A Bit Of Downtime

So yesterday I didn't do anything, and today I just didn't feel particularly like painting very much at all. I did however slap some basic colours onto one of the drop pods:

These are definitely going to need two things: a masking tape job to ensure a nice straight line between the bone and green, and another coat of bone and olive green before the Nuln Oil wash!

I'm going to Warhammer World on Friday with my long-time friend and opponent S to play a couple of games of 6th Edition Warhammer Fantasy, so tomorrow I'm hoping to make some more headway on the commission ships and maybe some of the Space Wolves too. But we'll see.

Undercoating, Base Coating...

... my goodness, a lot of coating has been going on today. I undercoated most of the commission pieces, except for one ship which I need to mask before doing so, and both (now assembled) drop pods. Then I went through all the Space Wolves and gave them their base coats of metal and blue-grey, before whacking a Nuln Oil wash over them all. While I was doing that I also slapped on some Ironbreaker to one of the drop pods, trying to identify which bits need to be metal and which need to be painted green and bone.

The next step with the Space Wolves will be to give them their highlight layer of The Fang, before starting to work on the details (and there's a lot of details). Once I get to the detail section I'll probably work on no more than four or five at a time, and I may well focus on them one at a time too - it depends how I'm feeling on any given day, and how much progress I make on the commission too.

Dreadnought for scale

 The drop pods are big, and I suspect will greedily eat up all my remaining Ironbreaker and at least a pot of Nuln Oil, but they should be relatively quick to paint (I hope). The internal sections that aren't metal will be a standard olive drab, the external sections will be green, bone, and heat-resistant black. Then I'm going to dirty the bejeezus out of them because these things are fired from orbiting space craft like a shell and then scream into the atmosphere of a planet to slam into the ground at the sort of speed that would kill a normal person and disgorge, in their case, Dreadnoughts. They're not going to look very pristine after all that, frankly.

Oops! All Battlemechs

Well that Marienburger is still waiting to get finished, but I have managed to do the 3D printed 'mechs:

BSK-M3 "Bull Shark" - a 95 ton assault 'mech in Davion service. The grimace on the chassis is a personal addition by the pilot, Lieutenant Feyliss "Sicknote" Crake, in blatant contravention of regulations

A shot of the rear - it's pretty boring!

That particular 'mech is destined for my friend C's Davion mercs/Guards RCT, so I'll probably end up on the wrong end of its guns at some point!

A heavy battle lance from MacLeod's Light Horse (MLLH), a mercenary unit originating from the Magistracy of Canopus. The Orions (centre) are modified versions unique to the MLLH, as is the Stalker (right), which is the personal ride of the unit's commander, Colonel "Mama Bear" MacLeod. The Black Knight (left) is entirely stock in a BL-6-KNT configuration

All the Battlemechs still need bases, which I'm going to get in a week or so from C. Once I stick them on their bases they'll be fully finished but I'm happy to count them as finished for Painting Point purposes.

Painting Points:
Today: 5
This Week: 5
2025: 324

Mystery Mechs And Marienburg

A little painting tonight in the cooler evening hours after a quite busy and exhausting day saw me undercoat and base coat the 3D printed Battlemechs I collected at the weekend, as well as doing some tidying up on the Marienburg Captain readying for the last little push tomorrow. Yes, I know, Space Wolves, etc etc, but I have been thoroughly distracted by these Battlemechs even though they don't even have bases yet:

 
The Bull Shark (stuck to the paint pot) is in my friend C's Davion mercs/Guards colours of olive green with the right leg in red and white; the remaining 'mechs are in the British Racing Green of my personal mercenary outfit, MacLeod's Light Horse. The Stalker is a modified variant -3H, with ten LRM-5s and four medium lasers... and maximum armour. The Black Knight is a stock BL-6-KNT, and the Orions are... mysteries. They appear to have SRM-4s in the left torso instead of LRM-15s, and a laser of some description instead of the SRM-4. They have a cannon in the right torso, and one has two medium lasers and the other has what could be four medium lasers? Or two medium lasers and two small lasers? It's not clear. More research required there I think.

Anyway, tomorrow will also be a long day for a variety of reasons but I'm aiming to get the Marienburg Captain finished and the Bull Shark nearly done at the very least.

A Slight Deviation

For a variety of reasons, not least of which is how warm it is in the office where I do my painting, I haven't actually done any of that today. What I did do, though, was clean up and repair the Bull Shark BSK-M3 model that I picked up when I went to visit R at the weekend.

The two metal barrels are from Heresy Miniatures' silenced machine pistols, replacing parts that broke off when being cleaned up

That beast should have two Autocannon 10s, two Autocannon 5s, four long-range missile launchers, and four medium lasers, but it turns out that you can't fit the AC/10s and the AC5s in the arms, so I had to swap them for LBX-AC10s (giant shotgun things really). Then I got to trying to stat it up for Alpha Strike, initially using the old Alpha Strike Companion rules:

 And then on being informed that this was out of date and that the place to go was Mega Mek's Mek Lab, I spent a while getting that downloaded and installed and the relevant Java runtime installed and then getting the damn thing recreated again:

Which is quite different really! At any rate if you'd like to get your own Bull Shark, you can find the files for them here. I also got the Orions, Black Knight, and Stalker 3H from that site too.

So no progress on the Pile of Opportunity, Marienburgers, or Space Wolves today - but I did do a fair bit of hobbying regardless.

Fight For The Right To Wear Loud Clothes

I must say I'm really enjoying painting these Marienburgers; they're very colourful and yet quite a simple palette. Today P and I went to visit P's friend R, and we all hung out in her workshop room painting. R does a lot of gunpla, and 3d prints stuff like "a Reaver Titan" or "a statuette of an anime character" and has a lot of funky things like airbrushes, and similar tools. She's very skilled and certainly a better painter than I am! At any rate while we were doing that I managed to finish the second Marksman and one of the Swordsmen, leaving the Captain, one Youngblood, and the last Swordsman.

I gave the Swordsman a grey beard because I figure he's a gnarled old veteran who's seen some things - hence the skull on his belt!

Unlike the other Marksman, this one's handgun stock hasn't been painted. Like the Swordsman, he carries a skull. Why? Why not

I like the way the feathers turned out, even if they could maybe be a slightly different colour to the clothes

The Swordsman has a gold earring; the Marksman a votive paper wrapped round his sword. Both are lucky charms in a way

Not only that but I finally picked up the 3D prints I'd got R to make for me at the end of last year (!) - two Dreadnought Drop Pods for my Deathwing army, a bunch of Battlefleet Gothic Imperial ships just because, and some Battlemechs:

 

I think the Stalker might be a bit small, or the Black Knight a bit too big, but whatever - it's Battletech! I do need to source some hex bases though...

And then, after all that, we had a very nice little game of Tokaido which R won handily (I came dead last):

At rear, some of R's 3D printed anime statuettes painted entirely by her

All in all, a very nice and quite productive day really.

Painting Points:
Today: 2
This Week: 6
2025: 317

Random Assortment

Today I painted one mini from undercoat to completion, and finished off the bases of some others for some nice quick wins. I also got to the point where I've very nearly counted almost every unpainted miniature I have: I just need to dig out my 15mm AK47 Republic file boxes and see what's left to do there. I know there was a fair chunk of stuff back when I was last working on them some... errr... twenty years ago. 

In the meantime, here's what I did today:

Spiders! These are from the Warcry spider cult warband, but I've repurposed them for random Necromunda critters

A Ral Partha mini, and a companion to the executioner and headsman's block I did the other day. She represents the 15th and last Pain Token for my Dark Eldar

The dark brown highlights on her hair didn't come out in this photo very well, sadly, but hey ho

This is Porcelain, a D&D Warforged character I drew up for a game a while ago. The mini is a 3D print from... somewhere? R, my friend, who currently has my 3D printer, printed her off a while ago

She might be all curves but she's magic-powered metal and deadly with it

I particularly like how the 'skin' came out - I used a lot of different tones and the end result is very nice

Then I actually put some more paint on the Cawdor models! No, really, look:

They're about 2/3 finished now I reckon

That's the metallics all done, and I'm on to the highlighting-post-Agrax Earthshade and details stage. Oh, and the skin, I guess. I should be able to get them finished tomorrow, which cleans my painting desk for something new. Maybe those Royalist Quar at last...?

Painting Points:
Today: 5
This Week: 7
2025: 7