Shape of Things to Come

Not a lot of painting got done this week. The fourth-quarter scramble at work has loaded me up with too much to do, and I'm close to finishing the first draft of book five in my viking series. There's just not enough time to paint.

However, I have set my eyes on making an old project new again. I'm going to assume the following pictures will give you an idea of what it is. This is the only model I painted this week.

 Yes, time to resurrect my Tau project from a few years ago. I bought a bunch of Tau around the time most of my game group was getting out of 40K. My interest in 40K also waned at the same time, and so I left a lot of these models unpainted. I came close to selling my Tau collection, but I hardly ever sell my games.  I'm glad I kept them.

So I've got one Crisis Battlesuit done. Of units that I've yet to paint, I have a unit of Fire Warriors, two Piranha skimmers, a Hammerhead rail gunship, and a bunch of drones. I probably need to add in a few more models to get enough points to play a game. I'd like to get around 1,000 points ready.

I chose a difficult paint scheme for these guys. It takes three coats to get solid coverage. To make it even more challenging, GW discontinued my base color (graveyard earth). Fortunately, I sagely saved a fresh pot of it when they announced this. So I can probably get most of my models done in the same color. At some point, things won't match any more. Well, I'll cross that bridge when I get to it.

This is a lot of words for a single model. Up next will be the Fire Warrior team.  

More Necropolis & Zombie Survivors

I finished up all but the skeletons for my Warlord Necropolis force. This week I painted the Bones versions of Necropolis gargoyles. Besides being inexpensive these models were completely assembled. The only issue was their wings had been compressed to fit into the blister. A quick dip in hot water reset them to original condition.

Though lightweight, the wings make their balance precarious. It's no big deal for a plastic model to topple, but still is aggravating. I ended up putting a small nail through the base bottoms to keep the gargoyles from falling off the base while the glue set. It ended up balancing them as well.

These were easy to paint. Basically prime black, then dry brush warm grays, wash with black, then highlights. I'd considered paint splattering them for extra texture but I don't think these are going to see a lot of play time. So the effort would be not worth the time and mess. I like how they turned out.

Last week I took some horrendous pictures of the other Necropolis models. One that I think people would have an interest in is the translucent plastic ghost model.  I took a better picture of it this week.

Lots of people don't know how to approach painting this model. I've seen people who just prime it and paint like any other model, and those who just fill the recesses with a dark wash.  I opted to paint directly on it without priming in order to preserve the translucent parts. Overall, I think it came out okay. The picture is still not as good as the model appears in person. The translucent effect is lost here, but I think you get the idea. It does look ghostly to me, and that's what makes this model unique.

I had a few models sitting on my desk as I pondered my next project. These are modern / zombie survivor type of models all from the Bones Kickstarter. I gave them all a quick paint job so they'd be ready when I might need them. My favorite is the zombie hunter with chainsaw. I liked the hand clinging her to pant leg!

Anyone who paints as many Reaper models as I do will eventually realize these models have their quirks. One that consistently aggravates me is clothing. Reaper models exist in a bizarre dimension where sleeves appear inexplicably from nowhere, or one side of a hand appears to wear a glove and the other side of the same hand does not. All sorts or extra-dimensional clothing exists in Reaper's world and can be a frustration when painting, particularly where layers of clothing appear and disappear on a whim.

However, no figure is more of a disaster than one I found in my Bones collection. I was looking forward to painting this guy, since he appeared like a thug with a sawed-off shotgun. What a unique model, I thought.

Well, unique is right. Check this out.

What the hell is going on with this guy's jacket? That's not a torn sleeve. One sleeve is full-length and the other is short. Model ruined. I couldn't believe what I was looking at. What is the logic here? The short sleeve is so defined that even a paint-over won't cure it. They modeled a flippin' wristwatch to drive the point home. Besides, I can't stop seeing this now that I know it's there. So I left the model mostly in primer black, quickly painted some large areas, and am now undecided if I toss it in the trash or keep it in case mix-n-match sleeve lengths ever becomes a fashion.

So that's this week's update. I've got a few new ideas brewing, including a few larger projects. Stay tuned!

Warlord: Necropolis

I've been on an undead kick these days, though this particular project had been planned far in advance of "zombie fever."  I'm just getting to it.

This is the start of my Necropolis army for Reaper's fantasy miniatures game, Warlord. Thanks to the collections of models I have from the Bones Kickstarter I have a solid base for most of the factions. Unfortunately I put most of these on round bases and Warlord is particular about its base sizes.  That may actually put me off the game, since most of the Bones models don't fit on the base sizes they're assigned.

Well, this force is all Vampires with supporting undead staples like zombies and skeletons. The undead must've possessed my camera as all the pictures came out like total crap. I'll have to retake them, but here are a few examples.

First the overall force and the only halfway decent picture.

I took detailed shots of each unit but most were out of focus.  Here are the few OK pictures to give you an idea of what some of these units look like.

Judas Bloodspire is the warlord leader and wearing the red cloak. The other is a hero, Malek the Hated.

More vampire heroes, Naomi Mistress of Wings (Bones variant), a Bones proxy for Sir Gauren the Wrathful, and Elsabeth Briarkiss. She is the only non-Bones character in the army.

Every other picture I took was way out of focus.  I have units of 8 zombies, 3 burrowing zombies, 3 chattel (humans that the vampires can eat to regain health), a bat swarm, a ghoul captain, and a ghost. I'll have to retake those pictures when I finish up this army.  I still have gargoyles and skeletons to assemble and paint.  I'm out of 25mm square bases, so I've got to order them before I can continue.

Not sure what I'll be working on next. I'm a little burnt-out on painting minis. Maybe time for a break!