Army Painter Guide

Just a quick follow on from my last post.

There is a more comprehensive and colourful free download from Army Painter on the colour prime, basecoat and wash. Naturally they focus on there own brand, but it's pretty universal and makes a few nice extra suggestions on quick army building that I'll be trying.




Article download here: http://admin.thearmypainter.com/files/downloads/pdf/army_paiting_guide.pdf 

(and yes they have misspelt painting!)

Quick Colour for a Mantic Marauder (Ork)

Back in March I'd picked up the Mantic Warpath Starter Box. It had occured to me to try and put together a simple Space Ork Army to battle Arabainsquire's new Space Marine interest, and I followed up in the simmer with a purchase of the Marauder Army box. Now I hate assembling figures and when it's sprue upon sprue of similar figure it's worse than watching  paint dry (although I do quite enjoy painting so it may not be a fair comment!). I also hate hate fielding unpainted figures. I'm not getting any younger and I find flat unpainted or primer covered figure just look like dull blobs on the table. So I thought I'd take one of the few completely assembles Orks and give one a proof of concept ultra quick splash of paint.

One advantage with this process with Orks is that they are meant to be a mess. Even the best painted Ork armies look all over the place, so a rough and ready covering of pigment should be passable until I feel the need to tidy them up. That's the theory anyway!

This is how I got on:

Assembled and bare

Primed with Humbrol Dark Brown Acrylic Spray
(as a note very close to Miniature Paints
Earth Brown for touch-up )

Very quick paint - goblin green for skin,
gun bolt metal for metal, black belt.
Rough a a badgers @r$£.

Liberally washed in Vallejo Sepia.
Hmm, neat sepia was a bit too strong, so...

Quickly blob of goblin green again and dry-brush
the metal with chainmail.

The most important shot: How it looks on table.

Well that does the job I think - Dirty, armoured and green skinned. Obviously there is room for improvement even its was only teeth and eyes, those are getting into the territory of detail. The end point above leaves room for tidying up, detailing or adding more colour in the future whilst gives the general image of the figure from a playing distance. I'll be repeating the process with the others. If only them went together as quickly as this painted up!

Glasgow Scale Modelfest 2012

Last Saturday Arabiansquire and myself headed through to the Kelvin Hall in Glasgow to meet up with Halo*Star at the Glasgow Scale Model-fest.

The show was a bit smaller than expected, but we all managed to enjoy our visit. In fact we stayed an hour longer than we'd planned, so that says it all. Loads of fine painting from single vehicles to grand dioramas. We even managed to pick up a £20 bargain of old 40k Armour (Rhino, Razorback, Predator & Space Crusade Dreadnought) for the Central Wargaming stand to bolster Arabainsquire's Space Marine army.

Typically I forgot to take my camera, but the wee lad dispatched himself with his ipod camera to catalogue some of the sights, doing a pretty good job too considering the equipment and the poor lighting in hall. Here are some of the highlights:

This scene was set up in a box with a viewing window to force
the perspective. The modeller has cleverly used 3 different
scales of boat to give the impression of distance.

SoBH Campaign 3 - Battle 1

Battlefield: Open Plains

Weather: Normal (altered from Thunderstorm by Elementalist)

Scenario: Chance Encounter

Defender: Humans

The forces were per the initial force lists.

Setup: 

The table was set-up as a wide open plain with 3 scenic items across the middle. As per scenario rules each player took turn placing one of his opponents figure anywhere on the table (at least one long measurement from a foe)

This scenario has been played before, and the big danger always seems to be figures getting isolated. The balance here seemed to be short moves of the dwarves delaying their re-grouping whilst for the humans the dwarves were individually stronger in battle.

Knowing this, and looking to take advantage of some poor placement by the Barbarian player Snowbeard made moves to close in on the vulnerable looking Elementalist, Ooko. Ooko defended himself by summoning up a Fire Elemental to act as a warm welcome should the Dwarf Warrior come any closer.

The Dwarves with their greater numbers were managing to start edge round the table to meet up, with the humans mostly moving towards the centre ruins.

Human Leader Ardaric had made to through to meet his archer Erwig. This would give Erwig the quality boost to encourage him to roll more dice and get those aimed shots, given the chance.

On the other side of the plains Dwarven Commander Valgen and met up with his long time Sergeant, Falster, and formidable duo made their way towards both their comrades and foes.

The primary pair continued their progress, and managed to take one of their young brethern under their wing, after he'd managed to manouver his way out if the ruins keeping out of sight of the human archer.

But during the march MacSver had rolled a couple of early turnovers, and the human warband had used this and their longer strides to group together first. Their numbers were also bolstered by Ooko, who had taken advantage of the extra space to summon a Water Elemental.

So the humans were grouped. Ruins kept the hardened dwarven warriors at arms length at one side, the Elementals kept the forces at bay on the other, and on the final side the low combat of the new young warrior and crossbow man were delaying the advance as they were aware of the range (and possible shot bonus) of the human archer.

Realising that they were in danger of being attacked in numbers on 3 sides, Ardaric decided to take his force into a wooded copse for protection. The dwarf lines were thin here, with only a single young dwarf in threatening range. Also his archers could take advantage of the ambush cover the wood would provide.

But not for the first time MacSver's dice failed him again, leaving the chance for a late human strike. The archer aimed and knocked down the young Beardling. The fire elemental fluffed his roll, not getting enough to move in and attack, but the second try with the water elemental worked, and it moved in and dispatched the rookie.

The humans then shrank back into the protection of the foliage, wary of any late hopeful long range shots from the dwarven crossbows. With time running out Valgen called his warriors back and away. He may have lost this tense and cagey meeting, but he knew there were still many battles to be fought.

Battle Result: A 1 VP win for the Barbarians.