Paint Table Saturday 208 - Bretonnians being prepped.

Hi All,

Not a lot of painting done this week. I've been prepping figures for the Old World Army challenge which can be seen here.

I was planning on doing an Undead army featuring figures from the Skull & Crown Triumph of Death Kickstarter for the Analogue Hobbies painting challenge. I made a list for the Old World challenge and then found out that three of us were doing Undead and no one was doing Bretonnia. So I switched just so we could have complete coverage and I can do the Undead for Analogue Hobbies. If I don't crash and burn that is.

So, we can see here the 20 Conquest plastic Normans I'll be painting up as Brigands. Behind them are late 80's Bretonnian foot knights, behind them are the 5 original metal Bretonnian bowmen plus the 2 plastic ones from 4th edition. To the right of the Normans are the 4 remaining metal Bretonnian Crossbowmen from my original collection and behind them the 5 retainers I had plus 3 retainers and 2 fighters I bought from Blue some time ago.

And my Foundry order finally arrived. A pack each of marching and firing Crossbowmen and one pack of firing bowmen from their Baron's war range I think. They threw in an ACW figure and I kind of wish they hadn't. I've been planning to do ACW in 1/72 plastic and this figure is so nice. Argh!

We had our final regulation Cross Country meet of the season this morning, and my boy came in first in his age group. Hurray! But I took this opportunity to make a trip to the Mesa, AZ Bookman's as I hadn't been there before. In the sea of 7th Edition (?) Warhammer 40K books there was this.

It wasn't the original shrink wrap, but the books inside appear to be untouched. I'm happy with the find.

I hope to finish up those IG tomorrow. I know I've said that for weeks. I'll keep saying it until it's true.

I need to get back to prepping and watching some kind of horror movie with my wife and son while my daughter goes out to a friends Halloween party.

Keep your brushes pointy.

Paint Table Saturday 207 - Ankhegs and Oxidation Beasts

Hi All,

  I somehow muddled through an overwhelming feeling of not accomplishing anything to completing these this evening.

I brushed on the black primer to these bones figures and then drybrushed on various earth tones. (Burnt Umber, Burnt Sienna, Territorial Beige and Khaki Tan for the Ankhegs.) For the Oxidation Beasts I jut used the Umber and Sienna but then sponged on some Burnt Orange and Bright Orange to make them look rusty.

The main issue I had was with my varnish.

As you may recall, I like to use my Liquitex Matte Varnish for shiny and Vallejo Matte for dull. Unfortunately I am at the end of my Vallejo, and it has been going on very cloudy. You can see it on the head and mandible for the one on the left.You can also see that I did the Ankhegs completely in Liquitex and it is too shiny for my taste. I ordered some Winsor & Newton Galeria Matte Varnish, but it won't get here until Halloween.

Then I remembered I had this. It had never actually worked for me before, meaning I had never used it and the last time I tried to it would not spray at all.

I noticed how old it was but figured I had nothing to lose at this point. I shook the can extra long and tried using a different nozzle, but ended up using the original.

As you can see here, 18 year old varnish works.The one in the middle between the pure liquitex shiny matte and the cloudy vallejo matte.

If you go back to the top picture you may see I missed a few pots so the shine comes through. I was cooking dinner and losing light outside so I rushed things. But I'm reasonably happy and I got some more stuff finished. Yay me.

Thanks for looking.

My Greenstuff World Order, and other stuff

Hi All,

My order from Greenstuff World came the other day, I hope to get started using it this weekend.

I spent way too much, ie bought too much stuff, but the 5% discount gave me almost free shipping. Also shipping from Spain was not that expensive and pretty fast. I posted the video here where you can get the discount code. It's at about 13 or 14 minutes I think.

I also got three Knights of the Realm from my buddy Kober. Now I'm only waiting on my Foundry order to complete my Bretonnian army.

Lastly, I also used green stuff to fill all the gaps on my Reaper Bones Ankhegs and tried to sculpt a stone base around the Silver Anniversary sculpt of Domur I painted awhile back. The Ankhegs are now all primed black. I'm hoping to knock them out tomorrow.

Thanks for looking.

More Painting Guides - Bretonnia

Hi All,

Lots to report, but I keep on reacting to the next thing. I was starting to think about banners and heraldry for my Bretonnians when I stumbled upon this post from Jaeckel Alone.

You can get the images from him but these two examples jumped out at me.

The articles have a few line art banners, but I couldn't seem to find any big banners like I had imagined. I think many of the ones you see around on the internet are from 4th or 5th edition  army books. For Bretonnians I only found something that was labelled 5th edition. No banners, but some good tips for painting those plastic Knights of the Realm.

This sheet looks like it will be helpful in planning.

I'll follow up with this.

Thanks for looking.

Organizing Imperial Guard Regiments (Astra Militarum)

Hi All,

A you may recall, I've been struggling to finish this first squad of Imperial Guard (IG), now confusingly called Astra Militarum in the latest editions of 40K.

My corner of the Imperium is Borborygmus Prime, I have as yet not pinned it down in the 40K universe. My thoughts are to make a Traveller style subsector map that includes my buddies planets, but that is not the focus of this thought exercise.

The purpose, specifically, is how to mark the shoulder pads of this first squad and do it in such a way that I can add them to a unit.

So I did some research, asked around, totally confused myself and came to a decision.

This one, presumably from a White Dwarf article, gives a good overview of the Cadian 8th Regiment. It shows the overall breakdown so you can see where your smaller units would fit in the regiment.

This one gives the same info in tree format.

Here is the original marking guide for IG from the Rogue Trader rulebook p162. The older models in that era had the circular badges on their left breast and the regiment number was there and then they say there are some colored sections on some.

I have been scouring the web to find the origins of this picture, but am at a loss. It further shows the divisions of the circle and how they relate to the platoon. This seems to have skipped the company level and ignored the squad designation. Although perhaps that level of detail is too granular.

This seems o be he genesis of the decal period with the 2nd Edition Imperial Guard Codex. However the more recent plastics only have these two tone circle decals for Tanks, the infantry get three digit squad numbers that don't appear to mean anything in particular.

Here's the tank org chart.

So,armed with this, I'm coming to more of a system. Nevermess used the 2nd edition system on his plastic Cadians here. It looks pretty good but I didn't really see how the regiment was marked. Also I'm not totally sure about the use of bright color n an otherwise camouflaged person.

I had to go all the way back to 2012 for this interesting blog post by Suber here. He quickly adresses all the things I'm looking for and does the insignia in a neutral, combat, palette. I like it.

So I'll be riffing off of this, if I can get myself together.

Thanks for looking.

Old World Army Challenge - Bretonnians

Hi All,

" My mind is a raging torrent, flooded with rivulets of thought cascading into a waterfall of creative alternatives." - Hedley Lamarr (Blazing Saddles)

I have been meaning to post on a variety of topics, but I keep on getting distracted be the next big thing.

The most recent "next big thing" is the Old World Army Challenge. This was dreamed up by Iannick of Marauders and Citadels and Blue of Blue's Marauding Miniatures. Isn't Vermont just New Hampshire for hipsters? ;)

Anyway. The challenge is to fashion an approximately 1000 point army according to 3rd or 4th Edition Warhammer and paint no less than 200 points a month between Nov and April, with one mulligan allowed.

Much like the Analogue Hobbies Challenge, in which Iannick is also a fellow challenger, participants will post their progress in a blog for the world to see and give first publication rights to the blog, ie not post it anywhere else for 24 hours.

Here's my list and figures:

No magic and the General is a Level 15 hero, but I got it to be a rules compliant army with only going over by 16 points. Not bad, but it took me three tries. I like Army Builder because it really lets you play around with things with out having to remember all the rules or do math. The only thing I would like to do is figure out how to make it a little more flexible. A version where you could just use the bestiary from the rule book would be awesome.

Now the figures (in list order):

The 3-man cannon. I will probably paint up the two laborers as well, just because.

The Feudal Levy. (You have the option of using the updated list from White Dwarf in Army Builder.) The 5 metal Bretonnian archers and two plastics I got from my brother. I think he said they came with the Shadow of the Horned Rat video game sequels. I ordered 8 more from Foundry, hence the unit of 15.

Retainers with Crossbows. You may recall that I painted the figure that says Ouch! on the tab a few years ago for the Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge here. These are the rest. I ordered 16 more from Foundry to make a second unit of 10 when I inevitably expand this army to 1500 points.

9 Retainers with Spears led by a Baron (5th Level hero). Ok, they don't all have spears. The primed and partially painted ones are my originals, the others are ones I purchased from Blue. I am going to paint over the original flesh and metal instead of stripping them. I don't have the citadel flesh any more.

9 Foot Knights led by another, more successful, Baron. I got all of these from Blue. One double had a hand bored out so I will have him hold a banner.

20 Brigands with Standard Bearer and Musician. I won these Conquest Normans an embarrassingly long time ago. I painted the casualties from the set here (same post as Ouch!). I have enough to make 40 but points and only allowing 20 Brigands in the army cut out the second unit. I will probably paint the second 20 as retainers in the future.

4 Noblesse d'Epee led by a Marquis (10th Level Hero). Obsessive hoarding pays off. I bought these sometime around 1990 or 1991. The Bretonnian lord is 1988 and the knights have 1990 on the plastic horses. I started having a panic attack when I couldn't find the knights. I had recently put all my figures in storage bins and thrown them in the garage when my in-laws visited. I searched high and low before finding them under some papers right next to my painting desk. Arrgh!

Lastly the 4 Chevalier d'Honneur led by a Viscomte (15th Level Hero). I can't remember when I picked these up, I think a more recent Ebay purchase. They are dated 1996 so I think may be 5th edition. I considered buying more Foundry Knights, but wanted to try and use as many old figures as possible. I have an Oldhammer buddy who is hooking me up with the three plastic Knights I need to round this force out.

Thanks for looking and I'll try not to wait so ling to post. I have lots of stuff to share, just not the discipline to sit down and write about it.

Before I sign off I'd like to welcome stewart to the blog. I think he has just recently started blogging but I'm not totally sure. Let me know your blog and I'll link it.

Paint Table Saturday 204 - Ok I know it's Monday

Hi All,

I had this Dragon Forge resin piece finished earlier in the week, but was trying to get the squad of IG off the table this week as well.

Once I used a larger brush to drybrush the grey on it looked better. Then I used  a sponge to stipple on some greens to look like lichen on stone. Finally I picked out the small skulls with reaper bone triad (09058-09060) and slopped my grunge wash all over it. I'm reasonably happy.

The IG are proving fairly fiddly.

I always hate getting to the final touch up stage. It feels like you are just going back over the same colors in a circle as you try to fix the places where you slopped paint on an adjacent part. I thought I would be able to add these to the skull thing for BeerMaW 13, but then I dotted their eyes.

His look ok in this view, but if you zoom in it is a definite cat eye look. Some are much worse. I used  XS Pitt pen and am finding it more difficult. In the past it felt like you could easily dot the iris, now it feels like you need to move the tip to get the ink to come off. this gives more of a line than a circle or dot. I probably shouldn't do eyes last, but I always do.

I also have been trying to figure out how to do their shoulder markings. These are pretty new hammer. Do I go more old school? Do I use decals or free hand? I haven't decided yet.

Happy painting everyone.