Trudging Along

I thought I'd be making this post over 2 weeks ago. Hot on the heels of my last batch of five Marienburgers, I pressed myself hard and cranked out four more. Then I got caught up with other things and had the fifth guy to complete the row stuck on my desk ever since. Today I finally had an hour free to finish him up and get some photos taken. So at this point this Spearman unit is at 10 models. The immediate plan is to get the unit to 15 Spearmen models and then 5 Free Company as a detachment. The front rank of Spearmen is on deck for completion as are the Free Company.

As of late I have had models on the brain. When I have free time I'm pouring through my old pile of White Dwarf magazines, old army books, or reading blogs like Dave Taylor Miniatures, Fort Buyaki, and Brian Carlson's Miniatures Workbench among others. I'm very excited to paint, convert, and get models on the table. It also fuels my project ADD like I'm on speed and I am finding it even harder to focus. Tomb Kings got announced as coming in May, I was looking through an old White Dwarf from the release of the last VC book and it has me jonesing to paint Spirit Hosts just because I love their look, and then I've been looking at a lot of Apocalypse articles. This leads me to a question for you all. You see way back when I bought a plastic Baneblade that was originally meant to get a red paint job to go with my Redemptors of Golinar. But the only army I have far enough along to actually warrant an Apocalypse piece would be the Angels of Absolution. I've seen other people put Baneblades with their marines so it isn't a huge deal and converting the Baneblade to look a little more streamline and marine-like could be good fun. Below is an ancient John Blanche drawing of the Dark Angels in massed battle. In their midst is an unusual tank with a Demolisher Cannon on the front, and an unknown turret on top. So the question I ask all of you is, what Baneblade/Stormlord variant do you feel it is most like. I'm going with Hellhammer. But maybe there is something in the Forgeworld range that I'm missing. Any thoughts?

Status update for Nick:

Points: 14

Models Painted: 10 Infantry, 1 Tank

Models Purchased in 2011: 1 (Steam Tank)

A Little New, A Little Old

For the last couple of weeks I have had Warhammer on the brain. Scott got talking about doing Skaven so I dragged out my Empire models and one thing led to another. Last week I posted a photo of the first model I completed this year. I didn't talk much about him, I was just so eager to get his ugly mug up on the blog. As it turns out, he wasn't done after all. After "completing" him I went through a huge crisis of faith in my red scheme. You see, back in the day when I started my Marienburg army I was really determined to paint them quickly. So the red was originally Scab Red with a Red Gore highlight and Red Ink in the recesses. You see, back 10 years ago we didn't have GW's current range of Washes, and the Ink's really left whatever area they touched with a bit of shine. When I pulled out the Militia figure with the Catachan head and red coat, I re-did the red in an effort to mute the original shine, so I painted over most of the coat with Mechanite Red, mixed Mechanite Red and Scorched Brown to paint the recesses, and then I highlighted with Blood Red. The end result was this coat here:

He looks pretty good in the photo but I thought he looked a little flat in person. So then I started experimenting with a ton of combinations of washes and highlights to find what I really wanted. I tried washing thinned down Bestial Brown into the folds which gave a smooth but very dirty look that I ultimately rejected. I tried painting the red areas Mechanite Red, and then highlighting with Blood Red and then Bleached Bone. I followed this with multiple layers of Baal Red Wash. At first I thought it was too shiny so I ended up rejecting that scheme. I sort of regret it now. It was very rich and had a lot of depth.

Ultimately, though I went for a tried and true scheme. My 40K IG army was Blood Red with a Brown Wash, and then Blood Red, Blazing Orange, and Fiery Orange. Unfortunately they look very dirty and very orange, so I wanted to sort of get away from that. Instead I used that same basic idea but with the improved paints that GW has released. The final scheme is Mechanite Red with Devlan Mud Wash painted into the folds. All the raised areas are touched back up with

Mechanite Red to ensure a solid coat where it should be. Then the raised areas are highlighted

with Blood Red and Blazing Orange. It's a pretty generic red scheme but it works. Here are the 2 schemes side by side. The scheme that ends in Blazing Orange is on the right. The scheme that ended in Bleached Bone and several layers of Baal Red Wash is on the left. I'm sure I'll adapt that scheme on something somewhere along the way.

I've been productive. Way more productive than usual. Since the January 1 I have finished 5 models. They are actually from two different units, and three of the Spearmen are roughly identical. I added a feather to one and made sure all of the shields are different. I'm pretty happy with how they are coming out aside from the skin. I spent a decade deliberately not painting human faces so I feel like they need some work. I think the army is going to look pretty good when it all comes together. I have another 100 models to refine my techniques on. Here are the 5 completed models. I haven't determined if the bases will have Static Grass ultimately so the bases are sort of plain for the moment. They are display case quality though, so for our purposes they are done.

Finally I wanted to end with some models that I unearthed while getting pumped on Warhammer. Twelve years ago when I worked for GW - shortly before 6th Edition, I was feverishly working on some Bretonnians. The funny part is that I never completed any Knights. I converted a bunch of figures that didn't have a model in the original Bretonnian book and that didn't make it into the new book, and for some reason I painted a crap load of siege equipment even though I didn't have the models to field it. Ah, to have what seemed like limitless hobby time and resources again so I could do whatever whim that struck me. Anyway, here are the only 5 Bretonnian Spearmen I completed in 1998 along with 2 of the 5 mantlets I completed. Maybe I'll mess around with them a little or maybe I'll hold off until they get their next book. We'll see.

Nick: 5

Scott: 0