Apologies and Tau

Apologies for not posting in such a long time, I've been touring around the UK for work then incredibly sick so not been able to stop and hobby (AS A VERB MOTHERFUDGERS!) but I will be back on it next week. What I have been able to do is start my 40k Tau army, I got a £20 voucher for my local bricks and mortar store as a house warming gift and wanted to use it to start the Tau properly. Here's what I did with it:

I got myself the absolutely beautiful Tau Commander. I was umming and arring over some Fire Warriors to begin with but really I want big robot suits so why not start with that. This is a gorgeous figure though while building it I a) had no idea what the weapons do on the battlefield so I stuck everything on and b) realised the model was a bit heavy on one side so stuck a 2p coin on the opposite side to balance it. Once it was built it looked like it was leaping backwards bringing up the guns to immolate unfortunate enemies. 

I'm building this army to play against Steve's  Orks so lots of firepower is key.

I'll be posting about the Skaven I'm doing later next week but until then this is what I'll be doing - Mic, Bike and Hike  so I hope you can forgive my lack of blogginess

Freshly summoned familiar

Apologies for the lack of posts but as you can see our newly summoned shadow demon is preventing any hobby work being done. Normal service will resume as soon as I find the right binding spell, oh no it's luring me in with it's cuteness...will draining...heart warming...brain softening...argh!

Family photo shoot

And here's everything painted all together in one place

Rat roster (updated)

I've made some changes to the original army list after getting a bunch of suggestions. I now have a more solid core with 2 blocks of 40 clanrats supported by a Warlord so my characters all have reliable units to hide in. 

I'm still taking both a Warp Lightning Cannon AND a Doomwheel mainly because I love both of these no matter how many times the DW tries to kill my entire army by itself, haha that's so Skaven. 

Multiple Mayhem

Phew finally finished the 5 (rat) man Globadier unit today. They're just one of those units that while you're painting doesn't look great until you get to the final touches. I'm painting the robe on it thinking "this looks good but it would look fantastic with blood spattered across it" or "I think the leather on this face mask looks nice but the lenses would set this off perfectly" so it's just a case of seeing the model for what it's going to look like. 

As you can see that giant globadier isn't alone he's accompanied by a blood soaked ratling gun. These guys have been sat in the army with just the metallics done for weeks so wanted to finish them quickly and get them paired with their unit, plus I was awake at 6am this morning and had 90 minutes where everyone else was sleeping. The red is a base red, brown army painter ink then some blood red on top finally highlighted with a blood red/bad sunz yellow mix. The rest of the army currently has a darker red to their clothes but I'll drop a highlight on them when I finish all the others.

I wanted the ratling gun to look like it's been getting right up in the combat, jamming the gun into the enemy units and letting rip with hot warpstone death. I think I use blood for the blood god a bit too much but I love how it looks and really it's called WARhammer not HUGhammer (that's something dwarves do). 

Next up it's either the Warp Lightning Cannon or the second half of a 40 Rat clanrat unit. Something big and impressive anyway.

Hello Ratfans!

I have to say this week is not going to be the most interesting for you. I have been painting multiples of the same model:

I love globadiers, they're fantastically chaotic on the battlefield and totally in line with the Skaven way of war. My only gripe is that GW hasn't updated the model in such a long time that these guys feel a bit outdated, next to their newer brothers and sisters they look like they've been mainlaining the growth hormones and cloning themselves. 

Just for the record here's a group shot of everything I have painted so far. It amounts to about 18% of the army so far. Not too bad but this has taken 6 months. Speed painter I am not. 

Two little skaven sitting on a wall....

Got another one of the globadiers done last night after purchasing a monster brush from army painter:

I love these brushes, the grip makes it more comfortable and precise to work with and the quality of the tip is fantastic. I zoomed through last night's globadier because of it. Together the two finished globe chuckers look nice but lonely, need to get the rest done quickly:

I've been asked how I do these guys robes and it's really easy. I wanted the army to have a comic book feel to the paint style, stark highlights and blacklining abound. I started with genestealer purple then covered it in a load of gryphonne sepia (seraphim sedia now I believe). Once this was dry I highlighted it up as if I was starting on a base of genestealer purple, adding white gradually. The effect is that the shadows and shades are a nice dirty brown to give the impression that these are old tattered robes. Make sure the wash is dry first before you start highlighting, sounds obvious but some of us are impatient and like to ruin their own work.