Astral Claws

In addition to a lovely FW Argus Lighter, my wife purchased a photo booth for me to use in updating this blog. It turns out my cell phone picts were not well received!

Since the Argus Lighter is for my Astral Claws army list, I thought I should give an AC paint scheme a try. I used very thinned down bolt gun metal, followed by chainmail line highlighting and a watery badab black wash for the metal portions. I did not want to use all metallics on the mini, so the gold was done with foundation yellow. I am not happy with how the mini turned out, both in terms of my painting skill or the methods used. I think the gold really needs to be metallic gold and the blue darker. I think I will use shaded grey instead of bolt gun metal for the body. My difficulty in painting metallics is one of the primary reasons my Grey Knights have never been completed.

Does anyone have a good recipe for astral claws that I could use?

I really enjoyed getting back into the swing of things last night, and even had some fun with the light booth. (hence the random chaos minis---or should I say Astral Claw allies!)

Christmas Eve Forgeworld

My wife and I are at my parents condo in an undisclosed place in the northeast. After returning from the requisite haircut at the mall, I noticed a stack of boxes in the hallway enterance. While looking for the 96 gigs of ram I ordered, I spotted a lovely little package from fw. How on earth did fw get a package to my parents place in time for christmas?

So now I have a wonderful new problem. A resing forgworld model, and no way to build it! I supposed it evens out in the end.

Merry Christmas!

My Wife And I Are Playing 40k: Weird

My wife wanted to try the game and we are playing. The game is a simple annihilation game with her as Blood Angels pitted against a Chaos war-band led by Typhus. The battlefield is strewn with abandoned imperial guard tanks with a ruined imperial temple in the center. Her entire force is left, while mine consists of a single unit of 5 lessor demons and Typhus leading three terminators. It is rather surreal playing a game of 40k against her.

Ultramarines Movie Review: It is terrible!

My copy of the Ultramarines DVD came in yesterday, and I promptly watched it as all fans of the genre are likely to do. The short answer is that this is a flat out terrible movie. The story is bland, the animation terrible, and the direction simply unbelievable. The marines move like toys, behave like amateur soldiers, and apparently allow enlisted to challenge officers orders. My wife offered to watch the movie with me, but had to go to an event. I thought the chance to share my hobby with her was such a cool opportunity. However after watching the movie, I will not sit through it again. I would not show this movie to anyone. It is such a shame since they have a normally good writer, and an excellent voice cast. Send this movie to /dev/null and forget about it!

Tau Battle Suits

Since Tau can't function I thought I should add some highly weathered battle suits to my force. They match the color scheme for my veteran fire warriors (the ones that protect Etherial Jones). They started out with a careful air brushing of blues, creating a shaded effect. I then proceeded to spray on sepia wash to give them the aqua color you see here. I have a lot of additional weathering to do, in addition to decals. I am thinking about adding rust to the metal plates as well as going back and adding some edge highlighting. Basically my Tau force look like they have been through hell, so these guys will fit in nicely if I keep weathering them till they are right.

My real camera takes much better photos than my iphone, but at the moment I am having a little painters block, so I am keeping away from the big camera setup and focussing on finishing minis.

Oath Of Moment

I don't normally review books, audio or otherwise on this blog, but today is an exception. Garro Oath of Moment is a fantastic audio book, well worth buying. The sound effects are a bit much, but the story is great, and it finally answers one of the great 40k questions. The script written by Tob Longworth and James Swallow is great. I know Swallow gets a lot of grief from the BA fan boy club, but just like his fantastic Flight of the Eisenstein, this is definitely worth buying. The authors did an outstanding job.

Tau Ethereal & Shadowsun

I know Tau Ethereals are supposed to be poor units, but I love the way this model looks, and am going to be hard pressed to not field him every time I get the chance. I have no idea why this model stands out to me so much, but it is a must have. Commander Shadowsun is so-so at the moment. I have her based, and am ready to start adding some more detail. I plan to add both blue and dark red to the model somehow, though I Have not figured out how yet.

Painting White

I started back on my tau after basing my Death Guard champion. My tau needed an HQ, so I decided to paint shadowsun. I don't paint white very often, but I think the white is turning out ok. It does not photograph very well, but in person it looks pretty clean. the trick seems to be two coats of a grey wash followed by white edge high lighting. She will stand out really well in the army. Some orange markings and battle damage are coming!