Long time no see

Finally, some results! Unfortunately for my painting, the last two months have been full of nice and boring real life stuff taking all my precious time. But let's skip the excuses and show of some miniatures!

So this month as you can see I painted an assassin, a master on manticore and five cold one knights. 

This gives a total for December and January of:

5 Dark riders, mus. 110 points

5 Cold one knights full cmd. 180 points

Assassin 90-160 (kinda) points

Master on Manticore 220-300 (kinda) points

So, 600-750 points. Well no one is going to take the characters bare bones but they don't need to be maxed out to make the goal work so I think I made it :).

Anyhow, next month I am planning to paint ten more witch elves to finish of that unit and five more dark riders. This will nicely round out my core for the small 1500 point tournament in the beginning of March. But that's only 250 points or something so we will see what I also paint. If I can get my hands on some decent wings I will build a master on Pegasus as my bsb. If that does not work out, I don't know, we will see. It will be a surprise, nice, everybody loves surprises.

Well, that's all for me for now. See you next time I have something painted!

December Painting

Hi!

So with the end of the year approaching with all the merry things that it brings. Exams, deadlines, stress, panic attacks etc... With all this to distract it is hard to find the time to sit down and paint. Well, I managed to get a few things done.

First of all with December comes the annual painting competition which the local game store holds every year. Since I was already on a painting roll I decided to paint something different than more elves for the single miniature fantasy category. So I rummaged around my lead pile (actually, it is more of a plastic and I guess, tin alloy pile. But lead pile is used here for historical purposes). After a short while I decided to repaint an oldish goodie, the Harry the hammer miniature GW relesed a couple of years ago. I decided against painting up his base since frankly, it is a piece of tin alloy big enough to kill someone and mainly I am lazy. So he got a small base instead. Sometime in the future I might paint his base, just as I might finish all the miniatures I have (HA! Fat chance!).

The thought was initially to try and paint him a bit different than the elves I am currently working on, but as you can see he became red and golden also. So much for changing it up.

Anyway back to the important stuff, in order to not get entirely swamped in stuff to paint in January I painted up the Dark riders I had lying around.

Same paint scheme, same basing, nothing fancy. As usual with these new models, I like them a lot. But if you paint them separately, I painted the rider minus the legs in one piece and the horse as the other (the legs are attached to the horse and the rider is split at the waist). I advice to better check if they go together as the quivers and scabbards can be a bit fiddly to get along with the spears and shields. Otherwise you might have to do like me and break of a few arms and reattach them.

Thats all from me for this year, next year I have quite a few points to paint in one month and to make matters worse I have a lot of boring real life stuff to take care of in early January so I might be a bit short on time. Ahh well, worst case scenario I paint a dragon and some dark riders or knights...

Happy New Year!

November Results

Hi!

So after a time of silence I have managed to paint up my last things for this months goal. Well, actually I finished my initial goal last weekend as I painted up the Sorceress. But anyway, this week I have actually managed to paint quite a lot. Mainly due to having a bit of a cold, so I was not able to exercise and instead spent my evenings painting, so something good came from that. Anyway without further ado here is what I have painted so far.

Group shoot

Black Guard

Sorceress

Side shoot

Someone puny non-dark elf lost their head.

The witches again

Some blood

 So, as you can see I added some blood effect to the elves. In particular the witch elves got the most bloodied. Most of them just got some blood on the swords, with a few having blood on their hands and with that blood running down their arms a bit. Finally a few got some splatter. I think an important part of adding these kinds of effects is to try and change it around a bit. If all the models are covered in gore it might be a bit to much and it takes over the paint job. So in a lot of cases, less is more.

So how did I do the blood, well I read a few articles people had written on the subject and basically followed that. So first I made a dark-red-purple-ish mixture from washes and paint. I made it quite thin and begun by putting it where I wanted to have blood effects, this gave the look of a bit more dried blood. This was also the mixture I used as I took a bigger, stiffer brush and just flicked some blood on a few witches to be splatter. I then varnished the miniatures and came back with the games workshop blood paint and added it kind of like a highlight and built it up so I got the look of both still fresh blood and some dried. It does not really come across super well in the pictures, but you will just have to trust me on this, it looks nice.

The article I used as inspiration on the blood can be found at. http://elementgames.co.uk/forums/how-to-paint-gore-blood-effects-t6.html
They also had some better pictures than me.

When it comes to miniatures, I might come of as a bit of a fanboy, but damn. The newer GW plastics are amazing, they go together so well and paint up so nicely. I have previously quite easily known things I would like to change with models, like small conversions, but with these, I can't really think of much that would actually improve the miniatures. Or may be I am just losing my creativity, which would be sad indeed. The only complaint I have so far is that the black guard have those pauldrons which go together in the middle, so you end up with a really visible gap at the top of those things that you have to fill up. I know it might sound like a first world problem, but compared to the witches where all the joints are so well covered by the model this is just such a pain in the ass to fix. Especially since it is so visible if you don't fix it well.

With that rant over, what have I painted?

10 Witch Elf's with musician, 120 points

10 Black Guard with champion and musician, 170 points

A Sorceress, lvl 2 or higher, 115 points (or more)

So a total of 405 points

I know I said I was going to use the Sorceress as a lvl 4 at the beginning of the month but I figured that since I managed to paint up some black guard too and I honestly have no Idea how I will be using her, lets just say she is a lvl 2 Sorceress or a more expensive variant.

So thats the end of this month, next month there is no goal, but I have to have 1100 points painted by the end of January. I have not decided what to paint yet but I think it will probably be something along the lines of dark riders, knights, a Master on Pegasus and whatever else I need to have a legal army by the end of that month, since if I recall correctly there will be a small tournament around there and it would be fun to bring a functional army.

Well, I better start planing on how to turn this bunch of miniatures to an army full of hobby killing filth! I guess I need lots of masters...

First Witch Elves done

After a time of boring real life stuff eating my time I have finally been able to finish some more miniatures. Unfortunately they were done during the evening so once again I am all out of sunlight and I have not taken the time to look into some better lighting. Anyway enjoy, the first ten witch elves.

When you are an evil elf, beach-wear and cold mountain-wear is the same thing.

 I have to say, these are some amazing miniatures. They go together perfectly, if you use the right pieces as certain hairs go with certain bodies. But all in all very nice and dynamic, a real blast to paint. It is quite funny though, a friend of mine commented that they all looked like they each had brought a stone to stand on to be able to strike cool poses. Which is quite true actually, I have tried to put some effort into the bases to make them look interesting. I think that also help to make the stone things melt into the basing better.

The one the far right looks like she is striking a pose from a Bruce Lee movie.

I am quite pleased with the bases actually, I wanted them to look like frost/first snow on the tundra. As basically, that is how I imagine Naggaroth. Like the Scandinavian mountain range, but with evil murder worshiping elves in it. I am thinking about doing some warpaint in the form of blood on the models, not to much just a few things. I was thinking maybe  something along the lines of what the Uruk-hai have, but with blood instead of paint. But we will see, I will have to sleep on that.

Speaking of not knowing, now I am not sure what to paint up next. I will paint up a sorceress as part of my pledge for this month. But I am also leaning towards painting up ten Black Guard, mainly because they look bad ass. I know executioners might be a better choice, as they fill the role of high strength attacks which is very needed in a all comers list. Anyway, we will see what I do as its the same bodies that have to be cleaned and prepared whichever choice I make.

First progress

Hi!

After a very productive weekend, in painting terms that is. I now have 5 witch elves painted. They are still unbased and I might touch up some of the skin and maybe the eyes. But basically they are done.

Group shot.

"Who said it sounded like a dying cat!" - Battle cry of the witch elf music corps.

A very angry she-elf.

Those were some pretty bad pictures to be honest, in the future I am probably going to build some kind of lightbox and get some better light. Alternatively I could take some pictures in the weekend as the sun will actually be up when I am home then. Stupid sun just being up a few hours in the winter, grumble, grumble...

So it begins...

Hi and welcome to my blog!

Here is where I plan to log my efforts to build a 2500 point dark elf army for warhammer fantasy battles. The army is built as part of a tale of x gamers the flgs (friendly local game store) is arranging.

For those of you reading who are unfamiliar of the concept tale of x gamers I will describe it to you. It works like this, a bunch of gamers decide that they need to get going with that army they have said for years that they are going to build and paint. But since they are gamers, they have already ten armylists ready and bought a bunch of miniatures which now sits half assembled on their painting table and glares at them with contempt. So in order to get started painting they get a set of rules. i.e. paint x amout each month or else. So basically peer preassure. For this installement the plan is as follows:

November 400 points

December No goal

January 1100 points

February 1500 points

March 2000 points

April 2500 points

So hopefully, I will have a painted 2500 point army by april.

"Okay thats nice, but where are the pictures" I can hear you say impatiently. Calm down, there will be pictures of painted miniatures soon enough. But untill then you will have to settle for some pictures of unpainted ones.

A bunch of angry, evil, unpainted elves.

So what we can see here is the beginnings of an army. 10 witch elves primed and ready for painting, 5 assembled dark riders, 10 Black Guard/executioners in pieces and an unopened Sorceress. Ohh right I also have 10 warriors half of which are painted, we will see if I strip the paint of them and repaint them. If I do I will post about it.

With that said my goal for this month is:

10 Witch elves with musician 120 points

Supreme Sorceress, lvl 4, sac. dagger and 4+ ward 290 points

Thats 410 points right there, if I get some time left I might paint up the dark riders to, but thats a stretch goal.

Now, I better get back to painting some elves.