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Craig

End of an Era, the Second

Posted on August 18, 2015

I wrote an article in 2012 about how the Park Royal Games Workshop store was closing, and how it affected me. At the time I was melancholy, but hopeful for the future of my gaming club, CHOP!. It didn’t occur to me to write about the End of Warhammer Fantasy Battles until after I’d listened to Chumphammer episode 45, where Patrick used those exact words – “end of an era”. It hadn’t occurred to me, largely because my last game of WHFB was about a year ago. I’ve been watching and reading all of the drama around the Age of Sigmar, but aside from a little disappointment that I’ll probably never play my lizards again, it’s not really a big deal.

It’s interesting to watch the reactions of people. Some people have long since moved on (myself). Some people moved on when the first rumours of WHFB not being quite the same. I feel like some of these people moved on because they were bored, and others might have a little bit of prescience… Some people are raging about 15 years of loyalty lost. Some people are saying the new game isn’t that bad. Some people are saying they’ve given it a try, and it’s pretty good. Some people are saying they’ve given it a try and it’s pretty bad. Some people are in the process of figuring out where they might move to.

That’s a lot of variability! But I think what’s really important to note, is that no one I know thought “ah well, business as usual”. Everyone had to make a choice.

I started my decisions by selling my Brettonians, of which I have no photos here because the army was that old. I still have Orcs and Goblins, my Lizardmen and my brand new Daemons of Chaos. That’s a lot of models for a game that I don’t think I’ll ever play again.

Because that’s the thing for me – at least with WHFB, it was a game I’d once enjoyed, and I enjoyed the aesthetic of it, and I knew that if I brought an army someone would play with me. Now, with the community fractured and scrambling to figure out what the next big tournament game will be, it’s just another game that I own that no one I know really plays.

Which is why you see more Hordes on my painting table! Because a large group of my friends decided to play that game, which I have a few models for.

Anyway, this Era Ending isn’t a huge deal for me…but I thought it deserved writing about anyway.

Work-in-progress

Arcanists – Union Miners Basecoat

Posted on August 14, 2015

It’s not that I haven’t been painting…well…not just. It’s that I’ve been to busy to bother taking my photography stuff out and I finished a bunch of Hordes stuff! Pretty happy with the models I’ve been doing so far – it’s nice to finally put paint on models that are ~5 years old!

In the mean time, more base coats!

This one is fun because I literally painted this in a half hour. Or 20 minutes. Having a game with some friends this weekend, and I decided I wanted to use my Union Miners for the game. I’d previously assembled them in a model-building frenzy, so they were nicely primed and ready for paint! Should be able to finish them off sometime this week, as they aren’t overly complicated models!

Included in this photo is my paint palette. It’s the top of a plastic box of spinach or arugula or similar iron-filled leafy vegetable. The 5 more brilliant colours are the ones I used this morning – Blazing Orange, Shadow Grey, Rhinox Hide, Dheneb Stone, Snakebite Leather and there’s a less obvious Mithril Silver between the orange and the stone.

Work-in-progress

More ring making!

Posted on August 10, 2015

After my last pile of ring photos, I took a break. But I have a wedding upcoming and now it’s time to get a move on with making the wedding ring!

The plan is to make another ring that “slots” into the existing one. We’re working from a resin cast of the existing ring to build around it. This first photo is of me with a very rough carve, and it identifies a problem with physics. ie, the holes will never line up with the geometry we have. One day of learning, toss that wax.

The next day of carving I spent an afternoon on Sunday and ended up with physics being appeased, but my sense of aesthetics not being so happy. The result looked a little bit like an alien frog thing. I brought it home to test against the actual ring and was surprised when I got out of the washroom that Miranda had slotted it in and put it on! Pleasantly surprised – I hadn’t expected it to fit.

I like my alien frog thing better after comparing it to the actual ring, but it still won’t work as the gem sections are to thin to be able set the gems properly. Back to carving!

Work-in-progress

Hordes – Cataphract Arcuarii

Posted on July 22, 2015

I looked up both words to see if they meant something. “Cataphract” is a medieval mounted unit, so I think we’re off to a bad start. “Arcuarii” is just a word that Privateer Press made up, as the only Google results for just that word link to gaming related sites.

Continuing the Warmahordes reign of terror at my gaming club, I picked up a box of these guys. I was on the receiving end of the pull mechanic one to many times in a recent game, and I decided that I wanted to be able to do that myself. As well, I don’t currently have any heavy infantry in my army, and these guys plus another small unit of Beast Handlers and I’m at 50 points which I’m told is the next standard game size after 35.

Plus they look badass. Scott was saying in club chat the other day, that the more he looks at PP models, the more he likes them. Even the shitty ones start to look a little bit less shitty. I still think the jacks look ridiculously proportioned, and I don’t understand why everybody doesn’t play Skorne since they are the most beautiful faction in the game. (Although Everblight could even be tied…only reason I didn’t play them is that when I got into the game sooooo many years ago, they were a popular faction, and I just can’t do the same thing as others >.<)

I’m going to have to type out “cataphract arcuarii” a ton while painting these guys, to put their name into every tag. I’m working on the Immortals right now, and these dudes may be next.

Work-in-progress

Hordes – Titan Gladiator

Posted on July 21, 2015

I thought this was a neat mid-step and I haven’t posted such a thing in a long time, so here we are. 🙂

After the base coat, I’ve only added 2 layers.

Seraphim Sepia all over the gold sections, takes that really pale watered down gold and gives it a much stronger contrast and a better colour.

And a combination of SW Amethyst, Golden Matte Medium and water into the recesses of the skin. After that dried, I took a similar combination but with SW Heavy Body Black and went deep into the recesses and the under areas. You can see on the arm on the left the contrast this makes, but a more comprehensive photo shows that it’s on the under areas as well, giving that more realistic shading.

Next I’m going to use green glaze on the gold, and red glaze on the skin to give both a more varied colour. For these, I apply the colour in a random pattern, to be just a little bit of weathering.

(I left his buddy after the sepia and amethyst step – from there it gets to detail oriented to be doing two models at once anymore.)

Work-in-progress

Hordes – Titan Basecoats

Posted on July 17, 2015

I’m really liking painting these models. Good details, but not a lot of it, so the colour schemes are simple and effective. Here’s a basecoat on the two Titan Gladiators.

One of these gladiators is all metal and the other is a Privateer Press plastic/resin combo and is much much lighter. The metal one is difficult to manipulate without dropping!

Codex Grey skin watered down so it runs into the crevasses, Dwarf Bronze metal, Ushapito Bone nails and tusks, Tallarn Sand ropes and 2 layers of Bloodletter glaze on the cloth and banner.

Work-in-progress

Hordes – Skorne Stuff

Posted on July 14, 2015

My gaming group has been picking up on Warmachine/Hordes recently, with the lull in Warhammer, so I pulled out my ancient models and had a couple games. I had fun playing people I hadn’t played in a while (because I haven’t been playing Warhammer much), so I decided to put some paint on them.

I also bought a few new models to get to a decent 35pt list. The Titan Gladiator and Agonizer on the right are new.

Featured Images

Guild – Fransisca

Posted on July 11, 2015

Unlike the rest of the last few posts, I wrote this one when I took the photos. So I don’t quite remember what I did here. Something with the Mournfang Brown and some glazes.

I took the Miss Terious model and gave Lady Justice the coffin to stand on, and gave Terious a little bit of a base extra and BAM instant Fransisca. Perfect.

Featured Images

Ten Thunders – Oiran Final

Posted on July 8, 2015

Not super happy with this model, but I want to be done.

The dress is a strange blue/green combo, when what I really wanted was just that one green. The hair is shiny, and it’s not bad, but it’s not right either. The base is a muddled mix of glaze colours over white, and when I tried to bring the colour back to the greys I’d been doing for my Guild crew, it looked absolutely awful.

Anyway. Leaving her alone.

Featured Images

Guild – Scales of Justice

Posted on July 5, 2015

This guy turned out pretty damn good…except for the flames.

The skin was similar to Lady Justice, with the Dheneb Stone layers, but I used the Vallejo Game Ink Skin Wash instead of the SW Flesh Wash. It’s a lot less yellow and a lot darker, so it needed re-highlighting after with more Dheneb+Ushapti, but I’m getting a lot happier with it. At one point I had to decide whether to leave it super dirty, or bring it up a bit, and I decided to bring it up and I wasn’t disappointed.

The cloak is a few layers of Sepia and Waywatcher Green. I’m finding the Blue or Amethyst to strong against the red, but the Green is a really great shading colour for it.

The flames are where it started to fall apart. I made the foolish mistake of highlighting my ethereal green flames, instead of lowlighting as you should for internally lit sources. I had to go back in with a strong yellow in the cracks to pull the lighting back down, but unfortunately I didn’t do “lots of thin layers”, so I filled some of the detail here. Then, yellow->green wasn’t great looking, so I used the Waywatcher again to green up my yellow…then I had to highshade (not a real word) with the Elysian Green, which is not a good colour for me to have continued with. It was ok for the base layer, but I needed something more poppy to go back up with. Something that I don’t have in my paint box and couldn’t figure out how to mix. The last layer here was some really light bits of Guilliman Blue glaze at the top – because “flames” get darker at the top. But they usually also get warmer (ie, red is “warmer” than yellow), but it’s a green flame so…do I add brown or red to make it warmer? Blue? I don’t even know anymore…

The worst part is that I had the same flame problem on the Death Marshals as well, so we’ll see how they turn out. They’re lower on my Guild priority list, as I already have 2 painted for my Tara crew. But 5 Death Marshals sounds amazing…or terrible. Very swingy. Possibly an NPE. I’m going to try it. 🙂

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