052 WIP 30th

Being away week days means slow progress but here is a little up date on the 30th.

The next rank all trousered up.

officer heads, peninsular period

colour Sergeant 

In the background of that last snap you will also notice I have started piecing together a Necromancer from GW. A cool little clam shell mini which has loads of character.

051 By your command!

The next rank has got its trousers on finally! The drummer boy is at the back just getting ready to go to prep, not sure if a black undercoat will be best for this guy.

And the command group ready for undercoating. You'll notice I have decided to go for the peninsular long tails rather than the short Waterloo.

050 Way back when....

White Dwarf issue 141. Now I had been involved in the genre for a few years prior to this with HeroQuest, Space Crusade and Fighting Fantasy novels but this was when the whole Gamesworkshop, Warhammer and 40k dream began.

That gorgeous pink front page with the Eldar battling the encroaching hordes of the Orks will stay with me for years to come I am sure. Back then White Dwarf was packed, stuffed and chokablok with stuff. This one had a Battle report of Blood Angels vs Eldar, an epic too and fro which to my tender years seemed to have the balance of power teetering on the brink at every dice role. It had rules for Space Fleet, the precursor to Battlefleet Gothic of many years later, it had wood elves and conversion ideas and Golden Demon winners and countless other things besides.

This one magazine sparked years of 40k adventures and a Blood Angels army… then an Eldar Army…. then strangely an Imperial Guard army…

Over the years I ordered up as many earlier White Dwarfs as I could when pocket money allowed and while there was still a back catalogue to order from but 141 was always my first, where the fever started.

049 The Wight King Cometh!

Progress on my Wight King has been going crazy and I am really pleased with how he has gone. A few little bits to sort but otherwise done.

Arm and cloak-less

Really liking how he looks, spent a long time thinking about the colour scheme to use but I am happy with the Burgundy scheme that I ended with, I think it looks quite balanced.

Was also quite pleased to notice I have settled back into the painting groove so well I have even seen the return of my "painter's Thumb!"

The final (pretty much) look although the sword blade still needs sorting and the cloak may get a little more distressing but cool nonetheless, really pleased.

048 Good Progress!

I have managed to get some good progress during the run up and into Easter both in terms of Painting and Modelling as well as with the blog.

I have broken through 400 page views and had 2 commenters which I never expected to see, so something must be working!

I have worked my way forward with the 30th Regiment and am pleased with the first test model and well on the way to bulking out the rest of the Regiment.

My Wight King has been a real success for me and I am over the moon with the result and its set my mind to the idea of widening out into the Undead as a whole. I like the model to start with and having seen some cool two handed weapon conversions on Rob Hawkins blog I am thinking I may experiment a little further with the next one. It would be my first conversion with a clam shell type model so I am interested as to how it would turn out.

Plans going forward are a little bit of a mixed bag (some would say NOT planned) with a continuing with what I already have on and adding in a variety of models that take my interest to break up the mass ranks of the 30th. With that in mind I have some Tomb Kings characters to works on (see later for Prince Apophas the Breaker of Brushes) I have also picked up some Dark Eldar, in particular the Homunculus as I really like the models and will make quite a change in the painting schemes. I will be breaking out the Perry Mercenaries at some point and starting to have a better look at those.

With work kicking off again the posts will become more weekend summaries of the week so don’t think I have disappeared if things go quiet!

047 Battle Box

I have finally got fed up with having various boxes, draws and shelves stacked with miniatures so I have invested in the new mini cases from GW and to be honest they dont seem too bad so far.

I went for the middle group "Battle" case which has three internal foam layers all cut to a tiger tooth pattern which your minis sit between.

As its layers of foam on foam so far it seems that even models taller than one layer are protected by the layer above. Also the tiger teeth foam is only attached at each end so you can push it wider to accommodate large or oddly shaped models.

Now the only problem I have had so far is that the texture of the foam is quite coarse and this is snagging on the models as I put them in. For the early rows this is not a problem as there is plenty of space to move but once you start to fill it out each row has less give and the snagging gets annoying as you load your minis in.

As a rough estimate from what I have squeezed in so far I guess you would be looking at between 250 -300 standard models.

046 "Rise up the 30th!"

Progress has moved on swiftly this weekend on the 30th Regiment with some production line work on backpacks and redcoats.

The test model arms are ready to go on, I have gone with a leather musket sling but may change it to the more traditional white.

The next file of redcoats have been prepped and cleaned and the heads have been spiked ready to paint.

And they didn't take long to spin through with a dash of Kislev flesh and a quick wash they were done just waiting on the final finish on the plumes.

Test model completed!

I think there are some areas for improvement and this has certainly been a steep learning curve back into the hobby but I am feeling the passion coming back!

045 Flying the Flag

My flags arrived from the awesome people at GMB I have the 30th as I mentioned,

Plus I got the 13th Hussars (just becuase 13 is my lucky number) and the the King German Legion as well as the 33rd.

At about £3.50 ($5?) plus postage I think this is a great little service!

044 Best thing since... Bread bags?

I have moved on with the first of my five Redcoats with all five coated and the first few bread bags tested out.

I have tried to go a little lighter than the trousers to make them stand apart but I am not sure they dont blend together too much.

I have also experimented with my pin vice to drill into the backpacks to mount the for easy painting and to be honest I am finding it quite helpful and the Army Painter pin vice works really well.

Basic colours on the test arms and the packs

043 Shrinkage

My ancient greenstuff when I dragged it out of the depths of my paint box was... well...not green anymore (yes yes I know its not green until you mix it but you get the point!) and hard turning into a solid strip of crap.

A quick order on line and a few days later....

Normal Greenstuff is not new to me and I am happy with how it all works and have a not too bad relationship with it but this new Liquid Stuff...? 

As a test I looked at using it to fill the gap between the clam shell pieces of my Liche King and it has worked to a degree; I needed to apply several layers due to the shrinkage of the material as it dried but it was certainly easy to apply. I did use a sculpting tool but I have seen a lot of people using old brushes so I may try that next time round.

Once dry it was easy to scrap and smooth so the only issue is the shrinkage.

042 Three Wise Men.... And a Lady

I have always had a leaning towards the Undead as a Fantasy army, but also for the aesthetic of the Ancient armies brought back to life.

Bramstoker's Dracula, The Mummy and all the different novels and films of the genre have stocked my passion.

I always had a love of the GW take on it with Nagash but also there are a few of the old school Fighting Fantasy novels which really bring out that idea of an all powerful Necromancer or Liche that has mastery over an army of Undead.

That being the case and with the upcoming changes to the Warhammer world I took the opportunity to snap up some Tomb Kings minis before they are discontinued!

These are also my first foray into Finecast and I am sad to say I am not impressed. To be fair given the models these maybe from the older generation of Finecast and not representative of the current type but even so I am disappointed with the material to say the least.

I am hoping that the nature of the Tomb Kings models and the sort of broken down and decayed look will hide much of the issues with the casting but to be blunt in places the casting was so bad I wasn't sure what was intended decay and what was casting faults by the end!!

The worst was on the last one here Prince Apophas who was covered in little spikes or stalagmites which all had to be trimmed and cleaned off, thankfully again the nature of the model means this is much hidden but shouldn't really be the case to start with!

Finecast feels very different under your fingers, strangely feeling both softer but also more brittle, I am actually quite worried that my clumsy hands might end up breaking the thing!

I also not the the "straightness" of Finecast is a little bit hit and miss and if you look closely both the sword on Apophas and the Staff/halberd on the Liche Priest are quiet twisted and most definitely dont want to straighten by brute force....  This is again saved by it being the Tomb Kings and I can live with things looking more decayed and ancient but sad to see in  the first place.

041 Imperial Marauders?

I am not sure whether I have slipped in these guys before but if I have these are better pictures!

Sergeant, or is that warlord? of the group with shotgun and chainsword!

Some of the veterans holding on to the old ways with shields and hand weapons, you can see here the mix of marauder, catachan, and i think even some power armour bits!

Feeling horny here, sorry couldnt resist!

These guys were from back when GW still did their bits catalogue and you could buy metal sprues of autoguns, pistols and all sorts

Never go to war without a drummer to sound the beat.

An axe and a hand grenade, do you need anything else?? :-)

Now I wouldnt say the paint scheme was great but it was a quick and easy little set up to churn through these guys as a tester of what could be done. I was quite pleased with them back in the day but  I think I would do them a little different today.