Skeletoro's Great Company motivational thread

[pedrogzc]

Absolute gorgeus!!!

[skeletoro]

thanks

Oh, and irwit, I ordered some silly putty from ebay to use for masking.

[CatSmasher]

Dude, you nailed the projecting light from the helm eyes. 

[skeletoro]

thanks, it's actually quite fun doing it with oil paints because you have a day or so to retouch/feather it before the paint starts to oxidise.

[Dantay VI]

Wow!!! Your Blood claws are astounding, I love them to bits. Makes me a bit hacked off that I have to do all mine by hand but your colour gradients etc are absolutely spot on.

[DarkMark]

I'm super tired, but super impressed with your wolves. A few ideas for you to chew on (sorry for the bullet point style, its because I'm knackered )

1.Never shade with straight black as it sucks the colour out of the mini, instead use a brown and blue mix to obtain the desired shade

2. Invest in Vallejo's Liquid metallics for the best metals, you'll need to dilute with them alcohol and use a separate brush though

3. Have you thought about grabbing some scale model weathering products like winter streaking, grey tank washes, pigments etc?

4. Check out UltraRaider's Wolves on YouTube: he started something similar to your efforts and may be worth a watch.

5. Keep up the great work!

[skeletoro]

Argh! Awesome tips, thanks!!

[Dantay VI]

I agree about not using black. For me personally, I only use black on the armour to darken it.

 

I find you get a much nicer finish if you use a blue wash over the red to darken it  down, it's how I do the shading on my wolves.

[skeletoro]

yeah, I varnished the blood claws before using the oil wash so I could experiment, and tried a black wash first - didn't like the result. In the end I actually mixed up a range of different hues to shade the armour. So far I've found that many of my oil paints are quite opaque and water miscible oils can only be thinned so far with water before the binder separates out, leading to weird lumps and non-water-miscible splotches of pigment and such. In fact, I've come to realize that this is what happened to my 5 grey hunters and is why their armour was filtered so heavily - I wasn't able to remove it all with water and cocoon buds.

 

To counteract this I mixed a medium turquoise hue and took some white and black and mixed in various shades of grey to give myself lighter and darker tints of the base armour colour to use as a wash. I was able to wet blend the oil washes quite easily, which was a lot of fun, and I found that it didn't give the model that washed-out look and even if I didn't perfectly remove 100% of the stray oil, it wasn't the end of the world, because the wash wasn't such a stark contrast with the armour. I found it worked really well.

 

I was also able to throw in some other washes too - I blended burnt umber into the dark grey turquoise near the feet, to make the beginnings of dirt (I intend to follow up with pigments). I used a crimson (this one happens to be much less opaque, happily) wash around the eye lenses, to add a slight lighting effect - it deepened the lines around the lenses, filtered the armour plates, and was quite straightforward to 'feather' with a brush to aid in making a relatively clean blend - I liked being able to retouch it until it was just right.

 

I found this technique didn't look right on one eye lens because that side of the face was in shadow - the lens needed to contribute more 'glow' to the surrounding armour rather than merely making it a bit redder. So I pulled out a lighter red and white and wet blended some additional reds on the side of the face. I'm fairly pleased with the result.

 

 

Purple washes were applied to the bottom half of the face and to all golds (not sure my photography shows this), while grey metals received a black wash.

 

I am actually thinking of buying some artisan WMO medium (possibly fast drying or painting, not sure which to get) and thinner, which should allow me to make washes with better flow and better control over transparency for glazing etc.

[skeletoro]

Ok, time to share some pics of the finished 5 blood claws.

 

http://1drv.ms/1mvcLPB for the album

 

Here's some group shots:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Jarl Kjaran Coldheart]

I love and hate your models at the same time....the reason? They look amazing. And I lack the patience and skill and stable hand to come close.

 

WLK

[skeletoro]

Wow.. thanks! That means a helluva lot.

[Jarl Kjaran Coldheart]

since reading aint a top skill of mine I mainly focused on the wonderful models, but I had a question...are your Wolves being set for the Horus Heresy rule set, or just making awesome use of the available models?

 

WLK

[skeletoro]

Just making use of the models. I would really like to get into HH but they'd need different weapons combos and squad sizes etc.

 

When Prospero eventually comes out I might try and make the army dual-purpose, or might just collect a separate heresy force. Not sureeee!

[Jarl Kjaran Coldheart]

ah, just wondered. I've started a HH raven guard army, and was bummed to hear of the delay in Prospero ...I wanted to start a Wolf HH as well.

 

thanks for the fast reply!

 

WLK

[skeletoro]

No worries, I have ADHD. It's like thanking me for eating cake.

[skeletoro]

I have been really tempted to start some raven guard or white scars allies, but raven guard use a lot of mark 6 and i think that similarity would detract from the look of my guys. White scars are cool but it seems everyone is playing them these days... and unfortunately taking allies makes it a bit tougher to trigger the redmaw's metamorphosis as he only gets the bonus from SW units in CC. that said, i think a LoW knight lancer taken in a space wolves detachment probably qualifies, and i really like the look of the FW mechanicum models. Here's hoping we see more of that and more of it finding its way into 40k.

[Rune_Priest_Rhapsody]

No worries, I have ADHD. It's like thanking me for eating cake.

Best...Yes!! I can relate to this statement comple- HEY!! Wanna go ride bikes??!!

The bloodclaw with the freshly drawn knife and chainsword... Stealing the out of that idea!! It's bloody brilliant!!

Your eyes are really great, even though, as you had already said you messed em up early on. You seem to have really nailed down the process now!! Great tips on using oil based paints and opposite colored washed to achieve unique looking models!! I would never of thought to use either, and I appreci- KITTIES!!

End of Line

[Baulder]

I have been really tempted to start some raven guard or white scars allies, but raven guard use a lot of mark 6 and i think that similarity would detract from the look of my guys. White scars are cool but it seems everyone is playing them these days... and unfortunately taking allies makes it a bit tougher to trigger the redmaw's metamorphosis as he only gets the bonus from SW units in CC. :( that said, i think a LoW knight lancer taken in a space wolves detachment probably qualifies, and i really like the look of the FW mechanicum models. Here's hoping we see more of that and more of it finding its way into 40k.

If you fancy an allied detachment but something that isn't as time/cash consuming you could go with a squad or two of LotD, they are fun and can give you allies without needing to start a big force.

[Dantay VI]

LotD are rally cool, and the fact they all have 3+ invulnerable saves is ace too.

 

Plus the awesome warlord traits!!

[skeletoro]

yeah lotd would no doubt be really fun to add to an army. Argh touchscreen issues, reboot time!

[skeletoro]

Hmm!! There's a tournament in Auckland (2 hour drive) on September 13 (my birthday) - that's 2 months away!

Wonder if I could actually manage to complete 2000 points by then?

I've got:

20 grey hunters, 5 are painted, the other 15 are about half done.

Another 10 grey hunters with parts designated but far from assembled and no GS work done yet.

15 blood claws, 5 painted, 10 assembled, primed, and that's about it.

5 cataphractii, dry-fitted but in major need of green stuffing etc before painting.

5 SM scouts with bolters, 5 tempestus scions in the mail to me (I intend to mix the kits to make awesomemanzzzz BEL pewpew team).

5 Long fangs with ML plus squad leader. Assembled and magnetized but still need extensive GS work - planning on putting many pelts and wolf tails onto their mark 3 armour, so they look kinda like the old metal ones that had lots of cool wolfy details.

2 crusaders (one almost assembled, one in pieces) and a Proteus (mostly assembled).

6 razorbacks (unassembled, and I was planning on doing some time consuming conversions before painting them.

1 Fire raptor, mostly assembled (don't know what FW is allowed by the TO yet).

9 TWC and 1 TWL - the wolves are assembled and half are somewhat painted, but the riders are just a twinkle in my eye. And i'd probably want to convert them (maybe get some Mk 2 bits).

1 drop pod that's missing half a door

An almost finished Rune Priest conversion (so not yet primed), a limited edition wolf priest, 2 of those metal rune priests, arjac (magnetized to allow trading of hammerhead for a converted plasticard axe head), some mysterious resin approximations of sicarius, the lord executioner, and a skin wolves pack I was going to use to convert bran, krom when my pre order comes in, Njal in TDA, and an old metal iron priest.

At least a couple of converted power armour wolf guard in various stages of built but not yet ready for paint.

Lots of bits for extra bodies (11 terminators including the storm claw ones, maybe 3-4 wolf pack kits, 20+ FW corvus, 10+ FW maximums (mostly non-legion version), maybe 30 old plastic vanilla marines, 5 fenrisian wolves, a plastic dreadnought in bits, maybe half a dozen bikes in disrepair)

That's off the top of my head.

So... yeah. I don't actually know how many points worth of models I have. My guess is over 5000, but really I have no idea. Anyone feel like approximating just for fun?

Anyway, I need a plan to get a 2k list tableworthy before September 13.

Although I personally find the prospect unpleasant, I could leave out the green stuffed extras, paint models to table top quality (or perhaps airbrush the major colours like I did with the blood claws) but everything else (including some GS work) until after the tournament. GS happily adheres to paint from what I've read (I think it was Night Runner in his awesome No Talent Required guides on www.trueminiwargamer.blogspot.com who said it) but doing it this way those GS details would miss the airbrush. And I have grubby sticky abrasive fingers that tend to destroy models the more I handle them.

In terms of lists... I do want to field a competitive list but don't actually care about winning that much. I've got a lot of stuff there to build a list from, but it's all pulling me in different directions???

I'm thinking one option is to start by completing my grey hunters while I wait the new codex. GH are a safe bet, though then i'd need to figure out a transport option... unless I footslogged or outflanked them? None of my transports (other than the Proteus) are particularly close to being ready to paint. My son broke the assault ramp on my almost finished raider, and all rhinos and land raiders are awaiting door conversions.

Another option would be to focus on my more expensive units: either fielding ALL my thunderwolves or a Logan wing. I need to find out what the tournament rules are, e.g. whether unbound is allowed. I could always get another box of TWC or two, and field a TWC horde alongside my fire raptor and (assuming here) a new space wolf flier? I haven't made my progress on my TWC yet but each one is maybe worth 3 great hunters in terms of points.

[Sohail187]

Just wanna say this claws are sooooo nice!!! and they have that blood claws look..... RAGING FORWARD CC BEASTS! love it! If those charged me... id be bricking it! just cause they look like they mean business!

 

Look forward to seeing more.

 

Good luck in the tournament :)

[pedrogzc]

List advice for painting but I never have played at 2k points, so take it with care.

 

Dropod in the face of the enemy a "tank" unit, perhaps 5 terminators with combis and probably a hammer and shield, and if you have more pods, grey hunters and or PA guard. They surely will hit hard and die, but they'll gain time for your TWC to hit the line. If you have to charge nasty's Carnifex or other heavy overwatch unit it's useful an expendable unit like fenris wolves for charging in first and absorb the overwatch fire.

 

Also, you need some kind of air suppresion, so the fire raptor and divination rune priest+5 missile launchers are wonderful.

 

About your model, as always, great!

[skeletoro]

Thanks

Turns out it's a doubles tournament: 1000 points each, using a modified FOC that essentially has half the slots (for instance, 0-1 elites per partner and there's an additional 0-1 elites that you and your partner share... so you could take 2 as long as your partner only takes 1).

And I think I've secured a partner, who plays crimson fists and is in a similar boat to me: has maybe 10 guys painted total.

Given he's crimson fists.... I think it would make most sense for him to take lots of dakka. Maybe 2 devastator squads (he's opposed to centurions) and some tacticals in pods - perhaps even Pedro Kantor and 2 units of sternguard in pods?

If he's going the dakka route then I was thinking i'd take bran redmaw, some grey hunters and TWC. But FW is disallowed so that rules out the fire raptor also.

Hopefully this new codex comes out this month!