November 2020 Totals

 This was an oddly productive month. I say odd because it didn't feel like I painted that much, but the numbers are high. I'm not going to count the 12 warmaster stands I "touched" up. Apparently, Warmaster and Man O' War stuff paint up fast. I also assembled all of my Aeornautica Imperialis ships. I think GW saw how fiddly the Malifaux miniatures were and saw it as a challenge. They were very annoying to assemble...

Onto the totals:

• 6 Man O' War Merchant Ships
• 6 Man O' War Khorne Deathgalleys
• 6 Warmaster Plague Monks stands
• 6 Warmaster Clanrat stands
• 6 Warmaster Gutterrunner stands
• 9 Warmaster Jezzail stands
• 3 Warmaster Rat Ogre stands
• 6 Warmaster Rat Swarm stands
• 1 10mm Ruin

November Totals: 37

Year to Date: 180

Warmaster: Skaven Army

Now for something a bit different. This is all the Skaven Infantry I have for Warmaster. It's the bulk of the Warmaster miniatures I own, which comes to about a 1200 pt army. I still need to paint heroes, the screaming bell, and 2 warp lightning cannons. At some point, I plan on picking another 1200 pts, which should make for a truly epic army.

Warmaster miniatures are fairly easy to paint. Contrast makes them even easier. 12 of the stands I painted 15+ years ago, and just touched them up (did another layer of highlights, redid the bases with a darker edge color). Another 15 stands I had undercoated dark brown and followed my previous plan to just do drybrushes and highlights to finish them off. The last 9 (the Rats & Rat Ogres), I started with Wraithbone primer and used contrasts (and Agrax) to darken them, followed by highlights to bring them back up. The contrast does a great job of capturing the miniatures details. You can see the fur on the Rats and Rat Ogres. The last 9 came out significantly better IMO. Stylistically you can somewhat see the difference. Moving forward, I'll use the contrast method.

There's a ruin I also printed on the 3d printer and test printed. I've since printed a few more. The rats need to live somewhere.

From front to back: Giant Rat Swarms, Jezzails, Rat Ogres (left), Clanrats (right), More Jezzails (left), More Clanrats (right), Plague Monks, Gutter Runners, and the lone ruin.

 

 

Man O' War: Khorne Deathgalleys

It's Khorne Deathgalleys today. These are the final 6 ships needed for my Khorne fleet. I kept the color palette dark since it hides some 3d printing anomalies. But overall I think they came out pretty good for the the cheapo printer I have. Contrast paints also do an excellent job shading the various bits that do matter (i.e. the decking and the oars in particular stand out). I wouldn't be embarrassed putting these on a table. As with all my 3d prints, I ended up making the masts separately.

Paint wise, the hull is contrast black with a light drybrush of Dawnstone grey. The oars and masts are just Basilicum Grey.  The deck is Darkoath Flesh followed by spot washes of Agrax (on the 3d print anomalies to further darken them). The skull is my standard skull recipe. Skeleton Horde contrast followed by Ushabti Bone and Screaming Skull highlights (and IIRC some spot washes of Agrax to darken the eyes and horns).

 A shot of the entire Khorne Fleet. The Te(a)rrors of the high seas! A smidge over a 1,000 pts worth of ships.

 

Man O' War: More Merchant Vessels

I mentioned I had another 6 of the old Might Empire Ships without masts. Here they are ... with homemade masts! Once more, they will be used as merchant vessels to be captured. I probably have too many of these...

I was thinking a good scenario would be to give each player 3-6 vessels and require they escape off the opposite end of the seascape for victory points. You can get points by capturing opponents vessels and sailing them off the seascape as well. Sort of a dual escort mission.

These have the cool new water effect bases. I think I mentioned how I "messed" them up by not leveling the bases before I let the glue dry. I think it gives them a storm-tossed look.

 

October 2020 Totals

Another month down. I'd hoped to be finished with all my Man O'War stuff this month and moving on to other things. It wasn't meant to be. I still have about 12 ships to paint and a few sea forts. Then I'll put that project on hold until I can print the sails. I'm hoping I can do all of the sails in one sitting.They are all ready to go.

Now onto the totals:

• 9 Khorne Ironsharks
• 2 Khorne Bloodships

October Totals: 11

Year to Date: 143

Man O' War: Khorne Fleet

Blood for the blood god! Skulls for the skull throne!

It's the first 1/2 of a Khorne fleet for Man O' War. The next 1/2 is still being painted. Like the Skaven before, these were 3d printed using Nathan Hunt's files on Thingiverse. I still only have a PLC printer (not resin), so there were some minor issues printing. These didn't come out quite as "clean" as the Skaven. I tried to overcome some of the print issues by keeping to a dark color pallet during painting on the areas that were particular deformed.

These have home made masts and yard arms too. It turns out I have a truly massive number of the flag poles. Man O'War used the same flag poles as the old Space Marine/Epic stands ... and I have several hundred of those. The masts are 1.6mm (1/16") polystyrene rods with notches filed so they kinda inset together (between the mast and the yard arm). Then thread tied/wrapped around the cross section and looped until the end of the yard arm (using a bit of white glue to keep the "rope" in place), where I wrapped it around the rod to make another thicker rope section. Last but not least, I flattened the top and glued an epic flag pole to the top the best I could.

I tried the same ocean bases as the last batch of pirate ships, but I messed up on them slightly. In particular, I made the seas too rough and let them dry in that shape before test fitting the ships. The ships are not flush with the sea. It's not too noticeable from 3 feet away, but it's not perfect. If I did it again, I'd do the bases before painting the ships, and use a ship to press into the ocean while the glue was still wet (to get a good indentation and mostly flat glue spot) and then let it dry. I think that'd work way better.

Painting wise, it's mostly contrast paints with some highlights. Contrast red for the hull, Contrast Darkoath flesh for the planks, Contrast Basilicum Grey for the Oars and Mast, Contrast Black for the flag pole and rudders. Then appropriate highlights/drybrushing. Onto some pictures:

 

September 2020 Totals

It's already October! Still plugging away on the Man O'War project. I'm hoping to be finished with all of my ships by the end of October and maybe get to paint something bigger.

• Pirate Man O' War Fleet: 6 War Galleys
• Merchant Man O'War Fleet: 11 Merchant Vessels/Cogs 

September Totals: 17

Year To Date: 132

Man O'War: Pirate Fleet

These are the basic wargalleys you get from the base Man O'War game. Once again, they are sans sails. They painted up pretty fast (I had them done 2 weeks ago), but I tried something different with the bases. I plan to use them as Pirate auxiliaries for the various fleets. If anyone ever makes some Empire Wolfships I could 3d print, I might expand them into a small fleet (3 Lone Wolfs and 6 Wargalleys is around 500 points iirc).

The bases are painted to match the Dreadfleet seascape fabric, and they blend in pretty darn good when you place them on it. I took tissue paper and soaked it in glue and made mounds on top, then took a second tissue paper and placed it so it covered the entire base and coated it with a generous helping of white glue (and some water so it soaked throughout). Painting wise, I tried to match the old white dwarf guide (found in issue 382 ... which you can find pdf's of online ... mine was lost when I basement flooded awhile back). So I painted it cornflower semi-gloss blue, wash of Naggaroth Night, drybrush of Caledor Sky, Wash of Biel-Tan, Drybrush of Caledor Sky, drybrush of Lothern Blue, drybrush of white, Wash of Guilliman Blue, and a final drybrush of white.  That sounds like a lot but it goes pretty quick (although it added a week onto the time). I'm a little worried that the ships might not be attached as well, since it's not a completely flat bond, but so far I haven't seen an issue.

 

Man O'War: Merchant Vessels

Sails Ho!

The first set of Man O'War vessels that actually have sails. In case you don't recognize them, these are GW ships, just not Man O'War ships. They are tokens from the old Mighty Empires game. I have another 6 of these, but for some reason I don't have the masts/sails. There are 11 (unfortunately, since MoW groups things by 3), and I painted the sails so that they can be used in 3 groups of 3 (red/green/blue) with 2 extras (white/black). I'll use them as treasure ships that the fleets can fight over. I tried using post-it-notes to stencil the lines on the sails, but that proofed too fiddly so ended up free-handing most of them.

I like these, they were easy to paint and the sails came out pretty good.

 

August 2020 Totals

I have totally veered off my TODO list, but seem to be picking up painting speed. This month was mostly 2 Man O'War fleets, a project that wasn't even on my radar when I made the list.

I also got a game of Man O'War in with the Boy. He crushed my Dwarf fleet with his Skaven. Highlight of the game for me was my Monitor who only had 1 crew left and kept getting boarded, winning and counter boarding until he left a string of abandoned Deathburners and Warprunners behind him (the crew finally died when the Bell rolled double 5's and killed one crew on every enemy ship within range).

Last but not least, me and the Kids finished Shadows over Hammerhal. I got the final kill of the game, with my trusty Grudgeraker auto-shotgun! It was close, the Gryphhound almost sniped the kill again (like he did with the Gaunt Summoner) but couldn't seal the deal leaving the Chaos Sorcerer on one wound. I picked up Blackstone Fortress and so that's on my paint table now too (although I'm saddened by the fact that you can't get all of the expansions anymore...)

Totals for August 2020

• Skaven Man O'War fleet
• 2 Doombringers
• 9 Deathburners
• 15 Warprunners
• Chaos Dwarf Man O'War fleet
• 2 Great Leveller Battle Barges
• 2 Thunderfire Battle Barges
• 3 Thunder Rollers
• 6 Hull Destroyers
• 1 Great Taurus Rider

Total for August: 40!

Total for 2020: 115

Man O'War: Chaos Dwarf Fleet

Another Man O'War fleet. This time it's the dreaded Chaos Dwarfs.

In the Old World, Chaos Dwarfs are Dwarfs who've succumbed to the lure of Chaos (namely the God of Darkness Hashut ... who may or may not be an actual Chaos God).

These were an odd inclusion in Man O'War given that the Chaos Dwarfs are about as landlocked as you can get. They had a river that stretched the length of a continent that they needed to travel down to even get to the closest sea (across Orc and Goblin lands), then sail 1,000's of miles down and around and back up the Southlands, just to make it anywhere near the Old World where most of the action in the game happens. After doing all of that (in barges no less), their ships had a tendency to explode when they fired their main guns. But look at the size of those main guns! They are the shootiest faction in the game!

It was a fun fleet to paint! Lots of oranges and warm colors. The giant squid thing is from Dreadfleet.

 

Man O' War: Skaven Fleet

Hide the round pastries! The Pie-Rats are coming!

It's a Skaven fleet for Man O'War. These are all (except the dead fish thingy) 3d printed using files found on Thingiverse (credit to Nathan Hunt at https://www.thingiverse.com/barnebiss2/designs).

I have a PLC extrusion printer (~ $100), which is not the ideal type for printing things at this scale. I hear resin printers are better (and more expensive and slightly more difficult to operate). I hit some consistent flaws in the prints. Namely the bells on the Doombringers and the wrecking balls on the Deathburners. Anything with significant overhang. This is more due to my incompetence than the designs, but where my 3d printing inexperience failed me, my conversion experience came to the rescue. They were not too difficult to fix. I used some left-over morning star bits from my Chaos Beastmen (for the wrecking balls) and/or greenstuff (for the bells). I also never got a good print of a mast, so I made my own using thread and some polystyrene rods. As with the Dwarves from before, I still don't have access to a color printer to print out the sails/banners, so these are currently banner-less. Overall, it's about 1200 pts (not including the dead fish ship from Dreadfleet ... which should probably be about a 300 pt ship ... so 1500 total).

Color-wise I put the base colors down and hit the whole thing with an agrax wash (i.e. liquid skill), then hit each areas with specific highlights. The colors: Wyldwood Contrast sides (highlighted with Deathclaw), Blood Angel Red Contrast roofs (highlighted with dragon fire red), Guillamen Flesh Contrast light wood/ropes (w/spot highlights of ushabti bone), Runefang Steel metal (highlighted back up to Runefang Steel), Retributor Armor gold (w/spot highlights of Mithril Silver). I based them all using Flames of War Medium Bases spray painted with a satin blue (Cornflower).

I think they came out pretty good for 3d prints, and should look even better once I add the banners.

 

July 2020 Totals

Still mostly staying home. Still not being quite as productive as usual.

This month saw me finish off the Sylvaneth Endless Spells and finish a Man O' War Dwarf Fleet. We'll probably see more Man O' War before that bit of inspiration finishes.

Onto Totals:

• 1 Sylvaneth Gladewyrm
• 1 Man O' War Dwarf Dreadnought
• 3 Man O' War Dwarf Ironclads
• 6 Man O' War Dwarf Monitors
• 3 Man O' War Dwarf Nautlilus
• 3 Man O' War Dwarf Gyrocopters
• 3 Man O' War Dwarf War Balloons

Total for July: 20 miniatures

Total for 2020: 75 miniatures

Man O' War: Dwarf Fleet

All hands to Battle Stations!

These aren't on my master list. Quarantine has caused me to veer off into old projects and try to get them finished. Here is a dwarf fleet for the old (25+ years ... late 80's to early 90's) GW game Man O' War. I think Man O' War was only supported for about 2-3 years by GW, so some of these fleets are kinda hard to find.

The color scheme is light gray with a teal spot color. I think they came out okay, but maybe a brighter blue might have made them pop more. I thought that would be a bit too close to the old 80's color schemes GW used to use.

I used the turquoise contrast paint and had to highlight it through with sotek green and temple guard blue for the spot color. The light gray base is Grey Seer, followed by a 1:1 diluted wash of Contrast Basicilica Grey and then a dry brush of Grey Seer again.

Pictured in the group picture is the Dwarf Dreadfleet vessel (some type of Battle Carrier). I painted him a while back.

I will probably put these on blue bases at some point, I need to find some I like. My favorite were blank plastic bases for Flames of War, but I don't think they make them anymore. I've gone back and forth several times on the best way to base these up and store them.

The Gladewyrm

The Gladewyrm. This is the last of the Sylvaneth endless spells. I like him. I have a surprising number of worm-like monsters now (Carrion Crawler, Purple Worm, Remorhaz). Now, I just need that huge one from Reaper's Bones line to rule over them all!

I tried something different with his runic head thing. Basically, it consisted of painting white into the crevasses and then wiping the excess away. Then I followed up with a glaze of the color I wanted the runes to be. It worked okay, I got talked into choosing red for the color and it had the same tonal "level" as the surrounding carapace and didn't pop like I wanted it too. I tried to fix it by then glazing yellow on it to mixed success. It would have looked better if I went straight yellow or left it white. I think I need to work on that some more.

June 2020 Totals

Half way through 2020! Not quite as productive as last year, but still making some progress. I've been thinking of starting a shelved/neglected projects page. I have a bunch of ideas I've started, but never finished. It might be nice to have a list that I work on when I need a break from any main projects.

Totals for June 2020:

• 6 Warcry Raptoryx
• 1 Spiteswarm Hive

Totals for June: 7 miniatures

Totals for 2020: 55 miniatures

The Spiteswarm Hive

Bees!

It's the Spiteswarm Hive. Working my way through my Sylvaneth endless spells in preparation for the next wave of Sylvaneth. I went for a prismatic look for the spites/bees themselves. Lot's of glazes that GW no longer produce and blending them together (Red to Yellow to Green to Blue to Purple (made by mixing Red/Blue). Overall it was pretty easy to paint. Either I'm getting better (unlikely) or I'm picking easier miniatures to paint.

Warcry: Raptoryx

The last of the Warcry miniatures (not including the warbands) from the starter set. 6 Raptoryx's. These were fun to paint, I particularly like how the wings came out. Red and Orange Contrast, washes of Red (Crimson Carbide?) & Orange (Fuegan Orange?), followed with drybrushes of Troll Slayer Orange and Git Yellow.

I've noticed that when I upload the pictures, the large picture (if you click the image below) have been showing up with their color reversed. It's odd, since I'm able to find the original size image by editing the url and that looks fine. Hopefully that bug is fixed now, but if it's not I'll start to add a link directly to the larger image.

May 2020 Totals

This month was more productive than last month, but still not anywhere near what I "normally" do. The quarantine is still effecting my output.

I also 3d printed 2 fleets for Man O' War this month. I now have a Skaven fleet and a Khorne fleet (to go with my dwarf & chaos dwarf fleets). Since masts are next to impossible to find online, I'm trying my hand at making some by hand using really thin polystyrene tubing with thread and white glue. We'll see how they look when I finish.

Totals for May 2020:

• 6 Warcry Terrain Pieces
• 6 Warcry Furies

Totals for May: 12 Miniatures

Totals for 2020: 48 Miniatures

Warcry Furies

As my son keeps pointing out, there should really only be 3 of these. He also thinks their beards should have been blue. These are the Furies from the Warcry Start Set. They are nice models. I must admit, I had issues painting the fangs, they were really difficult for some reason. I don't think they had much definition. Everything else came out okay.

A brief painting guide:

Undercoat: Grey Seer

 Red Skin: Blood Angels Contrast, Wild Ride Highlight, Fire Dragon Highlight.

Tan Underbelly: Zandrax, Wash of Agrax, Highlight Ushabti Bone.

Beards: Git Yellow, Orange Wash, Git Yellow and White Highlights.

Wings: Contrast Black, Dawnstone highlights/srtreaks, Wash of Naggaroth Night

Horns & Talons: Skeleton Horde, Screaming Skull Highlight

Base: Wyldwood Contrast, Deathclaw Brown drybrush

Stone: Grey Contrast, Admin Grey drybrush

Warcry Starter Terrain

Finally finished the Warcry Starter terrain.

There are 6 pieces, the other 3 pieces not pictured look pretty identical to the first picture. I like these, they painted up pretty fast, and I think they look pretty good. The wood is Wyldwood Brown over admin grey, followed by a drybrush of Mournfang Brown and an even lighter drybrush of Admin Grey. The other bits I followed my standard formula for ruins.

The only bit I'm not happy with these models is the two skeleton's hanging from the side of the bell tower. Those things are pretty fragile, and will likely break off during storage. I doubt I'll keep gluing them back on, once that happens.

April 2020 Totals

Only one miniature this month! That's the most unproductive I've been in a long long time.

The quarantine has had the opposite effect on my painting time than you'd expect. With the kids and significant other all at home 24/7, there's just not a bunch of time to get away by myself. My board game playing has taken off through the roof! I usually play 2-3 boardgames a day.

As I mentioned in a previous post, assembly is still going on. In part, since it's easy to pick up, do a bit, and then drop whatever I'm doing if a fire breaks out someplace in the house. I'm also pretty far into the final bits of the Warcry starter set terrain, and the kids both of miniatures they are almost finished on. So next month should be more productive.

Whenever I don't paint enough, I suffer from hobby wobble. Assembling 32mm Skaven convinced me to hunt down and pull out my 10mm Warmaster Skaven army which is only 1/3rd painted. It's only a 1000 pts worth, I thought it was 2000 pts. That in turn got me to look for more, but Warmaster stuff is insanely priced on e-bay. I did find some 3d print models that have potential. Trying not to get my hopes up, printing at that scale is pretty tricky. So I might pull out the 3d printer and try to expand the army to 2-3 thousand points. And if I'm going fire up the printer, I might as well print some Skaven Man O War ships. Don't know when I'd ever get it all painted, but both Warmaster and Man O War stuff look much better on the table than they do photographed.

I'm also wanting to paint some Black Seas ships I picked up when that game dropped. They are beautiful! I wrote an Age of Sail Full Thrust variation back when I used to play with a historic friendly group, so I've always had a soft spot for that genre.

The quarantine is making me chatty, time to list the totals for the month.

Miniatures painted in April:

• Chimera

Totals for April: 1

Totals for 2020: 36

Chimera

If two heads are better than one ... how about 3 (4 if you count the snake head)!

It's GW's Chimera. I didn't like the "official" paint scheme, so I tried to keep it more natural. It was fun to paint and it's a better miniature than it looks, but not as good as some of the other Chimera's that are on the market. I still like it though.

She'll go in my Beastman army and can be used as an independent monster in Warcry.

I'm not totally in a hobby slump (contrary to what the one model I finished this month might indicate). For some odd reason, I've decided to mostly do assembly. I put together about 100 Skaven in the last month, as well as, more Warcry monsters and some random metal Moonclan Grots I found.

Gotrek Gunisson

A bit delayed on taking his picture. Gotrek actually counted toward last months totals. This is my attempt at painting Gotrek Gunisson. I followed my formula for Fyreslayers, but gave him some blue pants and blue tattoos.

He's either the most successful or least successful Troll Slayer in history. Slayer's seek a glorious death fighting the biggest baddest monster they can find, Gotrek has been trying to find his for literally 1,000's of years (although it's not clear how long he traipsed around the Realms of Chaos ... given that time works differently there). He's effectively a demigod at this point.

Still not making as much progress during Quarantine as you might expect on other projects. For some reason, I've started assembling most of the excess sprues I have.

March 2020 Totals

The coronavirus pandemic is giving most people a ton of free time. I however, still have work and now have wife and kids home 24/7. I have mostly been assembling miniatures here and there. So even though my totals for this month are a bit low ... I have been making some progress. I've also had several sessions painting with the kids, so that both decreases and increases my output (I don't paint as fast when I paint with them, but since there are 3 of us, we still get more done (of lesser quality)).

• 3 Rippa Snarlfangs
• 1 Gotrek Gunnison (to be pictured)

Total for March: 4

Total for 2020: 35

Underworlds: Rippa Snarlfangs Wolf Riders

A blast from the past! It's some wolfriders! I have some of the old ones someplace, but these are much nicer. Good miniatures that were fun to paint! I particularly like the wolves!

Given the background of Beastgrave (namely, no-one can really die and sometimes creatures get trapped in amber for awhile iirc), I wonder if the wolf riders all died off 1,000's of years ago and nobody bothered to tell Rippa and his Boyz. They could be the last wolfriders in existence!

Noteworthy bits from painting: The white part of the white wolves is contrast white with Pallid Wychflesh highlights. The grey part is contrast grey straight (no highlights or anything). The goblin flesh is contrast orc flesh with Skarsnik and Nurgling highlights. It's a bit on the pallid side (I used something similar for Gloomspite where that look is more appropriate ... I think I'd experiment more if I painted more of surface orc/goblins). Everything else is pretty standard. I'm still struggling with eyes, ironically, in part due to my eyes...

2020 February Totals

A bit late, but the totals for February are (drumroll please):

• 1 Bad Moon Loonshrine
• 15-ish pieces of Warcry terrain (all of the little pieces from the start set)

February Total: 16

Total for 2020: 31

The Bad Moon Loonshrine

I thought this would be quick to paint. Just a bunch of washes and drybrushes ... right?!?!? Every-so-often I'm wrong like that. It took longer than I expected (about a week+ of my painting time). Vertically, it's probably my largest piece of terrain, it's really quite big. I guess the Night Goblins are compensating for their small size or something.

BTW, I do like it, it's a good "miniature" and fits right in with my various Night Goblin/Moonclan/Gloomspite Grots.

The Vengeful Skullroot

Run ... it's a tree?!?!?

The Vengeful Skullroot reminds me of the tree that tried to eat Frodo and the hobbits in The Fellowship of the Ring. It's a walking tree that bludgeons people to death. It's on the "side" of the Sylvaneth. I painted it at the same time as the previous Awakened Wyldwoods, using the same color pallette.

It's an evil tree, not much else more to say.

Awakened Sylvaneth Wyldwoods

They're awake!

These are the Awakened Sylvaneth Wyldwoods. Okay, at first I didn't like them. I thought they looked "off" for trees. Then I assembled some, and took a look from 3+ feet. It turns out GW's official pictures really don't do them justice. The angle makes them seem "top" heavy with all the foliage at the top. From a normal viewing angle, they look really nice. In addition, they are 1000% stronger and easier to use than their previous iteration. These things have really "grown" on me, my opinion has flipped 180 degrees.