Mortal Gods - Athenian Hoplites

More stuff I got painted up for Mortal Gods.  Just like the mercenary support miniatures, these were completed several months ago but I only recently got the basing material to finally finish them off.  I enjoy these sculpts much more and used a more traditional layering painting approach.  Fairly happy with how they turned out, aside from the skin seeming a little greyish.

Heavy Hoplites

Medium/Light Hoplites.

Paints used:

• Cloth:  RMS Breonne Blue, highlighted up with the triad
• Skin:  RMS Olive Skin, highlighted up with the triad
• Leather:  RMS Blackened Brown, highlighted up with the triad
• Off Whites:  Vallejo Panzer Aces Light Rubber (base), RMS White (edge highlight)
• Metal (Bronze):  AP Weapon Bronze (base), 4:1 AP Weapon Bronze:AP Plate Mail Metal (highlight)
• Metal (Steel):  AP Gun Metal (base), AP Shinning Silver (highlight)
• Entire models received a diluted wash of AP Strong Tone 
• Basing material is Luke's APS Mediterranean Soil

All said, a good chunk of Greeks done.  Although it still feels like a I have a ton left.  Ideally would like about 4 more each of Heavy and Medium/Light Athenian Hoplites.  Then there are all the solos I need/want/have.  Oh and Athenian Marines.  And then Spartans.  And then whatever the Mythic expansion brings.  Speaking of which, where is the Mythic expansion!?

Mortal Gods - Mercenaries/Support

Trying to get a bit caught up on posting up what all I have painted this year.  I was (and still isn't) terribly thrilled by these particular Victrix sculpts, but that represented an excellent opportunity for an extended experiment of GW's contrast paints.  The paints were brand new at the time.  Yes, that means I painted them almost 6 months ago.  After the initial painting they sat for a long while as I tried to get a hold of the basing material that I used.  Then further delays for the shield transfers.  All in all though for the time invested, I'm pretty happy with them.

I will say I think the GW contrast paints were oversold.  Definitely not news now or even then, but they take a decent amount of skill to use effectively.  I don't think I've come close to mastering them and I don't really care for the method.  That being said, they will get some use when faced with models I just want to knock out quick. 

Anyway, on to the Greeks!

Given these are just GW contrast paints (except for the metals), I'm not going to bother digging out what each color used was.  It should be simple enough to back out.  A couple of notes though:

• All the contrast paints were diluted 1:1 with the contrast medium.  Applied twice.
• Entire models received a diluted wash of AP Strong Tone (I was hoping it would dull the colors a little, maybe should have gone with a stronger/multiple application)
• Basing material is Luke's APS Mediterranean Soil
• Shield transfers were from Little Big Men Studios.  Important to note, the Victrix specific transfers are only available direct from Victrix.

Great to knock out some fodder for Mortal Gods.  I've got some Hoplites to show off soon.

Half Year Recap (Painting)

So continuing the previous post, here is a brief update on what all I've been painting the past few months.  These are no particular order since my memory is a little fuzzy.  Mostly I had concentrated on Outlaws for Wild West Exodus, with a couple of distractions/breaks along the way.

Jesse James and Friends

Not really a fan of the longhorn skulls these have, so opted
out and have some decals to add instead.

Love these bikes and after shaving off all the Lawman stars,
they are ready for duty as Outlaws (or even Lawmen).

Never could get glow effects to work out with these guys,
so I backed out of that completely.

Some local people wanted to do an true old west game using Dead Man's Hand, so I dusted off some old Black Scorpion minis I had (unpainted of course) and knocked these guys out.  It was a nice break in the middle of the WWX stuff above.  About the time I was adding the last highlights to these, I caught Pale Rider on TV.  I was a little dumbfounded when Stockburn's Deputies showed up in the movie.  Maybe that image was buried deep in the back of my mind guiding me.

I almost went back and repainted the color of my hats...

And for my last distraction from pulling together 1500 pts of Outlaws in time for Adepticon, I decided to go back and finally finish off my Company of Iron force that I was supposed to have ready in time for the previous Adepticon.  lol.

I should really ditch the rest of my Menoth figures.  I really don't
want to paint anymore of these guys.

Anyway, I've got some other stuff in progress.  Some 40k Space Marines for Kill Team and some Lawmen for WWX (so I can have a demo force).  I've also been assembling a ton of Greeks for Mortal Gods.  And even threw some Fallout super mutants together to have ready as a distraction.

My first attempt at the color scheme I wanted.  Seemed to
much like Dark Angels.  Kinda wished I had kept it though.

Second attempt and what I'm working with now.  I "think" it
will come together the way I want.  The other would have been
lower risk though.

Just getting base coats blocked in.

Oh dear, that's a bunch and I'm not even showing you the
archers, slingers, and javelin guys...  Or the Spartans...

These should be fun.

Anyway, that mostly gets me caught up with the first half of this year.  Maybe I can get back to at least posting up monthly recaps.

September/October Recap

It's almost Thanksgiving and I still had not caught up with September & October recaps.  Mostly due to not having much activity gaming wise the past couple of months.  However, I have gotten some hobbying done and got several miniatures fully painted in the past 2 months.  Hopefully I will get these posted up soon.

For both September and October, I only managed to get in 2 games of Guild Ball.  Both of those games were in September, so sadly I have not tried Season 4, yet.  It looks pretty good for the Masons but only time will tell.  I had hoped that Season 4 would streamline some things and reduce some of the inter-dependencies, and in a lot of cases it did but not so much for the Masons.

Also, despite running an escalation league for Konflikt 47 I did not manage to get any games in for the past two months (at the 750pt or 1000pt increments).  As the organizer, I needed to bow out when there were an odd number of players which was the trend for those months.  We ended up wrapping the league up a couple of weeks early to avoid overlapping a couple of major events at the game store.  Since the league was not anything I would call a success, that was more than fine by me.  

Lots of exciting news, IMO, hit toward the end of the October (maybe some of this is technically November).  The minds behind Test of Honour announced a similar game coming out called Mortal Gods: Test of Courage.  Ancient Greeks!  The figures are looking fantastic and should be very similar ruleset to Test of Hounor.  The other exciting tidbit is there seems to be some changes on the horizon for Test of Honour, which the creators taking it back over (or something).  Here is hoping they will break the horrible sales model that the game has suffered under (IMO).  Also, good news for SAGA in that the Book of Battles recently released containing new/revised scenarios usable for all the variations of SAGA.  This was followed up with the announcement that the Age of Magic would be the next expansion, bringing "fantasy" to the SAGA system!  

Coupled with an Adepticon challenge for 2019 and a new Bolt Action league kicking off, looks like my painting queue is going to stay packed.  Very packed.  

Lastly, some personal disheartening hobby news:  My new accountant discovered an egregious error in the book keeping.  While I thought I had managed to stay amazingly on track budget wise, he unearthed the fact that 3-4 months of purchases from early in 2019 had not be logged.  With virtually no time to "repair" the damage before the end of the year, looks like I'm really going to bust my budget for the year.  Of course the devil on my shoulder is shouting "Well, if you are going to break that goal, break it goooooood.  Real good."

Anyway, more soon.  Hopefully...