WIP

Dystopian Wars – New Ships Started

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Got started on the Plutarch Destroyers and the Pytheus Bombers over the weekend and managed to get the main armour colours finished off today, so with out further ado here they are;

Plutarch Class Destroyers WIP

Plutarch Class Destroyers WIP

Plutarch Class Destroyers WIP

Plutarch Class Destroyers WIP

Pytheus Bombers WIP

Pytheus Bombers WIP

I tried to make the cream colour a wee bit brighter on this lot of ships, and I think it makes a big difference over the Galens. I love how the Plutarchs have come out but do believe that the Pytheus’s stripes could have been done a lot better. They just look a wee bit too messy and haphazard for my liking, although with a huge blue glowing rotor in the middle to draw the eye I’m not too fussed 😀

Gonna be focussing on my commissions over the next few days, so these guys will be on the shelf for a wee bit. As I now have the robots to complete, a basalisk in the works and also a Sameal on jetbike to be made into a White Scar 😀

Dreadball League!

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League! Wooooooooo!

As you may have guessed we kicked off the local Dreadball league this weekend, and the Gamma Slammers made a damn good start. We have a fair amounts of the same team in the league, with the line up looking a little like this:

Gamma Slammers(obviously) – Marauders

The Thorsson Hammerers – Forgefathers

The Playa H8ters – Veer-myn

The Boner Corp – Corporation

Decepticons – Robots

Brigadoom – Marauders

The Bronze Warriors – Forgefathers

??? – Robots (I unfortunately forgot to get the name of this team)

I managed to get the two games. The first was against the hammerers, and they had me on the ropes for the first half of the game with the score swinging back and forth. That is until the Orx got warmed up, causing several injuries and 2 deaths(Bwahahaha :P) by the end of the game. This left my jacks the freedom to run around and get the score back on my side, ending the match at 3-0. Because of their superb performance two of the guards went up to rank two, gaining one 360 vision and the other stretch. Not a bad start 😀

The second game was against the Decepticons and my first time up against the robots. To be honest it was much the same as the first one but the Orx didn’t need to limber up first and by the end had cleared the pitch of opposing players and causing another 2 deaths. As much as I enjoy the killing and maiming, it didn’t feel too good killing 2 from a starting team of 6 :(. Although it did allow another 2 of my guards to rank up giving another 360 vision and changing another who already had 360 vision into a keeper. A jack also got a boost and gained a bonus to his skill 🙂

And this is how the team looks now:

Gamma Slammers Roster

Gamma Slammers Roster

You can find the roster template I used here: http://thepaintingmonkey.wordpress.com/dreadball-roster-creator/. Fantastic job this guy has done 😀

Before the next set of league games I’m planning on painting threat zone markings fully round the bases on the Orx with 360 vision(I know I’ll forgot the ability if I don’t), but am still working away on the robot team and have managed to get the majority of them up to the finished armour colour, other than a little cleaning up here and there. I’m gonna have a wee chat with the client before I go onto anything else, as I have a few ideas floating about but more on that later. In the meantime, look, robots:

Chromium Chargers WIP

Chromium Chargers WIP

Dystopian Wars – Galen Class Escort Progress

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The Galen class escorts are coming along nicely. This afternoon I have added the decking and most of the metals;

Galen class escorts WIP

Galen class escorts WIP

Galen class escorts WIP

Galen class escorts WIP

I’ve still to add some highlights to the metals, as this is them just after a wash. Following that there’s not too much to add, I am wanting to add a glowy effect on the weapons but instead of the green seen in the Spartan scheme I’m thinking blue instead(still wanting to stick to cold colours). Once thats done I will have my first very tiny members of my fleet 😀

Dystopian Wars – Painting has begun!

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Began painting the first of my Dystopian Wars fleet this afternoon, and thought I’d start of small with the few Galen class escorts I have. I knew straight off the bat that I wanted to stick to fairly cold colours across the models (they do hail from Antarctica after all), and that I wanted the main hull to be dark blue with a whity/creamy camo stripe effect. So set about getting some paint on these to see how it looked (I’ve had a few colour schemes in the past that looked great in my head, but in reality sucked big time), and was so pleased with the first one I got the others up to the same stage…

Galen class escorts WIP

Galen class escorts WIP

I really am chuffed to bits with how they turned out, and am glad I’ve got the main colours down so early as it usually takes a whole load of mmmm’ing and aaah’ing before I settle on a colour scheme.

Not quite as exciting due to yesterdays update, but I have got all the robots up to the same stage now:

Chromium Chargers WIP

Chromium Chargers WIP

These guys have been fairly simple so far with just the metals that where there when I got them, which I believe to be leadbelcher, with a nuln oil wash. Then a coat of fortress grey (leaving the recesses dark). Simple 😀

Dreadball Progress!

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Today I started work on the first batch of Robots, starting off with just a basic basecoat…

Chromium Chargers

Chromium Chargers

To be honest this gives a clear indication of what the team will look like in the end, as the next stages for the main colour is just highlighting up to white. Beyond that is just the team colour stripes and the blue glowy bits.

One of my mates also gave me a team name for my Marauders, who shall now forever be known as…

Gamma-Slammers

and in addition to receiving a cool name (Thanks Neil), I also managed to paint up some reinforcements for them over the weekend in the form of another Orx, Goblin and Slippery Joe:

Reinforcements ReinforcementsBack

With a league kicking off this weekend I thought it would be a good idea to have some extra players to hand, and the excitement of some hardcore Dreadball meant I couldn’t put the brush down 😀

New Toys! Part 3 – Dreadball

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Dreadball-Logo

Now this one isnt exactly a new game, as I have been getting on with this for a few weeks ago. I have however got some new goodies for it, and also managed to get 4 games in over the last couple of days, so I thought I’d show you where I’m going with it next and how the games have been.

I’ll start things off by saying that this game is freaking awesome! All of the games I’ve played have been an absolute hoot, and I think that comes down to the simplicity of the rules. It’s a very easy game to pick up, which means your not constantly bogged down with double checking rules, stats, etc. This coupled with the fact the game is incredibly fast paced just creates a great buzz when playing, especially when you’ve got the right opponents. As I’ve said I managed to get in 4 games with the Marauder team and luckily won every single one :D, I didn’t expect this team to be up to scratch and the original plan was to ebay them once complete, but I’m gonna stick with them for at least one league and see how I get on.

In between games I did manage to get the ref painted up, and also invested in the acrylic token set to replace the fairly crappy ones from out the box. These are well worth the money, they are good solid tokens and with the use they will see the card ones just wouldn’t last:

Dreadball Refbot

Dreadball Refbot

Acrylic Tokens

Acrylic Tokens

Up next will be a new team, the Z’zor…

Z'zor Team

Z’zor Team

I really like the design of the models, and think out of all the current teams these ones will offer the best oppertunity for a funky paintjob. Seems I got a bonus box too, as I had one extra guard in there. Score :D. I’m gonna go for a really bright green scheme on these guys, stupidly bright I think, but that will be after a commission for these guys…

Robot Team

Robot Team

The Client is looking to have them done in the same scheme as the Chronium Chargers, so will be going along the same sort of lines as the ref above, but with some additional embellishments to help ’em stand out.

New Toys! Part 2 – Dystopian Wars

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dystopian-wars

Next up in the way of new toy’s is naval battles in Spartans Dystopian Wars.

I’ve had my eye on this one for a wee while now, as it steadily grew in popularity. With a mate recently starting his own Empire of the Blazing Sun force I thought it was the perfect time to jump on board(sorry, couldn’t resist the pun :D). I set out over the last couple of weeks to settle on a force I wanted to play and was suitably impressed with the range on offer. All of the forces have an excellent range of models and stick to a particular theme, but the one that really popped out for me was the Antarticans. They have a really alien and advanced look which I fell in love with immediately, but its the airforce for them that solidified that this was the force for me….

Antarctican Aerial Battle Group

Antarctican Aerial Battle Group

The flying ships are just too damn cool, and I cant wait to get stuck into the painting, and then set about blowing up the Japanese with lasers (that’s right Dave, all of your ships are going to die!).

I knew I needed something other than the above though, it is primarily a naval battle game after all, so also invested in the following box…

Antarctican Battle Flotilla

Antarctican Battle Flotilla

I’m really impressed with the product you receive out the box as altogether it must have taken less than half an hour to get all those models ready for undercoating. Mold lines are to a complete minimum, or missing entirely from everything but the metal models, and the detail present is fantastic. It’s going to be weird doing a force with absolutely no basing required though, until we start getting into ground forces that is.

Having had a wee read through the rulebook I think this may take me a while to get my head around but there does seem to be a good presence of players at the local gaming shop (including some Spartan play-testers), so hopefully I can get some help from the guys in the know. I’ll let you know how I get on…

New Toys! Part 1 – Infinity

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Infinity_300Dpi_Orange_BluecopiaAs I mentioned yesterday I’m looking to get into a few new games systems, with a primary aim of painting something other than 40k models :), the first of which is Infinity.

A fair amount of mates have been getting stuck into it over the last few weeks, and tend to have nothing but praise for whats looking to be a great game. All that said I’ve not had a chance to play it myself but have picked up a few models to get me started…

Caledonian Starter Pack

Caledonian Starter Pack with William Wallace (centre)

Given the choice of models I had to go for the kilted radges, as not only does this give me the perfect opportunity to paint up some tartan but also I get to take William Wallace to lead them! The models are pretty stunning, with the level of detail being above par, and nothing really needing cleaned before putting them together. Was pleased that they are actually kilts, pleated at the back, as I expected just a flat surface all round.

The plan is to get going with these guys until I’ve had a few games and have a better idea as to where to expand to with the force. In regard to painting I’m planning on naming each of the folks in the force so that each one will have a specific tartan related to their clan, and this will give me the chance to paint as many varieties of tartan as I can, bonus!

Come back tomorrow to get a look at the next batch of awesome toys that I’ll be working on :D…

Dreadball Marauders Test!

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Got stuck into a couple of the marauder players, a guard and a jack, from the boxed game today in order to get an idea of a colour scheme for the team. This is what I came up with:

Guard

Guard

Jack

Jack

Obviously they arent quite finished yet with some details here and there needing added and some work on the yellow and black sections, but overall I am very pleased with the colour scheme. Especially pleased with how the digital numbers on the backs look. Gonna carry this across all the Dreadball teams I work on, with a more race specific number marking appearing on the shoulder guards, so for these guys something fairly messy and slapped on looking.

Would love to hear what people think of them, and any changes/additions you think could be made?

Hydra’s Finished!

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This afternoon has been spent getting the last bits and bobs on the Hydra’s done, which means they are now done and dusted 😀

Completed Hydra's

Completed Hydra’s

Completed Hydra's

Completed Hydra’s

Will be getting a few more detailed images of them over the next few days, individual shots from all sides and such 🙂 Then it’s on to the next project (still making up my mind as to what that will be :-/)