Warmaster: Skaven Screaming Bell

The centerpiece of the army. It's the Skaven Screaming Bell. It's usually surrounded by hordes of ratmen.

I got a new phone, and the pictures seem to be a bit darker.

 

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: