No Photos (boring I know) UPDATE: I lied

Sorry for the lack of photos today. The only real progress I made on the BA tac. squad was the first layer of blazing orange highlighting which, while creating a delightful extra level of color on the armor plates, does not show up in photos well. Such fine detailing on even just 5 models is enough to give me a neck ache so I am going to do the final body highlight maybe Friday morning. That orange is much brighter (more yellow) so will show up in pictures pretty well. Also, when the two are blended with a was the armor almost looks like it is on fire :-) Once the bodies are all done then the arms and a shoulder pad get taken care of. And then finally gluing!

I wasn't done hobbying though so I put together 5 more of my Mantic Orc Slaves. I am being really careful this time around because the Mantic models can be a bitch to line up if they are not put together well. I went in on their Kickstarter back in June so I have a mess of Abyssal Dwarves to put together. I loved how my Abyssal Dwarf Berserkers turned out so that kind of motivated me. Also, for the first time in a long time I put some effort into basing them. This is extra important for Kings of War because their ally rules are really permissive. You need a solid unifying theme, like same bases, to make your army look like a cohesive unit. Storyline-wise the ADs come from a wasteland so I went with a simple desert theme; just some sand and browns. Ah what the hell, here you go.

5 Berserkers

Typical berserker

Unit Champion

Also, on a side note, here's a post from today about how I feel about the new Chaos dex. Don't mind the nerd rage lol

This seems to be a fairly common opinion so I am definitely in the minority but I totally disagree with this guy. I am glad they melded some clearly warped/ daemonic looking stuff into their dex. They've been phasing daemons out of the chaos dex for years now and if this guy had his way the dex would be pre-heresy marines+spikes+ok to ally with daemons (snore) There are already enough variants on the standard marine dex. See; Templars (marines+scout allies) DA (marines+all bike or termy) Wolves (marines+CSM) BA (marines+MyLittlePony) There doesn't also need to be CSM (marines+auto cannon heavy weapon troops+big transports) 
If you read the fluff behind the drakes they are the CSM fighter jet (that was posted) + 10,000 years in the warp. Even mentions that it has a shriveled little pilot inside of it. Likewise with the fiends, mechanical constructs that effectively come to life. I would have thought that you addition of the Warpsmith would soften the blow but I guess not. 
In short, total fan of the change in direction as far as their aesthetic and can't wait to see some big monsters on the table! 

Here is the original article that spurred the comment; http://sepulchreofheroes.blogspot.com/2012/09/no-matter-how-good-csm-is-gw-still-made.html

Touch Up and Helmets

Next up I cleaned up the washing and finished the helmets. The washes were rather easy just a coat (sometimes two) of watered down V Blood Red and that covered up the SWM Ruby ink rather nicely (as opposed to a minimum of 2, usually 3 to get clean cover over GW Devlan Mud) Then the helmets I just took out through all the steps; cleaned them up, then the two light oranges for highlights and a SWM red wash to tie it all together.

Also, I took some white enamel spray paint to a tissue box to act as a backdrop for pictures. I think the result turned out quite nice. Taking pictures of the helmet was tough though. There is a limit even for a macro lens. I also have to think about the lighting situation as well. Maybe order myself one of those little mini studios. Natural sunlight looks nice but then I can only take pictures at a very certain time of day when it is coming through the window and then only at certain angles cause it creates shadows.

On a side note, friggin' stoked about the new Chaos 'Dex. I don't think that I'll be playing a Chaos army but the book looks like it is going to be amazing! They are definitely taking them in a different direction aesthetically. With the addition of the warp-smith and the new constructs it feels less like just marines that are lost and more like they are doing their own thing in the Eye of Terror. I wonder how the daemon tie-ins are going to work though. I miss the old black chaos dex where daemons and marines were mixed in. It had such a solid chaos legion feel as well, less generic. Rumor has it you'll be able to make legion specific armies in this as well but it'll require taking a special character as an HQ. Friggin' hate special characters. I wish they would just make regular HQs super modifiable.

Anyway, here are the pics,

unhighlighted touched up marine body

finished helmet from side (still kind of blurry despite macro lens...)

top view of helmet

Hopefully I'll be able to start getting the bodies highlighted this weekend. Got all excited about the helmets and then realized they are the last thing that gets done. Can't put them on the models until the bodies arms and weapons are done to make sure they aren't looking off in some crazy direction....

Basecoat and wash on some BAs (and a 1750 game)

A few of us Kona gamers have decided to start working towards a pretty ambitious campaign. In that spirit i've decided to start seriously working on my Blood Angels and to try to do some documenting of it.

I spent the morning putting the base red on a 5 man BA tac squad (part of what will be a 10 man squad) It is so much easier to paint red on red rather than trying to start from a black or white primer. The Army Painter spray primers are truly a gift.

Looks like my final color scheme for my BAs is going to be; 

(V=Vallejo, SM=Secret Weapon Miniatures, GW= Games Workshop, AP=Army Painter)

Krylon Plastics White > AP Blood Red > V Blood Red> SM Ruby Wash> V Blood red touch up> V Blazing Orange highlight> V Fiery Orange extreme highlight> SM red wash

Wow, that actually seems like a lot of steps when I write it out...probably never want to paint red again after these 5 guys. It looks nice and solid on the test model I did though so hopefully I can keep it going. 

Here are the 5 guys after being washed but before being cleaned up. Sorry about the shitty quality, I'll use my camera and figure out the lighting in the future.

After looking at some of the examples in the dex I decided to paint some squad markings on the right knee pads. Just the initial coat of yellow, it'll be brighter with a marking on it later.

And here is a slightly closer shot just to show how well the Ruby shades the recesses.










I tried GW's Carroburg Crimson as well, and while it looks similar in the bottle I wasn't impressed with it's darkness after drying. Had to use two coats to get the same kind of shading in the recesses. Though, to be fair, it is much easier to touch up afterwords since it is not as dark.

On an unrelated note, make sure to clean your models properly kids. Got well into painting when I realized that I have a wiiicked mold line on the inner leg of a few of the models. There were others that I had gotten rid of as well, but I missed those. Got this sprue of marines from a buddy but it must have been a bad batch cause they are covered with this crap. Argh.

On the gaming side of things I got in a game against my buddy Matt. Orks vs. Space Wolves. Every time I fight against them I am re-astounded by just how awesome the Thunder Wolves models are. Just pure awesome. Matt puts lots of time into the models poses and has sculpted resin bases so everything gets tied in together nicely. Excellent looking army all around. the game went pretty smoothly without too many rules issues (we still haven't gotten that many 6th ed. games in) It came down to a few important rolls but the Orks pulled it off (sheerly by number of troops squads) A few highlights were Long Fangs hitting 21 orks with a missile volley and then wounding 19, a unit of shoota boyz overwatch blasting the last wound off of a Wolf Lord (dakka dakka dakka), Rune Priest sniping a Nob with Jaws and a boyz squad Denying the Witch twice in a row. Good times.