Warhammer Fantasy Revisited

Happy new year All! Wishing everyone all the best for 2019.

Progress since last update:

Bretonnia – have started work on the base colours for the horses barding for the unit of 12 Knights of the Realm. Not much to show here yet.

Middenheim – Coated all all the cavalry with an airbrushed thinned down red ink over the Platemail basecoat. Also assembled another 8 proxy spearmen to bring the unit up to a sizeable 50. Finally, converted a Middenheim leader (Possibly Captain?) on foot.

High Elves – Converted a block of 10 Elven Marines. converted a Commander for the force and primed all the infantry in AP Plate Mail. Primed the Bones dragon (I’m just going to call it a Sea Dragon rather than a Merwyrm – Corsairs get Sea Dragon cloaks so makes sense to me…) in gloss black then airbrushed with fancy colour shift paint from green Stuff World – The ‘Psychotic Illusions’ from their metal colour Shift Box Set #1. Metallic green with a red shift offset which the camera fails to capture… Going to paint on details with a brush then do a few ink washes, then considering an AP varnish coat follows by a gloss varnish spray. Then plenty of water effects on the base. No idea how this will all impact on the colour shift paint but I’m keen to find out and don’t really mind if I mess it up 🙂

More miscellaneous progress here and these since my last update. Firstly, have managed to get a solid start on the base colours for the Brett cavalry unit I’m currently working on. My friend wanted the whole unit in purple and white so that’s what I’ve gone with. Trying to keep it to a fairly limited number of colours for the sake of expediency – plus they will be getting hit with AP varnish so I’m rusting that to do most of the hard work for me…

Over a white AP primer used the following colours (all Vallejo unless otherwise stated) – Base Violet, first highlight a 50/50 mix of Violet and Violet Blue, second highlight Violet Blue, then followed by an AP Purple Ink wash (if doing this again I would have just airbrushed in one shade of purple and left the vanish to do the rest… Best laid plans and all that…). Horses were neutral grey ase with a sparing Light Grey highlight with the beginnings of a few coats of Ivory on the white areas. All leather was hit with Leather Brown. Will still need to touch up where I have overstepped and hit the metal parts with silver before dipping. Knights will be hit with the same colours as their mounts with the addition of some gold for sword hilts etc and Cavalry Brown as an accent here and there and to tie in the red decals a little for when I get there.

Also unpacked and sorted what Dark Elves I had on hand. good news was a lot of metal minis. bad news is that most were missing parts. Just small things like wings, weapons or mounts mind you… Also have generic ‘drow’ or dark elf minis from other product lines which could be incorporated into the force without too much fuss. However I think this is going to get rolled into a Cult of Slaanesh army so the small model count presented should be OK, because everything goes better with daemons…

For the High Elf force I’ve printed and put together a couple of boats to ferry them around. Printed some bolt throwers to go with but can’t quite arrange four of them to a vessel so think it will have to be two apiece and the crew can just shift them from one side to the other as required. Printed models with wooden dowelling attached, then a basecoat of AP Desert Yellow before the rattlecan ran out, then a brushdown with AP Strong Tone Dip. Also appearing in the photo are some siege equipment I was painting up at the same time, because one day I WILL get to play a siege game 🙂

On the Middenheim front I primed the 50 spearmen, 10 huntsmen and a few of the characters before my white rattle can too gave out. Today I managed to assemble two command groups and do another pass through my bits boxes. Think I will be able to scrounge together enough components to have a block of 25 halberdiers and 25 swordsmen to form part of the Middenheim army – which is good as I feel Empire armies should have large blocks of core infantry. Just wouldn’t be proper otherwise…

It’s been way too hot to get any meaningful hobby progress done. (As in the paint is drying out on a wet palette kind of heat). Locally the weather has been hitting the 35-40 degree mark for most of the month hence my lack of progress/updates.

Have been doing some tinkering here and there – a little more work on the Dragon for the High elf Sea Patrol and have started putting the base colours on a couple of the Middenheim unis, but primarily it’s just been assembly and priming.

Middenheim/Cult of Ulric army as it presently stands:

50 spearmen assembled and primed.

25 swordsmen assembled and primed

25 Halberdiers assembled, primed and base colours commenced

10 Crossbowmen assembled, primed and base colours commenced

10 Handgunners assembled and primed

10 Handgunners assembled and primed

10 Huntsmen assembled and primed

2×3 man artillery crews assembled and primed

Cannon assembled, yet to be primed

Mortar have most of the parts, need to kitbash a frame and assemble

9 Knights of the White Wolf assembled and primed, red armour done

9 Knights of the White Wolf assembled and primed, red armour done

9 Knights of the White Wolf assembled and primed, red armour done

Grandmaster of the White Wolf assembled and converted, primed, halfway through base colours.

Plus other characters assembled and primed: Markus Wulfhart, 4 priests of Ulric on foot, 2 mounted Priests of Ulric, and a Middenheim Captain or Lord on foot.

Yet to buy/convert/procure – A couple of units of Hunting Hounds, a block of Teutogen Guard (maybe 2?…) and probably a wizard for the Middenheim half of the army – Frostgrave have some nice metal character wizards who look rough and ready (and beardly) enough to fit the bill. Also found an old empire engineer who I am considering adding – the model looks like a good fit but the army is getting a bit ‘shooty’ as it is…

So if I am only looking at the ‘in hand’ stuff I have 152 infantry, 30 cavalry and 2 warmachines to paint. Well at least that should keep me out of trouble for a bit 🙂

In actual hobby progress, I did get that unit of Bretonnian Knights finished off. A couple of progress shots follow

Will have to confess I wasn’t sold on the colour scheme when my friend told me what he wanted but now with them all ranked up I have to admit that they have grown on me – pretty sure he made the right call. Recipe follows (as I’ll probably add a Paladin to lead the unit and a foot retinue in the same colours/heraldry somewhere down the line…).

(All paints Vallejo Model Colour range unless otherwise stated).

Knights were primed in AP Plate Mail, Mounts in AP Matt White.

Purple was a violet base colour, next highlight was a 50/50 mix of violet and Violet Blue, fial highlight was Violet Blue (could afford not to be too subtle with the gradient as the AP ink at the end tones down the colour shift).

Leather was Leather Brown

Red was Cavalry Brown, re-highlighted after dip

Gold was AP Bright Gold

Flesh was Basic Skintone (multiple coats of same)

Hair was Light Brown (multiple coats of same)

White was multiple coats of Ivory, followed by a thin coat of AP matt White, retouched after dip.

The Dip was AP Strong Tone Varnish thinned down slightly with mineral turpentine and brushed on. Brushed excess off areas with decals to try and avoid pooling around edge of decals.

Base was Olive Green (2 coats). Flock was a blend of Woodland Scenics Earth Blend Blended turf and  Woodland Scenics Yellow grass Fine Turf. Flowers and grass tufts were a mix of of manufacturers (AP, Gamers Grass and Leadbear IIRC).

Then 2 coats of AP Matt Varnish.

Today’s update is brought to you by the colour Prussian Blue…

So, if the stars and fates align and Great Cthulhu does not rise from the depths I might get a few days off work next week. Planning on setting some time aside and doing a bit of a paint-a-thon. (As opposed to a pint-a-thon which is what I first typed… While a paint-a-thon does also result in blurred vision it usually doesn’t end with lamb kebabs and no taxi fare home…).

So planning on speedpainting some Chaos Mortal reinforcements for my existing armies, just to bulk them out a bit and get them big enough to field on the tabletop. Will be doing to ‘tabletop’ standard only, which in my world is block colours, an army painter dip, retouch, quick base and matt varnish. Consider these ‘A’ priorities for the project:

First up, half a dozen Tzeentch knights and a couple of characters:

Next up, a Nurgle force. A unit of 6 knights, plus one extra to add to an existing unit of 5, 5 warriors to add to an existing unit of 10, a chariot and a block of 14 warriors with a character to go with.

And for Khorne, 2 blocks of 5 (extra-spiky) knights, 4 marauders to bulk an existing unit up to 20 strong, 14 warriors and 2 characters, plus one lone knight to push an existing unit up from 5 to 6 knights.

If I get that lot knocked over I’ll push on with my High Elf Sea Patrol force as a ‘B’ priority – 2 blocks of 15 Seaguard, 2 blocks of 6 Shadow warriors, a unit of 10 marines, a captain and a mage.

Doubt I’ll make it through that but if I do would be good to get a start made on putting the base colours down on these 29 Knights of the White Wolf.

Even aiming to get to just ‘tabletop’ quality I’m not sure how far I’ll get but I’m keen to find out. I’ll post updates regularly to track progress and keep myself honest. Will kick off Saturday morning local time and see how far I get by next weekend. Wish me luck 🙂

Had a pretty chilled day today with a friend over to work on some hobby stuff. I got stuck into my chaos side of the project while he worked on some stuff he wanted to progress. Aside from a break for BBQ lunch most of the day was just chatting , painting and listening to music.

Managed to get the base shading down on all the armour, and a start on blocking out the first colour, English Uniform on the cloaks on the Tzeentch knights. The original paint schemes were before the projects system on OTT, so I don’t have an accurate record of the colours I had used previously, so am trying to do an eyeball comparison and account for the fact that the currently finished stuff has had an AP strong tone varnish dip which will tint the colours somewhat. I figure as long as it lines up approximately it shouldn’t be too much of an issue though…

A late start to the day due to getting distracted by printing projects, but had picked up a brush by noon.

The Nurgle force got a few colours added to them today, from here need to add the bone, leather and metal colours and I think they are pretty close to the dip stage (will need to have a close look at the comparison model to see if I’ve missed anything of note).

Khorne got another pass of red ink on the characters and spiky knights, left the lone knight and warriors as they are a closer match presently oto existing units. Again, blocked out some more colours here, mainly the cloaks which aren’t visible…

Finally, did the cloaks for Tzeentch and had a targeted retouch on the armour here and there where I had missed bits on the first pass or wanted a bit more depth.

Only minor progress today – could only steal away for a couple of hours due to having to do real life stuff unfortunately. Got a coat of Skeleton Bone on where it needed to go so starting to get to the more ‘value add’ colours that make it appear like progress is happening. Tomorrow s likely to be busy too so not sure how productive I’ll be hobby-wise regrettably… Should still manage to finish the Chaos forces (sans Tzeentch characters who I might leave and try hitting with washes if I feel confident…)