Chaos Is Fun

Just finished two figures for my eventual WFB Chaos army - both from Hasslefree! One will eventually be a Hero-level character, with a daemonic weapon, and the other is a daemonette who'll be sat on the Lord's palanquin together with some other figures.

The paintjobs were quite quick, an advantage of the previously discussed limited palette and, in the case of the daemonette, the decision to emphasise her otherworldly nature by doing absolutely no highlighting or shading whatsoever and then slapping gloss varnish all over her.

I've also begun the process of finishing off two Juves for my Necromunda Goliath gang, 'The Automatics'.

Pics, as ever, up tonight. Two more points for me.

Of Toothbrushes and Knives

Paint stripping is a chore. Today I managed to steel myself to remove the last dregs of paint from the 12 GZG New Israelis I bought when I was 11! I've had them for 12 years now, and in that time they've been painted:

Black.
Black and green.
Black and white.
Silver.

And all on top of the previous coat... woops! SoI bathed them in Superdrug Own Brand nail varnish remover for about a week and a half, then used an old and knackered toothbrush to remove the weakened paint armour, and a French clasp knife to pick off the difficult bits.

Underneath it all they're actually really nice little models. I think I'm going to do something I've never done before with them and camouflage everything except their visors. Camo'd weapons, armour, backpacks, the lot. No insignia at all except maybe low-vis grey or black stuff.

Hopefully I can get some photos up tomorrow if I finish the Hasslefree Chaos heroine.

He Was How Big?!

Today my wife, son, and I, went to the Tower of London. We wandered round the Bloody Tower, saw the Crown Jewels - which contrived to be both breathtaking and underwhelming - some Irish Guards marching hup and dahn the squayah, Beefeaters, Ravens and the Henry VIII Dressed to Kill exhibition in the White Tower.

The Henry VIII exhibition was small, but worth the entry price by itself! It was fascinating to see his personal armours, the intricate engraving of his horse armours, the massiveness of the lance (they're HUGE, far bigger, heavier, and imposing than I'd thought), and artifacts from the Mary Rose.

By far the single most interesting thing, however, was John of Gaunt's armour. He was 6' 9" tall and, being a knight, built like a brick outdoor toilet. I came up to his shoulders, or thereabouts, and I would've been tall for the Tudor period at 5' 10"!

I tell you, the armour, towering above me, even static and in a glass case, was intimidating. Filled with a big man carrying an even bigger weapon would have made it terrifying.

Limited Palettes

Today I have just under 30 minutes of painting time, split into two 15 minute blocks. This is typical for Fridays, as the weekly departmental lunch is something of a sacred cow.

However, it does mean that I'll come tantalisingly close to finishing off Kalee (b), in large part thanks to the extremely limited palette I'm using (and will continue to use throughout my WFB Chaos army). This technique of limiting the number of colours used provides an instant thematic bond between all the models, regardless of size or manufacturer. Not only that, but it enables you to mass-paint units and characters quickly and to a high standard. So what is my palette?

Black and white, with red, gold, and silver as the principal detail colours. Other colours - purples, pinks, blues etc - do make an appearance, but only for very specific details or where required. This extends to skin tones as well; with black and white being very much in vogue in this particular Chaos Horde. It has the effect of making the army leap out from the table, ties together all the disparate units, and enables me to paint each model differently without worrying about any impact on painting time.

As always, pictures up at some point next Monday.

A Piece of the Mountain

And, following all that boring text, some PHOTOS! Hurrah!


The Black Dragon and the Red Witch - both Reaper Miniatures, both bought from Orc's Nest in 2006/7 (links go to the specific minis).


The Red Witch - notice the translucent effect of her top; an experiment which was very helpful if not as effective as I'd've liked. You'll see more of this on my first Song of Blades and Heroes warband...



Revamped BUF - note the FIBUA bases!

Oh, and when I got home today, I had a present - Studio McVey's Seraphine la Roux! I'm using her as the leader of my first Song of Blades and Heroes warband, and I get to paint her up after Christmas, by order of my better half. I'm VERY excited about painting her as she's a genuine work of art - the sculpt is breathtaking and worth every penny.

A New Approach to Wargaming

For years, I have been a butterfly – flitting from one enticing project to another before its completion, darting from period to period and scale to scale. However, of late, I’ve been considering my approach to wargaming, and I’ve realised a few things:

1. Fiction Over Reality – I prefer either ‘imagi-nations’, fantasy, or SF wargaming.
   
2. Scale Dictates Engagement – 40mm+ squad-platoon, 25-30mm platoon-company, 15-20mm company-battalion, 6mm brigade-division, 2mm division-corps.
   
3. The Joy of Skirmish – forces of no more than perhaps 30 figures a side, and often much less? Yes please!
   
4. Completion Is Vital – I must become more of a Stillmanite* than I have previously been.

My main problem, as I see it, has been an inability to finish painting forces. I merrily buy a load of figures, start painting them, and then move onto the next one. There have been a few exceptions, but by and large these have become unfinished as I’ve added things to them. A good example would be one of my 40K Imperial Guard armies, a mechanised force of Valhallans called the Darendaran X.

Originally they were a 1,500 point army, completed, painted, done. No problems. Then I decided to add some mortars, and a special weapon squad, and ... before I knew it, I suddenly had a plethora of (unpainted) extra infantry and heavy weapons. Now, of course, they need extra Chimeras to accompany them, and a repaint of two spare Leman Russ MBTs I have sat in a box somewhere.

And then there’s the Hellbitches – a massive Necromunda Escher gang, almost – note the word almost – fully painted. I ‘just’ have about 4 more to do, but my enthusiasm for them has vanished. One of them, in fact, is sat in my To Paint box at work.

So, what to do? Well, the answer is simple: Plan, Purchase and Paint! From now on, all my projects will adhere to the Three Ps. I will carefully plan my purchases, taking account of the sorts of games I’m likely to play, whether I need OpFor, and so on. Then I will purchase the models at a show (I’ll come to this in a bit), preferably all in one go, and then – paint the damn things!

In the meantime, I’ll be working on my Unpainted Mountain, selecting one or two old projects and working on them until they’re finished. If there are models still to be bought for them, tough – nothing’s happening until the rest are finished.

Talking of purchasing, I’ve decided to forgo mail order or impulse buys from GW for the forseeable future if it can be avoided (as some GW models are Mail Order only, for example). Instead, each month I will put between £30-50 on one side, and then, in April each year, I will go to Salute! with a purchase list. I will buy what’s on it, and that’ll be that! Plan – Purchase – Paint. As Che once said, “There can be no victory without discipline.”

To give you a rough idea of the size of my unpainted mountain, here, from memory, is a list of the armies, gangs, and other forces that I have more than a few models for (note that not all of these ‘armies’ are actually army-sized, many are little more than skirmish forces or overstrength platoons, and further, that a sizeable minority of these are painted):

All figures are 25-30mm scale unless otherwise stated:

Fantasy:
Warhammer Wissenland/Drakenhof Empire Army – 6th edition models (GW)
Warhammer Solland Empire Army – 7th edition models (GW)
Warhammer Lahmian/Von Carstein Vampire Counts Army (GW)
Warhammer Bretonnian Army (GW)
Warhammer Dwarf Army (GW)
Warhammer Wood Elf Army (GW)
Warhammer Slaaneshi Chaos Army (GW, Hasslefree)
Mordheim City Watch Warband (GW)
Mordheim Vampire Warband (Reaper, GW)
Mordheim High Elf Warband (GW)
Song of Blades & Heroes Warbands and Characters (various)

Science Fiction:
40K Righteous Fists Space Marine Army (GW)
40K Ultramarine Army (GW)
40K Sisters of Battle/Witch-Hunters Army (GW)
40K Daemonhunters Army (GW, Hasslefree)
40K ‘Valhallan’ Mech. Imperial Guard Army (GW)
40K ‘Tallarn’ Imperial Guard Army (GW)
40K ‘Steel Legion’ Imperial Guard Army (GW)
40K Stormtrooper Imperial Guard Army (GW)
40K ‘Cadian’ Imperial Guard Army – 2nd Edition metals (GW)
40K ‘Catachan’ Imperial Guard Army – 2nd Edition metals (GW)
40K ‘Catachan’ Imperial Guard Army – 3rd/4th Edition plastics (GW)
40K ‘Vostroyan’ Imperial Guard Army (GW)
40K ‘Imperial Army’ Imperial Guard Army – RT era metal/plastic (GW)
40K Chaos Space Marine Army (GW)
40K Ork Army (GW)
40K Dark Eldar Army (GW)
40K Eldar Army (GW)
40K Tau Empire Army (GW)
6mm Epic 40K Ork Waagh (GW)
6mm Epic 40K Space Marine Chapter (GW)
6mm Epic 40K Titan Legion (GW)
Necromunda Escher (GW)
Necromunda Goliaths (GW)
Necromunda Orlocks (GW)
Necromunda Ratskins (GW)
54mm Inquisitor Warbands (GW)
Gangs of Mega-City One (Mongoose Publishing, Hasslefree)
Dropwing/Future Wars Rioters and Rebels (GZG, Copplestone, various)
Dropwing/Future Wars Police and Paramilitaries (GZG)
Stargrunt II Mechanised Mercenary Company (GZG, Old Crow, Denizen)
Stargrunt II Force Generica (GZG)
Stargrunt II ‘New Israelis’ (GZG)
15mm Dirtside II European Federation Mechanised Force (GZG)

Historical:
Pirate Crew (Foundry, Redoubt)
Very British Civil War – Skye (Musketeer)
Very British Civil War – Police Action! (Musketeer)
Back of Beyond – Chinese Warlord Troops (Copplestone)
20mm Vietnam (Britannia)
20mm Russian Civil War Bolsheviks (IT Figures)
15mm Vietnam (Peter Pig)
15mm AK47 Republic (Peter Pig, QRF)

There’s other stuff as well, such as the Skaven Grey Seer or Savage Orc Shaman for armies yet to be built, or the collection of models for a now-shelved plan to build a Slaaneshi temple with cultists, worshippers, and worse to adventure through (you start outside, with grounds staff and the odd worshipper/cultist to fight, then move inside – the whole thing was going to be a hexagon with six distinct zones, the closer you got to the central zone, the darker things got, with the Big Bad Boss being a Greater Daemon!!), or, indeed, the one-off models such as the 13th Company Wolf Priest or the handful of Blood Angels.

All in all, it’s a pretty impressive tally, even if a lot of the ‘armies’ are nothing like an army, or in some cases, even a skirmish force! However, it’s not as daunting as it appears for the simple reason of ‘out of sight – out of mind’. I only have a few models at my house, and they are:

• 1,500 point Chaos Space Marine army (The Pantokrator’s Fallen) – 33% painted
• Necromunda – all of them. Unpainted Orlocks, Hired Guns, Goliaths, Ratskins and Escher as well as painted Hired Guns, Goliaths, Ratskins and Escher!
  
• Inquisitor – all seven models. Only one’s fully painted and he’s not been based!
  
• Gangs of Mega-City One – essentially a complete project, only one model needs finishing off and then all I really want to ‘complete’ the game is a Judge or two from Wargames Foundry.
  
• Stargrunt II – New Israelis. There’s 12 or so of these I think.
  
• Mordheim – City Watch, High Elves and Vampires. Only the City Watch are at a playable size and they need four Henchmen models finishing off.
  
• Random – This includes some Eldar, my VBCW stuff, some Back of Beyond characters, the aforementioned Grey Seer, two Minotaurs, and some other bits and pieces.
  

So that’s my current block of Things to Paint. Not that many compared to what languishes at my parents’ house! I’m hoping to get as much as possible painted up before my first 3P project (currently a secret) gets underway in the New Year.

And Another One Bites The Dust!

Hurrah! Another Painting Point for me! I finished the Red Witch (she looks ace - I can't wait to take pics of her with her Vampire Mistress later tonight) and I made good progress on Hasslefree Miniatures' Kalee B, who I'm using as a Chaos Marauder Heroine/unit Champion for my long-planned WFB Chaos army. I think I'll probably be able to get her finished next Monday, as I won't have time to paint tomorrow; my department goes for lunch every Friday.

I'd rather be painting, but then I am a closet misanthrope.

As for Kalee, Hasslefree also do a slightly different and less clothed version, which I intend, eventually, to get together with Miss Fantasy Fetish Attire and Lady Exploding Head for a Mordheim or Song of Blades and Heroes Chaos warband.

Stay tuned - in addition to pics of the revamped BUF and the Red Witch, I'm going to put up a rather long piece about my current attitude towards wargaming and toy soldier buying, and my (large) Unpainted Miniatures backlog.

Olley Painting Points:

This Week: 9
Total for 2009: 13

Action Squad and the Red Witch

Quick post-prandial (paintial?) update for you, my loyal readers:

I finished touching up the BUF men from Al Front, and redid their bases (a simple grey drybrush over a black paintjob). They look rather good actually!

I then went to start undercoating my own, only to discover I've run out of black paint! Aieee! A trip to GW or ModelZone may be required... Having been foiled in my scheme to effectively paint up the rest of the 12-strong Action Squad which forms part of my State Forces for 'Police Action' (see below), I turned to a model which had failed to inspire me of late:

Reaper Miniatures' witch, or, in my hands, the Red Witch. I picked her up, started painting, and very nearly finished her! I was amazed! I still need to work on this translucent clothing business, especially as I want to showcase it on my forthcoming Song of Blades and Heroes warband, but nonetheless I'm pleased with how it looks so far.

All I really need to do on her now is some detailing, her leather gauntlet, staff, hair and base. She should be done tomorrow, which'll be good.

Having reviewed my BUF contingent:

3x pistol-wielding officers
1x NCO with MP-28
1x NCO with shotgun
7x Riflemen

And compared them with my proposed list for Police Action:

1x Officer
2x NCOs with SMGs
1x Shotgun
12x Riflemen
1x plainclothesman
1x female driver

I note that I'm lacking 5 riflemen (although I am reliably informed that the reason for this is because, unsportingly, the Empress Miniatures' Assault Guards are wearing a mix of monos and shirt/trouser ensembles), 1 NCO with SMG, the driver and the plainclothesman. My new, revised list, is:

3x Officer with pistols
1x NCO with SMG, 1x NCO with shotgun
12x Riflemen
1x driver

This gives me:

Staff car - Officer, driver
Truck 1 - Officer, NCO, 6 riflemen (inc. driver)
Truck 2 - Officer, NCO, 6 riflemen (inc. driver)

The female driver will come from the 'Scotland Yard Detectives' pack from Artizan Designs. The two plain clothes detectives in it will be part of the Police presence.

The remaining 5 riflemen will be made up of Empress Miniatures' Assault Guard Rifles 1 and 2 packs (leaving 3 spare who will either be given to Al Front for his 28mm SCW, or hung onto and used as, well, BUF men!)

All told, the BUF will cost me - not including vehicles - £15 at Salute! 2010. Not bad at all really.

EDIT:

Al Front has very kindly sent me a Lledo 1:43 staff car - a 1930 Bentley two-seater in dark blue with the British flag and number '1' on the side - for the Action Squad. Brilliantly, the '1' could pass for an 'I', which was the correct deisgnation of the BUF's defence squads; the 'I' Squads.

I'm now musing over what trucks to buy for the 'I' Squad - armoured Lancias, or civilian trucks, or one of each?

Also, I'm tempted to use the Lewis gunner from Musketeer Miniatures BCW03 British Militia Command pack as a BUF man - I'd need to head swap to keep him in line with the rest of the I Squad, but it'd certainly give them a bit of extra punch. Thoughts?

Painting Points!

After a slight delay imposed by life, I present the SB men! They're tabletop quality, so don't have pupils or divisional/battalion patches:




So that's the first 8 men for my 30-odd platoon for the Skye Battalion. I doubt I'll be doing any more SB until after Salute! 2010, where I'll be spending about £200 saved up over a few months.

At any rate, the SB men bring me another batch of OPPs:

Olley Painting Points:

This week: 8
Total for 2009: 12

Eight Down, Umpteen Hundred To Go

Today I finished the Skye Battalion men. They look rather spiffing, if I do say so myself! I also undercoated the chipped areas on the Al Front Barracks BUF men, and painted their bases black in preparation for urbanisation.

This represents a small chip out of the ever-growing Unpainted Mountain (I say unpainted rather than lead because almost none of my models are made of lead), and another tiny step on the road to victory! Eventually I hope to be in a position where the only models I have to paint are those I've just bought or are about to buy.

Some hope, eh?

Pictures will, of course, be put up this evening.

One of these days I'll catalogue my Unpainted Mountain, although I suspect that might cause me to die of horror. As an example, from memory, I have the following at home:

40-50 unpainted Necromunda figures.
~30-40 unpainted WH40K Chaos Space Marines.
12 paint-stripped Ground Zero Games 25mm New Israelis.
~10 unpainted WH40K Eldar
5 or 6 unpainted Mordheim figures.
10 VBCW/Back of Beyond types (inc. the 5 BUF men from Musketeer).
Assorted others.

Probably comes to about 125-140 figures that I have to paint, just at home. That's not including the vast bulk of my collection, which is still at my parents' house - which includes at least 300 unpainted 28mm figures. More like 500+ if I counted them, I suspect...