Have just a couple of minutes ago finished the last Archer's quiver detail. Now planning to sort through the models at work tomorrow to figure out what touching up needs doing to the models before the Summer Incursion

Pics or it didn't happen:)

I did take some pics last night but unfortunately I forgot to put my camera into RAW + JPEG mode which meant that as my laptop, on which the RAW conversion software is installed, is currently out of commission I can't edit the photos to a suitable standard for upload. I will try and find time to retake tonight and upload.

Anyway, on the hobby update side, after sorting out the quivers I went back through the Archers to check the state of the bows and do touch up work on them. I thought this would only be a five minute job as I could only recall seeing a couple of stray paint splodges but ended up having to touch up about half of them in the end.

Your first archer was started November 2009, and you're now finally finishing them, does it feel like an achievement?

Having the blog have you gone back to the very start and looked at the progress of the figures from how they started to how they look now. I'd imagine that's partly a satisfying experience, partly soul destroying!

Looking forward to the pics.

As promised, here's a photo of one of the Archers. (Apologies for the image quality - I had to use the image adjustment functions on Photobucket and I couldn't see any white balance correction)



Probably not the absolute best example of what's been done as this one needs teensy bit of clean-up for the lines between the 'feathers' of the wing on the quiver (the old lack of an absolute steady hand not, I think, helped by the cat deciding that was when she wanted some attention).

Also this looks like it's one of the older models in terms of how I've painted the skin so is one that'll need redoing.

Dave wrote:Your first archer was started November 2009, and you're now finally finishing them, does it feel like an achievement?

Having the blog have you gone back to the very start and looked at the progress of the figures from how they started to how they look now. I'd imagine that's partly a satisfying experience, partly soul destroying!

Looking forward to the pics.

Actually looking back at the very first post it was at least September 2009 when I started - the very first photos have some Archers in the background so I'll have been working on some of those still recently.

If I compare the Archers there is a degree of satisfaction at how they have progressed but on the other hand they still need the faces doing which is probably going to be a few weeks of work with the time available to me at the moment.

I also started touch up work work on some models today. As usual my main two mages needed some work doing but also the White Lions. Working on the latter was pretty disheartening as they're all still pretty much the same paint job as back in theose first photos, apart from having the cloth painted blue. I'm not quite quite sure I've got the enthusiasm to go back and do anything with them, particularly as they're going to carry on chipping as they're metals. At some point when I've got the spare cash I'll probably start slowly replacing them with plastics, although I'll probably have to substantially change any army lists I'm planning on taking to tournaments.

Hi folks,

This is a bit of a delayed post. I had meant to do one after the Summer Incursion but ended up spending most of my time writing up the battle reports for that event, which took the best part of a couple of weeks, plus being on holiday in between them and then forgot all about it.

Anyway, my pictures from the Summer Incursion can be found at the end of my battle report (link). I must admit I didn't take as many this time round mainly because I joined the "Table of the Damned", aka the High Elf players table, at lunch and sat exchanging sob stories about the unfavourable match ups and number of mirror matches there were that round (if only we'd known what was to come...) and didn't start looking at models until quite late in the break. Mind you, I must admit that there weren't many armies that seemed to leap out at me this time around for some reason (although maybe it was the number to look at that was the issue).

For myself I scored the amount I expected to in the painting scores, although I was somewhat embarrassed to realise after coming back from lunch on the Saturday that I'd forgotten to tidy up the bases of my Great Eagles after I'd given them some additional dry-brushing to try and make the raised earth stand out.

Since the event I've been carrying on with the Archers. I've now got the flesh on the faces redone, perhaps a bit overdone in a few cases, and need to do the eyes now before I look at doing a final highlight on the metal. After that I'm probably going to be leaving them be for a while to get another unit, possibly the Spearmen, up to the same standard and so on until I'm at the point that I feel they're ready to finish the bases.

I've only managed to get one game in since the Summer Incursion. The first opportunity afterwards I was on holiday but the next occasion after that the hot weather allegedly intervened to cause train delays which meant I was stuck in Nottingham, unable to get home to get my models, while my intended opponent was stuck at Leicester station unable to get home to get his and come back.

As if to prove the hoodoo of the tournament was still on me, the game was against Ogres (see the battle report linked to above for more detail on why I wasn't overly pleased to be facing Ogres once more). The list I took was a slightly stripped down version of the one I took to Summer Incursion, sticking with the double Archmage, which meant dropping the Level 1 Mage and Dragon Princes in order to fit down to 2400. Continuing the experiment from the tournament I was doubled up on my magic lore, this time taking double Lore of Light. Overall this didn't go too well and I took a stomping (no pun intended) and got more points from my opponent dropping his Firebelly down a hole than I did from killing his units, not helped by gambling on a highly risky charge going off which left my Spearmen fighting Mournfang and in a position where they were going to get flank charged by a unit of either Ironguts or Ogres (can't remember which). Unfortunately not many learning points from the game as I already knew that getting a fully ranked up unit of Ogres in the flank was going to hurt.

At the moment I'm not entirely sure if double Archmage is as viable at 2400 as it was at 2500 where I had the points for the extra Mage to take an additional lore but I'm planning to stick with it for the time being to give double-lore a try out, concentrating on the lores I've used little or not at all so far in 8th edition.

Obviously with Dan and Wayne's recent news there has to be a bit of a question mark over the future of this forum. For the time being I'm planning to keep adding posts to this blog here (if only because I'm not sure I can face the prospect of transferring posts elsewhere) but should Dan decide the forums have to close I'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

Hi folks,

Not quite a month since the last post (I know, I'm slipping) but here's an update on my painting status.

The Archers I've been working on for the past few months are now up to the point where I could just about consider saying that's that barring the base.



I'm in two minds as to whether to do eyeballs on them or not at the moment and I'm not 100% satisfied with the metal on the wristbands (specifically that there's not the definition between the raised and lower parts that I'd have liked but I'm not sure my hand is steady enough to re-highlight the raised areas properly)

Anyway, I've now moved on to reworking my Spearmen block. They essentially need the same doing to them as has been done to the Archers, although I've got the shields that need doing as well.

So, here's an example front shot of the current state of the models



and the back



Essentially what needs doing is the faces, wash and highlight on the metal, leather bringing into line with what I've done on the Archers, wood on the spear shaft changing to the same colour as the Archers' bows and finally the bases.

Oh, and the shields need work too. I decided to break them all off in the end to make it easier to get at the body of the Spearmen models. Unfortunately I forgot to take a proper "before" picture so the picture below shows a shield after I've given the metal bit a going over with Chainmail



Plan for the shields is to wash the metal with Badab black and then highlight and retouch the wood with Mechrite Red and apply somehighlights

Ironically, I'm getting onto the Spearmen just as I've ditched them from my current army list in favour of a third Archer unit, although the models for that are still in the process of being cleaned up.

That time again folks.

So, what's the progress been since last time?

Well at work I'm still plugging away on the Spearmen. I've done some initial tidying up of the armour as well as the faces. I'm now going back over the armour trim (as I'd been a bit lazy and not done it where the shields covered it up but I figured if I'm using them at a tournament and shields break off, as they have a tendancy to do, I don't want a load of part painted spearmen dragging down my painting scores any further than they're likely to) and leather.

At home I've done a bit of work on the shade and highlight of the metal work on the Spearmens' shields. I've also had a bit of a root round the various boxes containing my unassembled models and discovered I had more sets of Sea Guard and Sword Masters than I thought I had (possibly all the Sea Guard I'm likely to need) and have started the slow process of cleaning the models up and investigating conversion options for command group models to ensure I'm not wasting 3 models out of every set of ten.

Finally on the modelling front I've taken my current batch of work in progress Archers and cut the bow hands off several of them so I can reposition the hands (some of my currently painted models have had this done - they are actually how they were when I got them from ebay but I thought I'd do it to some more models so that it breaks up the fact that they're all mono-pose models).

On the gaming side the double-lore experiment has come to an abrupt end as I got fed up of using lores that are sub-optimal as main lores with High Elves so I went with double Shadow for my game at the club this week. Unfortunately that meant that my opponent, a guy who's new to the club and was running Ogres, didn't exactly get much of a chance...

haha, filthmerchant, love it.

Good to see your'e still 'plugging away' at these guys, any chances of getting an army shot at some stage. We keep getting lots of individual models but ulitimately it's unit an army look that will give it the overall feel.

I've started building up my HE collection, gonna be a while before I get to painting them but think I've come up with a scheme which should be easy enough to do and hopefully look pretty decent too. Thinking it's going to be a dip job for shading though.