The Dragon is in the Details...

Holy falling guano Batman!  This week has been buzzing with activity, as I make hobby progress in leaps and bounds.  I’ve decided to try a different approach to staving off hobby boredom by working on a whole mess of things at the same time.  For my hobby, it means that not only have I been working on my Chaos Army, but I’ve also been painting my Legion as well as working on some terrain for my local club’s tables.  All of this work has done wonders for my enthusiasm for the hobby, allowing my imagination and eagerness to skyrocket in equal amounts.  As I write this, my mind is still plotting designs for various terrain features such as Towers, Crypts and Spiky hills of various descriptions (perhaps something with a disproportionately large skull embedded in it);   but more on these creations later.  Right now I’d like to take a little time to talk about some of the awesome people who are contributing to the hobby, proving to everyone just how great miniature wargaming can be. 

First off the ranks is ‘Tales from the Lennycave’ , an inspiring Blog done by Brian Leonard, also known as @LennyExperiment on Twitter.  His inspiring painting articles and comprehensive tournament reports not withstanding, his most recent article has provided readers with a list of sites that he uses for inspiration and I must say the list is quite comprehensive.  I myself will be regularly visiting these sites in eager anticipation of the awesome hobby into contained within.  I'd also like to personally thank him for mentioning my own site in that list, I'm a big fan of your work and I'm humbled by your interest in mine.  The second person I’d like to mention here is the Mike Sweetman who runs the newly created Fantasy Battle Roundup.  Known as @FBroundup on twitter, Mike’s got his fingers on the pulse of the wargaming community, writing well-rounded articles on a range of topics from comprehensive unit analysis to modelling and painting sites.  I heartily encourage you all to visit these sites and take full advantage of the information and inspiration that can be found within each.  You can also find additional links to these sites in 'My Fantasy Blogs’ panel on the right hand side.  Speaking of painting progress, I should probably get onto describing mine.

On the Chaos front, I’ve been working on my Marauder Command group, getting my Champion painted and ready for battle.  So far, the process has been fairly stop-start, with real-life and other hobby projects (yes, I’m looking at you Legion of Everblight) getting in the way.  Taking a break from painting bronze constantly has been great and I’m particularly enjoying being able to achieve a solid layer of metallic colour in under 3 coats.  Once again Citadel Washes have been a God-send for me, allowing me to achieve a flawless shade-to-highlight gradient with a fraction of effort I expended previously.  In addition to this, I’ve spent a bit of time completing yet another shield and finishing off some detail work missed on the Chosen that I’ve painted thus far; allocating some much needed time to finally get to some of those fiddly bits like weapon hafts, horns and small skulls embedded into some of the helmets finished.  The amount of work that is involved with getting these bits done once again drives home the fact that there is so much detail in these models that it’s easy to overlook things here and there. 

For my Legion, I’m happy to report that my unit of Archers have finally been assembled and still retain the title of ‘Most Painful Unit to Build of all Time’.  I yearn for the day that these fellows will appear in stores made entirely of resin, allowing me to continue building my Blighted Nyss contingent with only a fraction of the cursing and grumbling I do now.  Still, you can’t have it easy all the time can you?  I’ve also begun basing and painting the Warbeasts that I undercoated last fortnight, trying out my new colour scheme to see if it works.  While I encountered a couple of teething problems when it came to basing the Shredders (no pun intended), the combination of greys, blues and purples have proven to be quite effective – both when it comes to minimising the time spent painting and maximising their appearance on the tabletop.  The main stumbling block that I’ve come across is the fact that I have very little desire to actually paint these miniatures for some reason.  Perhaps I’m still too invested in my Chaos Warriors to contemplate painting anything else.    On the positive side though, I’ve been able to at least get one of the little blighters finished, complete with front vision arc and an identity marker on the rear of the model (so I can tell each of the four apart from one another). 

Shredders WIP

Finished Shredder in all it's toothy glory.

The final couple of items I’ve been working on this week have been some buildings that were purchased for my local gaming club a while back that I volunteered to build.  This has been a project that I’ve had on my hobby desk for some time now, its history reaching back to at least the end of last year when I was still playing a lot of 40K.  When I shifted to Fantasy as my primary game, these buildings were set aside in order to free up more time to paint Chaos Warriors.  However I’ve decided to revisit them again, and this time I intend to at least get them to a stage where they’re ready for undercoating.  Thus far, I’m well on track to reaching this goal, getting both buildings based and building the obligatory piles of dirt and rubble inside one of them.  Now all that’s left is to spackle each of these piles and around the inside edges of the building, allowing them all to blend a little into the base which is fitting for a building that has been repeatedly bombed and shot at.  Besides, every building needs a bit of dirt and rubble to give it that ‘lived in’ feel you know?  Once this has been completed, I’ll be able to sand the entire base to give it extra texture and voila!  One ruined building ready for undercoating.  With the first building ready for spackle, my aim will be to get the second building to a similar stage of readiness before building the third and final building from the wall and door components left in the kit.  By the looks of things, there should be enough pieces left in the box to make a half-decent building (even if it looks a little short). 

With that, I’ll draw this article to a close.  While I haven’t been able to get as much painting done as I’d hoped, the progress that has been made thus far is still substantial.  My first warbeast for Hordes has been completed, I’m another small step towards completing my Chosen and I’ve finally gotten a chance to revisit some old terrain projects that have been resting on the back burner for some time now.  All in all this has been a good fortnight.  Hopefully by the next article I’ll be showing you photos of my completed Marauder Champion as well as one or two more shredders.  Not only that, but I’m planning to spend some time finishing off the rubble for the second building and breaking out the spackle for a bit of arts and crafts fun.  But until then, here are my progression stats for the fortnight:

Number of Warhammer Fantasy Units Completed: 6

Number of Hordes Units Completed: 1

Number of Points painted this fortnight: 3 (1 Chosen Warrior Shield and one Shredder).

Catch you all later

Trev