A Scottish Werewolf in the Desert

One week late, because the Real life is rearing its ugly head once again leaving me less time to paint than I would like... Nevertheless I managed to paint up five miniatures for Infinity to make a start on one of my new year's resolutions and put some paint on Radukar the Beast.

Pict 1285: McMurrough and Friends

Pict 1286: Yara Hadadd, Yasbir, McMurrough, Daylami and Ghulam Infantry

Seems like I cought the Infinity bug again. I blame Ash Barker's Tactical Awareness podcast! I've been listening for a while and have been thinking about painting something from the Infinity universe. These five will form part of my Hassassin sectorial.

The stand out has to be McMurrough the mercenary Dog-Warrior. What's not to love about a scottish Werewolf with a giant sword!

The Yara Hadaddad miniature is a conversion from an old Tuareg scuplt. I converted her right at the end of  my last stint with Infinity and painting her now seemed like the right thing to do!

The Ghulam with HMG is one of the oldest sculpts in my collection, right out of the first edition of the game. He'll probably play the part of a Ghulam with Grenade Launcher, at least as long as that load out is not available.

This was also the first time for me to make my own grass tufts. Really not that hard and they look great on the bases! Only problem is, that I will now have to go back through my collection and add tufts to the bases...

Having painted these five, I completed the first part of one of my new year's resolutions. Now, I only have to go ahead and play a game with them as well!

Pict 1287: Radukar the Beast and Vyrkos Bloodborn (WIP)

This is the first update on Radukar the Beast I'm painting for #MonsterMarch on my blog. You can see a first picture with the base colours established on Radukar the Beast and his two Vyrkos Bloodborn minions over on Swordmaster's blog. By now the three have had their washes and are waiting for the highlighting and detail work.

Pict 1288: Badab Enforcers (WIP)

Lastly I also started on these five Palanite Enforcers. I bought them second hand at the start of the year, so I don't know if they are built with legal loadouts. But since I want to use them in even smaller, narrative circumstances, I don't care that much. They will be part of my Badab War collection, forming the human compartment of the Tyrant's Legion.
For now, the basecoats are almost done. I plan to use mainly sponge highlighting and a heavy oil wash to give them a grimy look to tie them in to my Howling Griffons.

Sanguinius, The Great Angel

The main part of my hobby these past two weeks was spent painting up Sanguinius, the Great Angel, Primarch of the Blood Angels. However, I also found the time to quickly whip up some Mordor Orc command miniatures as well.

Pict 1277: Sanguinius, the Great Angel

Pict 1278: Sanguinius, the Great Angel

Pict 1279: Sanguinius, the Great Angel

Pict 1280: Sanguinius, the Great Angel

Pict 1281: Sanguinius, the Great Angel (Base)

There he is, the big, winged golden boy to lead my Blood Angels. Really an amazing model, these characters are what Forge World exels at.

For the gold armour I used two different shades of Vallejo Liquid Gold (these paints are really amazing!) shaded with Seraphim Sepia. Following this, the details were rather simple – pretty much only a basecoat, wash and some highlights. And even the leopard's fur was not to bad after I had finally convinced myself to start at it. Really a great project to push myself and learn new techniques!

The base is made using the rider from a metal Bloodcrusher. I found that the deamon needed very little adjustment to the pose. Just a few cuts, a left hand from a Crypt Ghoul and some Green Stuff. I also like that the metal gives it a bit more weight to pull down the center of gravity. I the future, I might want to try my hand at a scenic base to insert this one into with the remaining Khorne Juggernaught and of course more demons to mimic the ones on the painting.

Pict 1282: Mordor Orc Banners and Shaman

Pict 1283: Mordor Orc Banners and Shaman

I painted these Mordor Orcs on a whim – I really would like to have some more Orc warriors as they open up so many variants of Mordor and Angmar armies, but I dread the prospect of batch painting them.
These three however were great fun! Of course these miniatures stand out more than the common Orc, but a way forward might be to paint the Orcs I have in smaller batches.
The freehands on the banners were great fun! I looked at the old Mordor supplement from 2008 to get inspired for banners from different regions of Mordor. The one with the red face is more of a general banner but is inspired by the designs on the Minas Morgul banners. The other one I painted with my Black Gate army (including the Troll Chieftains) in mind.

Pict 1284: Radukar the Beast (WIP)

Finally, after the great success of last year's Dreadtober, I want to take part in the #MonsterMarch challenge, as organised by Swordmaster. I want to take this opportunity to get some paint onto Radukar the Beast. The miniature is very cool and it is used in both Cursed City expansions. It's one of my new year's resolutions to paint and play at least the first expansion of these, so painting Radukar will hopefully be a good start to that!

The High Host of the Blood Angels

Once again, quite a successful couple of weeks with some more Blood Angels as well as a setof ruins from the Moonbase Klaisus.

Pict 1272: Blood Angels High Host Destroyers

Pict 1273: Blood Angels High Host Destroyers

Pict 1274: Blood Angels High Host Destroyers

First up are the five Destroyers of Zephon's High Host. They painted up very quickly after my last post. A small squad of five Marines really paints up fast! I'm happy with how they came out and look forward to painting some more of those cool double pistol Destroyers!

Pict 1275: Moonbase Klaisus

Pict 1276: Moonbase Klaisus

After the Marines, I finally got to some more terrain to be used as a backdrop for the Heresy Marines. These ruins come from the Moonbase Klaisus set from a few years back. At first I was a bit taken aback with how blue the colour came out of the spraycan, but with a black oilwash, some sponge weathering and the pigments they do look quite nice now. As usual, I've written up how I painted these ruins on a separate page for future reference – you can find it in the sidebar on the right.

Blood Angels Assault Marines and Celebrating 200 Posts

These past two weeks, I finished the Blood Angels Assault Marines and got to work on the next few things for the Legion. Also this post marks the 200th one on this blog! (At least if the numbers on the back end are to be believed, I did not bother to count them all...) This calls for celebrations and so I allowed myself to start on the big boy for the Blood Angels, Sanguinius himself.

Pict 1267: Blood Angels Assault Marines

Pict 1268: Blood Angels Assault Marines

Pict 1269: Blood Angels Assault Marines

These Assault Marines were quite fast to get finished. I really like the way they look as a group! Slowly I seem to be getting the hang of using the weathering powders on the base. Might have to get some more experience, but I felt a lot more confident with this batch.

Pict 1270: High Host Destroyers (WIP)

The next few miniatures for the Blood Angels will be a small squad of five Destroyers. Dominion Zephon has the option to take them as a command squad and I liked the idea of that. They still would be legal as a normal Destroyer Squad, but usually I might not include a vexilla on jump troops (does not seem right to me). These ones got the hand held vexilla, however, to make them look more like a command squad with a Legion banner.
For now they have the oilwash applied and I wating for it to fully dry before getting to the highlights.

Pict 1271: Sanguinius (WIP)

Lastly, I started to work on Sanguinius himself. A bit of converting going on: Magnetizing the spear / sword was quite easy. But I also wanted him off the pillar he comes with and use his flamboyant pose to emulate the amazing Fall of the Rebel Angels by Luca Giordano. I ordered a Herald of Khorne to use as the demon being steped on and turning his head. Ideally I'd like to use some more demons to build up a scenic base for him since I did not order him fighting the big Ruinstrom demon when he was availiable like that.

Luca Giordano, The Fall of the Rebel Angels, 666.M2, on view at Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien

Blood Angels Air Support

The first proper post of the year with the first three completed miniatures, of which only one was stared last year! The big one is the Avenger Strike Fighter painted in Blood Angels Legion colours. The other two are Rohan miniatures I wanted to use in game.

Pict 1261: Avenger Strike Fighter Crew

Pict 1262: Blood Angels Avenger Strike Fighter

Pict 1263: Blood Angels Avenger Strike Fighter

Pict 1264: Avenger Strike Fighter Rear Gunner

This was quite a neat project – really something different from what I usually do. And quite big as well! I sometimes had difficulties handling the plane while painting.
To get my bearings I looked at a lot of other Blood Angel aircraft as well as other Avenger Strike Fighters. To my delight, google recomended one of the latter painted on the blog Würfelwiese – a blog I highly recommend! I looked at it for inspiration on which panels to set apart in a contrasting colour and for pointers on where to put weathering on the model.

Pict 1265: Rohan Captain and King's Huntsman

On a whim, I painted these two Rohan miniatures for a game today. They are both from the Rohan Commanders set, but the Captain with the Orc is the metal version, converted with a Warhammer Woodelf bow, while the King's Huntsman is unaltered. Sadly the latter suffered from a bad case of Finecast face, but I did what I could... And for an evening's work I'm very happy with the pair of them!

Pict 1266: Blood Angels Assault Marines (WIP)

Lastly, these Assault Marines are pretty much done as well. If the Rohan Commanders had not jumped the queue, they might be there already. The are only missing the weathering on the red armour, so I expect to have a neat little before/after comparison with the next post!

The Butterfly's Tally 2022

Happy New Year! 2022 has drawn to a close and as is customary this calls for a tally of what I painted, comparing it to my resolutions from the start of the year and make some new resolutions.

Final Miniatures of 2022

Pict 1257: Blitz Bowl Face Off

Pict 1258: Blitz Bowl Dwarves

Pict 1259: Blitz Bowl Dwarves

But first, here are the last few minatures I managed to paint in 2022 – the Dwarf Blitz Bowl team. As with the humans, I did not go for my normal painting standard but a bit below that. I'm not perfectly happy with them, but they look good enough to play with. The major hurdle was the orange... I really hate the bottle of Lava Orange by The Army Painter, I have here. The paint simply does not cover well. But then again, I don't paint that shade of orange that often, so I did not want to buy a similar colour by a different manufacturer and powered through.

With that I've finished a grand total of 131 minatures this year. Just a little bit more than 2021 – a double success! And with this number in mind, we are already into...

The Hobby Tally 2022

So, these were my resolutions for this year:

• 20 Warhammer Fantasy / Age of Sigmar miniatures
•  19 models painted plus 10 Blood Bowl balls and markers – I'd call that one done
  
• 10 Infinity miniatures
• not a single one painted...
  
• 10 MESBG miniatures
• easily done by Erebor Dwarves alone
  
• 10 miniatures by independent creators
• only the five Mjowls from the very start of the year...
  
• 10 pieces of terrain
• about half way there with a set of dwarven doors, the 5 pieces of the crashed Aquila Lander and a few bits of 40k scatter
  
  

Looking at it now, that is still quite a lot of stuff and while I managed to fulfill about half of these promts, I fear the hobby butterfly effect really prevented me from getting to the rest. For example, at the start of the year, I did not imagine painting the Blood Angels (more on those later). And the models also reflect the games I played or did not play – since I mostly dropped out of Infinity, I did not paint a single miniature for this system... Still I'm pretty happy with what I achieved and looking back at these goals will inform the resolutions I want to make for this upcoming year!

And if you want so look back at my progress of previous years, here are the links to the tallies of the past: The Tally 2017, The Tally 2018, The Tally 2019, The Tally 2020, The Tally 2021

 

Other big projects of 2022

There are some other projects I want to highlight, looking at my Middle-earth miniatures first:

Pict 1136: Mordor Troll Chieftain

Pict 1139: Mordor Troll Chieftain vs. Aragorn Elessar

Right at the start of the year, I converted and painted two Mordor Troll Chieftains – the second one stepping on an unfortunate Aragorn. I'm still really happy with the two of them and they take a place of pride in my cabinet.

Pict 1196: Númenorean Banner Bearer

In June I painted this Númenorean banner bearer to enter into the Middle-earth painting competition over on Instagram. While I did not make it that far in the competition, I really enjoyed the opportunity to challenge myself, especially with the freehand on the banner itself.

Pict 1210: The Nazgûl of Dol Guldur

The Nazgûl of Dol Guldur were a great project to do over the summer. For one I did not have that much time to paint during august and september and the Ringwraiths seemed like a nice and enclosed project to get back into the swing of things. And of course I got to experiment with texturing the cloth which came out great. If I were to redo the banner bearer from earlier, I'd do that to the black and white textiles for sure!

Pict 1163: Howling Griffons Sternguard Veterans

Other than my adventures in Middle-earth, I mainly spent the year painting Space Marines. I had not thought it possible (man, I still love the little space mans!), but first Arbitor Ian got me back into them with his series on the Badab War; the result of which are these Howling Griffons.

Pict 1260: 2022 Blood Angels Legion

Pict 1232: Blood Angels Contemptor

But of course the big thing was the release of the new edition of the Horus Heresy. First up, here is a photo showing my painted collection as it stands right now. I'm pretty impressed with myself that I was able to stick to it so well. It's Arbitor Ian again with his Tale of Four Gamers series that's kept me on track here. And of course participating in Dreadtober was a highlight for the project! Posting progress every week and seeing what everyone else was up to was great fun and amazing to get to know other bloggers!

Hobby resolutions for 2023

Seeing how I did and did not achive my goals last year, I want to set my new targets with an eye to playing the games. I find that to be one of the best motivations to actually paint my models. But of course I will always get swept of track, so my first three goals are somewhat small asks. I also want to try and finish some more terrain and especially get some progress on with the modular gaming board. Lastly, I again want to paint over 100 miniatures in total. While I have not painted less in the last few years I still want the ecouragement of a goal to keep me in line. And of course I want to try again and paint / sell more than buy...

So, that's it; here is what I want to accomplish this year:

• Paint and play at least the first of the two Cursed City expansions (it's only 6 miniatures: 3 giant bats, Radukar the Beast, Lady Annika and Carmilla DuSang)
  
• Paint 5 Infinity miniatures and play a game with them
• Paint 10 MESBG miniatures
• Paint 3 more tiles of the modular gaming board as well as the rest of the Garden of Morr (that's 6 pieces of wall)
  
• Paint at least 100 miniatures in total
  

Happy Festag, everyone!

Obviously a short one today – I wish you all happy holidays! A few bits and pieces got painted nonetheless: my human Blitz Bowl Team and a few bits of sci-fi scatter terrain.

Pict 1253: Blitz Bowl Humans

Pict 1254: Blitz Bowl Humans

First up the Blitz Bowl Team – I really like the bright and classic colours. And the painting did not take that long because I did not go with as may highlights as I might usually do. The only thing missing from the Blitz Bowl box is a set of transfers with player numbers. I might have to have a lookout online... I'm also quite pleased with how the bases turned out. Really simple but still characteristic.

Pict 1255: Blitz Bowl Dwarves (WIP)

The other team in the second edition Blitz Bowl box are the dwarves and I have made a good start on them as well. I had a hard time of choosing a colour scheme but thanks to a comment left by Sachiel, I went with orange as the main colour and went from there. With a bit of luck, I might just be able to finish them this year!

Pict 1256: Inquisition Crate and Barrels

I also painted up some quick pieces of sci-fi scatter terrain. The crate with the inquision logo is technically a 40k bit but I think you could get away with using it in 30k or even Infinity. It was painted the usual way while the barrels were highlighted with sponged on layers after the wash for a grimy, textured look.

So this will probably be it for this year, the next post will be my end of the year summary and look ahead at 2023!