Full of class, it's Masterclass!

Last weekend I was fortunate enough to attend a masterclass with Mathieu Fontaine,(http://www.akaranseth.com/) the multiple Golden Daemon winner. I'll be going back next weekend for part 2 (we're working on a Helion's board with an airbrush!  that'll be my Baron conversion!)


It was a good experience and I feel I learned a fair bit, despite losing two hours on Sunday due to some scrote gluing the locks on the building we were using! I found I already knew much of the painting theory, although I wasn't aware that I did, which was pleasing. It was just stuff I'd worked out for myself over the last 20 years of painting without thinking about why it was so. Now I understand why I feel happier about undertaking more ambitious projects, so it was money and time well spent.


Mathieu had us work on an Ogre figure over the weekend where the aim was not to finish the figure but to use certain techniques on the cloth, skin and metal. We worked through blending (very useful), True Metal Metallics (something that will help me no end with bladed weapons) and flesh. 


While much of what we learned is too slow for army painting, some of the techniques are great for working on the character models in my armies, so I'm very glad I went, and I'm looking forward to the next session. I'll leave you all with some pics of the Ogre I painted..the mistakes are all mine and not a reflection on Mathieu's teaching! The photos are a little over exposed again as I struggle to get good lighting in my apartment.

Apocalypse Now?

Now? No, the weekend just gone! And what a game it was, crazy reserve deployment, drop pods landing all along 2 table edges, asteroids striking the Imperial tank park and Dark Eldar characters so tough you have to take them out with a Volcano cannon! I've written up the battle as I remember it (and I'm sure I'm confused over what order things happened in the later turns!) on a couple of sites: Apocalypse 40k and The Dark City so I won't repeat that here. I will just link to the picture of my army from the game:

Thanks again to Gamestars for giving us the opportunity to play this game, and to the players involved who helped make it a great day!
Blogging frequency should return to normal now though as I've ploughed though a boat-load of my Dark Eldar for that battle so I don't need to spend hours paiting purple each night, and I can get back to moving things from WIPs to a finished state. Here are a couple of the DE vehicles I painted for the Apoc game (I took several other photos of the things I completed, but many were badly focused so I'll retake them and post them up at a later date).

Raven and Reaper

It's too quiet...

Yep, nothing much up here last week despite having left several unfinished projects having in half blogged limbo. Fear not intrepid reader, as I haven't abandoned them , I've just been painting more Dark Eldar as we've been invited to put on an Apocalypse game, by the store that supports one of the game clubs that I attend (The A-Club). For those that are in the Vancouver area, the store is GameStars in Langley BC, http://gamestars.ca/ who will be having their Open House this coming weekend (18/19th Feb). They are a very friendly store, well equipped with tables and gaming space and who have great prices; who could ask for more of their FLGS? Event details are on the web at http://www.facebook.com/#!/events/229219350493657/

This means that I have the rest of this week to complete several vehicles 4, including 2 still on the sprue, and a couple of figures. I think I can manage it, and the armies and game should give me material for another blog post next week - it's awesome sauce all round.

I've leave you all with a couple of pictures of one of the Grotesques I completed over the weekend, it's a Ratogre with bits left over from my Paulson Bioterror models and some green stuff.

The Weekend's Over!

What did I get done? Not as much as I wanted if I'm honest, something happened yesterday that annoyed me greatly and I've found painting when otherwise distracted is never a recipe for success. On the plus side I did manage to get some Army Painter primers, and have started on my next 3 old style Raiders/Ravagers for our big Apocalypse game in 2 weeks. With the spray it's so much easier, although I do need to then use 2 washes to match the GW purple on my other vehicles. In addition to this I got more Kabalites moved along the batch queue along with Drazhar, and because my basing paint was mixed up, I also finished the basing on a Warp Spider I started back in July!

Perhaps the thing that most excited me though, was the chance to do a test miniature for my Craftworld Eldar. The Dark City is opening a sub-forum for Craftworld Eldar and will require content to help get the ball rolling - what better excuse to get my thoughts on my Craftworld, named Mai-Bai (perhaps it's not!) pinned down, than a test scheme? The model is a little rough still due to the fact I used a Guardian bought second hand and it had been primed a little thickly with a cheese based spay apparently. I wanted to see how well it took washes, and the answer is badly so I'll be striping the others from the batch. In a future post I'll lay out the fluff for the Mai-Bai craftworlders, in the meanwhile here are the colours:

I did start some cleanup work on the Mortian tank too, but nothing worth photographing. The arrival of my Secret Weapon Miniatures 6x6 may push the tank back in the queue as it's far more tempting! The model is pretty cleanly cast with only a large gate to remove on the nose, and that looks lile it will come off easily. There are some alignment issues on the tyres, with the beading completely out of whack at the bottom, which is a shame. I'll be grunging up the wheels, so hopefully that'll be disguised. Here's the picture of the parts laid out, I'll do a more detailled review in a few days.

Something for the weekend?

No, not the question from the barber..but what arrived yesterday in my mail. Obviously no-one will guess what it was, so I won't ask you to, I mean I could but that would be cruel and rather pointless wouldn't it?

A while back I ordered one of these:

It's a Mortian heavy tank from http://heavy-support.com/ (the picture is theirs too) and it is this that has finally arrived! (I'm quite excited and I had to fight hard not to squeal like a little girl when I saw the Deutsche Post markings on the package). I intend to use it as an AT83 for my Blood Pact army, with a datasheet based on a Macharius.

Here it is on my display board with all the pieces laid out:

The casting quality is very good, almost no air bubbles, but there are some large gates that need to be removed, so this is probably going to take the most time to clean up.

I will definitely make a start on this at the weekend, but Dark Eldar has to take priority as I have now just 2 weeks to paint up 4-6 vehicles, and Raider based vehicles always take me ages!

Oh here's the next iteration of the Onager datasheet..rules are sorted now, but points are still a little high. From the feedback I've recieved it should be somewhere between 160 and 175.

Big Momma's Tank (2)

It's the sequel and Martin Lawrence is nowhere to be seen! Last night I shunned sleep again to get this project wrapped up and in the end I opted for regular doors (to save time and money) and painted up an unarmed cupola which has just been push fitted on for now. I suspect I'll swap this for one with a twin bolter later, and use the painted cupola on a regular Rhino or Predator, but I needed a completed shot for my datasheet.

Here's the finished article:

and here's the datasheet (2.0), we're still working on the firing rules for this (my gaming buddies and the guys at Apocalypse40k forums) so expect  at least one more revision, possibly tonight.