Solar Auxilia - WIP Charonite Ogryn

Managed to get a little paint on this guy over the weekend. The color scheme is inspired by some great Ogryn I spotted on the Solar Auxilia Facebook page.

Work continues : )

Cheers
Dave

Let's return to The Horus Heresy!

This year, on my trip to AdeptiCon, I didn't play any games. That's the first time since 2005 that I haven't. It felt a bit odd. I was still incredibly busy, and didn't have time in my schedule for gaming, but there was plenty there to be had. Of particular interest were the 30K events run by my friends Ty, Marc, John, and Robin. I'm planning on playing in at least one of their cool events next year.

Anyway, after finishing up my PowerPoint presentation for my metallics class, I was inspired to finish up the first on my Vorax Automata. These models are a reimagining of the old Crusader robots (I think) and their bug eyes are just magnificent.

At the show I also purchased my first squad of Charonite Ogryn for my Solar Auxilia army. I've already assembled them, and they now have primer on them. I think I may be back in the swing of things for my own painting! : )

Cheers

Dave

Back from AdeptiCon - Loads of Crowdfunding!

Well, AdeptiCon 2015 was fantastic! Such a massive and exhausting weekend that I am still getting settled back into the swing of things after returning home on Sunday night. I'll post a few photos later in the week, as well as a review and some information from my painting classes.

Until then, however, I thought I'd take a few minutes to show you a handful of crowdfunding projects that friends of mine have running at the moment. They're all for different genres of games/toy soldiers, and all seem like a lot of fun.

First up, my friends at Soda Pop Miniatures have launched a Kickstarter for their new chibi-style ninja board game, Ninja All Stars! In the game you get to play rival ninja clans that are sneaking around outside a Japanese cast in the middle of the night. It's a simple KS, with only a single pledge level and lots of scope for masses of models as stretch goals are crushed. As I type, it is about 160% funded and still has 27 days to go.

The next one to show off is much smaller in scope, and is from a regular reader of this blog. Nick Baran is taking some of his first steps towards building a miniatures line for a game he has been developing over the last couple of years, Broken Contract. He has developed the rules for the small-scale, underground mining, skirmish game and has those available now as a free download on his Broken Contract blog. Nick's Kickstarter is to fund the first eight miniatures from the range (enough for the initial game), and at the time of typing he's at 75% funding with 18 days to go. Nick is also pushing to build his Facebook presence, so if you are on the Facebooks, I suggest you go show him some love (and help unlock a few models along the way).

Another old colleague of mine, Joe Krone, and his Watchful I Studio have launched a Kickstarter for their first miniatures range, the Chinese Warring States. The primary goal is to get a line of historical miniatures into production, with stretch goals looking to add some more "fantastic" elements into the mix, such as Terracotta Soldiers and Temple Dogs. Where were these guys when I was building my Cathay army back in the day? At the time of typing, the Chinese Warring States project is 65% funded with 29 days to go.

And finally, my friends over at Mantic are running their next Kickstarter in order to help expand their range of miniatures for the Deadzone game/Warpath world. With essentially two simple pledge levels, you can start to get your hands on not only the elite of the Pathfinders and the hordes of chittering Veer-myn, but some of the cool new industrial sector scenery from their Battlezones range. I'll be putting some of the standard range together in the coming weeks for my work on a host of Relic Knights articles. Should be fun : ) At the time of typing, this one is 360% funded, with 13 days to go.

Cheers
Dave

Welcome to the Windy City!

Finally, the day has arrived. As this posts I'm doing the final scramble to get to the airport and fly off to Chicago for AdeptiCon. I'm obviously super-excited for the show, primarily because I get to see lots of good friends I only see once a year!

I'm also excited to see hundreds of thousands of miniatures on the tabletop and in the cabinets, all lovingly assembled and painted with care. Speaking of which, here's my finished model for the Crystal Brush, The Toad. I've shown you a few WIPs before but here he is now, complete and sporting a crumpled broadsheet decrying him as "The Devil of the Docklands".

The Toad is from Infamy Miniatures, and will play a major role in my collection for the game Infamy: Welcome to the Big Smoke. I hope you like him.

A little Chibi before the show...

I was chatting with my friend John from Soda Pop Miniatures a few weeks back, and the conversation turned to AdeptiCon. John pointed out the Crystal Brush had a Chibi category this year. I thought it was only right that I painted up a model from Soda Pop's Super Dungeon Explore board Game to enter. After looking through the box I settled on this dynamic barbarian leaping forward with her enormous axe.

I must say that the Chibi genre isn't really my thing, so it was interesting to see what I needed to adjust in my painting approach to achieve a reasonably "proper" look. I harbor absolutely no illusions, this isn't my best work and I'm sure she'll really just be filling out the cabinet. I'm quite curious to see what my friend Drew Drescher brings along for this category. His painting is great and he loves his Chibi : )

Twenty-four long hours until I board my flight to AdeptiCon : )

Cheers
Dave

AdeptiCon is just around the corner!

And for the first time ever, I'll be running two hobby seminars at the show : )

Getting everything together for the seminars has been... interesting. It has certainly been a lot more work than I first originally imagined, but I'm now ready to go. I'd like to thank Warlord Games for providing the Algoryn models (from their game Beyond the Gates of Antares) for the classes (below you can see 50 of the suckers waiting for priming).

As part of the seminars, all students will receive a bottle of my "Super Secret Metallic Wash". Here you can see my daughters mixing it all carefully on a recent snow day. My thanks here go to Robert Kingery for his supply of dropper bottles for the wash : )

Here are the examples I painted up for the presentation and handout. We'll be looking at Dark Iron, Polished Steel, Brassy Brass, and Shining Gold.

Once my presentation and handout were complete, I took a few moments to get some more metallics on my Mechanicum Vorax models. I just love the evil bug feel of these guys!

Perhaps I'll see you at the show : )

Cheers
Dave

Thanks for waiting, I hope you like your tanks : )

A little while back I posted about some Shermans I had converted for my friend (and blog-follower) Jake. Here's that post.

Well, with Jake visiting AdeptiCon next week to run a couple of seminars on digital sculpting, I thought I could save some money on shipping to Australia and please Jake at the same time. To that end I've been working to get this squadron of Pacific Theater tanks ready for the trip to Chicago.

I tried hard to match the conversions and paint job to those images sent by Jake, and I fully realize that they might not be 100% accurate, but I hope they're not too far off. As you can see, the tanks are beat to hell, with quite a lot of chipped paint and rusty areas. The salt air can really do a number on ferrous metals.

I named the lead tank Fireball, after a WW2 wargame called Fireball Forward.

And this tank was named Ducky. Jake is a University of Oregon alum, so I thought he'd get a kick out of that connection ; )

I hope you like them!

Cheers
Dave

And the final two Hell Dorado warbands.

I realized that I hadn't posted the final two Hell Dorado warbands that I painted last year for the hobby articles for Cipher Studios. Well, here they are. First (above) are the Immortals. This Chinese-inspired faction has been in Hell for quite some time, and the foot soldiers sport a few tainted/mutated body parts. Very fine and delicate miniatures, these ones.

The final war band I worked on was a little larger, primarily because it doesn't have a starter box, so I had to pick out the models based on what I liked - I liked a lot of them. These are the Mercenaries. I have enough of them to play a decent sized game of Hell Dorado, and I can also ally them with my Westerners (or any other faction, really).

The Officers here are Andre de Montbard and Marcus Leblanc. Both have a fantastic Templar look.

These are the Troops for the force: two Deserters on the left and two Templar Squires on the right.

And finally the Independents: Thirty Coins (the blind sniper), the Russian Trapper, and one of my favorite models in the range - Angelo Casaviecchi (a lemure trapper/trader).

Such wonderful character in all of these models, and a joy to paint.