Army Builder

Tribute to Natural Light

2009-06-24T13:15:00.000-07:00

I've drinken a lot of Natural Light over the course of my many modelling and painting sessions. Today I went to the fridge and saw on the Natty box something I had not before seen - a glossary of natty terminology that I thought was funny. I happened to have some left over boxes laying around and they were all quite funny - here they are

nattrick and natisfaction are my favorites - nice idea from the marketing folks at Natural Light

first batch of skinks

2009-06-22T18:56:00.000-07:00

I'm ten skinks deep into my lizardmen army. I'm also getting sick of my camera - it is old and the close up feature doesn't give me enough of a close up. My saurus test model is close, but needs a little more thought put into the spikes on his back. If I roll, I think I can still get it done by july 18th. I've been playing the list alot and will probably roll them out again on thursday.

Dragon game fun in Marshalltown

2009-06-08T09:58:00.000-07:00

My new terrain - mostly made out of Natural Light 12 packs.

So my new dragon game buddy Wes and I have started a mini-campaign. Before each game we play about a 200 point skirmish and whoever wins that gets some sort of advantage in the larger scale game. It is a blast and it has encouraged me to try my hand at building some terrain rather than playing with boxes, books, and pringles cans.

The docks - VC took over a cargo ship and charged the boat house in the skirmish!

Empire trying to reclaim the defiled church and village.

Lizzies are spawned

2009-06-08T09:50:00.000-07:00

Here is the basic army that I fielded yesterday. I have more stuff that is not shown here but this is the first stage. I think I can get everything based today with a strong effort and start primer coating tomorrow.

Pump Wagons

2009-04-26T11:18:00.000-07:00

Nietzel always makes gives me crap about having two Giants in my Orcs and Goblins list. So I have recently thrown together two Snotling pump wagons to replace one Giant. (Pump Wagons are a two for one rare option for O&G.) I didn't want to pay the 30+ bucks for each of them, so I decided to scratch build them instead. I bought a packet of 15 snotlings for 15 bucks - the packet had been opened and taped shut and it appeared to have more dudes in it than the other snotling packet at the store, whichs was weird - perhaps I inadvertently gave myself a five finger discount on some of these guys. These conversions came out better than I anticipated, and once they are based, should add some variation to my mounted O&G list.

Necromunda over the weekend

2009-03-30T18:52:00.000-07:00

I had Caleb "Smalls" Van Winkle and Andrew Finke come over for the weekend to play board games, including the every more popular Necromunda. We have had some fun, made some house rules, and generally shot the hell out of each other in a pretend post apocalyptic gang warfare setting.

Finke had his gang leader get captured, and on Sunday afternoon we cued up the "Rescue" scenario. It was the most fun game that I have had yet, and from the beginning we decided to take pics. It got bloody, thats for sure.

I started by deploying 6 sentries that move a random D3 inches and face a random directions. After Finke's guys are detected the alarm goes off and I am able to bring on an extra 2 guys per turn. Finke was climbing up the side of the prison building before I detected him and even with the numbers advantage on my side after a few turns, he was able to cut the prisoner loose and get him off the table edge. Finke took six of my guys out of action during the game. Two of my sentries got ambushed and taken out before they could sound the alarm. He couldn't take down my leader though - at least to keep him down. He must have gotten pinned (hit but not wounded) three or four times. Each time he passed his initiative test and popped up to kick some ass. It was super sweet.

terrain set up

2009-03-30T18:49:00.001-07:00

Just another day in the Underhive

2009-03-30T18:41:00.000-07:00

Intruders Detected

2009-03-30T18:10:00.000-07:00

Casket of Souls

2009-03-18T09:24:00.000-07:00

Although I'm not sure about the effectiveness of this unit, certainly it has some of the coolest fluff in the TK book.

chariots, chariots, chariots ... chariots.......... chariots

2009-03-16T15:33:00.000-07:00

2009-03-16T15:30:00.000-07:00

Necromunda Gang #1

2009-03-07T19:54:00.000-08:00

This gang is themed after a recurrent class discussion amongst my 12th graders, which is that some day in the post-apocalyptic future, my history class will have to form a shotgun brigade to defend the Meskwaki Settlement from white intrusion and scavangers.

It was nice painting these up, as I have been enjoying Necromunda quite a bit recently. Now I have no excuses though - time to get back to skeletons.

Leader and two Heavies

Gangers

Gangers

Juves

Liche Priest

2009-03-04T15:54:00.000-08:00

Necromunda Game #2

2009-02-28T08:35:00.000-08:00

Necromunda round 2. Bought the official terrain on ebay. Had a good game with Andrew Finke. He had two rounds of terrible shooting, followed by a phenomenal round of shooting which forced me to bow out and try to stop the bleeding. I maybe should have gone one more round to try to stand some of my guys up, but it could have gotten even worse.
At the end of the game I rolled awesome on the serious injury chart, and most of my guys got away scott free. One guy got a head injury and now before each battle has to roll a dice to see whether he is stupid or frenzied. One of Finke's gangers lost his left eye. I leveled up my Leader and rolled sweet on the Techno skills chart (armorer = +1 to all gang ammo check rolls). Finke rolled on the Shooting chart and got "gunslinger" for his leader, the ability to shoot with a pistol in each hand.
Me trying to sneak up on Finke - He would end up raining down on me. My heavy got taken out again before I could use him.
Gangers stalking around the ruins of the Underhive. These guys ate a frag grenade
Finke's Heavy finds some nice cover. He won the game and ended up with one of my territories, which is a big hit to my income.

Tomb Kings infantry

2009-02-23T15:32:00.000-08:00

I hope Richter brings 4 Scorpions for specials and never plays Tomb Guard since I only spent about a day of my life making this unit. I had a good start on the unit, then started watching "The Civil War" by Ken Burns as I painted. I finished the documentary before I got done painting the unit.

Pudwhackers
Seth wanted more skeleton archers. Got this batch done, only 25 more to go!

mounted TK plus Bone Giant

2009-02-23T15:20:00.000-08:00

2008-06-18T17:33:00.000-07:00

Wardancers are done. I learned a lot about painting skin with these guys. I felt that I got much better from painting the first to the last. I bought a dropper and am watering paint down now, then I go back and highlight. Also, you can see my pink chair in the background.

2008-06-18T17:30:00.000-07:00

Dryads are done.

Karl Franz

2008-06-07T16:28:00.000-07:00

Karl Franz and Deathclaw the Griffon came in my Empire Army that I aquired. They were both broken up, so I put them back together, and created a little rocky outcropping for them to go on. I don't know if I want to keep this or try to sell it. It looks pretty decent, but I don't think I would ever bring it in battle. The griffon is just too easy to kill.

2008-06-04T12:52:00.000-07:00

Kind of poor lighting on the pictures... but oh well. I aquired an Empire army through Seth Richter a few years ago. In my opinion, its paint job was pretty nasty. When Anderson took it to the two tournaments last year, I had repainted some of the models. This year, I plan on taking it and I have recommitted to the new paintjobs. It is going well so far.

Empire

2008-06-04T12:46:00.000-07:00

I put together a bunch of scraps to make an Empire War Altar. I did some decent conversion on the guy. The magic item that I gave him in the game is called the Mace of Helstrom, which is super powerful, so I wanted to try to paint it up like the hammer in the Mark of Chaos video, where the guy prays and the hammer gets charged with the energy from heaven. Didn't do too bad

Snow Day Production

2008-02-18T19:38:00.000-08:00

I finished painting my unit of Eternal Guard today. I love not going to work because of the weather. Oops - its snowing out - Jesse doesn't have to go to work. So anyway, I just have to put the snow on the bases and this unit is done. How sweet is the magnetic base? This way d-bags that splash the pot with huge casino dice won't piss me off. Well, they will still piss me off, but at least they won't send my models flying. For the main base, I put down a layer of that magnet tape, and then each guy has a little 'rare-earth' magnet on his base. It's a pretty tight hold - any tighter and it would be difficult to remove the model.

Recent Production

2008-02-17T18:01:00.000-08:00

This weekend, I didn't have anything going on - so I got back into painting and modeling. I got all 12 of my Dryads painted to this level - not sure if i will do more highlighting or not. I need to pick up another box somewhere to complete my list. Also, I started doing the detail work on my High Elves (used as Eternal Guard Unit.)

It gets easy to lose the desire to sit around and paint this shit. Today's distractions included some decent movies on Starz - Captain Ron, The Rock, followed by American Gladiators Finale, and Knight Rider season opener. Its amazing I got anything done at all. I hope to play some WH in March - and then May starts the summer tournament routine.

Treekin underway

2008-02-17T17:57:00.000-08:00

My idea of making treekin look like creatures of the forest was lambasted by Nietzel. I still like the idea, and have continued modeling them - the sad thing is, he was right and they look kind of gay. So I am making a bunch more tree looking dudes from dowels and greenstuff. The top models are almost complete and the bottom ones, in the beginning stage. These bastards take a long time to make, but still better than paying 15 bucks a pop for them i suppose.

Noble on Great Eagle

2008-02-17T17:52:00.001-08:00

I pieced together this female Noble from the Battalion box leftovers. I bought this Great Eagle on eBay about a year ago. I don't have this in my initial list, but it may be an effective unit in future variant lists.

More horseys

2008-02-17T17:34:00.000-08:00

Awhile ago, I got some more horses painted to the point where they are almost done. Also, I constructed 12 Glade Guard and 12 Glade Guard Scouts (not pictured). I put together the other ten or so Glade Riders (horsey guys). I have all of these models based and primed.

Special Slot Construction

2008-01-07T19:26:00.000-08:00

These "treekin" models are in the process of being sweet. I used sculpey clay to form a body, which i will cover in green stuff and texture it like bark. I am not sure how well the stick models will mix with the new sculpey models. I guess I will wait and see - I can always add more of one or the other types of models I suppose. The deer will be modeled after the dear that kicks the guys ass in "When Animals Attack". The squirrel will look pretty pissed and possibly funny with the short arms. I wanted the bear to not be attacking, but just growling with a huge mouth. I think i might have gone over the top - but again, we are talking about demonic trees that partly resemble animals, so who knows what that would look like. The stick figure guy to the right was inspired by the Transormer (Bonecrusher - Decepticon [I am gay]) that goes after Optimus Prime with the Scorpion thing.

Rare slots

2008-01-01T20:32:00.000-08:00

for the rare slots I am using the albion list truthsayer and two fenbeasts. I am using the 'hengus' model for the truthsayer and making my own fenbeasts, which i will think of as Snow Elementals. I am making the snow elementals out of 'sculpey' which is a putty that you form up and then bake to make it tough. It worked pretty well in the trial run - a keeper I think. For the second fenbeast/snow elemental, I am just going to make the other hand.

Testing, 1-2, testing...

2008-01-01T20:23:00.000-08:00

Here are some pictures of my initial painting and basing schemes. I am pretty pleased. It isn't perfect, but whatever. The horse is my favorite. When Nietzel was trying to talk me into starting Warhammer years ago, I remember thinking that if I were to paint horses, I would want to try to paint spotted horses, because that is what we had on our farm, and they are sweet. I couldn't believe how well my first attempt turned out.

I couldn't resist trying out a piece of wintery terrain. I made a rocky outcropping. I am using something called 'snow-tex' for the snow. It is super easy. It is what old ladies use for giving pinecones and wreaths the snow effect for christmas. It looks like fine-grade cottage cheese. It pastes on and dries in about an hour. It is very easy to work with, and much less messy than the powder stuff that I started with. Anyone want to buy a big-ass jar of fake snowy powder stuff?

Wintery Wood Elves

2008-01-01T20:12:00.000-08:00

After years of piecing together an Orcs and Goblins army, I learned some things about my painting abilities and preferences.

1. I am sick of painting everything green.
2. I want to switch it up and do a winter theme.
3. most importantly - I learned to paint from above the table, or what I
think of as "painting from a distance".

I would spend hours painting the O&G and tediously. I tried to paint every detail, and would paint the model right in front of my face. Then I played with the models and couldn't see any of my detailing during the actual game. I realized that contrast matters more than detail from a distance. Painting for contrast also doesn't require tons of layering highlights, inking, and dry brushing. You can do it, but instead of 12-15 steps, I hope to paint most of my new models in 3 or 4 steps. I think I am learning to be a more efficient painter. Pictured above: general on dragon. Just getting started on him.

modeling

2008-01-01T20:06:00.000-08:00

I really like making conversions on models. For this project, I decided that I want to model most of the stuff that is in my army that is non-core. I plan on making my treekin from scratch. I don't care for the GW models very much, and plan on making mine look guys as well as animals in the forest. I modeled a spider out of greenstuff, and have a deer in the making. A little "before" and "after" for you on the first of the scratch built models. It turned out above my expectations.

Begin Production

2008-01-01T19:41:00.000-08:00

I am now starting a wood elf army. I bought some High Elf spearmen to use as eternal guard a long time ago. Then on ebay the other day, I bought a small war party of six glade riders and five glade scouts. I figured that I would use these just to practice my color scheme on, which I did. I am now pretty pleased with the idea and yesterday a called up the Wood Elves battalion on ebay for 75 (usually 90).