Malisteen's Army Log: 5/16 Drakenhof Templar

[Sception]

I agree the verdigris was too much and have dropped it. While i might throw a brown wash on some of the metal, however, any red or orange or even especially warm browns will be avoided, i think, as i want to keep warmer tones out more or less altogether

 

[Banat]

TBH on my skellies armour and weapons I've done them leadbelcher with a wash of agrax, done and done. Plain and simple.

 

[Sception]

Right now im looking at p3 pig iron, similar to leadbelcher, then a black wash, edge highlight w chainmail, and a green wash around where the metal is near the ethereal bits, diluted 50/50 w medium. Its changed from the last test model in the addition of the highight and dilution of the wash. I may add some brown wash, either in addition to or mixed w the black wash, but honestly a fairly monochromatic army with spots of color only around the characters and a few other individual models is pretty key to the overall look Im going for.

Not exactly a curse of beers look, since i cant pull off that sort of light source shading or moonlit effect, but something inspired by that in terms of limited pallate, to achieve a sort of ghostly, unnatural, necromantic look - something basically as far as possible from my old vamp army, which looked like they were marching to war in broad daylight.

 

[Banat]

curse of beers?

 

[Sception]

CoB painted a spectacular moonlit army with light sourcing from torches & glowy bits. I cant pull off the look at all, but part of what i liked about it was the very limited color use. For the most part the models were red/orange where lit by torches, green/yellow where lit by magic, and almost greyscale otherwise, with only very subtle hints of color.

some examples of their stuff:

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k242/curseofbeers/Vampire Counts Mar 08/IMG_0333.jpg

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k242/curseofbeers/Vampire Counts Mar 08/IMG_0335.jpg

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k242/curseofbeers/Blood Dragons Sept 07/CIMG1941.jpg

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k242/curseofbeers/Vampire Counts May 08/IMG_0424.jpg

again, i cant pull off any of that light sourcing or subtle colors, so im not really aiming for anything that actually looks like his stuff, plus i want to keep red/orange out altogether, but i do want to keep to a very minimal range of hues.

 

[Sception]

Well, progress has been excruciatingly slow, due to a busy schedule with work and classes leaving me with little to no free time. I have finished assembly on one block of 40 zombies, and another of 30. The remaining block of 40 still needs left arms. I'll mess with pictures once the lot is ready for basing.

In more exciting news, the local hobby store recently had a trading post day, and I was able to exchange some chaos marine and lord of the rings stuff for:

1) One box of opened but unassembled & still on sprue crypt horrors/vargheists

2) one corpse cart driver, to convert into a necromancer.

3) One pewter Casket of Souls, currently soaking in simple green to strip the paint

4) One pewter Tomb King/Prince with great weapon, fresh from the paint stripping process:

(this is the only picture I'm bothering with today)

5) $100 in credit at the local game store.

The big question I have right now is what to do with that store credit. Current contenders are:

- Another box of horrors/gheists, in order to field two units of 3 gheists, or one of six horrors (not sure which?)
- two more boxes of horrors/gheists, to instead field one block of 8 horrors, or 2 of 4 gheists?
- a mortarch (I so don't need one but damn if they aren't cool)
- a box of grave guard, to get them up to a four rank horde to accompany vlad and the tomb king
- a second mortis engine, on account of it's basically my favorite VC model, and it works best in pairs
- more characters, replacing current old stuff with new necro, wight king, banshee, or lich priest
- two boxes of fenrisian wolves, to replace my dire wolves with models I like more
- a box of the new morghasts, which I quite like.
- a box of black knights, to get my bus up to 15 without mixing in old conversions
- two boxes of hex wraiths, on account of they're cool and I don't have any

Alternatively, I could up my core allowance, which currently sets the limit on my maximum army size:
- four boxes of skellies, for another block of 40 spears
- four boxes of mantic skellie archers, for two blocks of 20

Either of those could get me up to 1000 points of core for 4k max army size, but they would eat the entire budget.


I'm not sure which way to go at the moment. Right now I'm leaning towards two more boxes of the VC monstrous infantry, though I don't know whether I'd assemble them as horrors or gheists, and I doubt my magic molding abilities will be sufficient to make both (though I'll certainly try), since monstrous infantry is one thing I don't have much of yet, and I did get the three already. But four boxes of skeleton warriors or mantic archers to get me up to a legal 4k points is also quite tempting, as is upping the grave guard to a proper horde of 40.... so I just don't know.

 

[lord marcus]

you know, thats the one king model of the 5 or so variants they made i never bought. I regret it now.

 

[Alastor]

I don't like tomb king aesthetics but that one model always looked cool to me. Get painting!!!

 

[Duke Danse Macabre]

Don't need to "quote curse of beers" to me, I have some of that exact stuff.

Assuming you have already parted with your store credit before it burned a hole in your pocket.

Now as you say you are going for a similar effect to that old force I need to ask are you intending to use a airbrush or not before i start suggesting themes and ways so capture the same look.

 

[Sception]

Not a similar effect, so much as also using a limited pallate, and thus not wanting to stray much from the black and green. I have tried many times for the actual moonlit effect, and been unsuccessful. It is, sadly, beyond me.

A far better example of what I'm actually going for, which I failed to think of at the time, is the army of the dead from lord of the rings:

Actually, these black knights I found google searching 'warhammer ethereal army' are very much the effect I want to go for for the entire army, if perhaps somewhat darker metals:

That. That's what I want. A cool distinctive effect I can actually do, with an extremely limited pallate so I can put some effort into the colors I do use without taking forever. Maybe without the snow bases. Or maybe with, I kind of like that, too, now that I'm looking at it.. Maybe I can find who did these and ask them how they were done.

 

[Sception]

Started fidgeting with that casket of souls I traded for:

The guards are going to go on the side platforms. I'm not sure yet whether I'm going to use the guards that come with it or a couple of great wep grave guard or something else. I'd prefer grave guard, but I don't exactly have spare guard models. I suppose I could try to steal back the gargoyles that normally go there from a CSM conversion they're currently decorating, but it's probably ruin the model they're on already...

Not sure what else I'll do on the base. Maybe build it up with some of that epoxy stuff Infernal Skull used on his fancy terrorgheist base?

 

[Sception]

You may recall my old necromancers from the inventory post:

Well, forget those guys! Those guys are old news. Now I've got some new casters collecting bone for my undead legions:

Yeah! New style necros, hero on the left, lord on the right, with some bits swapped in from the empire wizard sprue to get some of that undead legion big hat style! Still need to do some green stuff gap filling on the hero's cloak, but once that's done they'll be added to the growing pile ready for primer.

I'm working on getting a starter list together, somewhere between 1k and 1.5k. Once I do, and the lot of it is assembled, I'll start painting them all in a single chunk.


I did cash in the remainder of my aforementioned trade in, picking up a second box of vargheists/horrors (though I'm still not sure which I'm going to assemble them as or whether I'm going to try and use the remaining bits to convert stand ins for the other), the above necro, and I broke down and got one box of morghasts. I don't really feel they're what I need right now, but they're very pretty, and help with the undead legion theme, so... yeah. I'll be assembling them with the armored chest, and trying to make the helmets and weapons swappable so they can be run as either unit.

 

[Eternal Salvation]

Cool conversions. I especially like the skull coming out of the bottle! I want to do something like that with a skull coming out of a necro's hand.
I really like the subtlety of the conversion on the old necro on teh right with the scroll. I never liked that sculpt, but you've made it very nice

 

[Banat]

The skull coming out of the bottle is from the Empire Wizards kit. If you want to do a skull coming out of your necros hand, I would use the same thing, just clip it off at the join between the smoke and the bottle, et voila.

That Empire Wizards kit is utterly brilliant for necro conversions.

It's a pity the Generals kit isnt as useful for Vampires!

 

[Sception]

Oh, I don't know. I built one mounted vampire hero mostly out of an empire general kit, and the banner in the kit is gracing my current BSB model. So while it might not be as useful as the wizard kit, it's still got some great stuff in it.

 

[John Rainbow]

I've used the Empire wizard kit too. It is a particularly good one! Nice work using it.

 

[Eternal Salvation]

Hmm... I might pick one up to check it out, Banat. Though my first thoughts about how to do it were a little different. Your way would certainly be easier!

 

[Duke Danse Macabre]

Started fidgeting with that casket of souls I traded for:

The guards are going to go on the side platforms. I'm not sure yet whether I'm going to use the guards that come with it or a couple of great wep grave guard or something else. I'd prefer grave guard, but I don't exactly have spare guard models. I suppose I could try to steal back the gargoyles that normally go there from a CSM conversion they're currently decorating, but it's probably ruin the model they're on already...

Not sure what else I'll do on the base. Maybe build it up with some of that epoxy stuff Infernal Skull used on his fancy terrorgheist base?

Compensating for something are we.

Your necros are looking awesome mate, looking every inch a set of backstabbing degenerates and that's just how it should be.
Can't wait to see the finished force.

 

[Sception]

Thanks! I've got a mall starter army list written up in the army list forum. I think that's where I'll start painting. Still a bit to do model wise before then - I have to finish magnetizing my morghasts, and figure out a way to make their hats removable. maybe tiny magnets? I'm not sure I have any small enough that I could set them in the helmets...

Sadly, they don't rank up perfectly when holding their halberds. I'll have to be more careful with the next batch of them, to make them so they'll rank up with the current two, even when holding the pikes. But that's a ways off, I don't know when I'll have money for another $60 box of minis.

 

[Undying Scourge]

Coming along nicely Malisteen! Keep up the infernal work, for the glory of Nagash! Remember, we all serve the Master now...

 

[Sception]

Yes, we serve indeed.

I've been very busy of late, but I have managed to fit a couple hours of painting in each of the last couple fridays, and if I can turn that into a habit I should start to make some reasonable progress.

I actually have started with the zombies. I'm still feeling out the color scheme, but the whole monochrome green thing is, I think, working out pretty well so far. What isn't working so well is my camera lately, so I apologize for the poor quality pics:

The local GW store also does monthly painting challenges. November is 'paint a hero', so I've started on my master necromancer:

Obviously it's got a long ways to go. I'm trying to do the blendy green business from the GW nagash painting tutorial. It's coming along pretty well so far, I think, but it needs many more coats of the diluted green wash, then it needs black wash, and then highlighting.

Still haven't figured out what I'm doing for wood, metal, and other bits on these, but I'll work it out. Once the test batch five zombies are done, the rest should proceed pretty smoothly, if perhaps not particularly quickly.


I've also done a bit of modeling work - got a couple morghasts assembled w/ magnet weapons. Haven't figured out what I'll do with the helmets, and they need some greenstuff before they'll be primer ready as well:

I also got my tomb kings shields in the mail, and have glued a few to skeletons and black knights to see how they look:

I have to say, I'm pretty happy with them.

So, all in all, things are progressing slowly, but they are progressing. The local GW guy wants to run through the end times campaign, and I really want to get in on that, but I've got just a tone of painting to do if I'm going to make that happen. A more realistic goal might be to get together a mordheim crew, as that's starting up soon as well. We'll see.

 

[Adam_Barrow]

This is gunna be a really cool legion when it wraps. Good on you for having a plan from the onset. It's already paying off.

 

[Eternal Salvation]

Looking good! Keep it up!

 

[Sception]

I actually finished the first five test model zombies, apart from the bases, yesterday. I meant to take pictures and post them when I got back from the game store, but I actually forgot the models there. I'll swing back to pick them up today, and post some pics later.

I'm happy with the zombies themselves, but the bases are giving me fits. I'm using textured paint, and am going for a dark grey, but I've gone back and forth with a few colors now and it always seems too light or too dark, I'm having a very hard time getting it where I want it to be. And then I think I'll be adding patches of snow too, so I'm concerned that I'll finally get the grey where I want, only for it to then look wrong next to the white. But we'll see. That's why these are 'test' models, after all.

Once these five are where I want them to be, bases included, the next five will be about streamlining the scheme and making it fast enough to paint chunks of army at a time, and once they're done, I'll move from painting batches of 5 to painting all the zombies in a go.

 

[Sception]

Alright, got some pics:

As I said, I'm reasonably happy with the zombies themselves, might darken the staff of the farm implement a bit, but other than that pretty happy. The bases, though, not so much. Will probably start over from black with a cleaner drybrush, and a darker grey color for the trim. Focusing on basing methods will be next friday's task, I think.


............

I haven't made much progress on the master necromancer, but I have taken some better pictures of the work so far, since I had the camera out:

Long ways to go, but I like where it's headed so far.