Dire Avenger Exarch

Well, it seems that I'm not able to gather enought time to write a decent post lately. Whatever, Easter is around the corner, and with a few free days at hand I'll do my best to finish all the posts I have half-written as drafts. Or at least I'll try to, considering that some of them are several months old!

Today I'll just post some pictures I took from my latest painting: the Exarch for the Dire Avengers squad. It was intended to be finished for a painting contest in a shop close to my place, and it was indeed finished on time; but took me about ten hours of job, because I wanted to achieve a close-to top grade result. And therefore, instead of giving me one point for finishing an infantry soldier, I'm earning five because I've put an effort on it similar to painting a character - general, farseer or whatever. I think I deserve it after so many hours of hard job.

The pictures are again bad (too dark), and they don't show properly the level of contrast of the paint, but luckily half an hour ago I've finished building a home-made light box that I hope will greatly help me in my future shots. I painted the body of the Exarch first and then I went for the head, mixing several blues and adding turquoise for the hightlights. The weapons were black, highlighted with different greens. They were a bit rushed, as was the white tabard, because I was running out of time for the contest. The standard was the final touch; I freehanded the first things that came to my mind, and maybe should consider to add something else once I've retrieved the piece from the contest.

Hope you like it.

Miscellaneous

Hi again! It’s been three weeks since last time I posted on my blog. Did you think I was being idle all this time? Not at all! I have a big bunch of news to write here, but not too much time; so I’ll try to be as brief as possible, without skipping any of the things I’ve been doing lately. Hard but...

First of all, painting job. I’ve finished another brood of ten termagaunts, already varnished and ready for battle. This means another ten points for my score, yes! I’ve also started painting two tyranid warriors to complete my five-bug brood; they’ll be ready for next week (and then I’ll add another four points to my score, yes yes yes).

But that’s not all. I’ve been told that there is a painting contest in a hobby shop in my city, and I’m planning to present my squad of dire avengers. For that mean, I have to finish painting the exarch of the squad (another point) and prepare a base to show them in all their glory. I’ve been looking for a circle-shaped one, but can’t find any with the proper size, until this very afternoon I entered a carpentry which was ending business and found some great ones at half price! I’m glad with it, and now I only have to model some terrain with a bit of clay (I’m not scared about that although it’s the first time I model terrain, but any help or advice will be really welcome).


In the picture you can see the base I got, and also two things more: first, a small tool case I’m gonna use to keep the tons of bits I have scattered around my home (that I’ve also bought today – great shopping day indeed); and second, some miniatures that belong to my recently started project... an army of Gondor for the new “War of the Ring” game! I’ve to admit that I never thought of getting some of the LotR minitures, not because of their quality (some of them are quite good indeed) but for the gaming rules used, that I disliked very much. But hey, the new system uses batallions of troops. Batallions! I’m imaging a couple of hundreds of soldiers in the board fighting each other in a somehow “historical” style and... well, can’t stop drooling :) Some of my mates had already started their armies and I simply couldn’t resist... so I picked up an army that was not being used yet, and chose the Gondorians because 1.They seem really easy to paint, and 2.I’ll be able to field lots of beautiful armoured soldiers, that can be led by Gandalf or Aragorn himself! Besides, I’have access to some really special units, like the Army of the Dead, and can include some allies too (although I think I’ll favour a “pure” Gondor army). At the same time, I’ve had an idea about how to make easier their storage, and have decided to magnetize them all to their movement trays, and then I’m planning to magnetize the trays themselves so they can stick to a metal tool case I have yet to buy.


I’ve calculated that I can keep the whole army in a medium sized case. That would be great because I don’t have so much room left at this moment! I’m using some magnets I got from the internet (as opposed to the USA, it’s difficult to buy them where I live). The result is simply terrific; and I’ve started calling it “Lord of the Magnets: the Game”, hehehe.

Wow, it’s late again. I haven’t finished writing all I wanted to, and in fact I’ve left the best part of it! Well, although I’m extremely busy lately, I hope I’ll post the remaining stuff in the following days... I’ve been working on it really hard!

IG Reference Sheet

Well, the purpose of this blog is not actually giving any rules updates or sneak peeks, but I think this is worth seeing... it's in French, but I haven't found it difficult to translate (hope you won't neither).

The new IG reference sheets. I'm sure all IG players around the world are dancing with hapiness at this moment.

Inferno rifles with AP3? Those pesky mon-keigh have developed more advanced technology... we will deal with them with extreme caution from now on, huh.

Year 2009: First model finished

Well, this weekend I’ve finally managed to get some time to spend on my minis. At first I had planned to start painting my Wraithlord, but eventually I just added on it some “extras” while I finished the paintjob of my first Vyper with some freehands. After that I gave it a couple of coats of varnish and took a few pictures to post them here, but before I played a bit with Photoshop again … I still have to find a satisfactory way to process my pics, but I feel that this has been a step forwards.



This model also means my first five points awarded for finishing miniatures this year! Wooooooo!! Well, to be sincere this model has actually been mostly painted in late 2008, but I’m gonna give me the points as Admiral Drax does – it doesn’t matter how long it takes, it does when it is done! And I’ve spent no less than three hours this weekend on it, so I think this is perfectly justified.

I guess I’ll start with the Wraithlord this weekend. It’s one of my favourite models of the Eldar army, and I’ve added my “personal touch” on it… more on this in a few days :)

Painting markers

I’ve been very busy lately, and haven’t been able to finish any of my projects during January. Shame on me again, but I’ve made some progress nonetheless. First, I’ve seriously considered including (and mastering a bit if possible) a new painting technique to my already learned ones (more info on this soon). Second, I‘ve directed my main efforts towards painting my bugs, almost finishing a few gaunts. Third, being a bit fed up of painting always the same stuff, I decided to give myself a short break and paint something completely different but nonetheless quite useful: counters and markers. I decided going for those after playing a few games and noticing a real need of a way to control the numbers of wounds caused on a miniature, the leadership tests to be taken by a unit after the shooting phase, pinned units and so on; besides, I wanted to try a bit of freehand just for the sake of it. I’ve already finished modelling a wound counter for my tyranids (again, more info on this soon) and finished some basic markers for my 40K games.

The markers are really simple: I took some spare round bases I had laying in my bitz box and glued some circles of plasticard on top of them (to get a perfectly flat surface). I primed them black, and painted some warning symbols on them. The red ones will serve for serious leadership tests, such as panic, and will identify fleeing units too; while the yellow ones (not finished yet) will quickly identify pinned/to ground units.

I’m quite happy on how they turned out, and although I was looking for a more serious look in them, they have some kind of “comic book” look I like very much. I’m planning to do some more of those for representing objectives, psychic powers and more stuff I may need during a game. Anybody has an idea I could use for their design? I’d thank any contribution :)