Something is Finished! Huzzah!!!

It is finally all starting to feel possible. I've finished not just one but TWO whole models. One of them has three skinks on the back, so that practically makes it 5 whole models! Watch out guys the freight train is moving now. If I keep this up I might even finish more than my planned 1000pts worth.

Okay now I'm just dreaming, perhaps the progress has made me slightly delirious, potentially that was paint fumes, but for some reason now that something is done doing the rest seems that little bit easier. Pity this realisation is coming 24 days into a 31 day challenge, but oh well.

First we will start small, I've finished the Scar Veteran on Cold One. By finished I mean I haven't touched his base. Shut up Greg, and stop thinking it as well, bases don't count. Unfortunately for the whole painting challenge thing I think they do, but we're ignoring that at the moment in the spirit of progress.

I'm fairly happy with how he has turned out. He looks fairly nice, and the highlighting on the shield really stands out. The colours in this photo seem a bit muted, I might try and take another one sometime.

The scales seem really flat in this picture. Maybe it is the fading sunlight outside...

As you've probably assumed the other thing I managed to finish was the Bastiladon, which I am glad about. He was a fairly complicated model to paint, especially given he's mostly just flat scales. But things like his back scales as well as the prism on his back just threw me a bit, I wasn't really sure how to paint them. Today I just sort of experimented with the prism until I was happy with it, luckily it didn't take as long to get right as the scales did.

I'm very happy with the prism/crystal bit!

In fact I'm quite happy with the whole model!

I was worried the blue would just be too much on such a large model, but I think it works fine and it is *very* striking. People will definitely notice this model sitting next to the table when I play games with the army, pity he won't make the tabletop but I just don't see the Bastiladon being that useful in game.

Next up on the painting table is finishing off the Stegadon, as he is worth a lot of points. Then I'll probably get started on the Temple Guard or Tetto'Eko. Both are nice models, so I'm looking forward to them!

Slowing Down and Speeding Up Again

I figure I should display the nice logo Owen made in at least one of these posts...

It would appear that I paint in fits and spurts. This is quite different to how i used to paint, where I would constantly be working away an hour or two at a time and just grind things out. Each day I would paint a little bit more and eventually things would be finished. Maybe that was a legacy of being a student living with my parents and not really having that much to do.

Things have changed, I have to pay rent for my apartment so have to work more, and I'm still studying. Duelling Paintbrushes has also come in the middle of crunch time for uni, which has been a pain. I thought this week would be my week to do lots, but I ended up at work when I would otherwise have been painting as things got a bit busy there. I had a day off today and spent almost the whole day painting.

About an hour ago I despaired at my lack of progress. The Stegadon hasn't really gone anywhere, the Cold One rider is mostly painted but just looks way less significant compared to the other two beasties, and I wasn't happy at all with how things were going on the Bastiladon.

All I did on this guy today was the grey on his howdah, as well as a little bit of the first scale layer.

I ended up scrapping the technique I was using for the scales on his back, and tried something new. I sort of half drybrushed half dabbed paint onto each scale individually, which made for a much more gradual highlight than the way i'd been doing it initially. This looks *way* better than the other way of doing it, and is actually way quicker as well. Within about 20 minutes i'd finished the scales on the Bastiladon, and then got a bit more work done on the Scar Veteran as well! Now I am feeling much better about my progress, and hopeful that I might even finish my 1000 points worth of stuff before the deadline.

I'm still not sure how to do the massive club at the end of the tail...

I did get a little bit of progress done last week as well, which means the cohort of skinks with the Kroxigor is practically finished. They are all packed up in a case at the moment, so no picture of them yet. As mentioned the Scar Veteran on Cold One is almost finished, pretty much all the basecoating has been done and he just needs a bunch of highlighting. The blue scales are done though, and that is the most time intensive part of all the models.

Quite clearly the grey and gold need to be highlighted...

All three of the beasties together in one picture. Funnily enough the Scar Vet is probably the scariest of the lot despite being by far the smallest...

The one thing that will stand between me and completion is the bases on the models. I have some ambitious plans for basing this army that involve water effects and the like, which is going to be difficult to achieve in the remaining time. Might have to work out an interim solution, see how we go...

Duelling Paintbrushes: Update 1

So for those interested I haven't really gone through what duelling paintbrushes is. Basically it is an inter blog painting competition that we run each year around this time of year in order to encourage ourselves to paint some figures. The basic premise is that each participant has to fully paint 1000pts of stuff in 1 month. Last year the 1000pts had to be legal war hammer army, made up of at least 25% core etc. I'm not sure if this is the case as the armies are going to be used at Warhammer World Series, so will ultimately just need to be a segment of the larger 1500pt list.

Either way I've made my 1000pts a legal force, which you can see below and I got painting right away! Then I stopped, and basically only started again last night. It is now the 11th of the month, meaning 11 of my precious 31 have slipped away already!
1 Scar Veteran on Cold One
1 Skink Priest
10 Skinks with a Kroxigor
2* 10 Skink Skirmishers - Javelins and Shields
1 Bastilodon
1 Stegadon
10 Temple Guard
1 Salamander Hunting Pack


Thankfully Greg over at The Hoodlings Hole has also false started a bit, as has the other Nick (Short Shorts and Paint Brushes), so I don't look too bad. Owen (Terrain for Hippos - beware Hippos! has done his usual thing of paint a billion figures every day, so no one really compares to him anyway. Freak.


So I tried to do a little bit of painting early in the week while I was watching TV with my girlfriend. Normally I don't have any problems painting while watching movies or the like, but I used to do it at a desk with something playing on the computer. Unfortunately sitting on a couch makes it really difficult to paint detail, so I didn't get much done and what I did do wasn't great. Last night I changed my tack, got out the biggest brush I own (disappointingly this was like a GW standard brush or something) and started base coating some of the larger models. This was a way better idea, and in not too long I had the first layer of purple done on a Stegadon, a Bastiladon and a Scar Veteran. Frustratingly assignments for uni distracted me from doing any more painting, but I'm hoping to do more tonight.

How exciting! 1 whole layer of paint!

The Bastilidon is really exciting me at the moment, I think if I do the large scales on its back well using the colour i do most of the scales in he is going to look really good. Although given the size I may need to mix a few extra stages of colour in so that the colour steps aren't as obvious. I contemplated doing a colour blend on every single scale, then realised how ridiculous that would be. Not sure I could finish that model in a month, let alone the rest of them.

I'm going to go out an buy a bigger brush as well, mainly because these big monsters are going to need some dry brushing, which really isn't possible with the equipment I have at the moment.

Alas it is time to do more uni work, if all goes well tonight there might even be an update tomorrow! Although I'll probably be busy playing warhammer, as I haven't had a game in almost 10 days and it is really getting to me.

Western Clash

Well painting progress has stalled a bit. I've done a good part of the next Skink/Krox batch, but probably won't find the time to finish them off until later this week.

I did manage to get in a bunch of games on Saturday though, as I went out to D6 Gaming in Melton for a mini tournament they were having. It was only 6 players, 4 of them Hampton regulars, but it was 4 games in the day so it was a bit of extra 'hammers than a normal saturday. 2000pts made for slightly smaller games, but I'm finding the lizards to be really flexible at shifting between points levels.

There was no comp, so my list was:
Slann: Death Magic, +1 ld banner, Soul of Stone, Triple Channel, Becalming Cogitations, MRd3, Channeling staff
Tetto'Eko
2 * Scar Veteran on Cold Ones
4* 10 Skink Skirmishers
30 Skinks and 3 Kroxigor
3 Terradons
Ancient Stegadon, Sharpened Horns
Salamander

So basically chaff, a Steg and 2 Scar Vets for a bit of punch, and a death magic party slann to wreck things.

Game 1: Watchtower vs Ben Rantell (Lizardmen)
I hadn't played the mirror match up before, and Ben had a much better list for watchtower. The key though was that he only had a lvl 2 (Tetto'eko as well) so I got to cast lots of spells. Death magic wasn't amazing in this game, although I did manage to purple sun off a scar vet. Ben didn't take the opportunity to put his horde of saurus into the watchtower in the early game which ended up costing him. I held them up with my steg and killed his BSB while doing so which meant I didn't lose any points and kept him out of the tower for a few turns. I snuck Tetto'eko and some skinks into the tower in the last turn, which boosted a minor win up to a 16-4.

Game 2: Meeting Engagement vs James Brett (Vampire Counts)
This game got interesting right from the start when after I had deployed James rolled a billion 1's (including on both his lvl 4's) which meant half his army didn't start on the table. Tetto'eko was great here as he could vanguard himself 12 inches before the game, and move 12 before the magic phase, which gave me an effective range of 48 inches on spirit leech. This cost James his terrorgheist in turn 1, as it has fuck all LD and James had no scroll or +4 to dispel.

The rest of the game was fairly even, I baited a unit of vargheists into the steg and killed them with Scar Vets, did the same thing with the other unit but lost a scar vet and the steg doing so. James passed some good 5+ ward saves with his characters which kept them alive from snipes, and the magic res on my slann stopped him sniping me back effectively. I killed off chaff, he killed off chaff, I won by about the value of the things i killed in the first turn.
12-8 Win

Game 3: Dawn Attack vs Ivan Diaz (Ogre Kingdoms)
I've played Ivan like a billion times, which is a lot given he's only been in the country for like 3 months. We have a pretty even record, and always have interesting games. I scared the crap out of him by Vanguarding a Scar Vet and a Stegadon at his army and then moving them up full distance in the first turn. He had two Ironblasters so I figured both were going to die anyway, may as well get them up in his grill and force him to deal with them. The scar vet ended up being dealt with by maneaters, the Steg survived being shot, killed an Ironblaster in combat (very very slowly, sharpened horns didn't do shit). Could have done it a bit quicker and killed the mournfang as well, but didn't. Ivan pressured my mages and skinks, got a few skirmisher units out of it but I kept the mages safe. Comet killed the other Ironblaster along with some Ironguts, Purple Sun (lots of fun) then went through them and sucked off the BSB along with a few others. Then the game ended in turn 4 because we ran out of time, which was disappointing as I wasn't going to lose any more points, and there were plenty to be gained.
10-10 Draw

Game 4: Battleline vs Ben Leopold (Warriors of Chaos)
Ben had my WoC from Convic, and just fanged a Daemon Prince straight at my Skrox with the Slann and Tetto'Eko in the unit. So I just walked past him into the building and started misfiring purple sun all over the place (2 misfires in the first two turns). Then I sniped off his Deamon Prince with a spirit leech, and killed his Knights with my Scar Vets. The Steg got wailed on by trolls, but then I shot them with a zillion poison shots for like 4 turns until they all fell over and stopped getting back up again. Suckers.
15-5 Win

List did what it does and didn't lose any games, Death Slann is pretty rude. Ivan ended up winning because he got 20 in the last round, won't happen again though. Lots of fun was had, got to test out the list a bit and I'm really starting to enjoy the lizards. They have potential, a shit ton of flexibility, and the models are cool. What more could you want.

Next update should come in a couple of days and will be Dueling Paintbrushes related. In short this is a little painting competition that we do each year in an effort to actually get stuff done. Should be fun, although I'm not hugely optimistic of getting enough stuff painted in the requisite time period...

Progress

Well some progress has been made, although not really as much as I'd have liked. I've probably spent a little bit too much time gaming over the last week rather than painting stuff, which has impacted how much I've been able to do.

I've managed to smash out a few games though, and I'm getting to use a variety of army lists which is helping me get used to the Lizardmen book. Lizardmen are an army totally unlike any of the other ones I've used in the past, and have the ability to have a lot more chaff than I am normally used to. They also need to use said chaff, which is something I never needed to do with my Warriors of Chaos, as if they were avoiding combat something was going drastically wrong! I think I am still losing units of skinks unnecessarily, and I need to work on the timing aspect of using them to divert. Working out overrun paths etc can be a pain, and in some of the games I got a bit slack and that got things killed.

Two of my games have been against HE, both of those seemed to go fairly well and I don't think the match up is particularly bad for the lizards. I had trouble cracking a unit of Pheonix Guard in one game so that is something to work on, but potentially I would have been able to handle them had my Slann not cascaded on turn 3. In the other tried sending buffed Temple Guard into the middle of my opponents army, and they tore stuff to pieces.

I also played an interesting game against an empire army. This gave me a chance to try out he "cloud" version of the list, which is basically nothing but skinks, terradons, salamanders and a Slann. There are also two scar vets which go and do the killing, something they are rather good at. A bit of a boring list to play against, as the whole point is that it doesn't engage and just chips away at you with magic and shooting, but it is certainly very effective! This game ended up being a minor win to me, although I think the empire actually have the better of it in this match up.

The large skink-kroxigor unit on the right rolled up that flank, which got me most of my victory points.

I used the same list against some Daemons of Chaos yesterday for an entertaining draw. There were 6 purple suns cast for the game, which meant they were floating about all over the place and making a mess of things. I had the best one though, taking out 20 Plaguebearers and a Nurgle Herald.

Painting-wise I've managed to finish another third of the Skink-Kroxigor unit. I'm really liking how they are turning out, and I'm looking forward to finishing my first unit. I kinda want to go paint something else, but I'm going to finish this unit first. Plus I can't let myself get sick of painting Skinks, because there are another 60 or something to do after this unit...

From the front...

Apologies for the glare in the photo, didn't notice that when I took the picture, something to look out for next time...

Besides these guys I've also finished building my Bastiladon, not sure how often I'll use it but it does look cool.

Next update I'm hoping to start a report of how things went at the ETC, but I keep not getting around to writing that. It will either be a game by game report or an analysis of the Tomb Kings and the list I took along with thoughts on what I would do different next time.

Back to blogging!

So after two false starts i'm giving this another go. Once again I have plenty of intentions regarding this blog, and hopefully this time some of them will actually be realised.

Its been a long time since the last post, and I've done plenty of work on my Tomb Kings since then. They're at an awkward stage where they are almost finished, they can be used on the table top and look nice, but there is plenty of fiddly highlighting and stuff to do, and honestly I don't know when i'll get around to doing that. This is a side effect of having to rush the army through for some tournaments, and just generally not managing my time well enough. A lot of the models were rushed up to a tabletop standard, as I'd made commitments to take the army to the ETC and couldn't exactly back out of that one and take another army. The wisdom of taking Tomb Kings to the ETC is another matter, and I will cover that in another post.

So now that the ETC is done for the year I have started a new project. The pace of army books this year has been really crazy, which is a great thing. That said it also has me struggling to keep up, I have a WoC army, a Daemon army, a HE army and a DE army (sounds like they're up next). Along with those I've been wanting to redo my lizards for a long time, as they were one of my very first armies. Ideally as each book came out I'd have liked to play with each army, but so far I still haven't played a game using the new daemons, nor the new high elves. I have used the WoC a few times as my WoC army is quite extensive and required minimal new models to use.Tourney results with them have been good, I took out ConVic in June which is the biggest fantasy tournament in Victoria, and had a few other strong results.

Now however it is Lizard time, bigtime. Since getting back from Europe less than a month ago I have purchased almost an entire army.  I'm a huge fan of the new book as it has brought a bit of balance to the lizards, particularly with the toning down of the Slann. I've always enjoyed the Lizardmen fluff and models, and now that I can actually paint with some degree of competence I'm hoping to paint up a really nice looking army. My old lizards were some of the first models I painted, and they suck, like really really suck.

But yeah I'm not even all talk about this project! I've been doing some painting during the last week and have finished my first little cohort of skinks along with a Kroxigor.

Ignore the movement tray, it is a legacy from when I was using Wood Elves and just happened to be about the right size.

Obviously the basing hasn't been done, I'm still deciding exactly how I'm going to approach that. I've very happy with how they've turned out though and I've already started the next batch. Eventually these guys will become a unit of 24 skinks with 3 kroxigor in them, hence painting them in groups of 8 skinks. 10 would make more sense if they were skirmishers, and that will probably be what I do when I get to that stage.

At the moment I am investigating airbrushing and that sort of thing. Every model in the army needs to be basecoated in Liche Purple which means doing it by hand seems a bit inefficient. I've not used an airbrush before however so we'll see how that goes.

That's it for this post then, hopefully I will have one up in the next few days with another 8 skinks to flesh out this unit, after that I'm not sure if I'll finish the unit off or start on something like my Temple Guard or some Ripperdactyls.