Certainly Dec was crazy busy with family and holidays, plus my usual week away for work in early Dec. But I'll admit I've actually been sucked into my Xbox 360 as well finishing off Assasins Creed 4 and GTAV. I usually only get a couple games in a year, so getting two basically done in the last 6 weeks took up time that would usually be spent on the hobby, if not making a few blog posts.
I have managed to get some games in over the last few weeks of course. Like last year I had a group of buds over to play 40k and that's always a good time to just hang out and much around with a couple of tables set up at my place.
A couple of guys are practicing for LVO, and a couple hadn't played since last Dec when I had them over. So it is just a cool chance to hang out with buds like yesteryear, prior to marriages and kids and careers.
I've also gotten a handful of games with my bikes. They've all been real tough but I think I eeked out wins in all of them (maybe a tie too if I recall). I've been running 1750 to keep that practice going for Vegas and I'm feeling pretty good. There is even a battle report over on Frontline you can check out of a game!
http://www.frontlinegaming.org/2013/12/12/warhammer-40k-video-bat-rep-white-scars-vs-tyranids/
Of course those were old bugs, and new bugs are looking scary so hopefully I'll get some practice there in the next few weeks before going out for the LVO.
Hell I even got a 3000 point game with my Beastmen against Lizards just for giggles. I felt the Beasts did about as expected, which is to say slightly better than horrible but not terribly great.
But really most of the hobby time I've spent working on my Black Dragons. I've been pouring resin like crazy and flashing and assembling the tactical squads. I've got 5 of them together which is the bulk of the army really. I'm about ready to move on to the assault squads, then command squads, then HQ.
These guys aren't all done either. Only one squad is currently spiked in the way I want to do the tactical marines. The assault and command squads will be more like the Dragon Claw I posted in the last update.
I tried to keep the bases simple and I'm looking forward to painting them. Basically I just painted on some liquid greenstuff and added some cork board. My hope is to be able to paint up some lave bases with some cool lighting effects. I'm not sure if the painted liquid greenstuff has really added enough to the base, and I may have to go back and add something more to build up the lava if just painting it doesn't cut it.
I also have my drop pods which I need to get around to finishing up a bit. I've assembled all the old 'center' bits that I never used and have them primed. I need to actually paint them and the insides of the 7 pods I have 'done.' They are painted up as Templar pods but I think all I'm going to do is pop of the BT symbol, patch it and add a Black Dragon Decal. Of course I have to paint two more pods and I'm debating if it is easier to paint all that white on those, or paint over the 7 pods that are white. Le sigh.
I also did a bit of test airbrushing. I've been thinking of doing the black a bit different than I did the Templar. What I've been thinking is zenithal airbrushing which is basically hitting the model with a color from only one direction thus creating highlights and shadows. Now I sorta did this a bit with the bikes but now I'm really trying this intentionally from ground 0 so trying to do some tests before I hit up 80 marines.
So I took my first two marines that I wanted to try, primered them black, then hit them in this method with a light grey.
I was not super thrilled with the mix I had going and I'm not sure if I'm ready to just give up on this airbrush or I need to add more thinner as things still come out more splotchy than I'd like. Still it had the basic effect I was looking to get.
So what I really wanted to test was now airbrushing on the wash vs painting it on the model. The airbrushing would obviously be quicker but I'm not sure if I would be as consistent across many models where brushing I feel I might have more control really. Either way I heard they created different effects so I wanted to check that out on these guys.
So the guy on the left is the airbrushed wash and the guy on the right is the painted on wash. Certainly the overall effect of the airbrush is kinda neat but it really brings the whole model down quite a bit. The guy on the right still seems to have his highlights stand out a bit more.
So after this I tried a third guys. This time I might have been a little heavier on the first layer of grey, but then I airbrushed wash on him, then hit him again with wash with the brush.
Overall I think this is the look I'm going to go with on these models. The black is not quite plain black and the highlights do come through. I think before I hit that second wash I will get some of the other paints (metals, whites, etc) on there and then hit them with that brushed on wash. Then I can go finish up the details. I might do the cork as well in that step and just wash the whole model.
So that's what I've been up to lately. The vegas open is just a few short weeks away but thankfully I don't have to get anything painted and am just packing my bikes like I did for Feast. Hopefully they will still hold up well with the new bugs, but only time will tell!
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