Chaos Dwarf - Daemonsmiths & Magma Cannon Complete

 

The first ever dedicated Chaos Dwarf army book, collecting the White Dwarf articles of the early 90s.

The main purpose of this blog for me was to track my painting.  It lets me see how much I actually achieve in a month/year/whatever, and of course share my improvements with my hordes* of fans.

* Hordes in this case is being used in it's less well known context of "about five or six"

So, let's recap on what I've been working on for the last wee while.

These are Chaos Dwarf Daemonsmiths, who are the leaders and spellcasters of my army.  Ailsa got me them a year ago but I never got around to painting them as it felt stupid to have leaders before having anyone to lead!

This is the Chaos Dwarf Magma Cannon.  A Christmas present, it brings some lovely flamey death to my army.

These pictures show the bare resin, but what does the fully painted deal look like alongside my other figures?...

The First Rule Of Book Club Is YOU DO NOT POST ABOUT BOOK CLUB

You might imagine that with all my nerdy interests, including running my Justice League roleplaying game, I'm a big comic fan.  Certainly, just a meter from my RPG bookcase there is a comics bookcase equally rammed with DC comics - and a second such bookcase in the living room with a variety of graphic novels.  One cannot run a game about President Lena Luthor turning out to have her dad controlling her brain via Ultra-Humanite technology unless you are already pretty deep down the rabbit hole.

However, I haven't actually purchased many of late.  Previously I visited Glasgow comic shops once a week, picking up my usual spandex-and-violence fare as well as trying out some other odds and ends.  (Sister Superior, predictably, has a love of gothier comic.)  Following the 2011 DC comics reboot, however, my interest waned until only a handful of comics survived my regular reading list then finally atrophied completely.

The only thing keeping me reading comics was the Forbidden Planet book club.  And after a hiatus, it's back!

My local Forbidden Planet, one of several good comic shops in Glasgow

It's pretty much a typical book club - we meet up at regular intervals, all to talk about the pre-arranged book.  Being a comic shop we talk about graphic novels which we purchase from said shop.  The talk inevitably wanders into other nerdity including other comics we have been reading - and into the work of some of our attendees who write and draw comics themselves as independant professional geeks.

Our book club previously met once a month in the store - Monday nights after it shuts, a sort of dweebs lock-in - but sorta fizzled out a year or so ago for various reasons.  Sister Superior decided to try and revive it at the start of this year and our first meeting was on Monday.  It was nice to see everyone again and to read my first real comic of the year.

That first comic was Beautiful Darkness: details below the cut

Chaos Dwarfs - Magma Cannon & Leaders Progress

Hopefully my Dwarfs will be a bit more menacing looking than this.

Painting updates have been a bit sparse of late, but the past couple of days I've been barelling through the Chaos Dwarfs to try and make some progress.  My poor Magma Cannon and its three crew, along with three Chaos Dwarf heroes & lords, have been sitting part-done for ages.  I'm about to go back to work after a weeks holiday and I really wanted these to be mostly done by then.

First things first, I tidied up the figures and got the base coats complete.  These were the same key colours as before - Caliban Green for a dark green armour, Mephiston Red for a slightly dark red vehicle, Silver and Bronze scattered around the metal.

The only notably different colour used here was a brighter Blood Red for the magma in the chimney!

After base coating.

 Of course, base coating is a bit drab on its own.  Thankfully,a splashing of Quickshade all over the figures helped bring out all the detail...

 

Cannon after quickshade.

The infantry in particular really changed after a quickshade, moving from "block colours" to "looking good enough to drop on the table" very quickly.

Leaders after quickshade.

 Next up came highlighting.  Although a little bit of edge highlighting for Warpstone Green, Dwarf Flesh and Blood Red was used, I mostly go with quick and dirty drybrushing.  The severed head in particular got this - the evil Chaos Dwarf would hardly be holding a pristine head, so it got drybrushed Dwarf Flesh, Warpstone Green and Bleached Bone to give it a rotting look.

Dwarf Flesh was the only thing I really layered on rather than drybrushed since it was going on a mainly flat area.

Dwarfs after highlighting

 The cannon also got highlighting - mainly Blood Red over the Mephiston Red...  But I also used drybrushing to try and dirty up the figure since a war machine shouldn't be pristine. First dark brown Rhinox Hide, then ash Adeptus Battlegrey and finally Coat D'Arms browny-red Rust were drybrushed onto the wheels, rim of the magma chimney and bottom edges of the vehicle.

Cannon after drybrushing.

 The intention was, especially with the heavy dry-brushing at the rim of the cannon, to make it look "used".  It's been dragged through mud and ash, occasionally stopping to shoot out burning hot magma blasts.  Contrasted with the brighter silver in the middle, it should be clear which is the business end.

Detail of front of cannon and wheels.

 Finally there was the magma.  I put Blood Red, then Army Painter Lava Orange, then modern GW Yriel Yellow in one at a time and mixed them together - always putting the new lighter colour in the in middle and swirling out.  I'm hardly an expert at blending but my hope was to create a hot magma look - I'll need to wait till it dries, but right now it seems far too thin and streaky.  Perhaps a glaze will tie it together?

Detail of magma chimney.

I think with the crew glued onto the cannon, the leaders based and maybe a little bit of work on the magma these figures should be done.  I'd really like to move onto Dreadball Xtreme or the Imperial Knight but I think I might be better sticking with the Chaos Dwarfs, make them up some more Hobgoblin slaves so that I've got a decent sized army and I get a game in sometime before the next general election.

Cars & Touchdowns - February Gaming

 

Been a while since I posted here, but then it's been a while since I did anything miniature-related.  I haven't played much or painted much recently - for the usual mixture of faintly pathetic reasons.  A winter bug that kept me off work and in bed a couple of days; work for my Justice League RPG reaching it's finale; a weekend away in Edinburgh visiting the Games Masters museum...

And some of you probably thought Warren Spector was only relevant to computer game nerds... but he also did some RPG work.

 I also managed to knacker my hand for a bit when, emerging from a pharmacy of all places, I slipped on an ice patch and fell backwards.  No serious injury - nothing broken, as I discovered after waiting in A&E - but it's still a little sensitive and I'm still struggling to carry anything heavy in just that hand.

God, I HATE slippidy slidy ice levels. both electronic and real life.

However this is the week to catch up, because I have taken a week off work with Sister Superior.  We aren't going anywhere, just having a lazy time in the house.... and 40K Dave, when he found about that, jumped at the chance to meet up and play some nerdy games with me of a Tuesday afternoon.

 So read on as I play two games for the first time: Dark Future and Dreadball Xtreme