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!

NOCF 2016 Charity Ork Army - Orks, orks, orks, orks...

Orks!

Earlier this year the phenomenally talented painter Zab over at Almost Perftec suggested that I speak with the further thoroughly talented Dave Taylor of his eponymous blog about pitching in on the NOVA Open Charitable Foundation project for this year, and I am honored to have been invited to do so! One of the two 40k armies that will be up for raffle is a rather fun airbase-themed Ork force, and the various participants put in requests for their preferred units - there have already been some really cool looking WIP shots coming out around the blogosphere, so I have some tough acts to follow!

Of course all proppa' Ork armies need a couple bigmobs of Boyz, and as I have no real fear of batch painting I volunteered to build and paint up the pair of 20-strong Boyz mobs included in the force. Not the most glamorous part of the army perhaps, but where would a Warboss be without his Boyz, eh?

Rooted around in the Closet of Doom for bits and have started getting things put together. I had the better part of the first mob already assembled, just needed to pop 'em off their previous bases and get 'em onto the rather cool resin bases generously donated by Secret Weapon Miniatures. While the basic Boys sprues provide pieces for a Nob, I decided to use a couple from the separate Nobz kit as they're just a bit more intimidating in my opinion.

The second mob is still in the assembly phase, but I did get the 'fun' models of the squad built. Still some more detailing to add to both squads as well, there's shoulder plates, knives and stikkbombs yet to be added, as well as the occasional hair squig! Hoping to get them built by the end of the weekend, and take advantage of the nicer weather forecast to be on the way to get 'em primered so I can get stuck in on some colors that aren't red or gold for a change! The deadline for completion looms for these (though not quite so imminent as the Thousand Sons were recently), so expect to see a slew of Orky posts over the next couple weeks as the Greenskins thunder down the painting table at me!

Heresy Era Thousand Sons - Iskandar Khayon and Gyre painted

To help wash out the taste of the slightly-disappointing rhino escapade, I spent some time last night and this morning and finished up Iskandar Khayon and his daemon wolf, Gyre.

 

I thought I'd try to split the difference between the Heresy-era crimson and white and the modern era scheme, so his outer robe and helmet vanes got the blue and yellow treatment.

 

Overall pretty pleased with how Khayon turned out, though I think I may add a yellow flame motif on the back of his cloak to jazz it up a bit more.

While my initial thought was to try a ghostly/spectral greenish white but throughout the majority of the book Gyre is described as being more solid. Never been too good at painting realistic animals, but did some photo research on white wolves and tried my hand at matching what I found, with the shiny green eyes as a concession to her daemonic influence.

Lastly I was able to get some decent light for an army shot of the force I'll be taking to the event at the end of the month as well. Pretty happy with how they turned out!

Heresy Era Thousand Sons - Rhinos painted

More frantic painting in preparation for the event coming up at the end of the month, today it's the final two models - a pair of Rhino transports for the Veterans and Tac Marines! I quite like the Deimos Rhino kit from FW, it goes together quite easily (barring a little trimming/sanding required on the side doors) and is a rather nice nod to the old RT-era version.

Started off by laying in the reds, as it's the sloppiest part of the scheme. Figured I'd try and do a semi-reversed scheme on the two Rhinos to differentiate between the Vets and the Tac squad.

The areas intended to be bone colored got a leather brown basecoat, as I find painting the bone color directly onto black tends to look patchy and dull. The brown 'shines through' a bit and give the lighter color a bit more depth.

Next up the bone color was applied. It's interesting that the lighting really blows out the color, it's not nearly as white as it appears in the photos.

Then things start to go slightly awry. The bone color used on the infantry has a wash stage that just doesn't translate well to the large flat planes of the vehicles. Again, the photos are not kind to the Vet's tank, a lot of the streaks and whatnot aren't nearly as apparent in-hand. Curse you, photography!

Once all that was done, the models got a selection of the excellent waterslide transfers that I'd gotten from Fallout Hobbies, a light weathering pass and a final sealant coat. Changing over to the usual photo backdrop brings the colors on the bone and red back down to their more real-world tones, but still makes the ham-fisted wash stage look a lot sloppier than it is in hand. Weird!

 

Really happy with how the Tac squad's Rhino turned out!

 

Slightly less so on the Vet's Rhino, but I really do like how the top hatch transfer worked. All in all a passable effort, might try and go back over the bone panels on this one again once I get on the other side of the event next weekend, but for now I consider it table-ready.

Once I get some better light I'll snap off an army shot - it's a little overcast and gloomy today however. Good thing I got these sealed yesterday while it was nice out! With these out of the way, I'm going to get a little reward time in and work on Khayon and Gyre, then it's time to switch gears significantly and get cracking on with a slew of foul Xenos over the next few weeks for the NOVA Open Charity Raffle Army of Orky Goodness!