Epic Battle of Ultimate Doom!

Irdgar saw the Dragon Ogres to his right advance against the Necrosphinx, as he led his retinue towards the horde of skeletons assembled before him. Arrows whistled through the air, but failed to pierce the armour plates and shields of Irdgar's elite warriors.
Drawing upon the unreliable winds of magic, Irdgar felt his dark lord Slaanesh's blissful caress, and smiled with pleasure as his spell made the undead bowmen crumble to dust by the scores! He opened himself further to the destructive energies of Chaos, becoming a true instrument for the dark gods, each millisecond bringing him closer and closer to his master, the Dark Prince. A tiny voice deep inside his mind pleaded him to stop, pleaded him to let go, but Ingtar ignored it in favour of the glorious choir rising higher and higher for every sliver of magic coursing through him...



Dusted off my miniatures and took roughly 1000 points worth with me to a local gaming club/store "Farao's Cigarer" yesterday, to partake in their Epic Battle of Ultimate Doom. All in all we were 14 players; the organizer split us into two even teams; the battlefield was chosen and our armies deployed. To cut it short: it was a blast!

The other team consisted of Dwarfs, men of Bretonnia and the Empire, Lizardmen, Wood Elves and Tomb Kings, representing the forces of good and order; my team on the other hand were mortal and daemonic followers of the dark gods and a handful of Dark Elves. As we were starting to converse and plan our battle strategy (few of us had ever met or played with/against each other, so there had been no planning in advance), a Bretonnian Paladin arrived at the field with his trusted knights just in time to see a band of traitorous Orc mercenaries leave the Encampment of Order, in favour of the armies devoted to Chaos and Destruction. Funny enough, the Orc Warlord turned out to have the highest leadership of all our heroes and commanders, so this shift of allegiance also gave my side a brand new commanding Warlord...

With 14 000 divided between two opposing forces, I soon lost track of what was happening everywhere on the battlefield, but my side's battleplan was roughly to harass/kite the Lizardmen on our left flank, keeping them from the core of the action; send our Flesh Hounds, Seekers of Slaanesh, Marauder Horsemen against the hill the cowardly Dwarfs and men of the Empire had fortified with their fearsome artillery; concentrate our superior heavy infantery on the right side of the battlefield's centre, to punch a hole through their lines, while our farmost right flank was screened by Furies and scouting Nurglings.
And I think it went rather well.

With an army consisting mainly of Chaos Warriors, with a trio of Dragon Ogres thrown in as support against tough opponents, my troops were deployed along hordes of Goblins, Plaguebearers, Black Orcs and Chaos Marauders on the right - except for a unit of Marauder Horsemen, which command were turned over to the captain overseeing the capture of the Artillery Hill.

Stones from Bretonnian Trebuchets fell among our ranks, while Skeleton Bowmen showered us with a rain of arrows, but it could not halt our advance! We answered with dark magic, softening them before the inevitable charge. Unfortunately, the commander of my troops became slightly overeager, let his control slip for a second and was rightly punished by the unforgiving winds of magic. Although his spell removed half of the skeleton horde deployed before the bulk of my units, the magic backlash of his miscast destroyed not only him, but half of the regiment he was accompanying. Nevertheless, the next round saw my screen of bloodthirsty Warhounds charge the crew of an enemy Trebuchet, which gave my Dragon Ogres a clear path to the enemy Necrosphinx. Although the Warhounds were soundly beaten, the fury of the Dragon Ogres turned out to be too much for the Undead construct, which was reduced to lifeless stone and dust.

At that point, the organizers tapped his finger at his watch; it was time to settle the score. I raised my eyes from the nearby melee, and inspected the battlefield surrounding me. At the far left, our flank had been pushed back by the Lizardmen, but our careful manouvering had placed the cold blooded warriors in a position where they could be of little assistance to their allies; our various fast units had successfully breached the defenses by the Artillery Hill, and enemy crewmen were either fleeing, slaughtered or fighting desperately for their lives. Although hampered by the dangerous march through Wild Woods, our horde of Khorne Marauders and Black Orcs had arrived to assist the cavalry by the hill, turning the enemy counterattack into a rout. My Dragon Ogres were in the midst of the enemy, awaiting orders to charge the next unit, while my Chaos Warriors were within charging range of the enemy bowmen. A valiant charge by Knights of Bretonnia had chased our Hydra off, and while this potentially left my rear vulnerable, Plaguebearers and a Herald of Khorne mounted in a war chariot had halted the human advance.

Although a lot could have happened if we hadn't had to stop at the end of the third round, I think we would have carried this home in the end. And the victory conditions counted at the time we stopped, were also in favour of the forces of Order's defeat:

- 1 point to the forces of Chaos/Destruction for having most units with Standards and/or Battle Standard Bearers on the enemy's half of the battlefield.
- 1 point to the forces of Chaos/Destruction for slaying most enemy heroes and monsters.
- 1 point to the forces of Chaos/Destruction for having captured most enemy Standards.
- 1 point to the forces of Order for having most painted units.

I think the opposing team were a bit unlucky, in that sense that their warmachines were unable to take out our heroes, and thus score points. My Sorcerer were our only casualty, in fact, and he died by his own hand... They were also unable to soften our units enough with their ranged attacks, and so we brutally butchered our way through their lines as soon as we made contact. Excepting the Bretonnian cavalry on the right flank and a regiment of Dwarf Longbeards (double 6 on the charge roll, what's up with that?!) were their only units on our half of the battlefield, as the rest of their army tried to defend their guns and stonethrowers, which gave my side some easy scoring points, as we got several banner-bearing units over to their side of the battlefield.

My side might have had Lady Luck on our side, though: the Necrosphinx for instance, missed on its monster-killing-blow strike, while my Dragon Ogres just cut through it, insane toughness and all, like a hot knife through butter... Granted, they had Strength 7 with Great Weapons, but still... But I guess luck can be put to blame in any battle.

Closing words: it was tons of fun, and I hope I'll be able to make it the next time such an event is organized!

Sorcerer of Slaanesh and new pictures of Wood Elf Highborn

Here's the Sorcerer of Slaanesh I built out of the Empire Battle Wizards box, and he's now awaiting judgement in Copenhagen's Games Workshop, along with my Amethyst Wizard. Saw some very nice entries when I dropped my miniatures off this morning, I think it will be tough!

Managed to take some pictures of him before I left him at the store; in a way it is wrong to say he is finished, because I had initially planned to paint a large Slaaneshi freehand design on his back, but at 2:30 am this morning, I simply couldn't keep my brushstrokes straight, and had to leave him as he is - but maybe I'll finish him properly when I get him back. Might rebase him as well, come to think of it; just couldn't be bothered with building something nicer last night.

Also had some trouble with the undercoating of this model; for some reason, the white spray left rather large pellets of paint on the right side of his cloak, which made an uneven and rugged surface - hopeless to try any smooth blending or shading in that area, sadly. Awh well, really happy with the flames and his book. The OSL could maybe have been more smooth, but I think it's OK.

Hope you like him!
My Wood Elf Highborn was returned to me when I left my pair of wizards, and I've taken some new pictures of him, which does the miniature some more justice than the poorly lit and unfocused pictures GWCopenhagen took for their facebook site...

I've already introduced him in a previous post, but with these pictures I can't but repeat my satisfaction with the blade and the base of the model.
Hope you like him as well!

Wizard of the Amethyst Order

The first wizard is completed!

Or, while taking these pictures, I saw I had forgotten to paint his ears and the edge of the base needs some cleaning, but I've just packed away my photobox, so you'll have to live with these pictures for now at least.

I need to get some whiter lightsource(s), I think: my pictures get all yellow-tintet and who knows if it affects my painting... But that's for the future!
Hope you like him!

Empire Battle Wizards - WIP

Just thought I'd give you all a small update on how my entries for the monthly Knights of the Brush painting competition are progressing. Starting to feel a bit of a time pressure rising; the deadline is the 29th of October, at 10 am, and I can't claim to be a swift painter. But at least both of the models are assembled and primed, and I've been fiddling around with some colours and settled on themes for each of them.

First out is this fella. His main colours will be black and white, to better fit in with my Slaaneshi warband. I've sketched down some freehand motiphs, which hopefully will be enough to mark him as part of my army, once it's all done. The staff-head was created by pinning the burning sword onto a staff - I do hope it won't disqualify this model from the competition; conversions are not really allowed, but as I have only used parts from the Battle Wizard-box, I hope it'll be okey. After all, the winner of last month's competition had removed the tree-spirit from the Wood Elf Highborn... But we'll see!
...come to think of it, I did cut, reposition and pin the hand with the book, and also removed the pharaoh-ish beard-compartment from the mask - which actually saddened me a bit as I found the thing itself rather cool, but I was forced to do it, as the head wouldn't fit onto the body, unless I cut off the beard-compartment. Awh well! At least I think he looks rather decent this way, so should he be disqualified, I'll still have a nice addition to my army!

Then there's the second mage.
I've not made any conversions to this guy, so no danger of him being disqualified! The idea is that he'll be using the Lore of Death, and I felt that it should be quite obvious to any observer that he is - apart from the scythe and hourglass... As the previous wizard, he's still at a very early stage, but the freehands are at a slowly, but nevertheless steady pace turning out the way I want them to.
Hope you like them so far, I'll do my best to slap some more paint on them in the following days, and update promptly!

Wood Elf Highborn

Afraid I havn't got much to show, when it comes to progress on my Empire Battle Wizards, which are the chosen model(s) for this month's Knights of the Brush - I have assembled them, even tried to sneak in some minor conversions, but in case that will get me disqualified, I've assembled a second mage. I just hope I have the time to get them both painted the way I visualize them.

Either way, the guys over at GW Copenhagen have finally uploaded pictures from last month's competition, so I thought I'd share a rather badly lighted and poorly focused image of my contribution.
As you can see, I went for some rather unorthodox colours for my Highborn; my model was the only which wasn't predominantly dark green with bronze armour.
I still need some practise when it comes to blending, but hopefully these monthly challanges will give me the motivation to push for and eventually master more fluid transitions between colours. All in all I'm quite happy with him; I really how the tree's barch turned out and the blade - although the quality of this picture doesn't render either very well.

Hope you all like him, I'll get some better pictures when the miniature is returned to me.

Returned!

Whew! Time flies!

Roughly half a year since my last update, and well over a year since I showed any pictures of painted miniatures. But now I'm back; I started painting again this summer, loaned a finecast Orion model from a friend to test out and rediscover long-forgotten techniques and the joy of painting, and have done a little painting here and there since then.

Sadly I do not have any paictures of Orion at this point; I did the painting at the owner's place in Norway, and it wasn't finished when it was time for me to return to Denmark again after the holidays. But I do hope to finish him during the christmas-vacation, and I'll make sure I get some photos in return for painting up the model.
I have to say, though, that although finecast is lighter and the models don't fall over as easily or break apart like the old (unpinned) metal models did, it is simply not of high enough quality at this point. I very nearly went mad from all the air-bubbles as I worked on the model; while the old metal models might have needed some greenstuff gap-filling here and there, the resin finecast require sculpting! In no way is it more user friendly. Luckily I have some experience with greenstuff, so I managed to patch him together reasonably well, but yea.. I think GW should have tested and perfected finecast more, before releasing it.

But enough whining about finecast... Just damn shame about them bubbles!

So, what else have I been painting?
Well, the local GW has started (or have had for some time, although without me knowing) a monthly painting competition, Knight of the Brush, where all the contestants gets a month to paint the same model, chosen by the winner of last month's competition. So I dusted off my brushes and paintpots (actually had to replace a couple of colours, as they had dried up...), and bought myself a Wood Elf Highborn for september's competition.
Sadly I didn't make it to the top, quite high standard of the local painters - which is very nice in my eyes. I did score some extra points for "daring to be different", as my model was the only one not painted with green as the dominating colour. At the moment, the model's on display in the cabinet at GW here in Copenhagen, and I have no pictures myself, but the staff has promised that they'll get some pictures taken and publish them on their facebook profile, like they have done for the previous competitions - although they are taking their time!
Either way, I'll take some pictures myself when the model is returned to me at the end of the month.

Speaking of the local GW, their 14th birthday coincided with the Dreadfleet release last saturday, and the whole day was filled with events and competitions. The staff and several regular gamers had baked cakes for the occation; and also dressed up as Zombie Pirates - awesome! I got my ass handed to me in the "Ogre Olympics" (I'll do my best to get ahold of the rules; although rather unbalanced and mostly down to pure luck, it was tons of fun) and of course I participated in the speed-painting competition!

5 minutes: Go!
Alright, the poor Space Marine may not look like much, but I think I started out pretty well, lining the shoulderpads, painted the helmet white wihtout drowning all the details, had changed colour and done one eye lense, when the judge yelled: "First minute's up! Time to change hands!" ...and it sort of went downhill from that point on.. First of all, I'm NOT ambidexteritous, not the least. A minute later, we were told to hold the brush in our mouths; next minute between neck and shoulder (I can tell you, it is hard to dip the brush in a pot of paint, when held in that position!); then back in our off-hand. Owh, let's make this fun, throw in 10 seconds with eyes closed!

.. Well, it was fun, and it's a fine start on my return to the hobby - I think!
Next month's model for Knights of the Brush is the Empire Battle Wizard - no conversion, no greenstuff, only bits from the box. I'll pick up my box tomorrow, and we'll just have to see then how I'm going to model and later paint it.

Two more paintings

End of April already, is it? Time flies...

I haven't spent much time painting lately; me and my brother's grand plan of weekly painting sessions over Skype sort of didn't work out in the end, and I've had tons of other stuff on my mind. But I've picked up the brush this evening, and will hopefully have some more paintings to show for it in the near future.

Today's update holds two facial-studies I did in the first couple of days of March, if memory serves me right. At the time, I hoped to complete more portraits, and thus I put off publishing these two 'till I'd painted some more, but I never got past than finding suitable photos on the web. So in a way of not leaving this guilt-ridden update empty of any imagery, I've included my first pair celebrity portraits - I hope you'll be able to recognize their faces, the first one's an actor, while the second is a musician.

If my brush-strokes have made them unrecognizable, tell me and I'll leave some more clues.

Photo-update

Just a short update.

After reading Nesbet's great tutorial on how to improve miniature photographing, I've spent some time experimenting with my camera's settings, and I have taken some new pictures of some old models, trying to use Nesbet's tips. Despite this, I still struggle with getting the light balance right, so my pictures have a slight yellow tint to them, but the details are much, much sharper! The increase in quality of my photos has been demonstrated at CoolMiniOrNot.com, where the new pictures of models I previously had uploaded, now average a score 0,5-1,5 points higher than the old pictures! I'm still not 100 % happy with the quality; it's not perfect, but I need 2 more lamps and a proper photobox for it to get much better. Anyways, do drop by Nesbet's blog and take with you some photo-tips if you haven't already, and if you feel for it, drop by my CMON-page and see the improvement for yourself.

On a different subject, I'm working on a couple of miniatures at the moment, so the next post will probably contain some photos of that instead of aquarelles. My brother and I plan to hold a painting session over Skype tomorrow, to help each other with the motivation. We used to paint together in our parents' basement when we were younger, but now that we've both moved from home, I think it's several years since we last painted together. So there's a bit of nostalgia in it all, but I hope that this will lead to more miniatures painted and lots of fun chatting about nonsense while we're at it - just like old times!

More aquarelles and new layout

With the revival of the blog, I thought it'd be fitting to change the old layout a bit - hope you all like the changes!

Also, I found some paintings I made last year, which I thought I could upload in lack of new stuff (I am working on a couple of things, so stay tuned!). The first two are the first two tries I did at painting people, and while they might not be as good as the last ones I've made, they mean a lot to me and were important stepping stones and taught me a lot.
The third piece is something quite different; a rather minimalistic landscape picture. It's a shame my scanner isn't better; it's not able to capture very light pictures as they are, and because of this, the colours are a bit paler than they should be. Nevertheless, I wanted to upload it, 'cos I made a lot of pictures like this a couple of years ago. Reminds me of the special light of the northern parts of Norway, with its cold and salty smell...

Long time no see

It's been a long time since last update, and to any followers I can only apologize. My computer broke down early last fall, and my spare lap top is unable to read SD cards. This rendered me unable to import photos to my computer, so I sort of lost interest in the whole blog, and left it alone. Not only that, I lost an important motivation for painting my Warhammer models, and must admit I've barely lifted a paint brush most of these past months.. I did paint up a Bretonnian Damsel for my brother's christmas gift, but as I couldn't get any photos up on the blog, I didn't bother with photographing it, before I gave it away - sadly, 'cos I was rather happy with how it turned out in the end.

So why revive my blog, you might ask? Well, I just happen to be the owner of a new PC, and now there's nothing to stop me from uploading photos of models I paint anymore, so why not make a small entry in the blog, to help myself get my cans of paint, bottles of glue and all my brushes out! In the moment of writing this, I have to admit my inspiration to paint Warhammer models is pretty low, but who knows what will happen, when I publish this post? Time will tell...

When I said I barely had lifted a brush these last couple of months, it was only partly true.. Many, many years before I started thinking of painting miniatures, I loved to paint and draw, and since the middle of December, I have been picking up my old aquarell-set, and done some good old fashioned painting on paper. For reasons unknown to me, I'm in a period of high inspiration and productivity not experienced for many a year, which I find immensely fun! So, in the absence of any painted miniatures, I thought I'd share some of my recently painted aquarelle paintings.

Hope you like them!