Peeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep. Peep. Peep. It lives!

So in an effort to try keep everything in one place and get my list of hobby jobs reduced I'm going to try get the blog going again... This is going old school style - I'm still kicking around on Facebook, but mainly in the gaming groups Facebook page, but not as Krom.

So 2015 was a massively busy year for starting new projects and for beating on GW policies. The latter won't change, but I'm going to try them again at some point. So, inspired by my brother re-starting his blog I thought I would start by typing to list down all the tasks I need to try and achieve in 2016:

Knight Hospitaliers (for a participation game at Vapnartak in February)

• 6 jockeys with pokey sticks
• 6 jockeys with choppy bits
• 12 volunteer st johns ambulance workers with choppy bits
• 12 volunteer st johns ambulance workers with shooty things

Blood Bowl Orc team

• 4 Black Orcs
• 4 Blitzers
• 2 Throwers
• 2 Goblins
• 2 Linemen
• 4 Balls
• 3D pitch and dug outs

Bolt Action Americans

• Finish 10 man regular GI squad
• 10 man Ranger squad
• Medium Howitzer
• HMG team
• Light Mortar team
• Bazooka team
• 1 1/2 ton truck with passengers
• Fury tank platoon
• M18 hellcat
• M5 Stuart
• M8 Scott
• M3 Half track
• 10 airborne from the 101st
• Bolt Action Fury farmstead inspired board
• Dutch Town board

Infinity Yu Jing
Not really sure here, but there's a few

Elysians

• Finish Valkyries with detailing and weathering
• Finish Vulture Base
• Avenger Strike Fighter
• Tauros Venator
• at least 2 Tauros
• Re-base everything

Loganwing

• 18 Terminators
• 5 Drop Pods
• 2 Dreadnaughts

• Space Hulk Models
• 3D Space Hulk Board

• Descent Models

The list is huge and to be honest I'm not sure it's all achievable within 2016, but my goal is to avoid buying anymore stuff until I've cleared the list somewhat. I may even decide to cull some and sell some stuff on, but it depends how my mojo goes.

This doesn't even factor for the no doubt endless new systems the club will find and I get tempted to start - but I'll try to resist.

I'll go and cry a small amount now.

Elysian 205th lands on Facebook

Well I've decided to take the plunge and make my small updates a bit easier to do by creating myself a facebook page. I'll us this for posting pics when playing games, updates during the painting process and anything else that takes my fancy hobby related. I'll use the blog as more of a showcase type tool. I'll look to possible create some nice features that I can add, such as youtube vids etc - but I'll see how we go to begin with.

Find us on Facebook

Also I was pointed in the direction of this awesomeness by Tim over at The Vanus Temple

On Hiatus - The 205th hit the battlefield in 2012

As you will have noticed I have been absent without leave from the 205th... Generally from gaming as a whole. It's been great, I've had more time for me, saved money and had time to play some console games. The mojo is starting to return - but will be halted this Friday by the oncoming Battlefield 3 on PS3...

But you guys don't want to hear about that, you want to find out when I'm going to get moving with the Elysians!

My plan is to give myself until Christmas for playing BF3 as much as possible, then in the new year to get back on the wagon. Starting with finishing my Valkyries so they are all up to a finalised standard.

Once the Valks are done I'll be aiming to paint up my second Tauros Venator and the 2 / 3 Tauros I have. Whilst browsing the usual pages (forge world) I took a fancy to the camp pattern they have on the Tauros.

Seeing as these guys are the fast moving scouts, the camp scheme makes perfect sense. The next big challenge is to decide if I build them with the heavy flamer or the grenade launcher... decisions decisions.

In between all of that I have some more drop troopers to get painted and the original guys to get finished off... And my Protectorate of Menoth force to paint.

So until next year... unless I get the urge to slip into the garage in the meantime ;)

Krom

Gaming weekend

So I have a gaming weekend coming up... or at least a gaming day drinking night and possible gaming morning...

I have my freshly painted realm of battle board... pics to come, my menoth army for warmachine ready (starter set) and my Elysian army 1500pts per my previous post I'm having to proxy to of the tauros venators with tauros... but I know the guys won't mind :D



I also picked up this week a new pack of elysian troopers and the elysian hq command set. Interestingly I think they made a boob with so e of the content, as I received two copies of a few of the sprues. This may be intentional... but I'm unsure, maybe someone else has had the same with this pack?

Hopefully by the end of the weekend, ill have managed to have tested my army and find any weaknesses that might be there.. such as the loss of the vulture!

In addition I have seen I missed some comments made on some previous posts that had been marked for moderation for some reason. so if I have not replied, I'm sorry and if there was a specific question, I will come round and answer them all in a single post for ease! :)

1500pts Elysians IA8

So I've not done an army list on here before, but I though I'd post this up and source some critique on it before I go too far with buying more elysians.

Tauros Venator Diorama

Well I finished the diorama on Saturday and went and entered it at the local GW store. I wasn't completely happy as I painted the guys on Friday night / Saturday, but hey I did all this in to weeks.

the pictures aren't perfect and when I receive the model back I'll take some better ones. I took a couple before these where the lighting was even worse, but I loved the way it add quite a bit of drama with the shadows.

So I'm generally pleased with it all however, I felt I rushed the two troopers and I think it shows... I also think that effected the results of the competition as well as I came second out of three of us.  And this is the winner. It is excellenty executed however something about it rings of something I've seen before by Keith Robertson (Heavy Metal painter) though I can't find pictures. None the less it was very well produced and a worthy winner.

Oh well better luck next time... and must try harder!

Elysian Diorama to date

So rather than post too much waffle... I did that earlier today I'll just post some pics of the diorama to date.

These are WiP, such as the image #4 has a wheel raised off the floor :( This will always be difficult as I'm aiming to be able to use this model for gaming as well.

Thanks for looking and if you have any questions, please fire away!

Day whatever in the diorama building house

Soooo, this regular posting I was going to do whilst doing this diorama seems to have gone out the window!

I have been working on it pretty much every single evening and trying some new techniques... I even bought myself another airbrush for the heady cost of... £20. It's become my new staple airbrush now. Its a simple dual action gravity feed airbrush, no adjustments can be made to it, so it's free of all the usual baggage and weight. I simply control air pressure with my air valve (connects the airbrush onto the hose) and amount of paint by how far I pull my finger back.

It looks a little like this, but with a smaller capacity paint chamber (about 2cc I believe) and a red housing at the back.

So onto my diorama stuff. In the image attached the tauros venator is almost complete, I need to just add pigments and oil effects.

I'm quite pleased with where I'm at, I tried applying rust staining with acrylics. This worked much better than expected, normally I would use enamel and oil paints for this as they can be feathered and adjusted with thinners easily. With the acrylics I added a whole bunch of drying retarder to the paint, this enabled me to do similar as I would previously, but create the feathering and effects with just water! Always a bonus.

I also applied a heat damage style effect to the lascannon muzzle. I tried this before with my valkyries, but it failed. I could never work out why... until last night when it all worked, due to the lascannon muzzles being matt this time and gloss previously.

To explain a little further, the technique is achieved by airbrushing layers of inks (red, purple, blue and black - in that order) to achieve a banded spectrum look about it... similar to how a stainless steel exhaust looks on a motorbike. The reason it failed before was I tried applying the ink onto a gloss surface and it immediately beaded away from the surface. This time as the surface was matt, it stayed in control and where i placed it.

So onto to tonight when I'm going to stay priming the models that are going on the base, I should also have mentioned I've changed the theme from roadside checkpoint to roadside IED.

Thanks and feel free to ask away :D

Day Three in the diorama building house

So I got back into the garage last night to continue working on the diorama. I didn't get too much done as I spent a good 30 mins cleaning and reassembling my airbrush after a really big deep clean.

Once that was done I lay done a dust layer to the tarmac section and more of a colouring layer to the earth. Utilising lighter shades to add dusting to the sand. I then made a different earth works mix, made out of plaster, gulf war sand, beach sand, light dust, a smidgen of europe dust, a splosh of some VMA sand shades, a splash of VMA white and lashings of vallejo matt varnish. I made this into a real putty like mix and smeared and tapped it all over my sand area.

Once this was one, I threw done a few different shades with the airbrush in the troughs that have ben created by wheels. Just to add a little more shape and texture to the base.

Obviously once that was done I got far too excited with myself and mocked up the venator onto the base.

And here's a few close ups of the decals on the venator.

This is quite an exciting project for me and I hope your enjoying following along. Any questions regarding the techniques etc, I'm more than happy to help.

Laters Krom

Day two of building my first diorama

Wowser... so soon I here you say???? Well the posting boob was all my fault and I apologise for that.

So onto the ultra cool and exciting stuff :D I received a package in the post today containg a few new cool items: Mig Acrylic Resin, Mig Thinners for washes, Mig Pigment fixer: Some great sanding boards, Tamiya putty and some Mig brown for desert filter.

So I've applied some filter to the chassis and parts of the Tauros Venator, but I didn't take pics as the difference isn't too noticeable by camera. Basically th filter works very similar to a glaze and is applied to alter the hue of the model, rather than shade it.

I also got onto doing the ground works for the base as well. Using a mix of plaster, Mig acrylic resin, matt varnish, Mig Gulf war sand,beach sand, light dust and europe dust I made a sickly looking paste/mix

Yeah, don't worry, it does look like I've had a botty accident in the plastic cup, but I do assure you it is the mix from above... Oh I also added tamiya buff paint and some model scenics medium buff ballast.

Then using an old paint brush I painted / stabbed this onto the base.

Looks like cool wet mud at the moment, but it is drying a nice colour.  Tomorrow I plan to lay a dust coat down with the airbrush before adding another small amount of mix with a litter colour to it and alternative mix formula.

In addition to this I also applied gulf sand pigment to the wheel before applying pigment fixer in a circular motion towards the centre of the wheel hub. I'll take phtos of this tomorrow so that the full effect can be seen.

Until tomorrow night.

Krom

My first steps into diorama buildng

Well it's been ages since I posted last... Again! I'm really starting a theme here for this blog. So, why've I bothered posting? Well Pottered into my local GW this Saturday to spend a gift voucher (thanks mart)... I got a sky shield incidentally.

After having a chat with the staff, I found out they do a monthly painting comp. Turns out this month is dioramas.

My first reaction was to not bother, but after going and eating some scran (corned beef pasty!) I decided I would join in. I raced to the nearest trophy store so that I could get a plinth.... With that bought I went to the model shop and grab some more supplies.

I realised I better go and check for rules and deadlines. Eek, the only rule was... There are no rules and the deadline was 2 weeks!

So, I got on with the task in hand. I've already developed a partial name / theme: roadside check point.

So here are a few wip pics.

Wooden plinth base with Das modelling clay added for structure and also Tamiya diorama texture paint (pavement effect dark grey) painted on for the road.

The beast to be the feature of the diorama. Been meaning to get one of these painted for ages, I've got another one to build and the lesser Tauros (Big thanks to blueronin and his crew for this beauty :D)

The awesome wheels! prior to weathering... this is rather experimental as I've never created rubber wheels before

And here is a little detailing added to the tarmac. A simple addition of Iyanden darksun foundation paint applied between a set of masks.

I'll be posting another set straight after these were meant to be last nights images... but i had an incident where I left my laptop in the middle of the street for an hour before I realised... Mart from Marts Warhammer Blog went and collected it for me.

Any comments and questions please fire away, and I'll be more than happy to help/answer where possible.

Krom

Where the have I been...

Wowser it's been far too long since I last posted! In fact I was on a strange mission to re-learnt paint. What's worse the results looked turd!

However it did teach me to be more careful with my painting and that I desperately needed glasses and a magnifier for painting. Since the escapades of the ultra smurfs... That results in 3 part painted minis, I jumped at the GKs as a force to try and make look fantastic... Dare I say, aiming to trophy status...

The GK are progressing and I'll take pics soon. The elysians are still my "love" force and I plan to kick start them soon enough.

However, the past 2 weeks I've been re-fitting my hobby zone (garage as the wife has banished me... Who am I kidding, I love it!). I've built myself a proper work bench that's solid enough for a fat bloke like me to stand on! It's not finished quite yet. I need to relocate my amp and get myself a/some display cabinets.

I've also chopped up my gaming board and turned it into shelves... With left over sheet material for other projects. Again, it's not the end of the world as I have my realms of battle board to texture and paint.

So many projects and so little time... Harumph!

Well I plan to get some pod sorted of a few things so that I can keep you guys posted of everything that's been done... And to be done.

Until then...

GW Doubles Nomination and my Army

Wahooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I recently went to the GW 40K doubles tournament held at Warhammer World. It's a great even, I absolutely love it and will be going back for more. Dezartfox over at the The Vanus Temple and myself took a combined force of Angels of Redemption and the plucky lads from the Elysian 205th Air Corps.

The force really worked well together as the Angels of Redemption were the real hitting power to the force and the guard ran distraction. It worked so well we managed to come 13th place from what I hear... not only that, but we got nominated for Best Army as well.

So here's some pics of our force in the freshly installed cabinets.

And here's a few links to the blogs of the guys I went with:

The Vanus Temple
Marts Warhammer 40K Blog
The Rune of Stone

Elysian Troopers and Valkyrie weathering

Just wanted to post a quick update of my progress for the GW Doubles Throne of Skulls additions. All I need to do to my force is these 4 snipers ready for the command squad and weather the Valkyries.

So here are the Snipers. finished, but require the addition of a single bipod leg that dropped off during undercoating.

Weathering of the valks. I've taken pictures through the process to try and give you a bit of an idea to my process of weathering.

So far the models have been base coated, panel highlighted, decals, sponge weathered (I'll do a tutorial on this once I'm past doubles :) ) and had Klear (Future) airbrushed over them. Alway 2 coats to begin with as the first layer soaks into the under lying paint. I should also note this is the old formula of Klear I have used.

This is the inside of the valk. I've not gone crazy with painting details in here as most of the time the top will be closed. Again base coat, sponging and varnished with Klear.

So using a wash created with oil paints and white spirits (Lamp Oil Black + Burnt Umber), this wants to be quite thin... but not too thin - (Once you get using it it's quick to understand). Too Thin, colour doesn't show enough but critical it spreads quicker than hot butter. Too thick and the mix won't flow.

What we are looking to achieve is a consistency where if you load your brush and touch a recess you see the paint start flowing through the cracks, crevices and nooks without spreading where you don't want it.

Here's the interior with the wash starting to bee applied. If you look closely you'll see where the mix wasn't quite right. Though it's not the end of the world as we can go back with a cue tip moistened with white spirits.

And the roof of the valk, you gan see around the details at the bottom of the image where the wash has flowed and where I was also a bit sloppy with application.




And here is the start of the exterior. I took a shot of the wing after flowing the wash into all of the details.



And here is a shot of the wing after using a soft flat brush moistened with white spirits and dragged along the wing. After progress times passing from front to back on the wing, I finally got too this position. I'm quite happy with this and I'll replicate across the whole model.

Once I have done that I'll lay down another thin layer of klear with the airbrush to protect this layer before applying small streaks of white paint to do the same streaking effect. After the white, I'll just touch up and of the recesses that might have white paint flowed into them.

So that's it for the time being. I'll get some more shots tonight / tomorrow hopefully.

Something to come next year.

Let's start off with a warm Merry Christmas to one and all.

Let's hope everyone has a great New Year.

So just wanted to post up a quick peak at one of my upcoming projects... A Tauros Venator


See you all in the new year and celebrate it in style!

- Posted using BlogPress

Drop Sentinel WIPS

So I decided I better show some pictures as I've basically not got onto showing anyone my list I took to ToS or my final battle results or my thoughts on changing the force. I'll get to it, but I just felt like my hobby mojo was running high... so I just jumped aboard and went along for the ride.





















As always C&C welcome, I hope you enjoy.