Hobby in the Back Seat: Damn you SWTOR!

You know it happens, when real life takes hold and the hobby takes a back seat.  Well this time it's for not so noble reasons... a computer game.  I picked up Star Wars: The Old Republic and I'm hooked.  It's been since Everquest 2 since I've played a MMORPG and for a good reason, they are addicting.  It has been a ton of fun swinging a light saber around and blasting things as a bounty hunter.

I'll let this run it's course for a little bit then I'll get back to the brush.  My Dark Eldar are chopping each other up waiting for some paint.

Sorry for the break in the blog, I'll be back soon!

Bring out the Gimp: Wracks & Haemonculus Finished

At first, I wasn't sure what to expect with these miniature, but they were fun to paint up and a nice change of pace with the rest of my army.  With the large area of skin tone, I was able to do the creepy pale skin.  I'll be running these in two squads of 3 for backfield objective holders and the Haemonculus will be transferring a pain token to the hellion squad.

Tonight I'm debating on either continuing with the unique squads and working on the Scourges or if I knock out another batch of warriors.  I'm getting pretty close to my first 1,850 list.  Here's what I need to paint still:

Baron
14 Hellions
10 Warriors
5 Beastmasters
5 Scourges

Wow, I'm not that far off!

Dark Eldar Trueborn Finished

I had a good time doing two mini "sniper" teams of trueborn armed with two lances a unit.  I'm going to play around with them bunkered in buildings or area terrain.  I figure with the amount of target saturation, they have a decent shot of living. 

For these units, I brought out the gold (instead of silver) and used the masked heads from the jetbike riders as well as the wytch visors.  For the wytch ones, I filled in the cracks in the visor.  I wasn't a big fan of that look.

I also finished up four warriors.  I'm finding that working on between 4 and 6 dark eldar infantry at a time is the sweet spot for me.  Too much more and it feels overly tedious.

Right now on the workbench I'm painting 5 more warriors and 6 wracks.  Once I figure out what portions are flesh, and what parts are metal, the wracks should go fairly fast. 

DE Ravagers Finished

Wow, I'm glad these are done.  It's funny how long the crew took to paint... I think I spent on and off the last three months working on these.  Now that these are done, I'm finished with my vehicles (for now).  Here are the finished products:

I'm making progress towards the 6 trueborn and 4 warriors.  I hope to have them done by the end of the weekend.  I also need to change up the Baron conversion, I just am not happy with how it turned out.

DE Venoms Finished

I finally have the crew finished!  At some point when I get about 2k of the army painted, I'll go back and add passengers to most of the vehicles, but I at least wanted to get them to this playable stage.

Tomorrow I should have pictures up on the Ravagers.  The army is humming along nicely.

Great Article: Ways to Stay Creative

Every so often I read an inspirational blog post, and Roundwood's World never fails to disappoint.  He did a great article on "29 Ways to (try to) Stay Creative: A Wargamer's List".

If you get a minute, take the time to check out his blog.  I found #11 and #27 hit home!

I finished my Dark Eldar vehicles last night, all 5 venoms and the 2 Ravagers.  I'll be sure to post up pictures this week.  Now I'm on to working on infantry, on the docket are 4 Warriors and 6 Trueborn. 

Dark Eldar Baron Conversion

I've been in a bit of a painting funk and having a real hard time getting inspired to paint.  So to keep the hobby push going, I started working on a Baron conversion.  Here's the structure that I've started with.  The wings will need some green stuff to blend the two blades together.  I did a bit of a rush job, but I think it gets the  point across.  I'll be sure to put up final shots of the finished product.  The cloak/head was a high elf mage.

If  I can get motivated, I'll start back up on the crew for the venoms/ravagers as well as the Necron vehicles I was working on. 

Necron Vehicles - Lots 'O Assembly

Wow, the Necron vehicles are a bit of work to clean and assemble.  Maybe because I'm used to doing marine boxes, I've gotten off easy on assembly.  At least the painting should be fairly quick.  I put together an Annihilation Barge as well as the Ghost Ark.  I took the instructions advice and left off the "fenders" and necron warriors to paint separately.  I'll let you know if that ended up being a good idea or not.  It will mean I'll have to use super glue instead of plastic cement, but they aren't high stress joints so it shouldn't be an issue.

I also have assembled some Dark Eldar Scourges and Hellions.  Since it's fairly warm (basically not freezing cold) and sunny, I'll be able to get some priming in this afternoon.  This holiday weekend my goal is to paint:

- Crew for Venoms and Ravagers
- 10 Dark Eldar Warriors
- Necron Ghost Ark or the Annihilation Barge. 

I'd also like to finish assembling my Black Templar.  Too many projects to juggle at once!

Necrons Painted: Immortals, Warriors & Scarabs oh my!

My rotation of 40k painting continues between Dark Eldar, Black Templar & Necrons.  I wanted to finish up the necrons I started on before I jump back to Dark Eldar.  With the immortals I knew I had to break up some of the metal with a color, otherwise it'd just get way too washed out.  I went with the whole Tomb Kings lock and brought in Hawk Turquoise.  To tone it down, after it was highlighted I put a wash of Gryphonne Sepia. 

The bases need some static grass to break up the sand, and I'll use probably harvest gold from woodland scenics. 

Last night I finished assembling the annhilation barge for Necrons and 14 hellions for the Dark Eldar.  This weekend I'll look around for different conversion inspiration to do the Baron.

Next on the docket, all the crew for my ravagers and venoms!

Razorwing Flocks Finished (from forgeworld flying rippers)

Now this is what a razorwing flock should look like.  Just a mass of flying nasty things.  I decided to keep the legs off them, more because I was lazy, but I don't think it detracts from the look.  It was a little bit of a pain to clean all of the miniatures and attach the wings, but all in all they turned out great.

Since my army is that silver metal with purple (body suits), red (hair) and green (for poison) accents, I kept to one of those colors.  My beasts will mainly be either shades of purple or red with green tongues. 

The carapace was simple.
- Dneb Stone base
- Devlan Mud wash
- paint on the Dneb Stone in everything but recesses
- White highlight with some striations on the edges.

Next up on the dark eldar project log is the crew for my two ravaragers and 4 venoms.  I'm also working on the side assembling the extra black templar pieces for that list.  It'll be a debate on what army I end up taking for the Adepticon championships.