Finished - Ordo Malleus Heretical Inquisitor

In my last post, I spoke about a Ordo Malleus Inquisitor in Terminator Armor and eluded to my love affair with the Inquisitor Codex. Thanks to finishing the Eisenhorn books, after finishing the golden boy of a puritanical Inquisitor, my thoughts drift to what a heretical inquisitor would look like. I have had an extra Fabius Bile body that someone had cut the head off of and I have always wanted to make either a Fallen Dark Angel or an Inquisitor. Later, while working on my Iron Warrior Bikers made from Chaos Knights, I saw this Chaos sword that screamed to me "daemon weapon."

At this point the bits I had were dictating the rules for the mini. I knew he was going to be an Inquisitor in Power Armor with a Daemon Weapon. This is far from ideal as Inquisitors are only S 3 and T 3. Give them all the armor you want, but with those stats they are going to get eaten by any other troops in close combat. The Daemon Weapon is also problematic as the particular stats of it are randomly generated. You may end up with something little better than a stick or you may end up with a S 6 AP2 weapon. It is nothing to be relied on from game to game. 

I start to realize that I am making a mini that is just for fun to paint and look at and may never see play on the table top. In some way this is freeing. Now I don't have to worry about effectiveness and posts cost and can just do whatever I want.

Editorial - Playing Your First Game against a New Person

I have my first game coming in ages coming up and it is with a new person. I was in the process of making my list and I began to stop and reflect on my choices. I thought about what this list says to my opponent about me. You only get once chance to make a first impression and that first game can be a last game if you don't start on the good foot.

I had a game last year with my friend and his buddy that I had never met before. It was the two of them against with 1000 points against me with 2000 points. Normally with 2v1 and even points, I would stipulate that both sides use only one Force Org chart to keep things even. Not doing that opens up the game for abuse (this was back in 6th before the Unbound nonsense), but my friend was a classy guy and I assumed that his friend would be classy.

I was wrong.

Ghost Ark "Epic" Post

This post has been sitting in my draft like for a year. It roughly details how I painted the Necron Ghost Ark. I am just going to throw the pick out because this post is never going to get written. If the formatting is a little strange it is because I am doing this on my phone on vacation. 

The basics are I wanted a Necron scheme that was not the dry rushed metal that the codex has. I thought about doing them in a bone scheme but was not good enough at bone to pull that ows at the time I started. I ended up settling for a concept that is a rusty robot that is in the process of repairing itself. Someone commented that it looks like what a robot might think that camo looks like. 

It starts with a brown base thay is stipples red then orange. The metal areas are carcharodon Granite then chain mail. The whole model is washed agrax Earthshade then touched up. 

Finished - Bloodslaughterer

I got this mini, like so many others, in a trade. I was excited to get him and got a great deal. I am glad the deal was good because he was assembled so poorly that I considered scrapping it. Glue was gooped everywhere and the legs were a jumbled mess. It was also missing a few bits for the legs.

I started painting this mini back in June 2014 before I got married and moved across the country. He had to be packed carefully because he was not clear coated and shipped almost 3,000 miles in a moving container. On the other end, he was unpacked, finished painted and assembled.

I don't know that I did anything really special here but it does get quite a few comments whenever I bring it out. I think I made a good approximation of the way the Blood Slaughterer on the Forge World site. I think there is a little more orange in their red and my shadows are a bit darker.

I like the final product and it is a good clean paint job for me and at about 8.5/10 for me. I could have gone for a little more detail but the kit already took forever to paint. I like the little extra details on the base (Chaos symbol, skeleton and SM helmet).

Finished - Belakor

I am pretty impressed with how this guy turned out. I used some pretty simple techniques to achieve some pretty complex results.

I got Be'lakor in a trade on Bartertown. He was resin and incomplete, neither of which is optimal. I got a screaming deal on him. He is a difficult mini to find as anyone that has him only has one and they want to keep it. You do not see him up for trade often and in metal he is very rare.

I started by looking at pictures of Be'lakor painted on CoolMiniorNot and in his Codex. (I also found an Australian Death Metal band based on this mini while searching.) I disliked the grey color scheme that was in the Codex and wanted something a little more colorful but still muted. I have been wanting to learn to paint purple better and thought this was as good of a chance as any. I also liked the light below/dark above pattern. Sharks and older planes have similar colors.

With the color scheme chosen, I had a little conversion work to do.

Agrellan Earth and Crickle Paint revisited.

After the failure of trying to use Agrellian Earth to paint veins, I decided to give the technique a fair shake by getting some crinkle paint and trying the process they way they described it. 

Normally this would have started with me buying some purpose-made crackle stuff for minis but I didn't want to wait for shipping.  I started my process by trying to get some Weathered Crackle Glaze at Lowe's but sales person said they do not carry that. Now, I have had some experiences with Lowe's where their reps on the floor know nothing about hardware or products so even though I could not find it and the sales person could not find it, I don't know for sure that it is not sold there.

Next, I went to Hobby Lobby. I've never had an opportunity to go to one because there where not where I lived before. Since I moved, there are two very close to me. They don't really have anything a Michael's would not have which is good because they are run by awful awful people.

Finished - Black Knights

Done at last. Done at last. Sweet Emperor, I am done at last. 

I've written about my experiences with painting "more faster" with these Black Knights before. The basics are the client asked me to paint a lot of minis fast for the same fee that I would have accepted for painting a few minis very well. I typically paint every mini as well as I can regardless of if it is a Tactical Marine or my HQ. I may spend a little extra time on more important minis, but for the most part they are all painted to the same standard. 

With these guys I ended up doing some things that were not specifically required to have them painted to the standard that we agreed on. For example, I probably could have gotten away with only painting the metal silver but through that might look too plane. I added in some gold areas to break up the monotony. Also, while painting these Knights, I thought they looked a little too clean and near for being resurrected, undead horrors so I added a two stage rest to certain areas to add some age to the mini. I only used red rust but was tempted to use some green patina to the gold areas.