Butcher1 Painted

 I've been holding onto this model for a long time now. I've heard that Butcher1 was the first model for Warmachine Privateer every made (though this is a resculpt). I think this is a fantastic model and I loved painting it, especially as a little break from brass and pink. 

Butcher1, face

I experimented a bit with stubble, since I didn't want his whole head to be one color, and I think I nailed it. This may be one of the best models I've ever painted. 

Butcher1, back

I painted him up in the 5th Border Legion theme colors, which is how I'm transitioning all of my Khador to look. Butcher actually has some history with the 5th Border Legion, at the battle where he got his name if I remember correctly. I did a very blue cool-tone fur coat to tie in the base (which isn't really finished yet), and many different browns for the leather cape. 

Butcher1, top

I really like the scale of him too, it has a great balance of details, and the details that are there are large and easy to paint. 

Butcher1, front

So even though I haven't gotten out my Khador in well over a year (two years?) I may have to soon just to show his off. I also recommend the novella that Dan Wells wrote, The Butcher of Khardov. It's probably the best fiction that I've read from PP's IP. 

Okay, now back to sea green robes and porcelain masks. 

Eliminators and end of Journeyman

So I have a few updates since the last post. I finished up Markov to the point that I feel good playing with him, but I won't be showing him off yet until I finish all of the little details, of which there are a lot, and his face. I tried dozens of times to get his eyes right before I just gave up. I'll try again "later".

As you can see, I've also started writing out character names on the base's front arc, largely because of these three, who I can never tell apart.

It's tough but rewarding. I intend to do this definitely for every named character, and possibly giving all my unnamed characters a name as well, from my solos to my grunts.

I also got a unit of Kayazy Eliminators, which were challenging because of how different they were from my heavily armored infantry.

I green stuffed the cobblestone bases because I figured they were technically mercenaries and so should have a more "neutral" base. It'll still have snow on it when I finally do that though.

Now I'm done to my unit of IFP, my battle mechaniks, and Sorscha0 and that'll be the last of my Khador for the foreseeable future. I'll of course continue to play them (especially since they're almost fully painted) but I want a break from them and will be starting up a Convergence of Cyriss army instead. I'll post about them later though.

Hope you enjoy.

Repainted Juggernaut and a little wip

I skipped last week because I was moving. Luckily, all of my minis made it through the move without disassembling themselves. Unluckily, I haven't have a lot of time to paint. I do however have a small backlog of pictures that I haven't done any updates on yet though. First is my Rager:

I hesitate to call it done-done, but it's a solid single done I think. In that second picture I intentionally added my thumb for scale because that 5th border legion logo there is now my smallest freehand of any model I can remember. For reference, here is the official pin of the 5th border legion (which I do not yet own!)

The Rager is not a traditional 5th border legion jack like the Kodiak, but that does bring my up to my next project which was to update some of my Khadoran red jacks to the 5th border legion paint scheme. Here is my Juggernaut before and after photo:

It's hard to see in that picture but I even repainted the shoulders in my first attempt at wet blending, here is a close-up of the result.

 It's not perfect, but it looks great for my first try I think! Blending has always been the barrier I never attempted in painting because it always seemed "too hard" so I avoided it. But I think it could add a lot to my minis, so I'm going to be using it extensively in my next several models to get some practice.

The other model I just started is Kovnik Markov, and he is taking a very long time because it turns out that blending doesn't always work out as easily on a non-smooth, irregularly shaped surface. But here is a WIP of him. Hopefully I can post his finished form by next week.

I'm kind of lucky, kind of not, in that I accidentally dropped him and he shattered into his three main pieces and then discovered he's actually a lot easier to paint this way so I'm leaving him unassembled for the time being.

Still no battle reports, I keep forgetting until halfway through a game. Maybe next week.

Journeyman League!

I'm starting in another journeyman league on July 1, with my Khador. I thought for a long time about picking up a third faction but I think I still have a lot of learning to do with the Motherland before I move on. Another player is doing the standard Khadoran battlebox of Kozlov and his Juggernaut and Decimator, which I've already posted here, so I thought I'd change it up. I'll start week 1 with the following list:

https://conflictchamber.com/?c32000f-dZkZ

Khador Army - 0 / 0 points

[Kozlov 1] Lord Kozlov, Viscount of Scarsgrad [+28]
 - Grolar [18]
 - Rager [10]

Mainly for the reasons that I like Kozlov, I never get to play with my Grolar, and I just got a Rager, which I magnetized for the first time. Plus, don't they look great together?

The picture is a little out of focus, but I also went back and touched up Kozlov some. Here he is now, with the old image in the top left for comparison.

I'm really happy with the face, something I've been struggling with lately for some reason (as an example, see Strakhov's weird face in the last post), but his looks great. I'm also very happy with how the cloak turned out after the touch-ups. The rager will be one of my submission for painting as well as a full unit of IFP, Uhlan Kovnik Markov, and possibly some more models that I've ordered. Like the battle mechaniks that still haven't come in yet. In week two I plan to just add a full unit of IFP without CA but I might change my mind on that one. It might be more worth it to take a min unit plus CA for the minifeat and relentless charge.

If my opponents are fine with it, I plan on doing at least one battle report per week to help with my post-game analysis. I know that LegoS is not the best (or even in the top 3) Khador themes but I trust PP that it is at least usable in most match-ups, I just have to figure it out first. 

Strakhov 2 and friends

I made a lot of progress on Assault Kommando Strakhov and his friends. I'm happy enough with them to play them but I'm not entirely sure I'm done with them yet.

I'm going to set them aside for now, and I might come back to them later. I tried experimenting with the black with hard highlighting, to try to imitate shiny leather or rubber which gives them corrosion immunity. I did the same with the red.

I thought that the extreme highlighting might evoke a night time lighting but I think I missed that.

As always, I'll wait to do the basing later with the rest of my army.

I also recently got the Extreme Destroyer and was surprised at how many pieces it had!

Even the individual fingers were separate pieces. I wanted to assemble it in a dynamic pose, with the 'jack looking where it was shooting, and I think I did a decent job of that. Here is what it looks like now, though I don't feel finished with it yet.

So I've gotten it to the point that it's at least as good as my other destroyer, but I want to do more to it still. I'm thinking some weathering and rust. What I like about it so far is the blue steel of the axe and a good looking Khador symbol on the top hatch.




Hope you enjoy.

Just bearly tabletop quality

Just finished the Great Bears, which means that I now only have two unfinished models in my Khador force.

Like I said in the last past, I wanted them to be violently Khadoran, hence the bright red. Eventually I hope I can actually play with some of these in a game. Maybe I'll take pictures and do a battle report. Anyway, the individual pictures:

I also finished up the war dog (who doesn't have a name yet, but I'm leaning toward Petunia). Here she is by Sorscha.

With so much getting done I made another group picture, this time with everyone in my Khador army. *USSR anthem intensifies*

On top of all that, I just put in a big order of some more pikemen, Uhlan Kovnik Markov, Strakhov2, Malakov2, and the Extreme Destroyer. After that, I think the army will be mostly finished in terms of models? Unless PP entices me with something extraordinary.

Rounding out my Legion of Steel

Now I have enough pikemen to play the Legion of Steel theme force within Khador reasonably competitively because I finally finished the Iron Fang Pikemen unit I started painting ages ago and had just left unfinished.

And I managed to catch a little bit of sunlight. I like the more popping red of the capes so I went back and brightened up my Black Dragons' capes as well to match. Now all that's left is my Great Bears which won't look like either Iron Fangs or Black Dragons, because I'm thinking about making them Khador red. They are, after all, living legends and should look the part.

I'm also starting to consider my bases. I'm thinking a blue ice using the tutorial posted here. If that is what I do, I may need to order a bunch of bases or potentially try casting them again. I might instead do a simple cork rock deal with some snow.

Stop. Time for hammers. Also, machine guns.

I've had a lot of work to do with no deadlines and procrastination is nearing its peak for me, which ultimately means another painting figure! This one is the slightly larger than usual Grolar, again from Khador. I took the lazy way out and didn't magnetize him because I don't have magnets. And I thought at the time (without checking out the rules) that obviously the hammer and minigun were better than no hammer or minigun. Well, now I wish I could also play the Kodiak but oh well, I guess I'll have to throw more money at PP. Regardless, I do like the studio paint scheme for the Kodiak for these bigger warjacks than the normal red scheme. I'm not sure if I'm trying to be consistent or not, but in case I am I think I'll paint future standard Juggernaut chassis 'jacks that classic Khador red, and the bigger ones the field green.

But enough empty plans. No decent pictures today, just what I snapped from my painting table. Don't mind the distractingly beautiful table cloth in the background, that what we play board games on and we'll be starting Pandemic Legacy tonight so that's why it's out.

I tried for easily over two hours to replicate what I did on the Behemoth with this guy but I could not get the green to look right. But it's close as long as they're not shoulder to shoulder. As an update, this is my Legion of Steel 75pt theme list so far.

It's just missing the battle mechaniks I ordered with my FLGS, I need to finish my IFP and start my Great Bears, and then it could be tournament ready. Despite being a terrible list. And I probably won't play with Kovlov. Or in any tournaments.

Some Dark Grey Dragons

When I got the big army box two Christmases ago, it came with two full units of iron fang pikemen, with the option of turning either or both into black dragons. When I built them, I had no idea which one I'd rather have so I put them together as one unit of each. Which I'm glad I did, as they seem to have different purposes and are both fun to play with. Since then I've put some amount of paint on all of those miniatures except the black dragons which I've avoided both because "it'll be easy when I decide to get to it" and because I don't like painting black. Maybe I'm somehow still burned out after the Cryx. When I finish each of the other pieces, I'll put them up here too but these guys are the first unit that is completely done.

I'm going for some kind of dark Roman Legionnaires look, which I think worked out well enough. I didn't seal them because I may go back and touch them out, and I've also not based them yet (like the rest of my Khador). I'm a little disappointed that a lot of the details are difficult to see without getting VERY close, but I'm still glad I did it. After almost a year I think I've figured out what those dangly things are on their sash, extra pike tips! Realizing that I wanted the holder to be a different metallic than the bronze of the tips and ornamentation.

I also grabbed a Kapitan Sofya Skirova, a Black Dragon solo which refuses to die. I thought the miniature was great and she was fun to paint up with the rest of her boys and girls.

I don't think that I'm still as up to painting 13 models in an assembly style as I used to, but it definitely felt efficient. I think it only took me three days of painting to get them from primer black to this state.

Anyway I've got about as many half-finished Khador as I do fully finished ones so it's likely I'll be posting relatively often while I finish those off.

Whoa... Bigger warjack...

Here's Behemoth as promised. I finished painting him months ago but never took pictures. He has the military green color I was talking about in a previous post and I'm quite happy with him. Amazingly, that's the same base size as the other three 'jacks, just to give you an idea of his size.

Again, bad pictures (time to buy a new camera?) and as always it looks a bit better in person, but even still you can see how the scheme is working. That gritty, dirty green gives me Death Guard vibes, but now with more imperialism (and in this case that makes it better).

I particularly like how the soot on the stacks turned out but it might need work in the future. Right now it just looks like black paint, instead of a dusting of industrial grade carbon. If I remember right, GW had a soot texture and I may consider that.

I still haven't decided how I'm going to do these bases yet. Snow is the obvious choice and would probably make my colors pop well but I'm thinking more of a muddy snow melt, but that seems quite difficult to not look awful. We'll see whenever I do a test miniature.

Next up should be some Iron Fang Pikemen (and their solo). Hope you enjoyed.

Added a new 'jack

For my birthday last year, my wife (I've gotten married!) got me the Khador army box, containing 50 points of badassery!

I hadn't had much of a chance or motivation to paint them up until recently, because I've found a new game store to show off at play games at, which means my models have to be painted.

I've actually made quite a bit of progress but I'll just drop the one that I've taken a picture of here now and add the rest later, but let me tell you I'm pretty excited.

Crappy picture, but I tried to match the Destroyer with the other two battlebox 'jacks but still have some progress. I think the shading went a lot better with this guy. He looks better to me, but that might be because I've been staring at him for the last couple days. Hope on some level I'm getting back up to the level I was at before, but I still have a lot of work ahead of me.

I'm very happy about the axe specifically. It doesn't have critical freeze like Sorscha does, but it does have critical amputation and I wanted it to look special.

In future posts I'll show off Behemoth (who is done) and some Iron Fang Pikemen (who are quite close). Maybe even a battle report if I'm feeling ambitious (don't hold your breath).

EDIT: Cropped photos.