Blog Props: Great Grey Knight Tutorial

Every so often I like to post an amazing blog tutorial or article that I've seen on the blogs I follow.  Not only does this how to paint grey knights tutorial do a great job detailing step by steps (better then the magazine articles) it uses the new GW paints which I'm sure are a mystery to those of us who haven't used them yet!

Check out  Stahly's Tale of Painters: How to Paint Grey Knights.  If you're not following his blog, I would highly recommend it. 

Plus it covers painting the force weapons, something I'm very interested in seeing that I may be trying my hand at Grey Knights for Nova.

I just finished up my 5 hellions, so as soon as I get the chance I'm going to prime up the 5 objective markers and begin on them.  The boats are half way finished, pictures incoming!

Odds and Ends for Adepticon

We're on to the home stretch for Adepticon. With work being potentially a little crazy next week I need to cram as much as I can into the weekend.  I'm making some serious progress knocking things out.  At least I am sorta smart by getting things done that require longer dry times. 

 I assembled the 5 objective markers.  Every army I do I make 5 since that tends to be the most we ever need.  These will be used for the 40k championship as well as the team tournament.  Basic but fun.  I need to add some sand to them when they dry and paint the suckers up.

 I also painted up all of our vehicle "wreck 5" results.  Since Dark Eldar vehicles are not easy to take off the flying base and I don't want to hurt the models, we created templates that are about the right size for when they blow up to the wreck result #5.  Here are my painted venom and raider/ravagers.  We are also painting up a ton of craters for vehicle crater result #6.  My wife laughed and said they look like they have chicken pox. I agree, but at least it's better then not knowing if the vehicle is destroyed or breaking it on accident!

 I finished my record-fast display board for the singles tournament.  It has to be the quickest and cheapest one I've done to date, but I really didn't have the time to do an elaborate one this year.  This will go on top of my rolling "beer cart". 

Since we're planing on getting a lot of rain I was able to get all of our ships primed up and the barrels/extras for the unit.  Dan and I are heading over to the GW Chicago Bunker tomorrow to get my 2nd game of Warhammer (in 10 years) so I at least sorta know what I'm doing for the Warhammer team tournament.  We'll be attempting to do our ships in the course of a day as well.  I also primed up the blue boards that we'll paint up as sea boards for the 4 armies to be displayed on.

Tonight I should be able to finish all of my pirates, as crazy as that sounds.  It was definitely a speed paint job, but I think they've turned out OK.  I'll have pictures up of the finished project tomorrow.  The 5 hellions are the last I need to paint up for the Dark Eldar army, man... they keep mocking me.  Hellions are a piece of work to paint but I've really enjoyed them in game.

Back to painting, only 5 days left! My wife has been very understanding, I have literally taken over the house with everything and their various stages of being finished.  Here's what I have yet to do:

Dark Eldar

 - 5 Hellions (half painted at this point)
 - 5 Objective Markers (need to paint)
 - creative army list for championship (need to do ink effects)
 - creative army list for team tournament (need to finish ink effects)

Dwarf Pirates

 - 7 pirate "thunderers" (almost finished!)
 - paint ships as a display board
 - barricades to count as shields for my thunderer units
 - creative army list for the team (need to finish ink effects)

Creating Creative Army Lists

Painting an army and creating a fun list is just half of the fun of a tournament.  I enjoy the "extras" like counters, vehicle wreck markers, nice objective markers and cool looking army lists.  I decided to try something new for our army lists this year at Adepticon. 

I had fun with some resume paper and spray ink stains.  I picked up some resume parchment "copper" paper and used some dark red color for the copy text with a legible yet with the appearance of hand written.  My thought is to make it look like it was written in blood.  To get the blood effect I sprayed the red/brown ink along some of the sides and corners and smeared with newspaper.  Make sure that you don't spray too much into the text; I had a couple mistakes where I got a little aggressive with the spray. 

I used a runic watermark to add some extra mystery.  I think it turned out great and adds a lot of flavor to the army. Here's the ink I used for the spray, I bought a 4 pack of different colors at the craft store Michael's. 

I'll be using the same technique with some variations for my team tournament army list (front and back for all four armies).  For the warhammer team tournament list I'll use our kraken logo as a watermark and use some brown/black ink stains to look like dirt. This is the first round of lists for the team tournament drying.  Once they're done I'll flip them over and spray over the newspapers on the other side!

I'm a big fan of this type of stuff, I think it adds a lot to the overall appearance of the army.

Nessie & Pals and lots of Adepticon Updates

Sorry for the lack of posts.  It has not been due to lack of hobby, I've been nose to the grindstone getting things ready for Adepticon.  Over the last week the focus has been mainly on my pirate sea monster force.  I've also done some odds and ends on Dark Eldar.  Here's the completed shot of Nessy (proxy for a dwarf gyrocopter

Here are some more shots of the pirates I'm getting done.  Two war machine crews and more "thunderers".  Just looking at these photos reminds me I probably should go back and paint the eyes if I have time!

My teammate, Dan assembled the ships from Ainsty Castings.  The masts are not permanent and we'll be blue tacking them in (that's why they're on weird angles).  Unfortunately I'll have to paint them a lively lighter brown instead of a true weathered dark wood look like ships should probably look.  I based my miniatures a little too "cartoony". 

I also painted up the pain token dice holders.  Here's a few as an example.  The one box of zombie parts made up 20 holders!  We also based up the vehicle wrecked templates, I need to sand them and get them painted.

I'm really looking forward to putting paint on them but I'm running out of time!  Here's what is left on the Adepticon to-do list. One week remaining!  Argh!

Dark Eldar

 - 5 Hellions (half painted at this point)
 - 5 Objective Markers (need to create and paint)
 - 30 vehicle wreck templates (wooden bases done, now need to create/sand/etc)
 - quick/fast display base for championship: I'm going to use my beer cart stand and do a quick topper, nothing elaborate this year.
 - creative army list for championship
 - creative army list book for the team tournament

Dwarf Pirates

 - 7 pirate "thunderers"
 - sea display board
 - assemble and paint ships as a display board
 - barricades to count as shields for my thunderer units
 - creative army list for the team
 - extra pirate stuff for theme

Custom DE Beastmasters Done

I had a productive night of painting last night and finished up the last 5 Beastmasters.  I'm happy with the way they turned out, but I did a bit of a rush job on the flesh tones of the cold ones, way too sloppy for my likes.  I'm half tempted to go back and redo it but at this point I just want to move forward with the army!  Here are some shots of the finished work.

I also started painting up our pain token holders for the small dice.  One box of zombies and two part apoxy later we got these tokens.  I'm going to do a basic blood red washed purple dry brushed up with some heavy gloss and we should be good to go.

Tonight will finish off the raider crew and painted up templates.  Trying to stay focused on getting things done!

Adepticon: 22 days left and a lot of painting!

Wow, I am way behind this year.  You would think I would be more on top of things but real life and that stupid star wars game wrecked my "hobby time".  With only 22 days left of painting I have quite a lot of things yet to paint. 

Here's what's on the workbench docket.  I figured I need to do at least one hour of painting a night and spend at least three days with 4-6 hour sessions.

Dark Eldar

 - 5 Beastmasters (half painted at this point)
 - 5 Hellions (half painted at this point)
 - 4 Raider crew (half painted at this point)
 -  1 Wych (half painted at this point)
 - Web Way Portal (need to create & paint)
 - 5 Objective Markers (need to create and paint)
 - 20 paint token dice holders (assembled, need to paint)
 - 30 vehicle wreck templates (wooden bases done, now need to create/sand/etc)
 - quick/fast display base for championship: I'm going to use my beer cart stand and do a quick topper, nothing elaborate this year.
 - creative army list for championship
 - creative army list book for the team tournament

... is that it? Nope, I have a warhammer team tournament army to paint... almost from scratch!

Dwarf Pirates

 - 22 pirate "thunderers"
 - 10 war machine crew
 - 2 war machines
 - Sea Monster (he's friendly)
 - 1 master engineer
 - sea display board
 - assemble and paint ships as a display board
 - barricades to count as shields for my thunderer units
 - creative army list for the team
 - extra pirate stuff for theme

Yeah, I'm screwed!

Ahoy Matey, First Batch of Pirates Done!

Got the first batch of my pirates done for the Adepticon Warhammer Fantasy Team Tournament.  These pirates will be counting as dwarf thunderers.  I assembled the entire army and primed them up after making some green-stuff three corner hats.

Here are the models I'll need to paint.

32 "thunderers" (mixture of dwarf and empire pirates with an ogre to boot)
8 crew
1 cannon
1 stone thrower
1 master engineer
1 "most friendly" sea monster that is proxy for a gyrocopter.

We're off to Mexico tomorrow for a much needed vacation.  Once we return it's non stop painting until Adepticon!