Shredders Revisited

This is the money shot.  Or angle, if you prefer.

Following an exchange with Cloudfang of Live to CRUSH in the comments across my last couple posts, I went back to the Shredders to tweak my scheme and see how it looks in person.  The tweaks were a pair: purple lining around the chitin and a bone/cream on the "under" chitin.  A couple caveats before getting into the comparison.  First, the work on the Shredders has been very quick and dirty.  Since this is a test run on a new scheme and not final work, I haven't been as attentive as I would normally be.  As such things like the purple lining are sloppier than they would otherwise be.  Second, the finished models are bound to be slightly different since the layers will accumulate in a different order, notably the purple would go down over either primer or the blue/white skin and not orange.  The "clean" Shredder is a better example of what things would look like in this case.  Finally, I primed these two white for no real good reason other than to mix things up by working over white for a change.  Considering the bulk of my Legion came primed black I'll probably go with that, and even my usual grey primer is dark enough to be similar to black.  In summation, final models are likely to be neater and darker than these two Shredders.  Now on to the fun.

Shredders "finished," Kovnik Joe WIP #1

Finished?

A bit of housekeeping first.  For this post I've re-sized and cropped the pics in an effort to a) decrease upload size during this time of slow, slow internet b) make the page load faster for you, the reader, in said time of slow, slow internet c) cut out all the extraneous bits of the pictures d) save some storage space, not that it really matters but it never hurts to be frugal when you can.  If it's horrible or wonderful then let me know and I'll adjust (or not) accordingly.  This is also post # 2 of the new naming convention for painting update posts. 

Shredders WIP #1, Blood Angels list

It begins.

Despite not having a whole lot of time to work with yesterday I still got a decent bit done.  The most obvious part is that I got started on some Shredders to try out my Legion scheme ideas.  My plan is for a very light blue, so light it's almost white, skin with brown/orange spikes/chitin/armor and an accent color yet to be determined.  On this pair of Shredders I took two different approaches.  The one on the left, with the raised foot, got a coat of VMC Shadow Grey as a base, a color which is far more purple than I anticipated.  A 50/50 mix of Shadow Grey and VMC Wolf Grey was next, then straight Wolf Grey, then VMC Dead White as a rather broad highlight.  The one of the right, firmly planted on the ground, started with a coat of Wolf Grey which didn't look all that different from the white primer I was painting over.  Next was a heavily watered, perhaps 4:1 water to paint ratio, wash/glaze of Shadow Grey.  After that the steps were the same, though I may well have skipped the 50/50 step.  I got similar results from both approaches, but the one on the right painted up much easier.  Perhaps it's because of the pose, or because I did the first bit of actual painting (after the base coat and the wash/glaze) after I'd already done the first coat of actual painting on the other Shredder, thus giving me a little bit of experience with how Shredders are constructed.  I think the wash/glaze just did the job better, and quicker, than layering up from the bottom.  The results are more purple than blue so I'm considering doing an Asurmen Blue wash over them, or at least in the recesses, but I'm going to wait until I have the chitin done to see how they look as a whole.  The current plan for the orange is to start with brown and proceed through a lighter brown into orange, with the orange as the last two layers.  I have no idea how this will turn out, but I hope for the best considering I picked browns that look a little orange to use as the base.

Capitals Fail Again*

(This post is a departure from my usual subject matter.  If you do not at least like hockey, the Washington Capitals, and/or the bloggosphere that surrounds said team, you may want to skip this post.  I won't blame you.  Much.  Regular content will return with the next post, which should be tomorrow.)

A Bold New Direction

Ternion?  Done.

The (no longer) current batch of painting has been finished for approximately 32 hours (from when I started writing this post).  "What took so long?" I hear you thinking (because I'm telepathic, it's how I win at cards), "You're normally prompt with the postings."  First off, thanks for noticing.  I try to keep on top of things like that.  Second, I had a little adventure.

In making new pictures.

I see these fancy-dan photo collages around the internets, with their multiple angles and close-up shots of faces and details.  On occasion I think "I should give that a shot one day."  Turns out one day is today.  I'm baby-stepping though, so "multiple" means two, and close-ups are not yet implemented.  Despite those shortcomings, the future is now.

Internet, I am disappointed in you

Very soon...

Let's start with the happy.  Some good progress was made on the Greylords yesterday.  After some close inspection I decided that the browns looked good after just the wash, but needed some contrast where multiple brown areas butted up against each other, mostly on the axe hafts.  That got fixed up nice and quick which made way for the biggest waste of time on this batch.  I decided to do the fringes in grey, but a darker grey than the cloaks.  A layer of black went down for a fresh start, which took forever, then up through a couple of greys.  The final result?  I shouldn't have even bothered as it doesn't look much different than when I started.  Live and learn I guess.  Gold and (some) silver followed to end on a high note.  There are plenty of rivets left to pick out along with fringes on the double cloaks. finishing the eyes, whatever details I missed, and bases, which sounds like a lot but I don't think will take too long.  I also want to run the bright blue into the designs on the weapons for the extra icy look.  With any luck the group will be finished today.

On the less happy side, I found out that my reading comprehension is pretty horrible.  While at the FLGS last night I learned that eSkarre's feat is much nastier than I thought (makes friendly models immune to attack or makes enemy models unable to attack instead of making models immune and unable at the same time), and followed that up with a double revelation about Slipstream.  First the Slipstreamed model has to be placed completely within 2" (I'd been playing it as just within 2"), which is unfortunate but not earth-shaking.  Then I found out that the Slipstreamed model isn't placed completely within 2" of where the Slipstreaming model finishes its movement, but instead completely within 2" of where the Slipstreamed model was when the Slipstreaming model passed it by, which actually did shake the earth.  These two revelations combined mean that the extra movement gained from Slipstream goes from a potential 10" (2" behind a Seraph when it starts to 1.99999" in front of said Seraph when it's done moving) to a flat 2".  This is quite the difference and means that a) I've been hosing EV pretty hard over the last couple of games, b) Legion is actually nowhere near as mobile as I thought, and c) a second/third Seraph moves somewhat down the list (though I still think it's an amazing beast.)  In retrospect the way I was playing Slipstream was way overpowered, on par with (or better than) feats like Strakhov and pVlad, which is out of line with its low cost of a single Fury.  In my defense, the wording on Slipstream is obtuse at best.  Upon hearing I was doing it wrong, I reread it a couple times without seeing what it was I was missing before I finally caught the subtle nuances of the language.  PP is generally good about making things clear, but this time not so much.  The biggest disappointment has been you, Internet.  You've been good about pointing out where I've done things wrong in the past, and while I haven't put up a ton of Legion battle reports (yet) there's enough of them up that someone should have caught it by now.

Shame, Internet, feel shame.

(Pay no attention to the fact that I should have figured out how Slipstream worked myself.)

Greylords inching along

Soon...

Chipped away at the Greylords yesterday.  Greens and reds are done, leaving browns as the last big block of color remaining.  After that it's all little details.  That means I don't have much longer to waffle about how to do the fringes along the cloaks.  My usual approach to fur, the group I'd lump the fringes in with, is an almost-white grey.  Since the backs of the cloaks are that same grey, I'll need to do something else with them.  My palette is rather limited in terms of spot colors, meaning none, and I'm hesitant to introduce any new colors on models that are already going to stand apart from the rest of the army.  That said, the clubhouse leader is yellow, at least for the auxiliary cloaks that everyone except the grunts have.  I've thought about green for the fringes on the main cloaks but I don't think it'd look very good.  Then again said fringes do border the red interiors, so at least they'd be in familiar surroundings.  Something to ponder.  Speaking of red, the shoulder pads don't pop quite like I had expected.  It's no big deal, they don't disappear into the cloaks or anything, but it is a bit disappointing.  For today I hope to get the browns finished and perhaps do the bases (if not the arc markings), plus whatever details I can manage.  I don't think I'll get them finished today, but I'd like to get close.

Fight the good fight

 Despite this glorious blog you see around you, I am not particularly savvy when it comes to the HTMLs.  As such, I'm not sure I can put in special codes and not wreck the internet, so instead of doing the full-on strike thing I'm doing my particular, low-tech version of it.  Your familiar, beloved KMNB will return tomorrow.

What's this all about?  There are a pair of bills (acronymized as SOPA and PIPA) about to hit Congress that would deal a heavy blow to the glory that is a (mostly) free and unfettered internet through a series of draconian (super harsh for you non-English majors) penalties for any site that hosts pirated material, or any site with any connection to a site that hosts said material.  This means that someone could come into my particular corner of the internet here, drop a link to a site that might rhyme with "Birate Pay" in the comments, and I could then be fined and/or jailed as a result.  There's more to it of course, but that's the bit that has caught my eye as ridiculous.  Living in the black heart of the DMV, I try to stay away from politics as much as possible since a large part of the politicians in this country either reside or spend an awful lot of time here.  I figure they have all the politicking covered.  These bills threaten the internet as we all know and (presumably) love it though, and for that I'll dip my toe, ever so briefly, into the foetid waters of politics.  Call and/or write your congressmen, there are lots of sites out there to help you do so, and tell them these bills suck and should be burned and then have their ashes scattered.  Are you sick and tired of your so-called representatives not doing much of anything, much less anything that you'd like to see done?  Then do something now.  The above links make it real easy for your voice to be heard.

Family Feud: pThagrosh vs eSkarre

Show me "Playing like you've got a pair."

A couple battle reports ago, EV left a cryptic comment: "Next time I'll be bringing out the big guns again, so be warned."  Considering his preferences for casters and lists, I assumed this meant I'd be seeing eGaspy and his infantry swarm the next time we gamed (today[Tuesday]).  There was an outside chance of pDenny as well, or pGaspy, but I felt confident that I'd be facing eGaspy.  I didn't tailor my list to that match-up because I don't do that sort of meta-gaming (and if I do it's after a long stretch of crushing defeats).  Turns out my gaming integrity paid off today as I faced not Gaspy or Denny, but eSkarre.  Even more bizarre, eSkarre with two (2) heavy jacks and no (zero[0]) arc nodes.  After double checking that I was in the right place and facing the right opponent, we got down to business.  My list was the same as last time while EV's (obviously) changed.  He went with:

Running in Quicksand

Some progress is better than no progress.

Despite my best intentions, and efforts, over the past 24 hours or so, I haven't gotten a whole lot done recently.  Last night I decided it was high time to get those new Legion reinforcements built.  This has been a sore spot with me since they arrived as I just haven't had the modelling urge of late.  Absylonia was my target for completion, but never got off the ground mostly because of the separate leg.  Yes, something as small as attaching another leg put me off my intended course.  It was that sort of night.  Next I tried the Shepherds, which are only two pieces, and succeeded in gluing them to their bases, but the tiny, spindly arms (smaller than the smallest drill bit I have) and their refusal to take glue left them half finished.  The current plan is to do up some greenstuff rocks and sink the staff into said rock, then try (again) to glue the arm on while the rock does most of the work.  There was one small success in that I assembled the Deathstalker, which is a nicer model than I originally thought (and I thought it was nice when I saw it on the PP gallery).  The Forsaken didn't even bear consideration since it's a smaller, more finicky Absylonia.

On the painting front, I got a bit of work done today.  I laid down the browns, including the areas that will eventually be gold, but stumbled after that.  Turns out the browns weren't quite as "inside" as I'd thought (since I'm going for the painting inside-to-outside approach), so I gave everything that wasn't a face or a cloak a Devlan Mud wash and walked around the table for a bit.  Eventually I settled on Orks and got a little work in on them as a change of pace.  That worked like a charm and after finishing my Orky interlude I went back to the Greylords, finished up the grey interior robes, and called it a day.  It seems like this batch is getting close to being done, though I'm sure if I listed off the things that need finished (bright reds, greens, fur, hair, metals, leather, assorted touchups and details, basing...) it wouldn't seem that close after all so I think I'll skip the list and call the post finished.

Pushing the shadows

Behold my painting progress.

The Greylords (all of them, not just the Ternion) are turning out to be a new technique/approach playground.  I'm reluctant to try new things on the scions of the Motherland as I feel like I've established a look in the pieces I've already painted and don't want new additions to look out of place.  Since the Greylords are a sort of subculture in the army they seem like a good place to experiment a bit as it won't matter if they don't look 100% like the rest of the army since they stand a bit apart.  One of these new techniques, the glowing eyes, I talked about last time.  There's another new approach though, one you sharp-eyed readers might have already discerned, on that addresses one of the problems I've spotted in my painting: "pushing the shadows."

This week in hobby news

Painting has occurred.

A few loose ends to wrap up here.  To start at the beginning, I got my Warstore order on Monday with one slight hiccup: one of the paints I ordered was missing.  I've gotten the wrong item before (blue instead of brown), but this was the first time my order was short.  I sent an email off to Neil and we got everything straightened out in less than an hour, which is a great turnaround in my book.  The truant paint was in the mail the same day and arrived yesterday.  Unfortunate that my order was short, but mistakes happen and it was resolved as well as I want.  It's for reasons like this that I'm loathe to abandon the Warstore for the cheaper Miniature Market.  This story is not yet over.

With the arrival of a variety of grey paints (along with browns and oranges), I got started on the Greylords.  Mostly I just roughed in the colors to see how they would go together.  While I see a couple problem areas, overall the scheme works.  Glowing hands are out, at least unless/until I can find the pictures that inspired me to try them in the first place.  Instead I'm going with glowing eyes which seems like a more straight-forward use of the technique and therefore a better starting point.  I should get some more work in on the bunch today.

Order of Activation is Important: pThagrosh vs pHaley

Not a bad song, even if you don't go in for light pop (I usually don't).

Having used it for all of three games (one of which hardly counts), I've been very happy with how my pLylyth list has worked.  The logical move for today's game (see usual caveat re: when this gets posted), then, is to change things up.  As such my lovely blind archer lady stepped aside for the big...thing that is pThagrosh.  My first choice to switch things up would have been the first lady of freeky deeky, Absylonia, and the tier 4 list I have concocted for her.  One small problem though: she's still in a blister (which is still inside a box).  It's been a little slow on the construction front around here.  With that avenue blocked off, I went in for the above-mentioned pThagrosh (the p stands for pimp, though that newcomer Kallus is messing up the sausage to bun ratio).  I figured I'd go ahead and bring out the Swordsmen while I was at it since they hadn't seen any table time either, and ended up with the following list:

The Littlest Battle Report: pLylyth vs eGaspy

Makes sense when you break it down.

As a way of easing back into doing battle reports before tackling the pile that's waiting for some love, today (or whenever this gets posted) I'm doing a bite-sized report.  The reasons for the length will soon be apparent, so let's start at the beginning.  Tuesday is now the day of gaming with EV, so I packed my stuff and made the short trip to his place.  Which faction I'd be playing was never really a question (want more Legion goodness), but I did debate for a bit about whether to bring pLylyth or pThagrosh.  In my first game with Legion and pLylyth (to be reported on in the future) things worked more or less exactly like I wanted them to, so I decided not to fix what wasn't broken.  While not 100% what I would ultimately like to run with her, I didn't have to do a whole lot of compromising to make a list out of the pieces I have.  What I fielded was thus:

Blue period and a shot across the bow

Nobby nobby nob nob.

Painting occurred this morning as I finished off the blue Nob I started last week.  Nothing extra special here, no new techniques or anything, just old fashioned painting.  On reflection that's not entirely accurate.  I picked up a pot of Gryphonne Sepia at the FLGS last night (along with a box of Demo Corps, but that's for another day) and put it to use on the skulls and wrist wrapping.  It strikes me as a lighter, browner Devlan Mud.  A while back there was a post on Lost Hemisphere, I think a Free Time Black Hole, with a throwaway comment about a trend at their FLGS of washing Gryphonne Sepia over a white base.  The result was a sort of bone look that I found quite nice, resolved to try out, and promptly forgot about.  Fast forward to my recent change of plans to make Menoth my "halo" painted faction, plus a need to use up all of a gift card, and I figured it was time to expand the wash collection.  In this limited application I think things will work out like I want them to, but it'll take an actual, full-scale application to be certain.  Perhaps the poor neglected Sir Ekkrion will get the cobwebs dusted off so I can try it out.  To continue with the new approaches on this model, I did a healthy application of Devlan Mud at the end, but left a couple of the blue areas (left shoulder, top of the klaw) untouched to create some contrast in what was otherwise a large expanse of blue.  I also painted up the base instead of leaving it alone like the rest of the Orks.  One of these days I'll ballast up the others, put some grass on this one, and get a coat of varnish on the newest additions.  Then I'll have an honest-to-Gork completely finished Ork.  Once I've put the Dullcote on of course.