On the table now - Daemon Prince of Nurgle

 I decided to start a new project. My plan is to paint a Daemon Prince for each of the 4 major Chaos Gods (plus a few Undivided) but I want to use alternative models from the currently available plastic kit. I used this page as an inspiration. I am going to tag it under "Cult Troops" for the purposes of this blog. 

I have my eye on a few already. For the Khorne Daemon Prince, I want an Ultraforge Wardaemon. I will get a Greater Wardaemon at some point too, but I feel that that particular model is too big for a Daemon Prince. I would really want one of these Molocks from Confrontation but not at $90. I want a Nekima from the Neverborn line from Malifaux but she appears to be out of print. Instead for a Daemon Prince of Slaanesh, I think I am going to go to Europe and get a Nalach, the dark shadow. I have no idea what I am going to do for a Daemon Prince of Tzeentch as of yet. 

To kick things Off I have a metal GW Daemon Prince of Nurgle on the table. I am using a lot of the same techniques that I used on my Plague Marines but at the same time am trying to up my game. 

Finished - Skulltaker

I can't believe it only took my a week to paint this guy. I think the only things I needed to do on this mini since I posted about him last was to paint some black on the flames. I have been in a kick lately of painting single models from start to finish rather than batch painting. I find it much more rewarding, gratifying and faster. 

I am going to try some new things on my Finished articles by talking about 2-3 thing I liked about how the mini turned out and 2-3 things that disappointed me. 

I like how the base turned out. I was worried about adding so many skulls and that it would be overkill. I think that the attention with painting and the extra sand between skulls diffused that. I also like how it gives the model a lot of height. He is head and shoulder above Terminators. I like the cape from start to finish. I like the black on the inside and how it frames the red skin well. I like the skulls on the back and the hooks. In some other images of the Skulltaker, people paint the skulls too white and the hooks too bronze and it looks weird. I think that the sepia and mud washes homogenized the colors so that nothing stands out. 

On the table now - Skulltaker taker of skulls

  I got this bad boy in a trade on Barter Town. He was painted okay but with a little touch up I think I can get him looking stellar. He is going to be painted in the same scheme as my Bloodletters with two exceptions. His nails, fore and aft, are painted as metal. I should have done his teeth that way too but I did not think it would look good on his face. Also different are the spines on his back. On the Bloodletters, they are painted black. On the Skulltaker, they are red. The reason for this is the skull cape. The black spines would need to be washed black and I worried that I could risk darkening the white skulls too much. The red only needed to be washed red and sepia. 

I also did not think that there was enough skulls on this mini for someone called "Skulltaker." I used two piles of them for him to stand on and tried to incorporate the skulls under his right foot into the mix. It worked mostly but I broke three drill bits trying to drill through it all. In the end I just glued him to the skulls and then drilled through the base and into his foot to pin it. 

Finished - librarian, Cassius and Inquisitor

 

We All Get a Little Bored Sometimes

It all started off with biting off more than I could chew with that damned Ork Wrecker. It is a
massive undertaking to convert an non 40k model to be usable in 40k. Perhaps I bit off more than I could chew and that is what lead to me stalling out. At first, work went swimmingly. The frame and cab assembled and converted nicely. When it came to converting a driver and gunner for the cab, things kinda stalled out. I did not and still have not found a way to insert a couple of Orks into the vehicle in a way that pleases me. So I would push off working on the Wrecker and work on other projects. Since I started the Wrecker, I have finished 25.5 minis. That's a lot of productive procrastination.

Now, I am out of side projects or small projects to paint and I do not want to go back to Wrecker. I am bored with painting. I sit at my desk for hours just looking at my minis an bits and thinking but brushes never touch anything. I have things I could paint. I have things that I should be painting but I do not have the drive. I have the mini painter's version of writer's block.

What follows is an article on some of the things that I do to break myself out of this sort of funk when it settles over me.

Warhammer 40k 7th Edition - Something Has Changed

Only two years have passed since GW rolled out 6th Edition. Why would they release a new main rule book? The cynical will say that it is just to make money and, while that has to be a component of it, I (in this instance at least) will give GW a little more credit than that. While it may be a good idea in the short term to release a new book to drum up some sales, that plan comes with more than just a few downsides and the cynics are breezing by.

The main drawback to releasing a new main rule book is that producing such a tome takes money. A lot of money. You have to pay writers, proofers, artists, binders and distributors. It takes a lot of money to get a book from the brain to the page to the printer to your hands. That is a considerable investment that is not easily thrown away. It is that investment that dictates the schedule of releases for the rule books. Have they made enough money from the last edition to recoup their investment.