FFotW - Insane Projects

Shame on me, this series received not too much love recently! Therefore today's Friday Finding of the Week will not contain only one project as usual but the multiple projects I came across on the last weeks.

But first I want to thank you all for the recent activity on my blog. All those comments keep me going and my mind is running with ideas how I can achieve things and what to paint next (most likely it will be a Mantic Forge Father Hailstorm cannon). And I am preparing some throw away pieces where I can practice weathering before I completely ruin my Ramshackle Drill :) But enough chit-chat for know, lets come to the model madness!

FFotW - The Battle of Finuval Plain

Battle of Finuval Plain from Hoodling

Today again something more hoby related. Perhaps some of you remember the last massive battlereport from Hoodling (The Battle of Hel Fenn) I posted a while ago. And he and his mad crew did it again: An unbelievable battle(report) of 25.000 points forces clashing into each other! Stand wide-eyed (or drooling) and read the madness of The Battle of Finuval Plain.

The Battle of Finuval Plain was a turning point in The Great War against Chaos in 2301 IC. The Dark Elves and their Chaos allies conquered the Blighted Isle and Nagarythe and started their raiding camapign on Ulthuan. After long fights favoring the Dark Elves and pushing the High Elves into some kind of geruilla war Teclis and Tyrion gathered a huge force and gathered on the Finuval Plain for a last stand fight to turn the tide of the war.

Take some time and read those many posts on his blog and enjoy the awesome (and pictured!) documentation how this battle went. Did the history books really tell the truth? At least you can read one version of this story today.
Hope you enjoy it as much as I did.


So long,
Paradox0n

P.S.: Welcome abroad to The Lord of Excess. Hope you found some interesting stuff here.

Dark Elves - Harpies WIP (color scheme)

Just a short update on my Harpies: I tested out a color scheme with just priming them gray, heavy black wash and cleaning the puddles up... Didn't work and don't like the result so I repainted the whole miniature in black, the wings purple and gave it a heavy drybrush of increasingly lighter graytones. Then glazed the wings to tone down the gray tones again to purple.
One thing I want to try after cleaning everything up is to gave it a marble look (yes my Harpies will be made of stone as I use the Gargoyle models from Mantic here). First time I try this, curious how this will turn out.

Please excuse the crappy picture but my camera goes havoc at the moment and I just didn't want to use my photo bucket for this short update (or buy a new camera :) ).


Have a good start into your weekend,
Paradox0n

Dark Elves - Harpies WIP

After pillaging through my whole Kickstarter stuff I found the Gargoyles from Mantic which could be a nice
replacement for my Harpies I used this far. So I spent the last two evenings (first time using my laptop cushion) with removing the mold lines and trying to get these thingies into a state that I can prime and paint them.

And oh boy... They have lots of mold lines. I am somewhat disappointed by the quality of these miniatures (as with the Orcs I started for Orctober and stopped painting before I threw them out of the window). But at least here the details work and you don't have to question yourself which part of the model this is you look at...

To be honest I like the sculpt pretty much, the mold quality is the problem here. But as with all the Mantic stuff: Its cheap and you get a good deal for your money.
The first miniature is already primed and awaits color getting brushed on. I want to do them in a very easy and simple color scheme: black/gray with the folds of the wings in purple. That should be just a lots of drybrushing and stuff.
So lets see what I can do here :)

Stay tuned and have a nice Sunday.

Paradox0n

Dark Elves - New miniature videos from Games Workshop

With the new Release of the Dark Elves it seems I have to rethink my complete army and stop my projects like my own Cauldron of Blood and the like. And I finally have to go to do the Harpies/Gargoyles I got from the Mantic Kickstarter and all the other stuff lying arround. Too many things to attend to, don't know where to start first...
But first some look at the new miniatures after the break.

Battle Report - Dark Elves vs. Empire: Battle Two

The forces ready themselves for battle

As promised in my last battle report there is another battle we did on our "Warhammer Battleday". As said, Labschi had only one army list ready, so we decided to give it another try and didn't change our setup for the gaming table. I just picked up my second list and we fielded our armies. This time I had some minor changes and swapped the Cold Ones against the Black Guard.
The Empire stood much better after deployment so I had to think a bit what to do this time. For magic I again was very lucky and had some strong spells. My Shades deployed in the small village, just outside reach and sight to get a fast charge on the cannon and my Dark Riders were setup on the far left to flank the empire army.

The game lies some days in the past so I have to try to remember everything with my pictures. It could be possible that I miss one small thing or another, but in the big scheme it should be alright. That is why I decided to not do a turnwise report but to give a bigger summary of the battle this time.

Battle Report - Dark Elves vs Empire: Battle One

I smell a battle coming

Lord Xanthus looked at his small warband and grinned: The small human village would bring him enough slaves to refill the flock in his mines. The only thing between him and his slaves were those pesky human soldiers who readied there weapons. He could also see some knights and even those blackpowder warmaschines he hated so much. Nonetheless he needed those slaves. Silent he gestured his Knights to trod aside his unit of crossbowmen. With the spearman and his shades blocking the right flank he didn't worry too much about the knights and artillery there, he just had to get grip of this human who chanted some blessings and prayers to this fool god the humans worship. As he felt the muscle tension of his Cold One he grinned and with a relieving: ATTAAAAAAACK! he sent his forces to slaughter.

WIP - Base for the Cauldron of Blood

And another WIP for my Cauldron of Blood today. At the moment I am trying to build me a base for the Cauldron. Since it should be a bit more scenic I thought of a small "hill" where the cauldron stands, two witches behind it and the standard bearer in front of it.
Since I have lots of bark in my box I used some of it to get a rough layout (which will be painted like rock). Too bad my Fimo dried out, so I couldn't finish the other parts of the hill. Any suggestions how I could do it without Greenstuff or Fimo? aybe just sanding the whole thing could work too...
For a better understanding how this should look like in the end, I placed some models on the base (sneaky skaven-ratlings are everywhere!).

What do you think of it?

So long,
Paradox0n

Sunday Afternoon WIP - Dark Elves: Witch Elves

2K primed Witch Elves

A day off, a delicious asparagus menu and a painting afternoon with a friend, what a wonderful and quite ending of a long weekend. And since I really managed to paint something I can show you some WIP shots of my Witch Elves for my Cauldron of Blood.

First I did a two component priming for a better definition of the lighting of the miniatures. You don't believe how tricky this is when it is a stormy weather like today. But after seeing of some pictures from Mr. Lee I know now that I can achieve this with my airbrush too. Therefore as soon as my aerosol cans are empty I will buy me a black primer from Vallejo since I am really pleased with their primers.

Saturday Night WIP - Dark Elves: Cauldron of Blood

After a rather restless night, I can show you some WIP shots for my version of the Cauldron of Blood for the Dark Elves.
The Cauldron is not the one from Games Workshop it is the Spawning Vessel from the Legion of Everblight. The acolythes will be used later as beastmasters for my hydra :)
Since I am a rather classical RPG player the thought of a statue carried by three wicked witches was not really appealing to me. It is too heavy, too clumsy and doesn't fit to my imagination of the Cauldron. And I was not willing to pay ~40€ for a modell I don't like and where I had to cut off half of it... The old model (more a chariot than anything else) is also not the best one (but fitted to the old rules) and only buyable via the Bay or similar places. So I bought myself a witch commando, the spawn vessel and a battle standard (more of her in a future article) and started thinking.