Tom's Sisters of Battle, month 1: Leader Month (227 points)

All this months models

First things first on this first post proper - a timestamp pic of the Sisters. Can't be doing with starting in December now! You can see that the tank came through in the post, although motivation for vehicles is super lo...

Looking through the Google searches on the old RT 601 adventures range and the original sisters sculpts, I single across this fine example of them. I love this style of painting - blackline, freehand eyebrows, transfers, drybrushed base, no highlights and a rough shade. It just screams a love of the minis and background, and I love that these are some of the first images in the search. Yes, they're not the most technical of paintjobs, but they are PAINTED and out there, inspiring other people - and just from the little details like the neat face, EYEBROWS and drybrushed metals, you can tell that there is a lot of practiced skill behind them and that there's a lot more painted models where they came from!

These Sisters☝️are to be found here on Jason Fulford's blog: 

Rogue Heresy: link

And they really made me want to paint mine up in the same style. 

Unfortunately I bottled it, and kinda stuck to a 'style' I'm more comfortable with, although I've kept with kinda blacklining the power armour. 

The model also recently appeared on that there popular Youtube channel Squidmar Miniatures: link, where the painters try to paint this model in a modern style. 👇

Anyway...enough. Begin!

The Canoness Veridyan

So, this month I've chosen my leader to paint. Motivation for painting is high so starting with the most complex sculpt in the army is for me a good choice. Some like to save these for a painting treat, but I found that the risk of being demotivated due to the painting grind and then having to face a difficult mini is too much of a risk for me..

Also, I figure that I've not yet truly found my flow in painting these Sisters, so any deviation in painting tekkers/decisions are best 'highlighted' on character models so that any difference makes them stand out from the troops even more.

I was extremely tempted to paint this with strict adherence to Blanche's depiction, but the kinda imagined 'painting pressure' was too big. I would have had to have used the majority of the month to paint her to the best of my ability (and painting to my best is a super rare thing for me to do), and I know for sure that is a surefire way for me to burn out quickly.

Instead, a spay cost of red on all of the Sisters - and I admit I probably sprayed it on a smidge too thickly. Ho well, I'm not gonna strip them all and start again, so....

Red armor, drybrushed orange and then yellow + orange. Maybe adding some white at the end.

Shade with a turquoise Contrast paint.

More shadows with black.

Super shoddy re-highlight with a brush.

Thin wash all over with a fluorescent red to make her stand out a little bit more.

Hopefully I'll do a picture tutorial of the stages and paints used at a later date (on a Trooper).

Canoness/Veteran Sister Superior  (DDW Sculpt)

I kinda like how goofy the sword came out, and the chequers are a little less square than regulation, and an inspiration from some rogue trader space marine models which I saw on the Instagrams, but which I cannot re-find. 

My drybrush layer was a bit too heavy handed, so lesson learned when drybrushing the next 5 or so models... 

I also realise now that I think I should have sprayed the red basecoat whist the models were separate from the base. It's a bit of a chore now - repainting the base and trying to hide all that red which pops out from all the nooks and crannies. I think if I was an organised soul and possessed a superior mental fortitude, I'd have snipped all the tabs off the feet of the models, paint all the bases in one go, and then pinned the Sisters into the painted base.

But... one by one it is, as I think I find that easier - but not quicker...

Another Cannoness/Veteran Sister Superior, this time a GW sculpt.

I like the'traditional' plasma pistol colours, and that turquoise in the mace head is to balance the blue out a bit. 

Battle Banner Bearer

And this righteous Sister carrying the battle banner 💪

The banner is just A4 plain paper, glued on with thinned down wood glue. The design I just made up. I hate painting banners, so there's usually no planning to them, just do it as quickly as possible whilst the will to do it holds out 😂

A Battle Servitor

I was super pleased with how this guy came out - it's pretty much how I envisioned him :) I like the flesh on his arm and the orange of the jumpsuit.

An Astropathic Navigator.

I've gone for little dots as highlights to try to emulate some cloth texture, and I'm pleased with how the model came out. Because he's quite simple, it was a relaxing paintjob, and kinda reset me ready to paint another.

And I re-painted the base of my previously painted Sanctioned Psyker, to fit in with the rest of the crowd...

I also painted up a couple of movement trays to finish off the month. Included in these pics is the test trooper painted before the challenge.

To recap, this month sees:

85...  1x Cannoness Veridyan

36...  1x Veteran Sister Superior with force sword

36...  1x Veteran Sister Superior with plasma pistol and power maul

70...  1x Battle Standard Bearer

free...  1x Battle Servitor with heavy bolter

free...  1x Navigator

Total: 227

And I leave you with a teaser for next month, which is a Trooper Month. This is probably one of the best paint I've managed to lay down on a face!

Laters yo

Intro: link

Golgfag1's January contingent - the first batch

Well, January got off the a flying start with me knocking off my initial sploshing of paint to ten original Bloodletters in the first week; these are two part models, which I've glued and pinned in various poses to provide variety to what could be a fairly mono-pose unit, the problem being, when you try to rank them together, which if I do say so myself - appears to work, for now.

What follows are a series of pictures showing the individual figures, where you'll see how I've take the standard poses, and by simply turning and twisting the position of the head and arms to the body they've become individual miniatures.

This little lot will be my submission for the January. But as I got off to such a good start, I've splashed a considerable amount of paint over a whole lot more, over the intervening weeks. As this is supposed to be part of a chaos undivided demon army, the next batch to pass over my palette are Deamonettes, I'm using those designed by Juan Diaz, as they're less bulky that the original crab clawed ones, primarily, because I like the poses and their easier to get hold of, but more importantly - they're slender and compact, which provides more space within units for the larger, more dramatic poses, thus providing a more diverse overall image across the unit. 

Please note there's is no uniform colour scheme for this force, my reasoning for this - this is chaos, I want something that grabs you by the eye sockets and gives you a damned good shake! So, expect even more colour with each month's post. 

There you have it - my submission, my cushion and I'm well on the way to my March and April contingents.

John Bentley's January Dwarf Host - Warriors

Big things come in small packages

Starting the year off with the classic dwarf warriors x10. Never did find the shield, the cat wins this round.

Dont zoom in too far I am nowhere near as good all the rest of you but these guys are a blast to paint.

Looking forward to seeing all the rest of this groups painted minis.

Hope you all have as much fun painting as I did

ChrisH' Chaos Dwarf Army - Month 1 (280 points)

Very pleased with how these turned out.  They fit in well with the originals I first painted back in the 80's. My biggest challenge was to replicate the re-basing I did about 5 years ago.  Plenty of grim darkness, which suites chaos dwarfs.  20 models with Arquebus, hand weapons and heavy armour.  They don't have an entry in the 3rd edition army book but points would be 14 each totalling 280.  Probably artillery next month - still a few days to decide......

Byron's Quest #1 The Trial - January Rank and File (384 points)

 

This month the Quest begins! We open the quest book to Quest #1, The Trial.

This is the introductory quest to Heroquest. It introduces each monster type and throws the players into a modestly difficult dungeon in which players who do not take the game seriously will most assuredly lose at least one party member. 

Since it is my object to paint the miniatures from 3 copies of Heroquest (I also got a copy of the Return of the Witch Lord too...) rather than merely those of a single game, I have decided to paint up all of the miniatures needed for a given Quest as my monthly entries. The tricky element is that each quest uses a different assortment of miniatures, and it was difficult to make the final numbers add up to 3 whole boxes over 4 rank and file months, but I found a combination of quests that gets reasonably close. 

The Trial contains the following monsters:

6 Orcs

4 Goblins (5, accidentally miscounted at the start of the month)

1 Fimir

4 Skeletons

2 Zombies

2 Mummies

3 Chaos Warriors

1 Gargoyle.

This is for a total of 384 points. 

Now, the astute among you will quickly realize "Wait a minute! Heroquest doesn't have points!" And you would be correct. However, the ultimate goal of this project is the creation of a Warhammer/Heroquest Army and I won't be daunted by such inconsequentialities. Instead I have written (still WiP at this point) my own Armylist compatible with 4th and 5th edition. This army list borrows the appropriate points calculations described in Warhammer 2nd ed (and carried forward until Tuomas Pirinen got his hands on Warhammer in 6th ed.) and should, therefore, be fair and balanced. In future posts I will share my progress toward a full Army of Zargon bestiary including characterful rules for the army, the various types of minions, as well as all of the named baddies in the questbook. 

Onto the miniatures! Undoubtedly what we all immediately scroll down to see and pass all of the pointless text that we all include as a formality. 

The wizard enters the first room and encounters 2 orcs!

A Fimir and Goblin guard the weapons wrack

Two chaos warriors guard an empty chest. Terribly let down to a deadly fight. 

Two greenskins up to no good. 

Goblins minding their own business, still need to be ruthlessly murdered by our "Heroes"

this is the goblin I forgot to count. :(

Skeletons!

The guardian of Fellmarg's Tomb denies passage

Fellmarg's tomb about to be ransacked by righteous heroes. 

The final battle against Verag, the foul Gargoyle. 

Additional notes on the project
The bases are done old school, they are just sand and cereal box cardboard. However, to get the right layered effect on the stones the carboard was repeatedly folded one direction so all the creases were parallel. I then opted to paint the rims a light grey. I made this decision because I wanted to match the lighter stone color of the game board and late 80s/90s game boards. (Compare the brightness of the original Space Hulk to the later 3rd and 4th ed Space Hulk tiles.) Sadly, I think this ended up making the bases look a tad wintery rather than stoney.

I painted every model with the same "primer" of Incubi Darkness. All shades were a combination of the midtone and incubi darkness, and all highlights were a combination of the midtone and lighter rotting flesh color (Foundry's Cadaverous Flesh Light C). The hope was to give everything a unified hue despite the variety of monster types and that some lacked the central Burgundy/Khaki color scheme.

Finally, I aimed to give each model a strong shadow effect so they look like they are coming out of the grimy dark into a sickly light. This is the first time I have tried object source lighting. I don't think I will do this again for another army, though I will continue it for the duration of this OWAC.