Something ends and something begins...

After, yet again, struggling with the Polish Post I finally got my fell bats couple of weeks ago. They were the last bit my VC army needed (until I decide otherwise, that is, there is always room for more) and with the completion of those five buggers the VC army is finally finished. That said, I am at last able to sit to my druchii army, which I am much more fond of, as it turns out.



And there is quite a workload when it comes to the dark elves. Aside from actually completing the army (of which I am roughly halfway through) there is an ongoing rebasing project, completely independent of the above. All in all, almost twice the work, but hell, it's the kind of work I enjoy, doubly so considering it's the druchii. The specifics are:

• 2 Reaper bolt throwers
• 20 spearmen
• 20 crossbowmen

...need only rebasing. Whereas:

• Death Hag on a Cauldron of Blood
• 10 more crossbowmen
• 5 harpies
• 5 shades
• 2 more Reaper bolt throwers
• 15 corsairs

...all need actually putting together and painting. Currently the corsairs are on my workbench and I can only utter warm words about the new plastics. Characterful, detailed, but need quite a bit of consideration and attention when ranking up - it's a unit of infantry with flowing cloaks and two hand weapons after all.

In fact, I'm thinking I like the corsair plastics so much I'm considering kitbashing them with warrior plastics to make a twenty-strong unit of spearmen. We'll see how it goes, but judging from some early dry fits they should go together just fine. Similarly, the corsairs' weapons (I'm talking all of them here, swords, daggers, crossbows, even some weird ones) are very decent and just SO much better-looking than for instance metal swords on Shades or Witch Elves. Shades are actually a wonderful unit to convert using the corsairs' arms and this is exactly what I'm working on at the moment.

So, to keep you through to the next update, here are some individual fell bat shots.

The Night of the Badly-Filmed Dead

My very first movie ever made. It sucks... but see for yourself.

Coaching in black

How many more bad puns on the Black Coach can be coined?

Anyhow, here is mine and it is finally, after a very painful process, finished. I decided to drop the old version since in the process of actually making the army the whole idea behind it got warped from a vampireless one to a very much vampire one. Well, as per usual, GW is to blame. Who the holy hell is responsible for the present vampire models on the market is beyond me, but her or she should be hung by the ribs.

Why was it so painful to make? Chiefly because I'm tired of this army altogether. Luckily, the completion of the Coach leaves me only with five fell bats to do for the army to be finished and I have already started working on their bases while waiting for the models themselves to arrive - which can take as long or as little time as the Polish Post fancies. Really, this company is Chaos incarnate. It is my solemn belief it is ruled by Tzeentch.

Getting back to the Coach, it would be a damn shame to leave it shut and not show the greatness that is the coffin-bound vampire. So I made the roof and one side removable, and of course the coffin itself is left open as well. Not very practical game-wise perhaps, but firstly, I don't play games with my armies and secondly, it may be used to denote some Wound loss or something similar, so it might turn out to be more practical that I initially thought.

On the coffin itself, I opted for something a tad different than I usually do. I realized how rarely I go for painting some extra effects on my models, so I decided the coffin will be my test field. I went for the marble effect and, well, here is the result. I'm quite happy with it and the way it goes along the rest of the model. The Coach is deliberately done in tender, neutral colors and the coffin with its marble finish and golden filigrees immediately stands out as the most important part of the whole thing. After all, the Coaches are constructed not by vampires themselves, but rather bu their servants after the master's untimely demise. Nevertheless, the Coach has to be the focal point of the army and this is what I wanted to achieve. Here's the roof section itself.

To wrap up, another shot of the whole coach and next time - the fell bats.

Coaching in black

...and a new header to boot.

Yep, been playing with the Photoshop lately. The result is to be seen above and on the photos. Took me damn three hours to figure out how to do the gradient on the new stamp. But eventually I did and I'm quite happy with it.

On the painting side of things, here are the latest. The last five Dire Wolves are done. It is my hope I won't have to do another dead canine for another several years. Don't get me wrong, the minis are splendid, but you tend to get bored after your tenth or so, wouldn't you say?

Yes, I definitely need a refreshment. I seem to begin to observe the overwhelming sense of chore while working on the Vampire Counts project. Luckily, the end is very near. Once I finish the Black Coach, the only thing left are the Fell Bats e voila. One largish VC army, well done. And then the new one...

But let's not skip ahead. I was talking about the Black Coach, well, here it is, at least what I've done to it so far.

You might remember me actually doing a Black Coach back in the day... well, all I can say is that I've grown dissatisfied with it. I still hope I'll be able to use it eventually as a second Coach (now that I can actually do it, army list permitting), but for the time being, the 'proper' Coach it is.

It will be opening, showing the coffin inside, which also will be open and the vampire left in plain view. Models like this deserve going a little beyond what's necessary. Even with a lousy paint job like this one.

Speaking of painting, I have to scorn the Vallejo greens. Maybe it is me who is incompetent, but these paints are very difficult to work with. The coverage is erratic at best, the hue gets altered after drying... no, the GW greens are in fact better than Vallejos. Or, again, I can't paint.

Sticking with the Coach, I have to reiterate something that has already been said a million times - it's a bitch to fit on a chariot base, and I mean a bitch with a capital B. I have seen some very creative methods of squeezing it onto the base and I've been considering several. In th end, I chose careful bending. Here's how it looks like. It's not perfect, but it works.

That about wraps it up...

...except it doesn't. As I mentioned earlier, I need a refreshment in my painting regimen, something completely different and preferably something that involves practice in the areas I'm not good in. These include:

• greens, reds, yellows
• metals (especially colored metals)
• bases
• painting patterns instead of uniform colors
• repetition (e.g. painting lots of models without lowering my standard)

It would be best if my next project included most or all of these. So, what army does? And, more importantly, what army does include these traits AND is interesting for me? I've come up with the following, not in any order:

• Space Marines
• Orcs, both fantasy and space-faring
• High Elves
• Dark Eldar (yum!)
  
• Necrons

So, what will it be? After being done rebasing the druchii, what will it be?

New year, new minis

Namely the skeletons and some vampires! I'm a bit sick, so I'll restrain myself from longer ramblings and just show you the minis.

On the boney lads, I tried the new GW washes and I must say they work quite decently. Well, at least they do what they say they are supposed to be doing. They give a great, matt finish, they really don't pool and they really flow nicely. Sometimes they tend to be a bit too transparent with a single coat, but then they cover thinly enough to make several coats. All in all a good product.

As for the minis themselves, I am in love with the design. These are the skeletons looking as they are supposed to look. They are noticeably smaller than their living counterparts and their equipment is really worn and battle-scarred. Splendid designs, really.

Now, I finally got round to doing the vampires. These are of course the old Blood Dragons; in my opinion one of the best designs on the market. I simply had to have them, they actually look like vampires and not vampirized figments of someone's sick mind.

I realize I've made a blunder on this gentleman's cloak. Vallejo greens are rather difficult to work with and it took one ruined cloak to make me realize this. Trust me, these paints change their tone and opacity as they dry on the mini and this can lead to several problems. My advice is to be quite bold in highlighting - don't skimp on the lighter color, you'll need more liberal amounts than usual to make the highlights really pop out. Don't be afraid of overdoing it - glazing with VGC greens is, on the other hand, a breeze. You will always be able to correct your mistakes.

I tried to do just that on the second, mounted vampire. After all, the count has to look grand.

I also tried my hand at gore effects, something I have never attempted, for reasons unknown. Turned out rather nice, no?

There always was a thought in my head to make my general carry a blood-filled chalice. Well, it's there. In retrospect I'd better have cut away the lance bit, but it adds that bizarre flavor to the whole chalice, makes it clearly an unusual artifact rather than a mundane object.

That about covers it for today. With the skeletons done, there are only three units left to finish the whole army, and I saved the tastiest bits for last. Except for the dire wolves, which I've come to sincerely detest.

Ride or die. Or both.

It's that time again, the time it'd be proper to update. And there is stuff to see and comment upon!

I'm finally done with the Blood Knights, or, as I like to call them, the Knights of the Blood Keep. While I semi-like the design and the whole idea behind these models, the casts themselves are an awful pain to work with. The amount of flash, miscast and downright error in the manufacturing process is simply ridiculous. At times I wondered how in the hell these models made it into retail sale - I'm talking faces cast so badly not to have any facial details to speak of! I don't have any photos as proof, but please take my word for it - seek alternative models if you include the Blood Knights in your armies (and why wouldn't you?).

When you look at the Blood Knights, it seems that someone had a solid idea on how he or she wanted them to look, but somewhere along the way that idea got warped into what was actually released. I mean, just look at them - they are so much more like Chaos followers than Blood Dragon vampires. Yes, the armor is there, the omnipresent bat wing motifs as well, but still... terribly Chaosy. Not that Chaos is wrong (it is, but only in 40k ) , but this is not a Chaos army to begin with.

Besides, what really ground my gears was that the respective bodies are only supposed to fit on their respective horse models. What you get as a result is every unit looking roughly the same, as the bodies themselves have only minor variation to them. This is fine as long as you only plan on havin a single, five- or six-model-strong unit. But when you want more than one, or are planning something as simple as adding a second rank I have bad news for you.

The thing I did was to order a rank-and-file knight and swap its horse with the trumpeter's one. That way, while still stuck with a duplicate horse in a five-man unit, I preserve some degree of variety. The leftover horse will be used as a mount for my vampire lord.

Whose bright idea was to have the knights wearing arrows on their pauldrons is beyond me...

The models are full-metal, something I used to adore up to a point. When I set the finished five on a metal movement tray I realised just how heavy the unit is. If you ever field the Blood Knights in a unit of more than five or six, I think it'd be wise to make a separate carrying equipment just for them.

Getting back to variety, I'm stumped as to why they would not include more horse models. Just one would do - instead of the prancing pony you see on the left. I guess the idea was to make the model more dynamic... well, it made it more comical, that's for sure.

In fact the only model I'm somewhat satisfied with is the champion. The cloak and the varghulf fur on the shoulder are a very nice touch and they add a bucketful of character. And I'm a sucker for the new VC sword designs - straight, clean, long lines with the occasional decorative pieces just shout "nobility". The Kastellan is no exception.

The only thing tha bothers me about are the weird, cog-shaped pieces around the horse's eyes. They almost look like glasses. Other than that, the champion is a very decent piece. You can full well have him as the general model in smaller games.

Also, if you paint the knights in uniform, drab colors as I did, the champion model bits and pieces you can use to break this uniformity a bit and make the unit that little dot more aesthetic.

On the standard bearer I did some tweaking. First of all, I didn't like the banner (also, it's metal too, so it adds weight to an already weighty model) so I swapped it for the Chaos warriors' one. That required changing the mast as well, but here I was much less sophisticated - it's just a piece of brass rod; interestingly enough, brass rod seems to be a rare commodity in Poland, so rare it took me over two months to find a store that actually sells it in gauges needed for scale modeling... make you own comments on this.

I did a little freehand work on the banner, nothing fancy. I went for simplicity, as I've always envisioned the Blood Dragons to be very down-to-earth, no-nonsense warriors, not at all interested in showoff. Hence the very modest banner, naturally in my army's established color - dark green.

The bases are done according to the theme I preserve in the army. Again, the Walls And Fences plastic kit proves its greatness. I sincerely recommend it, just remove some nonsense bits here and there and you have a very nice base customization resource.

To wrap things up, some shots of the entire unit. See you next time!