All the things Elfar

Well it has been a while since my last post, having been kept busy with other commitments. Not too much has been done hobby wise other than cleaning up a few things, but I thought what better to make a post on than the double whammy of having both my beloved High Elves and Eldar updated over May and June. I picked up a portion of both releases, so not to render my wallet to a state of comatose, and have slowly begun to get them together.

Part of the acquisition

                                                                                                                                                           











Other than what's pictured, I picked up the Handmaiden and Lore master characters, and I also caved and got a Wraith Knight and another box of Wraith Guard, so still quite a few new acquisitions but there is still the Sky Cutter, Sisters of Avelorn (Going to build the Shadow Warriors first up) and the Eldar Flyer kit left...which I'm sure I will pick up eventually (i.e in two weeks after the compelling need to have them overcomes and causes me to buy them and then shelve them forever)  

So I guess my aim over the next few weeks is to get these guys all assembled and ready for painting. I am likely to be starting Uni in late July, so having them all fully assembled and set to be painted before then would be ideal, and for me an achievement at the rate I assemble things. Plus I am going to magnetize most of the load outs for the Wraith units, and probably parts of the Phoenix like the rider and wings/head. The characters so far will be mostly disassembled where appropriate and put onto corks for ease of painting, most of the other unit should remain assembled for painting bar a few pieces if I deem it necessary to paint them separately.

Following up from my post regarding Finecast I have gone and opened the finecast products, being the Hand Maiden and Spirit Seer, and have found them to be very nice sculpts, with only minor flash and mould lines needing to be removed and some re-positioning of the staff and spear.

Hand Maiden

Quiver and Spear

Detail is very crisp, so still so far my only real issue that persists with finecast is areas being bendy/flimsy and that there can be quite a bit of excess resin, not exactly flash but chunks of resin that are left on parts of the sculpt, where the model is being held on the frame, which can be easily missed if you don't check over them carefully. Other than that they are very good sculpts, and so far have been relatively easy to get prepped and mounted onto corks

Spirit Seer Front

Spirit Seer Back

Seer parts back

Seer parts front

I am planning to do the inevitable female Farseer conversion that is in the back of every Eldar players mind (dont deny it :3) I have had such a project in the works for a while but haven't been able to properly pull it off thus far due to most Farseer models being quite bulky and not suited for a female figure. However the latest Farseer release is very well suited, being far more slender than the last few and the way it assembles means it will be very easy to convert. I am still going over exactly how I want to go about it, as I have a few different head options, and obviously making the body more feminine which I will cover in my next post.

I also completed my Vampire Lord on Zombie Dragon commission which I had in the works for a while. Was pleased with the end result. I had him in separate parts for painting so it was really nice to see the final result when I put him together. Was a pain to get wrapped and secure for postage however, so much paranoia when waiting for the owner to receive it, but he survived the transit quite nicely :D

So that's it for now. I will try to update as I go as best I can and not jump massively ahead, but I will try to get a post out at least once a week/fortnight to show my progress.

The Finecast Theory

As the title suggests, this post will be delving into that of Finecast, specifically in terms of product/casting quality and what I have personally found in my experience with finecast.

A range of Finecast products both new and old.

This post isn't going into anything on why Games Workshop switched or any 'Theorys' on the company and the product in terms of marketing or what have you, I mention this because there are quite a few posts and articles out there that delve into that that may be titled similarly. This simply goes into my experiences using the products, and a 'theory' on the product in terms of good and bad quality casts.

When GW switched to finecast back in early 2011, I was both greatly annoyed and intrigued  I personally prefer metal as a medium, but it was interesting to see the advantages that a product such as finecast has such as being easier to assemble and convert, the detail is far more crisp and defined, and is very light in weight. However, the material can be quite flimsy and sometimes brittle, and for me, I do prefer a bit of weight to models, so I do find their weight a bit of a downfall for me. I am yet to paint onto finecast, so I can't say anything in terms of that, but I presume it would be similar to working with Forge World resin or plastic.

So the key points for Finecast are:

PROS

• Light weight
• Easy to convert and assembly
• Crisp detail

CONS

• Tends to be flimsy
• Can be brittle

You will probably notice however I have left out one key problem that is generally associated with finecast products. Miscasts.

A miscast being any Finecast sculpt that hasn't been properly formed during the casting process, and results in warpage, areas not being casted at all resulting in parts of the model missing, air bubbles, and poor surface quality. I have chosen to leave it out for the moment because I am going to touch on my findings when it comes to miscasts.

I have picked up several Finecast products, both when they were first released, and at later stages up to a few weeks ago, and from different game systems. In total I believe I have gotten 10 FC products (10 individuals, 1 a box of 4 models) over the period since early 2011 to present. Out of 14 casts, 5 were of an average standard that needed some minor work to either re-sculpt/fill parts of it, or had minor warpage, but overall were decent casts, 2 have been that bad GW had to send me another or will require a lot of work and re sculpting to fix, and surprisingly 7 of them have been perfect, if not flawless casts.

Now when you think about all the bad rep that FC has received, It is quite odd that 50% of the casts were perfect, compared too 5 being average and 2 being terrible. The two terrible casts, were recent purchases, and out of the 5 average casts, 2 were early, and 3 where recent. Now its when we get to the perfect casts it gets interesting. 5 of the casts are completely new models that were released after FC was brought in, so are not old metal sculpts being re-casted, and thus are being designed with Finecast in mind. The 5 in question are the Cockatrice, Necron Overlord, Bolg, Yazneg, and Elrond, in order of release and purchase. They are also the only post-finecast new releases I have, so currently making it a 99.5% perfect cast rate on new releases, the other 2 were metal recasts, an Eldar Autarch and a LOTR Uruk Hai Shaman.

Heres a list of all the models and where they ranked:

Miscasted:

• High Elves Tyrion
• Eldrad Ulthuan

Average

• Korhil
• Harlequin Death Jester
• Uruk Hai Banner Bearer
• Uruk Hai Captain
• Uruk Hai Drummer

Perfect

• Eldar Autarch
• Uruk Hai Shaman
• Cockatrice
• Necron Overlord
• Bolg
• Yazneg
• Elrond

So my conclusion based on my findings is that it seems post-finecast new releases seem to have a much higher successful cast rate, most likely due to being designed with finecast in mind. Not to say they wont have any issues or miscasts, but seeing that all the new releases I have purchased are close to flawless it does seem more likely that they will be decent. The 9 Metal recasts had mixed results, 2 being terrible, 5 being average, and 2 being perfect, which evens out relatively nicely, but there was a mix of earlier and later purchases/releases, so I cant say for certain whether its improving over time.



I would highly recommend making FC purchases in a local GW store and inspect the casts before leaving. It's what I normally do, mostly when it comes to old metal recasts, since you can usually swap a bad cast out for another on the shelf, or they will order one to be sent to me from the main warehouse after being inspected on site, which I thought was very good of them to do, plus I got to keep the miscast, which allowed me to draft my conversion I had planned for him.

Of courses this is just a theory, I dont know whether this is definitely the case in terms of metal recasts and post FC releases, this is just based on what I have found from the small quantity I have purchased, so I thought I would share my findings. If you have your purchases to be similar, or completely the opposite, feel free to comment! I would really like to hear whether this seems to be the case or whether I just ended up being lucky with some purchases :P I will also keep updating on my findings with FC as I make purchases, to see whether it continues following suit, or whether It ends up changing completely.


I was going to add photos of most of the casts as examples, but its currently quite late, and I found that some of the photos ended up being too bright so you cant really see what going on with the FC, so I will have to take new photos and upload them at a later date, either added to this post or in a 'Part 2'.

Napoleonic French

Lately I have been kept busy with my personal life, but have managed to get make progress on some of my projects, notably my Napoleonic French.

 I currently have a reasonably sized force, probably with more cavalry than what I need. I some how ended up with 3 boxes of Dragoons, giving me 24 of the foot sloggers which is handy, but 39 of the mounted men is a bit excessive when I have other cavalry on the field. So far I have assembled 1 box of Perry French Infantry, 1 box of Dragoons, and 1 box of Heavy Cavalry as Carabiniers. I also have assembled a few Victrix French infantry, but are far more tedious and time consuming to assemble due to being multipart, and having instructions which can be tedious to follow since most of the parts go together in certain ways. I have gone and removed all the bits of the sprues and sorted them into their 'assembly orders' to speed up the process

2 boxes of Victrix French all organised and sorted accordingly

In total I have 2 boxes of Perry French infantry one of which is assembled as is standard, the other which is in the process of being put together using some of the head variants in the box, a box of Perry hussars, the Dragoons and Carabiniers, 2 boxes of Victrix French Infantry 1807-1812 and a few Victrix metals. I would like to add some more command models, since I plan to use these for the Black Powder ruleset, and thus need Brigade commanders and a Commander in chief as the head of the army.

Infantry Colonels and Sappers

As you would expect with Perry Miniature products, the quality is superb, with all the details being crisp and accurate. The Victrix sculpts are nice but the quality of the plastic itself is a bit sub par in some areas, with bayonets being brittle, and the quality of the casts not as clean as other comparisons. However their two main French Infantry kits were some of their first products, and went through a lot of the teething issues to began with, and have since overcome the issues with their newer products. The main difference between the Perry and Victrix kits are of course the uniforms being different, Victrix covers the period from 1807-1812, and Perry is based on the uniform regulations of 1812, thou the new regulations didn't fully come into effect, or simply weren't available, and thus older uniform standards were still kept in many areas. I plan to base my force primarily on conflicts in 1812-15 so both work fine in terms of historical accuracy.

Perry French Infanty 2nd box command with alternate heads.

Victrix 1807-1812 Line Grenadiers

I have taken some photos of most of the Perry set sprues in order to do some proper review of each kit, and made sure I did so before assembling ( or removing much of the sprues in terms of the second Infanty box set). I have found that I always try to find an 'unboxing' of kits before making a purchase, so will try and do my own reviews on things where I can. I should have some up at some point, along with several other things I have been revving working on.  

Carabiniers in their brass cuirass' and helmets issued in 1809

I also recently acquired some Storm Guardians for my Eldar, which I managed to nab of Ebay for a nice price.

Them Shortly after being removed form the package. May re-position some arms, but all good otherwise

 Been trying to get some for a while, and GW recently repackaged the kit to just be the head and arms in finecast, and instead of having enough for 10, only included 8 for just a bit over half the price of what it costed to get 10 Storm Guardians with the bodies. So I am quite happy to have finally gotten my hands on some, whether they are good or not in games terms is besides the point, I just think they look awesome :P

High Elves and Commission update

Well this next post has ended up being later than desired due to a busy week sorting out some things in relation to my personal life, but nevertheless here it is...

Coming off from Eldar in my last post, I thought I would touch on their fantasy counterpart, High Elves.

My High Elves are one of my later projects, but ironically probably my most together one. Most of what I have is assembled and based, or needing to be based. I have only a few unassembled items, being my Lord and Prince kit, which is because I can't deiced how to equip them, and my Dragon Princes due to being a recent purchase and are still in the box.

The army so far consists of:

• 40 Sea Guard- split into two units of 20 ( I think I may actually be 1 or two short)
• 12 Sword Masters
• 10 Ellyrian Reavers
• 1 White Lion Chariot
• 10 Phoenix Guard
• 10 White Lions
• 1 Eagles Claw Bolt Thrower
• 1 Prince of Griffon 
• 3 Mages- the Island of Blood one and the two from the mage box set
• Korhil
• 5 Dragon Princes (not pictured)
• and 2 Noble/Prince models (Not pictured)

and that's about it. The whole army is plastic, with the exception of Korhil being Finecast.

The bulk of it is from the Island of blood kit, which I cherry picked what I wanted off Ebay to avoid ending up with a mass of Skaven. However I have had to convert a few models, mainly being the command duplicates from the Island of blood models so I don't have a heap of similar command models among the rank and file ones.

Second Sea Guard Unit conversions

In the picture above are some examples of the converting done. The main issue was with the Second unit command, since I wanted to keep the unique I had to convert the musician and Champion, which I did by changing the champions weapon to a halberd from the Noble/prince kit, and had the musician pointing with his horn holstered under his shoulder. On the far right is a ranker converted from a musician, by removing his arm and replacing it with another.

Converted Duplicate sword master champion.

I also had to convert a Sword master. I only ordered one lot of 10, but for some reason I was sent 12, and the 12th being an extra unit champion, which was both nice but annoying at the same time, since the unit champion is quite unique and would look odd having two in the unit. So I removed the sword arm and replaced it with left over Sea Guard champions sword, and replaced his head using one of the bare heads from the white lion kit.

So the army itself its pretty much sitting waiting to be painted. I am going to be using the scheme that is used in the Island of Blood kit, which I assume is the generic scheme shown. I actually did a test paint for the sea guard a while ago, which is shown in the picture below

Left: White undercoat                        Right: Black undercoat

I painted two up as a test, using both black and white undercoats, and I was actually shocked to find the black undercoat turned out much better, especially for the bright, clean colours. Probably because I've been painting on black undercoat for years, and that's what best suits my painting style. The white one also took me far longer, and is a lot messier since Its harder to cover up mistakes. I followed the Island of Blood painting tutorial for the Sea guard, which is actually why I haven't painting more due to GW taking down all the tutorials shortly after I began painting them. Really should have noted them down, If anyone has a copy of them somewhere or anything, I would love to know about it!

So that's it for the High Elves at this stage, they most likely wont grow beyond that for a while. I'd like to bulk up some of the special units, and add a Prince on a Dragon, but I will hold off until they are all painted.

Speaking of painted, I did complete part of the commission I am currently working on. All matt varnished and ready to be posted!

Game Zone Blood Knights

High Queen Khalidia

 Glad to have completed them, they were quite enjoyable to paint, but now I am onto the biggun of the commission being the Vampire Lord on Zombie Dragon.

I will probably hit up on some of my Historical in the next post. I was going to try and do a post on every Project first before working on any, but some are all over the place and wont be worth going over until I start working on them, or like my Warhammer Dwarfs, are just the battalion box set, so not even worth making a post on at this stage.
So from here on in I will update on what I'm currently working on, and if I start working on something that belongs to a project I haven't gone over, I will go over it in the same post.

Eldar overview and current workings

Eldar.

Hands down my favorite race of the Warhammer 40k universe. I highly enjoy the look and feel of them, and also the way each unit is a specialist in a certain art of war, over being a jack of all trades. 

I have been collecting Eldar for a while, they are my oldest current collection, before them being Space Marines which was my first ever army (which tends to be the case for many people). But after looking into other areas of 40k, I purchased a box Farseer and Warlocks shortly after they had been redone in 2006, and I was set on Eldar. Since then I sold off my Space Marines to fund my Eldar army, and it has grown to a decent size, but of course not a whole lot is actually painted, and much of what was painted has been stripped of paint. 

Nestled safely, but for what reason without paint?

I nearly have at least one everything, minus Swooping Hawks, Jetbikes and Wraithguard- all of which I'm awaiting new kits, and I lack War Walkers, Heavy Support Weaponry (which I mostly have equipped in other areas anyway) and a Wave Serpant. The last 3 more because I just haven't really thought about them, bar the Wave Serpants, which I would like to get, but want to finish the current grav tanks I currently own.

Grav tanks and Grav unassembled mess.

The army currently consist of (based on model count)

2 Farseers and 3 Warlocks

Eldard Ulthran (Which may end up being kitbashed/converted since I'm not overly keen on the model)

10 Guardian Defenders

10 Dire Avengers

5 Rangers

6 Striking Scorpions 

6 Howling Banshees

6 Warp Spiders

6 Fire Dragons

6 Harlequins- Including Death Jester and Shadowseer

5 Dark Reapers

2 Vypers

1 Falcon Grav Tank

1 Fire Prison/Night Spinner (magnetized to allow for both weapon configs)

2 Wraithlords

1 Wraithseer

and last but definitely not least, 2 Avatar of Khaines, the GW and Forgeworld Variants.

Father and Son?

Definitely a major size difference between to two, but still will be cool to have both painted up and side by side. The list also reflects my love of aspect warriors and Wraith lords having nearly 1 of each Aspect Warrior and 3 Wraith lords (including the Seer). I would like to bulk up on troop choices however, and will probably pick up another unit of Dire Avengers and would like to get some Storm Guardians.

I am currently torn between what craftworld I would like to represent. Its up between Saim Hann, which is what I originally began with, or Ulthwe. I enjoy both colour schemes, thou I do usually prefer brighter colours for Eldar, and I enjoy the background of Ulthwe more, and the rune symbol of the Saim Hann more. So its going to be a tough decision. 

Wraithlords

One reason why I have ended up stripping paint of a lot of models is since the collection is one of my first, my painting level and the way I painted at the time were very different to how I paint now. When I first started out, and for the first few years I painted straight out of the pot without using a pallet, and I NEVER water down my paint, which leads to blotchy and pasty result of paint on the model. An example of that is the Wraith Lord in the above picture, which I painted around 4 years ago. While he may look nice, he would most likely come out much smoother and cleaner. I think I may leave him like that so I can compare him to the other Wraith Lord when he is painted. Thou depending on what Craftworld I decide on, that might be hard to do effectively 

Wraithseer/Lord bits

So that's the general lot of it. Most are assembled and just need to be based and painted. A few need assembly. One of my Farseers, a few Warlocks and some of the Exarch's are in the process of being converted, which I will show in the next Eldar post. I will probably do a test paint on some Guardians to work out what Craftworld to pick, and also have that up, but for the moment will continue posting up the other armies/projects current states.

I'm also currently working on a commission for a friend, which has kept me busy.

Blood knights and Khalidia

The first half is mostly done minus attaching the standard to the blood knights, Matt varnish and flock. I also have a Vampire lord on Zombie Dragon to do, which should be fun to do.

Hopefully the next Project post will not be as long. This one took longer due to being more over the place than my other projects, which are more neatly sorted due to being newer. 

Current Projects

Lately I've been sorting through all my current projects, and there are quite a few that have been sitting around, slowly being built up, but of course are still in the boxes and on the sprues. So I guess my goal for this year is to get a majority of them off the sprues, assembled and ready to be painted, or painted. Of course, that's easier said that done. I tend to be quite finicky about assembling models, and try to make them as unique as I can, but hopefully I can restrain that when it comes to models that are meant to be rank and file :P

Most of everything currently reside inside tool boxes and in plastic storage drawers

Some of the Pile

At some stage I need to invest in some proper cases to store models in so they are kept secure and protected form damage once they are painted and such. The tool boxes are nice, but really only are useful for storing unpainted models since they do move around quite a bit.

More stashed away

Currently I have the following projects/armies in the works:


Warhammer 40k:

• Eldar
• Inquisitorial/Ecclesiarchy Project

Warhammer Fantasy:

• High Elves
• Dwarfs

Lord of the Rings/Hobbit SBG

• Basically a mix of both Good and Evil. Really any model/characters I enjoy get added to the collection

Historical:

• Early Imperial Romans
• Thirty Years War (Imperialists and Swedish)
• Sengoku Jidai Samurai
• French Napoleonics
• Flames of War Germans
• a Hand full of Wars of the Roses Plastics from Perry Miniatures

I believe that is everything, plus a few models I have picked up just to paint, which are not part of a project or army. There are many more projects and armies I'd love to sink my teeth into, but I would like to focus on getting these ones further progressed and closer to being "complete" before starting anything new.

In my next few posts I'd like to detail on each project specifically and show its current state and such before I begin working on them. I jump back and forth between projects so will be working on one thing here, another thing there and then a few other things at the same time to help keep things fresh and driven. 

I will do my best to show my progress on things as I go rather than suddenly having a load of things done out of nowhere, but occasionally I may get carried away :P

Work space and other trinkets

I thought I would start with showing how I generally keep my work space.

Recently moving allowed me to get a new desk and reset up my work space, which was really needed since my old one was quite anti productive. While it was a good concept, the design of the desk was quite horrid since it had a top panel which was design to allow for more room, it ended up creating less due to it being to high to put a computer monitor, and then having back openings of the top panel completely closed of so anything needing power was limited in being placed. Basically I had little room to do much other than use my computer, which I needed regularly for my Studies.

So I purchased a large flat top desk from Ikea, which pretty much allows everything to be placed in the one spot, and the house we moved into also has adjustable shelving fixed to the walls, so I was able to raise the shelves higher up and put the desk underneath them to create more storage space.

The general layout of things

I pretty much have things laid out nicely at the moment, but I presume as I go along I may find better ways to keep things organised, and of course new things are always going to end up being added and will need to adjust accordingly. I have a few Back 2 Base-ix desk organizer products which are really great to help save space on your hobby area, so most of my tools and brushes are stored on those. I also have a rack that fits 42 Vallejo sized paint bottles, and may end up getting some that fit Games Workshop pots since mine currently reside the tool box to the left, making it awkward to get to.

Le other angle

I keep two jars for water, one for general colours and paint, the other exclusively for metallics, so I don't get any metallic pigment mixed into other paints.
Then I have the general hoop-bla of cutting mats and paper desk mats so I don't damage/mark the table. I currently use a wet pallet for my paints since in the summer the room get quite warm so the paints tend to dry quickly on a normal pallet. I generally use a floor tile as a pallet since it works nicely and is easy to clean.

But of course, my workspace extends into further areas like some of my desk drawers, which have been dedicated to my Andrea paint sets, blu tack and other material.

The Andrea paint sets fit snugly

And of course the top shelving with more...shelving

Shelfception...

I also have an airbrush and compressor, which hasn't seen a whole lot of use yet. I have done some basecoating and messed around with it slightly, but nothing serious as of yet, but definitely looking forward to delving into that soon. I have the compressor nestled under my desk with the outlet hose coiled around the desk leg so it wouldn't pinch.

Compressed Compressor

Well that's generally how things are kept.

I would like to go into my current projects and such but this post is already quite long and it is quite late, so I will save that for the next one.

New Beginnings, First Blog entry

Hello!

Welcome to my miniature painting/wargaming blog.

Before I delve into anything interesting I would like to start with a introduction and why I am creating such a blog.

My name is Sam, I live in South Australia, and have been in the miniature painting hobby for around 7-8 years roughly. I am only 20 (well nearly 21), so started when I was around 13, give or take a year, so the first few years of my hobby might not really count :P. It was probably around 4-5 years ago when I started actually getting into it a bit more seriously and developing it something I actively did in my life.

I more of a painter and modeler over wargaming as a game. Not to say I don't wargame, its probably more I'm not much of a social person, and don't really know anyone in my locality who shares the same hobby to really game much. I started in the Games Workshop ranges, and as I've gotten older started taking interest in Historicals as well.

But over the last 2 years up till around July last year I had gotten little done in my hobby in terms of getting anything assembled or painted. In 2008 I was diagnosed with Ulcerative colitis/Crohns disease, which at first wasn't overly an issue, but as time went on and I went into High school it started to affect me greatly. I was frequently sick and lost most of my motivation. I still hoarded models and expanded my armies but few items ever left the box/sprue.

However, over last 6 months I  have begun to overcome a lot of my medical issue and get it under control. I haven't been ill directly due to the disease in around a year now, and as my body has repaired itself and my health has gotten up to scratch my motivation has risen closer to what it once was. I also moved mid September last year, and was able to re-set up my work space with a new desk which allowed me to do pretty much all my work from it rather than separate areas for painting and computer use. I am also currently working on some models which a friend of mine commissioned me to do, which has been a great way to light the wargaming fire.

So my reasoning for creating this blog is to help keep myself motivated, to share my hobby and my collections with others, but also I am almost starting a new. Many of my older collections I sold off since I was no long interested in them (My old Space Marines I first started with for example) and many of my current collections under went a lot of stripping of old paint jobs from years back or are still in the box/sprue.

Within the next day or two I would like to post up an overview where I will show you my work space, and go over my armies/projects that I have reving to go. I would also like to get a post for each project specifically and lay out what I have currently and my plans for each one, and since many of my models are on the sprue or in the box I will try to review all those items before I start assembly and painting them.

Well this probably is a good point to end this ramble of a first post :P

So join me as a rekindle the fire, pick up the brush and start off a productive year