March Madness

Very mad, seeing as it's currently April! It was a very busy month both personally and in terms of hobby and now at least I can say with certainty that I won't have anything more to do in March...

Right, where to begin? I guess at the beginning is a very good place to start;

March saw a desperate scramble to finalise an army for an Event at WS10; Warzone Wednesbury. It's the first event I've been to in about a year and I'd actually been preparing this list from about December of 2017. My list was as follows:

HQ
Typhus
Lord of Contagion

Troops
20x Poxwalkers
5x Plague Marines
5x Plague Marines

Elites
3x Deathshroud Terminators
Plague Surgeon
Tallyman

Fast Attack
3x Myphitic Blight Haulers

Heavy Support
Plagueburst Crawler

Lord of War
Mortarion

The pictures above show the full list together as well as a decent look at the effect on Mortarion's wings. Everything is WYSIWYG for the list so equipment correlates. Mortarion's wings went through several experiments before arriving at this look that is almost finished but for the veins. I tried to do a wash based brown scheme where I layered brown washes over one another to create a dark brown leather look. I liked the colours but unfortunately I hadn't done the blends correctly so instead of smooth transitions I had... TIDE MARKS!!! Next I tried the same sort of effect but with red. I liked it but because of my light palette for the army the wings just overpowered everything. What I eventually settled on was a bit of a risk but hopefully you'll agree that it worked out well. Green Stuff World have released a range of colour shift paints and what you're seeing there is about 6 layers of Martian Green which shifts from green to purple. Kind of reminds me of both oil on water and house flies which is absolutely perfect for this army! I tested it on the wings of Typhus' and the Deathshrouds' flies first so he ties in with them as well. I'm very very pleased with the look of the army and...

SO WAS EVERYONE ELSE!! If you can't read it that's my award for Best Painted Army! I was so happy to win this that I let out a very high pitched "yay" as it was announced! I think I deafened half the competitors... Worth it. In terms of the games themselves I really enjoyed them but I think my lack of experience with the army and the edition showed as I was only able to win one of five games... I'm not too fussed with being competitive though; I'm all about the painting and having fun. If it's not fun then what's the point of playing the game?!  That's a whole blog post in and of itself though so I won't rant any further.

So following on from that I was really riding the hobby wave and decided to get stuck into something new and completely different to anything else I've painted. I'd got myself a Dark Elf Sorceress for Christmas intending to use her as a Silver Tower participant and thought she'd be a great test model for a Daughters of Khaine colour scheme. Now I know there's the standard trope for Warhammer/AoS that the Dark Aelves have pale skin but I wanted to do something a little different so I made her look more like this...

I know, yet another red cloth! I tried to do an ocean blue colour in preparation for the Deepkin but is just wasn't working for me so I went back to what I know I can do and can do well. Now the lava was something I've wanted to do for a while; I helped out with the scenery for the WS10 AoS event earlier this year and I was asked to do... Lava. From there I realised I really enjoyed it so I tweaked how I did it then (and by tweaked I mean added several colour stages for smoother blends) and when the sea blue didn't work out I decided my Daughters of Khaine would be based in Aqshy; the Realm of Fire. I love how dynamic the model is even though she isn't in a particularly dynamic pose. It lends itself perfectly to the thermals coming off of the lava! I did have a little issue with the gold against the tanned skin but a good friend of mine (@wilsongrahams, if you want to check out his insanely awesome work on Twitter) suggested a very very thin glaze of Nihilakh Oxide over it (Retributor Armour, Agrax Earthshade, Retributor Armour, Auric Armour and highlight with Stormhost Silver). The effect, as you can see, is just to make the gold stand out without losing it's "goldness"; it just helps to distinguish it from the skin. Since completing her I've been planning a full Daughters of Khaine army with Morathi at the centre. That model is amazing! Well, both models seeing as she has her two forms. GW are really knocking it out of the park lately with new models and I'm loving the Melusai most of all. Can't wait to get to the Temple Nest and start painting up some of them!

At the moment I'm working on a squad of Rubric Marines for my WS10 painting challenge. True to Tzeentch/form I've changed the colour scheme again and I'm now using another Colour Shift paint; Psychotic Illusions. This one transitions from turquoise to a lighter purple and really suits Thousand Sons armour. I'm debating how to approach the stripes and I'm not sure whether to introduce another Colour Shift paint or go for the traditional yellow/blue. Haven't decided yet. I'm just letting my hobby intuition lead me on this so stay tuned.

And that was March! A crazy month and a lot was painted and learned. Turns out I am capable of painting a lot but I enjoy it more when I get to paint at a leisurely pace. I've also confirmed that I'm not very good at 40k as a game. I enjoy it but in a competitive setting I'm not great at it. I much prefer painting. I hope you've enjoyed reading about my month and I'll be back in a few weeks with my April update.

Renewal

Sooo... My last pledge went really well! June 2017 and a promise to post each week... Boy was I naive! Life just really catches up on you.

Well where should I begin? In my last post I mentioned my Thousand Sons being my main project and a small force of Death Guard slowly taking shape. Well that flipped on its head and now Death Guard seem to have become my main project! There is a reason for it and that's due to my gaming club (WS10 Gaming) running an event at the end of March. Now when I signed up for this the Thousand Sons codex had been announced as "soon" but with no date and I couldn't risk creating a list for it to be all but invalidated the month before; my painting speed could not handle that so I took the safer option of using the Death Guard. As anyone who has read any of my previous posts will know (or anyone that knows me will know) I am a slow painter so my other projects have taken a bit more of a back seat to focus on the Death Guard. Most of the army is either complete or almost complete and Mortarion is getting closer by the day. In order to keep up momentum I am using the hobby streak hashtag on Twitter (if you want to follow said progress my Twitter handle is @lukanwhitehouse). 

So here's the part where I renew my pledge to post. Again. This time I won't be so naive as to suggest a weekly update; instead I plan to come back at least once a month to update on my hobby progress, colour schemes, techniques, discuss releases etc. I'll even set a calendar reminder so I don't forget this time! Hopefully some of you will come back to read, maybe some new people will join us as well but I hope everyone will at least enjoy reading what I write and show.

Return from the Warp

Well I've been away for some time huh?! So much has happened... My Necron army grew and then I lost inspiration for it so I sold it on, SO MANY NEW MODELS!!! Finally a whole new edition has just hit the shelves so I figured what better time to get back to the blogosphere than now?

I've rededicated myself to the Chaos Gods and while I was focusing on Tzeentch completely the new Death Guard models in the Dark Imperium set were too good to pass up! Plus I want to field all of the Daemon Primarchs when they get released and I can't have them sat alone on a shelf... they need friends. I'm also getting into Age of Sigmar as well and even recently played in a tournament in which I didn't come last. As you can probably guess I am also playing Tzeentch there too but I do have a force of Sylvaneth which I dip in and out of when I need to switch away from blue and craziness. Or even blue craziness (there's some of that going on as well),

So back to current projects; My main project is my Thousand Sons army and I'm making some excellent progress. Magnus is really coming along, my Knight has had yet another recolour but this one is going to stick I've also got 20 of the new plastic Rubric Marines on the go, Scarab Occult, Tzaangors and I'm also working on a few vehicles. For my Death Guard I have the contents of two Dark Imperium boxes (I traded my Primaris with a friend). Sylvaneth are a labour of love and I'm not sure when I'll go back to them but they're there ready and waiting. Might make an effort to finish Alarielle once Magnus and my Knight are done. Finally there are the Tzeentch Arcanites and Daemons that are ongoing and I'll do a separate post on what is going on there.

So I'm planning to create a new post each week and they'll follow my painting as usual but also my experiences with 8th edition and thoughts on it. Stay tuned!

Technological Advancement

Just because a civilisation is over 65,000,000 years old doesn't mean they can't make changes to their already amazing technology. Today the Crypteks from the Suhbekhar Dynasty have started to utilise a new type of energy and have decided to roll it out with the Deathmarks.

On the right you can see how I've been painting energy up until now and on the left you can see how I will be painting it in future. Well except the orbs... I need to repaint those ones as I messed up a bit but it's an easy fix.

The reason for the change is that I tried to paint the portal on my Monolith and with my current scheme and it looked flat and dull. It ruined the depth of the metal work and it really needs to be redone but the question I faced was how do I fix it?

I took to Google and YouTube (my first stops for any issues of this type) and found a few ways of painting orange but I didn't like what they were doing. Then I saw a tutorial where orange was involved but as a mid-highlight as opposed to the whole thing and it clicked with me. 

For anything that isn't a centrepiece model I've decided to simplify the process to just three colours; Evil Sunz Scarlet, Troll Slayer Orange and Yriel  Yellow but for HQ models and centrepieces I'll add in more shades and blending but for speed I'll take the less complicated route with infantry and such. 

So that's all for tonight! Over the next few weeks I'll repaint the orange I've already done and then going forward I'll be going down this route for energy.

Coding Errors

Hello! So it's been a little while but I've had an exam so apologies. I do have another two to do but nothing just yet so I have a little spare time which I'm using to catch you up on my hobby progress so far.

The Great Awakening (again!)

Following from my previous post I was chatting to a friend of mine (who is also a commission painter) about my chosen Necron colour scheme and he suggested one last highlight on the blue to just make it pop. Never one to turn down painting tips I gave it a go less than 10 minutes ago and he was definitely right. The extra highlight has taken it from this:

The Great Awakening

Today I offer up the start of my Necron army in the form of an Overlord. I have to say that I had a lot of fun painting him although I was a little worried about the colour scheme but I think it turned out ok.

Shadow Caster

Hello again! Oh yes I'm back again and this time it hasn't been several months between postings! Result! Today I'm here to share with you a model that I've had for quite a while but lacked the inspiration to paint... Presenting for your viewing pleasure... Be'lakor!!

Blood Rush

Hello people! I haven't really posted recently as I've not had the time to (new and awesome job that I've had to settle into) but here I am to show you my latest work and my god he's beautiful if I do say so myself. May I present to you my first ever Greater Daemon of Khorne; a Bloodthirster of Unfettered Fury.

The First Lady

Ladies and Gentlemen, boys and girls, step right up and see the amazing resurrected woman! Yes you heard right, she's died more times than Buffy the Vampire Slayer (well actually the same amount of times) but she's back and it might be to stay... At least she's staying in my collection even if Games Workshop kill her off. Again. That would just be really bad form... But I digress. Meet the new and improved Isabella Von Carstein!!

February Challenge Pt 1

Evening folks! It's almost midnight here and I'm having a little trouble sleeping so I thought this would be a perfect time to update you all on my painting challenge. Any regular readers will know that I'm engaged in a friendly painting challenge with my gaming group WS10 and my last post was about my January challenge which was completing three Justaerin Terminators.

This month I've gone bigger and started a Helbrute. The Powerfist and Multi-Melta Helbrute was a lot of fun to paint and this one is living up to that experience in that every new colour I add brings a little more of him to life. What you'll see below is the progress I've made on him over the past week which isn't bad. 

The Challenge Pt 2

Good morning readers! As I write this I'm winging my way to work on a train that's faster than... Well it's faster than walking. To pass the time I thought I'd share with you all the results of my first monthly challenge that I mentioned in my last post.

The Challenge

As something of a communal New Years resolution the guys of WS10 have all banded together to create and participate in a painting challenge. This is in part for our upcoming tournament as there is a painted army restriction (three colour minimum, no grey plastic) but also as a way of getting through the mounds of new models we all got for Christmas. My challenge is to build up my Black Legion forces which I can do now that my exams are finally over!! As I keep spending money without actually painting anything I've also decided to resurrect the painting points system to go alongside it.

The One With the Surprise Game

A couple of weekends ago I met up with my Apocalypse ally, Nick, for him to become my next enemy... Strictly in a friendly match... Yeah...

The match was 2000 points between my Chaos Space Marines (oh yes, no Daemon allies this time) and Nick's Necrons which was the very first time I've ever played against them. Having never really paid much attention to their codex I didn't really know anything about them which meant the entire game was a 5 turn learning experience for me. I can very confidently say that they are an army I'll take more notice of when their new codex hits.

Happy New Year!!

Yes it's that time again where hobbyists everywhere take stock of all the models they've acquired over the last twelve months and resolve to paint them all before buying anything new and I don't plan to buck the trend. In fact I'm going to make the same promise and the only time I will buy anything new is if I need it for a game (as I've done recently) or if Games Workshop suddenly throw out a whole new bunch of models for my CSM or Daemons (I've got enough Tyranids and Undead to be getting on with for now!!)

Come the Apocalypse

A couple of weeks ago I experienced the insanity and hilarity of my first Apocalypse game with the awesome guys of #WS10. The event was set on Port Maw and while I'll be focusing on my game, there were two others as well as the simultaneous games happening in America and Australia. All using the same scenario and the results of each battle were combined with the others to form a final result so not only was it a frantic and fast paced battle where a lot of things were blown up, it was also very important to achieve objectives and spend victory points wisely as the points earned in one battle can be the difference between victory and defeat for the whole scenario and the thought of letting down that many other players is quite... Motivating.

Triumphant Return

Why hello there! Yes I know, it's been a very long time and for that I apologise but I've had a lot of non-hobby related things going on recently so certain things have had to be pushed onto the back burner and in order to make time for my hobby, blogging is one of the things... I'd be lying if I said that things weren't still crazy but I'm managing them better than before.

I won't bore you with pages and pages (that comes later) but I will give you a quick overview of everything that has gone on with the promise of more in depth reviews later on.

The Return

Hello everyone, been a while. Real life; sometimes it's a real drag... Why can't we just be paid to sit at home and do what we love? Ok so maybe unemployment benefits aren't the way to go but still, a guy can dream. Be warned, this may turn into a long one and it'll be all words so if you want pretty pictures then you may want to pick another post as I've been off the blogging scene for a while.

Where to start... Ok so quite a few big things have happened to me recently in terms of the hobby and they both involve new armies so I guess that's where we'll start.

Never fear fellow Warp lovers, I'm not in any way, shape or form giving up on my Daemons or my CSM. They are still my favourite armies and they always will be so there will still be posts relating to them and my progress with those armies. That said, I am a bit of a traitor to the denizens of the Eye as my first new army is... Tyranids. Oh yes, the big bad bugs have invaded my hobby space (aka my bedroom) in a big way. Now why Tyranids I hear you cry? (Ok I don't but I can pretend you are so I am). Well as I sat down to paint yet another Black Legion marine I realised I'd had enough of them for a while and I needed some colour. I looked at my Daemons but recently inspiration has been lacking (I guess they're too busy waging war in the WHFB world to take the time to inspire me) and I did used to have some Tyranids (waaaaay back, many many years ago) so I decided to buy a Zoanthrope and the Hive Mind had it's talons into me.

The Plague Host

Edit: I started writing this about three weeks ago but forgot to publish... Oops.

Over the weekend (and the preceding week as I was off work for two days) I've been a rather busy little bee and not only started but also finished Typhus! I have to say that I'm so happy with him and how he turned out; in fact I surprised myself with just how well I managed to paint him (not to toot my own horn or anything).

Voila! One host of the Destroyer Hive.

I was going to paint him a while ago so I had done my usual paint scheme research already (moving house just screws everything up). What this meant was that I could start painting straight away. I chose the pre-heresy Death Guard scheme for two reasons. The first reason is a fluffy one in that that after being infested by the Destroyer Hive and becoming a mortal (ish) herald of Nurgle I very much doubt he'd have cared all too much about how his armour looks so it never made much sense to me that he would have re painted it. The second reason is that I saw a few pictures of both this model and the Forge World Typhon and thought that the Death Guard colour scheme was so much cooler than the green one.

To get the green trim I painted the whole model with Death World Forest. Then dry brushed with Elysian and Nurgling Green with copious amounts of Agrax Earthshade between layers.

Since this model there has been a lot of work done in terms of my hobby (and the rest of my life but this is about the hobby) including the beginnings of a new army... Which is something that anyone coming here from my Twitter links will already be aware of but for those of you who have stumbled onto my page it will be a mystery... Unless you stumbled onto a later post and then made your way back to this one. In which case you ruined the surprise. But anyway, hope you like Typhus!

Lord of Heresy

It has certainly been a very busy hobby weekend for me! I don't know where the inspiration came from but I'm just not questioning it as I've gotten so much done and I'm still in the mood for more (unfortunately real life intends to get in the way of my inspiration kick and I've got to resist the urge to book time off work.

To kick things off; voila! One Sorcerer of Tzeentch in Terminator Armour. In keeping with my green spot colour you'll notice that his staff is green and all the eyes are green too. The green of the staff was achieved with a little Waywatcher Green over silver (I wanted a noticeable but subtle colouring).

I'm actually most surprised with how the rock he's standing on turned out as I wasn't sure if I'd be able to make it match the Agrellan Earth I used for the base. It was quite simple to do; Baneblade Brown with an edge highlight and drybrushing with Flayed One Flesh. I was shocked myself when it worked first time.

While I'm loving the look of the cape/cloak/whatever I'm debating whether to repaint the fur. My original plan was to have it looking like a Fenrisian Wolf's fur but I don't think the effect is right. The idea behind this being to express the hatred between the Space Wolves and the Thousand Sons (according to my army fluff all of the Sons of the Cyclops were originally Thousand Sons) by proudly displaying a trophy from a battle but it's starting to look to me like he picked up a worn out rug and threw it on so that may be up for a repaint in future.

Everything else I've done on the model has been covered in other posts so I won't bore you with repetition but instead I'll just say that I've really enjoyed painting this guy and a lot of care went into him and this post has taken exactly the length of my commute to write. I'm off to a good start to the day I think.