A Narrow Victory

Gosh, it's been nearly a month since I properly painted anything and a fortnight since I last posted. The burnout is real.

Anyway, tonight I went to LUNAR's fourth session and played B's Orcs and Goblins in a 1,000 point game for the Escalation League. It was a fun game and although my Elves dealt out a lot of hurt, I only got a Victory and not a Crushing Victory because on the last turn with the last bit of shooting I had I elected to shoot some Trolls rather than the lone Night Goblin Boss with Battle Standard. Ah well! I am still - just - in the lead in the Escalation League, with 15 points out of a possible maximum of 16 so far.

Now I need to finish off these High Elves and get printing some Shadow Warriors... 

Return To The Damned City (And The Blog)

I've been AWOL for a while - painting burnout, mostly. Last week the Llangefni Wargamers didn't meet, but tonight LUNAR's fourth session took place and I had a couple of games of Mordheim, including a very fun (if sadly cut short) 6 player game!

 

Painting? What's That?

So I have had a few days of not doing very much if anything at all wargaming or hobby wise. Today, while running a game of 3rd Edition D&D with my son, T, I managed to finish highlighting the green on the next batch of Maiden Guard and started basing the white on the weapons and shields (I didn't get very far with that specifically). Tomorrow I'll be running the first session of a larger game of current-edition D&D, so I'm probably not going to get much actual painting done again for a while. I would like to get these done by Tuesday, but it's unlikely to happen. After last year's furious painting I feel like I've slowed down considerably this year.

Photo taken with flash, which makes the green look a bit too yellow. I may have put a bit too much Yriel Yellow into the highlight mixes, but... ah well, different dyes and paints produce different shades and tones anyway!

Once they are done, though, I'm not sure what I'll work on next, apart from the commission pieces I still (still!) have to finish.

Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes?

Tonight LUNAR ran again, for the third time, and it was successful again, which was lovely to see. Lots of games going on - Old World, Mordheim, Warcry, Root, among others - and I got in a couple of games myself. First of all, I ran an NPC warband (the Mordheim City Watch) against N's Skaven, and then after that I played some Warcry against K with my Melusai-only Daughters of Khaine.

 

More Green, More Flesh

Only a little painting tonight. I hit the green on the High Elves with a Biel-Tan shade wash, followed by the first layer highlight of the original colours, and then spent most of the rest of the session finishing up the Slaaneshi Marauder miniature. 

Who needs clothes when you're a devotee of the Darkling Prince, She Who Thirsts?

I'm pleased with the skin, there was a lot of highlight tones put into her

Pain is pleasure, and pleasure is pain, and both are the blessings of Slaanesh

Her left eye wasn't very well defined, but this angle makes it look like she's got it closed - she doesn't, they're both open!

I must dig out the other Slaaneshi Marauders I have and see what they look like (and finish any that need finishing). However that's for another day. I have High Elves to finish:

 

Gary Morley's 4th Edition Maiden Guard, with added shields, showing off (just about) the various green tones across the models

And the more heavily armoured unit, posed firing their arrows as the rear ranks would be doing most of the time

I have no idea how to light models. This is the Level 2 High Magic Wizard who'll be joining the force as it hits the 1,000 point mark

I had hoped to get more done this weekend, but such is life. No matter. The Elves will be done soon enough, after all.

Painting Points:
Today: 1
This Week: 2
2026: 42 

A Little Silver, A Little Green

And a tiny bit of peach, as well, to be fair. Today I spent some time painting the Maiden Guard, getting their armour finished and moving onto blocking out the greens. Next step for them will be to highlight the various green elements and then move onto the white cloth, bows, and spear hafts. After that it's gold, gems, skin, hair... the usual fanfarol. Shouldn't take too long, particularly not if I spent much of tomorrow painting, which I may well do. 

Such an awful photo, I'm so sorry. Anyway you can see the green on the shields, even if you can't see the green anywhere else...

In addition, I felt bad for the started-but-not-continued minis I had sat on the painting desk, so I grabbed some peach flesh colour and started to work on the skin of a Slaaneshi Chaos Marauder. What makes a Chaos Marauder Slaaneshi, you say? 

Nudity and a hint of BDSM, mostly

 
The skin is mostly blocked out on her, but I'm going to do a bit more work on it - there's so much of it showing I'm going to try and put a bit of time into it. And that's that for today, anyway!

 

Kickstarter Time!

A while ago I posted about getting the STL portion of my reward from the GrimForge Mordheim Kickstarter. Today, all the way from Italy, in two lovely little cardboard boxes, came the physical portion of the reward - some nicely cast miniatures, and some really gorgeous Slaanshi flavoured D6s!

A Court of Profane Pleasures! Front, L-R: Two Slaaneshi Cultists with swords, daggers, and bucklers; three Chaos Hounds in front of two Wretches with swords and daggers; two Slaangors with swords, daggers, and hand crossbows. Rear, L-R: A Danseuse with Great Claw and dagger; a Whipmaster with man-catcher; a Priest of the Obscene with pistol; a Flesh Merchant with double-handed weapon; a Devout with sword, dagger, and buckler 

I'm excited to paint these up. I have no idea how they play, but that's almost irrelevant - I think they're fascinatingly bizzare and creepy models with just the right mix of perversion, mutation, and elegance.

The dice! How cool are these?

And, of course, I got the dice! There were actually seven, but that is not at all the sacred number of the Princess of Pleasure, so I'm giving one to a friend of mine and keeping these. I'll use them whenever I need to make Auspicious Rolls with a Slaaneshi model. 

The Week's Work, A Week Later

I got ill. A combination of missed meds (I ran out and, despite having requested more in good time, the prescription wasn't ready) and Life Stuff meant that I basically didn't do anything for almost a week. Then, late last night - so late it was really very early this morning - I got the Painting Bug again, partially as a result of having been playing Warhammer: Total War III for several days, latterly as Alarielle and the High Elves of Avelorn. So I sat down at gone midnight and worked on the Everqueen. I finished up at about 2am with a coat of matt varnish, thinking to myself, well, I'll pop the gloss on the gems in the morning and do the base, and then she'll be done!

Except I made a bit of an error in applying the matt varnish. I'm not sure quite what I did exactly, but as I use brush varnish I think I either didn't shake it enough beforehand or I applied it too thickly. At any rate she was covered in dusty white areas and, despite my best efforts at touching her up, she isn't as good as I wanted her to be; and she's not as good as she was, before I varnished her. Mistakes and problems like this are one reason I don't usually varnish my models, but I've noticed that the paint comes off the 3d prints a bit like it does on metals. So I varnished her, much to my regret:

She doesn't look too bad from this angle, but I am a bit disappointed by the eyes - I tried to do green pupils to give her a bit of an otherworldly aspect, but I'm not sure it works very well

You can see a little frosting at the base of her throat and where her hair meets her shoulders, but honestly this isn't the worst of it and here my touching-up worked, mostly. I do rather like the emerald rune, and the different shades of gold do work well with the simplicity of her white gown and green loincloth

Here you can see the most obvious frosting

And here, on her right hand, but other than that she's alright from this angle too

A group shot of the Everqueen with her Herald (left) and the Commander of the Maiden Guard (right)

At any rate, she's finished, and I've started on the next 250 points of Maiden Guard: a level 2 Wizard (High Magic, naturally) and 10 more "Lothern Sea Guard" to bring the two units up to 20 each. They've been undercoated and had their armour based and washed with Asuryan Blue, so I'm hopeful I'll get them sorted in the next few days.

Painting Points:
Today: 1
This Week: 1
2026: 41

More Bad Photos, But Definitely Some Painting At Last

I think I just need to take the lighting from the hall where LUNAR meets and stick it in my house. I did some painting tonight - not a lot, just enough to break the drought and set the stage for some completed miniatures in the near future - and the photos are just awful. Ah well, here they are:

The Everqueen herself! I need to do a fair bit of touching-up around the skin, and do some more highlights on the gold areas, not to mention the jewels and the hair and the leather and the jade rune and...

The next batch of Maiden Guard, including the Level 2 Wizard

 

L-R: A modern day captive/bystander for modern or near-future settings, a Slaaneshi marauder for my Warriors of Chaos army, and the same mini but printed at a smaller scale for a Skaven slave unit, and a prisoner for Mordheim purposes

Speaking of Mordheim! On the left, a Slaaneshi-corrupted Empire sort, and on the right, a wizard for hire

Tomorrow I'll be trying to finish the Everqueen and maybe the Marauder and get some of the base colours down on the Maiden Guard, too. Who knows, maybe I'll do loads of painting over the weekend... I doubt it though. We shall have to see!

Thoughts On 3D Printing

No painting today, as it turns out. I've really gone slack on that of late - the curse of work and a social life. Something's got to give! I have however spent a fair amount of time plotting out where my Maiden Guard army is going to go over the next few months. First up is bringing the two units of Lothern Sea Guard up to 20 (well, one of 20 and one of 18 plus two characters) and adding in a Level 2 Wizard to give myself some magic defence and a little offence. That takes me to 1,000 points. For the Escalation League I also need to have "a centrepiece unit" painted up, which is a little hard given the nature of my army - there isn't really a "centrepiece" until quite a lot more points, as the whole thing is based around lots of bows and lots of counts-as Maiden Guard. I could argue that the Everqueen would herself count, but, actually, I think I might just grab the rose by the thorns as it were and do something outlandish like jump ahead to the final army list and get my "Dragon Princes" unit done.

After all, once I get to 3,000 points, just having infantry won't really cut it when other armies will be fielding all sorts of monstrosities. So...

Queen's Guard on horse, by Last Sword Miniatures

10 heavy cavalry, with a funky magic banner and a badass champion, giving the Maiden Guard a really nasty combat punch to back up the actual dragon that Commander Aeilliniarie will be riding by that stage? That seems like a pretty good centerpiece to me. Plus it gives me a chance to try 3D printing some slightly larger things than I have done previously.

Or I might just give the Commander her dragon early, rather than paint a load of horses:

Archmage on Dragon, by Last Sword Miniatures 

 Of course the rider'll need some converting to more accurately represent the Commander, and there are some other possible candidates, but it can't be denied that she would be quite the centrepiece!