Kastorel Novem work in progress

The bases have all been airbrushed with calthan brown, and I have also done an initial airbrush of adeptus battlegrey on the tower and mek shop.
On a side note, this is my first blog update from my Milestone Android phone using the Blogger app!

My to-do list

As always, I have a never ending list of things to do, but I thought I'd note down what I plan to work on in the near future:

1- Finish painting my Kastoral Novem themed terrain.
2 - Paint the realm of battle board to match
3 - Re-paint the bases on my Orks
4 - Paint my storm boyz, and any other units needed for my FOB Tourney list.
5 - Highlight my Ork trucks and battlewagons
6 - Apply basing materials to my Dark Elves
7 - Undercoat dark elves

There are a few items in there that will need expanding. 

A small but very enjoyable game of Apocalypse

Saturday night saw Jordan, Allistair and new gamer Luke (Hi Luke) come over for a small Apocalypse game of 4000ish points.  I ran 200 points of Blood Angels, Allistair allied with me and ran about 1850pts worth of Grey Knights.  Across the table Jordan ran 4000pts of Chaos, split between daemons and CSMs, along with Rusty, his Reaver Titan (I've been calling it Rusty in an effort to get Jordan using the name) and Luke ran approx. 800pts of Tyranids.  TO beef up our side Allistair also ran my Baneblade.

We played on a 6'x8' table made up of my 'rough' realm of battle table, and Allistairs 'ski field' realm of battle table, which we suspect he polishes between games just to listen to Jordan grumble about Bloodletters skiing down the slopes.  The mission was normal Apocolypse.

Overall it was a lot of fun.  I tried out the 'Dantes Sanguinary Host' formation, with Dante, an Honour Guard, and three squads of Sangunary Guard.  I matched that up with two Baal Predators - one with flamestorm and heavy flamers, the other with TL Assault Cannon and heavy bolters.  I then added two furioso dreadnoughts - one vanilla and one librarian.  Both in Drop pods with deathstorm launchers.

A few highlights - Indestructable Paladins holding our right flank, wiping our nearly all of Lukes Nids, then taking on two big mobs of Bloodletters, along with Skull taker, and taking one casualty in the whole game.  Gotta love the Nemesis Warding Staff - if you're the one with the knights.    Dante collected the head of a Bloodthirster - got to explore Honour Guards a bit more - they proved to be an excellent companion to Dante - and they can have Storm Shields.

A few lessons learned - it takes a Titan to kill a Titan.  Failing that, at least three super heavy tanks.  The lone Baneblade just couldn't knock off void sheilds fast enough (they kept regenerating) and the rest of the force just lacked the punch necesary to take it out.  Also, Sangunary Guard are definately a 'scissors' unit - very good against normal troops, but they fall like leaves when facing anything with power weapons (e.g other scissors units, and most rocks).  Building a list made up almost exclusively of SG is not a good idea.  Next time substitute at least one unit for Terminators, and if they are the only troops, don't put them all in one place.

Luke did ok considering it was his first game.  Admittedly an Apocalypse game may not be the best way to start.

The Mega Armoured Nobz (a.k.a. MANz) are DONE!

Well, it was one of the more drawn out painting jobs I've done, but they are finally finished!  Every once in a while I encounter a stumbling point in a painting project.  I think this is closely akin to writers block.  I just can't seem to get through the next step in the process.  This happened with the MANz, and it lasted over a year.  Finally broke the deadlock last week, and behold, the results:

Updated Ork Painting Method

Given my recent change in base painting, I thought I'd update my 'standard Ork painting method'.  Looking at the method, which I wrote several years and a hundred or so painted Orks ago, I've made some other 'tweaks' to the method also.

1. Drybrush Codex Grey, then Fortress Grey, then Astronomicon Grey in successive coats on the whole model, using a big brush and very little paint.
2. Overbrush all weapons, some armour, and key parts of the Kans, Dred and MANz Boltgun Metal.
3. Paint all skin Knarloc Green.
4. Pick out some armour, gun parts and other minor details in Dwarf Bronze.
5. Paint belts and straps Beastial Brown.
6. Spray wash with 1 coats of Badab Black.
7. Spray wash with 1 coat of Devlan Mud
8. Pick out detail and paint chips and scratches with Chainmail.
9. Highlight skin with Goblin green
10. Top highlight skin with 1:1 mix of Goblin Green and Bleached Bone
11. Paint base Calthan Brown
12. Drybrush base Tausept Ochre
13. Second Drybrush of base 1:1 mix of Tausept Ochre and Skull White
14. Paint teeth snakebite leather
15. Paint eyes bleached bone
16. Highlight teeth bleached bone
17. Paint eyes blood red (fully covering the bleached bone)
18. Extreme highlight teeth white
19. Paint any minor details unique to any models

Bases completed

Ok, so I've completed the bases as per my last entry, and thought I'd provide the pics I promised.  First, the bestial brown basecoat:

Then, the vomit brown drybrush, followed by a second drybrush of 1:1 vomit brown and skull white:

Overall I'm pretty happy - the effect I was after is certainly achieved, but....

Turns out, the brown and ochre paints that come with the large terrain kit are a little different.  I may need to try those out next.

New base colour for da boyz

Well, I've bitten the proverbial bullet and changed my core colour scheme for the Orks a bit.  I'm laying down a new base colour on the bases for the Meganobz I'm painting at the moment, and from the looks of it, I'd say I'll then be going back over the rest of my painted Orks and changing things up a bit.

The new base colour scheme is:

1. Bestial Brown, applied liberally
2. Vomit brown drybrush
3. 50/50 Vomit brown/skull white drybrush

The goal of the new base is twofold - one, I need to better 'separate' the models from the bases - they we're getting lost, and looked like black blobs on the table - not black clad Orks.  Second, I'm building up my game board and terrain to be 'desert' theme, which means applying the same colour scheme.  It will tie everything together, and should look a lot nicer than it does currently.

I'll put up some pics shortly.