Teeny Tiny Drukhari

Teeny tiny pieces!

I can say with some experience that one has never experienced putting together a finicky model until one has attempted to put together a multi-piece 6mm one!

I received my Dark Eldar army 4 days earlier than I'd originally thought so this evening my wife and I retired up to to loft and we put on Crimson Peak while she knit and I set to begin assembling very, very tiny evil space elves.

I started on the Raiders first. Raider transports don't cost any points in the Dark Eldar force, so I figured I should capitalize on them as much as possible, free transports are a tremendous boon!

I ordered the Dark Eldar force from Onslaught miniatures. Branded as the Stygians, these are wonderful sculpts consisting of white metal. There was little flash on the models, so they required only a bare minimum of work prior to assembly.

The models though are 7 pieces including the base! So it takes a little while to put them together.

Raiders in fine form

I'm debating paint schemes. I debate whether or not to go with a traditional Drukhari theme with a deep green base tone and a blood red sail, or to flip the theme and go with a maroon ox blood base with a teal sail. We shall see.

I also debate about the basing for the models. The Raiders are easy enough, I'm using some old Warmaster bases for them, but the infantry I could use either round bases or long rectangle bases. The rectangle bases would provide a maximum frontage for the infantry, though I'll admit that the round bases do look amazing, even if the frontage is considerably smaller.

In the meantime, I absolutely enjoy the sculpts and the look of these models in this scale. I cannot wait to start painting these.

Of Mass Conscription and Plague

Conscripts going through basic training.

Ugh, I'm sick as a dog lately. I've spent almost the entire holiday season completely nailed by some ugly cold thing and congestion the likes of which I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy.

I'm sick of feeling crappy, so decided to really get into the groove of working on my DZC Shaltari. Today I managed to completely base and put the wash on them. I'm still not completely sure of what my list is going to be for Adepticon, but I've got a good idea. I know that I'll always have 2 units of Pungari (A gift from my mother-in-law, that she jokes that they are miniature mother-in-laws), and likely 2 units of Firstborns. But I also managed to get a Shaltari Spire, Fire Drake, Coyote, Dreamsnare/Leopard, Jaguar, 3 Kukri, 4 Yari, 3 Haven Gates, and 2 Tarantulas all done up.

I really want to do up my Firebirds but I'm having a really hard time finding room for them in my list. I just LOVE how they look; like 2 tailed wasps. We shall see. Either way, it'll give me a chance to get the vast bulk of my Shaltari core finished and I can choose from there.

2018 Planning

Started with my Shaltari ground forces today. I decided in the end to go with a burnt umber kind of Fall theme. But first I desperately needed to clean my work space, and there is no time like the end of the year and with three major projects on the horizon.

So messy!

Now with 70% less mess!

Adepticon 2018 Planning

Man has it been a while. I have been gaming, quite a lot. I bounced from minis to rpgs and back and forth.

But today I want to talk about one of my favourite things that I did last year; going to Adepticon. I registered again and this time I'm going to play in 3 events; The DZC scenario event on Thursday, the Dropfleet Commander tournament on Friday and the Epic Armageddon tournament on Saturday.

I'm excited about these events but I do have a pretty ambitious goal of getting three different armies/fleets painted up for these events in just under 3 months!

This year for DZC and DFC I'm going to have my Shaltari painted up, which will round out both games nicely with 2 factions complete. That will make demoing either game a great deal of fun with fully painted fleets.

I am SUPER excited about playing in the Epic Armageddon tournament! I'm going to play me some Dark Eldar from the Onslaught miniature range. These minis are very modestly priced, gorgeous, and I have to say that the company owner Don is a really nice fellow.

The first on the painting table will likely be my DFC Shaltari as I've already started some of the models and just about everything is assembled for them. They have been a very interesting faction to start playing and a big contrast from what I'm used to with my PHR. I got OWNED last year by a Shaltari fleet when fighting for top table and I'm now curious as to how balanced they are with all of the (welcomed) errata changes.

I've definitely chosen some finesse lists here. Shaltari are like the Commander equivalents of Eldar and Tau combined. Lots of firepower, but relatively weak armour and wicked fast. They use their speed as a way of ensuring their survival. They also have some great mechanics on the ground with teleport technology that should be fun to pull some sneaky tricks.

In the skies the Shaltari feel like playing a wolf pack of submarines. With their very long sensor range and their quite small signatures, they can absolutely use a long arm kiting tactic to pummel the enemy from range while their Voidgates take the cities and objectives.

The Dark Eldar are the pinnacle of finesse in that they are incredibly fast and maneuverable and absolutely deadly in close combat engagements, but they have paper-thin armour and will wither under any concerted fire. I've only played the Eldar in the Epic range, so it should be fun to be able to lean even further into the Eldar finesse philosophy.

Fleet Parade

It is a happy thing to reach a milestone when involved in a large painting project. Today I feel as if I've reached a decent milestone.

I now have enough versatility in my painted PHR fleet that I can field a variety of options, including more frigates and different configurations of troop landing ships.

I do feel a bit short on Medeas though, really I do need two more to round out the fleet number to a healthy eight.

1500pt PHR Dropfleet Armada!

I managed to get 2 Calypsos done in 2 days during the work week, so I'm pretty happy with being able to have that progress. With the Scipio that I completed last week, I'm now able to field a 1500pt fleet for the gaming session that I was invited to on Thursday. VERY much looking forward to being able to play!

I'm horrified at the thought of how many damned gravity nullifier panels I have painted in this fleet.

I'm also thinking on whether or not I want to get a pack of the normal Echo corvettes. I am not in love

Close up of the Calypso

with the aesthetic of them, kind of preferring my weird Alien-esque scratch built ones but I'll admit, they are a horrific pain to build and the thought of building another 2 to 8 of them just exhausts me.

What do you guys think? Do you like the weird Echoes or should I be a conformist?

The Scipio is a nice centre piece model, which I'll admit, I feel like I was lacking a little bit in my Adepticon list last Spring.

What are you guys interested in seeing me paint next? I have the following on my plate:

• Finish the PHR fleet.
• Start the Shaltari fleet.
• Start the Shaltari ground forces.
• Start the Warhammer 40k Tau.

I'd love to hear your comments.

Paint Brushes Maketh the Man

I always enjoy getting new paint brushes. Even if they are the shitty ones.

Actually, I have to say, I do prefer crappy paint brushes to nice ones. The cheaper ones hold an edge just fine, I find and more often than not, even if I have a decent set of brushes I invariably end up cutting the points with an xacto-knife anyhow.

Sure the nice paint brushes are better quality but when you can spend upwards of $30 or more on a brush, do you really want to do anything by way of lining, drybrushing, blending or anything that's going to cause some wear? I don't!

Europa configuration

With the cheaper brushes I don't really care. I can use them for whatever I want and at $2 a brush I'm not worried if they don't last through an entire project.

So I've taken a small detour on my Warhammer models to complete some of the PHR frigates that I have for Dropfleet commander. Since my frigates are at a premium I decided that it would make sense to go ahead and magnetize the weapon types. It's a bit more work on the build time and
painting but well worth the effort.

I got the first frigate done in about 3 hours which I think is fairly respectable considering that 1 frigate is now 3 essentially. :)

Pandora configuration

I'm really not sure yet what kinds of frigates I like, I can see uses for them all. Initially I REALLY loved the Andromedas. Just something about pocket carriers really made me excited and reminded me of my Eve Online days when I'd run around in an Ishkur drone frigate.

The Pandoras are gods though in numbers with their small signature and absolutely deadly burn through laser.

While I dismissed the Europas for having somewhat mediocre broadsides, I did see how they can essentially almost drop a heavy cruiser in a single, well placed volley if fielded in numbers, so we'll need to test those further to see if they continue to perform.

I'm enjoying painting the frigates, mostly because I can bust them out relatively quickly, but I'll be

Andromeda configuration

happy to get back to my Warhammer figures and start chipping away at that new projects.

Oh! Also, I've been using Trello as a way of keeping all of my painting projects on task. I highly recommend using it! I might do a blog post and show some screen shots on how I'm using it soon.

The Problem with Army Painter Spray Can Varnish

Notice the milky varnish on the helmets and gun points.
Fuck you, Army Painter!

Oh man, I'm royally disappointed.

In my last blog post I talked about how rarely I ever use a dullcoat varnish but that in the case of my Tau painting project that maybe I should break tradition because I didn't like how the gloss varnish was taking away from the weathered look of the models.

The truth is I got burned pretty hard using a matte varnish at one point where I spent almost an entire year painting up a Flames of War British desert themed army. If any of you have painted any kind of desert camo you know just how invoved it is to bring a model up to a nice cream colour that isn't ghosted by whatever you have as the underlayer.

Anyhow, I used an Army Painter spray can and almost immediately could see my models starting to fuzz up. In the end the entire army was ruined.

Flash forward about a decade and here I am looking for matte varnishes and I again got myself an Army Painter Matte Varnish thinking that it was surely a fluke last time.

The moment I started spraying I figured something was up and unfortunately the varnish came out all super milky and inconsistent on the models.

While they aren't completely ruined this time, the detailing on the models is very much lost. Truth is that at tabletop level they'll look just fine, but I certainly wouldn't enter them into any painting competitions now and again I find myself wondering why the fuck I went with Army Painter brand again.

All my crisp, clean lines are lost for the most part. So I think it's back to using Testors brand, which has been such a great and consistent brand for me.

Given this setback, I think I'll wait on finishing the rest of the Fire Warrior squad for now and instead work on something fun, like the Stealth Suits.

The part that really pisses me off is Army Painter looks like they've raised their prices on their varnish to $17 Canadian a can! If I'm paying $17 fucking dollars for a can of varnish, I expect some quality!

First Fire Warrior Done!

First Fire Warrior fresh from training.

How exciting! A new painting project! As with all painting projects, getting the first model finished takes a hell of a lot of time I find. Figuring out colour schemes, what exactly do you want this or that part of the model to do? It takes some time!

In the end I did a modification of StrikingScorpion82's Tau scheme. In this first test model I followed the majority of his scheme, though I did gloss over the weathering stages quite a bit with the Seraphim Sepia and now I kind of wish I hadn't.

I also did some of the paint chipping, which I think helped bring up some of the details in the lower parts of the model. I liked his scheme because you can bang out quite a few models in a relatively short amount of time while being conscious of attracting the viewer's eye to areas that you want to highlight as focal points. This is perfect for me because I've managed to acquire a decent chunk of a starter army with a nice starter boxed set, a pathfinder set, stealth suits and a firewarrior squad that a buddy of mine was getting rid of!

Another angle of the Fire Warrior.

I really don't want to fall into the trap of playing with unpainted models, so choosing a scheme that looks good but also paints up fast is very important.

For the first time in forever I'm really not sure if I like the glosscote on the model. I think I'll end up
going with a dull or a satin coat. Likely a satin because I wouldn't want the metalics to get lost underneath a dulling varnish.

I also opted to go with a fairly heavy style of base. In my mind I liked the contrast of the model's orange with a swampier looking base full of green mosses and bull rushes.

Anyhow, I will modify the scheme a bit I think, find places where I can speed up the process somewhat and focus in on the areas that will make the models look better. All told though, I'm pretty happy with the look! Let me know what you think in the comments!

PHR Fleet Finished!

The PHR fleet in its entirety.

Huzzah! I'm quite happy to say that I was able to finish the last bits of my 1250pt Adepticon PHR fleet for the Dropfleet Commander tournament!

I am pretty happy with how quickly the fleet came together. Typically my painting progress is usually fairly slow. While I don't profess to be a terribly good painter by any stretch, I do get lost in the details when I'm painting models of this scale and that can greatly elongate the time it takes to finish a project.

Close up of the Bellerophons and Launch Assets.

Tournaments are a great motivator for me though and, since I'm headed down to the States in a little while, I wanted to make the most of it with a fully painted fleet and army. There have been times (as is the case with many gamers) where I've had to pull some all nighters in order to get an army done in time for a tournament. Given that I was able to get this sizeable project done in the time I had, I can turn my attentions towards rounding out my Dropzone Commander army in a little while.

I wasn't certain how I would enjoy going with the stock colour scheme, but now that they are finished
and I can see them 'in the flesh' I'm quite happy with how they turned out. I was even able to get all of the flight stands and launch assets complete as well.

Enjoy the pictures!