Malifaux Spirits of Vengeance WiP

 Today I worked on a Malifaux Resurrectionist crew based on the Spirits of Vengeance.  I really like the feel of these angry ghosts and they'll be a fun diversion from the Dark Eldar horde I've been focusing on lately.

I'm trying a new wood technique.  Its a synthetic iron oxide gel.  Applied over white it gives a warm feeling.  I've done one coat and then re-coated the recesses of the grain.  I think two general coats would have gotten the same result.  There is no other shading or highlighting done so far, and it looks pretty good as is, but I'm anticipating some edge highlights.

 The dark earthen areas on the bases will get revisited with weathering powders as the final step.

One of the spirits will be based entirely in water filled with eyeballs...yuuuck!

 I'm trying out some Blasted Swamp bases from Secret Weapon.  They are standard 25mm bases a la GW but have recessed surfaces that allow for water effects to almost the same depth as the new 30mm round-lip styles.  These will be used on the Court of the Archon for my Blood Rain Kabal.  I've based all the newer models for the Kabal in a  watery swamp style so it should be a good fit.  The regular bases take a lot of work to get a believable depth of water effect so ... we'll see how it goes!

As you can see the desk is pretty chaotic!  The Malifaux crew is getting worked on at the same time as the Court of the Archon... and old fashioned bulk job but with a lot of experimentation added in..

Dark Eldar Tantalus joins the Kabal

 The Tantalus joins the Blood Rain Kabal today.  There remains only the naming but that is true of the rest of the fleet as well.  The sail has the Kabal rune as well as the campaign badge from the Chaos Gate Campaign which this vehicle did not actually fight in.... someone in accounting is certain to take issue!

 The sail itself turned out to have a wrinkle in one of the spars that was smoothed out via the warm water method but returned, albeit to a lesser degree, after the painting was completed.  The sail is removable so I may end up making a modification to correct the defect .



The lower Blade Vanes are so low that I had to use the tallest flight base stem and tilt the vehicle  back from level to avoid scraping the tabletop.

Speaking of bases... the Kerr and King 60mm weighted Flight Base is performing well.  The order time from the UK was around a week and while drilling the hole for the flight stem I struck one of the weights which appear to be a non ferrous metal.  They really are heavy and the model is surprisingly stable in spite of the size and distribution of its mass.  One potential issue is that the model and the base are both heavy enough to place stress on the standard plastic stem that holds them together.  Its a bit like a dumbell joined by a straw.  We'll see how it holds up to moving but I am expecting to have to remount the stem at some point ans possibly replace it with something more durable.

Moving the model on the tabletop will be difficult at best.  It is quite large, there are few points of purchase, the forward Blade Vanes have little clearance making any sort of terrain a bit dicey due to the great length of the model, and the rudder has even less clearance due the the tilt.

It is a beautiful model and will spend a lot of time in a display case alongside the Reaper.

OGRE PANTS!

I started reviewing my Ogre Kingdoms Army so I can make some new additions in a similar style.

I realized that I'd actually done the army as an experiment.  Normally I paint with the idea that I want to minimize/eliminate brush strokes.  For this particular project I actually exaggerated the brush strokes to achieve texturing effects.  Additionally the Army has very little dry brushing although there are a few cases of heavy wet brushing where, again, the brush strokes are exaggerated for effect.  I painted this almost entirely at my local game shop and the cry OGRE PANTS! rang out often.. in part a reference to the pirate themed trousers sported by most of the army and in part just because it was fun (and very Ogre-ish) to bellow!

The Ninja Maneater shows these  exaggerated brush strokes clearly on the skin which was built up stroke by stroke from a base color called Stein Grun which is a mossy green.  The layered effect makes the whole skin seem exceptionally dirty and greasy without losing definition or illumination.

The Gnoblar contingents are swathed in a truly ridiculous quantity of bandages... the price the pay for being in close quarters with the Ogres... and with the other Gnoblars!

 Since the whole project was silly for the sake of being silly I added an Ogre Champion from the old Battle Masters game as a Maneater.  Hes a little more broad that the regular ogres but sits in the Army nicely. The belly plate shows that brush work again as do the skin and metals of these variously equipped Bulls.

 Everybody conga!  Indeed it is a good thing that most armies don't include a lot of Gorgers just because the very dynamic pose of these metal monstrosities is tricky to modify and thus we have the Gorger Chorus Line.  On the bright side the pale, streaky, layered, skin looks convincingly translucent.

 The Hunter was fun and I really enjoyed the cats.  I took a sort of part hyena.. part Jaguar approach and was happy with the result although.. as pat of the experiment they are a FAIL! since they are a smooth work up without the crazy brush thing.  Thats all right though I still like 'em!

 OGRE PANTS!  Here is a great example of the pirated trousers!  Even though all the trousers are individuals the colors are from a defined palette so they look like they belong together even though they are all different.  These are by design VERY cartoony and the Ogres seem to keep their trousers meticulously cleaned even though none of their other equipment/belongings are afforded the same care! 
There must be a powerful contingent of laundry Gnoblars working feverishly to keep up!

 The standard bearers clearly show the brush layers on their skin.  The pattern on the backs developed over the course of time and as it evolved it improved.  Some of the early efforts produced effects that were clearly ill defined brush marks but when I got it right the striping looked a lot less like a brush marks and more like low contrast zebra or tiger stripes.

 The standard bearer on the right with the purple and yellow trousers shows the evolving stripes.

 Boss!  This is the Bruiser from the Boxed Army and stands in as my generic tyrant if none of the Big Names are available to rumble.  Gotta be secure in yer manhood to wear those trousers!  Wood grain on the various weapon hand grips was painted in the same fashion as the skin except that more of an effort to look like wood grains was made!

 Matronly Maneater!  here the wet brush was used on the rolling pin which looks sort of moldy or slimy... disgusting!

Finally the Yhetees!  More competitors for "So You Think You can Dance"  still better than the Gorgers!

Thanks for bearing with the review!  I'm now in the right frame of mind to attack the new models.  I think I can work out something that gets the best parts of this effect with less time investment.

Dark Eldar Tantalus Structures WiP

 Back from the Holidays for a bit.  Starting with a shot of where I've ended up at the end of work today.  As you can see the primary hull is together.  The red has been brightened up to the same level as the rest of the fleet.

The provided flight stand does not fit snugly into the slot which is OK since the stand seems a bit small for a model of this size and weight.  I've decided to  go with a weighted base from Kerr & King.  These bases are 60mm so will be the same size but I'm hoping it'll be a bit more stable.  I'm concerned about the height once the poop deck is added in terms of fitting it into a foam tray!  I think it'll be OK but it may be a close run thing.

The Brass decking is very interesting.  It sits very close on top of the engine details making me think that, perhaps, the similarity in color between the engine compartment and the deck surface  is less than ideal... especially considering that the second tier of decking sits about a quarter of an inch above a large part of the first deck!  In retrospect I might have considered a very dark engine detail with very bright point source lighting under the deck.

The schedule for the early part of the year is kur-aaaa-zeee! So I'll have to be extra disciplined to get anything done.

Holiday Shuffle!

Due to the craziness of the season I'll be unable to make any headway on the Dark Eldar Tantalus until after the New Year.  In the meantime I'm catching up on some reading.  Mostly Codices and rules but also I have a stack of novels that has been growing at an alarming rate during the past three months!

Today's Codex  was the Necrons.  I just finished it and was struck by the notion that they have at least one weapon, the aptly named Death Ray, that allows them to intentionally shoot at their own units.  My gaming group has had a lot of discussions over the years about various races for whom it would be thematically acceptable, and possibly even routine, behavior to shoot up you own cannon fodder but had always come to the conclusion that the potential game breaking tactics that could evolve from such an allowance would preclude its adoption.  Then, low and behold!  Necrons...  I'm wondering if there are any other such exceptions in this edition that I've missed.  I'm really a fluff bunny and so would be completely unsurprised to discover a rules mechanic that I've overlooked.

I'm finishing up a troll through the Ogre kingdoms with an eye towards starting on the new campaign book "Blood in the Badlands"  I'm still churning over what the Geekfest theme will be this year and am hoping for some additional inspiration from the reading.  I did finish Tamurkhan: Throne of Chaos earlier this week and was impressed with the art and layout of the book as well as the solid story and campaign elements.

I'm a little nostalgic because Fantasy Battle was what got me into the Workshop Hobby and I played it hard for many years but the last decade or so has been very tightly focused on 40k.  Oh, I'm still painting up Fantasy Battle armies but I haven't actually played a game of it in 8ish years.  I think the last game I played was 6th edition  Ogre Kingdoms against Wood Elves.  I've read the rules in the interim and like the look of 8th edition but haven't taken it out for a walk.  I may have to do an off-season WHFB thing kind of like the 40k Geekfest... but that is still more of a notion than a concept!

I'm also trending into Malifaux.  In part this has to do with the gaming community in my, currently, local area and in part with the wonderful atmospherics of the setting.  Truthfully if the required figure count and playing area (3x3!) were not so small I'd have passed this by but the portability and small time/space requirements allowed me to deceive myself into thinking that I had time for another miniatures game!  I'm enjoying my delusion at the moment and you can expect to see some modelling projects related to Malifaux appearing in the pile in the early part of the New Year.

Blood Rain Kabal signature patterning added to the Tantalus

 I got the fracture pattern applied to the main hull, the side vane wings and the rudder.  Its a base of P3 bone jack, a mid tone of Menoth White Base and a top highlight of, Menoth White Highlight.   I actually paint in the white blotches over a black base and highlight each one individually instead of working up a big white base and painting black lines over it.  I end up having to paint the black lines in the end to tidy up fuzziness around the white areas anyway  but I've never had good results with the patterning with that method so I always return to color blobs.

The twin forked front made it easy to keep the blob sizes consistent.  I find I always need a to look at a reference when doing this over several areas, or several vehicles ( I have a set of three Ravagers where one of them has noticeably different patterning which is when I started using the internal reference), or the size of the blobs changes which changes the feel of the pattern.

 The rudder has had some basic block design painted on and the red work up has begun although there are no photos in this batch.

I'm happy with the look of the wing vanes although I've noticed a couple of areas of clean up fail on the blade and rudder.  I'll tidy these up and repaint.  Fortunately the fail is on the metallic area in both cases and is just a little trimming/sanding along the edges which should not be too much trouble to repair.

Dark Eldar Tantalus construction color blocks

 The crazy open architecture of the Tantalus has me painting in basic color blocks as I construct it.  A couple of areas will be below structural brass decking and could be fairly visible and the rest of the build is pretty clean except some split hull plates where the scythe vane hull section aligns with the primary hull.  I'll have to sand a and fill this when I get it together, since this central hull area is a pretty complex structure to assemble, and just repaint those areas unless another way to conceal the join presents itself!

The secondary engines were all conveniently on the same large sprue chunk which made it easy to get a consistent look on them.  They have guide pins cast in but things don't quite line up so I had to trim those down and pin it normally.  The fit on the curved engine compartment wall was really quite good.

Less good was my experiment with the Rat Fur colored primer.  It adheres to the model very well and turned up great even coverage, it covers very well so care has to be taken not to apply it too thick.  Unfortunately it dried kind of slick and doesn't take paint very well. Its not as bad as uncleaned mold release and just takes a second coat to remedy the situation.  While that is a bit of a pain it looks like it will still require fewer coats to get to the final red color which was the goal after all so  a mixed review at this point.