Finished Emperors Champion

I said in my last post I was going to get him done for Sunday and surprisingly enough he was. The pics:









Only done to an army standard; fairly quick actually 6-10 hours, somewhere around there. I've definately got faster recently.


So, good people of the internet, your opinion please.

Cheers
E

PS Before I go, I found this earlier. Simple idea, but I'd not thought of it, looks good in my opinion.

Update

Thought I'd let you know that I am still here and plugging away.

Since I was last here, I've half painted the army, finished painting the dread with the pointing finger and seven assault marines. I entered the Golden Demon warm up painting comp at my local GW last saturday and believe it or not both the dread and the assault marines came first! I also entered Balin from my LotR dwarf army (there are pics of him hiding in here somewhere), fantasy dwarf lord and my fantasy dwarf gyro. Balin got first, the Dwarf lord got second and the gyro didn't get a single vote, which I'm a little disappointed about; but overall, fantastic result.

I would give you pics but A) the assault marines, dread and Balin are in the store cabinet and B) it's 1 am and I haven't the energy to upload and sort the pics of the dwarf lord.


There will be pics of everything I've been working on in the near future, honest.

At the mo I'm painting my Emp Champ for the Astro Rumble of Stumble 8 comp ending on sunday, it's about a quarter done and considering I didn't start it till 7 pm, I think my painting is speeding up.


Gnite
E

Thanks to The 25mm Warrior

Hello and thanks to the new followers.


I have to say thanks to this guy and his great idea
This and This

It's worth having a look on there, there're a few good blogs on there including his own.

It's upped my viewers and subscribers by a fair bit, you have my thanks 25mm Warrior.


As an aside, I've managed to make a pointing fingered dread, for which I'll be putting up a tut in the near future.


Cheers
E

Finished Black Reach Dread conversion and Blog Thoughts

I read somewhere recently, on a blog I do believe, that blog rolls may not be the best thing for increasing the followers of the blogs that are on the roll and that they can replace subscription. All I can say to that is:



I am now a follower.

On another note, I finished my conversion of the Black Reach Dread last night, here're a few pics:





I've got the pics for a tutorial, so I'll do that soon, snooker final for the moment.


All comments most welcome.
Cheers
E

E's guide to Theming an Army

The FTW collaborative post spurred me on to do this.


I think it’s worth putting a summary at the beginning so that you only have to get bogged down in detail if you want to, so:

1. Background, decide the outline of it before you do anything else.

2. Reference pictures, having something that you like the look of can be very useful when planning conversions and paint schemes.

3. Unit selection can be more useful for adding a theme than any other single element, pick them wisely.

4. Conversions should embody and enhance the flavour of the army.

5. Paint scheme should tie the army together but separate the individual units.

6. Basing should be a frame for the model and doesn’t need to be complex (if it is too complex it can overpower the model or can add too much time to production), it should also be cohesive throughout the army. But don’t put a very dark army on a very dark base, or vice versa, it really can spoil an otherwise brilliant paint job, as I’ve found in the past.




I have an old issue of WD that I like to refer back to whenever I'm thinking of starting a new army, I think it's either 290 or 91 (UK edition) and it has a lot of interesting points (and a sense of humour, something painfully lacking from the new ones if you ask me). But for those of you that haven't got it, I'll add my two-penneth.

I'm now on my third themed army so here's what I've done to theme it and the thought process behind it.

First of all I had a read of the codex and a think, and decided that I don't want to do a Black Templars army. I like the background and the aesthetics but not enough to do an army of them, I do however like some of the aspects and picked those ones to focus on.

So the first bit I like to start with is the background; instead of having an entirely fleet based army with no homeworld, I wanted my army to have one. Now the only difference that really makes is that all the models in the army will have been brought up in the same culture, so you can't put in the variation you could otherwise have. I also wanted to add in something more than a little heretical and have squat/demiurg made tech, now the only way I can think of representing that is having more archaic/unusual weaponry and armour and removing the Martian skull and cog symbol.

I like to look through the canon art (ie GWs own) when I’m trying to decide which way to take my army, which is one of the reasons I keep all my old WDs.
Looking through the BT codex there was one piece of art that really caught my eye and that showed the BT army in full regalia marching down a street, and the thing that really got me was that each and every marine was wearing a tabard!
In one of the WDs from around the time the BT codex was new, there was a piece of concept art which showed an Initiate (full marine) paired with his own Neophyte (scout) with the neophyte carrying the Initiates personal heraldry on a banner, an image I particularly liked.

So to represent that lot I’m having one full crusader squad of 10 Initiates and 10 Neophytes, and I’m sculpting a tabard on each marine and putting a longish banner on each scout, the reason for the longish banner is that I’m giving each of my terminators the square banners and wanted to keep some unit difference. I’m also arming each of the initiates in the same way and each of the neophytes in the same way, now being as I had the mad notion of trying to win a best painted award with the army I’m giving the scouts all chainswords and the marines all axes/swords; I wouldn’t recommend it unless you like a painful amount of work!

I’m keeping fairly closely to the Black Templars paint scheme but putting enough of a twist on it so that I don’t have to call them Black Templars. I’m using the same colour on one shoulder pad throughout the army and changing the other depending on what type of role they’ll be fulfilling, and to show differences between units I’ll paint one knee pad the same for each member of a squad.

The overall similarity of the colour scheme should tie the army together, whilst the different colours should tie specific units together.

I’m going for an abandoned city themed base, which basically is grey slate/gravel with pieces of weathered plasticard to represent buildings or parts of them, obviously the bigger the base the more detailed and same goes for characters.

Unit selection can actually go quite some way to giving an army a theme, for example Fantasy dwarf can be made a solely defensive gunline or they can be an aggressive close combat only army (however unlikely that might seem). For my Templars I’ve decided not to have any tanks, reasoning that the Guard and the Ships would have done the dirty work of cracking the fortifications and the Templars can then waltz in and annihilate the enemy troops in close combat.

So I’d say that covers it, I would put up some examples but I’ve only got test models and unpainted conversions at the moment. If you want to see them just ask.


Hope someone finds this useful.
Cheers
E

proof of inactivity

You see, I said I hadn't done much.


The army as it now stands.


My sculpting/converting work space, including my two demon entries,.

A few more practice minis, because I'm still not used to power armour, they're not quite finished yet either. I tried a few different ways of painting pale cloth/ armour, those areas are finished so if you'd like to pass comment I'd be interested to read it.

Marine v1








I liked the freehand but not sure if you can see it properly.


Scout v1










Marine v2








The red is quite a bit brighter than in these pics (bad lighting), I'll take some with my daylight bulb later.


Scout v2






The skin isn't finished yet and I don't think I'll be putting Tallarn flesh on before the badab wash in future.


Any and all comments welcome.

Thanks for looking
E


PS Brighter and better cropped pics later.

E's GT Review

Right, well, I did make it... just.

Es' Review of the UK 2010 LotR GT 24th of Feb

My First Tournament

(Warning: It’s pretty long)

On the Friday afternoon when I left on the train, I
a) hadn't finished assembling Gulavhar -no wings, (that's what I get for trying to give him balrog wings),
b)hadn't painted the evil army,
c) hadn't got over my cold (which turned out to be surprisingly nasty),
d) hadn't played any practice games,
e)and, worst of all, I'd forgotten the train tickets.

As you can see, a good start.

Having sorted the ticket problem (and lightening my wallet by £70 in the process) I got to the hotel to be told that one of the Nottingham electric transformers had blown and that there was no hot water in the hotel. Declining the offer to change hotels, I was given a free upgrade from a single to a double room and, being completely knackered from a months worth of far, far too much painting, I slept (the evil army still being bare metal at this point).

Saturday morning: woke at half seven, skipped breakfast and painted the evil army, bar Gulavhar whom I still had not managed to get the wings to stay on. Got all the stuff together and got there at 11am, two hours late.

I was half expecting to be kicked out of the tournament, but the event staff being exceedingly helpful and friendly blokes allowed me to still enter the tournament; despite there not being an opponent for me to play. According to one of the refs they normally get quite a few drop outs from the tournaments but this year there were only two and then only one once I'd turned up.

So, my game 1 (3rd of the 8): against one of the event staff, a guy called Matt if I remember correctly, who had never played a game of LotR before; a good combination for my not having played in four years. He hastily assembled 700pts of Khand versus my 700pts of Dwarfs, it proved a good reintroduction to the rules for me and I managed a minor win.

Game 2 (4th of 8): Wood Elves against my 500pts of Monsters. You cant help but feel sorry for someone when they've only got defence 3 elves against a defence 9 dragon, they bounce. The game ended with him charging the Dragon with Galadriel (his last model), which promptly got squished, he did take it well though and I tried not to gloat. Major victory to me and the end of the first day.

Sunday morning: overslept and only had time to get the wings to stay on Gulavhar before leaving and got there only 5 minutes late. But wasn't allowed to use him by the ref due to no paint; he was surprisingly decent about it though and wrangled some black spray paint and even sprayed it for me.

Game 3 (5th of 8): Dwarfs and Elves against my 500 pts of Monsters (Kill the King), a guy called Jamie I'd been talking to in the bar the previous night. He broke my army but couldn't kill the dragon, a draw seemed a good result for me, having only killed a couple of his models.

Game 4 (6 of 8): Evil versus my dwarfs, cant remember the details I'm afraid (the problem with leaving stuff for this long) the result was a draw though.

Lunchtime: didn't get chance to eat anything due to painting Gulavhar and got talking to one of the best painted army nominees.

Game 5 (7 of 8): My Dwarfs versus Uruks and Wargs. Dwarfs won an archery contest! It happened to be my opponents first tournament as well and he was enjoying it as much as I was, both of us saying it wouldn't be our last. He happened to mention that he was glad he wasn't playing my monsters army; surprising really the psychological effect of a dragon. I had control of three of the four objectives when the game ended and got a minor win.

Game 6 (8 of 8): My finally complete monsters army versus the Wood Elves of the best painted army nominee that I’d been talking to at lunch, a very friendly guy called James Braum. Shiny model syndrome is alive and well, with Gulavhar promptly dying having killed nothing. I got a major loss and the opinion of a nominee that my dwarfs would have got me nominated if the evil army had been done to the same standard, a fair trade off imho.

So the tournament was over and this is how I’d done:
one major victory,
two minor victories,
two draws,
one major loss.

I finished 53rd out of 90 entrants, I think I acquitted myself pretty well (if I do say so myself); I don’t half feel sorry for the guy that came 92 though, behind the two refs that had to stand in, poor guy.


So my conclusions on my first tournament:Remember the train tickets, the refs were a lot friendlier than I’d expected, as were the competitors with much less rules-mongery than I’d expected. I enjoyed it more than I thought I would, it cost more than I thought it would, I found out that my self applied painting standards are way too high (for example: James Braums’ nominated armies were one layer of paint followed by a wash and a good base, apart from the heroes), what else, um... ah yes, must play more games before I go to another tourney. And finally, I will be going to another tourney when I can afford it.


Thanks for reading this, well done for getting to the end.

I will put some pics up of the armies I took, but right now I need to walk the dog.

Cheers
E