Saxon reinforcements aka the final Painting Challenge entries

With the painting challenge over it's time wrap up with my final entries. In the last few weeks I focused more or less solely on painting some Saxons. Our 1813 campaign is rolling forward and they will all be needed soon. And it doesn't hurt that they yield quite a few points while still being relative fast to paint ;)

All of these units are from the second Saxon Division. I've almost completely finished the first one, it's just missing the Leib Grenadier battalion which will need some green stuff work as their uniform differed slightly from the normal grenadier uniform. And after these I'm only missing 3 more infantry battalions from the second division and then that's completely finished as well! However they might have to wait a bit longer as I'm actually missing some line infantry miniatures and will have to wait for reinforcements. I have enough figures for one more battalion and if I use casualty figures on the bases then for maybe another one after that. I was going to order the missing Hussars and command figures and the final two batteries of artillery so it isn't that big of a deal.

First up combined grenadiers of battalion von Sperl.

 

Then we have Regiment Niesemeuschel in their red facings as well as a casualty base. I really need to crank out more casualty bases as well. I've only done this and all the light infantry ones until now so there will be quite a few to paint up!

 

And finally the two batteries of 6 pounder guns  that were attached to the second division. I still need to paint two batteries of horse artillery and two foot artillery batteries that were in the Corps reserve. Quite a lot of firepower with 8 batteries in total for two divisions and their attached cavalry.

And finally some rats! These were actually painted in late December, but were without bases as they were waiting for the rest of the unit to be painted. I never got around to it during the challenge so in the last evening I figured I'd just make some quick bases for them to get the finished. As paint test minis their main point was to see which would please my eye more, fur or skin shade, on the arms and legs. The clothing is also fairly dull and not the bright bluish green of Clan Mange that I'm going for. But I think I'll reserve that shade for just small details on the basic rats and use it more on characters and units like Stormvermin.

The bases are super simple as there will be far over a 100 of them so I need something that can be done fast and in bulk. The bases were just covered with dark brown Vallejo pumice, an assortment of pigments and then mostly covered with fallen leaves that I made with an assortment of different Green Stuff World leaf cutters. I'll also probably be adding different tufts and maybe some still water on some of the bases, but to be honest I didn't have the time on these guys. The PVA wasn't actually 100% dried when I was taking the images and it was already getting fairly late.

Painting Potpourri

I've been pretty lazy on the blogging front as of late and have amassed quite a backlog of unpublished miniatures that I've painted during the painting challenge. I haven't been very active in following other blogs or hobby forums either. To confess, I've usually actually done that at work, but since switching to a new place my workload has been way up as has been my motivation so workdays are usually actually spent working and when I get home I don't really feel like sitting on a computer anymore.

Still I've been painting fairly actively whenever I've had free time as it really helps me wind down after a hectic work day. I'm nowhere near the numbers some people are able to produce in the challenge, but I'm pretty happy with my output.

First up some Fantasy additions. I started on my Skaven army with some of the bigger machines in the form of a Doomwheel and the original old school Screaming Bell. Points wise I already have nearly half of the points of my initial army done with these guys finished. Now there's just the small matter of painting 100+ Clanrats...

 

I also painted some sideline support for my Blood Bowl team with the sportscasting team and a Bloodweiser babe. I'm pretty happy how they turned out, especially the five o'clock shade on the Ogre, Bob. And as a final Fantasy entry there's my contribution to the Monstrous theme with a Reaper Eldritch Daemon. It was a nice test bed for slightly different painting techniques. Most of it was done with a zenithal highlight basecoat and washes all through my airbrush. Then I just picked out some of the details by brush and it was done.

I also added some more tiny tanks to my early war German force that I painted for Flames of War a few years back. Until now the force has been mostly just mechanized or infantry with little armored support outside of light tanks. I've been planning to expand the army with some armor, but never really got around to it until now. There's been rising interest in playing Early and Mid War games at my club and when I saw that my local store had a box of PSC Pz38's in stock I immediately grabbed it. But as 5 tanks just isn't enough I also ended up ordering another box to have enough tanks to field a full company.

As the original army was painted already some years ago and to a fairly basic tournament standard (I did it to play at the European Team Championships) it was actually pretty refreshing to do a similar quick paint job on these guys. Basecoat of Panzergrau, highlight of lighter grey and an Ammo of Mig enamel wash meant for panzergray. It's nice to finish a unit of tanks in about one day with only the long drying time of enamels limiting the speed I can go through them.

 

And finally some more Napoleonic Saxons. This time a combined grenadier battalion of the 1st Division. They should probably have some with yellow facings as well as it should include some men from the battalions with yellow facings in the division, but for clarity's sake I decided to stick with just greens as about 2/3 of the manpower would have had that facing colour anyway.

With these out of the way, it's time to try focus on pushing towards my goal of 1000 points in the challenge. It's going to be tough, but with careful selection of subject it should be doable. Blogging wise I don't know if I'll be any more active than this. I'm a bit tired of the whole platform and find forums and facebook groups much more interactive and interesting nowadays. This would probably be better as a platform for longer texts and tutorials and the like. But as a place for just posting pictures of painted units like I've been doing lately, it's not that great. It all comes down to effort I guess. Either I need to spend some more time on this for it to have any meaningful use, or then just focus on something else.

Alpha Legion Squad Bravo

My slowly growing 40k army gets some more reinforcements with another regular Chaos Space Marine squad. As I was planning on building roughly a 1800-2000 point army and keep it at that this should be the last regular Core choice, at least for a while before I've played some full sized games. Still a Havoc squad and Terminators to do as well as character models, but outside of that it's mainly just vehicles and Daemon Engines from now on.

As with the previous unit plenty of kitbashing with pieces from different plastic kits from three decades and some 30k Forge World Alpha Legion bits thrown in for flavor. Some minor conversions as well pieces cut off and mixed between kits to vary identical parts somewhat.

Like with the previous unit main colours were done with an airbrush followed by picking out details. I cut down a little on the edge highlights compared to the previous unit as they are just a pain in the **s to do and getting clean  edges just seems nigh impossible at times. Concentrated on the most visible areas  now to save a bit of time, while still keeping the same look as the other minis. Worked out rather nicely so I'm going to continue with the same on the final minis as well.

I bought some new paints in late spring from a fairly new company from Cyprus called Warcolours. I've been tinkering with them lately, but haven't really painted proper until now. They seem to be more gel like compared to the Vallejo I normally use and dry a lot slower as they are meant more for wet blending etc. compared to traditional layering painting styles. I decided to try them out on the banner to see how easy  it would be. Smooth blends are something I've always struggled with, but boy these paints really seemed to make it easy. As they dry slightly slower and are more translucent than Vallejo it was really easy to feather out the edges between layers. In real life the contrast differences are a bit more stark than on the photos, but hopefully they still show the effect. Considering that I did that with 4 different shades in less than 10 minutes the results are pretty nice. With more practice and time really smooth highlights shouldn't be too hard to achieve. I'm really starting to like these paints more and more, the colour selection is aimed more towards fantasy and sci-fi with strong vibrant shades so not that great for historicals, but for other subjects should be amazing. Especially on larger smooth surfaces these are superior to Vallejo and so much easier to handle once you get used to the different properties compared to more traditional paints.

Decal wise I used a combination of Games Workshop and Fallout Hobbies decals as well as a 30k Alpha Legion decal for the unit's Icon. Everything else went on smoothly except  for the Forge World one. I've had issues with their decals previously as well as they are extremely thick, but still somehow they seem to be quite brittle and crease easily as well. Getting that hydra decal on the wavy flag took me nearly an hour to get it to sit straight and set into every crease. It seemed that the moment I though I had gotten everything to stick correctly some corner had moved  and lifted from the flag. With massive amounts of decal softeners and setters I finally got it to sit straight and covered it with a thick varnish layer that smoothed the surface out to remove most of the creases.

With these guys finished I'm probably going for a Daemon Engine next. I have a Helldrake and a Maulerfiend prepped up so going to start with one of them unless something else grabs my attention. We also have a Flames of War escalation league starting in September so I really need to start to prep and start painting for that as well. I'm going with a Soviet Tankovy so plenty of T-34's in store throughout the autumn.

Flames of War Pershings

With my summer holiday over it's time to be more active in the hobby field again. A month away from work was definitely needed as I was really starting to feel fairly burnt out and frustrated about everything. Couple of weeks in Canada and a few weeks back home spending time with friends, going out, watching movies etc. really did a lot to help bring back some long lost motivation for work, and for painting as well. I've been back to work and a normal routine for about a week now and painting has actually been really enjoyable for the first time in a long while.

First up are some more additions to my Flames of War US forces in the form of a Pershing platoon. A late war entry these didn't really reach troops until the final months of the war and even then only in small numbers. Still it's an iconic tank that saw much use in Korea and formed the basis of further US armor development into the Patton series, so I had to have some. From gaming point of view these are pretty bad to be honest. They are very expensive points wise in Flames of War, but still pretty vulnerable to larger late war AT guns. Fielding more than 3 is nigh impossible and they aren't too survivable then.  Still fun to field every once in a while for a themed list.

These guys were nearly done before I left for Canada, but with the mud effects taking hours to dry they weren't quite finished in time for that. Still it was a good way to start getting back to painting by just slopping on some finishing touches and varnish to get these guys ready.

I followed my normal recipe for US vehicles with a suitable green basecoat with dark yellow modulation. Some chipping and enamel washes for weathering followed by liberal coats of mud. Still haven't really fully figured out the Ammo of Mig mud products that I've started to transition to. They feel a bit too liquid to me and don't really have much texture so building thick coats of mud seems tricky. They've nowadays come out with some thicker stuff as well, so might have to give it a try or then try to mix in some very fine sand to add more texture and grit to the ones I already have.

Aside from the Pershings I've finally received my Skaven Blood Bowl team from a Willy Miniatures Kickstarter and been putting them together. I'd opted for a Deluxe box which included a pitch and transportation foam. After some mishaps those who did so ended up receiving their stuff about three months after everyone else. If I'd known before hand I would have just taken the minis, but originally everything was supposed to ship at the same time.

Alongside Skaven I've been continuing on the next Chaos Space Marine squad. Most of the time consuming work is finished with all the details picked out and the tedious edge highlighting done. I've still got decals to apply and chipping to add before a final panel line wash to make those pop out better. I probably should have gone for a slightly faster scheme to paint, but I do enjoy the look so maybe it's worth the extra time. Hoping to finish them of within a week or so, though a friends wedding this weekend will reduce available hobby time quite a bit.

From a hobby point of view it's forming up to be quite a busy autumn. We have a Flames of War escalation league starting to get new players in and for us older players to start new armies. Also a Shadow Wars Armageddon campaign starting which I was planning to take part in. And finally we are planning to start our 1813 Napoleonics campaign that we'd originally already planned for 2016. So there should be plenty of gaming and painting ahead and hopefully I'll be a bit more active updating the blog as well.

Chaos Decimator

Back to 40k and blogging! Painting has still been slow with computer games like Steel Division and Battlegrounds taking much of my free time lately. But with the 8th edition of 40k coming out and massive hype at my club and online it's really rekindled my interest for my Alpha Legion project so I dug them up and continued from where I left previously!

I started by continuing on the Rhino which was left in a WIP state previously, but like last time I wasn't completely sure about the aesthetics that I went for. Originally I thought a rust base coat and chipping fluids would be a cool idea, but now the vehicle just feels too 'messy' compared to how the rest look. So I put it aside until I figured what to do with it. I hate removing paint, but with an airbrush job covering some of the chipped areas will be a pain in the ass. Luckily most of them are on the lower areas and will be covered by mud anyways, but I'll let that simmer for a while until I get  some inspiration.

So with the Rhino pushed out of the way I went for what is probably my favorite Daemon Engine, the Decimator. It's like a massive mean version of a regular dreadnought that really looks chaotic, but doesn't go overboard like some of the funkier dinobots. Like many Forge World models, fit wasn't always perfect and it was extremely fiddly to put together as it's really top heavy and connection points were tiny. Plenty of pinning and green stuff helped though and now it feels pretty sturdy.

I was thinking about different variations on the green accents with more realistic highlights, random splotches etc. but just ended up going with highlighting panel lines and corners. Outside of that it was a fairly simple job of painting all the steel areas, picking out some cables in different colours and highlighting the demonic features on his armor. I added some dusting and rust effects with pigments, but didn't want to go overboard so left it pretty light. Likewise the base was kept simple, partly not to take too much away from the model and in part, because there  really isn't much room even on a 60mm base as the model really is that huge.

Outside of that I started applying paint on another squad. All the airbrush work is now done, next up it's all the steel pieces and then some edge highlights. That will have to wait a few weeks though, as I'm starting my summer holiday in a few days with a trip to Canada to visit my parents and tour Quebec for a little over a week. Might squeeze in a bit of hobby time before my departure, but that will probably go into some nearly finished Flames of War things. After the trip I'm going to try to get back to more regular painting and blogging, but we'll see how I'm feeling after a short holiday period.