Blog Anton's Lizards

[Anton_S]

Hello Lustria Online! This is my first post but I thought I might as well jump in at the deep end and start a paintlog. I already have one on the Ogre Stronghold and one on Da Warpath, but the Ogres are nearly finished (well, as much as any army is ever finished anyway) and the greenskins are something of an ongoing project ... I figured I could handle another one and I was struck by inspiration.

So I took the plunge and ordered a few boxes of shiny new toys. I prefer to pick the models I like the best and worry about shoehorning them into an army list later, so a Carnosaur was at the top of my list along with the packs of glyphs and glyph plates available from GW Direct. Unfortunately the Carnosaur turned out to be miscast but I'm confident customer service will sort that out.

I have a number of ideas I'm toying with at this stage and any input is welcome. I'm still waiting to break open the first battalion so nothing is set in stone.

• Everything is based on foundation paints drybrushed over a black undercoat. The extra coverage of the foundation range makes this a very efficient technique. I did this for my previous armies and I'm rather happy with the result (paintlogs are linked in my signature).
  
• Main skin colour is Tallarn Flesh, which is a brown with a bit of pink in it. Highlights will be Dheneb Stone, and I might add a wash of some colour if I'm not happy with the tone.
  
• Secondary colours are bone in Dheneb Stone with white highlighting, stone details in dark purple with sharp highlighting and gold details painted Iyanden Darksun with white highlights and a sepia wash. There may also be room for a spot of green I think.
  
• I want solid blocks of Saurus Warriors and Temple guard of a decent size. Is 20 enough or should I have 30? I plan to make these units stand out by replacing the skin shields with large square stone shields made from glyph plates.
  
• Bases could be paved and overgrown, maybe with some kind of jungle plants. Not sure how to do this yet. Styrofoam or plaster moulds?
  
• I want to convert Lord Mazdamundi as a centrepiece at some point, but I'm keeping my fingers crossed for a finecast version of the Slann for a while longer first. Hopefully I can make a flexible model that can be removed and fielded as an ordinary Slann as well.
  
• Skirmishers will have movement trays where I can really make the basing stand out.

That's about it really. So feel free to add your input, or just say hello.

 

[Omar]

Hi and welcome to Lustria! Wasn't able to see your O&G for some reason but the OK models look amazing. I love the basing on the Gnoblars, it gives the illusion that the wind is blowing as the march up wind. Love your Ogre BSB and the red hew you gave all of them. If you lizardmen end up looking anything like the Lizard mount you painted for your OK they will look amazing. Looking forward to seeing your LM.

 

[Arli]

Welcome aboard. I have probably seen your paintlog on the Ogre Stronghold. I am not a very active member over there though.

Anyway, to answer your questions about saurus and temple guard. You should have at least 20 temple guard. With 20, you will have a 6 wide unit that will have the slann in the center and full protection all around. However, you may want to pad that some by having 25 or 30 total. As far as saurus go, I would have to say you need more of them than the temple guard. If I was just starting an army, I would get at least 40 saurus. 50 would probably be more rounded though. These I almost always run 6 wide. I also only use hand weapon and shields on my saurus.

Lord Mazdamundi- I use a regular slann model and my stegadon as mazdamundi. It is simple and effective. My stegadon is modeled with plenty of space on the palaquin for my priest/chief/crew. I made them removable for that purpose.

Mazdamundi is really fun to play as well.

 

[Anton_S]

Hi and welcome to Lustria! Wasn't able to see your O&G for some reason but the OK models look amazing. I love the basing on the Gnoblars, it gives the illusion that the wind is blowing as the march up wind. Love your Ogre BSB and the red hew you gave all of them. If you lizardmen end up looking anything like the Lizard mount you painted for your OK they will look amazing. Looking forward to seeing your LM.

Thank you. I tested the link to Da Warpath again and it works for me so no idea what went wrong there.

Anyway, to answer your questions about saurus and temple guard. You should have at least 20 temple guard. With 20, you will have a 6 wide unit that will have the slann in the center and full protection all around. However, you may want to pad that some by having 25 or 30 total. As far as saurus go, I would have to say you need more of them than the temple guard. If I was just starting an army, I would get at least 40 saurus. 50 would probably be more rounded though. These I almost always run 6 wide. I also only use hand weapon and shields on my saurus.

Good points. That's 50 Saurus in two units of 25, right? Six wide is going to look nice as well so it's all good.

Lord Mazdamundi- I use a regular slann model and my stegadon as mazdamundi. It is simple and effective. My stegadon is modeled with plenty of space on the palaquin for my priest/chief/crew. I made them removable for that purpose.

Mazdamundi is really fun to play as well.

Good to hear! Thank you for your comments.

 

[Lord Cedric]

Hello and welcome to Lustria!

Since I am member and partially-active on both the Stronghold and DaWarpath, I took a real keen interest in your respective plogs and I must say. HOLY SMOKES THATS AWESOME!!

I've got a decent sized Ogre army to paint (about 4000 pts) and Orcs & Goblins (6000+) and have been dreading it as I am typically a slow painter. My signature will give you an idea of how many armies I have to paint as the only ones that are, are Brets and Dwarfs and I just am finishing up building a 4000 pt Tomb Kings army. But your method seems like it would be quick with GREAT results! Even with the extra modding involved. Truly I am inspired more than ever to do this just by looking intentively at your plogs. A BIG thank you for giving your painting recipe too!

I am very much looking forward to what you will create with the Lizardmen and give me even more inspiration with minimal perspiration effectively creating a masterful managerie of many magnificent models! (errr.. sorry fo the alliteration, just came out that way!)

- Lord Cedric

 

[Arli]

You can use the saurus as 2 units of 25. I generally will take one unit of 30 or so. I have never taken 50 because I only have about 44-45 or so. I do have a huge amount of skinks though (about 175).

 

[Lord Tsunami]

i checked through your other blogs and i must say i really like what i see. your high contrast drybrushing style will probably lend itself very well to lizardmen. i saw some wonderful conversions among your other work as well, so im really looking forward to what you can whip up for lizards

two pieces of advice i want to give to any one who starts with lizards (there are just my opinion ofc)

1) do NOT go for the standard blue theme. it is boring and you will most likely get fed up with it before you are done. blue is fine, but please please please do not just copy from the box (judging from your creativity with your other armies this shouldnt be a big problem )

2) i am not saying you have to, but it is easy to cut the crests of the sauruses to get them looking like proper sauruses. i know i am one of very few ppl who does it, but many ppl ive talked to says "i wish i thought of that before i did my army..." you can check my signature for pics of what i mean


Good luck with the project. ill follow this closely

 

[Anton_S]

But your method seems like it would be quick with GREAT results! Even with the extra modding involved. Truly I am inspired more than ever to do this just by looking intentively at your plogs. A BIG thank you for giving your painting recipe too!

Thank you. I started painting this way because I realised that I could never paint all the armies I wanted without a quicker way to paint them -- especially as this was around the time that our first child was born.

Then Foundation paints came along and things really took off. It's great to have a good range of colours that can be drybrushed over black on any surface with good results with no mixing. I can paint everything quite fast and with one heavy drybrush of the basic colour and one or two highlight drybrushings I will get a strong contrast which looks very effective on the table.

I wish you luck with all your projects, you certainly have a lot on your plate.

I am very much looking forward to what you will create with the Lizardmen and give me even more inspiration with minimal perspiration effectively creating a masterful managerie of many magnificent models! (errr.. sorry fo the alliteration, just came out that way!)

We'll see how it turns out. I haven't had any ideas for centrepiece conversions so far apart from Mazdamundi and he's pretty much defined in the fluff already. But I have high hopes for the custom Saurus shields. Right now I'm trying to make a good mold of it so I can make a lot more identical ones from my favourite glyph plates.

My army is still somewhere in the mail. I only got Kroq Gar and the plates from Direct so far and the Carnosaur was miscast. They sent out another though so I'll get plenty of spare bits out of that.

1) do NOT go for the standard blue theme. it is boring and you will most likely get fed up with it before you are done. blue is fine, but please please please do not just copy from the box (judging from your creativity with your other armies this shouldnt be a big problem )

I agree and I'm not going for the blue. And you're right, I never copy from the box anyway.

2) i am not saying you have to, but it is easy to cut the crests of the sauruses to get them looking like proper sauruses. i know i am one of very few ppl who does it, but many ppl ive talked to says "i wish i thought of that before i did my army..." you can check my signature for pics of what i mean

They do look good that way, but I quite like the latest incarnation of the Saurus as is. I'll know for sure when I have the models but I don't think I'll do it.

Thanks again for all your imput, everyone! I'm getting a ton of encouragement despite not having painted (let alone posted) a single Skink yet.

 

[Anton_S]

So I finally got the first batch of plastics, a used lot I got a pretty good deal on considering only ten of them had any paint.

The first thing I need to decide on is whether to go ahead with my glyph shields or give up on it. They aren't as easy to make as I had hoped and I'm starting to wonder if it's worth it. Also, I didn't know the Temple Guard came with one piece shield+arm assemblies so that's even more work to remove the existing shield.

I made a mock up of a Saurus with glyph shield and I would like your opinions. Will it look awesome enough to put in the extra hours (I'll need to do at least 60 of them) or is this a 'kill your darlings' situation?

 

[Arli]

They look good. My son even mentioned how cool it looked over my shoulder. Do you think it was worth the time? It will really make the army stand out in a tournament or even at the local club.

 

[Qupakoco]

Oh man, that will take a lot of work. They look really good though. Perhaps you could make it easier on yourself if you used bits from the saurus kits to decorate the shield. Then you only have to make a bunch of squares.

 

[DanBot]

That is cool. Almost too cool. I think you should save it for heros.

 

[Lord Tsunami]

love it. its like its the essence of a shield. just a flat surface to protect you, nothing else. very basic, very saurus-ish

 

[Anton_S]

Thanks guys, that's the kind of reaction that will reinforce my faith in this concept.

To clarify, I'm not sculpting these shields from scratch. I ordered a pack of glyph plates from GW and made a couple of masters that I can press green stuff into to copy the surface. It's still pretty hard but I hope I will get better as I go. If not I'll have to go with DanBot's suggestion and save them for the heroes.

 

[Creeping Death]

I like them a lot! You will put in a lot of time, but I think you will smile every time you put them on the battlefield. Will you also try to put other shield on Skinks too? Good luck with the amputation of the TG .

 

[Anton_S]

I made a couple of more shields and most come out with some small defect or other. I think I'll try and paint them and see how they turn out. They don't have to be perfectly identical as they are supposed to be made by Skink artisans and not factory produced but it can't look too shabby either.

Not sure what to do with Skink shields, right now I haven't even planned any Skinks with shields but I do have smaller glyphs as well so it's definitely possible.

 

[Anton_S]

I changed materials for the shields. Now I use stone cast plaster which is much faster than the green stuff. It cures really hard so it isn't as fragile as you might think, but I'm still a bit worried about them breaking as they may get irreparable if they do get damaged. On the other hand I made 10 moulds so I can make a few extra to replace any damaged ones on the finished models.

The ones that don't turn out well I can break up for rubble and paint like sandstone. They should look good on bases.


Not the best picture but you get the idea. Bottom pile is raw from the mould, the ones at the top are sanded into the right shape.

Also got the rest of my orders today. I'm very keen to get going but I need to be disciplined and finish a Scraplauncher and 4 Mournfangs first.

 

[Arli]

What did you use to make the mould?

 

[Anton_S]

What did you use to make the mould?

Instant Mold. Very easy to work with as it goes soft in hot water and can be recycled.

 

[Arli]

I thought that was what I saw in your picture. I have not had a chance to get some yet. Looks like it would be very easy to use.