Forest Grump

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Hello chaps, great news today – I’ve finished all the trees needed for the Albino Forest stage of The Chapel game this weekend! That’s six woodland bases built & painted in two weeks, with a few conversions chucked in for good measure. Yeah… I won’t lie guys, this was a slog! The painting was actually pretty ok, but the cleaning process was a real pain… I think it is safe to say that it will be a while before I tackle any more Citadel trees!

Here are the six new bases, plus a couple of close-ups on some of the more noteworthy examples:

Those miscast doll’s heads that Mark gave me are perfectly creepy, and will hopefully visually tie in the forest with the Chapel proper.

 

For those that are interested, the paint job on all of these is Dryad Brown, drybrushed through Baneblade Brown to Ushabti Bone. The rocks get an additional heavy drybrush of Admin Grey followed by a purple wash, while the ground gets an Agrax Earthshade wash, and the wood gets a Camoshade wash. I then do what I can only describe as a ‘wet dry-brush’ on the wood, using a very diluted white wash that I concocted, being careful not to get it on any mossy textured areas, (Citadel texture, added to fill gaps – a handy cheat!). Meanwhile the stone gets an additional light Admin Grey drybrush, has lichen spots added, and then a final wash of Agrax Earthshade. Then it’s just a case of picking out any details like bones & stuff – simples!

Here are the new trees with the three bases & scatter that I already had prepared – all pretty closely matched thank goodness:

 

I’m sure you’ll agree, that’s quite the forest, and I hope it helps to make the weekend a real visual treat. Now… I just need to finish my warband… I have four wraith-constructs to paint (should be quick), and I might even have time for a Harlequin… we’ll see how it goes! I’ll keep you posted dudes – catch you later in the week :-)

Chapel warband update – Exodite Avengers Assemble!!

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Hi guys, I have a very happy update for you today – I managed to finish up the fleshy half of my Chapel warband on Sunday, and boy, were they a pain. I really struggled with the hard armour plates on these guys… I don’t paint hard plates often, and even when I do, I tend to go for a more battered look than I have here. I think they eventually came out ok though – I kind of wanted a chitin/bone look about the armour, and that seems to have kinda/sorta worked. I’m less pleased with the glowing green eye lenses, but I can live with them. The rest of the paint job was a straight forward job of blending on the cloth and drybrushing on the fur cloaks. The only colours at play here are browns, gold, greens and greys – it’s pretty weird working with such a restricted palette, but was an interesting challenge and gives quite an unusual look. See what you think:

 1st pair

2nd pair

All four

and the whole unit

 

I may tweak these a little bit more, time depending… I’m thinking of introducing some red ‘warpaint’ around the eyes for all five, and I’m seriously considering ditching the back-banner on the Exarch – the more I think of it, the less the banner makes sense for a woodsy, hunter type… :-/  What do you guys think??

In other news, I used the bank holiday to start tackling trees…. Sooo many trees!!!

 

I’ve got nine trees built over the weekend, so six more to go and then I can get them primed and start the painting process. All pretty boring stuff to be honest, but I thought I’d share these WIP shots with you – ‘The Watchers’, built using some misprints kindly donated by Mark:

 

Anyway, that’s it for now folks! It’s going to be a boring few weeks of posts from here on in, with tree after tree after tree to paint. I’ll fit the rest of my warband in and around the forest, (though they are essentially trees as well).  I had better get a shift on – it is only three more weeks until we are called to the Chapel!

The curse of the Werewolf!!!

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Hi guys, a really quick post for you today – back in April I ran a small pulp game with my sons, where my eldest played Hraxi Jonas, (the interdimensionally famous xeno-archaeologist), and my youngest played Samwise Shortround, his plucky (and punchy!) sidekick. The game was based around killing off some death cultists and hunting down a werewolf, (more here). During the scrap, Shortround got bitten by the werewolf, (just before he delivered a crushing blow to the creature’s unmentionables), and my youngest asked whether this meant that his character could now turn into a werewolf himself… yeah, he’s a proper gamer in the making! Since then I have been keeping my eyes open for a suitable mini, and I spotted ‘the one’ at BOYL this year, the lovely wolfman by Tony Yates, so my son and I sat down to paint him over the weekend:

Hraxi & Shortround – Shortround starts to feel a bit peculiar…

 

…and transforms into beastform!

 

Here are the two faces of Samwise Shortround…

 

I was so impressed with how well my youngest concentrated during the painting, and he really did quite a lot by himself! He is also looking forward to working out rules for Shortround’s wolf-form, and we can expect a new adventure in a couple of weeks!

In other news, I have also been busily plugging away on my warband for The Chapel – I don’t normally post painting WIPs, but I just wanted to prove to Mark that I am on track :-)

That card in the background is all the painting recipes for this project – you can see why it is taking me so long!! Hopefully I’ll have these guys wrapped up this week, and then I can finish off the remaining tree constructs, (a much quicker job), before tackling the four forest bases I need to get through :-/