My return to GW games.

I’ve made no secret about the fact that I generally prefer the gameplay found on the indy scene over a lot of what GW has to offer. But certain games have always been among the ones that I found extremely tempting and Age of Sigmar is probably at the top of that list, not that I dislike 40k but the experiances Ive had in the past leaves me with hesitation every time I consider re-visiting it, lord knows the numebr of projects I should have on this system that instead hide among my shelves.

From the moment people started talking about Spearhead my ears perked, seemingly everything I had hoped that Combat Patrol was going to be and although technically I already have an unplayed Skaven army from years ago with the pieces that I could use, there was one recent release I’ve been fighting temptation from the moment they had been announced.

Now I realised this project system is not the place to push my own video content, but the opening moments of this make clear just how much I was tempted by the new Chaos Dwarfs.

But you’ve probably seen the sprues all by now so its time I started discussing some hobby.

By the time I managed to pick up my box 2 weeks later the hyper focus was mostly gone but that didnt change the fact I wanted to try and get them done quickly and around 2 or 3pm that afternoon it began, I would build everything in the box in sub assemblies for a change to help with painting later and I had everything built and primed around 10pm that night.

I’d already made a diversion with the priming and I did that out of habit more than anything but I wouldnt call that a mistake perse, just a diversion.

Now the eagle eyed amoung you may have already noticed the error in this picture, some of you might even notice two.. but we’ll talk about them next time.

I’m not entirely sure why I started with the flames, maybe it was the nerves about wet blending something so important on the model, though speedpaint makes that super easy but I won’t lie seeing that the colour choices were working were super exciting for my motivation to keep going

Although brighter because of the white zenethial priming I was very happy with how the turquoise came out as well, ironically to the point that for a moment I even questioned if maybe I wanted to just keep it but no i had a vision.

And then is where things went wrong, so first things first copper is not bronze, truthfully I hadn’t even read the label properly and that fact didn’t even occur to me until after I had finished. Secondly whilst you in theory dry brush with speedpaints, don’t.. It comes out horrible..
I sent this picture to a friend with the following text
“Thanks… I hate it”

My heart sank for a moment, I hadn’t been careful enough and my intent on getting it done quickly made me worry about 2 things, had I kept my paints thin enough to cover it? Could I even cover it.
For those of you new to the hobby this is where I genuinely smile and tell you to relax and stop over thinking everything, you can’t ruin your minis. You can however keep going. And so yes back over with turquoise we went.

Im not entirely sure if this was the thought in my head when I started doing the basing but looking back the fact I started doing the basing around the time I made the previous mentioned error doesnt feel like it was an accident. It feels like this was my time to refresh.

As I was looking at endless videos the question of what I wanted to do with basing came to mind as well, I have a habit of leaving basing decisions until last and as a result either rushing them or putting it off for eternity and given the limit of this project was smaller I wanted to plan ahead. I’d given thought to going for something in Lava, its a common choice for obvious reasons and would have been something to test myself as well but I just had this feeling if I went in that direction Id put it off instead. And so the idea was, theyre standing over terrain theyve ruined and decimated but how?

I decided to follow the rule of KISS, Keep it simple stupid, socks, cork and some slate.

Its worth noting that not all of these were done at the same time, infact the first base (that I already teased in the previous entry) was done a good day or so before any more and the rest were all done whilst waiting for things to dry in the last stages.

I cannot possibly tell you how simply my basing paints were though, seriously you really dont need to over think your basing, in some cases you will want to do more than I did, mine was simple to the point of stupidity but I wanted it to look like a fire hadnt long came through. Its a matte black spray, dry brushed first with Monster brown from the Army Painter (the air range.) and then followed up with uniform grey from the same range. I took my time and added the colours slowly  but given I was working from black all I needed to do was trace back over it if I ever pushed the dry brushing too far.

Hey look that rhymed 😛

Okay dumb moments aside was I going to change my plan? Well I knew it could be done and the whole point of this was to challenge myself with a new way to paint something so I went shopping. I’m not one that would normally advocate for buying a new paint just to try something if you have an another option on hand but the problem there was the only brass I had was a speedpaint and I wasn’t going to make that mistake a second time. And so I decided I was going to a local store to pick up a copy of one of the literal colours that the video used, the Monument Pro Acryll Brass I was not howeevr picking up the lighter colour by green stuff world because no longer buy anything that company sells. (this isnt the place for me to explain why but youre welcome to ask in the comments. So instead I picked up the Light Bronze and then I also give into temptation with some brushes and a 3rd colour (that I am yet to use)

You know how some people sometimes hear so many people talking about how great a product is that they become convinced theyre all being paid to say it, yeah well I know way too much about that mindset, I really wish Id tried some of these paints earlier as theyre amazing, though theyre also very expensive here in Australia (unsure about elsewhere). But I wont lie, the moment I started seeing the results I didn’t want to stop.

Now I kept this drybrush somewhat random and heavier in some places than others, trying to simulate the wear being uneven, I suspect if you wanted to you could truly go to town with this, the dry brush on a flatter surface obviously ends up looking like an over brush so you need to be more careful, I have to be honest the cannon is the lesser of the two. But this is the day I didn’t stop, I painted for like 5 to 6 hours without break for the first time in years I was locked in and honestly I havent been as happy as I am with a project in a long time.. Its actually a finished project as well.

Could I do some more highlights, damn right i could I could highlight some of the bronze as well but for now I am calling this finished they look better than I hoped for and I guess now I could show them off..

So thats it right?  Right?

Well i have more pictures to share but I also want to share my super professional and not me hacking away at foam solution to travel with them on the motorbike to share next time

I went back and forth on what solution I wanted to use for this, there isnt a Battlefoam for this set… yet. I could have gone magnets (and did consider it) but personally Ive found magnetising your miniatures when travelling on a Motorbike more than problematic, theres just too much vibration and the thing with magnets is if they do give way they go anywhere and break everything unless you get lucky.

So theres this accoustic foam in the garage I scored from my house mate. trace around the models and then cut it out… What could go wrong..

Now I jokes about this looking super professional and not just cut with a knife…. That was a lie, now you may sit back, giggle and tremble at the look of what I achieved without the proper tools, im not going to lie… I am very proud of it.

I actually have brought from foam cutting tools to clean these up since this was done so they will look nicer some time soon.

Sometimes a simple solution can just work, not everything has to be pretty and given the simple tools I used, Im shocked this works as well as it did.

Now.. to get a game in next friday… Hopefully

And there we go Jason “The Bruce” actually finishes something he started