Some more painting - Plastic Feral Warpwolf

I know I promised some more battle reports in my next blog but putting up pictures is a much easier way to fill a page.

I have done quite a bit of painting recently and have a lot of models half finished. I am hoping to use the Easter bank holiday weekend to get most of these finished off and posted here so expect a few posts.

First off I wanted to post images of the new Feral Warpwolf that I painted fairly quickly this week. It was a great model to paint as the skin gives you some lovely space to work with.

You may also notice that I have tried something new with the base (using insta-mold to create some interesting carved rocks).

Painting pKrueger

Over the last couple of weeks I haven't got in as much painting as I would have liked but I was pleased to add pKrueger to my list of painted circle models. I have liked the look of his rules for a long time. I have never been completely sold on the model - I love all of the pieces individually - the flowing robe, the levitating legs, the billowing cloak and the force lightening style hands but something about the way it all sits together always makes me think something isn't quite right.

That all said it was an absolute JOY to paint and I am very pleased with the result.

As usual I struggle to photograph the greens properly but hopefully I will be using him down at the club in weeks to come.

Bolton Portcullis Tournament

I had a good time yesterday at the monthly Bolton Portcullis Tournament. After reading on Dave blog of the last trip across from the Hull guys I was keen to attend and as Hull City's match had been postponed I was able to go without missing out on using my season ticket.

I had 4 good games with local lads who played; eCaine, eLylth, eSkarre and pHexeris. I took a pKaya list and a pKrueger list and managed to get one win to three losses.

I was also very pleased and honoured to be voted the 'best painted' and win some store credit. This is the first painting award I have won and I am encouraged that my painting is getting better and it gives me new enthusiasm to try and improve further and get some more serious painting time in.

I have taken a quick snap of the list that won the best painted award below (even though you have probably seen most of the models already in the previous blog posts).

PS I should point out the whitemane (far left) wasn't painted by me (thanks Jim!) but the rest of the models are entirely my own work.

Stonekeeper UA and Shifting Stones

I am pleased to be able to bring you some pictures of my unit of shifting stones which I completed last week. I have been using the stones for a couple of months but have finally added the Stone Keeper UA to the unit. My common/garden shifting stones are notorious at the club for being an example of my tightfistedness not to buys some model stones and have confused my none gamer friends - "Why would you paint stones to look more like stones when they are already stones?".

Hopefully the UA along with his own garden stone are enough to persuade doubters that I will splash out occasionally!

More Painting

Just another quick update with the latest models I have painted for my Circle Orboros army.


My terrible habbit of painting more casters than infantry continued in early January and I was able to very quickly paint up Baldur the Stonecleaver. He is not my best work but was enjoyable to and quick to paint.

After a giving myself a stern talking to regarding my lack of painted infantry I decided to paint up the unit of druids. I feel that the good use of these guys may be very important to playing circle orboros and it is about time I tried to work them into some lists. They are a bit more complicated to use with each model having a choice of defensive, offensive and healing abilities to use each turn.

I was pleased with the way they came out - I am enjoying painting the green robes on models at the moment and wanted to continue to work on improving my 'faces and bases'.

Morvahna the Autumnblade (updated)

I am attending the Golden Troll 35point open in Chorley next weekend, I am taking my circle who I have been playing most of my games with over recent months and in order to adhere to the two list requirement I have had to select a second caster.

I have been planning for some months to try out Morvahna the Autumnblade as a caster as her fluff is strongly themed around Tharn heavy armies - which is largely what I have constructed with Kromac.
I am hoping that her more attrition based style will provide a nice counter point to Kromac who is often seen as an assassination caster and that by using her I will get the most out of the unit of blood trackers I have also been painting over the last month or so.

I have yet to use her very much, only having had a few games but I will need to user her at least once next weekend so we will see how she fares.

Please excuse the terrible photography - I don't seem to be able to find much time to photograph models during the day at the moment.

EDIT:  New improved pictures included below:

Big Angry Goat Man! (Gnarlhorn Satyr)

I have finished painting my Gnarlhorn Satyr (or big angry goat man as I like to think of him).

I wanted to give him a nice glossy brown coat with hints of reds so he would fit in with the colours I used on Kromac. I experimented with basing using water effects for the first time in an effort to make a river for my very own 'Billy Goat Gruff'.

I am pleased with the way he came out and I am now cracking on with a host of other models in an attempt to have a fair bit painted for the big 'Hull VS York Team Challenge' a week today.

Please excuse the large number of photos, uploading them is easier than sorting through them all!

Kromac The Ravenous

In which, a new faction is started and the Great Devourer Wurm claims a newly painted warlock.

I have recently decide to start a force for Hordes. As Hordes is a game that is twinned with Warmachine I have often found myself facing Hordes with my Cygnar army and whilst I have a good idea how the alternative system works, I felt that until I played with a Hordes force I likely wouldnt get a good feel for it.

With this in mind I selected 'Circle of Orboros' as my faction, as I was very tempted by them in the first place. The other really tempting faction was Trollbloods but Hull Warmachine is well represented in that department (Drax and co.) and more importantly because Trolls are blue much like my Cygnar. I need a break from painting blue.

So faction selected I managed to procure a cheap Kromac the Ravenous model(s - its complicated) from eBay.

This weekend I managed to finish painting his human form (he turns into a big angry were-wolf man when he gets mad - this requires a second slightly bigger and entirely more angry looking model).

Robes
I have tried a number of techniques on this model, I was happy with my ability to paint green robes after my recent jaunt into the world of 54mm, so I went for the same colours for Kromacs robes. These look a fair bit brighter in person.

Hair
After seeing Andy McBirnie's Cryx (winners of the painting competition at the recent tournament I ran) I  decided that I needed to have a bright colour on the models to give them an instant impact from a distance. I decided to try and achieve this by going for vivid red hair. I was pleased with the way this came out - it looks slightly brighter in the flesh than in the pictures below.

I used a base coat of Reaper Ruddy Leather and then worked  highlights up with Magma Red, Lava Orange and Explosion Orange (the names may have got slightly muddled - but it was the volcano triad anyway).

Flesh
Painting flesh is always something I have struggled with, my Cygnar are improving thanks largely to the instructions given to my by the inestimably talented Jim Bowen. In order to give Kromac a more rugged manly outdoors feel (unlike my gun mages who look like they sit in darkened bedrooms all day playing with their pistols....) I went for the tanned flesh triad by Reaper Paints over a brown base and using brown washes.

I still think I can improve on this but it is definitely a few steps better than I was a couple of months back which is pleasing.

Basing
After receiving inspiration from Mart's Basing blog, I decided I needed to acquire some more basing materials. I read several articles online and came across a company called Silflor who produce a staggering range of basing tufts, clumps and sprinkles at a very high quality for a competitive price. I found a UK distributor and ordered a big box. I wanted to try a few of these on the base, whilst the Circle Orboros and the Tharn in-particular are a slaughtering horde of butchers - there is still very much a tree-hugging flower-power vibe to them so I wanted to make sure I worked in lots of plants.

In order to do this without obscuring all of the paint work I used cork to create a rock platform for him to stand on and survey the battle. (thanks again for the tip Mart).

Pictures


So, enough of my waffle - heres some pictures: