Alladin's "Step-by-Step" #1: Grey Knight Strike Squad (pt.7)

 A bit of a delay getting this one up, but as usual I got distracted with other things and that spread out my painting time dramatically.

With this post, I have officially started on the highlighting (mid-toning, I guess, but still! Progress!). As mentioned in the previous post, I have done all my washes for shading purposes, and now I am at the point of bringing out the colours one by one. Without further ado (and because I have so many bloody formulas to copy down), here are some pics:

These two highlight the shading for the reds (mainly 1st pic), and the beige/parchment (lower pic). They will look much better with further highlighting.

With the reds in particular, I went pretty random with the way the light hits the stormbolter. When doing shading, I try to pick a "virtual light source," generally coming from above, and try to stick to it, but after about 30 seconds I just throw any principles out the window and go somewhat random. At this point in the game, my skills are simply not that good to replicate realistic light physics.

Maybe, after I paint 50 of these buggers, I will have a better grasp of light physics. For now I just tried to make it look *somewhat* plausible, and hope that I don't end up associating with superior painters down the road, so I am not secretly mocked at my impossible light sources.

More pics & everything else after the break.

Alladin's "Step-by-Step" #1: Grey Knight Strike Squad (pt.6)

While Thursday was Thankgiving for our southern neighbours, it was just another day off for me. The result? Another productive day of painting. I managed to get the blue mid-tones completed, and I feel the momentum building to finally finishing this project. I used a new paint colour - VGC Magic Blue - and while I initially thought it was still too bright, I am happy with the result. I still need to do some selective washes for shading, and then a lighter highlight for some edging. The results are shown below.

Alladin's Morning Coffee Musings #6 - Alladin's State of the Hobby Union Address, plus Random Pictures of Doors!

I haven't done one of these in a while, and though my coffee is now thoroughly stone-cold, I think it still technically qualifies.

Notice: Above-mentioned coffee looks nothing like this.

Forwarning: This may be a long one...

Alladin's "Step-by-Step" #1: Grey Knight Strike Squad (pt.5)

Well, yesterday was a productive day on the painting front!

I managed to get the base layer done for all the purity seals/books, so, aside from the NFW and other glow-y bits, my models are now fully base coated.

It's amazing what a little beige does for the look of a model, I remember getting to this point with my last batch of GKs and feeling the first real sense of accomplishment. Of course, I still have a ways to go, but hopefully now that I am done the uphill scramble it will be smooth sailing from here on in.

Here is another shoddy group shot of the WIPs:

Alladin's "Step-by-Step" #1: Grey Knight Strike Squad (pt.4)

AKA, I hate painting white.

Well, after struggling through 4 painting sessions, I finally have finished with the white layers on the Purifier helmets and shoulder pads. What a bloody pain.

I am not sure if VGC Bone White is just crap, or if my bottle specifically is crap, or if I am crap, but the amount of layers I put down to get a decent white coverage is obscene. The sad thing is, if I really wanted to, I could keep going, since there are still some imperfections. I just can't be bothered..

Check out the shoddy progress pic below:

ZoaMG!!!

Well, once again I have been delinquent in maintaining this dusty space in the corner of the attic of the internet.

I will blame the recent deluge of Tyranid releases, which had rendered me unable to speak, type or otherwise function as a normal human being. I always suspected a Zoan/Venom kit was in the works, but I didn't dare to dream that it would come out so soon after the Codex wave of new kits. Sadly, now my stand-in Zoan Warriors can be ripped off their tiny styrofoam pedestals and used as actual Warriors, otherwise known as "never."

Hello ladies, how YOU doin?

Alladin's "Step-by-Step" #1: Grey Knight Strike Squad (pt.3)

For the third part of my Step-by-Step, I am focusing on completing the basecoat colours for the remaining sections of the models. As we are getting into the finer detail on the miniatures, this starts to make sense as you want to minimize the damage done from errant brushstrokes.

The first colour to go on was VGC Heavy Red. I use this for my purity seals, as well as the main accent colour for my Strike Squad and Terminator troops. At first I was applying a 1 : 1 ratio of Heavy Red and Magic Wash. However, the Heavy Red I own is one of my least viscous paints, and diluting it further made it act more like a wash than a base paint. As such, I applied it "uncut" and it seemed to work quite well. Even so, I still needed to go over a few coats on some areas to get good coverage.

Alladin's "Step-by-Step" #1: Grey Knight Strike Squad (pt.2)

Finally!

For part 2 of the step by step, I will be focusing on the golds and main colour (in this case red for generic Strike Squad, blue for Purifiers). As I have not touched a paintbrush in almost a year, my skills need a bit of de-rusting, and my paint times will likely be much longer for each step. Hopefully this is the last time I take such a ridiculously long break from painting.

Hive Fleet Ceryx - In the dark of Space, a Shadow stirs...

The last few weeks have seen me furiously scrambling to put the final touches of my 1500pt Tyranid force together. Of course, I chose to magnetize most of the options all for my big bugs, which has significantly added to the total time required..

That said, the end is in sight, and I now have a fully field-able force at my disposal!

The last two kits on my workbench were both from the new crop of releases - Harpy/Crone and the new Warriors box. I found both kits to be nice to work with, having minimal flash to clean up, and was very surprised to see that the Crone wings sit really tight with a just 4.75mm and 3mm pair of magnets holding them up to the body sockets. Although it was a pain to drill them out, I discovered a new method that allowed a much more accurate fit, but I feel that the square "peg" design instead of the ball-and-socket also helped. I thought I would need at least one brass rod as additional support, but it turns out I do not. The Harpy/Crone weapon arm sockets, however, gave me a bit of hassle, so I did have to drill some discrete support holes into the torso and use brass rods to keep them firmly in place.

As for my Warriors, they are meant to be counts-as Zoanthropes, so you can imagine my surprise when I realized just how small they were in comparison! To compensate, I cut out some styrofoam rocks and covered them in wood filler to make up the height. I guess I could have just bought Zoans and saved some time and effort, but a stubborn part of me still hopes for a plastic kit as part of a second wave, and I want to make sure I have the newest hotness (even though I do like the current sculpt. Besides, it seems that I will likely move to Malanthropes as my go-to synapse node unit at some point, so I can eventually un-convert the Warriors back into Warriors. All I need to do is buy some more 2mm magnets, which I am inserting into the 12 "optional" spikes from the Trygon kit (as if it needs MORE spikes to rip into my fingers...) to complete the feeble Zoan-esque arms.

Of course there is still a lot left to do, namely all the basing, my remaining Ripper bases, and some finishing touches with green-stuff (bolstering magnet arm sockets for better fit, etc). However, I have been quite delinquent on my Grey Knight painting goals, so it's time to get back to that!

As the rest of this week is shot due to work and other obligations, it won't be until next week that I will be able to crack open the paint bottles again, so I will hopefully have more to contribute on that front soon!

Initial Grey Knights Impressions - Alladin's Afternoon Pilsner Musings #1

Hello All,

I finally had a chance to pick up Codex: Grey Knights and do a quick read-through (that, and some blogs and articles from gamers much wiser than me).

Ta-Da!! ... ... ... (crickets)

Mini-Tutorial: DIY Twin-Linked Brainleech Devourers (part 2)

Well that was fast!

After playing around with some Green Stuff, I have completed the first arm!

This took a lot longer as I am still very much a novice when it comes to sculpting. However, all things considered, I am happy with the result.

As for the second arm, I decided to re-pose the claw as it was drooping down quite significantly. I clipped the claw as best as I could to avoid collateral tissue/chitin damage, then after a bit of clean-up with the hobby knife I drilled and pinned the claw back on at better angle. This was followed by a fairly successful Green Stuff fill-in.

I still have a bit of cleanup (mold lines, etc.) to do on both arms, but will wait until the Green Stuff has dried.

Pictures below. Hope this tutorial was actually useful!

(As a side-note, since I had to do sculpting anyway, I managed to finish magnetizing my Tervigon arm sockets, as well as all 3 sets of Trygon/Mawloc talon sockets, as well as the Trygon/Mawloc head carapace, jaw area and pincer sockets! I still need to drill and magnetize the talons, pincers, and remaining head carapace, but all-in-all a productive day!)

Finally, a pic of the Devourer on my Carnifex... and yes, I do realize that the radical angle I decided to place the arm magnet is a bit odd. Live and learn.

Mini-Tutorial: DIY Twin-Linked Brainleech Devourers (part 1)

In a first for this blog, I attempt to post something actually useful!

This morning I decided to jump in and get started on my brainleech devourers. Previously, I had scoured the net for inspiration, and found a lot of great resources. Of course, now that Forgeworld makes their own, there is always the option to buy them. However I still find them to look a bit flimsy, and besides they are super expensive and hard to come by.

With my research complete I decided I wanted to use Crushing Claws as the base for my conversion. I first saw this idea used on a showcase that GW had featured on their online blog (now gone). However, a bit of Google Image searching paid off, and here is a link to the owner's Hive Fleet Titan flickr feed. There are a lot of great conversion ideas on there, and I don't assume to come anywhere close to his skill level.

The Great Devourer...

...of my precious time.

When facing a seemingly insurmountable horde of grey sprues, my motivation to keep up on this blog is drastically diminished. That said, I am officially done assembly with my gribblies* and can ramp up work finishing my bigger bugs.

I really want to get my force assembled, so I can actually start learning to play. If I muster up the courage I may sign up for a 40K escalation league  at my FLGS that starts this week. I don't have all of my army built-up but it may give me the motivation to power through the remainder!

Either way, completing my Tyranid assembly frees me up to go back to painting my GK's (who are now pseudo-obsolete thanks to the Codex drop next week).

Once we get the Codex in our hands I will hopefully have more to add!

It he light at the end of the tunnel is at least visible now, if not more than a speck...

____________________

*This does not include the basing, which I will worry about closer to when I am ready to paint. Unlike the big bugs, the gribblies won't have complex bases.

Well, that absence was longer than expected - Alladin's Morning Coffee Musings #5

Hello again!

I am back to this blog after a 4 month "break." To quickly bring things up to speed, hobby life was going quite well back in early February; I was making fairly quick work of my Tyranid assembly, until one day we received notice that our landlords were moving back into the house we were renting from them. Basically, we now had 2 months to find another place to live. Deciding to test home-ownership again after 2 years of renting, a torrent of house-hunting ensued and we found a nice place that fit our criteria and happened to be located right around where we wanted to live. *It doesn't hurt that I am now only a 3 minute drive from the FLGS that I mentioned in previous posts. I tell my wife this had NOTHING to do with my location criteria... ... ... ... ...*

As I was unable to continue commuting to work, a new car had to be purchased in this timeframe as well, and when you add this to all the other things one needs to do before, during, and after purchasing a house, 4 months seems like a blink of an eye. And now that the boring stuff is out of the way, lets get back to the hobby!

Today's special: Aluminum & Lead

Today I put the finishing touches on my brand new Light Box (Mk.1). I opted to go with a white background for now (for lack of a colour printer), using a pretty ghetto backdrop of 8.5"x11" pages glued together with double-sided tape.

Ta-Da!!!

Hive Fleet Ceryx mini-update

Progress on my new army is going, but as always, not going fast enough. I forgot how time-consuming it is to assemble, and with 111 miniatures to assemble and base (my Grey Knight army had 33?) it's starting to feel like an uphill battle.

Saving Money vs Supporting Local - Alladin's Morning Coffee Musings #4

Today I want to talk about a subject in our hobby which, turns out, I feel somewhat strongly about, and that's who we give our hard-earned cash to (and what we get from it).

We all know our hobby is an expensive one. When you can now easily spend $100 on a single plastic model, or $500 just to get a workable starter army (Games Workshop economics - obviously other game systems may be more or less affordable), it becomes clear that a dedicated hobbyist invests significant disposable income into his or her passion. And since we live in a capitalist society (most of us, anyway), there will always be an enterprising person or company trying to find ways of separating us from our disposable income in a more efficient and expedient fashion that benefits both us (cost savings) and them (sales volume). This, of course, is not limited to our hobby; it is simply the world we live in. 

The point is that we have choices on where we spend our money, with some choices offering significant cost savings. Depending on your end-game, however, I feel that the decision you make can have significant ramifications in the long-term enjoyment of your hobby.

Huzzah! 2014 Resolution Complete!

Well, I am now officially part of not one, but two Blog Networks/Exchanges!

Thank you Natfka at Faeit 212 and the group at Tale of Painters for adding me to your respective blog lists. I now have much more impetus to put out useful content now... and I guess this means I can now stop having conversations with myself and my loyal group of "Team Edward" referral bots!

Next step is to put together a decent light box set up for future photography taking - I am quite underwhelmed at the photo quality of the first part of my Step-by-Step tutorial, and will try to get a better solution before I do any more tutorial work.

With that, I'm out!  40k Fist Bump!

Searched for "40k Fist Bump" in Google Images. Got this pic. The Internets are so cruel.

Hive Fleet Ceryx - 1500pt list

The last few days that I've had off have been predominantly spent putting together the massive pile of sprues I now own for my new Hive Fleet.

So far I have put together 12 devilgants, and have clipped and cleaned my Tyrant & Carnifex. I will be magnetizing some of the options for my Monstrous Creatures, so progress beyond this point will be slow. In any case, I hope to have my army assembled and ready for prime spray-painting season (aka spring).

 

I thought a lot about my initial 1500pt list for Hive Fleet Ceryx, after reading the 6th Ed codex and lots of reviews and first impressions online. I came up with the list below, which should be a good starting point and hopefully a well-rounded list.

Warning: Dramatization, may not be as fearsome as depicted.

The Nature of the (Hobby) Beast - Alladin's Morning Coffee Smoothie Musings #3

Good morning to all my loyal followers referral bots!

Today I will ramble a bit about the nature of our great hobby and how it affects me. Specifically, about how our hobby elicits a surprisingly strong hoarding complex in me, whereas in most other parts of my life I act quite the opposite.

I got back into this hobby about a year and a half ago. I still had some remnants of my old stuff, but I was essentially starting from scratch. Today, I am faced with a closet almost overflowing with hobby-related product. How is this possible? Why do I keep spending? I wish I knew the answers to these questions. Don't get me wrong, I am thrilled to be back in this hobby, and I do keep to a fairly strict budget, but they don't call it "plastic crack" for nothing.

Alladin's "Step-by-Step" #1: Grey Knight Strike Squad (pt.1)

Hello again!

After completing my first 5 Knights, I am moving onto the next batch of 5. These ones will be painted a bit differently: 4 of them will be painted up as Purifiers, with the 5th painted in my general Strike Squad colours. The focus will be on the Strike Knight, but will include WIPS of the entire 5-man process for posterity's sake, as well as colour combos and tips that may be unique to the Purifiers for anyone who is interested.

Additionally, I am a notoriously slow painter so part of my process will be to time my work and keep a tally of how much time I spend painting each section. This is more for my own use than for my readers' sake; a way for me to keep track of my progress as I (hopefully) improve both my quality and painting speed.

The Tyranid Codex pt. 2 - Alladin's Morning Coffee Musings #2

Is the main issue with Codex: Tyranids that it is under-powered, or is it that too many other codexes are OVER-powered?

Hello again! Having the Friday off as well I thought I'd finish my musings on this topic today rather than wait for next week. I ended the first part with the question above, and while the first part went into some glaring (albeit fixable) errors in the codex design, I feel that the answer lies more in the latter part of the question than the former.

This is what happens when we lose Synapse... Attack!

Balancing a game as complex as Warhammer 40k is an extremely hard process, compounded by the rate of codex releases and other additions/supplements such as Escalation and Stronghold Assault. Not to say it is impossible, but I think the community as a whole can agree that, regardless of your opinion on Games Workshop, they could be doing much more to provide more balance.

It's not to say that they don't make any effort, as FAQs are released from time to time to address wording and ambiguity issues, however I think (and in light of the less-than-stellar financials, which you can read about at Faeit 212 and many other blogs) that a bit more focus in this area would be hugely beneficial to their end-game, i.e. building a healthy, growing, profitable community.

The 6th Ed. Tyranid Codex - Alladin's Morning Coffee Musings #1

Hey all,

Today I've decided to try a new, hopefully "weekly" feature on my blog: A short(ish) opinion piece on  one thing or another in the hobby world. We'll see how it goes, normally I spend way too much time editing and proofing my articles, which is why I get so little done! Not to mention that I spend way too much time over-explaining things - see previous sentence... :|  Anyway, this week I will throw my 2 cents into the ring on the 6th Ed Codex: Tyranids debate that seems to be taking the internet blogosphere by storm.

<old Simpsons quote>"Shake harder, boy!"</old Simpsons quote>

As usual I will preface my comments with the fact that I am new to the hobby and have no gaming experience. I am mainly a fluff enjoyer/collector at this point, although I do eventually plan on playing.

After spending a lot of time reading about the new codex on the internet (and a little time reading the codex itself, although the pre-release leaks gave me a big head start), I get the general consensus that most people are, to put it lightly, displeased with the effort by GW. And that's putting it extremely lightly. Although I am a non-tournament player, and back my words up with no actual experience, I do see where a lot of people are coming from - it is impossible to rate this codex in a vacuum, since it not only has to compete against all other army codexes, but has to "compete" with its predecessor as well.

With this in mind, it is abundantly clear why people would harbour the opinions that they do. To put it succinctly, the 6th Ed Codex: Tyranids cannot be put on the same level as some of the other 6th Ed codexes released to date (namely Eldar and Tau, but Space Marines and Chaos Daemons fall into the mix as well). The debate as to whether it is stronger or weaker than its 5th Ed counterpart remains to be seen. There have been a lot of nerfs over last edition, but synergy is a glorious thing once discovered and I don't think the community is quite yet able to make this call. A quick look around some of the forums and blogs and you will already see new combos that show promise.

There are definitely a lot of questions surrounding this codex release, but I sometimes wonder if we, as a community, are asking the right questions to begin with.

Hive Fleet Colour-Scheme-a-thon!

Well, instead of painting as I said I would in my previous post, I ended up going to the really awesome Online Tyranid Painter (link included) website and playing around with some of my scheme ideas.

Over the last few weeks and months I have scoured the net for inspiration and found a lot of amazing colour schemes. I would love to link to all the cool stuff I saw, but there was just too much. Simply Google "Tyranid Colour Scheme" and use Google Images to scroll through lots of inspiring work.

I chose the following schemes based on a) my general preferences, and b) what I felt would go well with my 3 proposed Hive Fleet names.

Without further ado, the candidates after the break.

Hive Fleet Name-a-thon!

With the new Tyranid Codex coming out in a few short days, I have decided to take the plunge and put together a proper Hive Fleet. I will get my hands on the new Swarm box, as well as a Harpy/Hive Crone kit. This, coupled with the Hive Tyrant kit and box of 12 Termigants I already own, will should give me roughly 1000pts of "naked" units to work with, and likely pushing around 1250-1300 after upgrades.

To make it an even 1500 points, I will add another Monstrous Creature, likely a Tervigon but will depend on how the rules look post-Codex release.

When envisioning my future Hive Fleet, I wasn't really planning on using hormagaunts at all, but with the price of the Swarm box being so good I figure I can't go wrong... Plus, my other main army (Grey Knights) is an elite, low model-count force, and after thinking about it I feel that a swarm army may be a good contrast.

Now, on to the important (and fun) parts: naming the Hive Fleet, and picking a colour scheme!

2014 has Arrived! New Year, New Start.

Happy New Year Everyone!

Well, recently I started implementing a few changes to the blog, changes that will allow me some more freedom to interact with the community as a whole. I am in the process of setting up a new google+ account, whatever that is. This will involve porting all my pictures to date to the new account, and then re-uploading them to each post. Not a fun way to spend a free night...

My intention is to start signing up to other blog alliances, which should give me more exposure to the gaming community. According to Blogger, my biggest source of traffic is currently vampirestat.com (? Not really sure what that's about - I accidentally clicked on the link but it looked scary so I closed the window stat. How stat? Vampire stat.) so hopefully this will change soon, I don't think the people clicking through from vampirestat.com are getting the content they are looking for...