High Elves Army Plog Update #2

The last I blogged about my High Elves was Christmas 2012. Since then, the army has been completed - 2000 points of fully painted High Elves.

My entry for Legio Malaysia Throwdown II

Close up of the BSB

Legio Malaysia's Warhammer Fantasy Army Throwdown gave me the impetus I needed to finish painting the High Elves.

It was a wild ride! The initial trepidation at having to submit a fully painted unit gave way to elation and a sense of fulfilment as I began to complete each unit, week after week, seeing the army growing from the initial 5 man unit of Reavers to reach its eventual 2k points. The next few days will see me bumping this up to 2500 points in order to field a valid army for Legio Malaysia's Warhammer Fantasy Tournament 'Shadows over Nuln' on the 5th April 2014.

Some close up pics to follow.

Tyranid Commission - Pic Heavy

I've started accepting commissions for miniature painting.

A case of being at the right place at the right time saw a whole load of minis coming my way.

This was an army commission initially comprising:

1x Tervigon
1x Carnifex
1x Hive Crone
1x Harpy
40x Termagants
40x Hormagaunts
5x Ripper Swarms
3x Hive Guard

This was the original paint scheme the client wanted.

 Having received the boxes from my client, over the course of the next 2-3 days I proceeded to assemble and prep all the minis.

Harpy WIP

Carnifex and Haruspex WIP

Omnomnomnom!!!

Went for the classic 'screamer killer' look.

Hive Guard

 Phew! All assembled, next - priming.



Primed and ready for paint.

 

I quickly painted up a test mini and sent a pic to the client for approval and I was good to go!

Test model

Test model

The next few weeks would be a blur of painting. My recipe:
Skin - Warpfiend Grey thinned with Lahmian Medium. Shading wash with thinned Druchii Violet. All over glaze with Gulliman Blue.
Carapace - Base Rhinox Hide, drybrushed successively with Trollslayer Orange, Averland Sunset, striations with Rakarth Flesh.
Weapon casings, primary claws - Temple Guard Blue drybrushed with Skink Blue.
Based with sand and small pieces of slate, overbrush with Temple Guard Blue and Ceramite White, flocked with Snow.

Here are a few WIP pics.

 Carnifex WIP.

 Decided to build the Tervigon and enter it into Hobby Forge's March Monster Madness too.

 

 

Completed Tervigon at March Monster Madness



Pre-Heresy Thousand Sons Plog #2

Received my bits to start building my Sekhmet or Scarab Occult Termies and put together some test models.

Still need to get my hands on some Tomb King Tomb Guard kopesh blades to replace the one on the halberds.

Am also gonna build up the bases using cork and other basing materials.

Anubis Termie

Even without the scenic bases, they absolutely tower over 'regular' PA marines and are going to look so badass on the battlefield.

The 'Big Boys'

Pre-Heresy Thousand Sons Plog #1

Well after my initial decision to start making a PH Thousand Sons army, Legio Malaysia announced their "Legio Army Throwdown" as part of their 2013 Legio upcoming events.

This has provided me the incentive to see my PH army though. The Throwdown is simple enough, get a 2000 pt army list, build, paint and present it over a series of weeks, i.e. week 1 - Troops, week 2 - Elites, etc.

Armies must be not more than 25% completed at the time of beginning the challenge. As an added challenge, armies can be built according to a theme decided by the organisers - in this case the theme is "Horus Heresy". That's right up my alley.

Being in Penang and all, I realise that I probably won't officially be in the contention to win any awards, however I will still give my all for this.

Having pored through the Horus Heresy Book One - Betrayal, this is the initial list I've come up with.

HQ
Legion Praetor (represents Magnus the Red, The Crimson King, Primarch of The Thousand Sons)
Cataphractii Terminator Armour, Combi-bolter, Paragon blade
-155 pts

Legion Centurion (represents Ahzek Ahriman, Chief Librarian, Corvidae Cult and 1st Fellowship Captain)
Consul - Librarian, Level 3 Psychic Mastery - Divination
Artificer Armour, Refractor field, Force weapon, plasma pistol, frag and krak grenades
- 170 pts

Legion Centurion (represents Phosis T'Kar, Magister Templi of the Raptorae and 2nd Fellowship Captain)
Consul - Moritat
Artificer Armour, Plasma pistol x2, frag, krak and rad grenades
- 125 pts


Elites
Legion Command Squad (represents the Sekhmet or Scarab Occult)
3x Cataphractii Terminators combi-bolter, power weapon, 1x Thunder hammer
- 160 pts

Legion Contemptor Dreadnought Talon (represents the Pyrae Cult)
3x Contemptor Dreadnoughts -
a. Multimelta and dreadnought CCW with heavy flamer
b. Kheres Pattern assault cannon and dreadnought CCW with heavy flamer
c. Twin-linked autocannon x2
- 575 pts

Legion Apothecarion Detachment (represents the Pavoni Cult)
2x Apothecary
- 90 pts

Troops
Legion Tactical Squad (represents the Athanaean Cult)
15x Thousand Sons, Sergeant with Power fist, Power armour, bolter, bolt pistol, frag and krak grenades,
- 215 pts

Legion Tactical Squad (represents the Athanaean Cult)
15x Thousand Sons, Sergeant with Power fist, Power armour, Bolt pistol, CCW, frag and krak grenades
- 215 pts

Heavy Support
Legion Heavy Support Squad (represents the Raptora Cult)
7x Thousand Sons, Sergeant, 7x Missiles Launchers, Frag, Krak and Flakk missiles
- 295 pts

Total: 2000 pts

Will be posting updates as I go. In the meantime, thanks for looking.

High Elves Army Plog Update #1

With the recent flurry of painting work to complete my Chaos Daemons in time for Chosen and also The Outpost's Painting Challenge, I've been psyched up to complete all the half finished armies on my back burners.

I've dug the High Elves out of mothballs and am going to start chronicling their journey from basecoat to table top.

Heres the army thus far:

Lord choice is an Archmage. For games where named characters are allowed I'd definately go for Teclis.

Next up is a BSB Noble. Am planning to use the banner bearer from the Swordmasters command group to represent him

For my core troops I can choose from  3 main blocks.
a. 20 Archers (to be assembled)
b. 20 Lothern Seaguard

c. 28 Spearelves

Moving on to the Specialist troops:

a. horde of 30 White Lions (much choppy death - 15 done, 15 to go)

b. 20 Phoenix Guard to act as my mage bunker (10 done, 10 to go)

c. 14 Swordmasters (even more choppy death)

d. 5 Dragon Princes

e. Lion Chariot (assembled)

Finally a Great Eagle to round up the rare choice. Really hoping to win this bid on Ebay for the Coolminiornot Great Eagle model. Its an awesome mini!

Will be targeting to complete this army by March or April.

Keep looking for more updates.

Chaos Daemons Chosen 2012 Update #2

Managed to get some painting done over the weekend. Though not as much as I would have liked.

Earlier on had a bit of a panic as I suddenly realised that I didn't have the Changeling model. Luck was on my side though as a quick shout out on Facebook yielded the model that I needed.

Thank you to the Dutchman in Penang! Now I just have to replace the model that he loaned to me.

So I got started on the Lord of Change and Daemon Prince as these would be the focal point of the army and I wanted to spend as much time as I could on them.

Also managed to basecoat all the models (except the Changeling).

Started doing the chiaroscuro for the LoC, DP and flamers.

Recap for those who missed my earlier post:

1. Basecoat whole model Chaos Black spray.
2. First drybrush all over with Codex Grey using large drybrush.
3. 1st highlights with Fortress Grey using large drybrush.
4. 2nd highlights with Fortress Grey / Skull White mix, using large drybrush, hitting the highest areas.
5. Final highlights with Skull White using a small drybrush, only hitting the highest points. Edge highlighting where requrired.

After doing that I'm left with this:


Chiaroscuro done.
 

Did the same with the DP.

 After drybrushing the flamers, I started to layer in the colour washes.

1. Guilliman Blue glaze 1:3 with water.
2. For the flamers fire, I used Kabalite Green 1:3 with water to block in where I wanted a 'ghostly flame' look - mainly on the hands and the flames around their back and head.

After first few layers of washing. Can't really see the effect on the flamers in this pic. (will try to post some better shots)

This is after 3 layers of blue and green washes.

 The trick with chiaroscuro is to get a nice monotone to set your highlights and shading, then you just need to wash the model in your selected colour. However on large models like the LoC, you will need to take it another step and do some highlighting after you are done blocking in the large areas of colour.

One thing I like about the LoC is the amount of texture on the model rewards careful highlighting. I'll probably need to do some final highlights and glaze over with ink to complete the effect I'm looking for but overall I'm quite happy with the way it turned out.

Added several more layers of blue and started to layer in some Hawk Turquoise on the leading edges of the wings.

 Am looking to have a gradation of colour from an Icy Blue through Hawk Turquoise, to Dark Blue and finally blending into purple at the trailing edge of the wings.

 

Still lots to be done, so I'm going to be painting up a storm over the next 3-4 days.

Wish me luck!

PI Monthly Painting Challenge - Done!

Started on this guy at 11.25 pm using a technique I found on the web called 'chiaroscuro' - Italian for 'light-dark'. It involves blocking out sections using gradients of shading.

Basecoat Chaos Black

Drybrush all over with Codex Grey

Drybrush highlights with Fortress Grey and Skull White

Add colour using washes.

Robes - Guilliman Blue Glaze 1:3 parts water, several layers
Armour - Leadbelcher 1:3 parts water, several layers
Gold - stain the Leadbelcher using Devlan Mud and Calthan Brown 1:1:3 parts water
Chaos Icons - Hawk Turqoise and Mephiston Red
Staff - Warlock Purple stain 1:3 parts water with Skull White added for definition and lining
Skin - Codex Grey and Caledor Sky 1:1:3 parts water 
Eyes - Mephiston Red
Shading - Nuln Oil to tips of horns and in between armour plates
Base - Codex Grey shaded with Devlan Mud and Nuln Oil

The finished Chaos Sorcerer Lord

 The whole model took me about one and a half hours to complete and I'm quite happy with the results.

The Chiaroscuro technique is really fast because it uses a lot of drybrushing. Careful drybrushing to define the light and dark areas of the model coupled with several careful layers of colour washes brings the whole model together and is good enough for table top quality.

I think I should be able to pull off my 1.5 k army in 2 weeks at this rate.