Legion Basilisk

Just seen this over in the new stuff section on the forgeworld site. Now I'm really tempted. If you love your marines but always had a hankering for a bit of imperial guard artillery action then this could be the tank for you. I love the look of it but I've no idea of the rules so if anyone has an idea if it's any good let me know...

Kings of War Week on Beasts of War

I'm sure you're all aware of Beasts of War, if not then follow the link immediately... Now you're back or if you didn't go anywhere read on.

Mercs Week on Beasts of War

I know that this blog has been almost exclusively GW centric up till now but Beasts of War are having a Mercs week and as part of this they are running a competition which is entered by putting the image above on your site.

Mercs looks like a really nice little game.  It uses an RPG game turn mechanism so you're not sat waiting for someonelse to go.  There are only 5 models per team so no huge army to buy and paint (the models are quite nice as well)

So do people play any other games than 40k/WFB?

2012 Review

It was only eight months ago that I started this blog and the new year seemed a perfect time to review what has happened and thank everybody who has commented.

In May I started to paint miniatures again after a break of over ten years, so here's a quick look back at the progress I've made since then.

This was the first test model I did for my Astral Knights chapter, not a bad paint job for a first attempt.

Astral Knights on public display

When I took my models into my local GW store they asked if they could put them in their window display.  These photos show my two Astral Knights squads and my Wood Elf in the window. I apologise for the quality of the images but I was trying to take the picture on my mobile, through two panes of glass.

Heroquest: The Gargoyle

Here's the pictures of the final model from my Heroquest set, the Gargoyle.  I think I can clearly see the improvement in my painting from the first models to this.  I'm particularly pleased with the shading on the back of the wings.

Here's the whole set.

I hope you've enjoyed this little diversion and I'll be back to the Astral Knights ASAP.

Please feel free to leave any comments.

Heroquest: Chaos and the Undead.

These are the chaos and undead minatures from my Heroquest board game.

Skeletons

Mummies

Zombies

Chaos Sorcerer and Warriors



Next time the Gargoyle.....

Please feel free to leave any comments below.

Heroquest: The Orcs

As promised last time these are the 'Orcs' from my Heroquest set.  You will notice that the orcs and goblins have the same colour scheme, this is to deliberately tie them together as the same element of the game.  The Fimirs are slightly different as they are dressed/armed completely differently. As I only had one green colour at the time I highlighted the orcs/goblins in a similar fashion using yellow, although the orcs are darker, and the fimirs up using white. This gave them a very different skin tone despite them all starting with goblin green.

The Goblins

The Orcs

The Fimirs

Bonus marks for spot the sculpts that were reused in later GW box sets....

Next time the undead and chaos.

Feel free to leave any comments.

Heroquest: The Heros

A while ago Ron at 'From The Warp' did a post that suggested that the best way to improve your painting was to to do something different.  I thoroughly agreed with him and wanted to share the 'something different' that I tried. 

If you want variety and small enough numbers not to get bored whilst still achieving something then you can't beat a board game.  I chose the classic dungeon crawler 'Heroquest'.  This, if I remember correctly, was a late eighties/early nineties tie up between MB games and Games Workshop. I bought a complete but unpainted copy off ebay for a very reasonable sum and went to it.

I used a very limited palate of colours as that was all I had around at the time but I think this kind of suits a board game set. All the different shades are done by highlighting up with either yellow/white or bleached bone to provide rich/pastel or faded effects.

Any way here are the Heros...

The Barbarian

The Elf

The Dwarf

The Wizard



As you can see the sculpts aren't great (they were produced 20 years ago after all) and my painting is a bit basic in places but I learnt to improve from these guys so I'm proud of them none the less.

Next up the Orcs.....

Do you have any tips for improving your painting or a guilty retro gaming pleasure.  If so please feel free to leave comments below.

Why my second test model has taken a little while!

The following picture shows why my second test model has taken a little while to do, and I thought the edges of space marine armour was awkward to paint, just try cutting in all those corners on the roof with a 1.5" brush!

Anyway, the second test model is now finished and I'll put pictures up for comparison as soon as possible.