Gene Therapy - Leaving the Legion

When I first created this blog, it was designed to be a collection of articles that allowed me to share my progress across three game systems - Warhammer Fantasy, Warhammer 40k and Hordes (specifically Legion of Everblight).  Since that time, much has occurred and I no longer play games with my Legion of Everblight models my enthusiasm for the game has significantly waned to the point of non-relevance.  I held onto the minis though, not because I had any illusions of playing again, but because selling them off went against my hoarding mentality.  All things must change however and recently I felt it was time to move on from the game completely, allowing me to explore other avenues.  

Legion Update - Re-awakening the Dragon

For those who remember my blog back when it first began, I started a fairly short-lived army project associated with the Privateer Press game Warmachine / Hordes.  After a brief 6 months or so, I grew tired of the game and shelved it, convinced I would never again return to the Iron Kingdoms.  Life is funny though and two years down the line I find myself painting one of my shelved Legion of Everblight models and something unforeseen happened...

Legion of Everblight Update – Shredder the Third!

As a strange turn of events, I’ve been painting my Legion models whenever I’m lacking the motivation to paint anything else.  It turns out that these little spurts of activity have paid off once again with the completion of my third Shredder model.  Like the second one, I wasn’t really paying attention to how the model was progressing and once again I was somewhat surprised to see him finished (I forgot to do the base and marker on the second one it seems.  Oh well).  I happily finished off the base with some clump foliage, an ID symbol and a frontal arc before sealing the light warbeast with a coat of Estapol.   

This brings my total number of painted Legion models to 3 – all of them Shredders.  There’s only one more left before I mode onto another miniature (as you can see by the WIP pic below, he's well on his way to being done!), though I’m yet to decide on what that mini will be.  Best not get ahead of myself though, I’ve barely managed to paint half the models that come in the Legion’s starter box (and they’ve all been the smaller models).

Catch you all later

Trev

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

The Dragon’s Blight begins to spread

With Trickster’s Blade behind me, this is usually a time of relaxation and reflection as I wind down after a stressful couple of weeks of desperately painting to a deadline.  During this wind-down period my hobby progress is usually restricted to small detail-orientated tasks that I didn’t have time to complete prior to the event such as bases, shields or perhaps multi-level highlighting on weapons or other surfaces.  This time has been no different, with the finishing touches of my first unit of Chaos Warriors being steadily applied to the last of the models and their movement tray.  This is an exciting time for me as I have never actually full completed a unit for any of my Chaos armies (which is a little sad now that I write it here).    I’m determined to ensure that this is just the first of many that will be completed by me as this army develops, particularly since I’ve been crazily building movement trays for all my current (and future) units since I received my second modular movement tray kit.  Unfortunately, there are not nearly enough angled components included in the pit and I find myself with a considerable surplus of edging and tray that I cannot rightly use for making movement trays.  Other prospective uses will need to be looked into in the future methinks.  For the moment, I shall continue learning how to prepare and base movement trays so that they match the imagery of my army which has turned out to be more difficult than I originally thought it would be (who’d have thunk it?). 

However, all of this effort will have been for nothing if I don’t get any models painted.  To that end, I’ve continued working on my Chosen in a bid to finish their shields in preparation for final assembly.  The best thing about the Chaos Knight boxed set is the fact that everything is so intricately detailed (and their shields are no exception).  Combined with the many different weapon and torso options, it is very unlikely that any of my Chosen models will ever look the same (a very exciting prospect).  Below are a couple progress shots of the unit, showing several of the painted shields that will be found in my unit of Chosen. 

Meanwhile, I’ve also made a time for a short trip to the Iron Kingdoms to do some work on my Legion of Everblight.  Over the past couple of months I haven’t had the time or the desire to give these models much more than a passing glance, however after playing a couple of games over the weekend my interest has been piqued once more.  I’ve spent a good deal of time assembling several Harriers and my Archer Unit Attachment in preparation for an upcoming 25 point game.  Up till now, I’ve been playing starter box games of around 14 points; however the increase in points means that I’m in need of reinforcements.  I’d like to field a couple more big Warbeasts however hobby cash is stretched a bit thin at the moment, so I guess they will just have to wait.  Instead I’ve decided to make do with some additional light warbeasts and an archer unit.  I’ve come to the conclusion that assembling Blighted Nyss Archers is possibly the most time consuming and frustrating task I’ve ever had to do in this hobby.  Not even assembling metal Daemonettes were as painful as these.  Thankfully I’ve finally decided on a paint scheme for my Legion and have begun the undercoating process (albeit a bit prematurely as the basing has not been completed).  I’ve started by undercoating my Warcaster, a Solo and all the light warbeasts I own (which is a decent number thanks to the starter box) and will be invigorating a painting scheme used for my old Daemonic Legion army (example of paint scheme found below) I had back in 6^th Edition.  I’ll be doing up a test model in the very near future to see if this colour scheme is viable and if so, then I’m confident I’ll be able to bash out the Warbeasts in no time at all.  The infantry will be a little bit more involved with the presence of leathers and metal components, but once I have the colour scheme down, getting them all painted shouldn’t take too long at all. 

With the increased focus towards Hordes / Warmachine, I thought it would be good to include them in my Fortnightly Round-up of my hobby progress.  As can be seen below, I’ve included a tally of the number of Hordes units that have been completed, which will no doubt steadily rise as I dedicate more time towards getting models painted.  As I didn’t get much time to paint this week, the total number of models painted is woefully small.  On the upside however, another unit has been completed in my Fantasy army (Yay!) meaning that I’m another step closer to having a fully painted army.  By totalling the number of painted models in my 6 completed units thus far, I can happily say that my army totals just over 1000 points of painted models (meaning that I’m halfway to my goal of having a fully painted 2000 point Chaos Army), which is just pure awesome.

Number of Warhammer Fantasy Units Completed: 6

Number of Hordes Units Completed: 0

Number of Points painted this fortnight: 1 (1 Chosen Warrior Shield).

Catch you all later,

Trev