Team Yankee Americans in Merdc scheme

  This is something I've only recently gotten in to, and am most of the way through painting my limited American force. The Merdc camo has been a bit of a pain, but has been worth it! Lovely miniatures to paint.

Flames of War painted allies

  A selection of images of my Flames of War allies. I recently got back into this, after a gap of over 10 years and have been thoroughly enjoying painting the miniatures!

Painting Challenge 2015 Part III - Reaper miniatures

At the start of this year I set myself the target of getting 200pts of miniatures painted. Part I of the painting challenge detailed how I would score this and Part II talked more about how I was managing to get so many miniatures painted in one go. The wonder of Quickshade! So far this year I've managed to get 130pts worth of miniatures finished. That's probably more than I've painted in the last 3-4 years combined and has been great as motivation. I find you go ages without painting a single model and then all of a sudden you get into that painting groove and can't seem to stop! My only problem is sticking with painting a single system to completion, rather than bouncing from one army to the next. I'm too easily distracted!

In the last month I got the Dwarf battle standard bearer, two slayers, four miners, ten longbeards, ten wild west cowgirls & eight civilians and the Norman church finished. Yesterday I finished my Runelord. Today I thought I'd talk about something slightly different, Reaper Miniatures. Their dwarf range has some brilliant models in it. Earlier in the year I got the mounted dwarf lord from there painted up and I have a small number of their other miniatures for other dwarf character types.

The models in general are more dynamically posed than GW characters. That's not to say I don't like GW dwarfs. The 1990s and early 2000s metal models are some of my favourite miniatures. It's just that adding a few Reaper models adds flavour to the army and brings models to the table that few seem to buy. They are slightly bigger than GW miniatures, but that just makes your heroes stand out even more!

As a bonus the Reaper miniatures are cheap in comparison, usually coming in at about $6. They have a huge range of other models and while some are a bit meh its easy to pick and choose from their nicer ones. Many of them can also be found on the UK and Irish eBay site.

Unfortunately not my work....

Dwarf battle standard bearer

After years of this model sitting in a box I've finally gotten him painted!

How the west was won

Continuing the wild west theme this week is some civilians from black scorpion.

These are the first resin miniatures from this manufacturer that I've painted. All my other models are the older metal ones. Having an inherent dislike for resin I've been presently surprised at the quality of these. Unlike other resin miniatures, such as finecast, these models had no air bubbles and were reasonably robust. They were also free of useless embellishments (skulls anyone) which meant a pretty quick painting time.

I didn't spend a huge amount of time (maybe 3 hours total) on these models as they are backdrop rather than gaming figures. But they turned out nice all the same

The Lovely Ladies from louisiana

Finally got my cowgirl posse painted up for Warhammer Old West. All of the models are Black Scorpion. While they are slightly larger than other Old West minis they are lovely. Especially the lovely ladies! They will be pitted against my Lawmen and Panzermonkey's Mexicans and Commanches. Sorry about the picture quality. The light was terrible!

28mm European Church

After seeing the 4 part post over at Shed Wars I felt inspired to embark on a similar, if smaller scale, project of my own. I haven't bought MDF scenery before and wanted something small to get stuck in to. Rather than going for the large awe inspiring petite properties church I decided to go for something that wouldn't quite overpower our gaming table. 

After searching the net I found a nice little MDF church on ebay for the paltry sum of 15 pounds, a bit cheaper than the 50 pound monstrosity over at PP. That's not to say the large church isn't a lovely model, it's amazing. The smaller one is much more affordable and manageable as a starting project at  10" long and 4 1/2" wide, excluding the doorway. Plenty big enough for small-medium sized table games and could easily be used to represent a Saxon or Norman church, or even be used up to WW2.

To Dip or not Dip? Painting Dwarfs. Painting challenge 2015 Part II

With the equivalent of nearly 70 models painted in the last 6-8 weeks I've been flying through the dwarfs. That's more models than I've painted in 2-3 years! It also means I have my one large dwarf Hail Caesar division finished for our big 4 a side game later in the year

It's mainly thanks to using the Citadel painting station in the evenings. It means I can sit next to the wife and chat away, rather than me sitting painting in my nerd shed. Firstly it means I can get a small amount done every evening. Secondly, and more importantly, it doesn't leave my wife feeling neglected (and then annoyed) as I spend days on end in the shed, a win for both of us.

The other main contributor to my painting speed is Army Painter Quick Shade, namely the dark tone. This has enabled me to concentrate on only base coats for the majority of models, rather than spending a large amount of time washing and highlighting rank and file models. It's worked out very nice on the dwarfs and I've even gone back over a large number of models I painted years ago. These have been touched up where I neglected areas (all their weapon handles and boots were left black out of sheer laziness) and I've also gone back over nearly every shield to brighten them up. I've also painted two character models, but these were painted using the 'old fashioned' method of painting, washing and highlighting. 

Regarding the quickshade. I don't 'dip' the models but rather paint it on using an old brush. I then go back over the model about 5 minutes later and remove a lot of the dip where it has pooled in places I don't want it too. I find otherwise it can go on a bit thick, even with shaking off excess. It also means less waste and your tub lasts longer. I then leave the models a minimum of 48 hours before applying Army Painter Anti-Shine matt varnish.

I've learnt from experience that it has to be warm when you spray the matt varnish to prevent clouding, don't do it in cold conditions. I've a fan heater in the shed I turn on for 10 minutes before I spray models to warm it up a bit. I also do only one side at a time and then leave them for 5-10 minutes between coats, otherwise I sometimes find that the varnish wrinkles as it's applied. While you can sometimes repair the clouding by subsequent varnishing (I paint on GW ardcoat and then spray matt varnish again. This seems to remove most of the clouding. Thanks to JustJohn for the tip!) you can't repair the wrinkling so be careful and, unlike me sometimes, patient.

Here's some sample pictures of what I've finished in the last few weeks. I've still got to go back and base all the miniatures with GW Mourn Mountain Snow and Army Painter Tundra tufts.

These miniatures are dwarf troll slayers that I have painted and dipped. The hair did get an orange drybrush over the red basecoat though to make it stand out. Also the skin got minor highlights to prevent it looking flat due to the large amount of it!

These 4 dwarfs are ones I painted about 6 years ago and are much brighter than the dipped ones. 

The one on the left is an older miniature, while the one on the right is the one recently painted and dipped. The older ones will be getting a dip coat later today!

A selection of the dwarf rangers. I've ten finished in total and ten to do

Some of the dwarf warriors. There are currently 65 finished and 50 left to do

15 out of the 20 hammerers were painted years ago using the older painting method, but have since been touched up and dipped. 5 have been just base-coated and dipped. There's 20 Ironbreakers finished too that need varnishing.

The one on the left is base coated and dipped while the one on the right is base-coated, washed and highlighted (and now dipped!). Up close you can see the difference but when in units they look pretty much the same. The main difference is the face.

One of 2 dwarf organ guns finished along with their crews

The recently painted dwarf characters. These were painted, washed and highlighted. The lord on the bear did get an additional coat of dip for protection as he's a bit top heavy.

Only about 100 more dwarfs to go until finished!

Reaper Dwarf Lord on bear

I've finally gotten around to painting my Dwarf Lord on his bear this week. Its a great model from Reaper Miniatures. I love some of the Reaper sculpts and have a few hero models for my WHFB Dwarfs. They stand out nicely without being out of scale and come in some nice poses, being generally more dynamic than their GW counterparts, which can be very static (but still lovely models). 

The base isn't done yet but the model is completely finished and just needs some varnish. He is going to look great as the commander of my Dwarf division for Hail Caesar Fantasy!

Painting challenge 2015 Part I

I'm terrible for getting models painted. I'd consider myself an above average painter. Not brilliant but decent enough. The main problem is my interest often bounces from one system to the next and I rarely finish painting one army before moving on. Like many gamers I own a large number of half painted armies, including the WHFB dwarfs I originally started 8-10 years ago. I find these days that working, having a 1 year old boy and a pregnant wife isn't helping my painting either! Last year I think I only painted about 20 models, and many of them were Space Marines for Skibbcon.

I've recently started getting bits and pieces done in the evening with the GW painting station on my lap and that seems to be helping, even if it is only a small amount done every night.

This year my goal is to get back to these armies and finish them off before I start any major new projects. First off I'm taking some advice I saw online about the best way to finish painting all your models. Stop buying new ones! Therefore this year I've a self enforced buying embargo in place. Will have to see how long that lasts though :-)

I think to see this through, with huge amounts of dwarf and orc and goblin miniatures to be done, I'm going to have to get the main infantry dipped and then concentrate on more detail for character models.

As we are planning to start playing Hail Caesar fantasy (hail Caesar using fantasy army lists) it's the turn of the dwarfs to get painted first. I'll concentrate on getting one division painted at a time. I may even go over some of the early Dwarf models I painted, back when I took up wargaming again after a 15 year break, and give them a coat of dip to add some shading!

The aim for 2015 is to get 200+ points of models painted with the scoring worked out as follows

Infantry 1pt

Medium sized model/scenery 2pts

Large model/ scenery 3pts

Very large model/scenery 5pts

Finishing previous year models 1/2pts
Retouching older models 1/4pts

So far this month I've gotten 40 dwarfs painted, although these were all half painted previously so only half points!

Painting Crimson Fists

The Crimson Fists are a popular chapter for space marines...and rightly so! They were on the original artwork for Rogue Trader back in the day and have one of the best back stories, with them being almost wiped out in recent history (galactically speaking) during the battle for Rynn's World.

Finished Assault Squad