Atlantis Miniatures Wood Elves WiP

 

I'm really excited about these Wood Elf minis from Atlantis Minatures. They are part of a Kickstarter fullfillment so might not be up in the shop yet but they historically move pretty quickly from Kickstarter to regular product.  Very nice and kinda rare!

The models came with an assortment of bases. Some are fully detailed resin some are beveled plastic rounds. There was a good supply of basing bling to add details like forest critters, mushrooms, vines, big stones, and the like. This really inspired me to dive into the greenstuff and get to sculpting!

There are four different types of mounts in the set. A giant elk for the Male Warlord, a big panther for the Female Warlord, large Stags, and smaller Deer.

There are male and female versions of all the elves so this will make for a very thematic, and very scary, wood elf Kinband Warparty. You'll be seeing more of these soon but I wanted to say these are not your kinder, gentler type of "Wood Elf"... they are more like "Feral Elf"... many have horns themselves... they look like the sort of merciless forest guardians that might even eat any trespassers they find! They are gonna be fun! 

Malifaux: Avatar of Vengeance

Avatar of Vengeance

 

Continuing the tidy up of models that were started but never finished,  mostly due to packing up and moving house something like 14 times in the past 25 years... but also due to the occasional attack of  squirrel syndrome, I knocked out this old metal, 1st edition Malifaux, Avatar of Vengeance. Shown above with Kirai Ankoku for scale.

I haven't played 3rd edition... not sure I played 2nd either although I did get 2nd edition rules and some of the wonderful hard plastic kits. I think the Avatar type models have been retired from the game although there seems to be some cards available to allow these to be played as Emissaries.. whatever those are! Don't hate me I don't know these rules I'm just painting the pile!

The base is sculpted from green stuff.

Whole Model primed Krylon White.

The red robes are Blood Red (Reaper (R)), layer with Phoenix Red (R), whole robe wash with Drying Blood (Secret Weapon (SW)), target wash again with Drying Blood.

Green robe detail sash is German Luftwaffe Green (Vallejo Panzer Colors (VPC)) detail and edge highlights with Verdigris Pale Green (SW) wash with Sapphire (SW).

Ghostly Avatar painted Hexwraith Green (Games Workshop(GW) straight out of the bottle. Highlights are Splintered Bone (R) and a targeted re-application of Hexwraith Green for depth of color wraps it up.

Rug washed with Sapphire (SW) dry brush with Sky Blue (R) top dry brush with Ice Blue (GW). Fringe is Brass Casings (SW) Flesh Wash (SW)

Stone is Sky Gray (R) with a very diluted Sewer Water (SW) wash focused on edges and crevices.

I'm not sure what is up next... I found a pile of stuff to be repaired after the move so I may work on that.  There is also a Military Temporary Command Post from Antenocitis' Workshop in progress and I just got the new beefier Exemplar Sisters from Raging Heroes that I'd like to have a go at.

Back to the desk!

The Guild's Justice! (aka OMG Plastics!) Malifaux 2e.

Ok... I admit it... I'm slow!

Seriously!  I've heard a lot of people glowing about hard plastic minis but I hadn't really looked at one outside of a starter set, or a giant creature kit, in modern times.


I now see what I've been missing!

 First... and most important... you can do insane stuff with figure design in hard plastic.  There is no way you could produce these Death Marshals ,doing their acrobatics and coffin-fu, in white metal or even resin.  Not only do they defy gravity but, with the exception of the extrememly delicate sword of Lady Justice... yeah I snapped THAT right in two just getting it off the sprue... but the things are durable and take paint exceptionally well!

The set itself is done in the lavish Wyrd style with great art on the package, good assembly instructions, truly dynamic posing, and game rules (unit cards) all in one box.

I picked this up... because flaming coffins!... and because I hadn't done Wyrd plastics yet.  I have a couple of factions from Malifaux 1e. in metal and they were very awesome although the designs were sometimes a bit ambitious for the material.  With their obvious mastery of the hard plastic medium I'm expecting to be amazed right regular like!




 While I'm a fan of Lady Justice and The Judge the real show stoppers, mini wise, are the Death Marshals! 

 Now I must wander back to the table and get back to work!

Forge World Great Unclean One Step by Step

The last of the Contagion Salvage Project group that I picked up second hand a few months back.  I've been coveting this model for years and just never worked it into my purchase plan.  I thought I'd do a walk through of how this guy painted up.

For the initial color blocks I painted all the flesh areas with Vallejo medium Flesh and dry brushed with Vallejo Flat Flesh.  The sores, tongue, and open wound areas were base coated with Vallejo Rosa and highlighted with Vallejo Salmon Rose.  I used GW leviathan Purple inside the mouth to vary it a bit and add depth to the gullet. The gums got a glaze of Vallejo Salmon Rose highlights to tease them out a bit.

 The wounds were then treated with a Dried Blood Wash from Secret Weapon then layer highlighted with Vallejo Rosa and Salmon Rose.

 The Skin was more complex.  It was washed with a different color by skin texture,  Warty Patches had Secret Weapon Sewer Water and normal to shredded skin with Secret Weapon Flesh.  Once these were dry upper areas of normal skin were highlighted with Forge World ash powder, crevices with Forge World Medium Earth Powder and green shadows with Forge World Light Green Powder.  These areas were then damp set and the extended shadow areas had GW Ogryn Flesh Wash applied to for blending.

 The Horns and nails were a work up of the Reaper Master Series Khaki triad with a final highlight of P3 Menoth Highlight.

 The sword was also done at this point getting the standard "Blighted Weapon" treatment that the rest of the Contagion has.  Basically Vallejo Brown stippled with the Reaper master Series fire triad.  Some Vallejo Flames of war German Camo brown and German Light Camo Brown with a wash of GW Gryphon Sepia saw off the leather bits.

A little Green Stuff to texture the base to match the rest of the Project painted in reds from the Reaper Master Series Blood and Fire triads and some Secret Weapon Red/Black and Drying Blood layered washes gives the guy some contrast. 

I went with a chariot base for the time being in part because it'll work out for fantasy battle (although really a 100mm square is more appropriate) and mostly because it'll pack easier for the big move back to the states.  I'll likely magnetize the thing and have a fantasy and 40 style base to swap out as needed. 

 I sprayed the whole thing with Army Painter Anti Shine Varnish at this point (the green stuff based figure above) and the spot varnished the eyes, sores, mouth, and red areas with Vallejo Gloss Varnish.

The figure was a lot of fun to paint and should make a suitably disgusting centerpiece for the Contagion or for a Daemon Host.

Nurgle's Obliterators

 The Siwa Contagion salvage project gets some heavy duty reinforcements today... literally!  These Obliterators are huge chunks of metal that are very heavy and hard to work on.  They continue the Death Guard theme although I've not added anything in the way of Legion Markings... ie.  no flies or triple dots etc...  to the armor itself although there are a lot of three dot recurrences in the mutated flesh.  They also have the same corrupted weapons treatment that marks rest of the Contagion.

The models are both viscerally representative of the madness of the Ruinous Powers and strangely shallow in other regards.  The heads in particular are very difficult to pick out and give depth to.  I almost added some Max-Mini Bio-hazard heads just to make them pop... but ultimately decided to save them for some cultists that are looming over the horizon.  On the whole I like the sculpts but wow are they heavy!  I'm afraid some of the more fiddly plastic weapons that I used to replace missing bits will not endure.

These guys have had massive amounts of green stuff added to them, in the same manner as most of the minis from this project, to cement the Nurgle feel.  Its the sort of a 'Flesh gone Wild' approach that I would normally associate with Tzeentch... except for the fact that Obliterators are inherently of the Carnival of Moving Flesh variety.

The next addition to the Contagion will be a set of Forge World Plague Drones but they'll be in line behind some Raging Heroes fantasy minis and some assorted Witch Hunter style retinue that are primed and ready for the brush.   There is also a small pile of Sigmarite Sisters in process along with a few random Mordheim personalities.

More Morbid Termies, some salvage Obliterators, and Konigsmarck Sisters WiP

 I luvs me sum Nurgle!  For some reason the jolly Lord of Decay is really fun to paint for.  I finished up this second half of Terminator Brotherhood Morbid last night.

This squad, like part one is more moldy and green hued than Squad Typhus which makes them more prone to blending into the base.  To help combat that tendency I made sure not to use much yellow on the Terminators themselves and to make sure that the bases had a yellow glaze. 

These are obviously not painted in the GW style but i think they capture the feel of the fluff and of the concept art in the vein of the concept art of John Blanche... just with less expertise!

I've been experimenting with various ways to portray the corruption of Nurgle which I think about as being different from simple corrosion.  In some cases I'm pretty happy with the results, for example the blade of the power axe, the pinkish areas of really rotten armor, and the grime accumulations in the rim of the shoulder pads. 

The weapons so far in this project have have been platforms to experiment with the corrosion theme. I'm likely to come back to the weapons once the bulk of the painting is complete and add some details to personalize and define them.  They will still retain large areas of plain corruption since they are actually consecrated artifacts and are powerful symbols of the triumph of the Ruinous Powers over the loyal sons of the Emperor.  Fallen Astartes bear their profane weapons with pride and purpose




The great fear I have about painting the followers of Nurgle is that, in my quest to get the right feel of glorious decay, they might turn out to look like litter box foundlings on the tabletop.  So far the Siwa Contagion is doing OK in that regard and the minis look very sharp on the tabletop.




The termies are constructed with Death Guard conversion kits from Forge World.  They have really great atmospherics and sharp detail.  I'm such a junkie for this sort of thing.




As a painter of armies meant to be played, my first goal is to pass the '3 foot test'  If it looks good enough at 3 feet that someone is compelled to pick it up for a closer look it passes.  Of course it helps if it also looks decent once they get picked up!  I also strive to create a coherent that is easily identifiable in terms of WYSIWYG.

 

The next batch of recruits for the Siwa Contagion are six Obliterators.  Here you can see them in the state they arrived in.  A couple of them have large tracts of green-stuff in a similar fashion to the rest of the army.  They will need more of that still as there are some really prominent gaps and parts joins to conceal.  The bases are also either blank or pumice so I'll have to do some work to get them in theme with their compatriots.

That brings me, at long last, to the Konigsmarck sisters from Raging Heroes.  There are three of them (although one suffered from camera fail and was sent back to the dressing room) and a mascot.  I sprayed them black and brushed them up with Bone Jack, Menoth White, and Menoth White Highlight (all from the P3 series) to get a better look at the detail.  Awesome!  very characterful!  There was a lot of great detail and each mini had optional gear which will be handy in equipping the rest of the war band.  Since these photos were taken I've done the sculpting of the cobblestone and debris bases.  I'll get some precast resin bases in that theme for the bulk of the war band but I wanted to get these available for play in our current campaign so...

Chop Chop!  'ere we go!

Plague Marine Icon

The belatedly located Icon Bearer for the second squad of Plague Marines in the Siwa Contagion line up.  Like the rest of the squad it is Death Guard with armor being supernaturally corrupted by extended contact with the Ruinous Powers. 

It is an old metal Plague Marine and the backpack was broken long ago which gave me an opportunity to continue my experimentation with green stuff... so I created an elongated, fleshy, exhaust vent arm to go along with the other goops, fleshy and otherwise, that I'd already inflicted on the model.

The second half of Termie Squad Morbid is coming along and should be finished up in the next two days.  Tonight I'm off to see the Lt Dan Band so I won't get any work done at all!

Next up are the Konigsmarck sisters from Raging Heroes and prep on some Nurgly Obliterators.

Land Raiders "Pox" and "Rot Gut" ready to spread the Contagion

The Nurgle salvage operation continues as the Siwa Contagion adds a grisly pair of Land Raider Crusaders to their frightful armory.

Of course the Crusader variant does not appear in the CSM Codex and is not available for regular games.   If this had not been a salvage project I'd have gone with the standard vanilla Land Raider.  That being said these will be used by agreement primarily in narrative campaigns or to proxy the allowable models in regular games.

The corruption of the Crusader variant seems poetic and may play into a narrative rivalry between the Siwa Contagion and the Black Templars.  I'll need to get the naming details of  my nephew's crusade fleet (The Gol'rethian Crusade as it turns out) and work it into the fluff!

These began with a basic two tone green base spray over black.  From here I had to adjust the green tint to resemble that on the troopers and begin the blight corruption process.

Several irregular brown stains later it was time for the red/orange speckling.  This was a little rough as some of the patches dried too much prior to getting their edges abraded.   I adjusted this for the second vehicle and the splotches trended towards more consistency with the troopers.  Some bright orange patches retained more definition but that generally seems to have improved the effect.

 The two were named "Rot Gut" and "Pox"  in part because the names were short and could be rendered in an angular script visually similar to the Dark Tongue and yet remain legible so they'd be easy to use in army lists.

I also discovered a standard bearer for one of the squads that I'd overlooked.  I had thought that the numbers were a little off and here is why!  I'll need to do a little more greenstuff... to the broken backpack vent and then should knock this guy out next.

I've actually run through my supply of greenstuff a this point and need to get some more.  Work work work!

Next up some terminator squads and Typhus.

Dark Eldar Army Banner and Grotesque Music

 Here is the army standard/objective marker for the Blood Rain.  Its a complex kit from Raging Heroes.  In general it assembles relatively well but the banner is extremely fragile which makes it difficult to properly clean up.  Still its a stunning tabletop piece and I'm very happy to include it in the Kabal.

 To the right is a Blood Vestal (SF command ver.) also from Raging Heroes.  This model had some issues when aligning the raised leg and required a lot of green stuff to sort out.  I swiped a fan from the new Skyraa character model and really liked the motion and feel of the final pose.  Ultimately she required a lot of work to bring out details and I'm still not entirely happy with the result, but thats painter fail and not any fault with the model.

I went with the new style of Grotesque from Citadel for the Ubergrotesques of Urien Rakarth.  These are from the first run of Finecast and it really shows.  They were warped, quite brittle, and seem to be missing some parts which I replaced with fancy cut toothpick ends. 

 I'm experimenting with a few different necrotic skin types on these but wanted them to still work out as part of the same unit.  These are still WiP and large areas that will be metal are based in a sort of corroded wash just to set the tone.  There should also be a fair amount of green and yellow 'bile' in the different fluid vials that erupt from their bodies at various points and a lot of odd tubes and wires of various colors. 

I'm still looking for good alternative models for the rest of the unit.  Ideally I'd like something is roughly the same size and feel (like a big ghoul of some sort) with some more easily modifiable pose (or several base poses)  than is the case with the actual Grotesque kit. The official kit is sculpted in an unfortunately striking pose that is not easily adapted across other members of the unit, making it very hard to resist the 'Conga Line' effect.  It would also be cool if it rang in at something less than GW's hefty $24.75 per model.

Finally I'm working on another Raging Heroes model to use as a musician in the Grotesque unit.  Moloss and Minion is another complicated but very characterful kit.  The tiny, multi-armed (or clawed) drummer is tricky to get assembled as the arms can make it impossible to position the drums if you get too wild with their placement.  These will add a great deal of cool feel to the unit even if the musician has no actual game effect. 

Banners and Fashions

Today was a nuts and bolts day.  I spent a lot of time on a banner and some conversion work.  Both are coming along reasonably well.  Here is a shot of the storyboard work up for the banner.  This was actually quite a lot of fun and gives me an interesting background including Battle honors for the unit and its preferred enemy.  This is as far as I got on it today..i It still needs a lot of refining but is getting there.  The other main project for the day was some tweaks to Prince Yriel. Mostly a serious hair extension and some additional details for the back banners.

I also got the base coats done on the Armored Gunwagon, red of course, and have worked out a way to get the Zzap gun under the 'ard case although this will limit my ability to do weapon swaps.  The limit really has more to do with the 'ard case's propensity to warp if left alone for any amount of time so I'll end up having to lock it down just to keep it in line.  The follow on Gunwagon will not be armored and will have the weapon mount magnetized for easy swaps. I'll probably work on the Armored Gunwagon later tonight when I'm too tired to really make progress on the banner.