ZeroTwentythree's February Eldar Pirates (289 pts)

Discordant engines struggled to keep the awkward vessel on a smooth trajectory. The coffin-like slab of reinforced plasteel eventually settled among the smouldering corpses that it's multi-laser had annihilated moments before.

The lone bio-meat crewman jumped out of the hatch and surveyed his surroundings. "Mrs.! Up on the ridge, 70 degrees." A fusillade of red laserfire lit the dim haze and the pieces of three more guards fell to the ground. He sat down on the hull of the GOTHMOWER and waited for the rest of the raiding party to catch up.

GOTHMOWER is the fusion of several  sources of inspiration. Rather than recount the initial brainstorm here, I will just direct you to the story I posted on my personal blog. When I received a mystery package from Shadespyre that included the plastic housing from some sort of remote-control, I knew I had the chassis. After the model was put together and primed, I decided to stick with a good & gothy black, black, dark grey, more black, and little bit of red color scheme.

I had initially planned to paint another ten infantry for February, but that didn't work out for various reasons. During one of the brief painting sessions in which I tried to paint some infantry, one final reference for inspiration hit me.

While not part of the original plan -- at least not on a conscious level -- I was already 90% of the way there. So I painted a face and glued decapitated statue head (from a more suitable subject matter). After far too much whiskey, I painted a checkered band on the ass-end of it as one final nod to the Deathmobile. I had previously been planning to paint the "GOTHMOWER" name on it in similar lettering, but decided that would detract too much from the Eldar-ness of it.

 

The grav attack technically doesn't need a crew. It's equipped with auto-drive & auto-aim. But if I stick with the minimum requirements of the army list, I've got more heroes than I know what to do with. The list gives the option to make heroes crew for the grav attack, and it inspired me to convert a figure as such.

 

Nik is a former cargo pilot who worked the most dangerous sectors of the galaxy before joining the crew of the Cold September. More comfortable in a pilot seat than on his feet, he saw an opportunity on one of his first raids with the pirate crew and captured an imperial PDF grav attack. Space being confined on the September, the crew were initially reluctant to bring the captured machine on board. Since then, they have come to appreciate the additional quickly deployed fire support it offers.

GOTHMOWER has been modified from its original imperial configuration, shuriken catapults and a multi-laser replacing the original bolt-weapons, and new auto-drive & auto-fire system installed -- an infinity circuit Nik refers to as "The Mrs."

Wild Card Month:

Probati (Officer)..... 25pts.

Grav-Attack..... 264 pts.

February Total....... 289 pts.

Total so far........ 527 pts.

Lissanne's Eldar- So where were the spiders? (329 pts)

Defense of the Maiden World part 2
(Rank and File #2)

 Reinforcements arriving!  Warp Spiders from the Black Widow shrine.  Seriously, this exarch is one of those beautiful and incredibly technical and time consuming figures.  And I have 2 more exarchs slated for next month...

This is the first of the squads of Warp Spiders I am doing, in black and bone with red as an accent color.  I seriously question the color choices of the designers here, and took some liberties with the traditional look, mostly downplaying that red.  Unfortunately, the models don't vary much, but the rank and file Warp Spiders are fairly easy to paint, so I am happy.  Except for the gems.  I counted 46 on each model.  Really.  46.

And the last five scouts of the Brown Recluse squad I did 10 of last month- 3 of one sculpt and 2 of another.  I think I like the hoodless sculpts best of all, I think they came out great!

5 Brown Recluse scouts- 115 pts
Black Widow shrine
4  Warp Spiders 164 pts
Warp Spider Exarch 50 pts
total 329 pts

Why did I put off painting the Spiders for decades.  Well, being an artist, I know when you are told to do something that looks a bit awkward or doesn't come out right, just add excess detail!  A dragon or a vase covering that foot, and the client thinks they are getting more for their money.  So, these Warp Spiders have an awful lot of excess detail- large tassels, too many gems, hmmm.....

Next month the rest of the Warp Spiders and the Fire Dragons.  All my Warp Spiders are from the Black Widow shrine, but the different squads will have different back markings.  And good painting to everyone!

Paul D's / Golgfag1 February - more amazonian pilgrims (470 points)

Rank and file #2

 - 30x spear block, with no champions, musician or standard (270 points) with a detachment of 10x sling armed skirmishers of Greek / Hellenistic Pilgrims (60 - 70 points), figures were produced by Foundry (Will always be Citadel to my mind), which appear to be currently unavailable.

Following a promising start on the initial batch, I attempted to attach them to their plastic bases to assist holding them steady, whilst I paint the detail, with some old epoxy resin I had in my box of stuff, I should have realised as I mixed the two components together that something wasn't right, as I watched fumes and feel the heat rise! but I carried on, trying to hold the figures in place whilst the glue set, but it didn't, after about a hour with a semi-set gloop around the figures feet, I went off to bed in hope that the bloody stuff would set by the time I rose from my bed. Needless to say it didn't. So I removed the bases, cleaned off the mess and set the half completed figures to one side, whilst I ordered replacement bases via E-bay. 

Thus, I found myself splashing paint over what was to be the second batch of figures and their shields, inspired by a touch of light reading from Osprey and Mr McBrides artwork. The initial freehand efforts with the lions heads were a tad small, but rather the paint over and start again, I added a laurel reef around the edge, which I'm quite pleased with (happy accident). The other shields are my attempt to mould other typical designs on to the face of the supplied Spartan shields.

So my intended second batch, is now my first, currently look like this, with more to follow. I usually decorate bases within a unit/army at the same time, so you'll just have to wait until I've completed this months efforts to see them finished.

Following the delivery of new bases and a weekend of not doing anything else but daubing paint, gluing and dipping, my initial efforts have been brought to a successful conclusion.

Also, splashed a touch of paint over the skirmishers

As I rattled those off fairly quick, I decided to add another unit of rank and file - this time, mask wearing tribeswomen armed with spears and shields. A nice stroke of co-incidence, theirs shields have moulded lions heads to match my earlier attempts at freehand.

 

All for a grand total of a hundred and forty points to add to my earlier efforts giving a grand total of four hundred and seventy points for this month.     

Next months allocation - As I've now broken the back (758 points) of hitting the thousand point mark, I'm going to try dabbing a touch of paint over a few Citadel 'C30' Amazonian Bodyguards, which will be my Elite choice, designed by the Perry twins http://www.solegends.com/citc/c030amazons/index.htm . Doubt, I'll be hitting the same number of actual figures, as I'll be mixing my palette to give them a touch of variety, but time will tell. 

 Hope you're enjoying the journey as much as I'am?

Prepare to be Struck by the Scorpions! Brendan (260 points)

Rank & File #2

Here I come with another month, but prepare to be struck not with a hurricane, but with Striking Scorpions.  Yes, I know I'm not supposed to use an opening picture other than my models, but I just can't help myself...

Continuing with squads this month I moved on to a unit that has been the bane of my imperial guard's existence.  Striking scorpions.  Sadly I have always had to face them in their ugly black undercoat, but now when I give them back to my friend they can crush me in their new green paint job!

These guys took a long time to paint and I forgot how much edge highlighting there are on these models.  I think a lot more than the Fire Dragons I did last month.  Still, I am very pleased with how they came out.

There were three different poses which was a bit refreshing from the fairly mono poses of the Fire Dragons.  You could even dare say these models are certainly "striking a pose."

The squad leader was fun to paint too.  I thought about painting the claw hand a different color but opted to keep it green.  

Overall I am happy with the way they turn out.  Hopefully I won't cry too much when the models I painted have turned on me to kill my precious guardsmen. 

Unit of ten Striking Scorpions including Exarch: 260

Shadespyre's Lizardmen - Karnac Returns - February (252 points)

Rank and File II

For February, and for my second Rank and File month, I decided to step away from the archers and do something slightly more challenging than paint the same model another 10 times... so here we have 12 Lizardmen Warriors armed with swords (mostly) and shields, coming in at a princely 21 points each or 252 points in total.

These are the first "non-Karnac's Raiders" miniatures, and probably the biggest individual section / regiment in this project (it's a small project, after all). Now, I've cheated a bit here because I've substituted a model for the standard bearer that will probably end up in this unit (or will it? More on that later) and I've pushed that back down the line while I think about how to approach that.

A bit about colours - firstly, you'll notice some new skin colours in there, namely Fenris Grey, Hormogant Purple and Bestial Brown. I felt these added a bit of variety without Going Too Far? I hope you agree. The fourth model, with the crest and stone axe, is the "bonus" model, and I based the colour scheme on a Smooth Newt as that's what the crest reminded me of.

I've continued on with the cloth colours - blue, red, bright green - that I used to detail the archers. My explanation being that these are the colours used by the Dwarves which the Lizardmen have previously defeated and devoured. Some of the resulting combinations are a bit odd, but who knows what reptiles think is trendy?

I've mixed up the metal colours between coppery, bronzish and irony. Those big curvy swords didn't feel right in bronze, while it suits the jaggedy home made look of some of the others quite well.

The shields are based on tortoise shells and some sort of giant banded lizard or snake skin. There's next to no planning in any of this, I'm just doing what seems best at each stage, if I over-plan or worry too much about a project then I never get going.

Oh, I hinted about some potential changes in plans earlier on. Nothing huge, but ebay has shoved some more miniatures my way and this may change the final make-up and size of some of the units. The main impact of which may be having to buy some bigger movement trays, so no great panic. But it's taken long enough for me to write this blog update as it is, so more on that next month after I've actually made those decisions, I hope.

What's next?

I've started trying out some paint colours on some of the character and command models... but if I were you I'd expect the March update to be more Rank and File of some sort, so that I can put out all the characters in one big Leader month...