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.

Half Year Recap (Games Played)

My, almost the end of May and I have yet to post anything this year.  Obviously, things have been extremely busy.  I've gotten a fair number of games in and a respectful amount of figures painted.

Games Played:
Our group managed to play through about 75% of the Western Desert campaign for Bolt Action.  I missed a game here and there but got several in before the demise.  All in all, Western Desert offered some very interesting scenario but overall I found it extremely frustrating.  Many of the scenarios placed the allies at significant numerical disadvantage.  This was somewhat by asymmetrical win conditions/scoring, however it was often not apparent you could be winning until the very end of the game so it left me with the feeling of pushing water uphill throughout the game.  To the point of frustration at times.  Anyway, a couple of random pics:

Hold the line boys!

After those of us playing threw in the towel on Western Desert, we were all a little burned out on Bolt Action.  Interest transitioned to a Old West campaign using the Dead Man's Hand system.  We just wrapped that campaign up last week.  It was a lot of fun but the game system is not particular great.  I should expand on that in the future by adding a review of it.  The final games of the campaign were pretty fun as things turned a little "weird" in the Old West.  One table had players fending of an Alien invasion, while the other table was trying to stop a T-Rex from rampaging through the town.  Anyway, couple of game shots from various points:

Oh no, Mad Dog is bout to get hanged!

Aliens vs Cowboys?

Finally rounding all this goodness out, I attended Adepticon.  And finally after many years of effort, I managed to pull my buddy John from 40k Hobby Blog along.  Derek, Mike, and many others from our weekly virtual hobby hangout.  It was a great time and John and I finally got a chance to play a game of Bolt Action.  John provided the materials, so we played at his preferred scale of 20mm (1/72) and I have to say it is a really great scale for the game.  It just really feels right for a 6x4 board, vehicles, and what not.  We even played with John employing true hidden deployment.  All in all, it was truly great to get in a game with him.  And just as great to hang out with him and everyone else.  Some pictures of our game:

A long ways to go.  Hope we don't get ambushed!

Contact with enemy armor, call in the Shermans. 

Well, just trying to get caught up.  I'll try to post up soon a Recap of all my completed painting so far.  After that, I'll need to get a few more posts out to capture some of those paint schemes/colors.  Then I'll try to get back to posting at least a monthly update.

November/December Recap

Finished up the year fairly strong with games played and a bit of a slow down on models painted, although there was a good bit of assembly.  Between November and December, I continued on in the new Bolt Action escalation league playing about 8 games.  The recent games in the league have been a bit brutal as the Allied players (myself included) faced 3 straight weeks of superior Axis forces (1.5x, 2x and 2x respectively) as we play through the scenarios in Western Desert.

Allies prepare for the Italian assault.

In addition to the Bolt Action games, I also actually got two games of Konflikt 47 in at 1000 pts.  Both were fun games.

Uh Joe, we gotta a serious problem over here.

Sadly with the chaos of the holidays in full affect, I still haven't gotten a game of Guild Ball with the new Season 4 rules.  Maybe soon.  

Painting was primarily limited to getting a Sherman and a light anti-tank gun painted for the escalation league, along with model assembly for what I had planned out for the rest of the league.  I managed a little work on Wild West Exodus attack and gun dogs, but haven't managed to wrap them up yet.  Then on the very last day of the year, to make sure I could count them in my totals with a clear conscience, I finished the last bit on my Chaffee and Greyhound Bolt Action vehicles (which was just dust, mud and varnishes).

In any case, a pretty good year for painting and playing even if it has been heavily focused on Bolt Action.  Not a such good year for my hobby budget allegedly...  More on that when I work up the nerve for my 2018 retrospective.

Wild West Exodus - Outlaws

I wanna be a Cowboy...  Oh my, lets jump on the path of another distraction and a new project.  Derek, from Throne of Angels, suggested we pick something to paint and play at Adepticon this year.  After kicking some ideas over to him, the list came down to either Wild West Exodus or Relic Knights.  Having some stuff already, from the original Kickstarter, I advocated Wild West Exodus.  We agreed to target 750 pts for a small starter force that would be doable (for me) and depending on time we could either increase the size or also throw Relic Knights in at a small point level.  Note, since "agreeing" to 750 pts it would seem to have grown to full blown 1500 pt game...

I advocated for WWX mostly because I already had some models and that should mean not having to buy much, if anything.  Using the Outlaw models I already had also allowed to me to actually do something with a kickstarter (other than put it on the shelf) for the first time!  Since then I have been, albeit unsuccessfully, resisting the urge to buy more and new stuff but let's not dwell on that now.

Outlaws assembled.

The picture above consists of the Outlaws I got from the original Kickstarter.  The multi-part plastic models (hired hands) are tedious.  Each one of them was at least 5 pieces, sometimes more.  The resin models were much easier to deal with, although the alternate Jesse James was not such a great casting.

Slapping some paint on the hired hands.

I went with a strange, for me at least, approach to painting these guys.  Something I had never tried before.  I primed a black base coat, then did a heavy dry brush of grey followed by a light dry brush of white.  Then the colors you see above were applied as washes, trying to take advantage of the highlighting.  I think it worked to some degree, and I managed to get to this point very quickly (I think I was at about 20 mins/figure here).  The next few steps however bogged down  as it required more precision work.  Esp, since I did not use a good/proper order of operations (like the classical "inside-out" approach) to get to this point.

The metallics and light leather blocked in.

Now I've hit the home stretch.  Not terribly happy with the light leather and it "ate" the pre-highlighting (paint was to thick and my previous work being to sloppy), so I had to re-highlight.  At this point, I was hoping the washes would knock things down to where I wanted and also help clean things up.

Post-washes.

Maybe a matter of opinion, but I think the washes panned out the way I hoped.  I considered hitting the light leather with 1-2 more washes to tone them done some more but ultimately decided not to.  Now all that is left is to highlight the armor some and knock the bases out.  I kind of backed myself into a corner at this point though.  The typical darker color for the basing did not seem like such a good idea since the models themselves are kind of dark.  After a few iterations I ended up at this:

Click for a better view, Blogger is butchering the thumbnails.

I not completely happy with this, as I find the bases distracting and in general just find my eyes drawn downward.  But since they are just hired hands (grunts), I called them done.  Maybe down the line I will figure something out and get these fixed up.

Colors used:

• These colors were interchanged on various figures & places:
• Dark Browns:  RMS Blackened Brown
• Blues:  RMS Twilight Blue
• Greys:  RMS Cloudy Grey
• Light Brown (Holsters/Belts/Boots):
• Leather Brown (Base), 2:1 Bronzed Hightlight:Leather Brown (Highlights)
• Bandannas:  RMS Clotted Red
• Rifle/Pistol/Knife:  AP Gun Metal
• Rifle/Pistol/Knife Stocks:  RMS Walnut Brown
• Skin:  RMS Bronzed Highlight
• Cracked Earth:  RMS Tanned Leather
• All - 2-3 applications of thinned AP Strong Tone

Bolt Action - Even More Americans

Still catching up on finished projects.  Here is more Bolt Action Americans.  I'm not sure what I was thinking when I bought these guys, other than "cool, Americans can field 3 MMG teams!"  But, in retrospect I'm not sure I will ever use/field them.  But 9 figures painted is still something to share. 

Might go back and add some static grass to the left one to make it more interesting.

Bolt Action - More Americans

Not a lot to talk about here.  Just adding more American units to my Bolt Action.  The mortar team was painted per my previous infantry recipes.  I will capture how I did the Jeep later, with a group shot of the vehicles I've done.

Funny thing happened during this though.  I realized while I was airbrushing the Jeep I had completely forgotten to paint the actual mortar for the mortar team (I had the entire team finished, except for it).  So while I was cleaning out the airbrush, to prepare to quickly paint the mortar, I bent the crap out of the needle.  Luckily I had a spare, so I slide it in and was amazed by the difference.  It was such a night and day difference, I can't imagine how long I've been fighting the obviously (at least now it's obvious) bent needle.  Anyway, I then proceeded to very effortlessly do the best detail/precision painting I have ever done with my airbrush.  On sandbags.  *sigh*

Damn, those sandbags look good!  Note, this after a wash but before
the weathering pigments covered up most of these awesome sandbags!

More Guild Ball - Masons

Entering the home stretch for my Masons team.  Despite the delay in this post, I did actually get these done in time for the NOVA Open.  And then I decided not the play at the NOVA Open.  I thought this would be the last of them but I recently sourced Veteran Chisel and the dual faction Lucky model.  I need to still paint a ball, of all things.  And a bout of OCD will probably have me finally tackle the original Harmony model I don't like and finally make a goal marker.  Nonetheless, they have been a nice break from all the Bolt Action stuff lately.

Four new members.

This particular batch of models (with the exception of Granite) caused me a lot anxiety, leading me to hold off for a long time before painting them.  I was really worried with Hammer because I had never painted dark skin before and thought I would butcher it.  He turned out pretty good ok though, I think.  I also dreaded the mascots because I had no idea how to paint either one.  While I waited for an intermediate layer of varnish to dry on Granite and Hammer, I decided to throw caution to the wind and just grabbed paints and gave it a try.  I think it worked out well enough.

Here they are with the rest of the team that is completed so far.

Obviously looking at the picture above, I need to go back and repaint the base rims.  Again.  For some reason my black paint is just not taking a liking to those rims.  The mud basing is pretty simple and some point I think I will go back and add some vertical components to them (tufts, rocks, something) but I'm going to wait on that awhile.  I tried tufts with Brick and spent a considerable amount of time trying to undo the damage I caused.  

Anyway, for my records here how I painted them:

• Granite/Hammer - The same as my previous Mason models.  Hammer of course used the Reaper Dark Skin triad.
• Wrecker - Other than the shell, the rest as my previous Masons.
• Shell - RMS Stained Ivory (Shade), RMS Yellowed Bone (Base), RMS Creamy Ivory (Highlight).  Followed by 2-3 applications of thinned AP Strong Tone
• Marbles - No idea what I used on the branch.
• Fur - RMS Bone Shadow (Shade), RMS Aged Bone (Base), RMS Polished Bone (Highlight).  
• Skin - RMS Blackened Brown and I tried to feather/wet blend it into the fur colors.