980 standard models.

However, if you look into the future with these guys, if they keep up with the current standard of sculpts, and produce more armies (Orcs are next followed by Humans). I am sure they will garner a strong following. Especially disgruntled GW players who have put up with the insane price increases all these years......

~I could not pass up on the lovely Undead models, therefore I bought myself an Undead Warhost. It's only 24GBP after discount from Maelstrom!!!

When the rules come out in October and I realize I don't like the game. I'll simply use them for my Undead WFB army. Win-win situation for me. And I believe many other gamers in the world.

Are you guys gonna take the plunge? Any models you like? Or bought already even!?

Sunday, August 1, 2010

Magnet help....



I have been needing magnets for basing my fantasy armies for a while now. And after a discussion with Ray on them I decided to get my ass moving and get some. He did direct me to a link from Canada. But mentioned it was quite a hassle to order from them.

So now I humbly request the help of all our readers. Please direct me to where I can find the magnets I need to use for my bases. I know many of you have used them and bought them, so I would like to know as much as possible from you experienced ones.

Sizes and links to get them would be greatly appreciated.

~If any of you local guys (in Singapore) are able to order or even pick them up locally that would be best information! However international webstores and links are more than welcome as I doubt I can get them cheap locally!!

Terrain: Forests!

No game this week so instead, we started creating our forest! 


Using the materials Melvin got from Artfriend yesterday, here they are completed on their makeshift stands. We will base them on proper bases to turn them into movable trees.


They are quite fragile so if you're playing at our place, please treat them gently!



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