Painting a Trollblood Dire Troll Mauler - Part 1

After getting in a game of Hordes with my new Trollblood force I decided I did like them and needed to put paint to brush immediately.  Sunday morning, after finishing my first game, I set immediately to start painting up my Trollbloods.

I decided I wanted to go with a traditional blue color, as I've been wanting to paint "something" blue for a while the standard scheme seemed to fit with what I wanted to do.  The only thing off standard I went with was I did go with the orange fur.  I think it looks fantastic against the blue, and while it is a bit out there I love it.  The paints I used are from a few lines, I didn't plan this one well, so I used what I had.

On with a guide on how I did it, though really it's a "document so I don't forget how I did it" post.

I did have to spend some time green stuffing in some gaps, like most Privateer Press plastics this guy had some gaps.  I think the funny plastic that they use just doesn't lend itself well to conformity.  It may be easy to cast, or have other advantages, but it stinks in lining up with other pieces.  I can say I would much rather work with this then metal.  I am really glad having been away from Privateer Press for a while that when I came back I see plenty of plastic options. 

I

 I used a white primer, and then with an airbrush I based the model with P3 Trollblood Base.

 

 I then sprayed a highlight coat of P3 Underbelly Blue.

I then used a highlight coat of P3 Morrow white.

I then used GW Drakenhof Nightshade.  It's their blue shading color.  This brought darkened the model and helped even out the highlights.

 I missed a picture here, I used my secret weapon violet pigment in the shadows to build up some different shadows then just the wash.  I applied the pigment dry, then I used GW Purity Seal spray to hold it in.

After that I used GW Squig Orange to paint the fur.

I highlighted the hair with GW Trollslayer Orange.

 I then added two more highlights, first GW Fire Orange Bright and then GW Yriel Yellow at the very tips.

 In a very similar method to my first blue shade, I used GW Fuegan Orange to even out the hair highlights.

 The embedded rocks in the Warbeast's skin got a base coat of GW Scorched Brown.

The rocks then got a highlight of GW Graveyard Earth.

 The rocks got a final highlight of GW Karak Stone.

 The metal bits got some GW Leadbelcher.

The nails got a base of GW Karak Stone.  The paint i wrong in the picture, I think I forgot to move it. 

While the nails were drying I started on the loincloth, and went with GW Steel Legion Drab.

Going back to the nails I added some GW Ushabti Bone as a highlight.

 

Waiting again for the nails to dry, I started working on the tongue.  I decided a nice purple tongue would work and went with GW Liche Purple. 

For the final nail highlight I went with GW Screaming Skull on the tips. 

I went back to the tongue and used GW Warlock Purple as highlight.

 I was rushing to finish in time for Walking Dead and I missed a few pictures.  I ended up using GW Agrax Earthshade on the nails to level out the highlights as well as some GW Orange Glaze on the tongue.

I've still got a bit to too, but so far I am really happy with this guy. 

More pics from the 2013 Bay Area Open Narrative Game

One of my teammates for the 2013 Bay Area Open Narrative game, Jeremy of Valleydweller.com, was kind enough to share some of the pictures he took.  Luckily he took a lot more then I did, so you can actually see what the game looked like.  

You can see from his pictures much of the action I could only describe in my earlier post.

How not talking to your base costs you money

Warning: What follows is a quasi op-ed piece.  A poorly written one to boot. 

Every summer I plan on a painting project to keep me busy during my Son's swim meets.  If you haven't been to one, as a parent with only one child who swims, you spend about four hours of your Saturday (and some Wednesday evenings) mornings for two and a half months so you can watch your child compete for about three minutes.  This equals lots of down time. 

A few years ago I figured out that I could paint during his swim meets, and get a lot done.  The first year I did it I painted up an 1850 Blood Angels Army, the year after Grey Knights.  Last year I painted a bunch of Khador.   This year I wasn't sure what I was going to do, though after doing Chaos for the last four months I knew I wanted to do something non-dark.  

I ended up picking some Trollbloods last week, for Hordes.  I don't have any Hordes forces yet, so I figured it couldn't hurt to give it a shot.  Mainly I picked them for their aesthetics, as they were organic and full of bright colors.  I also ran into a stupidly great video on how to paint up a Mountain King (A huge center piece Troll model).

I can't recommended it enough.  This video has several methods I haven't seen before, including using ground pastels as pigments that you can "dry paint" on to help with shading.  Very cool stuff.

Now that I've explained the above, I'll finally get to the point.  GW is stupid.  Like, really stupid. I am not one of those folks that gets up in arms about their pricing, or their abusive behavior towards retailers.  It bothers me, though at the end of the day I like the universe and the game enough I tolerate it.

What strikes me as just plain dumb, is this business of not telling anyone what armies and models you are releasing until one week before it's release.  I would have easily done Tau as my next army and project this summer.  I have been waiting for new Tau for over a year and have held off as the rumor mill has always been saying Tau are coming, Tau are coming....

Friday I went ahead and decided I was doing Trolls as my next hobby project.  Guess what happens on Saturday....Tau photos from a white dwarf in two weeks leak.  If I knew Tau were coming out I would be doing a Tau army this summer.  Instead, I'll be playing Trolls.  

The most amazing thing about GW is how they keep doing so well and treating the base so poorly.  Some days I think I am in the wrong business.

Finally used my Khador Conquest in a game

Finally took my Khador Conquest out of the display case and put him on the table.  I went down to Black Diamond Games in Concord, CA to  get in some games during their open Sunday morning gaming.  I ended up using a 35 point eIrusk list with the Conquest and a unit of winterguard, mortor, and an iron fang unit.  Worked out fairly well. 

My impression of the Colossal is that it's more intimidating then actually effective.  It tends to draw a lot of fire, leaving the rest of your forces to do their work.  I only played two games, so it's a small sample size and as I haven't played in a while it's probably an inaccurate analysis.


The first picture is from my first game, against Menoth.  We played about 5 turns and it took over two hours, so we ended up calling it.  My opponent thought I would win, though I wasn't sure, but I wanted to get at least one more game in so I agreed.  My goal was to get back into playing Warmahordes, so it didn't really matter to me what happened.

 

 My second game was against my friend who taught me (and is still teaching me) the game.  His Mercenaries list is brutal, with lots of knockdown attack and ways to punch your caster in the face.  Great list played by a great player.

 

Building a Chaos Aegis Defence Line

One of the units I built for my Chaos army was an Aegis Defence Line.  I didn't think it would look right to use it "as is" so I spent some time defacing it.  I thought when I first started the build I would add chaos iconography and other "nurgly" bits.  After starting I decided I would leave it more generic, so I could use it with other "non" imperial armies I might play.  I hate building the same thing twice, unless I have to, so the idea of having a model I could use in multiple armies seemed worth the cost of not having a custom fortification for each army. 

The first thing I did, after assembly, was to remove the imperial logos.  There are quite a few, as each slit has an eagle under it.  I decided this would be a good time to "battle damage" them as well.  Using a dremel I wore off the logos and also damaged up the pieces.  I then used some liquid green stuff to add some texture, which I hoped would look like distressed metal.

 I then based it the parts in  GW leadbelcher, and then added some brass edging.

 I then washed the unit with the same wash I used on my nurgle army, a 1 part Nuln Oil/1 part Agrax Earthshade/1 part medium mixture. 

 When that was done I went over all of the models with the sepia wash. This gave it a very nice distressed metal look.

 I went over some of the bolts with some clean metal, to highlight them.  I then washed the gun itself with some additional wash to build up some character to the metal.  It's not the most amazing thing I've done, but I think it will work and looks a lot better then the standard metal with black wash I've seen a lot of folks doing recently.

Finished my Nurgle Army - Now with Lightbox Pictures

I finished up my first 6th edition army, a Chaos Space Marine force a few weeks ago, prior to playing in the big narrative game, though I didn't have time to take some good pictures.  I pulled out the lightbox and fired up the camera.  This is by far the army I've been the happiest with.  I think it's normal to get better over time,and this is the first army I've done that I look at and I'm super excited about.  Now all I have to do is actually use the damn thing in a game.  I've only used it twice, and both were large apocalypse style games, so I really don't know how the army is going to run.  

I haven't even used it and I'm already thinking of adding some allies.  I really think I'd like to splash in some Demon allies.  Not only is it thematic, but I really like both the new models and new rules.

On with the pictures of the stuff that's already done (I did cheat a little.  The Demon Prince got some touch up and the Land Raider had been in another Nurgle army that got sold).