First attempt at Non-Metallic Metal

So here is my first ever attempt at doing some Non-metallic metal (NMM) painting. Basically the idea is to use flat paints to achieve a metallic looking paintjob.

Most of the examples I found online were of swords or armor. It was really hard to find examples that other people had done where there were large flat surfaces so I wasn't really sure how to proceed. I spent about three hours just experimenting and trying different techniques and looks.

I experimented with several different styles on the spears in his quiver, most of which just don't look very good. These are ones that I'll definitely have to paint over and try again. I think the spearhead that I did for the one he is throwing came out much better than the ones in the quiver though.

For this spearhead I used a base coat of Shadow Grey. I then painted the edges of the spear with Ghostly Grey. Then I blended in Ghostly Grey and Shadow Grey for the rest of the spear, with a lot of Ghostly Grey on the top part of the spear. This is because I was assuming that light is coming from above him and so would make the top surface very bright and reflective.

For the side of the spearhead, I blended the bottom half to a mix of Chaos Black and Shadow Grey, so that the bottom side would look darker the further away from the light it was. I noticed that a lot of people that do NMM greys have this effect on their armor pieces so I tried to replicate it here.

Then as a last touch, I took some Ghostly Grey and "steaked" it across the top side of the spearhead, at a slight angle to try and get the reflective effect going. I think it's getting closer to what it should be, but it's still not looking right. I'll probably try hitting up the forums and seeing if anyone has any more tips for this specific mini.

I think maybe something that might help would be to highlight the edges again in skull white to really bring out the edges. I'll probably give that a try tomorrow if I have some time.

On a side note, there's a Hordes Coin tournament tomorrow at GameKastle, but I think I'm going to pass this time as I've got tons of real life work to get done, and I'm still really slow in finishing my moves...I don't think I'd make a good fit yet for the tourney scene. There's another one next month though that I'll try to make it to.

Impaler Skin and Chickens Done

I finished the Impaler's skin today...including his face (but not his eyes yet). I think it came out well and am pleased with the results. I also finished the chickens he has tied to his belt, but they don't quite look right...they don't really look like they're natural. I looked at a photo of our Thanksgiving turkey and I think I need more yellow splotches on it...it's just too evenly cooked the way it's painted.

I also started painting the spear tips...but but stopped because I'm debating whether I should use this opportunity to try doing some really simple non-metallic metal. I've never tried it before, but the best way to learn is to just try so I think I'm going to give it a shot...if it doesn't work out, well I'll just paint over it again. :)

The Trollbloods get burned, but live to tell the tale!

My Trollbloods faced their second battle against Menoth tonight. Once again, I played against Broken Zealot, though this time at 500pts. It was a really close game, and could have gone either way many times through the game. No deployment map this time, but it was fairly basic...I set up most the same as my last game. I'm also fairly hazy on the Menoth details, especially with the spells, but I'll hit the highlights.

The army lists:

Menoth Forces
Feora
Castigator
Devout
Revenger
Knights Exemplar
Paladin of the Order of the Wall
Vilmon
Senechal
Wrack x2

Trollbloods
Doomshaper
Dire Troll Mauler
Dire Troll Blitzer
Troll Impaler
Troll Axer
Fell Caller
Kriel Stone Bearer (min.)

The Battlefield
The battlefield was pretty balanced, with each person having a hill on their side, and each person having a forest. There were also a few low walls, distributed around the battlefield, but those didn't really come into play during the game. Actually not much of the terrain saw much use today besides the hill closer to my side.

Turn 1 Trolls
I mostly moved forward with the Blitzer and Impaler leading the way onto the hill. Mauler and Axer on my left flank, and KSB, Fell Caller, and Doomshaper bringing up the rear.

Turn 1 Menoth
The Menoth army surges forward, everyone pretty much running. What scared me was Vilmon being able to go into the Impervious Wall form and then running forward with the Paladin behind him making him immune to knockdown and invulnerable to everything except magic. Yikes! This really freaked me out because I only had one magic attack that did any damage, but it was only a POW 12 attack. I have imaginings of this guy tearing through my army, an invincible wrecking ball.

Turn 2 Trolls
With only one spell that could hurt Vilmon, I took a deep breath, cast the spell Accursed.....and killed him with a boosted damage roll that was pretty big! Woo! Then the Axer charges the Paladin and kills him. The Impaler I think slams the Castigator back through the Senechal, knocking them both down, and the Blitzer's chain gun does a bit of damage to the Revenger.

Turn 2 Menoth
The Knights Exemplar charge my Axer, but fortunately only 2 make it into contact. Even so, they take him down to about 1/3 life left. One Knight charges the Fell Caller and chops him to pieces. I think I forgot to attempt a tough roll here. Another Knight Exemplar charges toward the Blitzer trying to tie him up, but doesn't quite make it.

Feora arcs a spell through the Revenger and hurts the Impaler. The Revenger charges the Impaler and Blitzer and does a good amount of damage to the Impaler, who is now about 2/3s dead.

Turn 3 Trolls
The Axer regenerates some health and then does his Thresher special attack on the two Knights in contact with him, killing them both. The Mauler charges another Knight and eats him as payback for killing the poor Fell Caller last turn. The Impaler attacks twice and does some damage to the Revenger but can't remove any systems off it. The Blitzer then grabs a hold of the Revenger with both hands, and chucks him over at the last Knight, killing him and damaging the Revenger more.

Turn 3 Menoth
The Castigator charges the Blitzer, and does a fair amount of damage to it, but doesn't kill it. He has some special attack though and kills the Impaler. The Seneschal run around the hill and tries to get a bead on Doomshaper. Feora Arcs a spell through the Revenger at the Axer and almost kills him, but thanks to the KSB, the Axer's extra armor saves him from death. Things are looking kind of grim now for the trolls.

Turn 4 Trolls
The Blitzer throws the Castigator off the hill, doing some damage to it, then opens up with his chain gun and hurts it some more while it's knocked down. Doomshaper blasts the Seneschal with troll power, killing him outright, and saving himself from certain death. The KSB and crew charge the Revenger to stop it from casting spells and also keep it from charging Doomshaper. They plink the Revenger for some minor damage. The Mauler moves up some, and the Axer regenerates.

Turn 4 Menoth
Feora moves up and feats, catching everyone in her flames. The Revenger tries to kill the two scribes in contact with it, but I make two tough rolls. Yes! Feora does some damage to the Axer with spells also I think.

Turn 5 Trolls
One scribe dies to fire. Doomshaper takes huge amount of damage from fire too...I think around 10 damage, which I have to transfer to the Mauler. ow! Ow! OW! Two more scribes take damage from fire but make their tough rolls, and the Axer almost burns to death too. He's hanging on by a thread at this point (2-4 hp left on him now). He Regenerates some of it back.

The Blitzer slams into the Devout, knocking it into Feora, doing a good amount of damage to the Devout, and I think two damage to Feora. The Axer charges the Devout and finishes it off with three attacks. The scribes get up and plink at the Revenger some more. Doomshaper moves away from the Castigator slightly and casts Accursed on it, doing some damage. He then pops his feat.

Turn 5 Menoth
Feora runs far away with her weird machine speed spell (?). The Castigator moves up onto the hill. The Revenger kills two more scribes. Feora sits on her focus since Doomshaper feated last turn.

Turn 6 Trolls
The fire goes out on Doomshaper and the Axer, but the Blitzer and Mauler take more fire damage, bringing them to about 1/2 and 1/3 health respectively. The last scribe burns to death, and I think the KSB burns to death at this time also.

The Axer walks into Melee and finishes off the Revenger in true Axe-wielding maniac fashion. Doomshaper moves back again away from the Castigator and casts a big Accursed spell on it, finally destroying it. Whew. That was a big sigh of relief because there was now nothing between the Castigator and the old man.

Now seeing only Feora on the board, I make a really dumb mistake. I try to go for the caster kill with my Blitzer and Mauler. The Mauler moves into charge range for next turn, and the Blitzer charges in. Unfortunately, the charge takes the Blitzer out of Doomshaper's control area. DOH! So now I can't force for extra attacks, or boost to hit. Which means I miss both my attacks. Ah well, how much damage could she do in melee anyway.

Turn 6 Menoth
Well to answer that, Feora does a little sidestep around the Blitzer to get out of range of the Mauler and proceeds to drop the Blitzer in two hits. DOH!

Turn 7 Trolls
We decide to play out the rest of the game. To the death! Watching the Blitzer get killed so quickly makes me bring back the Mauler closer to the Axer and Doomshaper. I take this time to heal up some. I think Doomshaper is safely screened behind the Axer and the Mauler. WRONG!

Turn 7 Menoth
Feora moves up and uses her flame throwers on Doomshaper. One hitting for 5 damage, which I take, and another hitting for 7 damage. I think about transfering this damage, but then decide to just take it and save my fury for a kill next turn. Doomshaper lives with 3 hitpoints!

Turn 8 Trolls
Doomshaper moves slightly to get line of sight on Feora and casts Accursed on her twice, but fails to hit with one (on three dice!) and does very little damage with the second which does hit. It's up to the beasts now. The Mauler charges in, hits her with his first meaty fist, and then picks her up and eats her with his second meaty fist! (Had to boost both attack rolls). Go Mauler!

Conclusion
That was a nail biter of a game, that really went the distance. It could have gone either way at several points, and while I jumped out to an early lead, Feora's feat really leveled the playing field as my Trolls just could not put out their fires. Stop, drop, and roll guys! The fire and spells accounted for more damage than anything else from the Menoth side I think.

I also totally underestimated how incredibly awesome a Warcaster is when fully loaded up on focus. Ouch. I guess I'm just used to thinking of my caster as a real pushover, but that's definitely not the case with warcasters. It was pretty scary seeing her drop the Blitzer in two hits after buffing herself up. So much so, that I pulled back the Mauler to regroup for a round.

My MVP this game is really hard to pick...it's either the Blitzer, the Axer, or Doomshaper.

The Blitzer was key in doing a couple key two handed throws at very critical times. Between him, the Impaler, and Doomshaper the Castigator only got in one round of combat. He also threw the Revenger into a Knight that had a charge lane to Doomshaper, which probably would have ended the game there if he didn't do that. Not to mention the slam on the Devout, which set up the Axer for the kill.

The Axer. What can I say about him. He just would not go down, and kept dishing out the pain. He accounted for two Knights, the Devout, the Revenger, and the Paladin. He was an awesome killing machine, and with armor of 20 with the KSB, he was really hard to hurt and kill. If he did get hurt, he could get some of that back with regeneration and healing from Doomshaper.

Lastly, old Doomshaper. The spell of the day was Accursed. He killed the Paladin, the Seneschal, and the Castigator, as well as helping to keep the Castigator locked down a lot of the time. Without him, those enemies would have made short work of my army.

In the end, while the Axer did a ton of damage, I think I'd have to go with the Blitzer as my MVP - those throws and slams were just so key, and saved me on two occasions from a loss. The least useful part of my army is a lot easier. The Fell Caller. This guy did nothing, and died before he really got to do anything. Though that's mostly my fault for moving him poorly and letting him get charged by a knight. 4 dice on damage is not good.

Things that didn't work well:
One is remembering to rile my beasts in the early phases...there were a couple of turns I forgot to generate enough fury, so I didn't have any to leach the following turn. That could have been disastrous. Luckily, I didn't need the fury as badly on those turns, but it certainly could have gone the other way too.

Another is using my Fell Caller more effectively...I'm just not sure how this guy fits into my army yet...I certainly didn't get to see what he could do since he died so early. Lastly, don't charge a warcaster that is out of your control radius. :)

Things that really worked well:
I'm starting to get the feel that my Trolls really play better as a punch/counter-punch type of army. Keeping the Mauler in reserve to help clean up really seems to help. For example, using the Axer to charge first, then take the hits on him from whatever charges it, then counter charging with the Mauler and cleaning them up. He's got the ability of "whatever you have me charge will die" which is really really good for counter charges.

Additionally, I found that by keeping my forces relatively close, and using throws and slams to space out the opposing forces, works really well together to concentrate most of my army against a small portion of the enemy. This is where I'm really loving the Blitzer...he's able to two hand throw big nasty things away, and he can hold down one flank by himself or with the help of an Impaler by throwing and slamming things away. Meanwhile the rest of my army can focus on killing on the other flank.

All in all, another fun battle, this one much more exciting than the last, which bodes well for the future :)

Fallen off the wagon a bit...

Ok, so I admit having fallen off the wagon a bit in terms of doing some amount of painting each day. Last week was a really slow week due to school and also a seminar on startups at Stanford I had to go to.

But that's all in the past now, so I'll be back to painting a few hours each day now, and hopefully will have most of the Impaler done by next week. Actually I hope I'll have a good amount of him done by this coming Wednesday, which will be the next time I'll be heading in to the store for a game (I think).

Plus, I'm hoping that having done the Mauler's skin and gotten down the process for it, doing the skin on the rest of my army should go faster now.

Edit (2am): Finished a lot of the skin on the impaler. Only one hand and his face left to do in terms of his skin. Yay! I feel good about how it came out and it's in the same style as the Mauler. Tomorrow (err I guess today) I'll do his face and armor pieces.

Finished Mauler Pics

Here's the Mauler all done (except the base flock and grass). But the painting is all done! Yay!

I ended up going with the grey rocks after all as I just didn't feel like re-doing all the rocks. I'll probably try touching them up some at a later time.

All in all, though I'm pretty pleased at how he turned out, and I really like the bright color scheme as it really stands out from most other armies.

Below is a pic of the right arm rocks. I'd say I'm about 60-70% of my satisfaction. Definitely still want to touch them up when I come back to flock and add static grass to the base.

Up next, the Impaler! I've already started base coating his skin, so I'll have pics up of the skin once it's done.

Mauler finished!

Finished all the rocks and base. I think I will not seal him yet though as I really want to come back to him at the very end of painting my army, and improve him even more once I'm finished with the rest.

Pictures tomorrow, Impaler is up on deck next to be painted!

Trial by fire - Menoth invading our Ancestral Homelands!

I got to play my first Hordes game this afternoon, and it was a blast! I was able to play against Broken Zealot, whom I met through this blog incidentally, at GameKastle. I wanted to bring my camera along, but forgot at the last moment, so I couldn't snap any pics of Broken Zealot's really nicely painted Menoth army. I love the purple and white theme (very similar to my Menoth test theme!) As one of my friends likes to say, "Great minds think like me!" Hah! Yea right :)

I had thought that we were going to play a 350pt game, so that's all I brought along. I must have misread his email though cause he thought we were playing 500pts! Doh! He pointed down quickly though, and we started our game soon after.

I'm thinking about writing this up in short story format, but then again maybe it's best that the world isn't subjected to my crappy writing (more than it already is anyway). Below is a map of what our battlefield looked like which my wife drew up quickly in paint (yes, I also have horrible paint skills):

Menoth Forces
Severius (S)
Revenger (R)
Vanquisher (V)
Choir x6? (C)
Knights Exemplar x5 (KE)

Da Trollbloods
Doomshaper (D)
Dire Troll Mauler (M)
Axer (A)
Impaler (I)
Krielstone Bearer x4 (KSB) (SS)



I won the roll to deploy first or second and opted to deploy second. Why? I'm not sure really. I just wanted to hopefully get a first turn thrown spear shot in.

Menoth Deployment: From my left to right there was the Vanquisher, then the Revenger, with the choir and Severius behind. The Knights Exemplar were in a line facing me, on the right most flank.

Trollbloods Deployment: From my left to right I had Axer, Impaler, Mauler, and behind them and slightly more to the right I had the Krielstone Bearer and crew and also Doomshaper.

In front of me was a pretty huge hill (closer to me than Broken Zealot's side), and to the left of the hill there was a patch of rough ground. I was hoping to get up on the hill first and hopefully get one or two turns of shooting with the impaler. I'm worried about the masses of people he has compared to my relatively low model count army.

Turn 1 - Menoth
Pretty much everything runs forward with the exception of Kreoss. The Knights Exemplar run up the right side of the board toward the hill, but take cover along a low wall first, about in the middle of the board. Severius casts some buffs, I think Eye of Menoth and Holy Vigil and that's the end of his turn.

Turn 1 - Trollbloods
I walk my Impaler onto the hill, he casts his animus on himself, and then finds out that everything is still out of range by just a tad. So he throws his spear menacingly through the air. The Axer runs but stays below on the left side of the hill, in between the rough terrain and the hill. The Mauler runs onto the hill also, to the right of the Impaler.

Doomshaper moves forward some, casts fortune on the Impaler, and transfers 4 fury onto the Krielstone bearer. The Krielstone bearer and crew move up slightly and activate their protective aura.

Turn 2 - Menoth
The Menoth line advances, the Knights Exemplar move over and through the low wall and are getting dangerously close to my Mauler on the hill. The jacks both move up some, with the Revenger taking the lead. I'm please when I see the Revenger in range of the Impaler now and he's lined up nicely for a slam into the Vanquisher, but alas, the Choir chants the "No shooting" blessing on them. Rats.

Severius casts some damage spell at me through the Revenger's arc node, but fails to hit through horrible dice rolls and my Impaler also getting the +2 def bonus for being on the hill. He also buffs the Knights with +4 defense.

Turn 2 - Trollbloods
Krielstone bearer and crew move onto the hill and keep the aura going. Doomshaper moves onto the hill also and casts Fortune on the Axer. He also dispels the +4 defense on the Knights. They pass their command check. The Axer charges and slams the Revenger back into a Knight Exemplar and kills him, doing only minimal damage to the Revenger. The Mauler charges the Knights Exemplar, and gets into combat with two. He slaughters them and is now out of combat. The Impaler throws a spear at the Knights and skewers one.

Turn 3 - Menoth
Severius puts 2 focus on the Vanquisher, puts up Eye of Menoth, has the Choir chant +2 damage and to hit, and then unloads on the Mauler with the Vanquisher gun. He boost and rolls huge on the damage something like 31 or 32 total. Thank goodness for the 18 armor on the Mauler, else he'd have been fried to a crisp! Sadly, I find out that the Mauler was out of range of the Krielstone. Doh! As it was, the Mauler loses one aspect, Mind, and most of his Spirit.

Then the last 2 Knights Exemplar move in to finish off the Mauler. Lucky for me they just barely don't do enough to kill him, I think he had 4 hit points left! His Spirit and Mind are both gone now.

The Revenger gets up and moves next to the Vanquisher.

Turn 3 - Trollbloods
The Impaler throws a spear at the Revenger and hits for some slight damage. Still no slam! And I've boosted every shot so far. Ah well. The Axer charges in and Slams the Vanquisher away. Then he forces an extra attack on the Revenger, boosts the damage and destroys his shield arm, but the Revenger is still up and active.

Doomshaper casts Fortune on the Mauler, heals one point in each spirit and mind, and then lets the Mauler loose. The Mauler proceeds to tear up the two remaining Knights using only 1 more fury and eats them as a snack, regaining 6(!) health. He then forces himself to regenerate another 2 points. He's now back in action!

Krielstone bearer and crew move up some, sitting on top of the hill now.

Turn 4 - Menoth
I'm a bit hazy on this round, but I think this is what happened. Choir does the +2 damage/hit chant. Severius gives 3 focus to the Revenger and moves away from the Mauler and behind the Choir. The Revenger then goes Balistic on the Axer, doing tons of damage to it and kills the Axer in two hits. Ouch! Oh, and the Axer was just out of range of the Krielstone Bearer. Yup, I suck at moving these guys apparently. If he had been in range he might have lived.

The Vanquisher stands up, but is now out of range of the Mauler.

Turn 4 - Trollbloods
The Mauler charges the Revenger and scraps it easily with 2 hits. I then forget to regenerate him some more this turn. Doh! Krielstone bearer and crew move up behind the Mauler, near the low wall. Doomshaper follows them, casts Far Strike on the Impaler.

The Impaler hurls his spear at the Vanquisher with all his might and finally slams it back 2", right into a Choir member. No damage is done to the Vanquisher, but the Choir member gets crushed.

Turn 5 - Menoth
Severius puts 2 focus on the Vanquisher and fires off a salvo at the Dire Troll. He hits, but rolls horribly for the boosted damage, only doing 2 damage, helped out by the Krielstone. I think Severius may have also tried casting Ashes to Ashes on the Dire Troll, but failed to do much damage. Choir and Severius shuffle around some.

Turn 5 - Trollbloods
Mauler and Impaler move up. Impaler misses with his spear at the Vanquisher. That's about all that happened this turn. We're now fighting along the long way on the board...with the Menites on the left side, and the Trolls on the right. Doomshaper casts Dissolution again to get rid of Eye of Menoth, uses his Feat (I actually forgot to do this, though I had planned to, but at the beginning of Broken Zealot's turn he let me have it go off as planned. What a stand-up guy!).

Turn 6 - Menoth
Severius feats, casts Eye of Menoth, puts 3 focus on the Vanquisher, and charges in. It uses it's circular strike hitting both the Mauler and the Impaler. Mauler takes some damage, but stays up. He's down two aspects now again.

Severius then does the sneaky sneaky attack by casting ashes to ashes on a choir member close to the Krielstone Bearer, a stone scribe, the Mauler, the Impaler, and but is out of range to Doomshaper (whew!). Dire troll and Impaler take no damage, but the Krielstone bearer and the scribe both take enough damage to go down. But amazingly, both make their tough rolls! Shifty eyes and ponderings about my weighted dice abound. :)

Due to Doomshaper's feat, the Vanquisher takes 3d3 damage, Severius also takes 3-4 damage.

Turn 6 - Trollbloods
Doomshaper heals the Mauler's damaged aspects casts Rage on the Impaler, and the Mauler, the champ as always, unloads onto the Vanquisher, scrapping it in 3 hits. The Impaler then walks over to Severius, boosts the hit roll, hits, boosts damage, and runs him through. Severius shish-kebab tonight!

Conclusion:

Victory for the Kriels!

All in all, a very enjoyable game. Broken Zealot was a lot of fun to play, and was very accomodating of my several screw ups and allowed me to go back and fix some of them. I think that I got really lucky in this game, as he really did roll badly with a few key rolls, as well as being just out of range of Doomshaper with Ashes to Ashes. Plus, I think he had really planned his list for a 500pt battle, so I got off easily. In his 500pt list he had a good helping of zealots which scare me to no end.

Things that worked out really well for me was constantly slamming his jacks away from me. There were several turns where they weren't really doing much, which was great for me. The MVP definitely goes to the Dire Troll Mauler though. He's brutal! The ability to heal him back to almost full after munching through the Knights was amazing. Just goes to show that fortune favors the painted. :)

I also really liked the tip that someone gave on the Privateer forums where you activate the fortuned model first, then activate Doomshaper, cast fortune on a new model, then activate that, effectively giving you two fortunes per turn which really helped quite a bit.

Things that I really need to improve on though is the positioning of my guys relative to the Krielstone Bearer. There were several times I overextended my beasts, and was therefore out of range of the aura. This could have saved my Axer. I also need to remember to use my feat when I actually plan to!

Another thing I noticed is that I never had any excess fury on the board after Doomshaper Leached. This is pretty encouraging since I can definitely field more beasts without worry. The problem with Doomshaper though was that he couldn't use most of his spells because they have such short range, and I was worried that he'd get blasted if he got too close.

Anyway, hopefully next week we'll be able to get in another game, this time at 500pts. I'm really excited by this first game and definitely want to play more now :) As a side note, I found out that Ray, the store owner also has a Trollblood army and seemed interested in getting in some games too. Plus, there was one other Everblight player there (sorry didn't get your name!) that would be playing more regularly also.

Exciting times, I hope more people will pick up Hordes now that they've seen the a cross-game battle.

Spines and Rocks and Paint! Oh My!

Yay, I really liked how his spines came out. Here's a super bright picture showing off the highlighting effects of the spines.

I went with a Black -> Red -> Orange blend. It's very J-pop like hah! But in all seriousness (well as serious as one can be talking about troll miniatures) I think I did pretty well getting a good transition, and it looks pretty sharp on the table. It's also slightly different from the standard red/black that a lot of folks do.

I started with Chaos Black, Painted about 2/3 of each spine with Scab Red. Did a second coat of Scab Red. Then I covered about half of each spine with Blood Red.



Next, I washed all of the spines with watered down Chaos Black.

And lastly I took about 1 part Golden Yellow, mixed with 2 parts Blood Red and highlighted the tips of the spines with that orangey-yellow color you see in the pics.

For the rocks, I'm still not so pleased with the results so far...I'm just not good at painting rocks...GRR!

I started with the Chaos Black basecoat, then highlighted with Shadow Grey, and then highlighted again with Ghostly Grey.





A lot of the rocks just don't look clean or realistic to me. I dunno...I just don't know what to do to make them look nicer. I'm going to ask on the forums and see if anyone has any tips. Blue Troll needs food badly! Err, rock painting lessons anyway.

In other news, I'm getting my first beatdown this Saturday at GameKastle against Broken Zealot's (have a link to his blog in the link section, check it out) Menoth. We'll be doing 350 points so it should be a good way for me to try and get the rules right.

I'm going to try and bring my camera along so I can take lots of pics and post up a battle report when I get back. Exciting times!

Fingernails and Toenails

Here is the pic of his fingernails. I tried to make them look really yellowed and nasty...like he'd been digging on the dirt with them and such for a very long time.

I think the effect came out pretty nicely...they look really grungy. Looks like I missed the inside of his thumbnail though as it doesn't look right...it needs more brown.

For the fingernails, I started with a base coat of Bleached Bone, then added a wash of Brown Ink. I then took very thinned down bleached bone, and using the fine detail brush, I added thin streaks of Bleached Bone over the brown washed fingernail. I made sure that you could still see the brown between the thin streaks of bleached bone.



And here are his toenails. I made them even more dirty looking since, well they are walking through mud and dirt day in, day out.

Same technique as before, except this time I didn't add any Bleached Bone over the wash and instead just did the "streaking" with a clean brush while the wash was still slightly wet.

Overall, I'm liking the effect. I definitely would not want to be the pedicurist that has to deal with those nails!

Tonight I'll be finishing up his spines and rock protrusions. I've given up on the "brown" rocks and will instead go with the grey highlighted rocks instead. I'm ready to "finish" this guy off and start on the next trollkin.

I put "finish" in quotes by the way because I really have a hard time calling a model finished. I will probably come back to this guy again after I've done the other models so that I can clean up all the tiny little details that I've either missed or messed up on.

Stuck between a rock...and uh...more rocks...

The cheesey titles for these entries continue! Ok, so I tried to work more on the rocks sticking out of him and just can't get the look right, like the one model on the box. I tried all sorts of browns and just couldn't get the right color. I may just have to go with the more standard grey-highlighted rocks that people ususally do. I really wanted to try those brown rocks though.
Plus, I found out today that my Snakebite Leather Brown paint has gone "flakey" on me. There are these tiny flakes of hardened paint floating around in it, which make it impossible to paint with now. :( This makes me sad because I've had this one bottle since the early 90s? Maybe late 80s. It came in my old school Orks and Eldar paint set I got when I first started painting GW minis back in the Rogue Trader days.

Ah well, I'm amazed that it's lasted this many years...it's probably older than a lot of people that play at the local GW store hah! The other paints in that set are still going strong though! Now if only the new GW paints would last this long.

Some positive news is that I've got the spines well on their way and they should be done tomorrow. So all that's left will be his base and those darn rocks...maybe I'll ask on the forums for some tips.

Sorry no pictures tonight...for some reason I can't pull the pics off the camera right now and it's really late, so I'm going to bed. :)

Troll Mauler Update - Fixing my mistakes...

So, looks like I may not be able to finish this guy this weekend. What looked like an easy task of finishing the rock protrusions from his skin has turned into a major undertaking. While painting the skin, I painted over several of the black rock protrusions sticking out of his skin. It definitely made blending the large skin surfaces easier, but now I'm paying the price.

I now have to paint black over all the places I covered in blue. Ugh. The problem is that I have to be really really careful not to get black paint onto the skin that the rocks are touching, which means I need to go in with the fine detail brush and carefully paint the border in black. There must be 40-60 of these little rocks all over his body that I need to paint over.

It took me about 2 hours today just painting these little rocks...and I still have to do the ones on his arms and legs. I just can't paint any more for today...my hands keep shaking when I try to keep going, so I think it's time to stop. :)

The good news is I've finished off his finger/toe nails and his loincloth, so this is pretty much all that's left besides his back spines. Also, I've got the rest of my army assembled, based, and primed, so I'll be ready to work on them once I'm done with the Mauler.

Mauler's Face, Take Two

Here's more work on his face. This work took me about an hour and a half. Most of that time was experimenting with the pink and cleaning up some mistakes I made while experimenting.

I've got his eyes done, and I think his teeth are coming along decently. I used Golden Yellow for the eyes. I wanted to have purple eyes, but it just didn't show up very well as his eyes are so small they're literally pin points.

I'll be cleaning up the space in between the teeth and possibly adding a bit more brow/yellow to make them all tartar covered and nastier. I definitely need some darker lines between each tooth to make them look more defined and clean.

Also, I think I finally got the correct shade of pink for the gums. It took me a ton of experimentation, but the color is finally right. I just need to highlight the edges a bit more and they should be set.

I think overall the face is pretty decent looking, but it could certainly be improved still now that I see it magnified. Especially the gums and teeth...it's a bit sloppy. The tusks though came out nicely and are a nice blend from tartar like yellow/brown to white at the tips.

For the teeth I used a base coat of Bleached Bone, washed with Snakebite Leather (the yellow/brown color) and then blended it up to skull white.

So all that's left now is to finish off the spines and rocks protruding from his skin and also his toe/finger nails. I'm really not looking forward to all those rocks, as I've covered some of them in blue skin color, so will have to paint black over them again before I can work on them some more. That's what I get for being sloppy I guess.

In your face sucka! (Well, his face anyway...)

Started his face today. It's coming a long decently, though I'm really having problems with the pink gums and tongue. For the gums I tried starting with Red Gore, and painted over that Blood Red.

Problem is, the black primer makes the red looks really dark.
So I tried the tongue, with a mix of 1/3 Blood Red and 2/3 white, but it just looks too pink now. I'm thinking maybe if I try to add some more blood red to the pink tongue and blend that in that maybe it will be the right tone. I'm also wondering if a really watered down flesh wash might do the trick, as it's actually pretty reddish-brown when watered down.

Also, the teeth really need a ton of thin coats to cover up the black. I'll have to keep working on those later, my hands were just getting too shaky toward the end of this painting session.





The facial skin I think is coming along pretty nicely though, which is definitely a plus. It looks a lot better in person where you can't see all these small errors magnified like 20X though.

The good thing though with these huge sized pics is that I can see exactly where and what I need to touch up and also what to leave as is.

Here's a pic of the left side of his face. It's a lot more rough than the right side, which is why I wanted to snap a picture of it. That way I can see the problems blown up and fix them the next time I paint.

I'll need to deepen the shadows, and the crevices, and also clean up the blending here.

Lastly, I'll need to blend his teeth with more brown toward the roots, and more white toward the ends. I'm really dreading this part because the teeth are so darn small. Especially his molars, which are currently only black (haven't even tried base coating them yet.

Anyway, things are moving along smoothly and I'm pretty positive I can have him finished up by the end of this weekend. Or at least, everything except the super fine detailing and cleanup I'll undoubtably have to do after I photograph the "final" paintjob.

Till next time!

Troll Shoulders Painted - Assembly of army done!

So I did some more work on the big guy. Here are his shoulders painted. Basically more of the same technique for blending. All that's left now are his legs, face, quills, and base. I'm pretty excited about finally finishing this guy off this week. It'll be my first fully painted model completed in a long long time (I think the last one I finished completely was done about 3 years ago).





I've also finished assembling the rest of my army, and based them. I'll probably prime them tomorrow since it should be warm and dry, perfect weather for priming.

Dire Troll Mauler - Baby got back! Big update!

Ok, so I did a fair amount of work on the Dire Troll Mauler's back today and a bit on Sunday. It's about 40-50% done now. Just need to smooth up the blending (I think I'm getting faster and better at it now, yay!) and finish off the rest of the surfaces, like his lower back.

I'm really liking the super bright blue color over the more standard darker colors other people use. I think the neon blue will really make the army stand out from the crowd when it's on the table.









Here's another picture of his back with less lighting...you can also see that I did some work on the left arm, and also the right arm.

The right arm I think actually looks better than the left, at least the blending I think is smoother and more natural looking.

Plus, the dark recesses are darker and so I think it looks more crisp and sharp.

I have a feeling I may have some trouble with his lower back. I always have a tough time shading and highlighting large flat areas, as I'm just not sure exactly how I'm supposed to paint the lighting on them.




Oh, in this picture you can also see some of the work I did on his left leg. Here's a closeup of that leg, and a bit of his lower back. Oh, and a glorious shot of his plumber's crack. Hah!

I think the leg and foot came out ok. Just a bit of touch up work on his foot is all that's needed.

The blending technique I used for all these parts was a "wet" blending. Where I start with a watery coat of darker blue paint. In this case, I start with Enchanted Blue. Then, while that coat is still wet, I add a little bit of Space Wolf Grey to my palette, throw it over the part I just painted, and swirl it around a bit so that it mixes in a bit. I repeat this a few times, slowly adding more Space Wolf Grey color until it is completely grey/white. As I'm adding the color and swirling it around, I cover less and less area with each pass.

The result is pretty much what you see in these pics.



Lastly, here is the right arm. I think it looks pretty nice so far.

I'll be finishing off the Mauler this week, hopefully by Sunday since I have a break from real life for a few days.

Look for a completed Mauler then!

Also, I've started assembling the rest of my warband, so pics of them later this week also!

Getting some gaming scheduled

So, amazingly, there are actually people following this rambling troll blog now! :)

I've had a couple people contact me about getting some gaming in around the San Jose area, specifically the local shop, GameKastle, or Endgame in Oakland. I'd love to start up some regular gaming as I think there isn't really anything going on at either store at the moment.

If anyone would like to get in touch with me, you can PM Zugbart through the Privateer Boards so that maybe we can get enough folks together to work out some sort of regular meeting time for some good ol' beat downs (of me most likely! :) ). Plus, it'd be a good way to start gearing up for the Summer release of Evolution and also the new Hordes/Warmachine campaign.

I imagine I'll have enough models assembled for a 500pt game in about 2-3 weeks, though obviously not fully painted at the rate I'm going.

PS. I am still waiting to get registered for the GameKastle boards so won't be able to post there for a while longer.

Got my copy of No Quarter #11

So, my copy of No Quarter Magazine #11 arrived today at the local game store. This is a great issue for anyone interested in Hordes, especially since they have a preview of the new warlocks and warbeasts coming this summer.

All I can say is, I will definitely be getting a Grim Angus and a Winter Troll. Grim Angus has a ton of movement control spells and special abilities that should allow the Trollblood army to really pick and choose where the fight will happen and who will be fighting.

The Winter Troll just looks awesome rules-wise. His animus is incredibly good. It basically freezes anyone that ends their activation within 2" of it (or whatever your warlock casts it on) for one round. I can definitely see throwing this on whatever I have in my front line and charging right into the fray. Anything that lives and doesn't kill what I have it on is frozen next turn.

Ohh, I just thought of something else. Slam oir knockdown something with one warbeast, then cast Accursed on whatever just got slammed so that all they can do is get up next turn. Then, walk another of my units with the frost animus right next to what was just slammed and Accursed. Instant freeze so that both of the beasts can now wail on them with autohits.

Anyway, I still have to read through the rest of the articles, but there looks like an interesting battle report as well as a pretty good modeling and painting article.

Definitely looking forward to the next issue already too. :)

A small update

Just a small update today. Worked a little bit in the Mauler's chest and arms. I think the chest came out pretty well. I also did the other side, but it basically looks the same also, so no point showing it in a separate pic. Though the top of his chest looks really blurry in the picture, it actually came out really nice looking in reality. I'll have to try to get a better picture of it later.

I'm going to try and finish off the arms tomorrow if possible, though I'm having a heck of a time getting them looking right to my liking. For some reason I just can't get a good blend on the arm muscles ... they always look unnatural.