Tale of Warmaster Painters II: February...

[pw]

Well off we go into another 'Tale' and I have to admit that I'm delighted and surprised to be joining in once again. If it weren't for this my Chaos army would  happily sit in its box for another year or two! Having read the various posts on here it sounds like a nice informal affair is the best bet with all doing what we can.

That said, I think some kind of progress post once a week would be nice to keep things moving, even if it's just to post a picture of whatever real-life nonsense is keeping painting at bay. For me (this week) that would be baking biscuits with Harry (my son)... I'd also be interested to find out more about how everyone goes about painting WM models and to get some tips, step-by-steps and the like. The more sharing the better for me.

So, I reckon we define our own challenges this time rather than having a blanket requirement to paint x units a week. We can then judge, and be judged, according to our own criteria.

Here's mine:

Paint a 1000 point Chaos army by March 28th when I'm set to head to Warhammer World to meet an old gaming friend for a weekend of playing with toys. I've promised to bring two WM armies to introduce him to the game. My list is currently: General, Wizard, 1 x Knights, 1 x Warriors, 3 x Marauders, 2 x Hounds, 1 x Harpies, 1 x Chariots. Maybe not the best list but it's what I've got on hand at present. I'm planning to embark on a massive batch painting exercise so I expect my pictures will be of massed lines of figures slowly getting done rather than finished units each week. That said, this is just over a unit a week so it'll have to be faster than last time...

Here's the obligatory 'pile of lead' picture:



I've now got the units I'm using based (bar the chariots which I don't own yet) and I hope I can get some colour on them this week (but playing games too much might stop that).

So, what are the rest of you aiming for?

[BlackEd]

I will be joining the Tale.  I will continue with the Cthulu-based Daemon army.  My goal is to have a legal 1500 pt army fully painted and based by the end.  I will have to post later what the army list will be.

As for what I have on hand... Nothing.  I will be placing orders for the Daemon hordes and I will be making the Daemon swarms.  I will have to keep an eye out for possible substitutes for chariots, and hounds. 

For this first week, I will be headed out to the land of insanity called 'Disneyland'.  I tremble and shake as I blearily recall being haunted by merry half-sized people singing a simple, repetitive tune.  They followed me everywhere, mocking my pathetic attempts at getting away from them and their tinny voices!  I remember the words forcing all rational thought from my mind, consuming my conciousness!  Those words I cannot and must not recall!  It's... No! Resist! It's a small world....  Aaargh!

But really, other that, taking the kids to Disneyland ought to be fun.

[vincent]

I'm joining as well with my "Massively-Converted-Khemri-Army" project.
I guess the Tales goes from February to July. If I'm correct, I'm planning painting painting the following list:
* 1 Lich King
* 2 Lich priests
* 6 spearmen
* 6 archers
* 3 chariots
* 1 cavalry
* +2 spare spearmen for invocations
18 units => 3 units per month, plus a character every two month.

This is quite challenging since this list requires quite a lot of conversions, so I'm not sure if I'll succeed.
But I still need a target, at least to know I've missed it

[azrael71]

I am in.
First off I will be fnishing off my chaos dwarves with 1 sorceror, 1 sorceror on lamassu, 1 earth shaker cannon, 3 units of bull centaurs, 3 units of blunderbusses and 7 units of warriors.
I reckon to have these done by end of February.
Part of that will be a step by step image intense section.
Following on from that I will be doing either albion (been sat in the garage for years and always get put off), araby or brettonian depending on cash flow and the impact of beginning BKC.

To anyone wishing to join the challenge, please do not be put off by what I plan to do. The challenge is a personal thing and it will help you get your models painted even if it is just a few units.
When I sit down to paint, that is all I do for hours so I can knock out large numbers of units in a relatively short timeframe.
I also find an organised approach helps.
Take your time to prepare your models, remove flash & mould, glue to sticks, spray undercoat (I use black for my style of painting), drybrush either chainmail or light grey (foundation).
I normally try to do this for the entire set of models I am painting.
Then when I want to paint, I just get my stuff pick up a prepped unit or two and away I go.

Anyway enough ramblings here are my first few units. Should be the final 2 bull centaurs today.

Sorceror on Lammasu




Earthshaker Cannon



Sorceror


Bull Centaurs

[Swordmaster]

Greetings!

Goog Luck to everybody, new participants and veterans of the first Tale. I am looking forward to see pictures of your miniatures. Good to see new armies, new ideas about existing ones etc. It will definitely keep me painting my a little boring elves now.

Taking the opportunity I would like to share a little of experience I gained during the first Tale. Basically, I managed to decrease the amount of time I need to paint a single stand. Some habits from painting Warhammer miniatures die hard. I noticed I can obtain similar effect without shading and/or highlighting. I learned it is worthy to dilute washes sometimes and obtain better look of washed areas. I also switched to painting entire unit in one go instead of working stand by stand. Lighter colour of the bows definitely looks better (Thanks Stomm! ). Oh! And banners of any kind is a must! I even consider adding some for my archers, as they lack those.

I am aware this is not new for many of you but nevertheless that is what I learned. I believe that everybody likes to paint a little faster without decreasing the quality in the process.

Any new lessons or tips you might add after Tale 1?

Cheers!

[azrael71]

Last 2 units of bull centaurs.




A group shot.



Now to start the blunderbusses

[m4jumbo]

And so it begins..... with the knowledge that I will already be a week in the hole.     My plan for this go around is to finish the rest of my Ostland army that remains unfinished from the first tale.  OH the shame.  Actually I am very glad to have participated in the first tale because it allowed me to finish painting more than I otherwise would have and keep tabs on everyone else's excellent work. 

So on to the new tale....next week.   PW mentioned posting about things that are keeping us from painting for the Tale, so I can at least do that.  For the past couple months I've been prepping for our local game Convention, building, painting, playtesting, etc, so my Warmaster painting has been put on the back burner.  Here is a pic of just some of the stuff I am still working on.  Con is this weekend so got to hurry and get it all done.  Then back to Warmaster painting!

Pictured below; some of the culprits responsible for taking away Warmaster painting time.

[pw]

Wow! Now that looks like some lovely terrain! I wish I had an excuse that good... If things go well with my WM painting this time I'm aiming to try to 'WM-size' some of the current Warhammer terrain, starting with the Chaos shrine thing. Of course I'll have to buy one first to get the measurements and then put it in the Shrinkerizer...

[MrMarkRelf]

Well, I am enthused.  My personal challenge is to get 3,000pts of Araby on the table before year end.

I have been spending some time painting sample strips (lessons learnt from 3500pts of Bretts which took me nigh on 2 1/2 years !), this does two things:

1. Ensures that the colour scheme works, noting that a key colour is a good idea to link them together
2. Take a whole unit, come up with the colour scheme, then drop off one layer of highlight/wash and see if you can notice a difference.

Army builder dip is the way to go (IMHO  .

I have been prepping units (boy how much fun is it snipping and undercoating ?) so have a big pile of lead to go at.

I have also stolen a tip of my gaming buds here, just base 1 strip per base (undercoated black), then at least you can play with them whilst painting the masses. This gives some inspiration, and it feels so much nicer as you whip off an unpainted unit to replace with your latest work of art !

Other nice tip is to add some of that nice felt material (Kallistra games do it), that way the stands don't slide off hills etc.

I will get some photos on at the weekend,  next couple of weeks will be painting all my sample units so that I have a feel for the overall army look
 
Good luck everybody !

[azrael71]

A crafty unit of warriors done today.

[MrMarkRelf]

First attempt at uploading a photo of my unpainted stuff (fingers crossed !)

This is the depressing/challenging view of my Araby army in it's current form.

[MrMarkRelf]

Okay that was pretty rubbish - a tad on the small side, any advice from you pros of how to do it so they look like the ones above !

[Lex]

Okay that was pretty rubbish - a tad on the small side, any advice from you pros of how to do it so they look like the ones above !

No worries yours are fine (even better) the expand when clicked

[Stomm]

The wife is out of the country next week, so I'll probably be able to get some painting done, if not any sleep though. I'm just deciding whether to finish some of my Space Hulk stuff first, knock off the two units of crossbowmen I need to finally have the minimums for 2k, or to go back to my EIR WMA army and finish some more units for the HW campaign weekend in May...


Hmm, I think that aiming to get my EIR army finished for May is a good goal to go for...

[David Wasilewski]

My goal is to have a 3K Talabheim Empire army done by the end of the year.

(I actually have over 5K of unpainted Empire lead but trying to paint all of this at once would be overwhelming based on my previous warmaster painting experience)

I have already done 6 regiments of halberdiers and have nearly finished 6 regiments of crossbowmen. I will be working on 3 regiments of flaggelants next and that will be the infantry done!

Pictures will follow later as I am relying on Mr Mark Relf to take them for me.

Good luck everyone.

Dave