Infinity Faction Number 2 - MRRF. Yes, the French are coming!

Having barely painted any of my Haqq or played many games I obviously (obviously!) needed a second faction and settled on MRRF, mainly because I love the style and colourscheme.

Having got really bogged down picking a colourscheme for my Haqqislam (which I'm still not happy with), being able to emulate the official one and be happy with it is a huge encouragement to get these done. Here's the first three, speed painted and heavily washed so a little shiny before the dullcote goes on.

Despite the fast painting I think these guys will look great when the rest are done.

Oh, and of course I split Operation: Icestorm with a friend so have some Nomads to paint too. Plus the Gecko Squad and Corregidor starter set. I may have a problem.

The Pink Knight vs the Sea-monsters from Beyond!

Here are some random models I've quickly painted recently. I guess they'd most likely be used for D&D if anything, though painting for fun is my main priority.

I don't know who the manufacturer of this is, but I think it's very characterful. I decided to make him chaosy and used Tentacle Pink and Scorpian Green as the main colours. I didn't use any inks of washes, trying to use simple highlighting to do all the work and give a different feel, though the photos don't capture it that well. The ogre face was my first attempt at a shield in that style and I'm reasonably pleased with it. Hopefully with practice I can make the highlighting of the features more subtle and natural.

Next are some fishmen from Black Tree Design.

I went for a peachy coral look on the weapons and shell shield and dark blue highlighted up to bright green on the scales. These were great fun to paint and took about an hour from start to finish, my favourite kind of painting!

Orktober!

 I'm always amazed at how long ago my last post was. I think not having a half decent camera kills my motivation to take photos of what I've been doing, I may have to try rectify that this Christmas.

I planned to assemble and paint up 10 of my Blood Axes for Orktober (check out the Oldhammer Forum for more details). Now obviously I didn't get all 10 done, but I got close. As usual, apologies for the crap phone pictures, even with 3 lights they haven't come out very well.

First the seven finished* ones.

*still need some grass adding to the bases, freehand motifs on backplates and varnishing

Next the two assembled/undercoated guys and the WIP Warboss

 This Blood Axe warboss is one of my favourite models, he's getting better treatment than the normal lads. The 2nd edition era boyz have Catachan plastic arms with modified weapons and the deathskull posing as a BA has WFB Chaos Maurauder arms. I've found the scale varies a lot on the 2nd ed minis so having a selection of arms helps. Catachan ones fit nicely on Blood Axes too, especially with more dakka added to the lasguns ;)

I also started assembling some Bad Moons and have a unit of 12 boyz, a weirdboy + minderz, 4 nobz in mega armour and a warboss ready to paint up.

The nob came without arms so I used modern plastics and some bits. The weirdboy will have a pointing or casting hand when finished, I'm hoping I can manage it without having to use my mediocre sculpting skills!

I've got a pile of orks waiting for paint and plans to do small forces of each clan, at this rate I'll need a year of Orktobers to finish them all!

RT-style Eldar Pirates - WIP

So one of the projects I've been working on this week is a small force of Eldar Pirates (Corsairs if you're that way inclined). I picked up some RT Eldar cheap on eBay and from a trade on the Oldhammer Forum to add to the couple of random Eldar I already had.

I like projects like this as I can keep them limited which means a) I'm more likely to finish them and b) They're nice and cheap. Other than whats shown below I'm waiting on another 5 including a Harlequin who'll be the Pirate Captain, a Dire Avenger who'll be a squad leader and 3 basic eldar with various weapons. That'll be the full army for now, though I'd like to add a scratchbuilt grav-scouter at some point. I'd been drawing a blank for what would work as a base until I saw Area23's great idea of using a mouse, genius! Just need to find an old one now...

Models
As usual I have to apologise for the terrible photos, this is England and the sun only ever seems to shine when I'm at work.

First is one of the horrible monopose Eldar guardians which I used as a test model. I cut the head off first and repositioned it, instantly making it look 1000x better. What the fuck GW are thinking when they make the staring straight forward poses I've no idea, a slight head turn makes the whole think look more natural. I've another of these which I'm going to do a headswap on using a Dark Eldar reaver head, should look pretty good I think.

 

A quick photo of my first scheme test model. I want something simple and quick so chose a dark purple for the bodies (a few layers of light drybrushing + a wash) and went for an ivory on the helmet and weapon. The ivory was a pain in the arse and I decided before I'd even finished I didn't like the flat solid effect of the ivory next to the purple/black. I'm going to try dark green next and use a similar style of painting to tie it together better.

So far the scheme for the armour is:

Black undercoat

Drybrush Liche Purple (one of my favourite paints) & black (1:1)

Drybrush Liche Purple

Light drybrush Liche Purple & white (3:1)

Very light drybrush Liche Purple & white (2:1)

Purple wash

I'm going to try Scaly Green (another of my favourite paints) for the weapons and helmet, orange for gems and eyes and maybe a light blue for hair and accessories.

 Random pirates ready for paint. I'm not sure what the middle one is supposed to be armed with, its pretty chunky.

 Heavy weapon crew.

 Heavy weapon thrown together from a couple of reaver jetbike parts and an eldar lascannony thing, still to be glued and based. I'm really happy with how it looks considering it's made from my tiny pile of Eldar bits.The older RT Eldar are much darker looking than the modern ones and as these are pirate a few bits of Dark Eldar style stuff should fit in ok.

 The Eldar champion (left) was missing it's left hand so I've bluetacked this weird claw thing I found in my bitsbox. I've no idea where it's come from, weirdly it looks like a fantasy power claw with bits of rope between the fingers but it fits pretty well and should blend in nicely once affixed properly. The right mini is an Eldar musician. I haven't found any special rules regarding musicians other than they can be added to guardian squads in the RT Eldar book. They seem to just be unit padding with no special effects from what I can tell. I'm going to treat him as a low level psyker who uses music to focus his powers, almost like a Noise Marine.

Rules

I don't really play any 40k at the minute, though I'm hoping to change that at some point. I'm going to build these with 2nd Edition in mind as anything can be adapted for RT without issue and I've no plans on playing any of the more modern versions (I'd need a lot more models for a start). The list will essentially be:

Pirate Hero + 4 Pirates (close combat equipped)
Pirate Champion + 5 Pirates (lasguns and shuriken catapults)
Support weapon & crew
Grav-scouter (using Vyper rules maybe)

Should easily be under 500pts from the 2nd Ed codex (atleast looking at the Battle Bible)

Assuming I don't get distracted (I've got 3 other projects ticking over on my desk) I'll hopefully have these painted up and finished within the next couple of weeks, more photos then!


EDIT: I couldn't resist looking for a mouse in my junk pile. I didn't find one but I found an old pair of headphone where one of the earpieces had stopped working...

Tank 1

Tank 2

 I kind of like them, but I'm not sure the general shape is Eldary enough.

Infinity: Insert Pun Here

Wow, well it's been a while since I last posted. Hopefully I can get back up to posting semi regularly over the next few weeks, I have a couple of finished Otherworld minis to show, some WIPs on various D&D monsters and a few 40k bits.

But first...

1,000,000 Space Marines can't be wrong: 2nd Ed 40k, Rogue Trader Era Chaplain WIP

A friend of mine is interested in playing 40k, something I played as a teenager but haven't played since the start of 3rd ed. I started with Orks in 2nd, then moved on to Chaos, loving the opportunities both armies gave to convert and mess around with the models. When 3rd rolled around I got the rulebook and Codex Chaos and was left completely cold by the whole thing. The glorious sprawling mess that was my beloved Chaos army was now dry and boring. I played a few games before drifting away from 40k and gaming in general for a good decade.

Miniatures WIP and finished, quick pics

Here are some quick mobile pictures of some finished, WIP and just undercoated minis. Despite the original idea of this blog being for painting I'm very aware I've hardly put up any pictures so far. I'm hoping to change that and have more regular posts of painted and WIP minis, it just depends on how hard the painting bug has got me.

Miniature Pics (Finally!)

The whole point of this blog was to show some of my painted minis. I started painting again at the start of the year after a decade (or more?). I don't claim to be a good painter but at least I'm reasonably quick! Most of these models were painted, not including drying time, in 1 - 2 hours.