40k Harlequins - Tricolor shenanigans!

Managed to get some more brush time in yesterday, and started blocking in the green and purple sections on the Troupe and Starweaver. Starting to come together nicely now!

Still need to brighten up the purple a bit, but I'm pretty happy with the contrast between the green and yellow. Once the base colors are laid in, the next step will be to go back in and add stripes, checks and polka dots for full clownishness!

Rather happy with how the Starweaver is coming along as well, it's a rather cool model with the riders hanging on. That all said, this paint scheme is surprisingly slow compared to my usual batch painting cadence. Probably taken as long to get this far on these models as it had to bring all the recent Orks to completion!

40k Harlequins - Choosing a color scheme

Got some decent hobby time in last night after it had cooled off a bit and started off by putting together the Starweaver transport for the troupe - First time assembling this kit and it was a bit of a fraught affair! I think I got the measure of it though, so the upcoming Voidweaver should go together a bit easier. Hoping to keep the painting simple I left the two passengers separate, but getting them posed properly was certainly a struggle!

On the last go around with the killer clowns I'd gone for the full chromatic assault on the senses, which was fun but exhausting both to paint and to look at afterwards - it was almost TOO busy. This time I thought I'd be a little more restrained and pick 3-4 colors - Garish though they may be! Decided to go with Mardi Gras-esque colors for the initial Troupe and Starweaver, and started laying in the yellow on various areas, and trying to envision where the subsequent purples and greens will go.

Falling back on the recipe that I'd used on the Imperial Fists which is a bit more of a mustard yellow than the canary brightness of the recent Orks. Depending on how it ends up contrasting with the upcoming purple and green, that gives me some room to brighten up the yellow if needed.

 

For the Starweaver, I'm intending to to half yellow, and half green-and-purple diamonds. Should look neat I hope, but to start it was just a matter of laying down some painter's tape to get a nice crisp line. The passengers are just sitting in place for the photo, really happy with how it's coming along!

40k Harlequins - Cegorach's Jest

What with all this Ork business of late, it's got me thinking that it might be fun to do an army of Xenos filth again. I wanted to do something very colorful, and when it gets right down to it there's no force more colorful than the Harlequins! Poked around in the codex and picked out a Formation to do as a little side project - Cegorach's Jest.

It's a compact little force that includes a bit of each unit type in the Harlequin book aside from the 3 characters, so should be just a little bite-sized project. I do plan to add a couple more Skyweavers to the force, as 2 jetbikes do not a viable unit make in my estimation (but the local shop only had one box in stock)...

Started off by building up the Troupe. The models are actually somewhat awkward to photograph - they have a beautiful dynamism in-hand, but somehow always seem to look silly in the pictures. I had built this kit once before so I knew what I was in for, however I have never built the Skyweavers or Starweaver kits previously, so that should be an adventure! Definitely have to be cognizant of building the models in separate pieces to facilitate subsequent painting...

NOCF Charity Ork Army - The penultimate session!

Real Life(tm) continues to be heinous to my schedule of late, so while the following pics were taken back on Saturday I'm only just now able to get them posted up on the ol' blog. That said, Da Boyz are 99% complete!

I say 99% as it's inevitable that during the sealant step that I identify some step of the process that I've completely overlooked until then. In this case, I missed out on painting the tongues on all of the Orks with open mouths. Doh!

That final cleanup notwithstanding the units are complete and I am really happy with 'em. It was an absolute blast to paint some Orks again after so long and was really refreshing to use the strong greens and yellows - colors rather underutilized in my other recent projects! I'm planning on getting them touched up and boxed up to send over to the rally point for the army later this week, and then it's time to dive back into the Heresy - got a Box o' Resin Joy heading my way from Forge World with some new Thousand Sons goodies to add to the force, can't wait!

NOCF Charity Ork Army - Allmost... Alllllllmost...

Oh so very close to the finish line now! Over the last few days I've been doing battle with the house refinance so that's eaten up some time, but I did manage to finish off the detailing on Da Boyz!

Got all the black flames done, added in the copper jewelry and bullet casings, and got the spot colors laid in on the Rokkit Boyz. Also went back and picked out all the little teef and leather I'd missed here and there one the way through the lot. Phew!

Next up is a little further work on the Rokkits, then on to the bases - hurtling towards the end!

In other NOCF news:
-Zab has started laying in the base shading on some Ad Mech goodness!
-Greg has started working on the Grots and pressed on with the Deff Dredd (which is shaping up to be a corker)!
-Celso has done a frankly astonishing job on a battlewagon for the force as well!

More to come!

NOCF Charity Ork Army - 'Eadbangers in leather...

...More leather straps than a Judas Priest concert! As we near the finish line on da Boyz, we start to get into the little fiddly details - the goal over the last couple days was to knock out all the leatherwork, and there was a lot of it! Early steps in the process can be pretty messy, relying on subsequent steps to clean up any slop but at this point I'm having to be very careful not to overspill which slows things to a crawl. However perseverance it key!

Next up is the copper/gold jewelry and shell casings, the rest of the black flames, and general cleanup of stuff I'd missed. Getting ever closer to the finish line!

NOCF Charity Ork Army - Heavy metal

Real Life(tm) has been a bear recently so not as much brush time as I would have hoped. I did manage to squeeze in a couple more colors since Saturday, but sadly I've fallen well behind my initial plan to crank out two colors a day. Curses!

Got the boltgun metal painted in and washed with a pass of Agrax Earthshade, which gives the metal an oily, rusted look which is rather fitting for the Orks! Also started a bit of the shoulder pad detailing, painting on the Bad Moons typical flame motif here and there.

So far it's just been the yellow flames on the black shoulder pads, but the yellow pads will also get the treatment with some black flames (a couple have been done so far). Once those are done it'll be time to pick out all the leather and fur which should really help the look. Right around this mid-point is where I usually start to get discouraged in the batch process but I have to say I'm still really digging painting them. If only I had more time to do so! Planning to carve out a good chunk of time this coming weekend with a goal of getting them done up to the point where I can start painting the bases. Fingers crossed!

NOCF 2016 Charity Ork Army - Old Yeller...

Got a fair bit of brush time in this morning, and after getting the eyes in I got cracking on with the next set of colors for the Boyz!

Started off by basecoating any area intended to be yellow with Vallejo Beast Brown, which covers fairly well over the black and provides the subsequent yellow a bit more of a warm tone. I decided that I'd do up half of the models with black trousers and yellow shirts, while the other half would have yellow trousers and black shirts which will help distinguish the two mobs as well as keep me from going mental painting 40 of the exact same pattern 40 times!

Next up to bring the color up a bit the brown got a further pass with Vallejo Scrofulous Brown, which is a nice ochre color and shines nicely under the following step.

The last step of the session was the additional highlight of Vallejo Medium Yellow. This is one of the Model Air range of paints and is extremely translucent, it's almost more of a glaze consistency when applied with a regular brush. The shoddy pic-in-progress shot blows out a lot of the highlight it seems. Next up is cleaning up all the areas that will be black, then on to all the leather colors. They're starting to look like proper Bad Moons now!

NOCF 2016 Charity Ork Army - What big Teef you have...

...Da better ta bite yer wif!

In the process of refinancing my house so it's been frantic home repair for the last several days to take care of some cosmetic stuff prior to the appraiser making his rounds. That being the case, not as much painting time as I would have liked - just one color a day for the last two days, but it was a fun couple sessions.

Painted in the teeth with a basecoat of Vallejo Earth, followed by a pass of Bone White. They'll get a final highlight of Ghost Grey in the next step to give 'em a bit more pop, but I have to say that getting the teeth painted in really snaps the models into focus. ...Metaphorically speaking that is, my actual camera skills are as questionable as ever!

In recent NOCF news, Zab over at Almost Perftec got cracking on with several of the individual models that will be up for auction. Definitely worth checking out! In addition, the raffle for the two beautiful Dark Age armies painted by Dave Taylor are ending this coming Sunday!

I have a reasonably open schedule on Saturday so I'm hoping to get at least four more colors on to make up for lost time. 'Ere we go, as they say!

NOCF 2016 Ork Charity Army - It's not easy being green...

...But it's getting easier!

Few more steps on the Ork skin last night - nothing glamorous but it's actually been rather fun!

The first stage was to paint in the flesh again with Warboss Green, followed by a mix of Warboss Green and Nurgling Green, hitting successively less of the area with each pass and leaving the darkest green in the recesses.

Next up is a highlight of pure Nurgling Green on the uppermost surfaces of the skin where it would catch the light.

The last step of the evening is a pass of Waywatcher Green glaze to help blend the layers together. Much like the final step Monday night, the glaze really needs to dry thoroughly so the models are left to dry overnight. Moving right along!

In addition to the Ork and Space Marine armies that will be raffled off later in the year, there are already a couple forces up on the NOVA Open Charitable Foundation site, both painted by the phenomenally talented Dave Taylor - Definitely worth a look, and it's for a great cause!

NOCF 2016 Charity Ork Army - Green is best!

'Ere we go, 'ere we go, 'ere we go!

It had been cold and snowy for the last five days here and as such while the Orks for the NOVA Open Charitable Foundation raffle were all built they'd been hanging fire until the weather turned. Which it has! Over the next week it's supposed to get up to 85F (gotta love springtime in the Rockies!) and I was able to get all of 'em prepped and primed after work yesterday. I'm planning on going through the process step-by-step and documenting it here on the blog, so that you will be as sick of Orks by the end as I am. Hah! The plan is to try and get two or three colors a day done until they're all complete, so today's post is just the first two colors.

The paint recipes were provided to everyone working on the force in order to ensure that all of the models end up with the same color scheme (more or less, they are Orks after all), and as it generally the case I started off with the skin tones first as it's the sloppiest part of the recipe for the orks and any overspill onto the clothing will be cleaned up in subsequent passes. The recipe calls for a GW Warboss Green as the base color, so the models got a couple thinned coats.

The second step in the recipe is a wash of Thrakka Green which helps darken down the tone and settle into the recesses for some initial shading. You gotta let washes dry thoroughly before moving on so this was the last step of the evening (the wash is still damp in the pic as you can see), the models are left to dry overnight in preparation for the next couple skin colors on deck for tonight's painting session! 40 models is really about the limit for batch painting for me - any more than that and it REALLY starts to get tedious. Still, I'm really enjoying this project so far, it's been ages since I painted any Orks, and the color palate is radically different than what I've been working on recently which is very nice.

A couple other fellow bloggers have started posting their work for the NOCF as well, and I'll do my best to keep up with them (drop me a line if you're taking part and I've missed your posts):

Zab at Almost Perftec is painting up some Malifaux and Wrath of Kings models that are looking awesome!
Greg Hess at Feed Your Nerd is working up some Grots and a Flying Deff Dread!

More links to come as people get cracking!

Horus Heresy Event - The Alkoss Resurgence, April 30th 2016

The event for which I had been feverishly painting up the Thousand Sons was this past weekend and I snapped a number of pics (though as per the usual, only about half of them were actually in focus and viable). The event was held at Gryphon Games in Fort Collins, Colorado just an hour up north from where I live, which was a double shocker - 1) I didn't know the game shop existed, and 2) I was starting to become convinced I was the only person doing Heresy stuff in the whole dang state. I was glad to be disabused of both notions! The event was a casual narrative type event which is my preferred state of gaming, and the players were asked to bring 1000, 2000 and/or 2500 point lists and the various game sized would be determined by the players, with prizes being awarded for best painted force, most loyal loyalist and most traitorous traitor. The group was relatively evenly split between the forces of the Emperor and the Warmaster, and we got stuck in straight away!

  

My first battle was against a terrifying Blood Angels assault company-themed list, with two massive jump pack assault squads, backed up by a couple tactical squads. The jump troops rushed forwards and put paid to my Land Raiders with no delay (both squads being loaded up on melta bombs) but the Thousand Sons terminators made a great showing and managed to slaughter the assault marines over the remaining several turns. When the dust settled the Loyalists squeaked out a win 7VP to 5VP. Brutal game!

Once the first game was done, everyone laid out their forces for judging of the best painted army, then we all took a break for some rather pizza and beer at a nearby restaurant.

Blood Angels army #1

Blood Angels army #2

Alpha Legion

Death Guard

Dark Angels

Sons of Horus

Once we got back, we totted up the results of the first game, and then decided to do a couple team games with the Death Guard player and myself facing off against the Blood Angels.

Unfortunately I didn't get many good pictures of that game, but it too was a bloodbath. Luckily it was in the Traitor's favor, and the Blood Angels were hammered into paste under the boots of the traitors!

On the other table the other four folks opted for a Zone Mortalis game and it was utter mayhem!

The final game of the day saw my Thousand Sons take on what appeared to be a very small force of Dark Angels. I should have sensed that they had some tricks up their sleeves but the Tiscan's overconfidence is always their downfall!

 

The Thousand Sons drove into the teeth of the Dark Angels positions sensing an easy victory...

...Only to be ravaged by their mastery of Plasma weaponry. Turns out the reason the army was small was because they were armed almost to a man with absolutely vicious short-ranged weapons that essentially washed the Thousand Sons off the table once they got within 12". Sneaky and underhanded, as is appropriate for the Dark Angels!

So as the dust settled on the event, the Thousand Sons went 1 and 2, which is 33% better than I expected them to fare! Had an excellent time with some great opponents, and there was much enjoyment all around. I was honored with the Best Painted award which provided a nice chunk of store credit at the game shop, and made a few new friends for future Heresy goodness! Good times!

It has been snowy and unpleasant for the last week so while the Orks for the NOVA Open Charitable Foundation raffle are ready to get started, it's been too cold and wet to primer anything. However, it typical Colorado fashion it's scheduled to be pushing 70F over the next couple days so expect to see a mess of greenskin posts soon!