Friday 31 July 2009

Ork Objectives pt II

OK. Finally I got some pictures done of the final two objectives, here they are below.

The grot is blue tacked to the base and will be painted separately. I had to greenstuff the lower section of the pointing arm, as you'll see and that needs to dry.

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On this one, the barrels will be fungus ale with the space marine helmet will have some ale spilling out of it.


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Sunday 26 July 2009

Keep on walking...

I have found, as I am sure many others have, that when you are going the non-gaming side of the hobby you find you fall into a rut. You do some painting, it looks good and so you keep doing the same level all the time. But, something I realise is that you need to keep moving, 'keep on walking' as it were in this side of the hobby. The more things you try the better you become and the greater the work you produce.

I personally have found myself to be in a rut many times, never daring to try other things. I have recently decided that it is not enough for me. I want to be a better painter, and the only way to improve it to try new things. And I have. The freehand and blending on my recent Ultramarine. Not amazing work, admittedly (the freehand especially) but you do find that when you try something and look at the results you see what went wrong and how you could improve upon it next time.

You must never be afraid of trying new things. For instance, if you shade using the GW washes, why not try to shade via layering instead or even make your own wash? There are a number of things in this side of the hobby that take some time for you to figure out how they can work for you - or even just how they work. Thus, you must never be afraid to try. If it all goes horribly wrong, what do you do? Strip it and try again, of course.

So, I will say to you now. Keep on walking.

Saturday 25 July 2009

Ork Objectives

So, the maximum number of objectives in a game is five (D3+2), so I have decided to make a few extra things for my orks - namely, five objectives.

The first one, and it might be hard to see these but its a minefield. I removed the handles from the tankbuster bombs and stuck a couple to the base, one I cut at a forty-five degree angle and then did something similar with a rokkit - to make it seem all well...orky.


Next up is a trophy 'rack' or pile. Using the damaged helmets from GWs 40k basing kit and then a few ork skulls I have made a pile. And the thing I thought about is that I can add more with the wins I get. The sign in the middle is made from a shaped piece of plasticard I got in a set from GForce9, a piece of plasticard was added to the front to make a sign.



The final one I found the idea amusing, so had to make it. Its basically going to be target practice, and as you can see the orks are not doing too well. I have included a rokkit that missed target and embedded at the foot of it.




I have two more, but am unsure of what. I had the idea of a pile of shootas, but none of them come with handles (all have hands attached) it would look odd. Same goes for sluggas. The other idea I had was an grot holding a white sign/flag but its back would be strapped to kingdom come with explosives.

Any ideas?

My bitz box

I use to have one, it held bits from every sprue I had for my orks. But, I always came across a problem - I could never find what I was looking for. So, after seeing someone else do this I decided to use bags. The bags I use are sealable - a little push together thing at the top, you get these when you order bitz from other sites (not sure where else they are available from though).



So, separating the bitz out into piles I put them into a bag and label it. I use a marker pen, the best I have found is one that is designed for CDs or DVDs, like so:



The ink dried fast enough that there will no smudging of the label. Now, I have quick access to my bitz. I found it much easier to have this organised like so - need an ork head... got a bag of them. No more hunting through my mass of bits just to find one head.

Blood Tutorial

Firstly you need two things - Paint and a brush. The paint I'll be using is Tamiya Clear Red and VGC Black.



The following thing you require is a brush. I stipple it on, so I have an old brush which I cut the bristles right down.



The first thing you'll want to do is add some black to the red. Be careful here, the black is strong and will overpower the red, making it pretty much black. You want it to be a browny, redy, black mix. This picture it is hard to see, as it looks very black. Also, the clear red is very thick, it'll need quite a bit of watering down.



So mix this up, then get some on your brush. You don't need much, wiping some excess off is a good idea. The plan is to stipple - or to 'stab' the brush onto the surface, rather than stroking it as you normally would. The red mix will be dark and dries quite dark. The first layer looked like so:



Let it dry and continue until it looks dark enough. If you're confident you can stipple or paint some splatter a little bit further away from the source. This, when dry will look like dark, dried blood.



The final layer, if you want to do this, is to stipple on some pure Clear Red. This is strong and will give the look of fresh blood, so apply it to the edge and try to leave some of the darker, dried blood showing.



That, when dry, should give you a nice bloody look. I hope you enjoy this.

More Possessed

The next three brethren are finished. Except bases of course. I added blood like the previous ones but... I had an accident. You'll see what I mean, but basically I got some blood mix onto the bare headed guy and it had dried. I had could not have fixed it without doing heavy repainting on the skin. So...I went the opposite. I gave him a lead of blood splatter. It looks OK, but I wasn't too happy with him or it - I liked him better without it. He's not terrible but nor is he amazing. Oh well...





Oh and the pictures aren't amazing of him either.










Let me know what you think. For now I'm going to put these guys aside and do a few Ork Objectives. Being as you can get D3+2 objectives I have decided to make some for my orks. I'll hopefully have some photos up later tonight.

Wednesday 22 July 2009

Possessed Warband

I've done some work on the final three brethren today, just the skin and basecoated their robes. The skin is looking quite good, I have taken to a purple wash for the flesh - gives it a slightly tainted look and feel to it.

These three are the first; the Initiates as I've called them. I think I'll be doing a blood tutorial when I get around to it on these, it turned out quite well in general I think.






Tuesday 21 July 2009

The Badland Leg Breakers


It appears I did a little bit of miscalculation on my previous team list, I miscalculated by about 164,000. Oops. Anyway, I had another go and brought another linesman and thrower along with some more fan factor. So, my team looks like so:

3x Blitzer
3x Black Orc
2x Thrower
6x Linesman
3x Re-roll
6x Fan Factor

I called them "The Badland Leg Breakers" coached by "Grotrag 'Arry' Kuffrag.

I have been looking at a number of sites, most give some good suggestions for skills when they improve; 'pro', 'guard', 'block', 'tackle' seem to be the better choices for most of them. Though, I do fail to understand why Black Orc Blockers do not come with the 'block' skill.

My work space

I thought I'd share where I paint. I have an extensive workplace, lucky me. I'll start with the base. A lot of things can be used for this many use newspaper or cardboard, I use wood. It was originally this:

The paint station from Games Workshop. For many years I had it set like this with the support parts for the water pots and paint brushes. It also doubled as my cutting board and it was used to wipe excess paint off stuff (you'll see in a moment), but recently I got annoyed with it. It kept holding bits at the back of the board, so in a fit of destructiveness I tore this top bit off and this is what I ended up with:


As you can see I flipped it over and used the fresh side. It gets some serious wear and tear. In addition to this I have three holders for my paints and tools, these are from CNC Workshop and are very useful, each of the paint holders can manage about six pots of paint - including those from GW and Vallejo.


For lighting I have a flexible lamp with a daylight bulb, this allows me to paint when there is no decent sunshine, and the white box is my stay wet palette - a sponge soaked in water with a bit of greaseproof paper on top of it. This allows for the paint to remain damp and dries a lot slower.


So, this is basically my entire setup, where I paint and model. I have various products I use when painting and modelling, as to be expected - many kinds of glue, tools and paint.

Vassal - a poor man's 40k?

Something that has been around for some time is vassal. I could attempt to explain, but instead I'll quote the description from their site

"VASSAL is a game engine for building and playing online adaptations of board games and card games. It allows users to play in real time over a live Internet connection (in addition to playing by email). It runs on all platforms, and is free for personal use."
So, simply put it allows you to play tabletop games online, without the need for miniatures. You are required to download the correct module for the game you want to play, but they are all free and there is an extensive range of games available. For those in the Games Workshop hobby there is the 40K module, along with work being done on a Blood Bowl and Fantasy version. Or was. I have just read that the work on the modules is being closed (GW legal stuff), so it won't be available after 31st July 2009. I'd get the stuff downloaded if I was you!

I haven't personally played a vassal game, but I have watched one and it was quite well done. It involves a map, along with a .gif image of all the models in the game - you make your army and fight! It had its own inbuilt dice roller as well. In my opinion its a great idea. This allows you to either play with an army you normally wouldn't, or even playtest an army without having to buy the minis or proxy them in a game. Or even if you just want to have a game against a friend on the other side of the moon!

I would suggest gamers take advantage of this program, its worth the effort of downloading it.

The links:

Vassal Engine

40K Module

Warmachine and Hordes

As I said above, there were plans for Blood Bowl, Fantasy, Epic but it appears that GW spotted this program and have done their usual thing of shutting it down. So, hurry!

Sunday 19 July 2009

Random Ultramarine

Wanting something different to paint I decided to get this Rogue Trader era Ultramarine done. He didn't turn out amazingly well. =( The armour took some work, for some reason it went glossy and the blue was too dark - it also ended up being a bit thick. I attempted some freehand on his cloak, it turned out reasonably well but I still have a long way to go if I want to do decent freehand. I just need to practice more. I did however feel that the blending on the power sword was the best I've ever done - turned out really well.




Possessed Warband

I have begun work on these, doing some converting and all. Now, I was looking at a friend's Necromundagroup, he had used the flagellant minis from the Empire set. A very interesting set that, I just had to get me some myself. I enjoyed them so much that I ended up ditching the metal minis and instead converting from plastic my entire warband! All I have left to do is the possessed. Currently my band looks like so:

magister - axe, bow
possessed - extra arm mutation
mutant - extra arm mutation, 2x hammer, axe
mutant - stinger tail mutation, 2x hammer

3x brethren - mace, axe
1x brethren - mace, axe
2x brethren - spear
1x beastman - mace, axe

I tend to have terrible luck when it comes to rolling for my henchmen injuries, always seeming to roll a 1 or 2 at least twice a game. =/ Anyway, there are also photos in this: Mordheim album.

We're Green and Mean!

I haven't really started on these guys yet, but I will be doing an orc blood bowl team in the near future. It'll be a wholly converted one, because that makes things that little bit more personal. I don't have much at the moment, just a team roster:

3x Blitzer
3x Black Orc
1x Thrower
5x Linesman
3x Re-roll
2x Fan Factor

No idea how this will perform, but I'm gonna find out at some point. =D

The army is complete!

My orks are currently standing pretty on 1750pts, or 2000pts if I include the deffkopta and spread my points out. I am pretty happy with the army, the list isn't amazingly strong but seems to perform well enough. I just need to learn a few things - like when's the correct time to WAAAGH!

Anyway, I thought I'd show my army off. I'll only put a few select images in this post, the rest I'm afraid you'll have to see in the following photo album.





The rest can be found in this album: Kuffy's Orks

Forgetfulness

Is something I fear I suffer from. I am always forgetting to update my little piece of the internet. I'll try and keep on top of this.

As you can imagine, for those in UK educations, uni has finished for the year, which means that the Mordheim campaign is on hold until the new term. Hopefully it'll return with renewed vigour. This summer holiday has given me chance to paint, and paint and paint. I'm using it to get at stuff, random minis or long term projects etc. Talking of projects...

I have a few new ones planned. The first one would be... BLOOD BOWL! I have always been curious about this game, played a couple of matches against another novice and loved it (we drew both). So, I have decided to start a Blood Bowl team. I actually happen to have a team already, a dwarf one with a star player as well. But, as with Mordheim, I find myself wanting to try something different. So, I have chosen Orcs as my team. Look out for blog entries dealing with my greenskined players.

Painting wise, I am once again running a LOCs project. A long story cut short, this is a group of painters off a forum painting and selling miniatures for a charity. This time, I have convinced at least eight painters! And the miniatures are fantasy ones, again, a future blog post for me.

My orks are finished! At least to the degree in which I needed them to be. Now, after a short break I'll be expanding the army to include many other options. I realised that I want a huge ork army, and one that has enough elements that it could be played in various different forms. This will take time and money. One of them I have, for the moment. In addition, a rumour I knew of already has broken. The Space Wolves are coming! And I want to be part of that. I have always loved the Wolves but oddly enough never owned an army of them. So that'll be my second 40k army. A wolf army.

I also plan to, at some point, repaint my dwarf army to a better and higher standard. The colours I am toying with at the moment is red and charcoal grey. I'll have to have a play around, but I like them. This army will be done at a slow pace, ironically, as I want them to look good.

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