My boy wanted to play some Warhammer and I had an idea I've wanted to try out for awhile and needed to remind myself how 3rd Edition Magic worked. So we decided to take two wizards each. The idea was a wizard and his apprentice. So one 15th Level (to get some 2nd level spells) and one 5th level.
We rolled for magic points and spells as per the tables in Warhammer Armies.
Here's the report. ( I went with a rotoscope filter as the pictures weren't all that great.)
As you can see we also had to make due with the figures we had to hand. A chaos warrior subbed for the Undead Champion. Primed Zombies the place of Skeletons and a Giant Rat in the place of the Demonic Steed. I know I made the Ghost of HG Wells cry, but I've put off my son too many times in the past and I don't want to kill his enthusiasm for the game.
Still working on cleaning up the hobby lair and trying to finish up some things so I can take my final army pictures for the Old World Army Challenge. If you haven't already you should really check it out.
All the tree bases are finished. I just need to put foliage on the three bare trees and then spray them with hairspray or something. The clump foliage ones are shedding pretty bad.
I also finally started blocking in colors on the peasants and monk altar guards. The monks are wearing funky ceremonial robes in the red and blue of Monfel. Mongeaux, on the right is getting the fair skin tone. Blanche Neige will be getting the rosy skin tone when I unbury it.
A quick one before we rush off to the last regulation meet of the season.
Just trying to tie up loose ends. Safari giant is now primed. Peasants and Monks are just about ready, but I still need to build the wagon and War Altar. Broke out me old trees to try and finish them up. The Army photo will be composed soon.
Well, today was supposed to be the day I finished these.
But I encountered a slight problem.
Three out of the four knights did not fit their horse, I should have dry fit them before painting.
After some expletives and a little bending by hand, I decided to make up some green stuff and put it under the saddles to fill that gap. So it's hardening now and I'll paint it tomorrow.
I spread the excess putty very thinly onto a 25mm round base and textured it with my greenstuff world mesh roller. This time I put vaseline directly on the putty instead of trying to coat the roller. It worked much better.
We'll see if I can bang out the camp followers for the final army shot as well. I would also like to add a War Altar, but I haven't found the monk figures I have or received my Max Mini order.
I cataloged some of my Sci Fi collection, I'll post more on that soon.
This week seemed to be filled with everything but hobby time. My son ran an amazing 3000m this morning and may have qualified for the National meet later this Summer. I'll know for sure tomorrow.
I mostly painted the horse flesh and underneath the caparisons, so it doesn't look like much has happened.
I added a chimney, finished tiling the roof, and then put some active mesh in the windows to act as window leading. This is not in the original build instructions, I just thought it would look nice.
I also received my foam coat from Hotwire Foam Factory to try and put a protective coating on my Mighty Fortress.
Ok, not a lot of progress this week. I'm not really sure where all the time went. A few more colors slapped on the Bretonnians, but I need to get my rear in gear.
The Knights in the background are there to remind me of color scheme and what I had already done so that I don't accidentally repeat myself. Still those other random finished and unfinished figures lying around.
I've also been adding tiles to the roof of the coaching inn while I watch tv with the family.
Getting there. Still a lot more tiles to go. It also just occurred to me that I need to remember to put on the chimney. Oops.
The last thing I've been working on is the blog itself. I've added the link to some fellow hobbyists to the right, go check them out. I'm also try to make a gallery of finished projects but the various ways I've found all have some issues and have eaten up valuable painting time. I'll let you know how I did it when I finally get it done, but it looks like it's not going to be a quick fix. Then there's the banner to update etc.
I was having a conversation the other day about finding more sets/ pieces of the original foam Mighty Fortress and the idea of painting what you have before buying more of the same came up. There was also a side discussion about buying versus building and what materials make the best terrain. Those are sides to the main idea here.
I broke out some unfinished models that I had started 1990ish before I got bogged down in college and drifted away from the hobby.
First up though, lets look at the figures for this week.
Not as far along as I'd like but I got the knights cleaned and assembled. I also primed two of the cannon crew and the two laborers. The gunner needs a little bit of putty to fix a nasty mold line in his helmet. As I told you previously, he seemed to have a mismatched mold half or something. There was a significant mold line and a difference of about a millimeter in height on some parts.
I also brought out some Foundry Rogue Trader models and even some plastic Blood Bowl Orcs (not pictured).
But then I got a tad distracted by terrain.
The barn from a White Dwarf Article. I've carted it around in a box between four states for the last 28 years or so.
I finally started putting a roof on it this week. I did start to equivocate about making playable interiors but then decided I had been putting things off for too long. So I'm gittin er dun!
I would love to post more, but seem to only be able to post once a week. Here's what's going on on the painting desk.
Still the retainers and wizards.
I finally got all the base colors on the Baron.
Decided to free hand some stars and a crescent moon on Holbon to make him more wizardy.
Mazda need some highlights and his mouth painted, but he's pretty close to done too. I'm just slogging through these today as I want to finish them up so I can post them to the challenges by Monday.
Also a hearty welcome to Scott Templeman. I saw you a few weeks ago, but forgot to welcome you in the last post. As always, if you have a hobby blog I can link to, let me know.
A lot of stuff to tell you all about. I did end up finishing those Knights, but I can't show you until tomorrow. So I will do that with Paint Table Saturday. After we run our 5K in the morning.
On the desk right now are the old Citadel Men at Arms/ Retainers, a couple of old Bretonnian Crossbowmen mixed with Foundry Crossbowmen, and 3 C02 Wizards. Dormur, and in the back the Grim Reaper from Reaper are also there, but just as filler.
Now I've had these Wizards since the 90's, but obviously never got very far with them. I was looking at them the other day and noticed something hanging from the third guys belt. So I thought I'd do some research.
So you can find pictures of them on Stuff of Legends here.
So I have Baygar , Spyre and Holbon Toddlebrew on the desk right now and Mazda packed with my Undead somewhere. What got me curious about researching them was the thing that looks like a calculator hanging from his belt.
Sure enough it's mentioned on his page on the Collecting Citadel Miniatures Wiki, here.
Although I've barely been able to get anything painted for it, I'm also doing the Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge. I just missed getting the Knights finished on Monday, so I couldn't submit them there this month. One of the things that's new this year is that you can submit terrain for scoring. Since I have precious little terrain I thought that would be a good thing to do. I bought the Pegasus Chemical Plant last Summer, but didn't get it in time to take it with me for gaming Shadow War: Armageddon.
Lastly I refound the band BabyMetal to listen to while I was powering through the finishing touches on those knights.
Chocolate is the main song that pops up, but I like Karate better. They sort of remind me of Melodic Metal bands like Avenged Sevenfold and Dragon Force. I feel like I'm listening to the music for the end credits of an Anime. If you go through their youtube playlist, the one where they sing Breaking the Law with Rob Halford is fun.
Also mixed in their playlist was the group LadyBaby. It's also fairly demented, Ladybeard is something else.
For some reason I've been feeling too busy to post lately. Track season started on Saturday and my son ran the 3000m and the 800m. I think he PR'd the 3000 and ran a sub 3 minute 800m by my stopwatch, we'll have to see what the official time is.
Anyway, here are the Knights.
As is usual for me, I am frustrated with how the paint is going on and my putty job to cover the seams in the plastic horses is not very good. I like the perfect plastic putty, but I need to figure out a better way to apply it. I also need to get some precision sanding stuff. Sanding between the horses legs has been difficult.
I also have been reading my Adventurer Conqueror King books.
Produced by Autarch, I got these from DriveThru RPG about three years ago. I really like how they develop the Old School notion of what we were trying to do in AD&D. None of this, I'm going to go and fight gods bullshit and become 30th level. We were trying to make enough money from adventuring to make a keep somewhere and lord it over peasants in our retirement. My original intent with this was to help me flesh out my map and build up the realms. Mighty Empires is a little too abstract for me. I will use it as the basis for my idea "Insignificant Realms!"
Well, what with Track, practicing ropedart, and "Family" time in front of the TV I didn't get much of anything painted yesterday.
I did manage to noodle around on the Inkwell IdeasCoat of Arms creator to make the heraldry for those Knights of the Realm though.
It took me a fair amount of noodling around and my recollection of heraldic terms made it a little more trial and error, but I got something that seems to work. These are more or less in the order I've ranked them up and will paint them.
No names yet. The Buck's head is really front view but the software didn't have that. You can add your own vectors, but I just wanted these to be quick and dirty. The colors of the creatures are set by the colors of the decals I have. For the displayed eagle I thought white and blue would contrast well with the red eagle. The quartered Red and Blue is for the Viscomte. I used the seated lion because I didn't see the rampant lion. The blue lion is because I have two Lion shields. This guys head dress is some kind of bat winged almost lion thing, the first departure from the matchy, matchy thing I've done with the first three. Lastly the bull. This one was also supposed to be just the head, head on. Again, just making these quick and dirty. To me, although very simple, the black bull on plain white seems more visually appealing. Unfortunately I do not have a bull head dress so he will have the Dragon. I'll make up some reason why. Now I just have to think of what color to make it. Maybe just keep with black.
It's the Martin Luther King Jr holiday today, so no work for me, but a lot of errands to run. Hope you have a productive day.
Got a little bit of painting done today. I finished prepping the Knights of the Realm and primed some retainers.
I rigged up some new holders using bottle caps, bamboo skewers, blue tack and hot glue.
Retainers, a couple of wizards and that Reaper Dormur that I need to finish the base on.
Close up of the Baron leading the retainers. You may remember I cracked him straight through the middle. I filled him with Jet super glue and a fine point tip. You can still see a partial crack on the left.
I also received my Zombies of Karr-Keel set 2 today.
On the table today we have one of the next units of my Bretonnian Army for the Old World Army Challenge. 4 Chevalier D'Honneur and a 15th level Hero (Viscomte) to lead them.
Just cutting things off the sprue and cleaning up mold lines right now. I also have some retainers with spears, and some with crossbows for another 20 figures I could do, but they also need a little more prep so I'm thinking the five for this month. It would have been nice to have these guys all ready to go before the challenge kicked off, but I'm never totally ready for these things.
Here are the pics of those figures I finished on December 30th.
Two views of the foot knights lead by a baron (Level 5 hero) to show the banner and figures.
15 Peasants with bows. The front rank are my original ones bought back around 1990, then most of the rest are Wargames Foundry with two Plastic Archers that my brother gave me. I believe he said they came with the video game Shadow of the Horned Rat.
One Chevalier D'Epee to round out the points. I was mostly successful at getting rid of the join seams. I still have to figure out how to fix the one miscast horse I have.
Group shot that gives away my impromptu studio a little.
Some progress on the Bretonnians this week. I laid down base metal leather and flesh and then started on the surcoats.
I've decided on the colors to use for the knights, I'm going to use combinations of Blue, Red, Yellow and White on these guys. As you can see I started on the two knights on the right. The blurry one is half blue and the one with the axe overhead has a blue bend.
I still haven't totally considered what I"m going to do with the heraldry colors for these guys but I was going to use some greens and ochres on their clothing because they are peasants.
When doing the knights I had some questions about how to do the surcoat for the bend and found out I had been doing my half and quarter wrong. As you can see from the illustration, the divisions look the same on the front and the back. I had always continued the color around the body, so the division would appear reversed on the back. This is how I did the Brigands and all my previous 1/72 knights and men at arms.
The idea is that things need to be coming from the same side from my point of view whether I look at his front or back. Also the main design stays above the belt and then whatever color is on the torso just extends down the skirts.
Fortunately I only have to fix that first, halved blue, knight and not all of them.
I know it's Monday, but I was busy with a roleplaying session and kind of in shock from some bad news I woke up to.
First the minis.
Did the base flesh while watching tv the other night and some base metal the other day on about half. I need to clean up my work space as I'm having trouble doing simple things because of all the clutter.
The bad news I woke up to was that Dr. Xiao Puquan, Master Xiao, had died. I used to train Taichi with him and a group in the local park and had been to his Traditional Chinese Medicine clinic a few times. He had been an honest to goodness Shaolin Monk and had come to the states, married and started his own business. I'm still fuzzy on the details, but he was apparently admitted to the hospital for pain and died 10 hours later. It didn't really hit me until some of our mutual friends started posting pictures of him on facebook. The one with his wife and kids devastated me. He was only about a year older than me.
Anyway. I'm had already been thinking about how I'd let my Taichi practice slip. I'm going to return to it and get back to what he taught me, as well as what I learned from my other teachers. I stopped because I got frustrated with my practice, I rationalized that I made no difference to the world if I practiced or not. But I want to honor the people that gave me their time and not throw that away. So I will do it for them and for me and not worry about anything else.
I'd also like to welcome Mr Papafakis to the blog. Sorry to welcome you after the bummer part of this post. I know you have a blog, but I can't recall what it is right now.
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.
