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!!