Sly Marbo: the one man army!

Hot on the heels of BathCon 2017, I've been working on Sly Marbo.

This is an old GW model which I wanted to add to my collection due to his rules as a 'one man army' in Shadow War: Armageddon. I picked him, minus 1 arm and thickly coated in a rather terrible paint job from eBay for about£5! The arm was replaced with one from the Catachan set (again, an eBay purchase). My friend Dan used him (whilst still unpainted) with spectacular results during BathCon 2017.  I will be starting to work on my Sylvaneth and Blood Angels models in preparation for a trip to Warhammer World in April 2018 but I wanted to get this guy painted up before starting those larger projects.

For this model, I used tested out a new process- this involved painting his base coat and highlights before shading. I really enjoyed this process; it was quick and will certainly be the process I now follow for all future models.

I base coated him with Bugmans Glow for the skin, Death World Forest for his vest, Caliban Green for his trousers and Dryad Bark for the pouches. Alongside those main colours, I painted the base with a mix of Mechanicus Standard Grey/Dryad Bark and Screaming Skull for the copper pipes. 

As this guy is a 'one man army' in the context of how I will use him, I wanted to add a more detailed base. The base used here was taken from the Warhammer 40K basing kit which was glued to the top of a 25mm base.  

Each colour was then highlighted using the recommended colours from the Citadel Painting System chart. Once complete the whole model was coated in gloss varnish in preparation for the wash.

The final steps involved shading the model using a mix of Nuln Oil/Reikland Fleshshade/Lahmain Medium. After that was dry I added Nihilakh Oxide/Nurgle's Rot to the pipes and a wash of Beil-Tan green to the lower half of the knife. Finally, a couple of thin coats of matte varnish were airbrushed on to the model to matte down and protect the miniature.

In conclusion, I am very happy with how he has come out. The new process, combined with the use of more delicate washes (diluted with Lahmain Medium) has allowed me to quickly paint this model to a good standard. As is always the case, I try and take learning forward... onwards to Tree Folk and the Sons of Sanguinius!

BathCon 2017

BathCon 2017 was the wargaming day I've planned since the beginning of this year. On the weekend of 2nd September, I hosted 3 friends for a full day of X-Wing, Shadow War: Armageddon and Warhammer 40,000... and then some Poker!

Since I organised the event it has been the sole focus of my hobbying time. My goal was to get into a position where I could present a gaming table full of painted terrain and where possible fully painted models. Whilst achieving all the goals I set myself was impossible, I was able to prepare all the scenery pieces I wanted to paint. With one of the game on the roster being Shadow War: Armageddon this was no small feat!

Prior to the event, I ran a roll to determine which game systems my guests would like to play. the 3 winners were X-Wing, Shadow War: Armageddon and Warhammer 40k. The two games which lost out were Age of Sigmar and Blood Bowl.  

So, here are some of the photos from the day...

The Board

This is the board set up prior to the event. Whilst I made posts on this blog covering some of the pieces of terrain used, I didn't post about them all. Over the coming weeks, I will probably catch up with such posts as I learnt a lot from my experiences and would like to share that information.

X-Wing

To kick things off we played 2 games of X-Wing. It's been about 18 months since I last played and had forgotten how much fun it can be! I played a simple 50 point match whilst the other game involved a few more models on each side(as can be seen in the picture below).

Shadow War: Armageddon

We chose to play a 4 player battle in SWA, so 1v1v1v1... which turned out to be a lot of fun! We played it on the full 6v4 table packed full of terrain. It took 3 hours.. which is a bit longer than most SWA battles are supposed to last but it was hugely entertaining. We had Orks v Chaos Marines v Space Marine Scouts v Sly Marbo! the Orks and Chaos Marines spent most of the battle trying to tickle each other to death in combat whilst Sly Marbo did some cheeky stabby-stabby moves with his poisoned knife. The less said about the Space Marine Scouts the better!

Warhammer 40,000

Finally, we played some 40k. a 50 power level battle. Chaos v Space Marines/Blood Angels. Unfortunately, we ran out of time and only managed 1 turn each before having to call it a day.

Fences!

This set was a purchase made at Salute this year. It's a simple MDF terrain pack so was very cheap! They've come out quit well too.

My aim was to paint these in a colour scheme which matched the design of the fences without being too bright or complicated to paint. I chose a heavily weathered dark red scheme which contains large areas where the metal underneath was showing.

The fences were primed with Vallejo Black Primer. Warplock Bronze was then airbrushed over each piece. I wanted to gain further experience with a technique designed for heavily worn metals where the surface layer of paint had been worn away. This is achieved with hair spray! Once the Warlock Bronze was dried I applied a layer of varnish before several layers of cheap supermarket hairspray.

Once the hairspray had dried I airbrushed Khorne Red over each piece. When this had dried I used a damp brush to loosen the paint and hairspray (as its water based) underneath thus exposing the bronze... aka the bear metal. It's at this point I was presented with a slight problem with my choice of colours - the bronze is too similar to the red so it wasn't as evident that the paint had been worn away!

Once I had finished exposing the bronze paint I applied a layer of varnish to seal/protect the paint. Next up I brushed rust coloured weathering pigment into various areas of each fence. Again this proved as a good learning experience of weathering powders. This was then fixed in place with Vallejo Pigment Binder. 

After the Pigment Binder had dried I lightly drybrushed Leadbelcher along the raised edges of each piece to further enhance the appearance that the fences are metal.

Then, to simulate the build up of dust on the model I mixed up a very diluted solution of Steel Legion Drab and earth coloured pigments and applied 2 coats of this along the lower part of each fence.

Finally, I drybrushed Nercon Compound around the exposed (bronze) areas of each fence in order to highlight the worn away paint.

Next up I'll be working on some small pieces of battlefield furniture.

Shadow War Armageddon Terrain: Work In Progress

This weeks post covers an update of where I am with part of the Shadow War Armageddon (SWA) terrain. 

As you can see, I've split the terrain into groups based on the main primary colour being applied. In this case- Yellow! (Averland Sunset).

First I'd like to cover where the inspiration came from for the colour scheme. There are loads of great example of colour schemes for the SWA terrain which looks fantastic. It was whilst in my local Warhammer store in Bath that I observed how the store manager had painted the new 40k display and loved it! Whilst the exact scheme I am trying to achieve is not exactly the same as those shown in the photos of the display below, it made up my mind that yellow is the way to go.

 So, I started off my priming the terrain with Vallejo Black primer. This was possibly not the best colour to use underneath yellow as it took many, many coats to achieve any kind of decent coverage.

I also experienced a few problems with my airbrush during this stage so the base coat was uneven and rather 'dusty'.

Once the yellow had been built up to a reasonable level I moved on to painting the details. I picked out various details with Mephiston Red and Leadbelcher. I then painted the mechanicum symbols with Chaos Black/Celestra Grey and filled in the maker stamps with Zandri Dust.

Next up was the first round of weathering- applying paint chips. I created a 50/50 mix of Dryad Bark and Chaos Black and used a sponge to apply the chips randomly across the models. Once this was completed I applied a coat of Vallejo Gloss Varnish in preparation for shading.

At this point things started to go a little wrong! The plan, once the gloss varnish has dried, was to apply a mix of Agrax Earthshade/Nuln Oil gloss shade to the model. What is supposed to happen is that the gloss shade will retain more surface tension when applied to the gloss varnish and so the shade will settle in the recesses without leaving much residue on the large panels. I have used this technique successfully on other miniatures however this time the shade began to break up the gloss varnish and so didn't settle as expected.

I 'solved' the problem as best I could by drybrushing Averland Sunset over the model. Unfortunately this resulted in the models looking chalky (as can happen with drybrushing) however, I'm content with this as its a lot better compared to how the models looked after the shade.

I will continue to work on these models and will post the completed models next week.