Happy Halloween!!!!!

Well,



First off Happy Halloween, I hope everyone stays safe tonight while they go out & trick or treat. I will be over at a friends house grilling up about 100 hot dogs for all the folks in their neighborhood. Our friends have been doing this for a few years now, but tonight their two sons are playing in a football game and they would have had to stop the tradition, so a few of us volunteered to do this for them, so tonight I will be grillin!



Tomorrow though I will be battling for supremacy in our first "Gathering in the Desert" primer event. Now some of you may known that I was planning on taking the Dwarfs to war. But after about 5 games now with the list I had not pulled out even a minor win. The best I have done with them was a draw against Mikes Urk-Hai, and the only reason it was a tie was due to running out of time. I am pretty sure that Mike would have beat me in that scenario.



So I decided to change up my list and try something new. Now this new list has a total of 27 models in it for 346 points and I have never played it before, so this will make it very interesting. here is a teaser of where the army hails from:

I know this is a cheesy hint, but for some of you Uber Lord of the Rings fans you may know where this is, but I will post up pictures after the event as well as how well the army did.

Lastly, after painting up 3 LotR armies this year (Mikes Urk-Hai, My Easterlings & Dwarfs) as well as a huge Russian army in 28mm for Tom, I am looking for something else to do. I still have a few painting projects left for other people (Toms LotR Orcs & BFG, Mikes Arnica buildings) but I am looking for something different. Enter the Tomb Kings! About a year ago I bought a huge Tomb King Army (About 4000 to 5000 points) from Tom O, he got it off E-bay for only $230.00, and that's what I paid for it from him. Well I had hoped this year to be able to participate in a local challenge that we dubbed "A Tale of a Few Gamers", but I flaked out.

Well after looking for something to do and with talking with my buddy Rob, I decided to bust out the Tomb Kings to give them a try. So I will start assembling 1000 points this Sunday, so wish me luck and I will post a few pictures along the way...

TK

So whats next???

I guess I am asking that myself, so I thought I would do a small update on what I have coming up.

Well for LotR, besides doing some trade painting for a buddy (Yes Tom that's you!) I will be painting up some orcs for him, about 60 or 70 or so, nothing to large! Also have more dwarfs to paint up as well as a few odds & ends. Terrain wise for LotR, I will be building a few more rock mounds that I have built in the past for our upcoming GT in Feb 09. I also have decided to try my hand at building the Throne from Amon Hen found in the first LotR Journey book, but will be doing it out of plastic. I will also be finishing up my Fangorn/Mirkwood project as well.

On the Legends of the High Seas front, I will be adding pirates to my already huge collection of figures. I will be running a multi-player game at Adepticon 2009 on Friday & Saturday night which will allow 10 players each night to take control of a Crew and look for lost treasure on a cursed island. This means I need to make sure I have 100 painted pirates for the game as well as some of the "Exotic" encounters that players may run across, so I will have to paint up a few of these things as well. Luckily one of the guys in Chicago will be helping out with the terrain, so that's covered, he also volunteered to supply me with a few of his Pirates as well. Depending on how far I get I may take him up on that!

So there you go, that's what I will be up to in the next few months, I will be posting here as I get things done. Also I will be giving you a report on how well the dwarfs did while at the Nov 1st event.

Oh one last thing, I usually don't post anything up very political on this site, but I really need to encourage folks to vote in November. I will not go into who I think you should vote for, that's up to you to decide, but please please please get out there and vote! All I will say is that I am afraid of the supposed "Change" some folks are touting as their campaign platform, their idea of change could change our Capitalist way of life into a socialist way of living, so get out there & vote! Okay political rant off.

TK

The Dwarfs are ready for War!

Well they are done! 31 models ready for the November 1st tourney here in Phoenix. As you can see I went for a compromise on the basing, I went with a dark brown with dead grass for the flock, I think they came out rather well.

Here is the Leader Gimli in a close up, I happen to have about 5 different Gimli models and this one I have been wanting to paint for some time.

Here are two more shots of the army.

I happen to still have a ton of dwarfs to paint so there will be a few more to come like Khazad Guard, Iron Warriors, Rangers, Dwarven Kings, the list goes on & on. Now I think I need to work on my Red Dragon entries or perhaps the Dark Lord himself.

TK

I'm ready for my Close Up Now!

Okay,

I got a comment on a local forum about the Liquitex Stucco that I use on my bases, so here you go...

Here is what it looks like when wet, I just spread it around the base not trying to keeping it level, the rougher the better.


Here is what it looks like when it dries, I use this stuff on everything, here I use it on one of the GW "Creepy" trees GW has out.

Here is another shot unpainted on Gimils base.

Here is the same base painted and flocked.

Here are few other shots...

TK

Okay 17 Days!!

Well its been 17 days and no updates, what gives? Well I could go on & on about being busy with real life stuff, but I will not bore you. but I have been painting and the dwarfs are just about done, so lets get to it!


The last time we saw the dwarfs they were primed black with a dry brush of an off white color. Now I go back in & paint the basic colors in, some call this block painting I call it paint by numbers, here is a shot of the archers after they were blocked in.




There is nothing fancy just straight colors painted on, what you can't see in the picture is the highlighting I did stands out a bit on the white spots as opposed to the black areas. I painted the whole force this way and basically did an assembly line sort of painting. Once I had them all base painted I moved onto the next section, dipping!


Now there are many online articles out there about the speed method of "Dipping" so I will not go into all that, but a quick explanation is that you are washing the figure or dipping the figure in a urethane stain to give you instant shading. Here is what I use:

Now Minwax Polyshades makes a variety of colors but what I found that works well is the Tudor Satin color which is a blackish color. You will also notice I use Mineral Spirits as well, this is for clean up as well as controlling how much "Dip" I put on a figure. You see I really don't dip the figure in (That's were the term comes from) I brush on the stain. I just slop it on with the brush & set aside. I do use the mineral spirits to take away any extra stain I don't want on the figure, like pooling of the stain in low spots. I just dip the brush into some mineral spirits and touch on the figure, pretty easy really. Now once the dipped figure has dried, I shoot it with Testors Dullcoate, the nice thing about dipping is that you get three things out of it, one is the instant shading, two is a hard protective coating & thirdly you get a shiny model. Hence the reason for the Dullcoate. Here is a shot of a figure blocked in (on the left) and a dipped figure after Dullcoate (on the right).

Here is another shot of the dipped Axeman after Dullcoate.

Now once all the figures were painted I needed to texture the base, I use Liquitex Ceramic Stucco and I put it on the base.

The nice thing is it dries white and gives you a nice ground effect. Now Liquitex does make other pastes and I have tried some of these but I always go back to the Ceramic Stucco. here is the whole 350 point force textured.Next up will be painting the base & flocking them, my biggest issue at this point is what color to use. I can go with a grey color simulating rock underground, or I can go with browns to represent being outdoors, I still have not decided yet, that will be in the next post.

Now also besides the Dwarfs, I painted up a few Giant Spiders, a couple of Bat Swarms and the Spider queen in the last few days, here they are.

Here is the GW LotR Spider Queen, you will notice that I converted the model by cutting the legs apart & bending them to look more realistic. The GW one shown below has its front & rear legs molded together, it really looks terrible and not vary lifelike, so all I did was cut them apart, I think it looks better now & as a side note, my wife will not pick up the model!




TK