Work In Progress Update...

Despite the lack of updates this week I have in fact been working. I even have a tiny bit to share this evening...

First off is the Wraith Lord I've been working on. He's converted a bit and now in the midst of being painted. Here are a couple pics of the work in progress.


And a close up of the head showing what passes for translucent flames in my world...


This next pic is a prototype for the Dire Avengers I'm working on. The blue is quite dark, but I want this army to have a dark feel, so this is actually pretty close to a success on the blue armor as far as I'm concerned.


As you can see, my digital camera is still on the outs with me. I think it wants a tripod or a better photographer or some such garbage. Who cares what a camera wants though!

Thanks for stopping by and as usual, feel free to drop a comment with complaints, critiques, or whatever you like!

War Walkers!!!

Yes, finally they are ready (almost) to prime. I've taken a pic, but it would appear that today my digital camera hates me. After trying several settings and more than a dozen pics, I finally gave up and settled for the least blurry. Here they are thus far.


As per usual with this army, the heavy weapons are interchangeable. I'm not sure how I would want to load these guys out in a game... but I'm leaning toward anti vehicle. Of course, they could make horribly nasty infantry harassers too. I've snuck in another High Elf head to break up the monotony. But other than that, these guys are pretty standard. Any advice on how best to use War Walkers is always welcome as I'm way out of game practice and have never played Eldar anyway. Thanks for stopping by!

Wraithlord Progress

Some progress on the Altansar Wraithlord... finally! He is assembled and his pose finalized. Here is a pic or two!


Note the spiffy change of weapons thanks to all heavy weapons being magnetized in this army!


I have three War Walkers coming up. I'm debating whether to hold the primer and paint on this guy till those are done, or just go for it? The War Walkers won't be heavily converted... at least I don't think so... yet. But they will be magnetized as well.

I've given the weapons platforms and crews for my Guardians as well as my Dire Avengers a coat of primer, so they are on their way too! Which brings me to a question. Since this is the Altansar Craftworld, I had considered going with a non-standard color scheme for my Dire Avengers. They might not have the same traditions of color for Aspect Warriors that other Craftworlds have. I have been considering a scheme that is the opposite of the Guardians, black armor with red helms. Set them apart, yet hold them together. Or maybe traditional blue armor but black helms with red crests... or red helms with black crests? Hmmm. Any Eldar aficionados out there are welcome to weigh in... as well as any one else with an opinion!

Random thought for the day, "two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do".

Off Topic...

A little off topic here. If you have any interest in video games (or would like to be discouraged to) you should check out the reviews over at The Escapist, particularly Zero Punctuation. The guy is pretty funny and can find a reason to complain about pretty much any video game known to man.

The reason this came up today is that in the midst of his review of the recently released game 'Haze' there is a split second appearance of a Space Marine. See if you can spot it here!

Guardians Update... with Pic!

Here they are. Not 'complete', but pretty close. I still have to do the jewels and certain other little details, but they are table worthy (in my opinion) now.


I still have to get the Weapons Platforms and crews for these guys done. I'm magnetizing all the heavy weapons... that is a new skill I'm learning... slowly. I also still have the ten Dire Avengers ready to prime... could be primer in my near future. The Wraithlord is on hold while I make some decisions about positioning. So, I think it will be primer and War Walker building for this evening.

And of course I can use the time to catch up on 40K radio... check'em out if you haven't before. They have some Baltimore Games Day coverage up right now. Good stuff.

Where is my progress?

I have been making progress, believe it or not. I probably could have finished up my first 16 Eldar Guardians last night... if not for distractions. However, I happened to stop by the gwuscommunity page yesterday and saw their super cool 'Wisdom of the Imperium' quote widget. I thought I must have something similar, but they are a wordpress page and so stealing their widget was beyond my skill. So I searched and fiddled and gave up and asked a friend for help and finally came up with something. I now have a '40K Quotables' thingy that will display a different quote with each page load. See how little it takes to distract me! Not that it's all that fancy, but I'm happy to share the code with anyone who might want it. Just email me.

So, there should be some finished (or nearly finished) Guardians by this evening, and pictures up by this evening or tomorrow morning. I need to get these little guys finished as my sweetie is out for a girls night Thursday so I'm thinking of heading to the GW store near me and hanging out. Maybe even build a War Walker... or three.

MyNew Best Friend...

Ok, I have a new best friend. No, it's not RonSaikowski over at From The Warp or Sean at Running From The Law. It's not even Admiral Drax over at Admiral Drax, thought I do enjoy ALL of their blogs and recommend them highly.

No, this is my new friend...

Following the instructions in this article over at the Bolter and Chainsword I have made my first wet pallet. I don't do any fancy blending, or anything on my minis so I wasn't sure if this would be worth the trouble. Let me tell you, it IS! It's freaking magic. I can put a bit of paint on the paper, and it doesn't dry out. This, in one evening, has changed the way I put paint on minis. In fact, the wet pallet is sitting on my desk waiting for me right now, with the same paint on it I was using sixteen hours ago. Freaking magic. I used to keep a pot of paint open and dip, place on a pallet, add water as necessary, then paint on mini... repeat repeat repeat. Now I put paint on parchment paper, dip and paint. It adds it's own water... freaking magic. I would recommend trying this to anyone who hasn't yet. I'm off to enjoy less effort and wasted paint!

Skin Tone Dilemma

As my Eldar are to be from the Altansar Craftworld I've had this idea about how I want their skin tone. I would like them to be very pale (even for Eldar) and downright "guant". They are described looking haunted or ghostly so I figured extra pale would be good. I've tried a couple different skins here and I'd like to share them. Both pictures are the same, just slightly different angles and light. The mini on the left is just too purple in the skin. The one on the right I think might be close to the target. I know the obvious answer is to use more helmets, but I'm going out of my way to include heads from the High Elf range just so as to show off their paleness.


Strangely, the armor is quite different on these too also with the right mini being a good deal more bright red. I'll have to think on the skin tone further. Any comments or criticism would be welcome.

Real Progress!

Well I finally got some work done. And some pictures to prove it!

Here is a prototype for my Altansar scheme. There isn't quite enough depth in the red for me yet. I am going to try again with a different paint progression. This one is black primer, mecharite red, blood red drybrush, then baal red wash. I'm going to change the drybrush to blazing orange and I'm reasonably sure I'll still get a good red with a bit better depth. The black parts will eventually be black parts.

I also did a couple of test minis for my Plague Marine scheme. I really like the lighter pus colored marines compared to the greener marines. This paint progression is black primer, tau sept ochre, rotting flesh, then a wash of thrakka green. I like them so far, but we'll have to see what they look like after the trim is done. I will probably do the trim in a metallic, then wash it all with something to tone down the metal and tie it together. Something like a rust colored wash perhaps.

Bases have all been done for what I have primed. I'm still trying to decide which will be easier/faster. Priming black then hand painting the base (foundation) colors. Or priming black then spraying on the foundation color. Option one puts the bases at my starter color for bases. Option two will see me having to go back and hand paint every base black then build up the color and probably retouch the legs of each mini. But, it may still be faster in the long run.

Here is my current workspace. (Note the ghetto photo area) Like a goldfish, my hobby kind of grows to fit it's environment. Luckily, I have a very supportive and understanding sweetheart, not to mention gorgeous and smart (she reads this you know!). Any workspace this messy must mean that real work is going on, right?

Update!

I've not forgotten my blog. I will return and I will return with pictures! I've been getting good progress done on my Eldar. Twenty Guardians with one scatter las platform each are done and based. Ten Dire Avengers with Exarch are also ready to prime. The Wraithlord is coming along, slowly but surely. I even have seven Death Guard ready to prime... yea don't know how those got in there... but I feel a 'Theories of the colors of Chaos' blog post coming up soon.

Priming is happening when I get off the computer in a few minutes. I may even break out the paints and my new set of Citadel Washes soon!

Lack of Progress Report...

Not much in the way of progress today. Some days the time just gets away from me. I did however pick up a new Dremel rotary tool. I'll be testing it out tomorrow and I might even put up a review on it. Although, I primarily use my Dremels for drilling and pinning purposes I may have to try a bit of cutting with it too... for the sake of science of course!

I did order some rare earth magnets today for making my Eldars' heavy weapons swappable. So, I guess if you squint your eyes and look from just the right angle, I did get some things done today. I'll just declare it a administrative and/or logistical day... yay I did get some work done on my minis today after all!

Altansar Wraithlord

Well, one of my many irons in the fire is a newly purchased Eldar army. The story behind the Altansar Craftworld really appealed to me so I said why not. I actually think I felt the overwhelming urge to start a new 40K army because I was desperately close to making actual progress on my Imperial Guard... which were probably a diversion from my Space Marines. In any case, the trigger hath been pulled.

I found a post on the DakkaDakka forums by a fellow who was converting an Altansar themed Wraithlord. It is, in my humble opinion, awesome! So I quickly absconded with his idea and began my own conversion. The image of a scythe wielding Wraithlord just really does something for me. I only hope my foray into Wraithlords turns out half as good as his.

I'll update as progress is made. I'd like to have this guy mostly done this week. Paint will be another matter. I have plans involving foundation paints and the new wash set coming out this week, but less impressive minis will have to take the first plunge.

Macharian Crusade IG Regiment Challenge!

The guys over at the Bell of Lost Souls are having a competition of sorts. The gist of it is, convert and paint an Imperial Guard trooper and write a bit of fluff for it. Include some doctrines from the codex that are fitting and POW! The top three entries will be included in their upcoming Macharian Crusade book. I am a little curious as to whether doctrines will remain a part of the Imperial Guard Codex when it's revised this summer. Rumors seem to point to no. Then, will the Macharian Crusade book only be IG and 40K 4th edition compatible?

Anyway, here is a sneak peak at one of my IG beastmen.


We'll see how the horny bastard does in the challenge!

First Post!

Talk about a work in progress. I can hardly find time to engage in the geeky pursuits I enjoy, but now I feel like I would like to share those pursuits online! I blame the 'Fly Lords of Terra' over at the Bell of Lost Souls. While I don't think I will ever have the number of readers they have, I do believe putting down my ideas and thoughts might help me get more out of my hobby.

So, this site will start out as a tool for me, and we will see what it evolves into... or if it simply goes extinct.

What is this hobby of which I speak? I've been collecting, converting, painting, and on rare occasion even playing games with Citadel/GamesWorkshop miniatures since I was young. I have a theory that they used to put addictive chemicals on their metal miniatures back in the late 80's and early 90's that compels me to continue to collect them to this day. Or, maybe I just really like to put together and paint toy soldiers?

I'll close for now, but there is more to come. As I learn to use this fancy blogger.com site, I'll add more articles, pictures, and maybe even share some of my legendary (in my own mind) knowledge of the GW Hobby.