Memory lane: Reinholdt, Gobber Speculator

Here is one of the very first figs I finished when I first jumped into Warmachine, everybody's favorite cowardly Gobber, Reinholdt.
At that point in my painting career, I didn't see fit to ever highlight black because I always thought it made things look dusty and bland. Now its the other way around. 
I remember being pretty pleased with how different my Reinholdt looked form everybody else's. Now I look at that cotton candy blue skin and cant imagine what was going through my noggin!
Ah well, he still see's use in a number of my games. 

Dark Age: Cesspool

Well, I got pretty tired of proxying this guy while he sat half painted on my desk. So, I decided to sling some paint and get him finished up. I cant say I'm terribly impressed with how he turned out. He is such a strange sculpt, and very hard to paint properly. With that big coat on, he is all smooth and rounded without a lot of crisp detail. I wouldn't say the fig lacks coolness because of that, but it definitely made him more difficult paint. This wasn't helped by the fact that I picked an extremely nuetral, dark color to paint him in, so a lot of the highlights get lost, especially in the pictures.
But after all, he is for the table top and I think he will look just fine for that purpose.

Thanks for looking!

More Silos and a full day of games

Finished up a couple more silos since I was so pleased with the look of the first one. They were then used in a game of Dark Age and I think they really helped set a cool atmosphere for the board. I'm excited to get working on  few more factory style pieces so I can theme an entire board.
I'm going to have to make some that look suitably Cryxian to help tie in the whole set for our Warmahordes games. 

Also snapped a few pics of Yesterdays gaming goodness. For some reason the cosmos must have aligned just so, and a few of us got passes to go game for the ENTIRE day!
At noon, we started with a game of Warhammer Fantasy,  with some Warmachine and Hordes taking place as well.  Unfortunately , Warhammer games are few and far between these days as seems to be the case all over from what I see on the interwebs.
This was my first game of eighth, and really my first game since the very earliest days of 7th edition so we kept the game small(1500pts) 
I took an infantry heavy Dwarf army and was met on the field by a pretty standard High Elf army.
The game was really a lot of fun, and was surprisingly close until a rather volatile magic phase saw the demise of my entire block of Ironbreakers! The MVP for the game had to be my Gyrocopter. He buzzed around, harassing and steaming Elves with reckless abandon. 2nd turn saw him blasting a 14 man unit of Swordmasters, killing most of them , and then watching them panic off the field, which I must say I was very glad for as I really did not want to see them in combat.
By the end of the game, I had a Demon slayer and Gyrocopter left to his bolt thrower. Lion chariot, and very heavily depleted unit of Spearmen who held that blasted level 4 Mage.

After the Warhammer was at an end we had a planned Super Dungeon Explore Demo to jump right into. I only got pics from the very outset of the game because we all became so engrossed after that, that I totally spaced taking any more pics of the action.
We had the max number of heroes playing in the demo, so the game took quite some time. It was also slowed a bit by having a bunch of headstrong nerds arguing amongst themselves the whole time on the best course of action for every round.
If you have not had the opportunity to try this game out I would highly recommend you try to get involved in a demo. The demo we played  was a blast and the game in general is simple enough that my 6 year old could understand it but engaging enough to keep an entire game store full of grown men hanging on every dice roll.
Props to my Buddy Grim for running a great demo and weathering a hail of verbal abuse throughout.

After the SDE demo we all ran for grub and then finished the day off with our usual, monthly paint night which had a great turnout this month. What an awesome day!
 May have to make it a quarterly tradition..........

Just in case you missed it.

Tre Manor, Creator and sculptor at Red Box Games has put up a great Kickstarter project. It has already funded which really comes as no surprise, he sculpts some of the greatest fantasy figures on the market these days.
I really hope to jump on this project and lend some funding to it. Maybe you want to have a look and do the same?

Industrial Silos

So, I've got this buddy that just so happens to be an amazing terrain maker and all around fantastic artist.

You may have seen some of the great stuff he has done such as the his Orgoth Tower seen in No Quarter magazine.
 He came up with a really great idea for some Infinity terrain that I really, REALLY liked.
Here is a link to his original idea and prototypes.  Johns Infinity silos

I decided I wanted to make some for myself and modify them just enough that they could cross game systems a little more freely.
Here is my first prototype, and I am honestly pretty happy with how it turned out. The Celery color was sort of a last minute idea as I was originally going to just do a basic grey and metal paint scheme.
Now that this one is finished, and I know that they will turn out alright, I am going to start to churn out a good dozen or so, to really help theme a board for Dark Age, Warmachine, M.E.R.C.S. or Inifinity.
Let me know what you think, or if you might change anything.
Thanks for having a look.

Loyal to the Crown

Finished up these two Iron Kingdoms figs night before last. They were part of a larger commission for a local, and were thrown in as somewhat of an after thought.
I had been putting them off to work on the larger things in the commission but it turns out that these were needed for a Historical Warmahordes tournament this weekend! So, I had to hurry and bust them out. Hopefully the client will find them satisfactory. I enjoyed painting them both quite a bit, as I love working on figures that have lots of armor plating!
Where do your loyalties lie, Vinter or Leto? With the true King or the Usurper? (can ya tell I'm a Magnus player?)

Miracles can and will happen

That's rights folks. the other day my wife proved that Miracles Can, and occasionally will occur.
So first off, you need a little back story. The summer time is when I really start to stock up on figs as I start to work a lot more(more money) and I have less time to paint.
Well, at the beginning of this summer my wife stumbled upon my stock of unpainted and unassembled figures. I had them hiding in a few drawers and for some reason she decide she needed something in said drawers. Needless to say she was a bit upset with all the figures I have amassed and neglected.
Over the last month or two I have been slaving(I hate assembling figs) away at trying to make a decent dent in the hoard you may have seen in some of the more recent posts. I guess this had not gone unnoticed by her and she took it upon herself to head to the local shop and pick me out some figs!
Yup, you heard right.
Not only did she go and randomly pick some figures for me, but they were ones I had wanted, and were for a specific Dark Age sub-faction and can be played together. Which is awesome!
She assures me she had no help in her decision, which can only mean she does listen to my endless babble about Wargames!
I am now the proud owner of St. Luke and a blister of his arsenal troopers. I think I will have to give these guys a quick assembly and paint job to show my appreciation.

Looking for color suggestions on these guys as well.  ;)

Memory lane: Old witch and Scrapjack

Way back in MK1 the Old Witch was probably my second favorite caster to run(right behind the Butcher of course) I didn't win a whole lot with her, but I loved her sneaky tricks and very different play style from the other casters , and honestly, who doesn't love an Arc Node for Kahdor!?
I don't get near as much time to game nowadays as I would like, so Zevhanna has been collecting dust for quite some time. 
I thought I would go ahead and dust them off for this installment of Memory lane, and give you all a gander at them.

Eiryss, Angel of Retribution

Well, I got this done and only just barely before the deadline. About an hour and a half before the deadline!
Wouldn't have mattered terribly if I hadn't, but it does sort of zap the fun out of contests if nobody endeavors to finish on time.
I am pretty pleased with her. I hope the new owner will be as well. The painting went pretty smooth at first as I had  a pretty good mental image of how I wanted her to look in the end. The only part that really gave me struggles was the big feathers draped across the back of her cloak. I knew I wanted them to be somewhat eye catching since the rest of the model is painted in such nuetral, subdued colors.I wanted to steer clear of bright parrot looking feathers, because that would just look goofy in my opinion.
  When I hit a snag such as this, I usually let my wife have a look and see what she thinks. Two sets of eyes and all that jazz. She asked if I thought doing bright phoenix type feathers would work, and I had a DUH! moment. Why hadn't I thought of that? I am really pleased with how they turned out. So, props to the wife unit on that one.

Gamers Asylum Paint night

Once a month we plan an evening at the local game shop for everyone to get together, BS, paint and have a good 'ol time.
With summer in full swing the attendance is a little lacking, which is really to be expected. We have a great time though,no matter the turnout. I went ahead and snapped a few pics of the figs everyone was working on. There were a few other people there earlier, but I had forgotten to get out the camera before they were long gone(these things tend to last until 1 or 2 AM after all.).
The greatest part about these painting parties is seeing all of the different things that people are working on, and getting feedback from all sorts of different perspectives.

If this is something your local crowd does not do, I would highly recommend coordinating one and making it a tradition.