Praetorian Ogryn Thursday #2 Bone Head and thanks!

I'm on track with my (pretty easy I'll give you) target of one a week. In fact I'm slightly ahead as I couldn't resist working a little more on the banner of the standard bearer you'l see next week. Here's my Bonehead for the unit, with the obligatory metal skull (odd then he's not called metalhead?) the eye of which is just a space marine bionic helmet bit jammed in the green stuff, I had to sculpt his hand a bit, and his figners a bit chunky but its really a bit late to change it! Here's some pics:

I just noticed I accidentally smudged black on the back of his jacket, must have been when i was painting the base edge... lets er... call it a trial weathering technique until I get around to fixing it :P.

This seems like as good an opportunity as any to once again say thanks to all those who take the time to stop by and have a look at the blog and a particular thank you to my followers. Popping things up here, getting your feedback and comments really helps me hit my modelling goals and brings me that step closer to sticking and painting that entire cupboard of unopened warhammer boxes I've collected over the last eight years or so!

Mantic Ghouls Model Review Pt 2.

So heres some more of the mantic models, this time fully made up. First up heres a couple of pics of the units fully made up just so you have some idea of how the units really look rather dynamic when all ranked up, I was impressed how much they look like they're surging forward looking for walking lunchables. I'll get some appropriate sized movement trays for them when i get around to painting them up.

Next up heres a rank of vanilla models with no weapon arms. I've also thrown in the ghast command model torso as he's really cool> He's waving around a spine and wearing a (?)skin cloak of sorts. He should really stick out at the front of your units and add that extra bit of character.

Heres three chaps with the weapon options included: Knives, a meat cleaver and a claw thing. I don't really like the claw thing, but the other two are grand, particularly the meat cleaver, fresh meat (I loved diablo)!

Next up here are some alternate weapons from the empire militia boxed set. The warhammer hands are by enlarge slightly too big for the models with chunkier fingers etc. but some of the slightly older models go well enough. As it happens these are conveniently also the three different head options provided.

Lastly heres some head swaps. Again most warhammer heads are a bit big, such as the knight helmet! However I thought it was fun to add some diversity to the unit.

I hope you all agree these are a great and very cheap substitute for the GW ghouls, If your a die hard tourney player these probably wont be of much use to you with the whole GW only rules, however if your a casual gamer who wants to save a few quid/bucks then I'd highly recommend these as an easy and quick way to make up alot of guys fast. This is especially relevant at the moment for those die hard Undead players who want to suddenly have huge regiments of ghouls the old army book didn't often reward you for playing as skeletons and zombies are not exactly top notch choices until the new rules come out.

Given changes in fear rules and the recent tomb kings chatter from GW about 'legions of undead' I fully expect serious skeleton points costs, but until that happens there are going to be alot of ghouls running about the empire!

I hope this helps a few people who wonder what mantic models and sprues look like, sometime in the future I'll look at how to paint up lots of these guys really quick. I think coloured sprays are likely, you may notice in pics 1&2 I've already started testing the red on my blood angels, I'll post up how thats going soon.

Mantic Ghouls Model Review Pt 1.

I impulse bought some mantic mini's while they were doing some 15% off sale thing awhile back. I hate the GW ghouls with a passion. They look like some sort of cartoon igor meets quazimodo and not the least bit frightening. So I went and purchased a ghoul formation from mantic containing two ghould hoardes. A total of 80 ghouls including two ghast command torsoes.

I was surprised to find there are only two ghoul scultps on the sprues (no i didn't carefully read the site, I impulse bought with 15 seconds to spare before the deal ran out at midnight!) although these have alot of different options between them. Heres some sprue pics:

The two torsoes and bodies are interchangable and have ball and socket joints to allow a massive variety of poses. Unlike GW mini's the legs come attached to a round flat piece that sticks in the base (put glue on the model not the base or air will trap and be a pain) which allows you to stick the guy to the base later, giving more pose direction and allowing the slightly tricky models to rank up better without having to waste time pre planning what every guy looks like. There are three heads, one of them particularly cool, the other two not so much to my taste. Different hands with weapons can be used to replace the hands on the model by clipping them off, this is a bit of a pain but saves alot of time not sticking tiny hands on if you want most of yor guys without a weapon. The scale is not as herioc as warhammer, but some heads and hands I found were compatable. I'll whack up some pics of some stuck models soon when the light is a bit better tomorrow! I might try to do some kind of crazy entire undead army in a single weekend paintathon for fun sometime as I really don't have any other vampire counts models.

If anyone in the UK wants my 8 mantic points drop me an email with your address and I'll pop them in the post to you, I'm going to lose the stickers before I ever collect 20!

Praetorian Ogryn Thursdays.

Those of you who have been following from early last year when I started this whole blog thing may remember I made up a squad of 6 ogryns. Its about time I got them painted up really. Thus as a motivational exercise for the next few weeks I'm going to post one of the last three up every week starting today. TA DA!

Heres an ogryn grunt. I actually might like him the best of all the guys I made up. The GS work is hardly flawless but they were my first major GS project and I'm still pretty happy with the overall results (from a distance at least!). I also wanted to say thanks to all those who many eons ago commented on what I should put on their banner. The painting of it has begun, I'm sorry it took me so long!

Terrain: Battlescape

First of I'd just like to say I love this bit of terrain, great to paint and really ticks all the boxes for me. It looks like something guys could actually take cover in. It looks like theirs been constant war over it for decades. Its an awful lot cheaper than buying a rhino, greenstuff and a citadel wood and trying to do this yourself. Its also got some nice details with a cadian skeleton, standard helmets and skulls everywhere and a rather nice skull and crossbones sign. Heres some pics:

I went for an imperial fists Rhino as the yellow is a wonderful eyesore and I think the yellow looks very nice when heavily weathered. I love the GW 40k Terrain of recent years and warhammer terrain is beginning to catch up. If you don't have any, go get some, it completely changes your gaming experience. If like me you find your modelling time is at a premium then kits like this from GW are a great time saver on scratch building terrain, plus you know its going to look good from the get go!

Blood Angels Master of the Watch

In reality this guy will play as an honour guard or as an assault squad sarge. I might whip of his packpack and magnetise him up but he doesn't really look dynamic enough to me to be flying. We'll see if I end up getting around to doing a DOA list.

I'm really happy with how his shield came out. Thoughts welcome!

Blood Angels half-tac squad

Heres the melta end of my most recent tactical squad:

I seem to be batch painting models about 5 at a time for 40k, trying to do 10 at once is just that bit too much on models as detailed as they're producing these days. Hope you like them!

BA Master Of The Fleet?

So I'm not likely to be taking a BA chapter master, but this lovely model was begging for some paint so I'll likely use it as an assault marine sarge with thunder hammer so it gets some game time. I did a quick head swap from the bare head it comes with to a blood angels head. I didnt think it was a great looking head anyway but it was mainly just to add some blood angels iconography to the model and make it look slightly less like everyone elses. Anyway, pics:

I did his helmet yellow and I think I'll continue to do this on my other assault squads even though I didn't on my first. They obviously thought they were going to be deployed as tactical marines and didnt have time for a pre battle repaint...

Blood Angel Auto-Las Predator

So now I need to go back and weather up all my older space marine tanks because although I liked the idea of relatively clean and well maintained spae marine tanks, this just looks better. Enjoy:

Not sure the dust build up on the turrent is quite right, something to vary next time around! As ever any comments/suggestions/critiques welcome!

Skaven Tretch Craventail

This model is just superb, the pose is amasing and given I love characters who are raised up on bases to show them off in the unit you don't get much better basewise than this!

I had great fun painting it but a note to others; some of the model is a little tricky to get to so if you like painting models in pieces this is one that really might benefit from that or if not be sure to paint the tricky underbelly and belt where hes hunching before the rest of the model. I paint in pieces because I always have way too many projects on the go at once and end up loosing/misplacing bits just when I want to paint them. I have a Gabriel Seth I wont paint til I can find his cloak and backpack...

Blood Angel Red Tutorial with GW colours only.

Here's a go at a quick tutorial, just pics. I use only GW paints because I became familiar with them before I realised I had other options out there and so have doggedly stuck with them ever since.

First off here are the colours I use, the vermin brown can be used to line highlight at the end if the orange is too cartoony and bright for you. I use vallejo game colour thinner (its not a paint!) as I find its easier to work with than water when thinning down paints. I like a Black undercoat because I am lazy about filling in the black later and the dark undercoat provides a good contrast with my bright final highlights. Step one is to base the guy in chaos black, I use spray and fill in gaps with a brush once its dried.

Step two is to layer up with mechrite red. I thin my mechrite red 1:1 with paint and thinner. You could use water instead or as well as thinner this means no detail is obscured. I like to layer up with around three thin coats. As you can see in the picture the pad on our left has been fully painted and the head and the right shoulder pad are in the process of being layered. Ensure layers are completely dry before painting the next layer over it or horrible things happen. You can be quite messy with the mechrite red, after all your going to shade it and paint any detail later. Once the Red is dry wash it liberally with Leviathan purple (if you want it really dark you can use badab black or thraka green or even a combination in different layers)

Layer up with blood red, again thinning 1:1 with thinner. You can start to cover less and less of the recesses of the model and concentrate more on raised areas each layer to leave shaded areas and create a smooth blended transition in a way that wouldn't be possible if you painted the model with just one layer of each colour.

Another layer or two of blood red, solar mach orange and thinner mixed 2:1:2. This is because the orange foundation paint is much less transparent than the other paints. If you were to use blazing orange or similar you could ratio 1:1:2. Again paint less and less of the mini with each layer to leave shading. Once this is dry you can use very controlled layered washes of leviathan purple to correct any areas where not enough shade has been left of you've accidentally dropped some lighter colour where you didn't want it. Don't just smother the whole mini in wash here though or you'l dull your highlights. If you wanted to tone down the orange you could wash all over with baal red.

Paint up the rest of the mini and then finally do fine line highlights with solar mach orange to 'toon him up or vermin brown if your going for a redder marine. I leave these 'til last as they can be more of a pain to fix later than your layered red that you can just touch up and wash down in case of any mistakes. I use the side of my brush to paint most of these fine lines and just draw along the edges as its just easier to keep a controlled line of even thickness that way.(Finally you can chip over if you like to weather your marines, I use charandon granite feathered on edges and then feather boltgun metal in leaveing a thin edge of the granite colour showing. Its a great way to hide mistakes! it works particularly well on very bright or black models for contrast).

Hope this is of some use to some of you out there!

Also here are some links to youtube vids of different ways and techniques to paint red I found helpful as I realise my picture only stuff leaves something to be desired! I've given you pt 1 of each so just look for the next parts in the sidebar for more, first three are from 'girl painter' the last is from 'spuse maroon':

Blood Angels Commander:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hw7FRa5hyXQ&feature=iv&annotation_id=annotation_353090

Blood Angels Terminator (from Pt 2, as part one just undercoats it white)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGpB9ozLy6Q&feature=related

Blood Angel RAS Marine:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w997F4poNwU

Blood Angel Tactical Marine
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNrcoxhfhhM&feature=related