Behold, my badges!

So it took a while, but apparently I earned two more badges on the Internet. If I read the rules better and tried to game the system more, perhaps I could have done even better. I didn’t think this was even an online painting competition, but it turns out there were prizes that I could have won. Online painting competitions are a lot more common than they were twenty years ago.

Besides being rushed for time and trying various untried techniques and paint combinations, I also would have benefited from taking better individual pictures of my models. I pay for webhosting and Flickr and I actually tend to upload smaller images than kids these days, because I’m old and remember when the Internet was slow. So next time I volunteer to paint something for the good of the Internet I’ll try to take better pictures as I think I may have painted more hours than the average participant but earned less points.

Plague Surgeon

WordPress updated since I last posted and if you guessed it works worse, you’d be correct. Every time I tried to use the menu on the left to add a subheading, it would crash. Now experts say subheadings help your search engine optimization so I tried and tried until I used a different button to add this subheading.

So my Plague Surgeon is going to be called Dr. Stealgood, because of course he’s going to make your gene-seed all mine. I actually think I could have done a better job painting him. I wasn’t happy with the grey or even the apron. I wanted to avoid the usual burgundy everyone else does. I did go with white or offwhite armour using a technique I’ve already described.

Nurgling Infested Objective

So the reason I wanted to add a Plague Surgeon to my 9th Edition Warhammer 40,000 campaign army was he had his own agenda. Recovering the gene-seed of fallen foes as represented by a special objective you were supposed to convert, paint and give to your foe to place on the table. So of course I made mine an Avenging Son, because clearly they need something to avenge and apparently they don’t like the Death Guard for some reason that was never clearly explained to me.

Of course I scoured the Internet for bits, of course I had to use Swaggy P or whatever they call this Nurgling which meant buying another entire model to get one bit. Then for the Ultramarine I was pretty sure I had an Ultramarine bit or two. Obviously they are all old and thus not Primaris. Apparently the Imperium isn’t against all mutations, hypocrites.

Bill was supposed to give me the exact transfer to apply and I bought the specific blue to use as the basecoat, but then I used whatever blues and other paints I had lying around for the rest of the model. I put a lot of skulls on the base and a lot chain which I spent a lot of time rusting. So yeah this was a time consuming paint job but it could have been worse. Maybe the Nurgling shouldn’t have been dark green, but I didn’t have a lot of time to second guess myself.

The Future

Since painting these guys, I’ve already painted more Nurglings and I have more models on my painting table but we’ve gotten busy at work again. I think some people are about fed up with us always being busy and being expected to stay late. I expect there will be more changes in the New Year.

We or at least me have not been playing much Warhammer 40,000 or anything. But I did complete my painting vow and earn my badges. I don’t know if that will impress Vince Venturella. I did buy some of the paint he recommended so I don’t know if I’ll use much of it on the models currently on my table but I can see some Poxwalkers in my future not to mention, Blightlords, Plague Marines, and probably more Chaos Cultists. I seem to be big on footslogging this edition, because I have lots of painted models so might as well push them around on the table.

The problem is of course is the cheap models die easily and they can’t kill big tough stuff, I’m still hopeful the Blightlord Terminators can, so that is the unit I will optimize next. I also will likely get new HQ on the table, maybe not in 2023 but in 2024. Not sure when I’ll paint a tank or a daemon engine but eventually.

I don’t keep up with the rumours, but I think Necrons may get the next codex, but if regular Chaos Space Marines get their codex before the Death Guard, I’ll probably go back to being Nurgle Renegades or I could just run my non-Nurgle guys the Nefarious Fire. In the mean time, I hope to keep painting with my new lower standards, but basically it is the weekend or nothing, as during the week I work late and don’t have a lot of spare time or energy, hence updating this blog later than usual, but I got my badges.

If you have thoughts on the optimal Death Guard army, online painting competitions or people’s obsession with badges and vanity metrics you can leave a comment below. If you hurry over to the Bolter and Chainsword you may even be able to vote in an online painting competition and see all the models better than mine.

Lead Painters’ League is On

There are a record 70 official competitors. So if you want to see a pile of cool mini’s you know which link to click. Every week for the next ten there will be a bunch of freshly painted unseen miniatures in all types of scales and genres. People can vote for their favourites.

My naked chicks should be in there somewhere. I didn’t take the best group photo as I only have an iPhone. Some people didn’t even enter as they couldn’t take good photos which seems strange… I’ve been hit by ‘real life’ but I have two entries done, so hopefully this week I’ll make progress on my OOP Bezerkers. In the meantime I’ve got some minis to check out.

On to Spaceships

The naked chicks are done and officially entered in the Lead Painters League. I thought of one or two more highlights I meant to do. Another layer of red on some of the lips, a highlight of silver on the shackles… I already spent too much time on models I don’t really have a use for other than to get bonus points for in an online painting competition.

Wet Palette used in painting naked chicks

Still no pics publicly available or even privately. But I took a shot of the wet palette. I blended up some custom skin tones. Actually all the skin tones were custom, I have the Californian Blond, the Native American, the Mocha Skinned Lass, the Red Head and the Asian. I used all manner of thinned washes too. Hopefully they score alright.

I dug out my Silent Death models, the spaceships in the title. Many were broken off their bases, some were even bent. It’s been years since I used them. I even bought some new ones off of Metal Express but I can’t find them. I know they got mailed to my current address, so unlike some other models I know I own but am not sure where they are, these models are definitely in my apartment somewhere. I’ll probably paint up a squadron of five for the Lead Painters League, but I don’t plan to spend as much time on them.

Silent Death Models

What I really need the spaceships for is to run an Astro Smash at this year’s Trumpeters Salute. My demo game is April 1st on Friday evening that my event will be run, so if you want to play a fun little space dogfight came, come on down. You have to pay admission at the door, but they did rent an entire community center or at least three rooms in it, so there are other options and models to buy and gawk at.

Here is a pick of everyone I’ve ever painted and still have in my possession, plus two that I won already painted from the Ottawa Red Shirts.

Everyone’s Doing Cool Sh!t But Me!

Well maybe not everyone but a lot of the miniature painting and hobby blogs I follow are making me look even lazier than I already am. I thought after my last game, I’d get in some more games and get my hobby mojo going again, but it didn’t happen. I still do a lot of thinking and planning, but not enough getting off my ass and doing. In truth I have bigger problems than lack of hobby output, but I have so many cool ideas and so much money invested in this hobby, I really should try and do something.

Either that or I should move up my excess hobby crap sell off date…

Anyway inspired by one of the coolest things I’ve seen in a long time, I resumed rebasing my Nurgle Terminators. I kinda wish I had one more armed with Chainfist. I could convert another one up, I have the parts, but I have enough models I need to paint and I think just making my one chainfist guy a champ will accomplish almost as much.

I’ve got them all on 40mm round bases now and I commenced gluing bits to them. I raided my bits box and gluded on a bunch of 28mm metal skulls I got from Black Cat Bases. It’s not all glamorous showpiece projects, sometimes you have to spend an evening with nail files and little metal skulls and various chemical concoctions. I think six of them still need more bits so I will be busting out my bits still on a sprue, maybe even bust open one of the many boxes I still have shrink wrapped for some fresh bits too. 

Lots is going on in the hobby, the Lead Adventure Forum is running their Iron Painter or whatever contest. The Iron refers to your ass or your will power as the goal is to paint 10 groups of five models over a ten week period. You can get started early, as in right now. Scale doesn’t matter, so I’d be better served painting small models not say Nurgle Terminators.  These models on my table right now won’t be eligible, they need to be in groups of five, not three, and rebasing doesn’t count as freshly painted, no matter how many little bits you glue on the bases.

I like to paint in groups of four sometimes even less. I often paint one or two models just to add to a squad or to give me another option. I’m going to have to alter my painting preference and re-order my queue. I’m also going to have to dig into the many, many, models I own that are unpainted and find some that will score the odd bonus points. First up is non-combatants. I thought of some, I don’t know who manufactured them, or who traded them to me, but I have some dancing ladies that got thrown into a trade about 15 years ago. They are definitely unarmed, in fact I think they are pretty much naked. They are also smaller than 28mm so they will paint up quickly.

I will do up five Khorne Bezerkers though in reality I need to paint six… One I think will remain unpainted until after the contest. I will also paint up some Night Goblin Archers and a Big Boss for one of my units. It is the basing that worries me there. Normally I base the whole unit, in one go, that is 30+ Night Goblins in this case. We’ll see how I feel, it takes a whole day to do the multi step basing process on that many models.

I’ll also be doing up some regular goblins armed with say a sword to serve as war machine crew. Again I think I need six, so this time I’ll probably just do six. I’m going to make custom movement trays for everything, so again basing these models will be way more work.

If I can get all that done in ten weeks I’ll be doing pretty good. Might do up some Zombies or something for my Servants of Decay army. Either that and go way off the wagon and buy something just for the contest, say the Fellowship of the Ring.

Wish me luck and stay tuned as I’ll try to update say weekly.

Immortal Brush Year Four

The Immortal Brush is a local painting competition in Vancouver put on by Darren at Strategies. I actually remembered to drop off some entries this year. I don’t usually paint for competitions and I didn’t paint anything special this year, I just entered two categories using models from my Chaos 40K army or armies. My chaos army has gotten so large it is probably better to think of as three armies.

Into the fantasy squad category I entered five fairly recently painted plaguebearers. Most of those models have likely been featured on this blog.

My more impressive entry is “The Council of Chaos”. You have to enter five models on 40mm bases or smaller in the sci-fi category. It doesn’t have to be a legal squad so I cherry picked some models from my collection. I chose models that have never been entered into a painting contest, certainly not Darren’s. I also then chose one representative of each chaos power and one worshiper of chaos undivided.

The models I chose were mostly character models, models that have lead my armies in various tournaments. I wanted to use Da Kanopena, as it was my newest spiffy model, even though some people like his little buddy better.

To represent Slaneesh I naturally opted for the Phantom of the Rock Opera.

To represent Tzeentch I went with my renegade with lascannon conversion. Which I can’t seem to find a picture of online…

To represent Nurgle I settled on Malefactor the Marred, at least I think that is the model’s name. He’s on a 40mm base, the same one as the Phantom of the Rock Opera and was painted around the same time. He was actually used in some games, unlike the Phantom.

Finally for my undivided model I chose my Chosen with Autocannon or Renegade with Autocannon conversion, the one everyone likes. I was worried it was on too big of base, but Darren has no problem with it.

These five are all visually cool looking and they fit together due to the purple and black motif. I think the Nurgle guy is well painted but the Phantom and the Khorne guy got the initial glory from people in the store.

I want to try and swing by tomorrow around 4pm to see who wins and to see the other entries. I also want to check out some of the free concerts and other stuff happening in Vancouver as part of Main Street Drift.