World's Shortest Battle Report

So... I went over to Rich's last week to play some Hordes. Unfortunately his young son was poorly and we called it off after turn 1:(

Here are some pics of the first turn though! Two main things happened. Yet again the Bloodtrackers were great and unlucky at the same time. Ambuscading the Raptors, they all hit and, needing to roll 11 on 3d6 to kill a model each, left 3 of the 5 still standing on 1 hp each... grrrr!




Over the last week I have mainly been finishing some painting off. I finished my Woldwatcher, Pureblood Warpwolf and today finished off Baldur. Pics to come soon!

Placeholder!

Back in the day I used to play Everquest, one of the most addictive, frustrating but brilliant games ever. For some quests you would need hang around in one point waiting for a "named" monster to spawn. However, if it wasn't there when you arrived you would need to kill the monster where it should be, then in another 27 mins or whatever the named would have a chance to spawn. The monster in that place was called the Placeholder.

This post is a placeholder with the promise of a "named" proper post to come soon. I was pretty ill last week (nasty manflu cold ugh) but I did get some painting done. Some fine Thunder Hammer and Storm Shield Terminators for the Ultramarines. These were done pretty fast but I think they look good.

As I type this, the last model for my 500pt Circle Orboros Horde force is drying the final coat of varnish. Tomorrow night they get an outing against Rich's Everblight army. I have never played these guys before but they have a fair reputation- his 750 Everblight list came second in the WPS Club Challenge last weekend. Hopefully he won't be running epic Thagrosh as his warlock tomorrow! Come the weekend I should have some new shots of the Circle army posing and battling on the field. If my memory doesn't let me down I should also have some battle report.

If not, you may have to wait another 27 mins for the named to pop!

My golden rules of painting (why do I keep breaking them?!)

I have spent a fair bit of time thinking while painting (what else can you do other than listen to music?) and it keeps occurring to me that there are small "rules" that I know I should be following when I am building and painting models. A lot of the time I seem to ignore them against my better sense. I will try and lay out my largest sins here-

1: Use more water. The number one rule and the one I always seem to break. I don't think you can ever use too much water with your paint. I am constantly having to remind myself to keep it wet. the paint just flows so much easier with a fresh brush and wet paint. Why is it that I will battle a brush that is too dry and low on paint to keep applying paint badly when I could refresh the paint and water the brush?

2: It is not a race. When you are up against a deadline, real or self-imposed, rushing does not help. More haste= less speed as we all learnt as kids. If it is going to take an hour to basecoat a model, it is going to take an hour. Either make more time to paint or accept you won't finish it in time. If I find myself rushing the model usually suffers for it and the time actually saved is marginal due to having to retouch areas.

3: The basecoat is everything. It may look like crap relative to the finished model and take a lifetime but in my experience getting a neat and tidy basecoat makes everything else so much easier. Even if you end up having to repaint some sections due to having to force paint into recesses this is much more preferable to leaving bare metal (that the primer may have missed). A good basecoat makes inking so much easier and reliable and, once highlights catch the main focus, a plain or underpainted area is not so noticable as long as it is neat and tidy.

4: Work from the inside out. If you are painting a guy like this orc with a helmet, it is a hell of a lot easier to paint his neck first then the outer parts of the helmet. I find it so easy to just start on the most obvious part of a model such as a shoulder pad or face than the inside of the armpit socket or elbows (on a marine for example) Then when you have a beautifully basecoated shoulder pad you find you have to go back and mess it up getting the the interior.

5: If you find an error, fix it: It is annoying as hell to find a little bit of flash hanging onto a finger like a Floridian voting chad. If you cut it off you end up with some shiny metal and need to do a cover up job, usually needing two or more coats due to coverage. If I don't fix it at the first opportunity it will still be there when I come to highlight and then I will be even more annoyed at myself for not sorting it out.

Here endeth the lessons for now. The model shown is an old orc model that I finished this last week. I was trying to play around with the monochromatic paintjob of just mainly metal. I used loads of washes on the armor and then spent an age doing the fine highlight in Mithril Silver. This model was bought many years ago to be a D&D character but I never got round to him. He almost got ebayed the other week, but I decided that was not his fate as the model is great.

Slight diversion this week

Being in a small rush and on a timetable to finish my Hordes force for June, I just spent about 6 hours painting my first 40k figure in a few months. Contrary, I know.

This is the classic 90s model of Marneus Calgar, Chapter Master of the Ultramarines and "Lord Macragge". I got him cheap off Ebay and lavished him with some care and attention. The photos dont really do him justice as I think this is about as well as I can paint a model with my skills.

My main 40k army is Ultramarines so the model will get used, but if I was being super logical I wouldn't have painted him for a while. I guess that is one of the contradictions inherent in this hobby. To quote Omar in The Wire, "Do what you feel". In some ways, this goes to the core of the hobby for a lot of people. All my armies were chosen on gut feeling; a combination of aesthetics, playstyle and power level coming into it. You chose what you want to model, paint and play but what informs these choices? Some days I can look on the web/white dwarf/ hobby shop and get the urge to want to collect a whole new army. This is despite already having a ton of models to build and paint and play with. Is it just greed that makes us do this? Or is it the manufacturers nefarious marketing? Damn them for making such fine models!