Vayl, Stingers and Harriers

This month's Tale of Warmachine Painters challenge got some Legion of Everblight figures on the table.

Two Stingers.

A couple of Harriers.

And Prime Vayl. Total of 11 points for the month.

'Til next time.

Legion of Everblight Solos

Last month, I painted these Legion solos for the local Warmachine painting challenge (where we are all trying to paint 100 points of figures in one year). 

So, first off, we have these Spell Martyrs. Yes, it was very fun painting the burst chest cavities. Lots of red ink in there.

I also painted a set of Incubi, chewing their way out of the Legion corpses they inhabit. Gross.

'Til next time.

Two Everblight 'Casters

For central Alberta's October Warmachine painting challenge, I decided to bulk up on some Legion 'casters. I've had Kallus sitting around the hobby room since he first came out a few years back. Epic Absylonia, on the other hand, has just recently been released. As soon as was able to get her through the LGS, I picked her up...very cool flying model.

I'm gravitating more and more to the blue-skinned theme in Everblight, so here they are.

Kallus, obviously, was super-easy to paint. Tons of armour, with just a face, some hair and a leather skirt. Absylonia, on the other hand, with her wings, tail and so on, was more of an interesting challenge. Love the model though.

'Til next time.

Assembly Line Painting: Blighted Legionnaires, Farilor and Standard

Our monthly Warmachine painting challenge beckoned this week. 10 points of figures (give or take) every month for a year. Who knew this would be such a grind!

Anyway, this month I decided to knock out an infantry unit...and it was a good opportunity to discuss the topic of assembly line painting. My models are the Blighted Legionnaires for Everblight, along with the officer and banner attachment. 

Here was everything before assembly started.

Most Warmachine and Hordes units are good candidates for assembly line painting. They most often wear the same gear, are armed the same way, and just have a few different poses. I particularly like the Legionnaires for the assembly line method, because they carry so much metal armour. That makes everything pretty quick to paint.

So the main idea behind assembly line painting is that you have a number of similar figures (in this case, 12), and every time you sit down to paint, you do one similar pass on each model. These particular models would require about 14 steps to finish...so that's a good two weeks of painting assuming a half-hour painting session every day. A steady pace, but not strenuous.

As usual, I started with assembly and basing. Then everything got shot with white primer.

Next came the obligatory dark wash to pre-shade the models and pop out all the details.

So, down to painting. Working from the inside out, the scale mail and other "golden" armour areas got a thin coat of P3 Blighted Gold. This is a dark greenish gold, similar to bronze, which can be dry brushed into a very interesting metal colour.

The bronzy areas got a drybrush of Vellejo Old Gold.

And a final highlight drybrush of P3 Radiant Platinum. The end result is kind of a shimmering bronze.

Next came the steel areas...thankfully, lots of that on these models. I started with a watered down coat of Reaper Shadowed Steel applied, as always, to all the models in the unit. It has kind of a bluish tinge, which I thought would contrast well with the bronze scale mail.

Then the steel was given a wash of Umber and Blue, mixed together. This darkens the metal, and increased the blue coloration.

In the next painting session, I did a GW Chainmail drybrush pass on all the steel areas. This lightens up the steel and gives it a dull sheen.

In the next assembly line session I moved onto the leather skirts worn by each figure. I started with a thin coat of Reaper Ruddy Leather.

The next two passes were Oiled Leather and Burnt Orange. This was straight layering...I wasn't going to get bogged down in blending all the colours here. In assembly line painting, the goal is to get out a unit of well (not professionally) painted figures in a reasonable amount of time. The next step would serve as my blending pass.

The leather areas were then given a thin coat of Umber wash. I did this to help blend the layers together and unify the look of the skirts.

I was going to move onto the skirt fringes next, so it was time to do the bases, so that the fringe wouldn't get ruined later. Basing was standard brown, orange and off-white. The circular plastic bases were painted with a few thin layers of black.

OK, on to the leafy fringe. I know that this is not the usual colour scheme for Legion. In the studio scheme, the parts I'm picking out as leaves, Privateer Press calls out as black feathers. Well, all my Legion of Everblight models are done in a jungle scheme...so leaves it is. I used a progression of Reaper Pine Green, Leaf Green and Pale Green.

Once this was done on all the models, everything got a blast of Testors Dullcoat, and then the bases were finished off with static grass.

And that was it. Two weeks of step-by-step steady painting, and this unit came off the assembly line.

'Til next time.

Scythean and Raek

Well, August turned out to be a pretty busy month on the hobby table. Here are a couple of Legion of Everblight warbeasts for Hordes. These are my entries into the Edmonton "Tales of Warmachine Painters" painting challenge for this month.

First up is a Scythean.

I airbrushed on the skin striped scheme, and then hand-painted the metallic chitin, claws and teeth.

This is a Raek, which, like all my Legion beasts, juxtaposes skin and organic-metal components.

And the two of them together.

'Til next time.

Blackfrost Shard and 50mm Objective

The Blackfrost Shard is Legion of Everblight's 3-man character unit. Again, I was painting this week for the Journeyman League's painting challenge. All shard members can cast Ice Bolt and Ice Cage, and are weapon masters with magic claymores.

Here's a closer view of Rhylyss. Among the standard Blackfrost abilities, he can cast the Kiss of Lyliss damage buff.

This is the unit leader, Sevryn, who has the Disbinding special ability.

And finally, there is Vysarr, who gives the unit Stealth.

The stretch goal for this week's painting challenge was to prepare a 50mm objective marker. Again, I used a piece from Scibor miniatures' Dwarf Ruins set. Makes a good monolith objective.

Next up...Alexia and the Risen.

'Til next time.

Teraph

So the painting challenge in our Journeyman League this past week was to complete a Heavy and Light Warbeast. I've already posted the Ravagore...but I just finished off the Teraph.

Kind of a sweet figure. I like the sculpt a lot.

Kind of a dragon-dog crossed with a Giger alien.

 Next week's challenge is a 3-man unit and a 50mm objective. Comin' up!

'Til next time...

The Best Day of the Year Happens EVERY Year!

As long-time followers of this blog know, my favorite day of the year is "fall back day," where we go from Daylight Savings Time to Standard Time. I always invest the extra hour into painting...and this year was no exception.

This week's painting challenge at the LGS's Journeyman League requires a Heavy Warjack or Warbeast. I'm playing Legion of Everblight at the league, and don't have a Ravagore in my arsenal yet...so here it is. I put the extra hour today to good use...putting skin texture into this beast, and finishing the mouth and teeth as well.

If you play Hordes, you know that the Ravagore is something special. Lots of hitting power and a great animus.

I found the pose of this beast tilting a little to much downwards for my liking, so I built up the base with some cork and tipped the whole figure up.

The Ravagore now takes his place alongside my other jungle-themed Legion heavy 'beasts...as well as Epic Thagrosh, who feels like a heavy 'beast as well! As you can see, my Legion theme is part organic and part metallic. I was always fascinated with dragons described in literature as having "claws of steel" or the like. All carapaces, horns, teeth and claws on my heavies are metal.

'Til next time.

Epic Lylyth and Her Striders

OK, back to a little bit of Warmachine and Hordes...

My attention has been wandering back to Legion of Everblight, so I put together an Epic Lylyth shooting list. As a consequence, it was time to finish painting Lylyth, along with the Strider Officer and Musician. A couple of Shepherds got caught up in the painting frenzy.

Striders work really well in an Epic Lylyth list, so I decided to paint Lylyth up in my Strider paint scheme, to make them look like a unified force.

Here is the complete Strider unit, along with the unit attachment and Deathstalker solo...and Lylyth. Here's to hoping they do well on the game table!

'Til next time.

Absylonia

Finally, there's good summer weather up here in Edmonton. The festivals over the past couple of weeks have been excellent, and my wife and I have been enjoying them all.

Of course, this means figure painting has been taking a back seat. In Edmonton, you have to enjoy the warm temperatures while they are here.

So, this week only one figure made it off the hobby table. Absylonia is a Legion of Everblight warlock who excels at running multiple heavy warbeasts.

I'm sticking to my main Legion theme, which is bluish skin and metallic bone extrusions.

She is small, so a pretty quick figure to bang out. When the weather turns, painting production should go up...but I'm not wishing that for anytime soon.

'Til next time.

Legion Striders and Deathstalker

I'll be away from the computer this weekend, so I thought I'd post early this week.

So I was happy to finish off a unit of Legion Stalkers for my Hordes army this morning. I did a fair bit of work on them last Sunday. The Deathstalker solo is on the far right.

In the game, this is a unit of stealthy rangestrikers that also move quickly through rough terrain. They work well with shooty lists run by Epic Lylyth...and I'll be working on her shortly.

I'm still casting around trying to nail down a faction paint scheme. Right now my Legion stuff is all over the board. However, I watched Avatar again this weekend and decided that Legion for me would be all about jungle beasts and blue dudes. About half of what I've painted so far kind of fits into that theme...so the other half will just have to be allies from the frigid north where blue skin is unknown!

The cloaks are Foundry Buff Leather, and the leaves/feathers are a combination of GW greens and green wash. The darker browns are Foundry Bay Brown, and there's a fair bit of Foundry Rawhide in there as well. The blue skin is P3 Frostbight, GW blue wash and Foundry Boneyard Light. The bows are GW Deneb Stone with a brown wash. Well, that's about everything. Hope you have a great weekend.

'Til next time.

Typhon

Continuing on with Legion forces...

Finished the Typhon last night and did the basing this morning. Tried out another color scheme...this time it's a mottled green and brown. I airbrushed the base colors with Vallejo air model paints and then did the highlighting with GW and Foundation.

Continuing with the theme of hybrid metal and "fleshy" beasts, the carapace is brass and the spines, claws and teeth are silver. GW paints for the metallics.

I was going to bring this guy out onto the table today during our lunch game of Warmahordes...but he's really just too expensive for a 15 point game. I took the Angelius instead with Epic Lylyth and got my butt handed to me by a Khador force played by the very adept and experienced Elliot. Lessons learned!

Next up on the table...I'm trying out six Khador pieces in an attempt to match the painting style of the finished Khador force I got in an Ebay auction a few weeks back.

'Til next time!