Quick update time again.

On the home front I'm slowly slogging through cleaning up all my scenery before I think about assembling and undercoating it. I also need to think about where I'm going to store it once it's all done.

At work I've been applying a layer of Astronomicon Grey to the fabric and hair areas of a load of Sword Master models in preparation for applying my usual cloth and hair base colours. However, work on them is going to stop for a while as I've been experimenting with army lists a bit, trying to think about what I want to take to tournaments for the rest of the year, and at the moment have a block of Sea Guard in the lists I've done to scale from 2200 to 2999 points. Unfortunately, other than assembling and undercoating, I haven't done anything to my Sea Guard models so it's going to be quite a bit of work to get them up to minimum tournament standard. In fact its going to be more work than I was expecting as I hadn't really looked at the models with a thought to how I was going to paint them until today when I started putting grey on one and realised there's a lot more areas and detail I need to take care of on the Sea Guard than there is on the Sword Masters from the IoB, not helped by the fact that the shield and bow get in the way a bit.

I'm probably also going to have to buy a second Great Eagle, plus a couple of boxes of the new Dragon Princes as I'm considering dropping the Ellyrian Reavers from my list and using Princes instead. As a musician is pretty much mandatory on the unit and as I've not been able to locate a musician model of the same era as the other DP models I have, I'm thinking of selling off my current DPs and replacing them completely with two boxes of the plastics so I can day dream about fielding a unit of ten some time.

All this does mean that I'm probably not going to manage to get any of my work in progress units finished off this year like I was originally hoping to which is annoying but the priority is going to have to be getting the stuff that's fresh into my list up to basic tournament standard. I've still got no idea when I'm going to be able to start work on building the Skaven army I'm gradually buying bits for.

I realise this isn't the battle report section but as I don't have time to go into full details I'll quickly summarise my recent (or rather all since the Bad Dice Open) games here. Straight after the tournament I played against Joel and his Bretonnians with an expertimental list (Prince with Killing Blow sword, single Level 2, unit of Sea Guard, three units of Archers, Sword Masters, White Lions, three bolt throwers) in the Watchtower scenario. Had a flukey charge where I needed to roll an 11 to make it in and rolled a 12, which surprised the Knights a fair bit. A technical win in the end - I still had control of the Watchtower but if we'd had time to complete the turn Joel would have been able to kill off the Archers holding it.

Next game was against John's Empire. I took the twin Arch Mage list I take when I'm trying to see if I can get Transformation of Kadon off. Only got one attempt at casting it and John dispelled it which was a bit of a bummer as I'd deployed and moved with the sole aim of getting the Arch Mage with Beasts lore into combat to get the spell off and see what 4D6 S7 ASF poisoned attacks did. Lost the game in the end as I'd pushed units forward a lot quicker than I would have done otherwise.

My next game was another Empire opponent, this time regular opponent Andy who was running out the Steam Tank for a change. I had another experimental list by my standards, taking a second Noble with the Shadow Armour and putting him in a unit of wannabe Shades, er, I mean Shadow Warriors. We both had Lore of Metal and both had Final Transmutation. I won first turn and moved up to within 24" of the Stank and crippled it first spell of the game with 8 wounds from a max power Searing Doom. Unfortunately I didn't have the dice left to cast anything else of particular note and then Andy cast Final Transmutation on my White Lions bunkering my Arch Mage general and killed him which shafted my magic for the rest of the game (seriously, I don't think I've ever seen Final Transmutation not kill my characters, or at least wound them where the effects of the spell have been amended). If I remember correctly he got my Level 2 with the same spell next turn. It was pretty much downhill for me from there - I'd taken two units of Sea Guard so wasn't wanting to move them forward too agresively as otherwise the couldn't shoot but to be honest I should have moved at least one of them and the remaining White Lions up to take on his Halberdiers who the scouting Noble and suriving Shadow Warriors managed to keep beating in CC after they'd taken out a Great Cannon and Hellstorm. In the end the Empire magic and shooting took me down too much and so it was a bit of a massacre to the Empire, although my Sword Masters took out the Arch Lector and War Altar (the Lector went down first round but that bloody War Altar stuck around for about three rounds of combat, even with the Sword Masters getting an extra attack from a nearby Altar of Khaine).

Last game was Watchtower against Nick's Orcs and Goblins with the new list I'm planning to base things on. The High Elves actually performed better than normal, possibly helped by the points level of 2200 which meant Nick had only the single Rock Lobber and no Doom Diver or Spear Chukkas. I killed his Black Orc War Boss turn 1 with Final Transmutation (these 1 in 6 chances seem to come up 9 times out of 10...) and for the most part was winning - his Goblin Big Boss riding the giant spider got turned into a pin-cushion by two units of Archers. They both shot at him on one turn and out of 20 shots, 11 of which were long range, I got 17 hits and took two wounds off him, and then he died to a Stand and Shoot. The Black Orcs also got shot to pieces (helped by a Plague of Rust lowering their armour save) before finally charging some Sea Guard who stood and shot to reduce the unit to four models and then, thanks to a nearby Altar of Khaine, did enough attacks in the combat to wipe out the Orcs before they got a chance to swing their choppas.

Unfortunately it was also the Sea Guard who lost me the game. Turn 6 and they failed their Frenzy test to not charge the Night Goblins across the board from them. Surprisingly they rolled high enough to make it into combat but were inevitably beaten down and fled, panicking the Sword Masters who were holding the tower. There were actually a couple of mistakes here. Firstly, I should have put my BSB in with the Sword Masters so they'd be re-rolling their LD tests on a 9, and secondly, even if I hadn't done that, when the Sea Guard (who would have been within range for the BSB re-roll) failed their Frenzy test, I should have moved them into alignment as far to the right as I could against the Night Goblin horde as this should have just about put them outside of the 6" panic causing range.


Anyway, apologies for the lack of pictures in this update. I thought I had taken some of the Ellyrian Reaver Musician and the four IoB Sword Masters I painted up for the Bad Dice Open but can't seem to find them.

Time for my almost monthly update.

Well tonight I've actually sat down and done about three quarters of an hour's painting at home, which is the first since the painting I did for the Bad Dice Open. I was planning to work on the trim of the Sea Guard I've been prepping at work but didn't get as much done as I'd hoped as I found some spots where my preparatory layers of Astronomicon Grey weren't quite complete.

My Watchtower is mostly assembled. At the moment I'm awaiting the arrival of the new length of green stuff I've ordered to arrive before putting the chimney on it. After that I plan to get on with assembling the Dreadstone Blight and Arcane Ruins.

In the absence of any new pictures of the stuff I'm painting, here's a picture of my friend Andy's scratch built War Altar

Wow, that archlector has a massive organ...

Yeah, personally I think he's trying to compensate for something...

D

Well, as the missus is feeling too ill to allow me out to the club tonight I'm on baby alert and so decided to do a quick update with photos...

As I've probably mentioned, at the moment I've been slowly working on my Lothern Sea Guard. I'm actually trying painting them a different way round compared to normal - basically I'm doing my metal last rather than first to see if it ends up being any quicker (although given how long I go between painting models I'm not quite sure how I'm going to judge that).

So, here are a couple of Sea Guard as they stand at the moment.



Also, having finally got round to getting some more Green Stuff, I've started what looks like turning out to be a really tedious task, namely filling in all the really obvious gaps on my Watchtower.

It's that time again. Still slugging away at my various bits of painting, as well as plugging gaps in the Watchtower. Managed to get the inaugral game in on my new, built by my own, barely competent hands (under the instruction of my neighbour who's into DIY and therefore knew what he was talking about), gaming table.

Was also at the Rushden Rumble this Saturday just gone. Aiming to get a battle report up by the end of the week.

Before I forget, the Rushden Rumble battle report is up here.

Despite having eight weeks to go until the Summer Incursion I'm beginning to despair of getting stuff painted to even a basic level in time. I seem to be going through another phase of being unable to drum up enthusiasm to get much if any painting done at home - I don't think it's helped by not having a clue what colour I want to paint the wave pattern bits on the armour skirts (not helped by having a blue colour scheme on my cloth) .

As it was sunny today I decided to paint the gaming table. It didn't go quite as quickly as I'd hoped - I needed to fill in some gaps and the cheapo filler I bought from B&Q just seemed to refuse to come out of the tube so I ended up cutting the tube open in order to apply it. After leaving it to dry and sanding down I started painting. I wasn't sure the sampler tin of paint I was using was going to be enough and it turned out not to be, meaning a trip to B&Q to get some more. Somehow that took up most of the day after having dropped my daughter off at my parents plus fitting in lunch.

Try not to die of shock but here's a quick update.

Against my better judgement I've decided to paint the shields and parts of the wave decoration on the Sea Guard white. I'm already having doubts about this. Part of the problem is that when I painted on the Astronomicon Grey base I use for a lot of things I don't think I quite got it thin enough (although it's normally bordering on too watered down when I apply it to the point i find I need a couple of coats to have a layer I can paint on) so it's not a smooth layer. Normally doesn't matter but painting white seems to show it up a lot more than happens with other colours.

Bit of an update again.

Unfortunately I'm not as far along with things as I was hoping to be by this stage.

My father passed away unexpectedly two weeks ago, which understandably dampened my inclination to sit down and paint.

I'm now back at it but I don't think I'm going to get the bulk of what needed doing for the Summer Incursion done to a minimum level - I've already had to put feelers out about borrowing models for the event as at present the Sea Guard I've got in progress need a fair bit of work to get to the minimum level, the new Dragon Princes are still completely unassembled (fortunately I should have enough of the old ones about somewhere) and I don't even have the second Great Eagle yet.

I haven't made things any easier by cocking up the hair on the Archers I'm working on. I thought it looked too dark compared to Sea Guard after I applied the wash to it so I started the hair one one over from scratch and unfortunately had my suspicions confirmed. It might be something I have to sort out later as I'm trying to concentrate on getting a layer of paint on everything before I go back for washes or additional layers