Thanks Deke Stella!

You may have noticed my new banner for the ol' MPB. I just wanted to say, "Thanks!" to my good friend Deke of Soda Pop Miniatures fame, as well as this blog, for whipping it up for me. There is a lot going on for Soda Pop, including getting picked up by the Warstore and he is a busy guy.

I have been up to my eyes in building Slaanesh. Caught an awesome trade on Bartertown and ended up with a whole other box of Daemonettes as a bonus. I have been assembling a lot of Daemonettes and Seekers all the while cursing their contact points for gluing their arms on. I get why the models were cut that way, just me and my fat fingers hate it.

Should have everything I need for the Daemon list purchased as of Saturday. No more proxies for this guy. From there I will push through to build everything and start to get the paint brush going. The month of Tzeentch has seen little progress, and is threatened by a work trip I have to take, but I think the goal is still attainable. Must build faster!

Thanks for reading,
T

Tzeentch Models Underway

I have declared from now until the end of February Tzeentch Month. Technically Tzeentch Month has like 34 days, but hey, he's the Lord of Change, it's all crazy. I have set two goals for myself, on attainable and one a wish list.

Attainable Goal
5 Horrors with command.
6 Screamers.

My wish list is the Attainable Goal + 3 Flamers.

I kicked Tzeentch month off by basing the stuff I have, I still need 3 screamers but that will have to wait a few weeks.

From Mars' Project Blog

From Mars' Project Blog

Sorry about crap picture of Screamers, dunno what was happening there...

When I am easing into a project I tend to hunt-and-peck a little. Doing a little bit here and there on everything. I also started building the bases for 10 Bloodletters, but they aren't Tzeentch, so they get no coverage!

This multi-project thing works out pretty well, especially when you are base coating and shading with washes. I find that I don't do well waiting for paint to dry, even if I am standing over it with a hair dryer. Instead I will slop a coat on, as is the case for the Horrors, then work on something else. In the case of the horrors that is just the first of probably three coats I will need for good coverage.

Speaking of Horrors, I have been doing some step-by-step photography for them. I will be doing a few posts showing how I did them. It will be a kind of, "Here is what I did to paint mine," thing. Keep an eye out for it.

Thanks for reading,
T

Daemon Prince of Khorne, Mephiston Squasher?

I have always been kind of fan of Khorne, though that isn't too shocking. It seems everyone I know has, at some point or another, embraced their inner rawr and been enamored with the personification of unbridled rage.

After unintentionally painting a very Khornesque Daemon Prince I decided to have a look at Mark of Khorne for and possibilities having it created for the model. I should preface this by stating that my original intent with my princes was to run them cheap, just basically a 30 point shooting attack and that is it. Playing against my friend Mike's Dark Eldar started making me ponder the value of an armor save, and that kind of opened a flood gate. I started entertaining notions of fully loaded Nurgle and Slaanesh princes, but still never looking at the Khorne.

So then what was one to do when they ended up with an accidental Khorne prince? Take that karma and make karmacorn! Looking through my codex, the very first thing that stuck out was the Collar of Khorne. The mark was kind of exciting, in that it gave another attack, but nothing that made me jump up and down. The collar though...there is something there. I play against Mephiston a lot. And he tears up a lot of things...a lot. Enter my prince. With 6 attacks on the charge, a strength 7 shooting attack, and 2+ save against his force weapon, suddenly the rerolling, Str 10 Mephiston isn't as scary. The best part is, unless I roll really well I probably will not kill Mephiston until his assault phase, which prevents me from having to stand there getting shot in face while covered in Mephiston's gore.

Mephiston could well decide to stay away from my Khorne prince, but that is nice too. If I plant the prince amidst other things, well what isn't better off for not having that monster librarian threatening them? I hope to create a situation where it becomes a piece swap, and I am on the winning end.

Obviously he has uses past Mephiston and I am excited to have a direction in which to go with my new prince. His librarian hunting ways are already swirling around in my head. Cha'dmhaught is on the prowl!

Librarian blood for the Blood God!

Thanks for reading,
T

Cha'dmhaught Done

Got the prince done and met the deadline. Wish me luck in the voting. Thanks again Greg for the mini!

As a compromise to all parties he will henceforth be known as Cha'dmhaught the Gifted.

From Stuff I Have Painted: Chaos Daemons

From Stuff I Have Painted: Chaos Daemons

From Stuff I Have Painted: Chaos Daemons

From Stuff I Have Painted: Chaos Daemons

Thanks for looking,
T

Must Move On

Mhaught's skin is "done". I don't want it to be, in fact there are large swathes that I want to do over. This is because I suffer from a similar curse to many miniature painters, wherein, I always want to do more. I am going to say I am done due to a deadline and the words of my mother, sounding faintly from the echoes of memory, scolding, "Don't pick at it you'll make it worse."

From Mars' Project Blog

From Mars' Project Blog

It should be noted that I didn't actually quit "picking at it" until a few glazes after the photography. I am still really new to putting striations in the musculature. I glazed them down a couple of times as I thought they were coming across a touch too bright.

The bruising affect I was trying to create failed in looking like a bruise, but upheld its job at being visually interesting. It doesn't look like a bruise so much as just kind of purple, which is ok because it is a daemon.

The full color progression for the skin was as follows: Base coated with 2:1 Midlund Flesh (MF)/Rucksack Tan (RT). First shade was glazed over base with 2:1:1 MF/RT/Thornwood Green (TG) and ample amounts of glaze medium. Final shade was brushed into the deepest recesses with 1:1 TG/Cryx Bane Base (CBB).

Reclaimed the base coat where I was messy from the shading the shading with the base coat. First highlight was 2:1:1 MF/RT/Jack Bone (JB). Second highlight was 1:1 JB/Menoth White Highlight (MWH). Final highlight and muscle striations were 1:2 JB/MWH. Finally mixed a super thin glaze of RT and glazed down the "tops" of the muscles.

I am learning a lot about painting organic surfaces like skin, claws, etc with these guys so it has been a lot of fun. Here is a shot of Mhaught so far:

From Mars' Project Blog

Thanks for reading,
T

Mhaught Gets Blocked

From Mars' Project Blog

I got all the color on Mhaught blocked in. The red and gold ended up being more Khorne, or Skorne, definitely something "orne", than I intended. It didn't bother me enough to change it up though. Maybe for giggles I will run him as Khorne prince some day. In the meantime I will keep running him cheap.

The skin tone looked kind of flat so I decided to add a little color by making the skin around some of tubing look bruised. I am hopeful that the bruising will not only add an organic feel, but the contrast of the purple and the yellow will add more "pop" to the model.

From Mars' Project Blog

Once I realized how Skorne-like Mhaught was turning out I decide to succumb and give that lacquered gold some of the PP models have a try. I pretty much just used Baal Red wash over the Shinning Gold base. Currently I am not super thrilled about it, but I think with some darker washes to create shadow, as well as reclaiming some of the gold in highlight it will come together. I will also keep the Chaos star as the same gold as the rest of the model in order to create some contrast on the shoulder armor.

From Mars' Project Blog

I am excited to get this model to this point, which is like 1/3 done, but the time crunch is pressing down. I have five days to finish, and will not get anything done tonight. Yeah for deadlines. Mhaught must be finished!

Thanks for reading,
T

Mhaught's Red Armor

For Greg's approval and your perusal, I followed Greg's advice and added a little red into this guy. Check it out:

From Mars' Project Blog

Greg, aka the Greg who gave me the model, aka J.G. "Honeysuckle" Mathews by his friends in "the yard", is a very accomplished painter. So when he tells me to do something with a model I normally hop to.

I used a pretty simple build for the red, shading wise. I started with Mechrite Red as a base over the Dupicolor Gray Primer I use.

From Mars' Project Blog

Then I just hit it with a generous wash of Baal Red straight out of the pot.

From Mars' Project Blog

Lastly I lined the places where the shadow would be deepest with Asurman Blue wash, also straight out of the pot.

From Mars' Project Blog

That deepest shade is a little light for me right now, but since so much of it is flush with that trim which will be gold, I want to see how dark it gets when it collects the shade from the gold colored parts as well.

Speaking of gold-colored parts, I spent the lion's share of my brush time last night blocking in the base color for the metallic parts on the model. Having to do it over, I may have just primed this guy black. Though it would have made the skin tone darker, or take more time, so I think the gray (Which is my color of choice.) probably ended up being about even.

Pretty much everything that looks black in the first picture above is, except the parts that I will be painting gold. In the case of gold, bronze, etc I use a 1:1 Chaos Black/Scorched Brown base. I am hoping to get the gold and silver metallics blocked in tonight, as well as shaded. I have a sneaking suspicion I will not get a lot done him this weekend as I am headed out of town to watch the Seahawk's game with friends. It will no doubt entail drinking to excess during the game, with still more drinking afterwards to celebrate victory. Or the more likely outcome wherein I drown my sorrows. Either way I see some recovery time required on Sunday, so Mhaught will have to be neglected until Monday. That will mean I have a scant seven days to finish him when next he and my brush meet. Down to the wire friends, down to the wire...

Thanks for reading,
T

Gifted Prince WIP

From Mars' Project Blog

I would like to thank all my readers, or reader, for his suggestion for the name of my prince. Thus far the names in the running are:

Chad the Daemon Prince
Or
Mhaught, the Frenchest of Ticklers, the Sloppiest of Seconds.

For folks who are fond of banter filled internet jackassery there is s a fella' what goes by the name of Mike over at Scary Biscuits Studios. We tend to leave each other "helpful" comments from time to time. Mike and I went to college together, though he lives in New Zealand now so I am sure he calls it "University" or something equally as pretentious.

Anyway, back in my acerbic gamer youth I felt it was not only appropriate, but necessary, to ridicule those gamers who didn't play the games I did. Mike was the standard bearer of Flames of War, and his WW2 shenanigans were claiming the guys I played with at an exponential rate. We had many a "back and forth" on the internets, but enjoyed each other's company a great deal in person. I think we are also the only people in our club who give a damn about baseball.

Mike has since moved on to work for Battlefront, has a killer blog, and secretly is developing a fantasy game within the FoW scale because he such a fan of the genre (I probably made that last part up, unless it turns out that I didn't. In which case you heard it hear first!). Check out his blog, it is awesome, especially for not having any monsters.

Back to my shiz. I spent a little time on this guy last night. I added the final shade for the yellowish skin (1:1 Thornwood Green/Cryx Bane Base). Then I had a little time to reclaim some of the higher parts of the model with my base skin tone (2:1 Midlund Flesh/Rucksack Tan).

From Mars' Project Blog

Normally I would finish this color up before moving on another part of the model, but this guys is sculpted in such a way that areas of flesh just kind of become armor and vice versa. I want to get those areas blocked out before I start adding final high lights, chiefly because I don't want to put a lot of time into something I will just end up painting over. I should be able to get some of that down tonight so I at least have an idea of what I am looking at.

Lastly, the interwebs tell me GW is losing money again, or has been for years, whatever. I know that this is in part, perhaps largely, to them sometimes conducting themselves like perfect bastards. Even still, buy GW, or whatever game you are playing. We can't keep playing their game if they go out of business. And if you think they have done some dumb stuff now, wait till you see what they do when they need to drop into a recovery mode.

Ok this was a long one. So summation is thus: Mike Haught, good guy, killer blog. Daemon prince is being worked on. Buy GW, or whatever game you play.

Thanks for reading,
T

Gifted Prince Under Way

From Mars' Project Blog

The history of this guy has been alluded to in a few posts, but the skinny on this guy is that my buddy Greg gave him to me for Christmas when I was rummaging through his crap in his super-secret back room. That room is very cool, and loaded with magical GW product. I was over come with flashes of petty larceny at its viewing, but refrained on account of the fact that he is my daughter's godfather, and I figured it would create weirdness if I busted out a good old smash-and-grab.

I am obviously not very far along with this guy, just the base, skin base coat (2:1 Midlund Flesh/Rucksack Tan), and first shade (2:1:1 Midlund Flesh/Rucksack Tan/Thornwood Green with a lot of Glaze Medium and water).

Painting tip, when you wash or glaze large areas with a shading color, do it with the model upside down. Also let it dry upside down if you can help it. I normally have magnets in my base, so I just stick them to the metal pole that runs under my painting table.

I ended up spending a little time with the base, just because there is so much of it. I wanted to keep with the shattered and out of time landscape, so I worked in a little cobblestone into his base.

From Mars' Project Blog

I have only played a few games with this guy, so I haven't even named him. I have been running him cheap, just basic prince, no mark, with either Breath of Chaos or Gift of Mutation. I think like the idea of giving him the 3+ armor save with Iron Hide, especially with the prevalence of poison out there. Not sure if it is worth the 30 points though.

I still have along way to go with figuring out the best prince for me, but in the meantime who can resist this winning smile?

From Mars' Project Blog

Thanks for reading,
T

First Thoughts on Daemons

Just a quick note. From last Tuesday, to Saturday, I got in at least one game of 40k and a twelve pack a day. All of my opponents were gracious enough to let me proxy so a combined Daemon/Tau model force tore forth from the warp to go 1-1-2.

In all, the games were a kick. Daemonic Assault is pretty interesting. Especially because you don't break your forces until your first turn. That pretty much cements in my mind that there are very few instances in which my Daemon army will want to go first. By going second you have advantage in objective missions by going last, in Kill Point mission you deny your opponent the first turn of shooting, and you can see what is down, and where, before you start calling in your vile beasts. (Or in the case of this weekend, some beasts and some fire warriors.)

The Daemon shooting powers are really cool, and I don't want to put them on BS 3 heralds. Much rather have them on the BS 5 princes, but the princes get very expensive with a mark. In all I am still a huge fan of Breath of Chaos, because Bolt is only hitting half the time anyway. But I will need to test it a touch more. My favorite power is Gift of Mutation. The turning to spawn thing is OK, though in many ways detrimental, but being able to single out a model, and use the shooting power in close combat makes me feel like I am getting 30 points out of it.

That is all for now. Going to snap some WIP pics of the daemon prince I am working on and hopefully get him cracked out this weekish.

Thanks for reading,
T