Tale of Four Gamers - Challenge 1: Empire General

Yesterday I posted pictures of my (nearly) finished Empire Captain with Battle Standard.  Once he was done, I turned my attention to my General on a warhorse.  When modeling the General, I really didn't spend any time worrying about whether or not his wargear would be WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get).  Coming from 40K, WYSIWYG is typically, if not a huge deal (nobody wants to be That F'ing Guy), at least encouraged wherever possible.  Most gamers are ok with proxies in a friendly match, but no one is that excited about playing against your Tactical Sergeant counts-as Marneus Calgar.  In Fantasy, I just don't see how it is possible to be WYSIWYG with your characters without having a ton of individual models you can swap out as needed.  With the differences in magic items available to them, it just wouldn't be practical to have one Captain modeled with the Sword of Striking, and have to swap out for another Captain if you want to take the Hammer of Judgment.  Long story short- I'm not concerned about whether or not my General or Captain are holding the right weapons.  That being said, I just modeled my General in a way that I thought looked cool.  I gave him a lance, because number 1, it's baller, and number 2, I figured at some point in the future if I wanted to have a BSB on a warhorse I've got a stand in ready to go.  I didn't attach that weird baby ribbon thing that comes in the kit.  It creeps me out a bit, to be honest.  I gave him a pistol in his other hand, again, just because it looked cool.  I have some other bits and bobs that I want to put on later, like a sword in a scabbard and his cloak, but I don't think those will make it in to this challenge.

In this picture you can see that I started from the ground up with this model.  I painted the horse first and then worked outwards in the various layers of cloth, chainmail, and armor.  The yellow I painted like I did for all the yellow on my Captain.  I started with a layer of Snakebite Leather, to give the Yellow a lighter base to cover than the black.  Then I painted Golden Yellow completely over the basecoat before giving the area a wash of Ogryn Flesh.  Next I layered Golden Yellow back on, leaving the wash in the recesses.  Finally I highlighted with Sunburst Yellow mixed with a little bit of Bleached Bone.

I decided to paint the horse's armor gold, as befits a General of the richest army in the Empire.  I started with a basecoat of Shining Gold and Scorched Brown.  I then washed the armor with Devlan Mud and layered Shining Gold followed by Shining Gold and Mithril Silver mixed.  As you can see in this picture, the overall effect was a little more like bronze than gold. 

I remedied this by later painting on a layer of Burnished Gold which has more yellow pigment in it.  For the armor decorations, I wanted them to look like the metal itself was colored, rather than having been painted over.  I mixed a little Boltgun Metal into Chaos Black for the basecoat, and then added increasing amounts of Codex Grey for the highlights after washing the basecoat with Badab Black.  I followed the same process for the yellow lettering using Golden Yellow and Shining Gold.  Does the effect work?  I'm not sure, to be honest.  The yellow didn't really preserve the metal flakes in the paint as well as the black did, so I think that was a wasted effort.  I'm not displeased with the black, but I don't know if it looks as good with the golden armor underneath it.  I'll see how it looks once the entire model is finished.

5 days to go and I'm almost there.  Will anyone else join me at the finish line?  Stay tuned for more.

Brandon

Tale of Four Gamers - Challenge 1: High Elf Noble

Chris is almost finished with his High Elf Noble carrying the Battle Standard, and not a minute too soon as he only has 5 days left to paint his mounted Prince.  Chris has gone for the classic blue and white High Elf colors with his army, which should give him a crisp, bright army that really stands out on the table.  To continue that crisp, clean feeling into the silver armor, Chris washed Asurmen Blue over a Mithril Silver basecoat before drybrushing Mithril back over the top.  The bit of blue left in the recesses gives the armor a cold, sterile feeling really appropriate to the High Elves.  In these WIP pics you can see the effect:

Also notice the really bright colors he has gotten on the shield.  Chris managed this by highlighting Golden Yellow with Sunburst Yellow and Skull White and Enchanted Blue with Ice Blue and Space Wolves Grey.  In these last pictures, you can see the final highlights on the shield and also how he painted the gems.  If you're going to play High Elves, you gotta know how to paint gems!  Chris painted his gems with layers of Mechrite Red, Red Gore, Blood Red, and Skull White.

If you look carefully, you can even see that Chris has painted the eyes of his Noble blue, a very clever piece of work that required the use of a toothpick as a painting implement.  They say the face is the most important part of a model, but its also one of the most difficult sometimes.  Great work, Chris!

Be on the lookout for more from Chris as the deadline approaches.

Brandon

Tale of Four Gamers - Challenge 1: Empire Captain

As you can read in my ToFG Month 1 post, I have decide to start an Empire army.  After reading the army book and flipping through the really cool Uniforms and Heraldry of the Empire book, I decided to paint my army in the colors of the Averland province.  I liked the look of all the Handgunners and artillery available to the Empire and while I really like the fluff for the city of Nuln, I didn't want to do an all out Nuln army (playing Blood Angels definitely had a little to do with this- I'm tired of painting red!).  I also thought that the Black and Yellow of Averland looked great together and their reputation as the richest province in the Empire would give me opportunities to really bling out my characters and special units/war machines.

The Empire is perhaps the only army that can be built entirely in plastics, and GW's Empire General kit is a must-have for any aspiring Elector Count.  For under $25 you get 2 General or Captain figures, one mounted, and the option for a Battle Standard Bearer along with several different armament options.  Really good value in my estimation.  For the contest I decided to assemble a mounted General and a Captain on foot with the Battle Standard.

For my Captain on foot, I decided ahead of time that I wanted to go for a high quality tabletop standard figure.  I wasn't going to spend a lot of time blending, or doing time consuming techniques like Non-Metallic Metal.  What I wanted was a model with clean lines and moderate levels of shading and highlighting that would look great on the table leading my army to war.  Here he is after I got the main figure basecoated and applied a wash and then layered the basecoat color back over leaving the darker colors in the recesses.

I added a layer of highlights to the Captain and then painted the Battle Standard.  The Battle Standard was a breeze to paint, the wings are great for drybrushing.  With the main focus of the Standard being the skeleton, I wanted the wings to have a decayed, rotting feel to them.  I based them white, then washed devlan mud all over and drybrushed them once with bleached bone and then a second, lighter drybrush of skull white.  I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.  For the robes on the skeleton I simply based the whole area in codex gray and then gave it a liberal wash of badab black and highlighted the edges with codex gray.  The most time consuming part by far was painting the yellow and black banner, yellow is every bit as annoying to paint over black as red is.  Here is the finished product (minus the all important base).

I'm very pleased with the overall figure. I think I was able to get a model that will look great with my army and I was able to paint it over the course of a about a week giving myself lots of time to work on my mounted General. Stay tuned for a WIP post on my General as well as updates on the other challengers as well.

Brandon

The Tale of Four Gamers - Challenge 1

As I stated before, the release of Warhammer Fantasy's 8th edition and the "Tale of Four Gamers" feature on www.games-workshop.com prompted the Legion of Doomed Husbands to issue their own army building challenge.  Unfortunately for us, none of us really have time to build and paint an entire battalion in a month like the GW guys did, so we settled for a little smaller gauntlet being thrown.

Before I get into the challenge, I thought I would lay out the philosophy behind the competition.  All of us had a lot of interested in the Fantasy game and wanted to get started on an army.  I think we all also had in the back of our minds the memory of starting our 40K armies and how it was easy to get burned out on trying to build an army as fast as you can.  Consequently, our Tale of Four Gamers contest is based around three main goals:

1. Build a functioning Warhammer Fantasy army- obviously we all want to play the game so the object should be to make that a possibility
2. Spread out the cost of buying a new army- we all have families in various stages of growth and we are all fairly conscious of where our hard-earned dollars are going.  By expanding our armies in stages, we keep the month-to-month costs lower.
3. Keep the drudgery of building and painting the army to a minimum- painting one or two boxes at a time keeps you from staring at a mountain of plastic and wondering how you will ever get it done.

With those goals in mind, we started out our competition slowly.  Here is our challenge for month 1:

1. Competitors will have until Saturday, September 4 to completely assemble and paint 2 character models from their chosen Warhammer Fantasy army range.  For the purposes of the competition, "character model" refers to any single Lord or Hero choice, or a Champion and Standard Bearer model from any Core, Special, or Rare unit.

2.  Models should be photographed and photos sent to me for distribution (and also to post here on the blog)

3. This competition is worth 40 points total, 20 points per model.  75% of a model's total possible points will be awarded for completion, including basing (always a speed bump for me!), and the remaining 25% will be awarded based on quality of paint job as determined by the other 3 competitors.

 With the rules laid down, we each chose our armies and characters and got to work.  The lineup is as follows:

Brandon- Empire army of Averland- General of the Empire and Captain of the Empire with Battle Standard
Cam- Skaven Clan Mors army- Warlord Queek Headtaker and Warlock Engineer
Justin- Warriors of Chaos army of Nurgle- Chaos Knights Champion and Standard Bearer
Chris- High Elf army of High Elfiness- High Elf Prince and High Elf Noble with Battle Standard

The deadline is almost on us and we have all been working hard to get our models knocked out.  I'll be posting some individual competitor updates with WIP pictures soon.

Brandon

First Post - Welcome to the Legion of Doom... -ed Husbands

Hello and welcome to the Legion of Doomed Husbands Blog!  The Legion of Doomed Husbands is a Warhammer Fantasy Battle and Warhammer 40K gaming group based in Cypress, Texas (with an Austin satellite).  Why the Legion of Doomed Husbands?  Well for one it sounds mildly scary, especially if you just read the first bit.  But also, all the members of the Legion of Doomed Husbands are husbands and we are all doomed by a growing addiction to tiny plastic men worth more than their weight in gold (and thereby doomed to be mocked by our wives for "playing with dolls").  So it's not just a catchy moniker.

I've wanted to start a blog ever since we got into the hobby about a year ago.  I thought it would be a fun way for us to share our heroic miniature exploits with others so that we don't have to endure their rolling of eyes in a face-to-face situation.  I hope to use this blog to post army updates, battle reports, painting tips, and various other Warhammer related miscellanea.

So who are the Legion of Doomed Husbands?  Well there is me, Brandon, your humble guide through these various misadventures.  I am currently playing a Blood Angels army in 40K and have just started an Empire army in Fantasy.  Joining me on the blog is my brother Cam, our Austin outcast, who plays an effeminate but feisty Eldar army in 40K and a newly started Skaven army in Fantasy.  Next we have Chris who plays Chaos Space Marines and is starting a High Elf army.  Last, and possibly least, depending on whether or not I like him at any given moment, we have Justin, the proud owner of a ramshackle Ork horde and recent devotee to the Warriors of Chaos.

You may have noticed that we all are currently in the beginning stages of collecting a Fantasy army.  With the release of 8th edition this summer, we thought it would be a great time to jump right in to "the thinking man's Warhammer."  Encouraged by the recent "Tale of Four Gamers" feature on the Games Workshop website, we decided to hold our own Tale of Four Gamers challenge.  And thus was born The Legion of Doomed Husbands First Annual Warhammer Fantasy Battle Tale of Four Gamers, or TLoDHFAWHFBToFG for short.

Stay tuned for more upcoming posts on the TLoDHFA... you get the idea.  The first challenge is coming to an end this Saturday so I'll be posting pictures from each contestant showing their entries in various stages of the process.  I'll also have a post detailing the rules of the contest and the particulars of this month's challenge.

(This space left intentionally blank until I come up with an award-winning catchphrase)

Brandon