Well played, GW

GW's inclusion of Allies has been on my mind way too much lately.  Since my main armies don't play well together, I somehow came to the conclusion that I needed another army that could ally with both.  Also - whatever I bought would have to be painted  yellow.  No idea why.


Enter the Eldar.  I bought a starter army from a guy on Dakka Dakka, but I know myself too well - I am sure I will be expanding this with more stuff in the future.  Good job GW.  Way to convince me I have a need to buy even more plastic army dudes...not to mention objective markers and special dice.


This is the beginning paint scheme:
Krylon Fusion White to Prime
Watered down layers of Yriel Yellow (GW) to Cover
Thinned down Gory Red (Game Color) and Devlan Mud (old GW) as a wash
Dry brushed yellow and white.

Mephiston 3 hours from boxed to 90% complete

How long should speed painting take? How long should an above avg tabletop painting take?
Why not combine the two. In a race to go to bed at 10pm last night, i took Mephiston out of the package. I really like pewter models, they just feel more, well like pewter.
I spent about 5 minutes gobbing some Black gesso on it and went to subway. Black gesso or gesso of any color is my favorite for small painting qualities or when i cant use army painter or GW spray for a base coat. just throw it on, dont be afraid to go it on and cover of the fine details because as it dries it tightens up like a jimmy hat.
I got home and started work on the color scheme. I had what i wanted to do in mind. Tip one. Lay out the colors in order from the largest use to the hillights. It helps speed the process. First Scab Red on the robes. Then started with a GW kindleflame dry to pop the high areas out on the robes. Then i took some crimsonburg shade to the low areas. Them some Bobab Black to the more recesses areas. Then whatelse, Mephiston Red to start pulling out the robe. I spent about 20-30 minutes on the robe.
then i started on the gold. Most of (90%) of this model was done with a 0004 Wargaming brush. I dipped the brush continually in my fresh water pot as to keep the paint as then as possible. The gold i used was Vellajio Gold. Their metallic just cant be beat. From their i did a quick flame job on the plasma gun with GW paints followed by a nice dark gw green hillight around the edges.

For the power cords i been working with some color chaging nail poilsh and airbrush paints. I still need to do some hillighting on the sword.

The back of the robe and the bottom was a quick design i sketched on paper. Finnaly i placed a little taint of a chaos backpack because it looked fitting. With applying paint with such a samll brush and a fan going not stop to speed up painting time (cut it off if you wet blend) i worked on a small cobble stone etched with the blood angel symbol.

i still have to do popping hillights but i hop you like it.

start to finish about 3 hours.

Sisters, where are the sisters?

So I spent some of my vacation working on getting my color schemes down for my sisters, basing and starting some of the 60+ nuns with guns (regular bolter sisters). I hope you enjoy. i really do like the secret weapons leaves for basing, they look like actual leaves, not oregeno.

We dont just paint

Just so you know we dont just paint. We also enjoy weekly 40k games. Here our some shots from Control alt Elite and a few from the BA vs BA July fourth bash on my table breaking in some of the terrain i havent finished...enjoy

big update incoming

With the entrance of the 6th, i have started to picture and plan my fall league army. With that being said there will be a massive update to whats been going on in the man cave including some gaming pictures taken on the 4th of july at the man cave and control alt elite on the 6th.

Fire! Fire! Fire!

I started 40K Dark Angels, but ended up really liking the Salamanders as well.  I decided to paint a hybrid color scheme and call them the Burning Angels Chapter...with the idea that I could play them with either Codex without too many comments from my opponents.

In any case, if you want to play any kind of Salamander themed army, you need lots of fire imagery.  I really struggled with this at first, but then I learned a simple scheme to paint fire.  I'm sure some folks know a better way, but this worked for me.

First, paint the flaming area white.

Then, with a relatively dry brush, layer in some yellow, starting a little ways up the surface.  Drag some streams down over the pure white.

Repeat the process with orange, starting a bit above the yellow.  Pull a few lines down over the yellow and white.

Same thing with Red

Then, outline the flame effect area with black.  This is the hardest part for me. 

Finally - paint everything outside the line black.  Easy flames! (Probably should have waited for it to dry before taking the picture!) 

A New Dark Look for my Tau

My poor cutting matte

Okay all, I got tired of the tan/green of the basic Tau. So I decided to go with a colour scheme that will go with the fluff I am working on also.
My New Tau are from Korst'la (deathbringer) planet.
This is a planet that the Death Weaver's brun from the Orcish Hands of Warlord Knug'slok. Simple paint scheme, This is also my first "real" attempt at blending the new citidel paints. The red has 3 layers, and highlight. I will be using helmet colour as squad differentiation. I still need to do the finer points on this model Like grass alittle of his corpse base, and his pack pack and other lights, perhaps may paint his gun, Havn't had any good colors come to mind for the gun though. I will not paint it silver, as I think the Tau are more advanced than using metal for weapons. I may actually go back and paint his Pulse Carbine as tan, to show their weapons origination. But don't know. I will also do squad markings in each squads helmet colour. Just a quick post to show what has been coming "slowly" across my hobby desk.
BTW: The Korst'La Tau get their 1st 6th edition Game in tonight. I will post the Battle report later or tomorrow.

I guess that kid is me

Chris asked us to contribute to the blog.  I've never done that before (hell - I don't even like to use Facebook), but I thought I'd at least give it a try.  One thing I've learned is that I will need to get my wife to teach me how to transfer pictures from the good digital camera, because it was a real pain trying to get a decent close-up shot with my Blackberry.

So, Matt was over at my house last weekend (he plays 40K as well - Eldar and Dark Eldar).  I had just bought an old box of minis from someone whose kid had never gotten into the hobby, although he had painted a few of the models.

Some of the models were Kroot, and the kid had painted them with blood dripping off the end of the bayonets on their rifles.  Matt said, "I don't know why kids feel the need to paint bloody weapons on every single model".

I looked over at my Dark Eldar army and shook my head.

When I started building this army, I decided I was going to try to have fun with it - make some interesting conversions and poke fun at my opponents.  Matt's Eldar are still the army that I struggle with the most.  Win or lose, I can always count on them to be aggravating....Doom, Fortune, Reserving everything....they just never let me have a fair fight.  Of course, back then I was playing my Dark Eldar like my Marines, and always losing because I hadn't yet embraced the true Eldar values of the unfair fight!  



I started by making a Dire Avenger into the Figurehead of my HQ's Raider. I bought a single minifigure from an Ebay Store called Black Dagger Games http://stores.ebay.com/Blackdagger-Games.  It was a really simple conversion.  The legs didn't need any adjustment at all; I just had to create a slightly greater bend in his arms to make the positioning look less forced.  Oh - and I glued a hook to his chest and painted lots of blood....just like that kid.

More later.....