Having painted enough infantry for my first platoon of 8th Army, it was time to paint some of their antagonists: the Afrika Korps! Just like for the 8th Army models I’ve painted so far, these are Warlord Games models and being some of their relatively new plastics are quite nice to build and paint.
It took me a couple of attempts to get the colour I wanted for their fatigues, having at first started with a much yellower green that ended up not looking very good. I’m not sure how accurate this green has ended up being, and I should probably have highlighted them further to simulate the sun-faded look that would have been prevalent, but these look nice to me and were a nice balance of looks to effort! Additionally they stand well apart from the 8th Army models in their almost cream uniforms this way.
Plenty of fun details to paint on these models, with the face coverings offering the opportunity to add a bit of colour to this sea of olives and khakis! The goggles were a fun detail too, I wasn’t to sure how to paint them, but the references I found seemed to be tinted so I painted them in the silver and filled the lenses with GW Contrast Wildwood which turned out ok I think.
The kit comes with heads sporting the pith helmet the AK wore early in the campaign, and considering the time I’m roughly painting these for (1941) they maybe should be wearing them, but I do like the look of the steel helmet and apparently they were available also early on so this lets me build these in a more generic manner (i.e. if I want to play scenarios in 42-43 as well).
As always when painting the first unit for a new army I made myself a painting guide, very useful for me as I like to jump between projects all the time and need a refresher when I get back to something. Let me know if you find it useful yourself!
Anyway that was a fun project and will keep progressing this over the long term, to hopefully get two sizeable forces that can do battle with each other!
Last post I mentioned I was working on a bigger model than usual and was expecting wanting to take breaks from it and paint smaller things as I went. In the end I surprised myself and kept at it with relatively few distractions along the way!
So here we have it, probably one of the largest models I’ve painted, a Knight titan! He’s nominally from the Warhammer 40,000 universe, but I’ve done him up to support a new project: Iron Warriors for the Age of Darkness/Horus Heresy game (Warhammer 30,000?). I’ll go more in depth about Iron Warriors next time I post something about them, but they are useful context for this model so here’s the short version.
I hadn’t been very interested in the 1st edition of the Horus Heresy rules as they came out when I had a bit of a hobby slump (and moved overseas for a bit, which required more portable hobbies!), but the latest starter set for the 2nd edition that came out a few months ago has me really interested.
Iron Warriors Chaos Space Marines were my main army during the 4th to 6th edition Warhammer 40,000 period, and I have a relatively large amount of them done up (Which I think I’ll document for the blog when I start painting actual Iron Warriors for this project!). When I decided to paint up some marines for Age of Darkness, I was split between a few legions, but Iron Warriors won out. One thing I wanted to do however was make them distinct from their Warhammer 40,000 counterparts I’d painted up in the past and make them relatively clean looking (my old army is quite rusty!).
Now on to this model! I’ve had this knight kit in a box for a fair few years now (since it came out I think) waiting for an army to attach it to. I wanted it to make sense alongside the army so that meant a couple of things: it needed to fit in with the army colour-wise (or at least not clash horribly!) and make sense in the background. I did some reading on the knight houses that fought alongside the Iron Warriors during the period, and came across House Caesarean who were alongside the Iron Warriors on Tallarn (More on that later!). The house fit the bill rather nicely colour-wise too, being black and yellow! A quick google later and I’d found a reference image of what a knight from the house is supposed to look like and I was off to the races.
The colour scheme is rather straightforward, split black and yellow right down the middle. The reference had the weapons coloured the opposite of whatever side they were on but I decided to make both yellow to make them stand out. The painting process tested my masking abilities, both to delineate the colours in a nice straight line (I used tamiya thin (5mm across) masking tape), and to mask the armour plates to spray the rest of the model silver (there I tried out masking putty). It all worked rather well, and I’m pretty happy with the order I did things in.
The yellow started with an all over coat of Vallejo Air Beasty Brown, followed by a spray of white ink in areas I wanted lighter, with a final all over spray of GW Nazdreg Yellow Contrast. That was a bit of an experiment, but I really like the results and I’ll definitely use the recipe in other places. The black was simply an all over coat of Vallejo Black, with a highlight of Vallejo Dark Sea Blue placed in a similar manner to the white for the yellow. The metallic areas were all painted with Vallejo Metal Colour Magnesium, a really nice dark metal colour. I picked out a few details in black, red, white, and bronze to break up the mass of metal. The model then got an all over coat of diluted oil paint (a mix of dark brown and dark grey) that was then cleaned off of the raised areas using a makeup sponge. That did a bit of work on the coloured areas, but really makes a big difference on the metallic areas, adds a bit colour and a lot of nice transitions from light to shadow. I did a few highlights on the metallics using Scale 75 Black Metal and some chipping on the “painted” areas using Vallejo Air Silver.
I added some transfers here and there, but GW only do House Caesarean transfers for the Adeptus Titanicus game, and therefore are way out of scale for this. That meant hand painting the insignia, which was a bit scary, but worked out ok in the end I think.
The banner hanging between the legs is done using a mix of transfers and freehand painting elements.
This leads us to the basing of the model, which some of those more familiar with Warhammer 40,000 may have recognised as being the whole left side of a Baneblade kit. Rest easy, I didn’t sacrifice a whole kit just to make a base, I’ve had this Baneblade side section on sprue for many many years, the result of some giveaway/raffle my local GW store ran back then, presumably the good parts of a returned kit that had issues. Needless to say I had a lot of fun making it looked wrecked, although getting those long straight track sections to look believably hinged took a bit of messing around. I also spent a significant amount of time getting the side skirts looking like they were hanging loose rather than awkwardly straight, which required a fair amount of cutting and re-sculpting of hinges. I wouldn’t want to do that too often, but it was a lot of fun as a one off! If you look properly into the exposed cavity of the tracks it looks very much like a chopped up plastic kit rather than a believable set of wrecked tracks, but I’m hoping the effect is sold well enough from other angles!
Painting wise there is nothing really special about the base, I used the old military modelling hairspray technique to get the chipped metal look, then mashed on some rust coloured paint on all the exposed metal sections. Topped off with a large amount of pigment powders to get a suitably dusty desert look.
I made this base to look like what I assume the battle on Tallarn looks like, hence the desert setting and the wrecked tank (for those not in the know, Tallarn is effectively a planet-wide giant tank battle during the period). While I was building/painting this model I listened to the Tallarn audiobook as inspiration and one of the details that stood out to me was the descriptions of the effects of the air on vehicles (The Iron Warriors did some rather nasty things to Tallarn’s atmosphere, effectively rendering the surface of the planet inhabitable). In the book the paint on every tank that fights on the surface is effectively stripped/discoloured by the toxic air. This makes the relatively pristine paint job on the knight and my want to paint the accompanying Iron Warriors as relatively cleanly not really fit the setting too well. I’ll have a think about what I want to do there, luckily wrecked tanks and desert settings abound and it should be relatively easy to re-host the army lore-wise!
Anyway, quite a bit longer post than usual! I had a lot of fun painting this model as you might be able to tell from my enthusiasm, and am jumping right into another project when I already have countless others on the go, clearly everything is going along as might be expected!
I’ve been working on a few larger projects over the last few weeks and wanted a break from building so decided to look around for model I could paint in a couple of evenings. I had built and primed the Obi-Wan Kenobi model from the Clone Wars starter set for the Star Wars Legions game alongside the CloneTroopers from the set but never got around to painting him. He seemed like an ideal candidate for a little change of pace!
Like the other models in the starter set, he’s made of that soft boardgame plastic which is honestly not super fun to build or paint, especially when compared to the newer hard plastic models in the game’s range. I struggled to get the lightsaber to stay straight, and it definitely looks a bit wonky from some angles.
Just like the Anakin model, he’s holding his lightsaber quite close to his face (seems dangerous!), which means an opportunity for some dramatic lighting there! As with all my lightsaber glows, the main glow effect was achieved using the airbrush, with some spot highlights done with the brush to enhance the effect. The low highlights on the tunic and the belt are just painted on with the brush. This glow is painted on top of what is effectively a finished paintjob and is always a scary step!
Unlike the clones I’ve done up for the army I’ve kept his armour clean and unchipped, as I presume a person of his stature would be able to get fresh armour rather regularly while the clones would have to make do with what they had. No idea if that’s how things are described in the stories, but it made sense to me.
I made an attempt to replicate the Jedi symbol on his shoulder pad and I think it turned out ok, not as smooth as I see other painters get their freehand work, but close enough for me!
I’ve not made a habit of showing off work in progress on the blog so far, so won’t go over what I’m working on in the background, but I expect it to take a little while so you might see a few one off models like this over the next few weeks as I paint things up as small breaks from the bigger stuff!
I’ve done a bit of terrain painting over the last week, tackling a bunch of forest bases I’ve accumulated over the years. These are all the same kit, Citadel Woods which I believe are not sold anymore unfortunately. I’ve somehow amassed a bit of a collection of them and it felt like time to finally get them painted!
Taking pictures of these gave me the opportunity to take pictures of some more terrain I did up a little while back, this time not old kits, but pieces I 3D printed. The files are from RM Printable Terrain from their Stormguard collection. I was waiting to receive the mat you see the pieces on before I took photos.
I didn’t necessarily plan on painting these trees to match, but I think the ruins and the trees work nicely together and I’ll definitely have them both on the table at the same time for games going forward.
Look forward to getting some games in amongst these!
I previously mentioned that I’d been reading the Gotrek and Felix novels while painting my Skaven, and as a result had an eye out on eBay for the models of the protagonists and of their nemesis: Grey Seer Thanquol! I managed to get a pretty good deal on the models and have had them for a few months now, ready for a coat of paint. A few public holidays lined up nicely over here and I decided to get the Skaven side of that equation painted.
I had a lot of fun painting these models, they’re classic metal Games Workshop models with their exaggerated features, and are really satisfying to paint. While the rest of my Skaven have some blue greens on them, I wanted Thanquol to stand apart so I painted him to match some of the art that graces the book covers. The basing was done to match the army however, and I find that usually does a good enough job of making a model belong.
I decided to go for a classic Warhammer green crystal sword on Thanquol. It could have come out a little smoother but I’m happy enough for an army model.
I’ll have to paint up Gotrek and Felix themselves at some stage, but for now at least my Skaven are bolstered by the most infamous Skaven of them all!
I’ve been a fan of Bernard Cornwell books for a long time, and I believe I’ve read every one of his book series apart from his most famous: Sharpe. It’s been on the to read list for a while, but I always held off as I was well aware of the consequences of starting the series. I would get interested in the period, and therefore in wargaming the period, and therefore adding to my ever growing backlog!
As you might have guessed, I finally got around to starting the series and here I am, painting some Napoleonic miniatures. I’m four books in at this stage and tremendously enjoying myself. They’re great adventure novels with a decent amount of historical detail, keeping my attention and prompting me to read more about the elements that stand out to me.
As soon as I realised my fears were realised and there was no turning back from painting musket wielding miniatures I turned to finding a system and scale to play the era in. My first thought was Warlord Games’ Epic Waterloo system, with its large scale battles and mass ranks of 13.5mm scale miniatures. After eyeing off the starter sets for a while I decided to aim for something a bit smaller in scale (miniature count wise) and larger in scale (miniature size wise!). I have enough large model count projects underway for now!
I started looking for skirmish systems set in the era and rapidly settled on two: Sharp Practice by Too Fat Lardies and Chosen Men by Mark Latham and Osprey. Sharp Practice turned out to be a bit hard to get a hold of locally, and seemed quite a bit more complex in rules so I decided to go with Chosen Men (which has rules for bouncing cannonballs! I couldn’t pass that up). I like to have a game system as a framework for my painting as even though I have no plans to play games in the short term, this lets me decide how to build my models and how many to paint.
I wrote two small forces for the game, one French and one English, and the unit you see above is the first for the French side: Napoleon’s fiercest, Old Guard Grenadiers. These models are from Victrix, and quite nice plastics. The set comes with most of the models marching with their muskets upright, but has some firing and reloading poses, and I concentrated on these for this unit as I felt they were more sensible in a skirmish scale. To give you an idea of the size of the game, the French force is 21 models strong and the British 31 models strong, so really that’s half of the French painted!
Painting-wise there’s not too much to write about, the main feature of these models are their blue coats and trousers, which were painted all sorts of shades of blue in paintings and reference materials. I settled on a darkish blue, lighter than a navy blue and slightly desaturated. This was done using a base coat of Vallejo Dark Prussian Blue and a highlight of 50/50 Vallejo Dark Prussian Blue and Vallejo Prussian Blue. The rest of the models were painted much as I paint materials of the same colour. As these are effectively a one-off I wasn’t too careful about writing my steps down.
Anyway these were good fun to paint, and I’ve just received the eclectic mix of models I want to build the British side out of which I’ll assemble and paint the next time the urge hits. Given my so far unbroken Sharpe novel streak this might be sooner rather than later!
Back in North African Theatre for this update, with an addition to my 8th Army forces; this section of Sikh infantrymen.
Ever since I cracked open the 8th Army set from Warlord Games I’ve been eyeing off the different head options that are included, and I decided that while this platoon is supposed to be from a British regiment clearly in the heat of battle this section from an Indian regiment must have been joined them! I really like these models, Warlord did a great job here. More than just the models, I’m keen to showcase the variety of troops that fought in the desert, and while I won’t be building a section for each head option in the set (there are a lot if you consider the options also included in the Commonwealth Infantry set!), I wanted to not just stick to Brodie helmets.
These models also mark the end of the first platoon with regards to infantry, leaving me with 3 sections of infantry done and a royal engineers section. Progress is slow, but it is progress! I have a fair amount of infantry left to paint for the 8th army side of this project as I have my second platoon’s worth to paint (nominally as Australian, we’ll see who else sneaks in there!), and also the entirety of the other side (DAK) as well!
From a painting point of view, these are doe exactly the same as my other 8th Army troops except the skin of course. For the skin I used Vallejo Flat Brown, followed by a light wash of Agrax Earthshade, a highlight of Vallejo Flat Brown (effectively leaving the Agrax Earthshade in the very recesses), followed by a highlight of Vallejo Flat Brown mixed with Vallejo Heavy Skintone, and a final highlight of the previous mixture plus a dash of Vallejo Iraqi Sand.
The mixes I listed above were done to match colour swatches I’d made from sampling the colours present in a photo I found online. It’s the first time I try to do something like that and I think the results worked rather well, so I’ll definitely try that again in the future.
The background I used in the photo is a printed out photo I took when visiting the Flinders Ranges in the middle of Australia. Not quite North Africa, but it is a desert so close enough for my purposes! I spent a couple of weeks out there back in 2014 in the middle of winter and it was freezing cold and so dry that my lips were cracking no matter how much balm I put on! The scenery was fantastic however and the night skies unbelievable for someone that grew up in light polluted Europe.
Finally, here’s something I stumbled across in a second hand store yesterday! A really nice book from the late 70s on the Desert Rats. Plenty of great photographs that I’ll be pouring over for ideas!
Well I don’t often (maybe ever?) post twice in a day, but I ended up with a few hours of spare time I wasn’t expecting so decided to tackle the last model I needed to paint for this army (for now!).
This is the Warlock Engineer from the Island of Blood starter set. A cool little model (love the blunderbuss with a scope on it!) that was really quite fast to paint. I’d planned on just doing the basecoats tonight, but got carried away.
Once again not much to report on the painting front, he was painted much like my other Skaven, although with a little more care than the rank and file!
Once I’d finished him, I couldn’t resist setting up the whole army together for a photo!
So there you have it, the 2000pts of Skaven I’ve been working on for quite a while now, arrayed in front of my unfinished fortress, with the Dreadfleet mat hanging behind it for a very mystical looking sky! This feels like a nice achievement, as while I’ll definitely paint more Skaven models in the future, my goal at the start of this was to get to the 2000pt mark. It’s also taken me a while to get here, as my first post on the army was back in October last year, so almost a year ago.
I’m not too sure what I’ll be painting next, I have a couple of other projects on the go but I wouldn’t be surprised if I end up using this as an excuse to kick off a new one!
Back this week with another Skaven model, this time a Clawlord! This model was a limited Skaven warlord that came out around the time of the Island of Blood set, paired in a duel with a High Elf Noble. Both the elf and this Skaven are really nice sculpts and as I bought both at the time I’ll have to paint his elvish counterpart at some stage.
Not much to write about from a painting point of view, he’s painted much like the rest of the army although I did spend a bit more time on him than I would a regular trooper. His main new feature is the fact that I painted the pupil on him rather than just the red iris I did on all the other models in the army.
The tail is quite a prominent feature of this model so I made sure to spend a fair amount of time on it, adding a bit of colour variation, and picking out all the lovely (🤢) details. Overall though a really fun model to paint!
I’m currently in the process of rewriting the army list as a result of the new Skaven rules being released a month or so ago, but so far there is a good chance he’ll be the second to last model I need to get done for 2000pts which is rather exciting. I do love finishing projects! This also means that next post on the army is likely to features shots of the entire army together which should be fun to do.
It’s been a few weeks since I posted anything as I’ve been on a brief hiatus caused by me getting into some card gaming with some friends, but the painting itch has been strong and I was excited to get back to finishing models!
This week I painted up these clone troopers for Star Wars Legion, to add to my 501st Legion Clones. As you may have noticed, these have yellow* markings rather than blue, to mark them as part of the 7th Sky Corps, Obi Wan Kenobi’s troops. I wanted to do this because I plan on fielding Kenobi in addition to Anakin Skywalker in the army, and I fancied them having a squad each from their respective commands.
* Interestingly, the wiki article says the markings should be orange, but they always looked yellow in the tv show to me, probably a trick of the lighting!
These were painted in exactly the same way as the first batch of clones, and I kept the marking positions the same on both, just changing the colour.
These were nice and quick to paint, a good project to get back in the painting flow!
Lair of the Lagomorph 