Bankholiday Weekend and Wargaming

Hey all.

Hopefully everyone's had a good and productive Easter weekend in terms of Wargaming. There's not much going on at the minute in terms of news, so just a quick one today.

Me personally, over the weekend I went on a bit of an undercoating Spree. I prepped the remainder of my Imperial Guard Mech-Air Force for painting. The to-paint list for my 2,000pt force now stands at:
- Command Squad: Straken, Melta Gun, Medic, Vox Caster, 2 Bodyguards, Atropath.
- 3 Flamers
- 6 Melta Guns
- 2 Chimeras
- 3 Valkyries

As I had everything outside and the weather was holding off, I decided that I'd also spray my Lord of the Rings remaining stuff - in the hope I can get a game of it soon or sell it off fully painted. Also serves a nice change of pace from 40k stuff having reference images to a film as "this is how you paint this", rather than free-flowing like I do with 40k. I still do change stuff, since I really don't like painting Gold, for example, but for most part I try and keep to the film or book description.

This then led me to decide on undercoating the other half of my Bretonnian army ready to paint, who've not come out of their box for a good 18 months or so. But, wanting to save a job later down the line, I needed to glue sand to all the bases first before spraying. Which took a LOT longer than I first thought - about an hour and a half in total, by which point it had gone dark outside. So, in a box, ready to spray I've got:
- 8 Grail Knights (converted plastic Knights of the Realm)
- Grail Reliquae plus 20 Battle Pilgrims (converted from Men at Arms, Flagellants and a Chariot)
- 10 Errant Knights (old edition Bretonnian Knights I got cheap)
- 15 Men at Arms with Spear and Shield
- 5 Mounted Yeomen (Kitbash of Empire Pistoliers, Men at Arms and Knights of the Realm)
- 2 Damsels

I'm quite eager to get my Brets back into a game and finish painting them. I've found I have to work a lot harder to paint stuff for Fantasy, but I've got a quite quick scheme for painting Knights now that I've been using Citadel Washes a lot.

Lastly, I played a game last night against Mark's Tyranid army which included 3 Trygons, a Tervigon, 2 units of 3 Hive Guard and the Doom of Malan'tai in a Coconut.

In all, it wasn't a very good game for me. Objective was to take and hold the central building, at the end of the game the player with most Troop choices within 3 inches won.

In short, I got annihalated from some bad judgements, not knowing the enemy capabilities (Fleet on Trygons for example) and generally being extremely tired from a busy Bankholiday Monday.

At the start of my turn 5, all I had left were a unit of Grots that had failed to show up from reserve throughout the game, so we called it a white-wash there.

There were a couple of turns that went my way, but generally a spot of bad luck here or there, along with bad decision making and you get what you deserve.

I did manage to topple a Trygon with Tankbustas and was Snake Eyes away from battering a second one with a PK Nob in a slugga mob. Next time I'll get you, you pesky Xeno Worms!

So what have you guys been up to over the weekend - painting, converting, hobbying-wise?

SB.

[FTW] Worst Painted / Modelled in your experience?

Hey guys,

As part of our collaboration with FTW (http://fromthewarp.blogspot.com) each month there'll be a collaborative post that each blog registerd with FTW posts about on a subject.

"What is your absolute worst personal example of modeling/painting?
We've seen the best, collected them and archived them... now let's see your worst stuff.

I'm talking about stuff gone wrong, things that didn't turn out right, conversions that don't look anything like what you planned, that kind of stuff. Stuff you would never show anyone in a million years."

So go on lads and ladettes, what's your worst examples of painting and modelling over the years?

To get the ball rolling, I'll share mine with you. Mostly mine occured through playing Lord of the Rings, starting off painting, modelling and gaming with that, then later moving onto 40k where I had the majority of skills built up from practice.

I've also not got many pictures, as things have since been repainted, stripped or sold on. It's hard to pin point some prime examples, but they all tended to be in the first year or so of painting... a few I can remember fondly:

- Ringwraiths from LOTR, which were painted with Black paint, no shading or highlights etc, then scraping the black paint off the armoured areas, as I thought that showing actual metal would always look better than painted metal.

- Painting all 4 Hobbit characters from the Fellowship box, I decided "Why try and leave black shading near the eyes or in the mouth? - I'll just give everything an overall wash of Black Ink". It made them look like they'd cried Tar out of their eyes, it was really bad.

- My first attempts at painting were a box of LOTR Goblins, which were painted armour Mithril Silver, skin Goblin Green and anything else whatsoever on the model scorched brown. The effect looked like it could have been achieved by a paintball gun.

- I once also went the cheapskate option and used a spray paint from a model railway store to undercoat my figures, only once it had been sprayed on did I realise it was glossy finish. So I had 40 Uruk-Hai warriors in shiny black armour. More fitting to Dark Elves I suppose.

Also, last night I went to find some images for this post at my parents house, where I've left all of my LOTR models due to space, and found this chap... who at one point I thought was one of the pride and joys of my collection:



A knight of Minas Tirith, which by the time of painting I thought I was quite well practiced at painting horses. Looking back now, flat Codex Grey over Chaos Black was a no-no.

Also, tied in with the modelling, I decided that I wanted to make my Knight's horses stand out more from the other ranges of knights and cavalry, so I tried to use Greenstuff to make barding for the horses.

Rather than think things through, roll the GS flat, cut it to shape and then drape it over, I decided to just attach parts here and there, stick my fingers in it and then deal with the consequences and in the end it ended up looking a mess.

The funny thing is, I then went and did this to 4 other Horses because I thought it looked good at the time... and let's not even get started on the Orc that's being trampled on the base!

So, I'll leave it there for now, and open it up to everyone else - What are YOUR prime examples of bad painting / modelling?