Blog Elite Guard of Texustria (painting stuff)

I finally got around to spending my winnings from last weeks tournament. I purchased a box of Ripperdactyls. So far I have only built one Ripper with a magneticly swappable head and one rider. It is hard to get them built whith three children ranging from age 8 to 4 trying to "help".

 

makes life a little interesting, may the force be with you!

I also have a box on them on layby, but i'm using them as terra's as i don't rate ripperdactyls too highly. I'll be making an egg caddy and the other 2 terras so that the chief can be used as the unit champ pretty excited actually!

 

I didn't explain myself very well, but I am magnetizing the heads so I can use them as either rippers or terras. I was going to do the tails/legs as well, but that makes mounting them on the flight stands a much larger problem. I just need to get one more box so I can have six as well as a new skink chief or two. A little creativity with a rock or some green stuff could make for a pretty dynamic looking skink chief on foot.

 

Ripper building is proceeding slowly. All Three are built as well as their riders, but I haven't really thought about painting them yet. I expect I will paint my new table top before the rippers as I finally got shipping confirmation from FedEx. They will arrive on Monday. Having a river is going to mix things up a bit.

The table top is a modular 1'x1' tile set akin to the Realm of Battle boards GW sells. I have been using a RoB board for the last two years and it is nice, but I think the Secret Weapon boards are cooler. We'll see how it actually works out next week.

And if all that wasn't enough, I've been working on building the models for Space Hulk as well. The hardest part is keeping the completed models out of the hands of my 4 yr old. He is quite enamored with the Marines and Genestealers.

EDIT: I'll try to get some pics when I open the boxes.

 

Rise my painting thread! Rise from the ashes in which I abandoned you so long ago!

So after the End Times and the huge disappointment (to me at least) what was the release of Age of Sigmar, I took a "little break" from all things Warhammer (ok, ok... so it was five years and two months and not "little"). Moving out of the city and having to box all of my minis up didn't help my enthusiasm any either. However, I'm loving country living again, but unpacking is a slow process when you downsize by over 1000 square feet and increase headcount by two.

However, some of my minions (er, children) are now old enough to start playing Age of Sigmar, as well as potentially start painting models, so I'm putting a toe back in. I just re-read this entire thread and it has helped to motivate me. I had forgotten how much painting I was doing, how much I enjoyed it and how good some of my still boxed up models look (I need to unbox a few for further motivation).

Speaking of minions, I started an AoS Skirmish series with them (ages 12, 11 and 9) on Sunday. The 12 year old chose High Elves (their aesthetic appeal to her quite a lot), the 11 year old chose Seraphon (that's my boy!) and the 9 year old chose Dark Elves. That left me with the Greenskinz (well Grotz really). We played using the original Skirmish rules/info with 50 points each. The DE/Grots got trounced by the HE/Seraphon (no surprise there, right?), but I had fun. My 9 year old took his loss pretty badly, but he is still learning how to cope with

 

We are now four battles into our Shadespire campaign. So far I have lost three out of four. However, the Seraphon/High Elf team has been victorious each time I lost, so that's good news. The 11 year-old grumbles about the Seraphon not being that good (he has Phoenix Guard save envy pretty bad), but he has a winning record, so I'm not showing much sympathy with his opinion.

 

Well, I have finally gotten my brushes out and got some work done. No Seraphon at the moment as I'm waiting for the Battletome to hit before I spend any time on them (though I really want to get more of them painted). I purchased the Storm Strike box for my son since he wants to play some Stormcast Eternals, so I've been working on the contents.

Nighthaunt models. I still need to highlight finish the bases, but they are good enough for my little jungle swarm to use at home.


Sequitor. Again, need to wash, highlight and base. I've never painted a model quite like these guys, so I was experimenting with colors quite a bit. Lots of metallic paints. I'm not overly happy with them yet, but they are an experiment.
More of the same as above.

 

My oldest son has decided that he would rather play Seraphon than Stormcast. I can't say that I blame him what with the new battletome and all. I picked up my tome and realm shaper on release day and took my son to the Warhammer store with me. It was his first visit and he was wide eyed the whole time. He really enjoyed the visit. He has Apserger's Syndrome, so he gets hyper focused on things and his current focus is Age of Sigmar. We've played a few games with the new tome and he has largely won, but I finally managed to play my Sacrosanct Stormcast something less than horribly (thanks largely to AoS Reminders) and managed my first win against him. He was trying to play a Starborn summoning list that he created, but Kroak and a Starseer just couldn't withstand my Evocator's charge. It ended badly for them....

Speaking of Evocators, I bought a box and painted them up. I like how they're turning out better than the Sequitors and Castigators (which I also like, just not as well).

Sequitors (Storm Strike box set):


Castigators (Strom Strike box set):


Evocators:



The Knight-Incantor brothers:

 

I almost forgot the rest of my chamber. the ballista and crew are pretty much done, but the Griffhound is a perpetual WiP. One day I might actually finish him. Maybe.

Celestar Ballista Griffhound:

 

I got called for work early this morning. While I was working in my office, my oldest son came out (my office is in a separate building from the house which also contains our multi-purpose/game room) and decided he was board, so he "decorated" the gaming table that he left up from our match yesterday. This was the result:


The combined Aelves vs Seraphon made for an interesting diorama. I'm not sure who would win, but I think Aelves might be in trouble....

 

I've finally come back to the Great Plan and got some work done on my Start Collecting Seraphon set. I spent a chunk of last Saturday building the Carnosaur with Scar Vet, starting the Troglodon kit bash and the other Oldblood and Scar Vet kitbashes (including Astrolith) so my middle son could start building the Warriors and Knights (he really likes building the models and painting much more than playing the game). Today he went to work on the remaining models and built them all. Then he started kitbashing on his own. The end result is the model below. Not too shabby for a ten-year-old!

 

Just passing through on my way back from the realm of Azyr. I have been working on my Sacrosanct force lately. I have a serious soft spot for dragons and the Star Drake was begging to come home with me even though he isn't Sacrosanct. This is the result so far:





I wanted a metallic look for the whole thing since it is supposed to be infused with the power of Azyr. I base coated the entire model with a metallic silver spray paint then washed the scales with a sapphire blue wash. The gold colored portions is my usual yellow coat followed by a metallic gold craft paint. The horns and claws have a coat of metallic gold craft paint to give the metallic silver a hint of contrast. The wing membranes were left alone largely due to the fact that the metallic spray I used does not make a good primer. It took a lot of wash to make the sapphire color stick, but I'm very pleased with how it turned out. I may have to do something similar with my new Bastilodon from Start Collecting Skinks.

 

Full metallic suits this model really well!

 

I thought so. In fact I just finished base coating my Carosaur metallic gold and my bastilodon a combo of gold and silver (silver armor plates and gold everything else). I have to let it dry before I remove all of the masking tape, but I have high hopes.

 

Dragon looks amazing.

Reminds me of the D&D Metal Dragon.

 

Thanks. I like the aesthetic enough to try it again.

All taped up




I pulled the tape from the Basti and it turned out much better than I had feared it would.







I've never tried masking a model and I did it the hard way; silver first then gold. I should have done it in reverse.

The next step it to give it a wash or two to make the details pop. I'm thinking sapphire for the silver armor and something I haven't quite identified yet for the gold.

 

The washing is done. I used Secret Weapon's Sapphire wash on the silver scales and Dark Sepia on the gold. I knew how the sapphire would tur out, but the Dark Sepia was an experiment that went so right I could hardly believe it!







Next step is to dry brush the armor plates and work on the details such as eyes, teeth, spikes and claws.

I was speculating with my boys about how to do the crew. I was thinking of making them gold, but I'm not sure that would look right. Any thoughts or opinions on how to make the crew fit, but not blend in completely?