Tale of Four Gamers

Josh – Cities of Sigmar – Episode 3: Revenge of the Griff!

Well update 3 is here and I’ve done SWEET FUCK ALL! That’s not entirely true but it certainly feels that way. This unmentioned period of time for this update I managed to finish my unit of 20 great swords and aTtEmPtEd some free hand on their banner. It’s fucking shit and I hate it but what can I do? I’m not an artist, I’m just a humble plasterer.

There it is. My secret shame. But I can only get better, right? Right? Fuck I hope so.

I also started painting 6 crossbows which unfortunately have been shelved due to abit of a hobby slump. What’s caused this slump? no idea but it hit hard and lasted weeks so to try and beat it I decided to learn a new skill within the hobby, I subscribed to NRMPaints Patreon and started trying to wrap my head around NMM and secondary paint reflections which kinda feels like learning Russian. Anyway here’s the irongut I’ve had a crack at. I know the eyes are wok eyed as fuck but I’ll fix them soon when I finish the model. Or maybe I’ll leave it wok eyed and nickname him Angus and he can sit at the back of the unit and get himself a nice DSC for his troubles.

At time of writing, the full cities book has just leaked last night and I’ve been combing through it absorbing that lore and putting together some fun combined arms lists. I really like the Lethis colour scheme and the sub faction rule making non wizard human heroes priests. I also like the fact that the Van Denst’s come as a set now similar to an underworlds warband. So what’s planned for the following weeks? Finishing those damned crossbowmen is high in the list but also I really want to sink my teeth into painting the Van Denst’s and the Witchhunter underworlds warband while I (im)patiently await the new cities models to drop. I’m going to be all over those Hunter looking dudes from warcry when they drop and 1 unit can be battle line for every steelhelms unit in your army, so I’m getting a mad lotr osgiliath vibe for my army, some sweet hunter/ranger dudes with armoured infantry back up duking it out with the forces of evil for the glory of their city!! Ugh so fucking cool I also want of continue my journey down the path of NMM by painting up some duard—— dwarf irondrakes, sorry I can’t bring myself to call them duar*vomit noises* That’s it for me for this month (or 2 or 3) I look forward posting to the next update with some more finished models for you all to feast your eyes on while I have huge anxiety putting my work out to the masses.

Yours in Sigmar Freeguild Marshall Gossip Griff Xoxo

Chris – Slaves to Darkness – Part 3

Over the last couple of months I couldn’t get my hands on the Warcry kits I need for my battleline, so I primed everything I had built, with Chaos black, that’s 3 vortex beasts, a daemon prince, Mibyllor Darkfang (chaos sorcerer lord) and 10 chosen. So now that they were primed and I had no more models to build, it was time to start Slap-chopping and in the words of Shang Tsung…

The slap part of Slap-chop has been applied to a fair part of the army now! I think it would be impossible for someone to be reading this and not be aware of slap chop so I’m going to assume everyone is familiar with it as I continue my entries for the Tale, but in the briefest of brief descriptions, its drybrushing a black (or other colour) undercoated model with grey to white before then painting over it with contrast paints. I refer to the drybrushing as the slap, and the contrast painting as the chop.

Before I sat down to start drybrushing, I re-watched Rob from the Honest Wargamer’s original Youtube video on Slapchop: https://youtu.be/bH3WGHw9eDw

Following this, I then also watched Byron Orde’s (of Artis Opus fame) Youtube video; a kind of Slapchop+ hour long video talking through the drybrushing technique in more detail and offering some additional, fairly quick steps to just lift the overall level of a Slapchopped model: https://youtu.be/_OSAbpLhY-0

Personally, I won’t be doing any of the extra steps from Byron’s video; the whole point of slapchop to me is getting through an army as quick as possible, in as simple a way as possible while still looking really good and being approachable and achievable to a relatively new painter. While I did find Byron’s video interesting, and definitely helpful – mainly for the tips about drybrushing itself – the extra steps that he says only add a little bit more time, honestly for someone that isn’t a pro-painter, i.e me, are too much, and would take me a LOT more time and would negate the whole purpose of slapchop as a speed painting technique. I’m at the point of my hobby journey where I was able to understand everything in the video that Byron was talking about, such as mixing paints with different properties to get closer to something he wanted to work with, but immediately, the concept of mixing paints and shades and testing their properties is too high a level for what I want to do with this army, “and so for that reason, I’m out!” no money from this Dragon today Byron, sorry. But to reiterate to anyone reading, it’s still a worthwhile video for watching, especially for those more high end painters that DO want to elevate above the core Slapchop, so go and watch it, I just won’t be applying any of the extra steps for my army.

I’ve noticed Byron has since done yet another Slapchop+ video (https://youtu.be/K7xjRK6LBCM)  with the release of the new Seraphon range, and while I haven’t watched it yet, I probably will, because the mini’s do look gorgeous and even just finding out which paints were used to achieve which effects will be useful info as I start to move to the ‘Chop’ part of the project.

So from my list of primed models above, I have drybrushed up two of the three vortex beasts, One of many mouths and the GW original:

That just leaves my favourite of the three to go; the awesome one from Archvillian Games.

The reason for this, is as keen as I am to see it drybrushed up, given in an earlier post for the Tale I stated one of my goals for this was to become better at drybrushing as it is actually a technique I don’t think I have ever been particularly good at and therefore I wanted to get some practice on the other two before I tackle the best and biggest one!

Shortly after I finished drybrushing these, the first of the Warcry Warbands I was trying to source, arrived, and therefore I have gone back to building. First up was my favourite of the three Warbands I’m using, The Unmade, which after having assembled them, I made an excellent Dad joke on Twitter, which got a criminally underappreciated amount of likes and comments (thanks Tero, you’re a Gem, appearing in White Dwarf anytime soon?!…) and so I won’t make it again here, but I will die on the hill that it was a great joke and if you don’t make the effort to go back through my Tweets to find it, it’s your loss! Haha.

Next up on the assembly line is the Corvus Cabal which I’m currently partway through and then following them to round out the original list will be The Untamed Beasts.

Now the reason I say the original list, is because with the new 2023 GHB set in the cold regions of the Lucasfilm universe, there were inevitable points changes and I have to say, for my list especially, boy were they kind! 😀

My vortex beasts have dropped 25 points each and the Daemon princes also dropped 20 points each, already saving me 115 points, furthermore the untamed beasts dropped 10 points. So with these changes I saw an opportunity, as, sticking with the Star wars theme, “Somehow Be’lakor dropped in points” also down to 340! So with 125 points already saved and 340 points to try and find room for, I had 215 points to cut, looking at the list it was pretty clear to me what I could and have dropped, the second sorcerer lord and the second unit of Corvus Cabal, an absolute bargain to fit in Be’lakor; so he has also been purchased and will be the last thing I need to assemble for the army!

I get to fit 5 monsters into the list (the Daemon prince isn’t a behemoth so doesn’t affect the cap of 4) so I am very happy and can’t wait to get this army done and ready to play this GHB for hopefully a solid 6 months by the time it’s all painted, if I can meet our aim of end of the year!

That’s it for me for this update; as mentioned on the last one, I have settled on my basing scheme and purchased some basing products for it, but I haven’t yet knocked up a test base, so that’ll be for the next entry.

Toodles! Chris

The family so far!

James – Lumineth Realm-Lords – Part 3

Hello everyone, welcome back to instalment #3 for our Tale of 4 Wargamers.

It’s been ages since our last update, but here we are. Still slugging away. I think when it comes to these kinds of ventures, you have peaks and troughs, and I think that I personally had a bit of burnout from running Sydney Slaughter and Mortal Blade, that it has taken me ages to pick up a paintbrush again. Nevertheless, I’ve slowly got back into the groove over the last few weeks and have reached the final stages of my Alarith Stoneguard unit.

Armour and Metals

Since the last update, I’ve finished off the final highlights and touches on the armour and helms, using Vallejo Metal Color Silver. For the Diamondpick Hammers, I painted the picks black, then a wash with Nuln Oil Gloss to make them shine – all this to prepare the way for Green Stuff World’s Colorshift Metal Celestial Azure.  I felt like the helms needed some more attention, so I gave them a wash with Reikland Fleshshade Gloss on the cow heads and went back over them with a slight layer with Vallejo Game Color Polished Gold.

Banner

I don’t normally paint banners very well, my freehand skills are very basic, so I’ve always leaned into using decals. This time I’m painting the banner and I’m very grateful that these sculpts have the design etched into it, making it so much easier to achieve. Not quite finished yet but very close. Went out and bought more of the new Vallejo Game Color paints and inks too, using the oranges, blues, and magentas from that range, they are such vibrant colours and great paints to work with. Slowly transitioning over to this range as my primary brand.

Gloves and Gems

Finished off the gloves too, very basic approach here, Gorthor Brown base, Agrax Earthshade then Baneblade Brown highlights. For the gems, I used Vallejo Game Color paints. Base Deep Magenta, layer Warlord Purple and a dot of Squid Pink.

Bases

Bases are ready for the last few steps on the models. I painted them Steel Legion Drab, then a wash on the textured surface with Agrax Earthshade, followed by drybrush passes with Karak Stone and Vallejo Model Color Buff (my replacement paint for Screaming Skull). I’ve shaped the plants as well, Gamers Grass – Alien Rosette – perfect colours to help tie in the colour palette.

Last Steps

Once I’ve finished painting the banner to a standard I am pleased with. I will dirty up the bases and around the bottom of the capes and robes with Forge World Weathering Powder, Dry Mud. After that, I’ll seal the models with satin varnish – which will really help to tie in an unify the model’s colours and accentuate the shadows more. Looking forward to this part because this is the point where I’ll get that satisfaction of knowing I’ve finally finished this unit. Last step is to glue on the plants, then done! After this unit is done, I think next unit will be 10 Sentinels.

Cheers,

James

Craig – Kruleboyz – Part 3

I think it came out ok.

The molds I made weren’t the neatest, so there’s a little bit of clean up. But I think it is a bit easier to use than having to tape up every base

With that my completed model count is

10x Gutrippaz
10x Hobgrotz
1x Mirebrute Troggoth

But I’ve been working on others and I’ve got a bit of a deadline going. I was aiming to get Da Riva Morkis ready for Bathurst GT but I still have too much to paint. Hopefully for Sydney GT 😉

A Shaman and 18 Killabows have their bases painted and ready for basecoats.

I finally replaced the spears on these starter set Gutrippaz

And finally, I have made a lot of progression the Corpse Rippa Vulcha

Even some greenstuff for the Banshee for the base

And that rounds up the progress for the team for part 3 of the Tale, thanks for reading and we look forward to sharing our next updates hopefully in about a months time!

Previous Update:

James – Lumineth Realm-Lords – Part 2

G’day! So far, this project has been a fun creative adventure, and for this month, I’ve made a bit of lead on the next unit, Alarith Stoneguard. I went with some unexpected colour choices for these models, and made some changes in my approach to painting some of the elements. So without further ado, lets dive in.

Crafting Contrast and Depth

I began by painting the robes with Scale 75’s Amarth Blue as a base coat. I then applied Citadel Contrast Talassar Blue straight out of the pot, followed with a highlight blend using Scale 75 Hiril Blue. After this a final layer of Talassar Blue to tie it in together. I felt this simplified technique will help save some time and give me a satisfying result – work smarter not harder, right? Later on I plan use some weathering powder to dirty them a little, then the final satin varnish step will smooth it all over and bind it all together.

Elevating the Metals

For the armour, I want to go for a blue-tinted effect. Starting with a base of Vallejo Metal Color Burnt Iron, I painted the armour (and hammers) to provide a solid foundation. Next up a layer of Talassar Blue, in the recesses and flat armour panels. For the hammers, I gave the a subtle wash with Vallejo Model Wash Light Grey. Finally, a highlight of Vallejo Metal Color Silver to add a touch of brilliance to all the metallic surfaces, making them truly stand out.

Unexpected Capes

Initially I was stuck on what colour to paint the capes, and I kinda just went for orange without giving much thought to it, it was as if Teclis was guiding my hand. I was intending to use orange as a spot colour, but hey-ho, here we are with full orange capes the former Juicer would be proud of! I started with a base coat of Jokaero Orange, which I followed with layers of Troll Slayer Orange and a shade of Fugan Orange. Built up the layers again with Troll Slayer Orange and Fire Dragon Bright. To unify the blend, I used an all-over coat of Army Painter Speedpaint Fire Giant Orange. I actually really love the Army Painter Speedpaints. I especially like its drying properties. In this case I love Fire Giant Orange because its not to saturated and you can be more subtle and apply layers where you want it to be darker, without ruining your blend, indeed, it enhances it. I went back with with Fire Dragon Bright for another layer, taking as much care as I could to keep it as smooth as I can. Finally the lightest of light and tiniest of tine edge highlights with Lugganath Orange, followed by another pass with the Fire Giant Orange to help bring the blend together.

Adding a Touch of Magenta

To introduce magenta elements, I embarked on a journey of discovery with inks. Using Scale 75 Bloodfest Crimson as a base, I layered Citadel Pink Horror and Emperors Children to build up the colours of the inner robe and lining of the capes. At this point, it still lacked the vibrancy I was hoping for. That’s when I discovered the transformative power of Vallejo Game Color Magenta Ink. A single layer of this ink made the magenta elements pop, infusing them with life and making them truly zing. In my excitement I applied some of this magical substance to parts of the hammers on the unit champ. In the midst of painting the cape linings, I decided to change tactics and incorporate my newly acquired Vallejo Game Color Magenta Profundo, Purpura, and Rosa Pulpo. These colours are replacing the Citadel combo, as they’ve got so much more je ne sais quoi!

That’s it for this round, next up in the process will be to finish off the details and bases, so by the time our next update comes around, these models will be finished.

Cheers,

James

Chris – Slaves to Darkness – Part 2

Hey all, a month later and I don’t feel like I’ve done much at all for the Tale, as a lot of my hobby time has/ is being spent on things I’m working on for this year’s Sydney Slaughter (lots to look forward to there though and I’m excited to see that side of things coming together at least!) but progress has been made for the Slaves to Darkness nonetheless!

Since the first instalment, I’ve finished printing the remaining parts needed to finish both Mutalith Vortex Beasts, done the required ‘greenstuffing’ to fill any gaps and fix an unfortunate ankle snap I had on the big one (caused by me foolishly gluing things together in the wrong order and applying a bit too much force when trying to push the front fist into it’s correct place on the base when the back ankle was already glued down – the model didn’t like it, but a bit of greenstuff and I don’t think you could tell now it’s been sprayed black, so no biggie!)

I don’t have any Greenstuffing tips as I’m really not very good with the stuff other than use whatever tools you have to hand to help poke it into gaps and smooth it out and don’t be afraid to use tools to try and add texture to whatever greenstuff you add, don’t just do a plain blob! I generally tried to follow the lines of the existing model, to try and continue tendons etc.And I used it on the One of Many Mouths below to create a little leg stump for one leg that misprinted that I didn’t want to reprint the whole piece to correct; as I mentioned before, I’m happy for these prints to not be perfect as they are supposed to be warped chaotic beasts. I just covered the flat part of resin where the print failed, with a lump of greenstuff, shaped it into a bit of a rounded point and used one of my hobby files to add some texture holes as a way to try and make it look a bit ‘sculpted’. Hopefully once it’s primed, it’ll just blend with the model and won’t really stand out in a bad way.

I’ve also finished building my 10 Chosen (today, 5 minutes before writing this instalment, nothing like a deadline hey?!). They’re awesome models, and GW have come a long way in their kit design that even the guys with the two handed weapons requiring two shoulder pieces to be glued on and then aligning a wrist piece to a hand on the weapon, they just line up, there’s no annoying process of trying desperately to hold 4 different pieces all at once and try and align wrist to hand that clearly won’t ever line up… anyone that’s built Grave Guard, you know what I’m talking about…none of that here I’m very pleased to say!

Last but not least, I’ve built up and primed my second daemon prince, from the new kit, it’s lovely! Obviously being the power gamer that I am, I’ve built up the Nurgle version, no Ward saves is legit tech, but mixed and matched up the kit using different feet and tail etc.

For the next instalment, I hope to have primed the last vortex beast, the 10 chosen and printed/ built and primed my two sorcerer lords. I’ve found a cool STL file for one tzeentch sorcerer and I’m going to use the Warhammer + subscriber Year 2 Exclusive model for the second one (Mibyllorr Darkfang is his name apparently!) as it’s a cool model, I already own him, and he won’t see the light of day if I don’t use him for this project! This is the GW box art, not mine (obviously)…:

I continue to think of ideas for how I’m going to base the army, as I didn’t have anything in mind during the last instalment; I think I might have decided now, but I’ll save that for a future instalment once I have something to show!

Until next time…

Chris

Craig – Kruleboyz – Part 2

I didn’t think I got much done this month, as I’ve been focused on my entries for The Mortal Blade, but this is everything I have for Da Riva Morkis.

My goal for the month was to get everything based and find a list through playing more games. I got all of this based!

It’s a lot of Boltboyz. 18 of them. My other armies don’t really shoot, so I’ve been enjoying the change. What I think the army needs going forward are some speedy units like maybe spider riders?

 A few units I didn’t get based were mostly just forgotten, but not these.

I figured I could convert the Swampcalla from left over Gobsprakk bits after it was build but I can just parts from elsewhere. The Gutrippaz I’m just waiting on some more parts to replace all the spears. I’ve honestly never liked spears as weapons in general, but these Gutrippaz are from Dominion so there wasn’t a choice.

I also finished off my first 10 sword and board Gutrippaz aside from the resin making this what I have complete:

Just a quick note on the resin, the last time I used sticky tape to hold the resin in. And it’s been working fine but it can have some, unusual points.

So to try and remedy this, I made some mould to hold them.

It should be fine but we’ll find out next time.

Craig

Josh – Cities of Sigmar – Part 2

A Time of Change

Well the 2nd month of our tale of 4 gamers has come to an end and it’s time for our update. After struggling with Slaanesh mortals for the first bit of the month I decided I couldn’t put myself through it any more and pulled the plug on the planned army. I’ll come back to it, but in my own time and at my own pace. 

This lead me to a bit of a hard place in terms of this project, what would I do? So I listened to my heart and pulled the 8000 points of Freeguild and Dispossessed out of the containers of isopropyl alcohol they’d been bathing in since February and started on my main love of Cities of Sigmar. “But Gossip Griff, the whole range will be replaced in the spring why would you do this?” I  hear you ask, well let me explain.

Freeguild (Empire) and Dispossessed (Dwarves) have been my absolute favourite factions since I started playing Warhammer Fantasy Battles as a young fella, I started with High Elves but big bushy beards on little muscly dudes and phat moustaches and puffy, feathered hats on regular humans have always been my weakness. The aesthetics just call me back every time. Now I know the Freeguild range is being replaced but that’s okay, because I’ve got a couple of tournaments before that happens and now that GW have announced that Old World will have larger 25mm squares it means I can find some 25mm round to square base adapters or something meaning I’ll still get use out of these older models. It does however mean I’ll be painting 2 human armies over this project but that’s absolutely fine. 

With all this in mind I got to work making a tournament list for Cities of Sigmar book 1 to do me until the new book and new range drops. I’ll  paint this list with some extra units that I like the look of. So here’s the list, I won’t go into details about it all in this blog but I think it’ll keep me off the very bottom tables and hopefully somewhere in the fat middle for a change.

I’ve already started on the Greatswords and the crossbowmen and to keep the army interesting I’m going to paint each regiment as a different regiment featured in my absolute favourite book in my Warhammer collection: the uniforms and heraldry of the Empire. The Greatswords I’ve chosen to be the famed Carroburg Greatswords in the red and black they’re shown wearing in this book and not the red and white they’re shown in, in early army books. I didn’t however like the black armour that some regiments wear, so I’ve changed that to iron warriors heavy washed with Nuln Oil. The crossbowmen will be the stern tower marksmen, I love the grey and white of Wissenland with the yellow spot colour. I plan on carrying yellow as a spot colour across the entire army. 

The army has been based with greenstuff and rolled with the cobblestone roller from greenstuff world, painted grey and washed with several Different washes before being hit with a dry brush. A nice and simple basing scheme that suits my vision of the many units involved with defence of Altdorf or the great bastion in the end times.

Obviously having my Cities of Sigmar v1 army planned, I then had to plan my army scheme for the new book. It’s going to be Hammerhal, my favourite city. It probably resonates with me because the colour scheme is very similar to my favourite city in the Empire: Middenhiem. I’m incredibly keen to get my hands on those new knights and the new Freeguild Guard models, they look fantastic! If the rumours are true and the Dispossessed range is staying you better believe you’ll see these new human kits along side some stout little dwarfs at Cancon next year. 

Anyway, that’s probably enough talk of regular humans in AoS for this month. Stay tuned as I try to finish the remainder of the Greatswords and crossbowmen next month and maybe get my brushes into the Helstorm Rocket Battery, one of my favourite models and one of my favourite units in Warhammer Total War. Until next month, stay sexy and keep being good cunts. 

Xoxo Gossip Griff

Part 1

Alright, it’s finally here, the first post in our new Tale of Four Gamers! Better late than never eh? Besides, what are long weekends for if not Warhammer?… So let’s crack on with it!

A quick intro to our Four Gamers:

James

One half (the half you’ll learn from during this hobby tale!) of Mortally Wounded. James is a plucky painter, lover of all things death and narrative, but he does have a desire to crush your soul if he can…no bye’s here Jett….

Chris

The other half of Mortally Wounded. Definitely not the painter of the duo, in the hobby for the game, but has become more of a hobbyist with each year of Age of Sigmar that passes.

Craig (Anderson)

The first of our guest gamers, Craig hails from Western Sydney and is has a big focus on converting within his projects; most recently seen on his awesome Tomb Kings themed OBR.

Josh(ua Griffiths)

(That’s the pic he wanted….) The orange juicer himself, now part of Crutchhammer, looking rather juiced… Josh lives in Orange and hosts the War Under the Mountain AoS event. A solid painter also, he’s won several awards in his local area and is looking to put together a new army and pick up some more awards.

So now you know who the 4 gamers are, let’s start this tale!…

James – Lumineth Realmlords

Excuses Excuses

I’ll level with you, the past month or so has been busy for me personally between life, work, and organising my one dayer, Ghoulburn Smash II, which I ran at Goulburn Comic Con. On top of that, the following weekend I headed up to Orange to play in War Under the Mountain III. Add to that a trip to Sydney to support my wifey’s art exhibition opening night, all while helping Chris to manage the eye watering Sydney Slaughter 2023 ticket sales blitz and creating graphics for the website, Slaughter and the Mortal Blade painting competition and.. well, you get the picture! As a result, my hobby time has been slim and of course, in the little time I had, needed to paint a couple of Death models in the lead up to War Under the Mountain (hosted by Josh!) to get my army ready for the event!

So, to my shame, the Lumineth sat in my display cabinet, judging me. Typical, I start a new project and immediately go back to paint Death models.

Models done for War Under the Mountain III:

Wight King

Vampire Lord

Now, back to Lumineth

As a palette cleanser from those Undead Galletian Champions, here are some pictures of the Vanari Auralan Wardens I painted for this project last year. These will be my reference models for this project, and I’ll be aiming to replicate this consistently across the entire army:

Now, on with the show

I bought stuff, that counts too, right?

Stuff bought:

Actual Progress

I already have a good chunk of my collection built and primed and was able to get a basic 1^st layer on the flesh across the aelves. I got the airbrush out and put through a thinned out Screaming Skull layer onto all the flesh areas of the models. This is my first layer, next will likely be a wash with a thinned down coat of Guilliman Flesh Contrast and a highlight of Screaming Skull.

Building and Priming Phase

Models currently built: Archmage Teclis, Scinari Cathallar, Alarith Stonemage, Alarith Spirit of the Mountain, Vanari Starshard Ballista, Hyishian Twinstones, Alarith Stoneguard, Vanari Auralan Sentinels and Shrine Luminor.

Building and priming models is an essential part of the process, and it’s important to take the time to do it right. My process was to snip off the parts, remove all the mould lines using sanding sticks, files, fine grade sandpaper, and a mould line scraper. I have a fancy mould line scraper which helps me get into tight places, and I find sanding sticks and fine grade sandpaper – 400 and 600 grade, are so good at smoothing out areas without destroying detail. Files are good for grinding back those larger outlying bits but using only files to clean your parts can frequently lead to undesirable roughed up areas. Whenever I use a file, I’ll go back and smooth it out with the sanding sticks and/or sandpaper. Sandpaper is great because you can fold it to angles to get at those nooks and crannies which a file can’t get to without wrecking your model. There’s a lot of small touchpoints for gluing delicate parts together in these Lumineth kits, so I use a combination of Tamiya Extra Thin Cement for the trickier parts and plastic glue for the rest.

Building and assembly tools:

Basing

For the basing of this project, I’ve decided to try something new. In the past I’ve gravitated towards using a mix of texture paint, crackle paint, tufts, and weathering powders. I’ve also played around with snowy basing. For the Lumineth army, I want to go for a rough wastelands/desert with bright succulents as the flora. To get the texture, I’m using a mix of Woodland Scenics Fine Ballast and Coarse Ballast.

I experimented with using PVA glue to get it on there, but I found this a bit onerous, so I tried superglue, and it kept it on the base a lot  better than the PVA glue. Once dried, I applied AK Interactive’s Gravel & Sand Fixer, which is a solvent based liquid, dropping it onto the bases with a pipette.  The fixer is perfect for making sure that the gravel stays on the base forever and not come off over time through use.

Once the fixer is dry. The models are ready to be primed.

Priming

I’ve moved on from rattle-can priming a few years ago when I bought my first airbrush. I use Stynylrez surface primers. They are fantastic because due to their self-leveling properties, which means you’ll get a smooth and crisp prime all the time, every time. I have white, black, and grey. For this project, I went with black, followed by a heavy white zenithal highlight, to keep it nice and bright, but still have some of the shading.

For those not familiar, zenithal highlighting is a great way to create a sense of realism on your models, and it can make the details of the miniature pop. Once the base colours have been applied, you can use this technique to add depth and shadows quickly and effectively to the model. The technique involves applying multiple layers of paint to the miniature, with each layer getting progressively lighter.

To start, the miniature is primed with a dark base coat. Then, a lighter colour is applied to the miniature from a specific angle, usually from above. This creates a gradient effect where the lighter colour is applied heavily at the top of the model and gradually fades out toward the bottom. The result is that the miniature looks like it’s being lit from a single light source above.

The technique is called “zenithal” highlighting because the light source used to create the effect is positioned directly overhead, like the sun at its highest point in the sky, which is also called the “zenith”. Some painters will use an airbrush or rattle-cans to apply the highlight, while others will use a brush to carefully apply the paint.

I have left the Hyishian Twinstones and the Alarith Spirit of the Moutain as black because I have plans to use Greenstuff World’s Colorshift paints on them, which needs a nice solid black undercoat to work properly.

Conclusion

Well folks, that it for me this time round, I think over the coming month I’ll have some more time and no big events to prepare for, so I’ll have more progress done!

Cheers,

James

PS, my Sentinels are coming for you.

Craig – Kruleboyz

Overall the process I was building the army pretty much changed completely pretty early on in the month. I was going to improvise the recipe originally, where I would build a small amount of the army and play small games and build into taste, with a focus on the New Year New Army path that GW has put out. That was because I missed this in the FAQ

I saw the Facebook comment but somehow missed it actually being put into the FAQ. So I ended up writing a list and building it up. So I went from having this at the start of the month.

10 Gutrippaz, 10 Hobgrots, 6 Boltboys, 1 Killabow, a Swampcalla Shaman, a Killaboss and a Breaka Boss on Mirebrute Troggoth

To this

20 Gutrippaz, 20 Hobgrots, 12 Boltboys, 2 Swampcalla Shamans, a Killaboss, a Breaka Boss on Mirebrute Troggoth, a Snatcha boss on Sludgeraker and a Killaboss on Corpserippa Vulcha.

With a few games in and a little one dayer tourney done I have more of an idea of how the army works and I can shuffle things around and start finding what I really want to play. It’s pretty exciting.

Hobbywise I spent time trying to get scheme ideas ironed out, such as the movement of the river and the unified paint schemes across all of the units.

What I’ve finished this month is the Breakka Boss on Mirebrute Troggoth who I have named “Rippa and Terraryzn” like “Rip and Tear” and “Terrorising” and the first ten Hobgrot Slittaz, with 10 Gutrippaz and a Swampcalla Shaman are almost done.

Goal for this month is to get more games in and find a list I’m very happy with and get everything based with more of the ghosts and everything. Also I’ll have to rebase the Swampcalla Shaman and Pot Grot onto seperate bases. I hate that they’re seperate as there’s no reason for it, plus you can’t have the Shaman pour into the grots pot.

Hoping to get the Kruleboyz of Da Riva Morkis ready for Sydney Slaughter but with the level I want to get them to before I take them to an event they may not be ready in time. I’m also working on my 3 entries for the Mortal Blade as well.

Chris – Slaves to Darkness

Work’s a bitch…but it pays the bills! Alas, Late Feb/ all of March was an incredibly busy time for me at work so my time for hobby has sadly been greatly reduced and therefore I haven’t progressed as much as I would have liked to over the past couple of months, and as always, being the hobby butterfly that I am, the limited hobby time I have had has been spread across several different armies/ projects.

Actual models painted – 1…frigate…

After – Before

Yes so I slipped and finished painting up my second frigate for my Kharadron Overlords for the list I submitted for the recent Contest of Fools 2-dayer event in Toowoomba hosted by PMTT (Polymath Tabletop – Henry Wagner), check out photos from the event on their page here:

Having bought my KO already all painted, I had to do my best to match the yellow with my existing paints (no idea what actual colours were used, but I ended up having to constantly mix Jokero orange and Yriel yellow) and paint over everything that is now yellow from the previous green or yellow that I had painted myself before buying the army. If there’s one part of painting I really hate, it’s taking the time to put down solid base coats, doing this in yellow, and with a colour I had to constantly mix to try and colour-match to an existing colour was not fun, to say the least, but that being said I am glad I took the time to do it, as the original quick pass with yellow contrast (see above) was not going to cut it, even with me, as much as I tried to tell myself it was ‘fine’….and I am pretty happy with the end result. Is it perfect? No, but could anyone really tell one of these ships was not like the other one? No. Good job me. Now let’s never do that again!…

Oh and I had some fun playing around with AI last week too and with the aid of ChatGPT wrote some fun Lore for my army and displayed it at the event:

Should you wish to sample the delicious Bana fruit for yourselves, come find me at any event where I’m playing KO!…

3D printing

As I mentioned on the intro episode for the Tale on the podcast, a big goal of mine for this project is to incorporate a significant amount of 3D printing into the army, with likely 50% of the army being GW models and 50% being 3D printed alternate sculpts from other 3rd party designers.

Now before I could crack on with the required printing for my Tale army, I had some models to finish printing for a friend’s alternate Eshin army…

For those new to 3D printing (myself being relatively new also, having only got my resin printer (Anycubic Photon M3 Plus) at Christmas) there are two main types of 3D printing, FDM and Resin. Now there are many, many, far more knowledgable people than me that have put out much more comprehensive info on 3D printing than I can and will, so if you really want to get into it, I’d urge you to watch some Youtube videos and read some blog posts from recommended sources, but throughout my Tale entries I will add in little tips and tricks that I’ve learnt so far on my relatively short journey into this massive hobby world that will definitely be good for anyone to know. But a quick little bit of background for the uninitiated….

FDM printers came first, anyone you know that got into 3D printing probably 5 or so years ago, likely has a Creality Ender 3 Pro kicking around, still going strong that they’re using to this day to print ‘big’ pieces of terrain. Primarily terrain is the only thing these types of printers are considered good enough for as they do leave a visible layer line with each layer they print, and they take A LONG time to print. They work by feeding a reel of plastic filament through a super heated nozzle, melting the plastic and essentially drawing the model, line by line, layer by layer building up the filament until it’s done.

For models, people use the newer, more advanced resin 3D printers, which use a vat of liquid resin positioned over an LCD screen which shines highly concentrated UV light on individual pixels which then hardens (cures) the liquid resin on that pixel. They are therefore only capable of printing parts that can be rotated to fit on the size of the LCD screen. In my case, my printer has a build volume of 197mm (L) x 122mm (W) x 245mm (H), this is a fairly decent size for a resin printer, reflected by the Plus in the name. In other respects the printer is pretty much the same as the Photon M3, it just has a bigger screen and therefore lets you print bigger/ more parts in one go, saving me time in my printing. This was the main factor for me when choosing a printer, as my hobby time is already limited, I didn’t want to be spending more time breaking down prints into multiple parts, or taking 6 or 7 prints to print an army of models when I could do it in 4. It’s not a huge difference for some, but for me I felt it was worth spending the few hundred dollars difference in price between the models.

It is worth saying at this point, that again in the interest of my setup being as efficient/ easy as possible on my time (and to be honest, neatness and effort) I also invested in a matching Wash and Cure (Plus) pictured below, which to some might just look like a second 3D printer, but it’s actually a completely different bit of kit ‘required’ for the process. I say ‘required’ because technically, you don’t need it at all. You can wash the models by hand (wearing gloves, mask and other protective equipment) and then leave them in normal sunlight once the cleaning agents have been rinsed off and left to dry and they will be perfectly fine. This process however is a lot more taxing, and time consuming, and I am not about that life, and to pay bills is why we work afterall, so you bet I spent that money, and to be honest, I’ll tell every single person that ever asks me what I’d recommend, to do the same.

Anyway, the point I was going to make a paragraph ago… yes I write like I talk, (soz! you’ll get used to it…or you’ll skip my sections…I digress), is that in choosing to invest in the M3 Plus printer (for extra dollarydoos) meant that I also needed to invest in the Plus-sized Wash and Cure station, which again cost me a few hundred extra dollars, so my choosing to Super size, your printer, you will inevitably super-size some other bills too. But again, if you can afford to, I would honestly recommend it, to save yourself time down the track, and time is money… so go you, you just paid yourself back – high five! (Yes I work in finance, no, never come to me for financial advice, I’m terrible with money!)

Some action shots

Below you can see a ‘finished’ print once the printer has done it’s part in the process. As you can see the model(s) gets built layer by layer on the ‘build plate’ after getting dunked over and over into the resin vat, having UV light shone on the relevant pixels on the screen for that layer, and slowly retracts higher and higher until the final layer has been printed and your model is left hanging upside down above the resin vat (hopefully) attached to your build plate.

I say hopefully, because, as all people that have printed something with a resin printer will have experienced, your models won’t always stay attached to the build plate throughout their journey. There are many factors that affect this (which I won’t go in to, again go read much smarter & more experienced people’s blogs than mine for this level of info) but ultimately it comes down to adhesion with the build plate. From the picture you can see below, I use a detachable build plate for my printer – Sovol – purchased through Amazon:

I discovered these (again via Youtube videos) a few weeks into printing, and my god, I would recommend these to anyone. It’s such a tiny investment ($25 for 2) that will massively improve the experience for you, just consider them a required starting purchase if you’re looking to get into it. Basically you attach a magnetic sheet to the actual build plate using the adhesive side, leave it for 24 hours to ensure it’s properly stuck, then from there your detachable build plates will just hold on magnetically (watch out for your fingers when attaching, they have some pull….)

One advantage of using a detachable build plate is that you will not need to re-level your build plate every time you print (which you will need to do otherwise due to unscrewing from the bulk of the machine to otherwise more easily remove your models). A second advantage is that they easily flex by hand, which makes removing of models a lot easier, meaning less aggressive use of the scraper tool and less chance of accidentally damaging your models when removing them from the build plate. Lastly, they let you crack on with hitting Go on another print almost straight away if you’re running short on time and don’t have a lot of time to remove the models you just printed, just take the detachable build plate off, slap a clean one on and off you go (with a few caveats but that’s for another time…).

Coming full circle (man I do love a tangent!…Ooo piece of candy…) Build plate adhesion! From the pics above you will probably see I have also lightly sanded the printing side of my build plates, these micro scratches again really help the initial layers (rafts) of the resin to gain solid purchases on your build plate and ensure they win the tug of war with the FEP (once you’re done here, go read a proper blog if you really want to get into this) on every single layer of the print.

Cleaning and curing

Wait, that’s not Slaves to Darkness…. no it’s not. But it is a very cool alternate Verminlord deceiver (Shadowking from Clay Beast Creation – https://www.myminifactory.com/users/Clay%20Beast%20Creation)

This is what the models looks like after removing any supports and errant pieces of resin from the print, washing in the Wash and Cure station and letting dry.

Last stage of the Resin 3D printing journey is the curing! For this it’s a quick change to convert the wash and cure station from it’s default wash mode to it’s cure mode. For that, you just pop on the mirrored reflective piece provided on the base, add the plastic turntable and bend over the top section of the UV light tower to get UV light shining down from on top of the models (and reflected up onto the bottom from the mirrored piece), not just the back and front. Then pop your cleaned and dried pieces onto the turntable, change it to Cure (not wash) and pop them on for a quick sunbed for a few minutes. And bam, just like that your models will be ready for paint (and a night at The Sugar Hut for those of you familiar with TOWIE).

So what have I actually done for my Slaves to Darkness in the last two months?…

A long lost treasure!..

I found him. I trawled through all my trays and boxes of models to find my classic demon prince I painted about 15 years ago…

Now as I mentioned on the intro episode, one of my goals for this army, is to incorporate this ‘lil fella into my modern Age of Sigmar army and have him not feel (completely) out of place next to his shiny new big brother. At the time I painted this, I really, really did not paint and I was super proud of this paint job, it was probably the best I had ever done, and honestly, even now looking back, I’m like hey, it’s not utter trash, but like, even I’m not so self-deprecating of my painting ability (James is always telling me to stop selling myself short) to say that I can’t do a much better job on him now. So let’s just say, over the next few months, I’m gonna slap-chop some lipstick on this pig! But for now, I’m content enough to have just been able to find him!

Surely you must have actually done more than that though?! I hear none of you cry…

Progress! 

So here is my actual progress for the Tale these last few months…

The beasts gather!….

I tore off the now very dusty shrink wrap on my Mutalith Vortex Beast (we’re past pretending the other models is actually a thing in the game) and over the course of an evening, built him. He’s not an old model, but for something that predates AOS, he’s a distinguished gentlemen, and do you know what, the kit is great. It went together super nicely and I still think it looks great and stands up to the more modern monsters that have come since.

Next was the other two vortex beasts for my planned list. For these I found two cool sculpts I felt would fit the bill nicely from two companies I am a current subscriber to on Patreon – the widely known and very popular Archvillain Games and My Mini Monster (I followed these guys initially for their sweet Pokemon themed sculpts (I have my heart set on a dragon-type Stormdrake guard army in the future)).

From Archvillain Games – Kagon Aspect of Demogorgon (From Tome of Demons Vol. 3 collection)

And from My Mini Factory – One of Many Mouths (From Nightmare Fuel collection)

My prints

I have not yet fully printed either of the two models, due to a couple of failures in the prints, but below is where I’m up to, with some progress photos:

The quality of the sculpts is excellent and generally the parts printed pretty well for the most part, other than the noted fails, being the two claws and one of the tentacles. One common ‘issue’ with 3D printed models in multiple parts is usually the join lines where the two parts meet. Unfortunately these are often not able to be cleverly hidden away like most modern Games Workshop kits are designed to do and is a slight drawback on 3D printed models vs GW, but the variety and ability to create truly unique armies definitely outweighs this drawback in my opinion. I will need to do some greenstuff work (nothing crazy, mainly just gap filling as I am truly shite with greenstuff, and I am not looking to learn that in this project) to get these guys to a level I will consider acceptable to myself.

I knew this would likely be a requirement going into the project and it’s one of the reasons I chose the mutalith’s to be the main 3D printed element, because they are warped chaos demons, I feel I can go with the flow a bit and they don’t need to look ‘perfect’ – One of the legs and tentacles partially misprinted across the two models, but as it’s only a small part and the end of limbs, I’m going with it, rather than reprinting the parts. For this project I’m cool with some slight imperfections.

So here’s my 3 boys together, albeit in different stages of ‘completion’.

I had to use a bit of judgement when looking at the models, recommended base sizes etc. and size of parts in my slicing program (Lychee – again more detail on that available elsewhere) on whether they would be about the same size/ volume as the official GW model as I don’t want them to be too dissimilar so as to not be considered appropriate for gaming purposes when I eventually take the army to a tournament. At a high level, I’m very happy with the scale of the two 3D printed models. I printed Kagon Aspect of Demogorgon as he comes straight from Archvillain, but for One of Many Mouths, I had a feeling it was a bit smaller when looking at the volume of the print area the pieces were filling when I added the files to Lychee slicer, so I scaled them up slightly (10%) and I think it was the right call.

And that’s it! 2 months of progress, not as much as I’d hoped for, but progress nonetheless and I’m keen to continue and see where I’m at with the next update!

Cheers

Chris

And last but by no means least – Josh – Slaanesh

(Due to some technical issues this month, namely Josh’s laptop shitting itself, he’s got no photos to share for now, but we will add them in when we can)

What. A. Month. Heading into this project I expected to breeze through my first couple of units, oh Lordy was I wrong. Unbeknownst to most of us be adepticon? Reveals slaanesh and khorne were coming out real soon, like this month soon. This meant GW had their usual stock issues and made it a hard task to get the units I wanted: a lord of pain and some blissbarb archers. I did however manage to find some after a lot of searching so alls well that ends well or whatever the saying is.

While I waited for these mad dawgs to arrive I decided to throw myself headlong into working out flesh tones on a second ale guzzler gargant for my gitz – side note realistic dark skin tones is hard, and worked out my gold recipe on some stormcast that I had laying around. The look I’m going for is a mix of skin tones with clean white robes – Vallejo model colours are my preferred choice of white with the new soulblight flesh? Contrast to keep the shadows low but realistic. I’ve never seen deep dark shadows on white clothing before so I’m trying to stay away from that trap. The gold is an attempt at a white gold that I didn’t want to end up looking like pure silver so I’ve based liberator gold, given it a light wash with a watered down flesh contrast and then relayered with liberator gold, highlighted with stormhost silver and a very very thin edge highlight with scale 75 white alchemy.

My hopes for this army are hobby awards so I’ve been looking into tutorials on painting make up and eye shadow while also practicing my eye painting, something that will drive me crazy with the dainty little blissbarbs. My basing scheme at this point in time is undecided. I’m thinking greenstuff flagstones and dirt to represent the ruined temple scene from the first Felix and Gotrek novel as abit of a tribute to my preferred setting in the old world.

My display board – yes I’m making one finally! Will feature the old arcane ruins, the temple of skulls and hopefully a fortified inn made from the manor from warhammer fantasy battles because I’m a grognard neck beard fucker who prefers the old world and the old terrain

So while all this planning and testing was happening I checked my auspost app and noticed my package containing sweet, sweet slaanesh units was still at the Kelso sorting facility, a mere 43 minutes away. 17 days later and it’s still there, I wholly blame fellow crutchhammer members Blake and Jarrod as not only do they live in Kelso – the Crenshaw boulevard of Bathurst, Straight outta Kelso! They also grew up in the shady, cold hellscape that is Liffy brah or Lithgow as us normal people call it. And my third and final most damning piece of evidence is that Jarrod is a locksmith by trade so take that as you will and I rest my case! Now normally this would make me panic and rage as I’m a bit of a bloody hot head but gw dropped the Slaanesh vanguard box so I promptly ordered one and waited for it to come. I’d never been so excited for a vanguard box before and I forgot the horrible time I had building my original mortal slaanesh army over the last 2 years (my slaanesh warriors of chaos from fantasy don’t count apparently!) boy was I bought back to reality fast. Blissbarb archers and seekers will forever be my Vietnam! Cue fortunate son playing in the background as I build blissbarbs whilst flashing back to the last time I built them.

Going forward into next month I’m going to aim to paint my entire vanguard box now that it’s all built and I only had 36 flashbacks and ptsd meltdowns but hey, at least I didn’t shoot Chris Kyle am I right? I’ll be pushing for painted eyes and make up along with the old school method of painting gems and maybe even an attempt at peacock feathers for the arrow flights.

Until next month stay sexy you cute mother fuckers xoxo Gossip Griff