Busting out all over
Realised I hadnt Blogged for a bit so thought I would do a quick review of June and its glories, or what I painted anyway, some less than glorious though Dulce et Decorum est did come to mind as the month wore and turned Kriegish.
June had more 40k than I have done in some time and more GW generally. I tend not to spend much time posting on the 40k facebooks so its not something that comes my way usually but a bumper crop this month and all enjoyable! Though not as much fun as these people are having https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=khL3AVmPj24
First up was a nice Eldar commission which showed me just how far these have come in plastic. Many years ago I actually owned an Eldar army and I think only the guardians were plastic The Avatar required a granny trolley to move around and superglue was necessary every time you looked at the army in a funny way...
The Eldar do have a cool aesthetic though, organic but sharp and Its an aesthetic I enjoy and i think suits airbrushing well.
This was a Biel Tan mob and all the colour suggestions came from the customer, swapping in Biel Tan colours to such as these Dire Avengers. Never been a fan of these helmets though, sort of Spartan meets encephaletic not in a good way. Low doors would be a killer anti Eldar tactic as the following minis all demonstrate...
Eldrad. For someone so good at foretelling the future why did he never say buy GW shares back in the early 2000s. I have heard that GW is now bigger than the UK fishing industry ! This isn't true but its not far out. GW revenue was £353 million in 2021 and UK fishing £821million in 2020 so it wont be long now.
Classic Maughan Ra - definitely better in plastic. Ditto Warlocks below.
Grim faced Dark Reapers. I remember these being the best unit in my Eldar army firing salvos of death onto the enemy from miles away and removing a unit a turn basically. Was this a good thing I don't know but if you got first turn it was game changing.
Cool Jetbikes with Rangers. I don't remember these being a thing back in the metal olden days but they are very nice. Not sure about firing long rifles from the back of a moving jetbike but I imagine they are more transport than combat.
Howling Banshees were a thing and when they were described as multipart that was pretty much how they arrived at every game, a base with a stack of pieces balanced precariously on top.
MCP continues to be very popular with my customers and new heroes join the ranks everyday exposing ever greater depths of my ignorance. I suppose there must be a final end point but not yet apparently. Below we have a nice X men group which has Jean Grey again. One of my favourite models due to finely sculpted face.
Next up an Avengers group. Thor was doing promotion work for his latedt film so left the rest of the guys to cope. I like this version of Hulk more than previous versions I have painted as I pushed the contrast further. I am never completely happy with Ironman as i dont get the same contrast with reds.
whereas I do like doing Magneto and I am happy with the reds here. I wonder has anyone ever thought about doing a film called Superheroes Anonymous about a group of Supers who aren't entirely in control of their powers and who accidentally wreak havoc whilst attempting to live ordinary lives. It would be funny to see Magneto walking home to a semi detached in Barnsley unwittingly trailing metal objects behind him.
Ladies all being propelled upwards by various means. Storm and Scarlet witch are models most likely to end in tears due to fragility. Rogue seems popular as every recent job has had a Rogue in there. Absolutely no idea who she is but seems pretty lively.
Back to GW and the classic Gaunts' Ghosts but in plastic! I remember special rules being published for these when they were originally metals back when the world was only available in Black and white. Actually like the fish thing that is also not true, those were the days of everything being painted as red as possible and stuck on Goblin Green bases. For those who were not around the past really was different country things were different there.
Gaunt is my favourite looking uncannily like the cover of one of the novels but rather undercutting the camo effect of the special Tanith cloak by wearing a massive North Korean style red hat.
More GW in the form of plastic Krieg guys. Not hard to see the inspiration for these 1917 German stormtroopers, I mean Death Korps of Krieg guys even down to the stick grenades! What would be good would be some similar French style guys like these re-enactors, could be a different part of Krieg, perhaps the province of Guerre...
Far from Guerre is the manly sport of Bloodbowl and my very first Bloodbowl commission painted in the standard Norse colours which also conveniently seem to be a tribute to Ukraine though unintentionally. The links between the Swedish 'vikings' and the creation of a state which became Ukraine are discussed really well in the podcast The rest is history which I cannot recommend highly enough as a listen while painting. History done really well, intelligently and as far from Channel 5 'history' documentaries as you can get.
The big yeti was not in the original box and came from Forgeworld. He is not as good as the plastics but not a bad model at all.
Look its Rogue again. What a coincidence! More MCP terrain towards the end of the month. As I have said before these basically fall together and are an easy paint with an airbrush, especially the cars.
This was a new build for me but was exactly the same quality and the whole rebar look was cool. Dr Strange's house is on the running machine as well and will probably be in August.
In between commission work I tried to get some of my 3d prints painted as I need to have some nice pictures for the Army Lists section of my upcoming historical/fantasy rules provisionally called Legions. Below we have a Lady of the Lake for the Medieval Arthurian List. This STL is by Lost Kingdom and like all their stuff is a quality sculpt but comes in quite a few parts. This one is particularly tricky with the kelp and the splashes but I am happy with the result.
This guy is one a part print from One Page Rules. He is a Jackal from one of their SCIFI ranges. I like OPR a lot as they have made even the biggest models printable on smaller printers, they have excellent supports, the Patreon is outstanding and the minis come combined so most are one piece prints.
Archvillain games are probably the best quality STLs out there at the moment. The sculpts are imaginative, textured and created with the best supports. This guy is solid but the supports fell away under boiling water. He is from their recent Anubian range which as usual for AVG is a creative and different take on undead Egyptians. These can be used to flesh out (boom boom!) Tomb King armies but used alongside the older GW Tomb Kings will show them up a bit. I have just 3d printed an army using a mix of OPR and AV models and it looks fantastic even unpainted.
Another AV print which was for the same army as the Lady of the Lake. This is a Griffon from AV's Astral Court range. These have a sort of Sigmarite feel but taken further and with a grittier feel. Anyway needing a Griffon for the Arthurian list I printed this bad boy as its wings were already folded - space saving!
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