Recent adventures in hobbying

Small bases in action.

We'll start today with the visually interesting.  Legion infantry hit the painting table this week in the form of two Shepherds and two Swordsmen.  One of those Swordsmen has been kicking around on the table for a while, waiting for me to start figuring out a scheme for the infantry.  That never happened, so instead of testing out on a model I decided to just jump straight in and figure it out as I went.  Not the wisest choice I've ever made, but sometimes you just want to slap some paint around.  With the league over I don't have any concerns about taking models that will feature in any given list, like the Shepherds, and sequestering them on the painting table for days or weeks at a time where they will be unavailable for use.  That was the logic behind using a Swordsmen as a test model in the first place as there was little chance I'd field Swordsmen, plus I had 8 of them which is is too many for the min unit and too few for the max.  They've recently been beefed up to the full unit (with UA no less), but that has little bearing here.

Shepherd WIP #1

I'm trying to apply the same logic behind the beast scheme to the infantry, namely blue/white skin, soft parts in white, hard parts in brown/orange, purple as a spot color.  This scheme is easy enough to apply to the Swordsmen, but the Shepherds are taking a bit more thought.  The problem is the legs and all the straps.  I don't know that I want to do all the straps in orange, but I also don't want to do them in brown, and certainly not all in purple.  While I try to noodle through what color to put where, I went to work on the areas I was already settled on: skin and cloth.  The skin went well, though I'm also now wondering what to do about hair.  The cloth...not so much.  I went through the same progression as the beasts underplates, but I skipped the wash, and I think that was where the trouble began.  When I got done with the final highlights, there wasn't as much definition as I thought there would be.  The answer?  Gryphonne Sepia applied liberally.  While the resulting tone was nice, the definition still isn't there.  I'm going to go back with the white again and reapply the final highlights and hope that it works out.  If not, maybe some Devlan Mud?

The solution.

On the other end of the visual scale, on Friday night I went through a frenzy of construction so I could get a Legion heavy plastic kit assembled, and more importantly magnetized, so I could field a Scythean on Saturday for the Gnarls tournament.  This was my first foray into magnetizing and it was easier than I thought.  At least until the morning.  After a brief test fitting to make sure the magnets would line up, I left the pieces apart to dry overnight.  When I went back to them in the morning, perhaps an hour before the tournament, I found that the head worked as intended but the magnets I used in the arms (the same as the head magnets) were too small.  They would keep the arms attached but the smallest provocation would cause the arms to fall right off.  I figured I was screwed and would never get the magnets back out.  While bemoaning my fate with Plarzoid, he suggested I drill some holes around the magnet, then lever it out.  The plastic is malleable and will flex he said, which made sense.  Later that night I sat down with the offending pieces and some drill bits.  After an hour or so of work I had managed to replace the magnets, swapping out 1mm for 2mm, and now the arms stick as solidly as I had hoped they would from the beginning.  Disaster averted.  Construction has started on the Ravagore bits, but I'll wait for a while on the Carnivean pieces since I already have two of them (one is even painted in my scheme).  I'm not sure how I'll paint the arms and heads just yet since I don't think they'd stick to the body enough to withstand painting.  The obvious solution is to just hold the pieces while painting them, but that can easily lead to paint rubbing off.  Perhaps I'll try painting half, varnishing, then painting the other half.  This approach lead to disaster the last time I tried it, but having learned some good lessons since then I'm confident I could make it work on the arms, though the heads remain a problem.