Something Evil

I've had a touch of hobby burn out lately.  I did get a few things done but mostly took it easy.

The Night Stalkers finally have some blood worms to add to the ranks.  These are plastic worm things from the Halloween store and fishing lures.

The murderous elves now have a tree herder that looks fabulous!

And a regiment of heavy cavalry!

And no longer do my artillery pieces have to go into battle in grey plastic color...

Oh and I decided to go crazy and take some giant group shots...

Yeah I have a problem...

Done Dragons

Well that's another army done.  This time with the least amount of units! 

The final dragon kindred lord was done up as a gold dragon using the Mantic model.

And the final horde of drakon riders also done as metallic dragons.  The purple one is from Wrath of Ashardelon, the silver one is a heroscape dragon and hiding in the back is a D&D attack wing miniature with a copper dragon using the jaberwock bones mini.

And that's the whole army only 7 very points intensive units at 2k points (plus a few artifacts).  Head on over to complete projects to see the whole thing as one.

Dragon Time

I suppose some armies operate on a different time frame.  In the way way back I started a dragon army based on the Elf army list for KoW.  Well I'm finally getting around to adding to it.  The whole army is drakon riders and Dragon Kindred Lords (they all ate the riders though) so the points add up really fast!

One regiment finished.  The various gold and sparkles are all a mixture of gold circle glitter and very fine colored glitter for gem stones.

And a new Kindred Lord.  This one come from bones and is the same model as the old metal version that I did way back when for Warhammer Quest (ignore the even worse photography of old!):

The wings are a little heavy in the bones version and tend to sag sadly.  Heck the whole body falls forward if you don't use the added metal tree that was engineered onto the base.  Fun dragon though.

Hippos and Beyond

So I found bags of glowing rocks which of necessitated the painting of my Yu-Jing Infinity...

And as a bonus the drakon horde is finished for the elves!

How To: Elfy Bases

Time for another basing tutorial!  This will take a lot less painting than the lava bases and can serve as a nice 'basing for beginners' type of how to.  For this you will need glue (super glue and PVA or elmers), paint, two different colors of flock and some flowers or clump flock.

For the elves I've been starting with the super easy to use mantic bases.  These are for a horde of tallspears but I want to be able to take them down to regiment and or troop level so I've split it in half and then in half one more time.  Next take some super glue and glue down bits of cork to make a more varied surface.

To add a little more variety to the bases I've used super glue (although PVA or elmers will work) to glue down some more coarse rocks around the cork.

Fore these bases I've primed the whole thing white though if you want a darker base you can prime black and drybrush your colors over it rather than the wash we will do on the next step.  

Now its time to take our least expensive paint (ie craft paint) and water it down.  I've used a basic brown paint and water it down to a 25% water 75% paint.  This will create a little variance and help to cover the cracks in the cork as well.  Slop all that paint on so that it covers up the primer.

Let it dry completely before this next step.  Next up we will take the brown we used earlier and add a good bit of white into the mix.  This will be drybrushed all over the place (no picture sadly).  After that dries take a nice bright green static grass or flock and glue it onto the base in spots.

I like to use super glue because it keeps it from falling off later during play.  Just make spots of glue at random all over the place and sprinkle your flock on. If you are using super glue instead of PVA make sure to do it in sections so that the glue doesn't dry before the flock hits it.

Next I do the same thing with a slightly darker flock.  This time it is in small spots and with much less flock covering everything.  Again this is to provide some more variance and color.

Next I've taken some 'flowers' (ie clump flock) and placed them sporadically around the area.

After painting the edges of the base (make sure to wait for the glue to dry before this!) we can finally put a set of demon elf models onto the base!  Yay for being done!

Big Pointy Eared Update

There are enough elves now to constitute an actual army!  Some of these are painting edits from the old Elf fantasy demo army but they look much more interesting now that they are pink!

Since it didn't take too long to repaint I could use this guy as a drakon rider lord though I haven't really had a desire to try that unit out yet.

 So far this has been my favorite model for GWs high elf line.  Its overstated just enough to avoid being bloated with useless details like I feel the new models are.  And the pose is suitably haughty for an elf as well.

The mage is of course a repaint of the demo set but the prince/king on foot finally has a base to go with his expensive armor.

The silverbreeze are again a re paint of the demo set so they came together quickly.

I tried a little different recipe for the white on the master hunter and rather like the result.  I wasn't going to bother trying this hero out until someone used one against me and it single handedly took out a troop and a regiment over the coarse of a game while hiding a forest...

The palace guard are waving a punch of pointy big knives around so hopefully they don't hurt themselves too much...

To distinguish the seaguard from what the regular tallspears will be I let them keep their sea motif while adding in some more glorious pink as well.

The archers are now a more filled out unit so the base is no longer sparse!  I really do like the slightly older GW models more than the current one.  If they remade these they would all have at least 15 extra random things strapped to them and another 10 gemstones per model.  So instead of looking like rank and file troops they would all look like some high ranking general.  I like my troops to look like troops thank you very much!

So that's one big project well on its way to being done.  Now what's next?

Purple Hippos and WWII

There's a not so subtle reason why the elves are sporting that strange hippo on their banners....

Behold the mighty phelddagrif magical god of group hugs!

This big guy is on a 75mm base and will represent the Dragon Kindred Lord for the Elf army.

Up next some proof that this isn't just a Kings of War blog. I painted all of these up for the store and sadly the Flames of War scene died off as the small group decided to play at home.  Eventually half of their group moved away and they ended up growing bored of each other and quit the game from what I understand.  Pro tip:  If you want to have players PLAY IN YOUR FLGS.  Games die because people try to keep others out of their group...

 First up and last in order of being painted:  Team yankee demos.  Battlefront was kind enough to send us a demo set which was made so quickly the T-72s are actually resin making it pretty much impossible to keep the smoke launchers in tact.  It was free though so that was super appreciated!

Next to the old Sherman tanks the Abrams were super intimidating size wise.

Next we have the Open Fire starter set.  I took a little extra time with these and it ended up being a really awesome looking demo for sure.

 FoW Infantry makes me want to quit painting though.  They are super detailed and if you want to get even half of it you will be painting for a long time.  Worse yet you need a ton of them...

 Need a group shot of those Germans obviously.

 The Americans thankfully had far fewer infantry though they still had a ton of detail. The Tanks thankfully had a far more simple camo scheme so they painted up super fast.

And a group shot as well.  Sad to see a game die out locally but even more sad to see a demo shelved forever.

Kings of War Campaign Map

Finished up the stuff for the KoW map campaign map itself including the markers and various other tokens needed.  This is a vast expansion on the previous map campaign as you can see:

And for a break I painted up the first of my elf army which someone will be borrowing for the above campaign to throw a wrench in our melee centered armies.

Still no clue what I will be doing for the bases but I'm sure that will come eventually.