Watching Them Come And Go: Back To Warhammer Painting

The Chaos Dwarf Host as it currently stands.

While I've given you some RPGing and some terrain-making in 2016, I've yet to give you any figure painting.  The supposed purpose of this blog, recording my dabbling in wargaming, has been somewhat lacking of late.

The last time I posted about painting a figure was all the way back in July 2015 - a mystical ancient land, when David Bowie and Wes Craven still walked amongst the people who had not yet heard of liquid water on Mars or Zika virus outbreaks.  Instead they had to amuse themselves with the US and Cuba renormalising their diplomatic relations while tawdry British tabloids accused the royals of fascism and lords of being coke-using prostitute-hiring cross-dressers.

And somehow, we claim our media is classier than America's

The last thing I posted about painting was Hobgoblins - another ten archers were needed to get my unit up from twenty to thirty.  I was having trouble sourcing or converting a standard bearer, too.

Since then I had played the Chaos Dwarfs with Paul - well, I played "Abyssal Dwarfs" in Kings of War but close enough, right?  However I haven't done much about putting ink to plastic and finishing my proposed three by ten block of Noblin goodness.

The last figures you saw on the produciton line.

The last couple of days I finally got the painting table set up and sat down with these figures to try and make some progess.  I want to try and rekindle my wargaming hobby progress after a six month crash and burn.

So, here it is, ladies and gentlemen: the inevitable return of the great sideburned hope.

An interim picture - front rank are base coated and based, bank rank have been Quickshaded.

Well, progress I've definitely made.  I've been able to source a standard bearer, for one thing - an actual Hobgoblin figure rather than a Night Goblin proxy so he's a bit taller than the rest of them, but then clearly that's why he was chosen to hold the banner!

The paint scheme is exactly as before - after spraying the Standard Bearer with an undercoat he got the same colours slapped on him as his little bow-wielding chums.  A dash of poppy seeds and it's time to slap on the Dark Tone quickshade.  Once that's dried, a little bit of red and green highlighting will be the order of the day.

All ten figures, all quickshaded and waiting on a little highlighting.

Of course if I'm going to play Kings of War again then I'm going to need to consider more Goblins.  The unit sizes aren't quite as flexible in KoW as in Warhammer - there a unit of Hobgoblin infantry could be any size from 20 models up, whereas in Kings of War there are fixed sizes for units.  I can have a 10, 20 or 40 unit Hobgoblin squad but not 30.

Because of the way army building works it might be beneficial to have forty models, either to play in a huge block or have two twenties available.  This means that I may need to consider some more forces to bulk out these units.  Perhaps it's time for a Hobgoblin recruitment drive?

British World War 2 propaganda is somehow both naff and awesome at the same time.

Then again, I have painted sixty Hobgoblins total - I should maybe give my Chaos Dwarfs some more Chaos Dwarfs, say a twenty block of infantry, before moving back to archers and sneaky gits.  Or perhaps I could focus on somethign more interesting than base troops - a mounted lord is in my pile of unpainted figures as are some Hobgbolin Wolf Riders.

This is a Dungeons & Dragons Hobgoblin illustration rather than a Warhammer one, hence being hairy rather than green.... but I don't care because DAMN HE LOOKS BADASS.

Of course there's plenty of other unpainted plastic, metal and resin in this house that isn't Chaos Dwarf.  40K is well represented with things I could be doing if I wasn't always so busy eating, working, sleeping and rolling dice!  As well as fifty bajillion suits of power armour I have another item on the to do-list... the Imperial Knight Titan, which as you may recall I had assembled with some minor Chaos adaptations. 

Since last time I've given this some basing with the usual mix of cork dust and small rocks, though I've still not worked out quite what I want to do with regards to adding Warp Amps to it.  I kinda feel bad modifying it too much since there's so much lovely detail and I'm worried I would mess it up if I festoon it with too much green stuff.  I've still left the weapons loose for removal and reattachment so it can be a bit more flexible, especially if I go ahead with my plan to make additional more Sonic-looking weapons.

The Dark Mechanicus' part-assembled project.

 Colour then is the big question here.  The bulk of my Chaos Space Marines are Emperors Children and thusly come in purple, with some silver/gold/pink additions to make loud and proud Slaanesh worshipping bling Marines.  The intention is for this Knight to be a deviant Slaanesh-dedicated Chaos Knight so the urge would be to do much the same here.

However, my army isn't exactly mono-colour so there are other options available to me.  Noise Marines are not exactly known for sedate colouration, after all!  My army has dark red marines, black and yellow marines, dirty white and magenta marines & even some rainbow coloured marines.  (Which, incidentally, I'm thinking could make a fun colour scheme for a second bike unit.)

You'll notice a lot of Alien Purple / Genestealer Purple in this group shot

That's a lot of different colour schemes to ponder.  Right now the one that is most likely is a Pink body, Gold trims and maybe some purple for darker elements like parts of guns etc.  The pink I can get nice and smooth with a Tamiya TS-25 Pink spray, possible following up with some of my home-made Titillating Pink proxy.

White undercoat first, mind.

I do wonder if doing a foot tall model in pink might be just a step too far, though, even for the god of Excess...