Well, its been slow progress since last time, so not a huge post today.
The smaller creatures are all now done and appear suitably gribbly. Is it normal to develop an itch when playing with so many insects…?
Next batch will be the four little Glitchlings and a the trio of Vox-Shamblers. When they get done its on to the last, and biggest, of the figures.
Remember that Nurgle Killteam that I undercoated in the warm start to the summer. Startlingly it seems to have reached the top of the paint queue faster than a lot of other things…
Coronasan reminded me he had painted all of his Rogue Trader Killteam and would be ready to play the campaign from that game if only I had mine ready to go…
Well, as I wanted to try out more of the contrast paints, and while I was being helpfully badgered to get the crew done, I thought I might as well make a start.
Never one to do things in a sensible fashion, I started with all the smallest and most fiddly stuff. As these Gellerpox Infected guys are all close combat focussed, they are unlikely to be too effective in our normal games. They will make great choices, however, for a range of other games we play in the shed.
First up the Cursemites. Gotta love a few giant, mutant fleas.
Continuing the insect theme we also have some Eyestinger Swarms. Available in a number of sizes ranging from tiny fly swarm, too big, bulbous and buzzing.
As I was getting all the creatures done in one batch the wonderfully named Sludge-Grubs would also need to get done.
This lot have been treated to a small range of contrast paints, a selection of technical paints, along with my usual red, yellow and green, Smartie like, spot treatments (do they do Smarties abroad? Should that be M and Ms for all the non-Brits?).
A single benefit that could be drawn from global warming is the increasing opportunity in the UK to get outside and undercoat a few models. Usually it is too cold. Often too windy, and all too often, too damp.
This time of year we get short windows of opportunity that cannot be missed, otherwise we would all have nothing in the painting queue when winter comes around… (Who am I kidding, there is always something in the painting queue).
First up, and likely to get a bit of attention when I finish that run on GREEN Space Marines, are some Hasslefree miniatures that were purchased with Last Days: Zombie Apocalypse in mind. I suspect Kev sculpted them all as African Americans and I might actually try to do them in an Afro-Caribbean skin tone. Most of my miniatures end up with pink skin purely because that is my usual flesh paint colour. The last time I attempted a darker skin tone was on a set of Buffalo soldiers for some cowboy game.
The other batch to get a little attention from some spray paint was my Nurgle Kill Team. These are the mutated crew from the Rogue Trader expansion.
I used a can of the new GW Wraith Bone contrast undercoat on these guys and it went on very well. I plan to try a few of the new GW contrast paints on these guys. I suspect that I won’t find it any quicker to paint them up. I never spend a lot of time on highlights and shading so won’t be saving time that way. They might offer up a few more colours and some interesting effects to these, well sculpted and nicely detailed, figures though…
After a few games of Kill Team over at Coronasans on his new MDF industrial terrain it was time for me to host a game in the shed.
I went for a forest outpost as the games setting, and we used some old and new figures for the armies in the game.
Coronasan brought his freshly repainted Tyranids along. These are truly ‘old hammer’ in my opinion and lovely models to boot. Freshened up and deployed for the first time in many, many years, they were hungry from the start.
My Space Orks were there to defend the base and were desperately trying to stop the Tyranids from getting close enough to eat them.
Lets just say that I fed all the Grots to these giant aliens and it didn’t even give them indigestion… A good number of larger Ork dinners later, they seemed a lot more settled…
The Harlequins have been back out as I wanted to see if I could get some undercoating done with the airbrush while the weather is so cold. No rattle can will work at the moment so a bit of primer on a few figures might give me something to do in the next weeks.
My cheap Chinese airbrushes are not brilliant, but after having to clean them quite so vigorously last time, due to paint caking at the nozzle, I do wonder if they have are now slightly worse. While undercoating the paint dried up in the nozzle quite quickly and they were slightly spluttery when working as well.
When the airbrush was last used, it was back in the summertime so it might be just me or to do with the weather, but I didn’t pursue things today any longer than it took to try some slight colour fades on these six figures.
As I will NOT be trying any fancy paint techniques on these boys and girls, I thought some brighter colours and slow transitions might be a good start.
Red to Orange. Green to Yellow. Red to Yellow. Playing around more than painting really. It should give me a head start towards these guys being a bit more interesting than just a regular brush paint job.
Even though I have just built two completely new Kill Teams I should really finish what I started. That would mean doing something with the last of the undercoated members of the Space Marine and Space Ork Kill Teams.
The two sergeants from the small Intercessor and Reiver sets I got seem easy enough to get on with. Wash, weapons and heads, the odd bit of trim. I could also call one them my commander (A Primaries Lieutenant).
Two Ork Boys. Regular sculpts, less than thrilling to paint, but they should be quick to paint up and an easy way to add some more clout to the kill team for when those sneaky Gretchin aren’t needed.
Now, these might prove more fun to paint… Two random old lead figures with arms gathered from various other Ork kits… They do not fit any existing profiles for Kill Team, but they look great, so what the heck!
And another batch of five Gretchin, let’s hope that a future expansion adds a little more use for these ankle biters.
Time to get myself back into the shed while I await some better undercoating weather (unlikely to happen too soon as snow is forecast for the UK at present…)
While I am spending time with my clippers, scalpel and glue. I guess it is inevitable that other kits might get completed. Well, put together at least.
Where as the Gellerpox Infected might number in the teens as a full Kill Team, these Eldar Harlequins are slightly more ‘Elite’ so hardly any are needed. Only six Players can be fielded as a full 100point force. A £25 box of figures from GW doesn’t often supply you with everything you need.
In this case it doesn’t either, as to get the crew I wanted I would have needed to buy a second set just to get the weapon options I required… But with a slight compromise on weapon options, and some further juggling of points values, I managed to keep it at six figures and hold onto my sanity to boot.
The figures themselves are quite slight, as you might expect for elves in space. It’s my first space elves, ever, so please don’t look too closely at how I built them. To get a sensible pose out of them (not looking like they just tripped over) I was less than careful in checking the pieces used in their construction.
I am pretty sure some of the boys are now eunuchs and a few of the ladies might be packing a little more than you bargained for..
Either way, with a little paint on them they might not get noticed…
And NO, when it come to it, I will not be trying to paint diamond patterns on their tiny little limbs…
With two or so Kill Teams completed to a playable state, it’s time to decide what to do next. I really do need to play a few games the the teams that I have before I know what to tweak or add to the teams. I have a few figures already side lined for those teams, selected from the odds and sods section of my collection.
While I get those game played though, I don’t want to be wasting my time doing nothing.
Therefore, its clipping, trimming and building time… Coronasan split the Rogue Trader set with me (well he left them here for me to fall in love with. All the time knowing I would be a sucker for some brilliant new Nurgle inspired sculpts).
This Kill Team is a set of larger and smaller models. Representing the infected engineering room crew of a deep space explorer. That, and the collected vermin found in the bulges of any long adrift vessel. The biggest are these Nightmare Hulks. Lending a level of muscle to a kill team that has little or no shooting to speak of.
Led by Vulgrar Thrice-Cursed, on the right above, this chap being the conjoined remains of the chief engineer and his two first mates. These have some nice touches that, although space travellers, feature sea creatures with almost C’thulhu like overtones.
The mid sized guys are the Vox-Shamblers, a bunch of mutated crewmen. Lesser souls that are now part man, part machine and wholly plague zombies…
Glitchlings (on the left) and Sludge Grubs (on the right) make up one half of the hordes of massed dross.
Eye Stinger Swarms (on the left) and Cursemites (on the right) finish off the horde of little gribblies that should distract, if not damage, my opponents kill team.
Now that these are built I wonder when I will get round to undercoating them. Not the best time of year for using a spray can. Might be time to unravel the Airbrush from the accumulated rubbish that has gathered under my desk…
The last of the Space Orks, that I intended to paint in order to have a playable (but unlikely to be effective) Kill Team, are these five Burna Boys.
Well, actually there are four Burna Boys and their ‘Spanner’, which I guess is their equivalent of a Boss.
The Burna Boys got their first coats of paint last night and before I nodded off I got the Spanner to an almost similar state. Fast and dirty painting (my usual style) and using a mix of brown tones from the brighter end of my paint collection.
Tonight I managed to get the last of the base colours done and then glue them together in their final poses. As a consequence of the multi part design, not all of the poses are perfect. Some of the shoulders for example do not want to fit on to the bodies where shoulders are meant to be… Well not if you want the second arm to actually find its way to both the gun and the Ork…
Anyway while the washes are drying let me remind you of the force. Five Autumnal Goblins with Guns (Gretchin to the true 40k fans).
A Boss Nob with big choppa, his Gunner Boy friend (Not boyfriend! Not in public anyway) with Big Shoota and their Kommando cousin.
Have now been joined by not one…
Not two…
Not even three…
But four Burna Boys, all armed with… Wait for it… Great big Burna’s (flame throwers to normal folks).
Not only that but there is also their Spanner and his Kustom Mega Blaster…
Yes, a fine bunch of green skinned lads (flamethrowers make it easy to hit stuff when shooting, so these guys might be the only boys to kill anything when shooting with this Kill Team).
All in all a nice looking Mob of Space Orks (and goblins). There are thirteen of them so, from here on in, they will be known as ‘Lucky’s Louts’. Although I might wait until after their first outing to decide who of them ‘Lucky’ actually is…
With the scouts nicely out of the way the green skin tide can wash in.
Sadly that sentence stopped me typing for longer than is proper, as I dwelt on the fact that it was not only cheesy but fairly apt.
Some of you will cringe with me, thinking of green ink washes, tide marks and the fact that thirteen figures does NOT make a green skin invasion… For everyone else I shall move swiftly on…
I seem to be taking small bites out of the painting pile at the moment and achieving more that way than any other. With that in mind, I started painting my green skinned Kill Team with these 5 Gretchin. I suspect they will be first to die in my games, so why not make them the first figures to paint.
They are a wonderfully varied bunch of figures. Full of character and little details. Being plastics, some of those details do blend or merge into the main body of the figure in an annoying way. Pouches that become trousers and then loincloths, without a point of division, spring to mind… Where as other details stand out, ready to be painted, like these tiny fingernails and teeth. They even have eyes that are large enough for me to attempt to paint.
For speed painting a limited palette was used. Various browns and tans mainly, with a touch of red, silver and brass that I intend to use on all the larger Orks to tie the force together.
Another thing that ties a force together is base material. I tend to try not to paint bases these days. A mix of coloured flock or grit suits me for most things and in this case – A mix of Sand, Grey Grit and some Red/Brown Stone Chips. Nostalgia almost made me paint the edges of the bases using a pot of old GW Goblin Green that I still have. I managed to avoid that disaster with the use of a dark earth colour instead.
When the whole force is completed I might add some plant life to the bases in either grass or straw tones. As the skin tone of the goblins is almost an autumn green/ brown it might be fitting to use the straw but I shall leave that until they are all done.
For now though, the first five Gretchins are done, and the Orks are sat awaiting their turn under the brush…
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