More Prime Puns

Old shot, now they're primed.  

Now I'm going meta with titles.  Look upon my works and despair.

That whole tournament thing I was going on about?  Didn't happen for me.  Illness stepped in and said "No, you will not be playing games this weekend."  Fortunately I was still able to make good use of my time by assembling a unit of Errants and a Vigilant.  The Vigiliant went together quick and easy.  The Errants, not so much.  Each model was at least 8 pieces, not counting the base, which takes some time even in plastic.  The metal models must have been a nightmare, one I'll get a taste of when I do the UA and solo.  Now I have a reasonable collection assembled and the biggest remaining hurdles from my initial batch are the TFG and Cinerators.  Everything else is single models or small groups.  Granted some of those are Wracks, which look frustrating, and most are metal, but it's easier to get an Errant solo and UA together than those plus the unit.

All this force congealing is coming at a good time, more or less as planned, because there's now a lot of Journeyman chatter going on the local email group.  The plan all along has been to gather Menites, assemble and prime them, then initiate a painting orgy when the league starts.  While I'm on the hook to paint a couple before the league starts (thanks in large part to local Ron's attempt to reboot Paint the Target) I'll still be in a good place.

Ready For Prime Time

The fruits of my labors.  

The title of this post is a little misleading, which I'll cover in a minute, but it was too good to not use.  With the "polar vortex" poised to freeze all of reality solid sometime today (Monday) I took a look at forecasts for today while watching the foosball yesterday to see if I'd be able to squeeze in some priming before the 9th circle of hell (which your classical education taught you was frozen) descends upon us all.  Turned out there was a window this afternoon, so last night I got to work building a Reckoner and pinning two heavies to bases, the final items on my pre-priming list.  As the picture above shows the work went well, and now I have a fully assembled and primed 35 point pKreoss army ready for a test run on Wednesday before their maiden competitive voyage this weekend.

Crusade Gains Ground

From last night.  Not exactly frightful, but nice anyway.  

Amidst a flurry of snow there's also been a flurry of hobby progress.  I got a bit handsy with the bases last night and gave them a good ballasting ahead of schedule, which paved the way to get the Zealots assembled today.  I stuck with the smaller pinning option, piano wire, and things went much easier.  I learned some good lessons while doing the unit, to the point that I'm a little concerned about the first couple.  Not that I expect them to come flying off their bases, but they're not as solid as the later ones.  High on the fumes of victory, I plunged ahead by greenstuffing three large bases and (finally, years later) putting together a Vanquisher (full glue, I skipped the magnets this time).  I'll ballast the bases either later tonight or sometime over the weekend.  Pinning the Vanquisher should be far easier than the Zealots because plastic/resin is a thing that's great.

The Crusade Takes Shape

Still working on that whole "regular update" thing.  The silver lining is that when I get around to posting I have a decent bit of progress to report.  I've made a reasonable dent in the pile, as you can see on the right, and there's even a bit more unshown progress in the form of a cleaned, ready for bases unit of Zealots.  The bases for the Zealots are in progress with the largest hurdle (greenstuff) done and curing at this moment.  I'll do ballast tomorrow and hopefully get the models on the (dry and finished) bases over the weekend.
Turning to the completed construction, the jack support is ready to go with the Choir and a pair of Vassals waiting for primer.  The Choir was more of a pain than anticipated.  The tabs and robes were all one big piece, so clipping and filing took a while.  Pinning was a pain as well, but for the Vassals I tried swapping my standard paper clips for the (relatively) new piano wire with pleasant results.  The drilling went much faster, with less worries about potentially drilling through a leg or ankle.  I didn't try bending the piano wire and greenstuffing it to the base like I do with the paper clips.  We'll see if this causes problems down the road, but the Vassals felt plenty secure even without dry glue.  As a bonus I did a bit of greenstuff on Kreoss' base to blend him in with the rest.

The First Step

Now in a darker grey.  

The pile of boxes lost a member a few days ago when a Redeemer took form.  Building a whole mini without a base was as odd as expected and pinning the model to the base caused some collateral damage (the gun popped off), but aside from seeming to take longer the process went off without a hitch.  The weather broke after everything was glued together and dry, a clear sign that I'm on the right path, so I even got to prime the little bugger.  It's incredibly top heavy even discarding the Vlad-esque shoulders, so I have a few concerns about the load-bearing chicken legs, but it's a finished model which is what counts at this point.  I've been planning to do TFG or Errants next, but now I'm thinking about doing the Choir.  They're single part sculpts for the most part, will feature in every list I'm likely to field, there's only six of them, and it'd scratch one of the metal units off the list.  We'll see how it turns out.

In keeping with tradition, I added another model as soon as I finished the Redeemer.  In my defense I didn't exactly go and get it for myself.  We had a white elephant/yankee swap/whatever holiday free play event on Wednesday, so I had to walk away with something.  I've never done one of these events before, but my initial impression was a good one.  Everyone seemed to have a good time and the amount of Menoth in the swap was nice as I had plenty of options but also a bit daunting as I'm now wary of faction overload.  I finished towards the sharp end, which meant I could almost take my pick of the litter.  There was a Devout floating around that tempted me greatly, but ultimately I went with a Vigilant because it's plastic.  I brought a Nephilim Soldier (it seemed prudent to bring something I'd like), so I think I made out fine.

Now With Title!

My latest endeavor.  

Fun fact: this is version three of this post.  The previous two were lost while trying to get the phone and tablet, and multiple apps on both, to play nice.  The future, it is not yet here.  This third iteration brought to you the old fashioned way, with a keyboard and mouse.  I had missed natural, effortless typing.  But I digress...

My lack of hobby progress over the past month or two has been unsettling.  Things are fine on the gaming side, but modelling and painting has slowed as much as possible without hitting a full stop.  The only sensible thing to do in this sort of situation is to add more models to the queue, which is exactly what I did thanks to Black Friday sales.  It took a while, but I finally pulled the trigger on Menoth.  I settled on a list of (what I consider) core choices, ran it past my locals, and finally gave Spikey Bits a shot.  Now I have many more mans waiting (and waiting) for some TLC.

Insert Knight Pun Here

Nearly there.  

My slowly growing Empire army is now on the cusp of having two units ready for action, the cannon from a while back and now a modest group of knights.  Both still require some final gluing and varnish, but all the painting is done.  The drive to look back at my work to find problems is irresistible, so it's no surprise that even as I was putting the finishing touches on I was regretting decisions I had made.  I tried to stick to the studio Reiksguard scheme, which meant red and/or white feathers.  I blocked these in with little forethought, and as things turned out every helm with a ribbon had a red feather on top of said ribbon, which meant those ribbons had to be white.  Since there's a ribbon on the banner pole, the banner had to be red.   In vacuum this wouldn't be a problem, but when the color of the lances (red) are factored in then you can see the issue.  A red banner precludes a red banner pole (it ended up black), which is a very small inconsistency that is unlikely to ever be noticed, but it'll rub a me for as long as I field the model.  There's also more red than white in the unit, but that will be addressed when the ranks swell.  Those small grumbles aside, I'm pleased with how the unit turned out.  Despite doing horse and rider armor in different ways, the results match up just fine.  I tried out using a wash to do some black lining between the helmet plumes with good results.  The champion's face came out particularly well, and the unit didn't spend an excessive amount of (work) time on the table despite being ~2.5 times larger than a standard halberdier.

Now I have a final hurdle to clear, and it's one I have no experience with.  The picture in this post makes the unit look basically finished, but it's still a collection of mounts, riders, and shields (where appropriate).  It's been so long since I've painted something before it was fully assembled that I might as well be doing it for the first time.  Ideally I'd like to put a coat of varnish on the riders and shields before assembling the whole model and applying the rest if the varnish.  I don't have a good idea for how to let the pieces dry without sticking it whatever they dry on and potentially leaving paint behind when I peel them off that surface.  I'll probably end up assembling the models before varnishing as it's the easiest way.  I'm also considering magnetizing horse and rider for potentially easier transport.  That may not be an issue though, and I'd very much like to have a unit well and truly finished.

More Randomness

A whole posse of gatormans.  

If I've learned just one thing about creating things it's to go with what feels right.  While I should be working on Empire or Infinity I felt like putting together gators today.  By going with what felt right I got a unit (plus a solo) assembled that had been sitting in a box for far too long.  The alternative was to tell myself I should be doing something else, dicker around with the phone/tv/whatever, and make little to no hobby progress on anything.  I think I made the right call.  Now if I can roll into assembling the lingering Hex Hunters I can try out the Bethayne ideas that made me order these things in the first place.

Magnets Are Tough

Witness my amazing conversion skills.  

Continuing my recent trend of thrashing around between projects, this morning I dug out and assembled that lingering third Legion heavy kit.  To be fair I only did the torso, but that's all that I need for the moment as I have a number of limbs and heads ready to go.  It wasn't all step by step assembly though.  I made two vital modifications to this latest chassis.

Foremost is the epic conversion work I did to make this torso stand out from the others.  The first two I've affectionately dubbed Lefty and Righty, thanks to the choice between left- or right-pointing tails that come in the box.  What to do for the third?  I'd already exhausted the tail possibilities, at least the ones that are easy to execute.  I suppose I could have made a straight tail or an upward-pointing tail, but those would have required a lot of work.  Instead I decided to mess with the only permanent (meaning non-magnetized) limb that doesn't connect to the base.  I thought this would be as easy as shaving down the peg so the arm could turn into a different position, but I soon found this was to be a more involved project.  The shaved peg had no real contact with its hole, so I pinned the arm and stuffed the hole with greenstuff to keep it from spinning.  I also had to cut down the meat on the shoulder to have the arm stick closer to the body.  PP did a nice job of making all the bits fit together well, so it shouldn't have been surprising that I'd have to fill gaps when I moved a piece around.  All my effort turned out decent even if the results came nowhere near justifying the time invested.  Worse still is that the new pose doesn't really inspire.  It's a bit limp wristed, which doesn't suit the heavy chassis at all.  It is different from the others, so I guess I'll call it mission accomplished.

The other modification isn't as obvious visually (which is saying something considering how little the limp wrist stands out) but is vital for usability.  It is, of course, magnetization.  I took my sweet time coming around on magnets, but now I'm fully on board.  With this third kit I can now field a pair of Ravagores and a Scythean, or a pair of Scytheans and a Ravagore, or (provided I put the bits together and suffer enough head trauma to make this seem appealing) five Carniveans.  My first excursion into using magnets wasn't the smoothest ever, but since then I've had a few more reps and feel confident that I can do the job right the first time.  That said, you've probably already guessed that I screwed everything up and had to take all the magnets out.  I thought that both arms had the same polarity, so I wasn't too particular about which one I used to make sure I put the magnets in the right way.  This was a large mistake as it turns out that the arms aren't the same.  I also had to swap out the magnet in the neck for a larger size thanks to putting it far enough off-center that the smaller one wouldn't hold enough to stay in place while moving the model around.  At least my prior practice digging out magnets came in handy.

Construction Ahead

Welcome to Khador.  Have a lance and shield.  

The painting mojo didn't make an appearance today.  Taking its place was the elusive building mojo.  This is a rare beast, so I like to lasso it whenever it appears and ride it for all its worth.  Today it was worth a Spriggan and, at long last, the completion of the Iron Fangs.  I've gone on about IFP previously, and Black Dragons in particular, but I'll take a bit of space here to dig into the Spriggan a bit.  Much as many proud sons and daughters of the Motherland might wish otherwise, Khador is primarily a single jack faction.  There's no real jack support beyond the Koldun Lord, which is dubious "support" when compared with the options available to the other factions, and the majority of casters don't do anything past handing out Focus (which they'd rather keep) and maybe Boundless Charge.  Khadoran jacks aren't really compelling on their own, especially when compared to Khadoran infantry and the support available for the footmans.  You're more or less locked into taking a jack (if only to use the bonus points), so it makes sense to make your one jack a good choice.  The Spriggan is that good choice.  It's the only non-character jack with Reach (not counting Conquest, which is a fine choice as the lone jack but not yet available to me), has Bulldoze, is ARM 21 (via a shield, so it could go down to 19), has Powerful Charge, sports a pair of grenade launchers, and can fire off a flare to counter Stealth.  At 10 points it's the most expensive non-character jack in the faction, and on the expensive end for non-character warnouns in Warmahordes overall, but it's has so many tools that you can get value out of it on every turn (outside the running turn) and in all situations.  Last night I encountered Satyxis Raiders with Occultation, which is a real pain to deal with.  I ended up sending Sorscha way too far forward to get in range to (try to) Freezing Grip them, which led to a messy death for her.  If I had a Spriggan I could have fired off a flare to reveal a Raider so I could have targeted them from a more reasonable range.  Plus it looks awesome and has two big open spaces (forehead and shield) that are just begging for a nice 5th Border Legion icon and something else.  There are already a ton of Khadoran anvils on the model and I don't want to double up on 5th Border Legion so I'll have to consider what to do with all that prime real estate.

Last(?) bit before the Nova Open

Shamelessly plundered from the PP forums.

Once again I slacked on going out to Huzzah.  On the one hand it's unfortunate as I haven't been there in a while and won't have a chance to hit Game Parlor on Thursday before heading to the Nova Open, so this was my last chance to test lists pre-con.  On the other hand I assembled the rest of the pieces for those lists today, so it's not like I just sat on the couch eating truffles and watching Oprah.  What did I get built?  Just this:

• Strider UA
• Totem Hunter
• Naga Nightlurker
• Nephilim Bolt Thrower
• Rhyas

Rhyas was more bonus than anything as I wanted to assemble another caster and she looked easier to deal with than eVayl and her huge, floaty cloak.  I may prime this latest batch if the opportunity presents itself tomorrow, but I'm content with my collection as it stands and don't feel compelled to do anything else to get ready for the Open.

Between now and Thursday I'll need to pack a suitcase, which is boring, and also pack the new bag that just showed up today, which is exciting.  I got some purpose made Legion and Khador foam to fit the problem pieces (warnouns and MoW) and am looking forward to splitting my collection later tonight.  The one issue I foresee is gaming accessories: dice, markers, tape measure, that sort of thing.  Perhaps I'll look into a small shaving kit sort of bag to keep all those bits in so I'm not fishing things out of one bag and plopping them in another.  Fortunately there aren't many, if any, models that work for both Khador and Legion so I won't have to worry about which bag a model is in.

This is probably the last post until I get back as I don't have anything exciting to do between now and then, but you never know.  I keep hearing about this Twitter that all the kids are going on about, and it seems the Open is using it to make announcements and the like.  It's possible, though highly unlikely, that I'll be Twittering during the Open.  If that sounds interesting my handle there is demitra_kmnb.  I have no idea how to link it, or where to link it to, or really much of anything about twits in general.  Just in case I've missed the mark, let me stress again that there will likely be nothing happening there.  With that, I'm vacating this particular part of the intertubes.  For now...

Typhon WIP #1

So much armor to paint...

Work is at last underway for this month's Paint the Target victim model, yonder Typhon, who will fulfill the "uses an aoe or spray template" requirement (as much as three times per turn).  The skin was done in one session and was as enjoyable as the Carnivean was.  For today I hope to get the mouths done, purple lining on the plates, a base coat on the upper plates, and finish things up with a wash (again on the plates).  This is very ambitious since the upper plates took approximately forever to do on the Carnivean, but it's not entirely crazy.  At the very least I want to get the mouths and purples done, which is well within my grasp.

In non-painting news, I accomplished much yesterday.  The morning saw a less-than-triumphant return to 40k.  I didn't bring my usual camera but did get a couple shots with the phone that I may take a new approach with, but there wasn't a whole lot going on in the game (plus I got my butt kicked all the way back to Baal) so that may or may not happen.  In happier news I finally based pVlad and the magnetized Marauder, both of which are ready for primer.  The Carnivean and test finished Shredders got snowy bases which didn't turn out as well as I'd hoped.  Just snow is a bit boring, so I'll be looking to add some rocks or something to break up all the white.  As if all that wasn't enough, I also assembled Zerkova, Saxon Orrik (who should have had his hand pinned as it's just going to fall right off but since he's firmly attached to a base it's too late to sink a pin into the wrist), and eLylyth (who did have her bow hand pinned in my finest display of pinning yet).  While the pile of unassembled (how is that not a word?) models is still vast I've been taking chunks out of it recently and, more importantly, not adding to the stack.  With any luck I'll be finished assembling some time before the world ends.

Magnets are an attractive option

Progress.  Slow, but progress.

The last week or two seem like a hobby wasteland to me, though on reflection I've actually gotten a decent amount done.  None of that work was done with a brush (well, a little was), so perhaps that's what's causing the wheel-spin impression I've had.  What all have I accomplished?  Another bullet list will illustrate.

• Demo Corps base slots filled, then covered with tiny rocks and ballast.
• Honor Guard assembled, magnetized, and based.
• Ravagore arms magnetized, still no head.
• Khador jack kit assembled, torso and Marauder arms magnetized.
• pVlad got a rock added to his base to get him ready for ballasting, which I promptly forgot once I got to that stage. 

Progress with little to show for it

No model pictures = look at the bacon.

Let's start with the obvious: I have no pictures for you.  Photography fail aside, I've been rather productive recently.  I feel like a list, bullet-point style.

• The Demo Corps are fully assembled and on their way to being based.  I worked up a big ball of greenstuff to attach the shoulders and then fill the gaps in the bases before ballasting.  Shoulders are attached, but I forgot about the bases.  Hope to get that rectified tonight, along with the unpainted pVlad that's been hanging around for far too long.
• On the ballast front, I managed to knock over my tiny container last night, so today I got a new bag.  Considering how long the tiny bit I got 2+ years ago from EV lasted, the monstrous bag I got today should be enough to last approximately twice as long as I live.
• Since I'm almost out of black primer, I got some more while I was getting ballast.  Quite the little shopping trip today.
• Back to greenstuff, I applied it to Typhon and the Raek last night to prepare them for priming.  
• Things primed this morning: Typhon, Raek, Yuri the Axe.  The first two will require another coat to get the undersides primed.  Yuri could use the same treatment, but can survive without it.
• I decided my test Shredders are probably never going to get stripped and repainted, so I painted their bases white and laid down the first coat of gloss varnish.  The recently painted Carnivean also go the white base treatment.  On the schedule for tonight: applying snow to those three models.
• The Shepherds got a little more love as well, the re-highlighting on the robes while also roughing in the purple and filling in the oranges.  I'm not sold on the scheme so I'm giving it some time for reflection.
• I'm also chipping away at an old-fashioned battle report, complete with bears and pictures and all the usual stuff.

That's what I've been doing.  In addition to the above noted items I want to finish magnetizing the first Legion kit, build up the Khador kit that's been gathering dust for months, then carry on into the second Legion kit.

Thinking of splitting time between Legion and Khador modelling projects, I find myself stuck between the two factions.  With the frenzy of the Gnarls league behind me, I now have the opportunity to paint up all those Legion pieces I wanted to paint during the league (Seraph!) but couldn't bear to take off the table.  At the same time, I'm getting into the meaty part of painting Khador stuff where I have enough done to field fully painted lists, so I can paint up a particular unit or jack to expand what I have available for a fully painted list instead of having to paint everything except a particular beast that's already done, as is the case with Legion.  The current plan is to split time between them.  How well that works out remains to be seen...

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.

A hint of things to come

Family portrait.

I've let the battle reports pile up to the point that there are no less than four waiting for some love.  Some will be shorter than others, but it's a troubling collection no matter how long they turn out to be.  I'll start chipping away at the stack and hopefully get caught up by the new year. 

In the meantime, I have a little nugget here from one of the upcoming reports.  I played against...Steve? (horrible with names) a couple weeks ago at the FLGS.  It was his first game under mk 2, and first in a couple years.  It was also my first mirror match against a fellow Khador player.  The exact goings-on will have to wait for the actual report, but one of the things that came up during the game (Steve was very nice and chatty) was a Black Ivan comparison.  He did a so-called "Full Metal Ivan" conversion, using the old metal Destroyer as the base.  I've seen a couple of these across the interwebs, but this was the first I'd seen in person.  The plastic jacks are bigger than the old metal ones in my experience, and I expected the same results in this comparison.  Imagine my surprise when the two Ivans were more or less the same size.  My plastic Ivan is wider due to how I posed him, but height-wise there isn't much difference.  Plastic Ivan is a shade taller, but you'd have to do some looking to notice the difference and I don't think you'd be able to tell if they weren't sitting right next to each other.

In other teaser notes I had my first game of Hordes today facing off against EV's Skorne.  I thought it would take some time to get used to how Fury works, but turns out it was pretty natural.  Looks like Hordes is, or at least can be, exactly what I hoped it would be: a game of beasts with some infantry support.  Looks like this week won't work for gaming at the FLGS, but next week I'll be faced with a tough decision: fight for the Motherland or spread Everblight's influence? 

The now standard hold you over while I do a battle report post

Pinning all over the place.

Not entirely standard, despite the title, as I've gotten a lot done over the past few days.  Starting with things not pictured, I did a better job of priming Black Ivan.  The high spots were fine, but the undercarriage needed some work.  Black Ivan is now significantly blacker in his hard to reach crevices.  Talking with EV today about Ivan made me think about how quick he should paint up.  He'll be mostly black (shocker) and most of the rest will be metal, with just a few bits of green and red to tie him in with the rest of the army.  I may take a run at getting him painted quickly, but quickly is a relative term around here and I have lots of ideas for this month's Paint the Target.  More on that in a bit.  I also put down a Dullcote on the WGI, Doomies, pButcher, Strakhov, and Harkevich.  This was a bit of a rushed job as I got called away to keep an eye on a sick puppy (my model for the War Dog that you've seen here and there), so there are still lots of shiny parts on the models, but it's nothing another coat won't fix.

I blame EV for this one

Cast-iron bitch to assemble.

With EV's birthday coming up in the near future, I went out to do something about it.  I had a few ideas (Wrath, Black 13th, Bane Thrall UA, Primal mk. 2) and took a tour of the game stores in the area to see what I could find.  Good news is I found stuff.  Bad news is the stuff is for me.  Good news is I have a Warstore order in to remedy this situation.  Bad news is there's more stuff for me in said order.  This flies in the face of my resolution to not add to the pile of unpainted/unassembled models until I've taken a significant chunk out of what I have on hand, but I can't very well go to a game store and leave empty handed, can I?  We all have to do our parts to support local game stores so that we can still have local game stores.  It was for America.  Yeah, that's the ticket...

Another quick one

Not as hard to pin as I expected.

After reading a recent 3++ post about Hordes, a thought got stuck in my craw.  The idea that warlocks need more beasts than warcasters need jacks made me wonder if my desire to run jack heavy might not be better suited to Hordes.  When I first started looking at Warmachine, well before I started playing, the jacks didn't do much for me.  They all looked basically the same, and while I can appreciate the subtle differences between Khadoran and Cygnaran jacks now the point still stands.  There's no way you're going to mistake a Circle beast for a Legion one though.  Looks aside, once I got into the game I wanted to run a handful of jacks, at least three, but sadly the game just doesn't support it.  Granted I could run Karchev or some crazy pButcher list with a ton of Kodiaks and Berserkers, but the system just doesn't encourage running more than two jacks per caster, and even that's pushing it for some.  So perhaps Hordes is the key, where the beasts power the locks instead of the other way around.  With all this in mind I sat down for some pinning and got pMadrak assembled.  I wanted to put a beast together, but they're going to take some real work to get together and my pinning skills, while getting better, still need lots of work.  Perhaps I'll get Madrak up there based and primed, plus splash some paint around, while I'm on a between-paint-the-target-goals hiatus.  Maybe I'll get the beasts together and start work on the battle group.  More likely Madrak will sit and wait for a while before getting any love while I continue to plug away at Khador troops.  Whatever the future holds at least I finally cracked Primal and the Trollbloods box that have been waiting for attention since they arrived at my door.

In other news, there's a battle report in the works.  It might get finished tonight or it might get done sometime over the weekend.  In the meantime, ratchet up your anticipation.

Is there such a thing as a "quick" post?

The group, it progresses.

Though my previous estimate of completing the Doomies in another two sessions is probably off, I did get in some decent work today.  As you can hopefully tell by looking at them, I got the skin done.  Less noticeable is the leather bits, which also got finished.  To round out the day I did a coat of Red Gore to firm up the red which had gotten rather dark after the wash.  While I have a firm idea of what color is going where, the firmness is most squishy when it comes to the trophy heads.  Like all good maniacs, the Doomies have taken plenty of trophies and display them on their belts, or in your face in the case of the leader.  Pending a good, close examination to see if any are Skorne heads, Ogruns, anything other than human, I'm thinking of doing some sort of wash or unusual (for me) shading on the heads to show that they're not fresh.  Having never done decaying/putrefying skin before, I'm not sure where to start.  My current inclination is a green wash, though purple seems like a good idea too. 

Individual shots show details better.

Because I need another paragraph to put in the second picture, I'll continue.  Tomorrow is D-Day for NGF.  I'll be bringing a box of Devastators and my handy modelling box, which has all my tools and materials for assembling minis, when I pay him a visit tomorrow.  My natural inclination when assembling is to save the one I'm most excited about until the end so I can get all my learning out of the way before I care about a stray cut here or there.  Since I want to set the hook firmly on the first strike with NGF, I'm considering going the opposite route.  As much as I want to give him the full treatment on cleaning, basing, posing, all the modelling goodness, I think the better tactic will be to just have him open the box and see what catches his fancy.  My big bag of marine kits may stay at home to avoid option overload, as staring at 30-40 sprues might be a bit much.  In the meantime I have to actually go get that box of marines.  And go make that money to get marines with.