Purple Trollbloods!

Out of all the Hordes armies, I really love the Trollkin.  They have great comical value, but the other point of them being the "good guys" of the universe really appeals to me as well.

I plan on posting a pic of the whole army up here once I'm finished.  I've started doing some quick and dirty jobs on the warlocks.  They are not quite finished yet - have some more highlighting and touching up to do, but they are getting there.  I'm only spending about 1 hour or so on them each, so they are certainly not high quality jobs, but they'd pass the 3 ft test I reckon.

Sold armies - have started on WarmaHordes!

Sad, but true, the old Knights of Revelation have gone by the wayside as I moved onto other pastures.  I am now playing Warmachine / Hordes and have started on Trollblood, Cygnar and Legion of Everblight armies.

I will start posting some of the pics and what not of my current paint jobs up here soon.

M.

Space Wolf HQs - Progress

Over the last few days i've been working on my Wolf Lord and Rune Priest.  I've decided that all of my HQ units will have different coloured armour to that of the regular rank and file and decided on red for Captains / Wolf Lords etc, Purple for the Psykers and Black for the Chaplains. 

These two have taken me a long while to do, a lot longer than other models and at the moment i'm not really that happy as they don't look any better than some of my others!

The red I've used is from the White Dwarf paint scheme in the Space Hulk edition.
Started off with a basecoat of 3:1 blood red to dwarf flesh,
followed up by a devlan mud wash. 
Continuing that, two thin layers of blood red,

then a layer of blood red and vomit brown in a 2:1 mix to highlight

followed by a wash of baal red
then finally highlighted with a mix of 1:1:1 blood red, vomit brown and bleached bone.

For the face, I used a painting scheme that I found from awesome paintjob - how to paint space marine faces - http://bursleylb.tripod.com/id13.html

Basically, it uses a base of dwarf flesh,

wash of leviathan purple,

relayer with dwarf flesh

highlight with dwarf flesh : elf flesh (1:1)

highlight with elf flesh

highlight with elf flesh : bleached bone (1:1)

Rune priest.

With him (he's still not finished) I used a guess for the armour.

Started with a base coat of warlock purple : chaos black : regal blue (1:1:1)

layered with warlock purple

highlighted with warlock purple : skull white (3:1, 2:1),

washed with thraka green

continued to highlight, mixing in more skull white each time through (1:1, 1:2, 1:3)

washed again with leviathan purple then thraka green.

I tried an experiment with some directional lighting around his eyes.  I wanted to get the feeling that they were glowing with ethereal energies just prior to him casting a spell.  I used skull white for the eyeballs, ice blue and enchanted blue in glazes and kind of stippled it around the eye sockets / nose  and upper cheekbones.

In both, the wolf pelts were base coated scorched brown and chaos black respectively. 

I then drybrushed detail into each coat.

Wolf lord has -

mix of scorched brown / vomit brown (1:1)

vomit brown

gryphonne sepia wash

vomit brown / bleached bone

bleached bone

skull white (very little)

devlan mud wash

Rune priest has -

codex grey / chaos black (1:1)

codex grey

badab black wash

codex grey / skull white (1:1)

skull white (tips only)

badab black wash.

So it's taken me a long time to get through these two, and I think for the amount of time i've spent on them, the results aren't all that great.

Can anyone give me some advice on how I could speed this up or any other ideas that could help me out with painting? 

Any thoughts more than welcome!!

Space Wolves - Wolf Guard Progress

Work has been pretty hectic of late, which means little time for modelling / painting.  A few things arrived this week - ironclad dread, scout bikers and some more forgeworld stuff.  Also managed to pick up a chapel of sanctuary - interestingly it needed no painting, unlike most GW stuff. It's actually pretty nice, with some plastic stain glass windows.

Anyway, I have been working on my Space Wolves "wing" of my army this week.  In particular the Wolf Guard retinue that tag along with my Wolf Lord.  I'm reasonably happy with how they have turned out.  The bulk of painting has been done on two of the Guard, just some touching up to finish off.  Will try to get the Lord done this weekend as well for a Sunday blog update!!

Heavy Flamer and Frost Axe Wolf Guard.

I tried a different technique with the Frost Axe from a White Dwarf - November 2009 edition I think - the one with the Beastman on the cover.  It's an attempt at a "crystalline" weapon.  I thought that the Frost Axe could have a mirror-like ice finish to it.  More pics below.

As you can see, he isn't quite finished, but is looking alright.

The Heavy Flamer guy I didn't take as much time on, especially his power sword which I think I may redo.

Also managed to do some more modding of my "primarch".  Which after a bit of deliberation with Exarch Sammy J - I think he may be integral in the new background fluff that I've been considering.

The wings are from a Bretonnian Pegasus Knight.  Makes him look pretty formidable I think.  Thanks again to Exarch Sammy J for the idea. 

Before I sign off, one last pic of the Forgeworld dreaddie that I got this week. I'm going to modify him a bit to become my death company dreadnought with Blood Talons.

Assault Terminator Conversion

I managed to polish up a few terminators over the last few days.  I used forgeworld black templar shields and wanted them to have something a little different to a thunder hammer, so one of my friends suggested that I could make a "Thunder Lance" - having the same rules as a thunder hammer.  The result is below, a very easy conversion, but I hope it looks fairly effective.

An assault cannon term for my regular footstompers

Librarian Conversion

Recently bought an Empire General kit, mainly for the purpose of getting the raven for one of my rune priests, but as it turned out, I gleaned a few extra parts for my librarian that I have been thinking of doing.

My inspiration for the hand design came from Migsula's phenomenal Crescent Guard Librarian http://www.pbase.com/migsula/image/56544363 .  Just an amazing piece of work that entire army!

So anyway, I've nabbed the cape and sword from the empire general kit, the torso and legs from the new death company kit.  Still need to work on the very poor, impoverished psychic hood - but a little green stuff should sort that out.

Comments more than welcome!!

Assault Squad with no Jump Packs

Anyone have any thoughts on running an assault squad without jump packs?  I thought that the 35 point discount on a transport could make that very worthwhile.  I think that after I made my decision to go codex marines over black templars, my initiates outfitted with assault gear could be used as non-jump pack assault marines.  Free rhinos or drop pods sound pretty attractive!

Assault marine - I put some damage effects on his chainsword.  Pretty crappy though.  Anyone have some pointers on how to make a chainsword look really weathered?

Still deciding on whether or not to give this guy a power sword.....