Silver Tower Skaven

My wife and I actually got to play a demo of Silver Tower at our Local Friendly Game Store about a month ago. We both really enjoyed playing. I really liked the basic mechanic for the heroes of rolling a dicepool at the beginning of your turn. You use these to perform different actions. The more powerful actions like a big attack require you to spend a better die result. I was playing the dark elf and he could make his basic attack by spending any die (1 or better) but his big stabby attack needed a 4+ and for his crazy teleport move of doom you needed a die with a 6. You lose dice from your pool if you're hurt meaning you can do less actions but there is also a Fate pool that everybody can take dice out of to use as well. I thought it was a really nice system that was unique to me but very clever and fun.

After playing I started working on the next two figures from the set: the Skaven assassin. They actually represent only one guy and his magical duplicate that he projects in the game. So I painted them exactly the same.

I didn't get to play with my figures but I included the Dark Elf to commemorate the game.

I'll admit I kind of ran out of steam about 80% done and he just kinda languished on the paint table pitifully staring at me with unpainted eyes for weeks.  This weekend I jumped in and finished him off. I kinda rushed the final details but he's done and at this point I'm counting it as a win.

I'm going to put Silver Tower aside for a while as a it looks like I might be playing some games of Team Yankee this summer. I'm going to paint up a force of British to join the NATO forces and hopefully get a chance to bring my airbrush out of storage. I also wanna get back to playing around with some terrain again so that will probably be next.

Tenebrael Shard

The past few weeks have seen a lull in painting. I simply haven't had much desire to get the brushes out. However this past weekend the wife and I got in on another Age of Sigmar game down at the local gamestore. This has managed to rekindle some modelling spirit in both of us. She is working on assembling some ghouls for her Death force (rather in the spirit of the season) and I finished off the next character for Silver Tower.

So far this has been the most difficult figure to paint from the set. Partially due to not really having any inspiration on how to paint him but mostly because he's physical hard to paint. He has so many overlapping layers of trailing cloth, flying chains, pointy blades and poofy hair that navigating the brush through it was very frustrating.

I veered away from GW standard dark  elves and instead tried something more like D&D's drow with a darker skin tone. I stole the lavender for the pants and cloth from an anime we recently watched. It's definitely not one of my go to colors but I think it worked out for him.

I also assembled the Grot scuttlings. They seem pretty easy so I'm gonna try to get all 8 done in one go and push up the finished model count.

I need to get some more dwarves put together before they get overwhelmed by ghouls!

Tau Firewarrior and Pal

In the background of my other projects for the past couple of months I've been trying to work out a paint scheme for the new additions to my Tau force. This hasn't exactly gone smoothly but I finally figured out something that I like.

I painted up my original Tau force when they first came out back in 2001 ( I think, I tried to look it up online) I actually painted the entire army in about a month and a half to meet a deadline of playing a local Rogue Trader Tournament. The downside is that I completely burned myself out on painting them and never painted another Tau figure. Till now.

My concept for my new additions is that they would be a unit of specialized recon/assault unit tasked with tracking local Tyranid splinter forces. My original army would fill the role of the hapless local planetary defense forces explaining why they have some out of date equipment in their ranks ( the first release models some of which have now been updated by GW).

With that idea in mind I wanted to have a camo scheme but one that doesn't really look like a typical modern pattern. After some web browsing I picked out some ideas to try out.

The first was a German WW1 helmet pattern. I liked the heavy black lines between the different colors, not something you see anymore in modern camo schemes.

Image courtesy of the Imperial War Museum http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/30091482

I also wanted to go with a modern dazzle scheme that you sometimes see on warships and planes. Here I was strongly influenced by the figure made by Fichten Foo who's work is always just amazing. I highly recommend checking out his blog at this link.

This is Fichten Foo's K-H.O.L.E. Gunner. I really like the way he did the camo pattern.

So with those ideas in mind I tried a couple of different schemes. I didn't finish any of the figures off as I was just trying to get the camo to look right. There was also usually a couple of weeks between each figure as I pondered other approaches.

These were done left to right. The final pattern took parts of each.

In the end I was happy with my fourth attempt which I tried out on a drone first as I was running out of pre-assembled Firewarriors. The last firewarrior I assembled just for the project so he was armed with a pulse carbine to fit in with the close quarters role I planned for the detachment.

Next up for the Tau project: Stealth Suits.

Journey to the Silver Tower

I finally got a chance to pick up my copy of Warhammer Quest Silver Tower last weekend and have started work putting together the figures. I decided yo start with the Questor as I had some ideas on how I wanted to paint him to avoid the golden statue look of the official paint job.

The first thing I noticed about the miniatures is how well they go together. These are probably the first of this new generation of plastics from GW that I've worked with and I'll be honest they really blew me away. All of the parts go together perfectly and layer over each other to hide seams and mold lines. They remind me more of a Japanese model kits than the clunky models that GW used to put out 10 years ago. The downside is that there is really only one way to easily assemble the models which is going to make the second half of the monsters a bit harder to make unique.

My plan on the Questor was to make him a literal white knight. So I went with a cool white for the armor and a warm white for the cloak. I kept to some gold to break it up a bit. I also wanted to give the impression that he's been out fighting evil for a while so I scuffed up the paint on the armor and gave him a bit of wear with some weathering powders.

I'm still undecided on how I want to do the bases. I want to have them all match so I decided to hold off on his till I figure it out. Making it more difficult is that rooms in the game are pretty random ( as befits a Tzeentch chaos tower) and I really haven't figured out a good choice that might blend in to all of them. I'm considering a tile or mosaic looking but I might just fall back on simple stone slabs too.

Next for Silver tower will be some of the cultists.

Place Keeper Post

Things have been busy with being out of town last weekend and heading out to vacation in Colorado this week ( actually due to the magic of automation I should be in the mountains as this goes up.) So I haven't managed to finish any projects yet but I added some pictures below of in progress work.

Two more Big Stone Heads under construction and a few roughed out flagstones for a road.

Little plastic gemstones direct from the factory in China. I'm hoping these are going to be a major component of stage two of my terrain building. 

In other news I'm really excited about the new GW Warhammer Quest game coming out. It has evil birdmen in it! Along with a ton of nice looking sculpts. I'll be picking it up after vacation to try to play with the wife.

Unlike a lot of people I really wasn't bothered by the switch to Age of Sigmar but at the same time it didn't provoke much interest either. I think the Old World setting really made much more sense as a role-playing setting then for a mass battle one. So Silver Tower will be my first real look at it. I know many people can't get behind the stylistic change to the figures but I like the new look to the Orcs  ( or Orukks or whatever they renamed them)  As far as I can tell they seem to be pushing a kinda modern video game aesthetic to the models which actually comes across pretty well. League of Legends on the tabletop. Grognard grumbling aside it has a very striking visual appeal. I'm less into the Sigmarites but I think that has to do with the gold paint scheme something I want to avoid. Not sure I'll go all the way into AoS but it at least has my attention now.

Timewarp Thursday! Orks!

With the talk on various blogs of the new arrival of the Ork Codex for 40k it got me thinking about my own long mothballed Ork army. Many years ago I was a pretty dedicated player of 40k although even then it was mostly about the background and modelling. My clan of choice for the Orks was always the Blood Axes as their bizzaro interpretation of the Imperial Guard always struck a chord with me.

Da Kaptan and his pet Squig

This is actually the second time I built a Blood Axe army and I still regret selling off the first one especially since I never took any pictures of it. In particular I wish I had some pictures of my Rambo-styled Kommandos and the fearless leader Kommisar Klang. This time I at least want some pictures to be able to remember my work if I ever have to part with them again.

'ard Boyz made with Black Orc parts

All of the work for these guys was done way back in 2008 and they were put together pretty quickly hence the simple, rust and red paint scheme. I wanted to get a force on the table and then add the character to it later. I originally planned to go with more of a Orkish Afrika Korps look for later models, especially the tank hunters and kommandos. I still have some partially converted but by then I had moved onto other projects. Maybe one day I'll get back to them.

My lone Mega Armour Ork and the back half of a Trukk

This looted Leman Russ was one of my favorites but routinely performed horribly in games. 

Most of the boyz were built from the Assault on Black Reach box. 

Shoota Boyz - I had a bunch more ready to paint with the forage caps sculpted on but that was when I ran out of steam for the army. 

Phantom Firepower

I had a lot of fun in the first campaign games and with the new 40k, so I'm looking to expand my force. Next weekend starts the 1000 point level and while I have enough guys right now to reach that I want to add some variety and more long range punch.



Quickly put together from partially assembled guys I had lying around from an old project.

 First, I want to expand out a squad of basic chaos marines. I have three right now and my goal is to get three more done for this weekend so I can switch out a squad of the Wights. I'd like to add a heavy weapon to squad but the codex says you need a 10 man squad for that option. So a plasma gun is as good as it gets for them right now. 


He still needs all of his ghostly ectoplasm sculpted on.




Next I had an idea for making some themed Obliterators. I feel like I'm going to need some ranged firepower at the next point level and these guys should fit the bill nicely. Plus I always liked the concept of guys manifesting the right weapon for the job and it seems like a rather spectral ability so it fits my theme.





Lord Orpheus and the Spectral Dead

I'm going to play in a 40K campaign that is running at the local game store this weekend. I was pondering which force to play with when I remembered my ghost marines that I painted up about 4 years ago. So I had my lovely photographer take some quick pictures of them using the lightbox that I just made. I wanted to do a force that I didn't really need to spend much time painting and focused mainly on converting them to look like ghosts.I use the Chaos Space Marines army list for them and kinda stretched the unit types to portray their necromantic might.

Wights ordered into battle by their Necromancer (Thousand Sons Marines)

The Tomb of Zagreus (Dreadnought)

 

The Spectral Dead! (summoned Deamons)

Lord Orpheus ( Chaos Sorcerer)

Time Machine: GW Inquisitor

I'm hoping to get some work in progress pictures of the ruins up soon, but in the mean time I thought I'd post some pictures of a miniature from my past. Inquisitor Covenant is from the GW Inquisitor game and I painted him up just as the game was first released 10 years ago. These were larger 54mm scale figures and were covered with detail and gear.  I'm still happy with the paint job on him and looking at him again reminds me how much fun this scale is to paint. I know I have a couple more of these guys squirrelled away somewhere. Maybe I'll try to dig them out and work on them.