On the table now - Daemonettes

6 finished, 2 in progress. That leaves the champion and the Herald left to finish. So close I can taste it!

Finished - Squig

I have had this mini chilling in my bits box for longer than I can remember. I don't even remember where it came from. It does not look like a current or recent 40k model. I decided to paint it up as a Squig and maybe use it as a counter for an Attack Squig or, if I wanted to be really beardy, a Bomb Squig. 

He was fun to paint up. I tried to use a modified version of my Daemonflesh. I started with a purple basecoat followed by Mechrite Red first pass. I then hand highlighted the flesh with Evilsuns Scarlet. I have all the skin a wash that is a 1:2 mix of orange and red washes. The current red wash is entirely too dark to be suseful to shade red. After the wash was dry, I touched up the red.

I left the gums purple to act as some contrast and to make the mini look more alien.

The hair was based with a 1:1 mix of black and grey, highlighted with a grey dry brush and washed black. I did a final dry brush of grey to finish. 

The teeth are bleached bone washed Sepia and touched up with bleached bone again. 

I don't know what it would take to replace this mini. Current similar models go for between $2 and $10 on eBay so $5 is about right to replace Paint job is solid for me at a 6/10. Value of the pant is about $10 (below my bench fee because of how easy and fast it was). I would estimate the total replacement value at $ 15 and the same for the trade value.

On the table now - Daemonettes, Savage Shoota Orks and Necron flyer

I and grinding my way through the Daemonettes and wanted to outline my next two projects. I find that if I set specific goals in my painting it keeps me from bouncing from project to project and leaving my table strewn with half-finished minis. 

That does not mean that I will not indulge small side projects like the Squig or Preacher of Nurgle, but I should finish one large project before moving on to another one. 

Up next after the Daemonettes, I have my Feral Ork Shootaboys. I like pairing the Clans and paintjobs ironically with the minis.  I can think of no type of Ork less suited to be a Shootaboy than a wild Feral Ork. For a little further irony, I am going to paint them as Bad Moons, typically the most rich of the Ork clans. My Sluggaboys are also Bad Moons so they can share use of the Trukk that I have already painted. 

I am very excited to start work on these Orks and am trying to use that excitement to propel me through the Daemonettes (which are still not going well). Really, what I want to do is to set the Daemonettes aside and work on these bad boys. To tell a secret, I have been. when I am waiting for Daemonettes to dry, I will try to get some paint on either the next set of Daemonettes or on the Orks but always returning to the Daemonettes. 

On the table now - Daemonettes

This 10 man squad of Daemonettes will finish the basic Troops for Daemons. I have finished but not yet taken pictures of my Plaguebearers and with the Bloodletters and the "Pink" Horrors finished, these little pink ladies will complete the set. 

The painting is not going well. 

I decided to go with a pink, black and silver color scheme to match my Emperor's Children. With the EC, I randomized (to a point) the colors and where they were placed. With the Daemonettes, I decided early on that I would paint all the skin pink and use silver and black as accents. Painting black and silver are two things that I can do well. I thought that I could do pink as well because I remember it being shockingly easy on the EC models.

Finished - 'ard Boyz

I finished these Orks summer 2014 and never posted about them. Recently, I took out the old photo studio and tried to document them. I had some lighting issues in that I did it at night, in a poorly lit area wiht only two halogen lamps for lighting. I am still trying to get my photography skills to the point with it displays my painting skills. I have some programs that will allow me to edit photos (Apple has updated their camera software to include this recently too). Even though I can edit the photos, they still never turn out perfect. Seems that I am no better at editing photos than I am at taking them.

I knew that I was going to do a unit of 'ard Boyz (now called Boyz with 'eavy Armor) from the start and also knew that I was going to use WBF Black Orcs as proxies for them as soon as I saw a unit of the plastic minis. I fell in love with these models. What is more terrifying than a giant unstoppable green killing machine than a giant green killing machine wearing 100 pounds of armor. The kits also had very little Fantasy feel to them. Aside from little chainmail hanging out the cracks, they could easily be 40k Orks. 

Finished - Lootas and Meks

To go with my Ork Wrecker Trukk, I painted up a minimum squad of Lootas and true to my word, I used Speed Freak colors. Lootas are supposed to be the greedy thieves of the Ork warband. They think that "sharing" is an integral concept to Ork Kultur. My vision for them is that they stay in the Trukk and shoot wildly ant anything that comes near. then they zoom up, unload and haul away their kill. 

I painted them just like the Trukk primarily red with lots of silver and yellow and gold accents. I am really liking the two color scheme for my Clans. I have finished but not posted pictures of my 'ard Boyz. They were blue with some dark red rust. There was silver and gold in there too but with only one bright color (blue), they look kind of monotone. I should have added in some red accents, but you live and learn. 

Finished - Ork Wrecker Epic Post

I started this project almost a year ago. After a flurry of initial activity, I encountered difficulty in converting this 1:32 scale Army truck into a sufficiently Orky Speed Freak Wrecker. I started cutting up bits of plasticard into interesting shapes and gluing them on. I quickly found that this did not really make things look Orks and rather just kinda made it look like I had glued a bunch of crap onto the model. It was a mess. It like the more I did, the worse it looked. I initially tried to fix it by adding more armor plates, bits and gubbins but that really made it worse. Getting frustrated by converting it to an Orky Trukk, I set that project aside and tried to focus on other aspects of the conversion.

I wanted to magnetize the crap out of this vehicle to the point that as it became damaged, parts would come off of it. I wanted all the doors to work and the top of the cab to come off. I wanted the windshield to fold up and down. As the assembly went forward, I had to stop assembling the cab and paint the interior. The doors were held in by the top of the dashboard. To assemble it further, I would need to have the inside painted. Before I could finish painting the interior, I needed to get the driver and gunner assembled.

Finished - Gretchens

I also finished these in the Summer of 2014 and am just now getting to post about them. there was a lot of painting in that time period that never got documented. Recently, I took out the photo studio and tried to take some good pictures. 

I think I took some adequate pictures. I am still getting the hang of taking picks of colorful and detailed minis and making them look as good in pictures as I think they look in front of me. Part of the is getting my light right. 

My painting studio has two halogen lights and three natural lights. My photo studio has just two halogen lights and whatever else I can grab. I end up with kinda washed out and orange photos if I am not paying attention. I've gotten some photo editing software to try to fix this.

Finished Shokk Attack Gun

I finished this guy a while ago (2014 in fact) and his pictures have just been sitting on my desktop waiting for me to write a post about him. Since then, a new Ork Codex has come out so maybe it was a good kind of procrastination.

When I got this mini, there were cheaper plastic Shokk Attack Guns available, But I was used to the metal mini and initially liked it better. I got a great deal on Bartertown for this mini because it was missing the left arm, the chains and the pole. None of that really mattered to me so I was down. I started by stripping the awful paint job (wish I had taken pictures of this train wreck) and re-priming. I must have not washed the brake fluid off because the primer did not want to stay on the mini. I had to re-strip the primer off because it was rubbing off. The second try was much better.

Painting went ok. I decided that he would not belong to any particular Ork Clan so there is red, green, blue and even some purple mixed in there. I was still hammering out how I was going to paint my Orks at this point but stumbled across a technique that helped me out in the future.

Finished (again) - Big Mek

I had finished my Big Mek with 'eavy Armor and Burna a while ago on a lark. New Ork codex comes out and the rules have made this an illegal wargear combination. Meks of any type can no longer take Burnas at all. The only units that can have them in any way or Burna Boys. I talked about strategy and tactics in an article about this mini and I didn't see any potential for abuse so why this bit of wargear disappeared is a bit of a mystery. 

Meks are now restricted to Kombi-rokkit, Kustom Mega-blasta, Rokkit Launcha, Kombi-scorcha, and Kustom Mega-slugga (a pistol version of the KMB). This list makes little sense to me. The Kombi-rokkit and Rokkit Launcha are the same cost. One is a one shot with a Shoota and the other is a Rokkit shot every turn. WTH? It was not until after I had finished my Kimbi-rokkit bit that I noticed this. 

I am getting ahead of myself. 

What I did was trim the offending Burna bit off the front of the weapon and added in a Shoota bit to make the Kombi-scorcha in the top picture. It took me about 10 min to fix it. 

Then I thought, why stop there? I made another Kombi-weapon. Like I already said, I had finished the Kombi-rokkit before realizing that this piece of wargear is dumb and I would probably never take it. I contemplated breaking it apart the Kombi bit but since I had plenty of Rokkit Launchas, I didn't mind ruining another one. 

Lastly, I banged out a KMB bit as this is the sexiest piece of 5 point wargear in the Ork Codex. 24" S 8 AP 2 is to be drooled over by any army. The only thing holding it back in the Orky BS 2. This means that if you have three of them in a unit, you can reliably expect 1 to connect each time you shoot. They also get hot so for those same three shots, you can expect that you are going to lose one of those guys. Rough

The good news is that now i have a Mek or Big Mek that can take almost any of his Mek weaponry. The downside is that now I have to keep track of all these dinky little bits. 

Finished - Three Psykers

This post represents the last post I need to finish before being completely caught up. I've gotten into a habit over the last year of not posting pictures of things when I'm done and that makes it difficult to keep track of when I finished over the course of the year. Since realizing this, I have tried to at least post a picture if not write a post when I'm done with a project. Later I can come back and write about it. Downside is I let myself accrue a big backlog of posts and had to spend 2 or 3 days fleshing them out. 

FWP.

I got these guys in a trade on Bartertown. I've wanted them for a long time but did not want them in resin. I found them on eBay and bid $25 on them before realizing that new they cost $15. Luckily I was outbid by an insane person. 

When I did my On The Table post, I talked about the rules. I thought they had changed since the Psykers were removed from the Grey Knight Codex. While they are different in the Imperial Guard/Astra Militarum codex, in the Inquisition Codex they are similar the the past editions of Grey Knights.The Psykers lay down a S3 AP 6 large blast template but for each additional Psyker the S increases by one and the AP decreases by one meaning that for 6 Psykers that is a S 8 AP 1 large blast. My plan is to trade for a Chimera on Bartertown and stick these guys in it. Since 5 people can shoot out of the top hatch that leaves room for the Inquisitor (either with a shooting weapon or a witchfire psychic power), the 6 Psykers (counting as one shooter), and 3 more Servators, Priests or other member of the Inquisitorial Warband to fire our while being protected by the Chimera's AV 12 front armor and supported by its Heavy Bolter, Multi-laser and Lasgun Array (the Inquisition Codex omits Lasgun Array from the Chimera's description but I am sure it is a typo). 

Hobby - Electric Paint Pot Shaker

I have wanted an automatic paint shaker for a while now but they had bad reviews and were expensive. I found this post on CMON that led me to this video (embedded below).

I realized that I had a sander much like the one he was using that I had paid $20 for. I gave it a try and it works great. Mixes paints even better than shaking.

1. Get a handheld sander.

2. Apply a Crown Royal bag or piece of felt to the sanding end.

3. Place paint pot against the sanding end.

4. Run sander.

I love this method and this paint mixer/sander is going to be a staple of my hobby forever. My only regret is that I did not discover this sooner.

Finished - Proxy Beasts of Nurgle

I started these guys what feels like a few days ago and they are done. Granted, I did not really paint them with any sense to detail that I could have. I put about $4 worth of paint on them which is what they are worth. I have already talked about how I painted these minis in some other posts. They finished up nicely then I gooped Nurgle's Rot into their worm-mouths. They required very little detail painting and turned out really well. I don't know if they will ever see table time as Beasts of Nurgle are kinda weak and can't be summoned. I could proxy them as Plague Drones but that is a little douchy for me. 

Overall I am pleased with how they turned out. I liked how easy they were to paint and how inexpensive they are.

On the other hand, they were kinda chincy. The white plastic was kinda hard to clean the mold lines. I had to really dig at them with a hobby knife and still missed some. I still had to find a base for them too. I was going to reuse a Dreadnought base but instead decided to use a large flying base. They are about the same size and that way I am not out some nice bases for cheep models. 

In terms of value for these minis it would only take about $8 to replace them if I can find them. The paint job is about a 5/10 for me and is worth about $10 each. Total replacement value is about $30. Trade value is about the same assuming someone would want them.


1-24-17 Update: Recently I traded these two worms and this green cow of Nurgle for a current edition of the Dark Angles Codex. That is $70 retail. I call that a pretty good trade for two $4 minis, a serendipitous find in the bits box ad a few days of work. This is the ideal for me. I would love to buy cheep minis, paint them the flip them for expensive books or more minis to paint.