Night Lords Completed!

 It's been a minute(about a damn month) since I updated this blog, so I figure I can now do a drop here! (I did say 'updated when I feel like it.' I would make a terrible content creator. Not that I would WANT to be.)

So in some basic news: minion has started school yet again, I am back to being a bit busier, FFXIV Evercold looks amazing and I've been playing that more again in evenings, and I'm still painting every night, for at least some time. Also, I have yet to hear an album better than Via Doloris' Guerre et Paix, yet this year so it becomes ever closer to my AotY award.

But here are the Night Lords! I don't get a whole lot of time to tabletop game, and that time is spent more TTRPG than wargaming, and wargaming is more skirmish based on the odd time I do it, and these would never be legal in GW rules but they'd be played casually with friends. Mostly they'll play the role of 'AD&D 2e Enemies' or something, or a table OC or whatnot. 

It's a unit of 5, I named them and gave them little quirks. Apologies for the picture quality; I am still rearranging my space to get A. A new art desk and B. A better picture corner. 

First up is the leader, Radek Farkas. He's a big, black metal looking lad with corpsepaint. (3 of these have long hair attached for that grimdark aesthetic which as most know I enjoy a lot and is my main painting style.) 

Second is Lucian Kovács, his 2nd in command. He might be a little crazier. Around his waist is some of that hand-made skin cloak material. These two look the most 'corrupt'. 

Dorian Stan is the 3rd guy and he's kind of obsessed with medieval style stuff for some reason. Slightly cleaner armor, goes with an axe, and has a hand made skincloak as his accessory. 

This guy is Andrei Zurvat, who went all in with the guns(this is a very melee-heavy group except for him, though he does have the bayonet.) I guess because he chose Ork Boyz as his primary rivals, he likes the dakka. 

(I don't know where his other pictures went, I thought I had more!) 

   

Finally there is Atilla Herczeg, the lightning claw specialist, who is also pretty crazy probably.

And a few group shots of the gang! 

These guys were built from 4 boxes(5 if you count the Deadwalkers), and a paint list that is very long(including oils, enamels, speedpaints, regular acrylics, effects paints, pigments). I have the latter scribbled down, I might list it in another blog later if I get around to typing it up. I think I mentioned it last month, but the boxes used were Night Lords Nemesis Claw Kill Team, Chaos Chosen 40 and AoS, and Chaos Possessed. (I'll be seeing what else I can make after this, but I'm taking a little break from Warhammer based models for now, save for using a couple for test colors.)

This was a hella fun project to get to personalize. For now I'll be probably working on some AD&D minis from Brite Minis, who does these awesome, almost Ral Partha-like miniatures that seem perfect for old school tabletop, and I'll probably be messing with the drybrush-speedpaint combo for them since I've been wanting to practice the grayscale drybrush(or, well, grisaille, which it's been known as for centuries. I wonder if the inventors of 'glazing color over grisaille' would recoil knowing it's now known as 'slapchop', lol.) This is mostly to serve as a palette cleanser and to mess with some other styles before I jump back into the Heretics, which I have lined up. (I have been doing a lot of color testing for the Artillery Witch, and I think I have my scheme for her, I know the Priest is going to be inspired by the Dark Bishop from DD: Dark Arisen, and I have a bit of an idea for one of the Anointed that is a shout-out to FFXIV in terms of kitbashing.) Also think I wanna do some terrain building again, since it'll give me more excuse to try to get the bi-weekly(I'll take monthly at this point) AD&D 2e game off the ground. I've been cooking a 2e-based blog talking about it a bit(the game itself, not the still not existing campaign). 

Oh yeah! Speaking again of FFXIV, here is that chort color scheme I was messing with. I think this is going to be good for when I get around to Great Unclean Chort. Eventually. For some reason.

Even threw together a little Clyteum-inspired basing scheme. Being a Lord of Plagues he looks more menacing than our round boi but I think the color scheme works shockingly well for a Nurgle bunch. 

Alrighty, and with that, I think I dropped enough stuff here for now, I'll hopefully update this again sooner than later this time. I'd like to try to update this thing more often but you know how it is.

'Til next time! 

Night Lords kitbash and paint underway!

 So the custom Night Lords are underway. It's been taking awhile-I've been working bit by bit each night. It was slower to start, since I had to rummage through several boxes. The idea behind the crew were that they were Chaos-corrupted, possibly against their will(given the Night Lords don't really care too much about the gods), but then just managed to fight it off somewhat(mentally, at least), and just went on being Night Lords. 

I mean the 8th Legion aren't known for their sanity ANYWAY but, hey. 

So they're built from a mix of Chaos Chosen(40k), Chosen(Age of Sigmar), the Night Lords Nemesis Claw box, and the Chaos Possessed. I like the Chosen and Possessed bodies since they're bigger than the standard Space Marines; I was almost getting a Primaris box too(I still probably will, for more future parts), but I managed to get what I needed. (Also plan on getting some Havocs for kitbashing something.) Also have a box of Deadwalkers from AoS for parts; they're great for heads and hands to throw all over the boys in Midnight Clad.

I made up five models(I have a sixth that I started to build, but he's going to be more a shout-out to Nightmare from Soul Calibur rather than a part of this particular unit), and have still been adding bits and pieces to them. Heads and backpacks, and bigger pieces of flayed skin, are going to be added to the models after main base-coatings are done, and I'll be doing them separately. Three of them are getting long metal-style hair(because of course.) One is going to get the skull-head corpsepaint(they are all getting some manner of corpsepaint-ish stuff), and one is fully helmeted. Two of them are more mutated than the others; they have the special Possessed legs. 

Here's a few random WIP pics from over the past couple of weeks! I believe I started them around two weeks ago. The first picture was the very first mock-up of the first 3(with sticky tack), and it moves forward over time, down to some head swaps and color testing and the like. 

I took some time to test colors. I do think it's going to be the pure Liquitex Prussian Blue ink over a zenithal white, but the combo of Highlord Blue speedpaint with some of that same ink is also very nice. I also am trying out both black and decayed metal, obsidian black and aged metal on the trim. (Black metal + Oily Steel will be for stuff like weapons.) But without overthinking it, as of now it'll be the ink. (Inks are quite cool to paint with I discovered-very saturated colors!)

I am finishing up pre-weathering today, and hopefully priming them tonight! I'll hopefully get the drybrush in too so tomorrow I can set up to start the official painting. That said, I might do base mock-ups first, but I'm unsure about that yet. I kinda like the idea of tying them into their bases, and I'm not in too much of a hurry to start painting them(I'd hope to get them done by the end of the month in case I want to bring them to a convention), but I'll see what happens after tonight and tomorrow. 

Anyway, 'til next time! 

Saint(And Court Warband) Now Complete!

 Well, been a minute since I updated-but as I always say, I update when I feel like it. 

Finally finishing my Court warband felt great! I of course don't really have any time to play at the moment but we all know that most of us in the hobby paint 90% of the time and maybe play 10%. (And then that 10% has to be split between different TTRPGs/wargames or whatnot.) 

I took some somewhat passable pictures; I do promise to one day get a really proper setup to do this to take better ones, but I always manage to find something else to do. So here we go! Starting with the Saint, and then I re-uploaded some pictures of the rest of them. I'll get a picture of the entire troop together somehow. 

Quite the gang; I think my favorite is the Sorcerer, and it seems to be a lot of others' favorites as well. It's that satanic album cover appearance methinks. 

As of now, I started working on a Heretic warband, though slowly; I did the five basic troopers. No real kitbashing on these guys-I went with pre-weathering instead, which I think works just fine for them. I used the usual acrylics, Dirty Down and Villainy Inks with a touch of oils, but wanted to purposefully keep these simpler. I kinda dig how they turned out!

Took a break from the Heretics to begin some of that corrupted/possessed Night Lords kitbashing using the Nemesis Claw box, along with Possessed, and Chosen(both 40k and Sigmar). I'm having fun going through the boxes to find stuff, though this will definitely be a decently longer project, to do the whole lot of them. I'm just going to start with a small squad-I have three so far(just jammed together with sticky tack) that I dig, and I'm going to figure out a couple more, but they're going to have a whole lot of other stuff added, so that'll be a 'more to come' project. (In the middle of grinding cosmic tools in FFXIV.) I'll take a few pictures of them when they're assembled(pre-painting), right now they're a bunch of half-cut up and tacked together things. I'm still getting down the poses! 

Alrighty, I'll be back hopefully sooner this time. I'll be going to Ropecon this year(RPG convention), not sure if I'm entering any painting competitions but I might consider it depending on how these kitbashes turn out. I'm also considering for Mordheim, instead of undead, a Carnival of Chaos warband, thanks to Kefka Ultimate stuff having been posted so much this month. 

'til next time! 

Praetor Complete! One more to go for the Court

Since I was working on both at once, I had finished the Praetor, as well! This lad was a bit intimidating at first, but as I went along, got easier. Just as the rest, mixed brands of acrylics, ABT 502 oils, Villainy Ink enamels and spirits, as well as the usual Dirty Down effects. Did minimal kitbashing on this guy-added the heavy metal hair that I like to do for the uncanny look, plus a scraggly beard since Praetors are what happens when a devil mates with a hyena or jackal apparently. The model had taken some battle damage in the same incident that cost the Pit Locust one of his wings, so I had removed the rest of the sword and whipped up a scourge. I'm pretty happy with how he turned out!

The base was kind of inspired by the Paris Catacombs. 

Included are a couple of shots with a black background as well! (I will be getting an even better setup for pictures in the near future.) 

I definitely enjoyed this in the end and got to experiment with more colors-I really like Umbral Nightshade, and look forward to using it for some Undead stuff, too. 

Also recently got a box of Possessed and Chaos Chosen to kitbash into the Night Lords to make a sort of 'Corrupted Night Lords Kill Team', which will be very very black metal inspired as well. Some of those helmetless dudes are *definitely* getting corpsepainted. (No idea of what order I'm doing these in.) Also-also, I ordered up some Ionic paints to try them out; I heard they are quite saturated, and the Rotting Yellow and Rotting Flesh colors seemed to be up my alley(as did Frost Blue and Phthalo Blue, both of which I can utilize in ice stuffs.) Also grabbing some more ABT oils-I can certainly use Reddish Brown and Phthalo Green. They aren't due in until June, though. I kinda want to test out Bear Cavalry and P3, too. (I've also somehow fallen into Paint Experimenting mode, since I seem to be getting certain favorite colors of each brand now. It was only a matter of time. 

Anyway, I'll be back around with more stuff when I think of it or I get this Desecrated Saint done! (It's all primed and about to be drybrushed. Basecoats on the main body to start tomorrow, but he's got the big body rack that's getting done separately. Yeah, that bastard is a 2-parter.)

'Til next time!