Blog Warden's Other Paint Log

... and as a bonus to my army photos, here is the cockpit of my Archaeoraptor!

 

awesome.

That cockpit is an amazing touch to a great army

Great work!

Grrr, Imrahil

 

I appreciate the compliments!


Onto my next project.

I purchased this lot of Cryx from Warmachine well over a year ago for $90:



It was in the clearance section of a local game store, they were getting rid of their on-the-shelf warmachine stock, probably due to mark III removing a lot of their player base

• Starter Battle Box (Agathia Caster, Reaper and Slayer heavy warjacks, deathripper light warjack)
• 2x Deathripper light warjacks
• 2x Ripjaw light warjacks
• 1x Corruptor/Malice/Reaper warjack
• 15x Blackmane Ghost pirates
• Kraken colossal warjack

Regardless, I always wanted to give Cryx a try, as not only is green my favorite color (and therefore they would have to be the faction I try to paint first) but I really like the piratey-zombie-mechanical theme they had going on. Plus there warjacks were the coolest.

Sadly a lot of the game meta seems to be focused on infantry, but I want to give a bunch of warjacks a go too.

Here is the battle box contents:



My plan is to start with the battle box, and the unit of Blackbane's Ghost Pirates, and begin testing out colors.



To go along with the piratey feel of the army, I wanted to make some wood-floored bases for all the models too.



I liked the warcaster (Bane Witch Agathia) but had to do a little conversion work



She has a few leftover adeptus mechanicus bits to give her a few extra mechanical arms, and I added more of a "spider helmet" look with a bit from the van-saar necromunda gang I have yet to paint.

Looking forward to experimenting with the paint scheme for these guys. Most of the armor will be green, with the bone or skin planning to be a gray/light purple color.

 

Second haul of cryx models showed up yesterday, I unboxed them all today.



This batch cost roughly $75, and all were second hand models, to include one missing a base (easily replaced).

• Erebus heavy warjack
• Nightwretch light warjack
• Defiler light warjack
• Aiakos solo
• 10x Bile Thralls

Also added the list of my cryx models to my previous post.

The bile thralls are first on the chopping box to get their paint stripped off. Fortunately i was able to save all but two of their bases when I took them off.

Spoiler: stripping the paint

Going to let these sit for a day.

 

The ghost pirates are well on their way to being complete:

Spoiler: ghost pirates

Final stuff that needs to be done is highlights for the purple-white bone/skin and the bright parakeet green for the flames. The dude on the right is mostly done, except for the eyes:



Considering doing a matt wash for these guys, never tried it before but I think that will help cut down on the sliminess, especially for the wood on the base.

 

I love this level of detail. That's a steady painting hand you've got there!

 

Totally like these, big fan of the wooden deck on the bases.
Purple-ish green is a great combination

Grrr, Imrahil

 

Thanks! Most of the work on the admech flyer's control panel was done with a toothpick. That's how I do basically all the eyes on miniatures now.

Got about half of the ghost pirates complete:

 

Finished my cryx ghost pirates!



The ghostly-looking ones:



The piratey-ones:



The genie-ones:



And the Jared-Leto-Joker-looking-ones:



For some reason one of them was missing a leg. Never had something like this happen for a metal model before, but in this case it works great considering most of them have swirling gas for legs anyway.

...and the leader of the group, Captain Blackbane himself:

 

A couple moar pics because I took a ton:



Top-down view of the wooden bases:



I think the matte-varnish I used on these guys helped a lot. Never done that before, really cut down on the excessive shine after all the washes I used.

Spoiler

Last picture of the full photo-terrain setup!

This brings me up to 200 completed models since June of this year!!!

 

very nice work on those, and quickly done. Good work on your backlog

Grrr, Imrahil

 

Next up, some WIPs of the cryx battlebox warjacks and caster. The deathripper is the furthest on its way to completion, and is my test model for the warjack scheme.



Painting the bigger jacks is going to be a fun challenge.

Spoiler: moar WIPs

How the deathripper looked in the initial stages of its progress (see: ugly )





The big jacks:



Slayer's leg broke off



Agathia with her base coats done:



Bile thralls are also all stripped and re-base-coated, ready for painting. Will start them soon, but don't plan to finish any of the rest of the cryx on my workbench until the battlebox is done first. That way I can at least have a minimum-sized Cryx army to use on the fields of warmachine!

 

Great paint jobs!
What game are the models for?

 

Thanks!

These are for the game Warmachine from company Privateer Press. Fantasy/steampunk game, where magic and science are basically the same thing, and armies fight each other with infantry, wizards, and also giant magical construct-golem-warmachines called warjacks.

I like the ascetic of the game, especially the Cryx faction (undead steampunk pirates). They also have a more "primal" version of the game called Hordes, that is interchangable and can play against Warmachine in the rules just fine, but instead of warjacks it has giant beasties and monsters instead. Same company that made my gatormen.

From the reviews I have seen it plays more like a skirmish game than WHF, with no huge units except for some infantry. Also plays a bit like chess, where your king and queen is combined into one character (warcaster, super powerful wizard/warrior who if they die, you loose), and all your pieces have different rules.

 

Calling my deathripper bonejack done, great test model. The matte varnish on the metallic parts helped even out the model.





Just got to paint brown around the base edge.

Spoiler: next on the paint table

Also some shots of my painting table. I had to move around some stuff so my samurai cavalry are on my desk now too, along with some still-to-be-assembled warjacks:



Also making a new rubber mold, along with the rest of my cryx forces:



But Warden, you ask... is that a grasshopper on your desk while you are painting?

Why yes! Yes it is

 

Nicely fits the paintscheme of the Cryx you did

Good work!

Grrr, Imrahil

 

Thanks!

Current status of the rest of the box set:
The warjacks:



The warcaster:

 

Moar cryx on the table, I assembled my heavy warjack Corruptor and Malice from pieces from the same kit, as well as some parts cast and bits purchased from Hoard-o-Bits:

Spoiler

Corruptor:



Malice:

And in a fast painting left-turn, I was inspired to paint up some samurai cavalry that have been sitting on my painting table since over a year ago, and I didn't get around to finishing over the summer when I finished a large batch of my samurai project.



Seven more cavalry members complete, to include the two on the left with bows. Just gotta add some plants to the bases and they will be done!

 

Nice models.

GW should bring back Nippon in TOW in my opinion. I've had so many great ideas for samurai rules.

 

I like the colors on those Samurai

Grrr, Imrahil