Infinity WiPs - Shinobu Kitsune and Antipode handler

As promised, I've gotten back to infinity painting-wise. There's not much to show, but I'm trying to get better at posting WiPs.
First model is an Antipode Handler for Ariadna. I've still got the Antipodes themselves to paint, but they're next in the queue, as I'm excited to see what they're capable of on the table.
She's pretty fun to paint, this one, good sculpt with a suitable level of detail. 

I've also finally gotten to work on Oniwaban Shinobu Kitsune. I've had her for over a year, she's actually the first JSA model I got, and I've been unable to decide how to paint her.
2 days ago, I got Angels painting book, and he mentions using a simple black-grey-white gradient with glazes to paint, in particular swords, so I'll be trying that on her. The basic idea is to have her entirely black/white except her sword and her face, to draw some attention to them.

Her hair still needs work, but I have to decide whether to go for black or white hair.

A question for the reader, then: What colour for the sword? I'm playing with the thought of using a light green like on the studio model, but somehow that doesn't scream "monofilament" to me. I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Thanks for reading!

Frostgrave and Samurais

Bit of a slow period, sadly. Been busy with job-hunting and such, but I've gotten a bit done at least.
A while back I started a frostgrave warband, and they got finished. Finally. For some reason, the top 5 was good fun to build and paint, while the lower 5 was a real chore. Could easily have done without them, but they're done and now all I need to do is actually have a game.

I'm thinking that the wizard is going to be a witch, but I haven't checked out the specific rules yet. Si/Maelstrom seemed to think that witch would fit the Merlin-type wizard best, so that's what I'm banking on.

I've managed to start another project, what with the frostgrave project being done. With the Lion Rampant force completed, I felt that I should do another historical project, and the Ronin rules for samurai skirmish games were the obvious choice. The armies are small, 5-12 models a side for the ones I've done, the models are readily available from the Perry brothers, and it's always a pleasure working with their sculpts, not to mention that it's an interesting period. Initially, I had planned to try and persuade Mikkel, the friend I've played Lion Rampant with, to pick up a warband for it, but then I accidentally planned out 3 armies and wound up buying them myself.

The overarching plan is to paint 3 small armies and a bit of terrain for a weekend in November, where three of us can meet up and get a game or three in.
I'll post up the background and my plans later in a dedicated post, but for now, here's the tester and some initial terrain, entirely inspired by the houses done by Juxt over on Warseer:

Expect more of this, as the deadline grows closer and I panic over all the stuff I need to get done.

I've finally gotten back to infinity again painting-wise, but no pictures on that front yet.

Attack of the blue space mayans

Got the Kukulkani done!
 

I've gotten my camera set up, so I've indulged myself a bit with the pictures. I'm quite happy with them too, part of the reason I started them was to see what I could do paint-wise without spending too much time on them. Trying to find the optimum balance between quality and speed for a given unit size, sorta.
I think I did ok, especially with the NMM. The gold could easily do with more work, but it's pretty good considering the time I spent on it, even if I do say so myself. I realise I haven't written much about the background, so here's a wall of text before the rest of the pics:

Background-wise they're Mayans, who got picked up from earth when a passing alien civilisation realised they worshipped beings much like them. Hence the name Kukulkani, Kukulkan being the Mayan name of the feathered snake-god Quezalcoatl. These aliens apparently saw some use in having a slave-warrior race that considered them to be actual gods (I imagine there's some hefty benefits to morale from that) so they picked these guys up and since then they've been given some pretty insane modifications.

The planet the game takes place on has a race of robots using a power source that is looted/copied from the one their masters use, and thus is considered holy.
Of course, they react to this with all the grace and diplomatic ability that one would expect, and descend on the planet to brutally sacrifice absolutely everyone they find. The gods aren't picky, after all. 

Model-wise, I'm very impressed with the sculpts - they're finely detailed and have a lot of character, IMHO. I'm NOT very impressed with the fit and organisation of the parts, however. When putting them together, I would have appreciated some sort of assembly guide or even just a set of pictures of the actual models showing both front and rear to work from. Instead, it was just bits in bags and the picture of the models on the front of the box was all I had to go on. The models aren't even entirely the same - the leader's cape (which is 4 pieces - cape, 2 pieces of fur and the clasp) aren't the same that's modelled on the box, and it took a while to figure it out.

I mean, none of this is impossible, but it'd be a small thing to pack each model in its own little bag and it'd have save a fair amount of time.
Sour grapes over - they're nice models, it's just a shame with a minor but annoying mistake like that.

A few closeups:

These guys are called harvesters. From what I understand, they're meant to run around, be difficult to hit thanks to some sort of evasion-rule, and use a non-lethal attack to take down the enemy. Then the big guy can get a permanent stat boost when he scoots in and kills them while they're lying down.

These chaps are warriors. They have the same non-lethal attack the guys above have, and some other stuff that I think makes them better in CC.

Finally, the big lad. Supreme War-captain, he's called. Whenever he kills someone, he gains a stat boost, so by the end of the game he should be very, very unpleasant to be near I think.

I've got my first game tomorrow, so there might be a post then with some thoughts on the game.

And, as always, comments and thoughts are much appreciated.

Back to Infinity, plus some space mayans

Alright, I got the Domaru done just in time for the monthly paint challenge over on the infinity forums. Well pleased with him too:

This leaves me just 8 models short of completing the JSA I've got. 5 Keisotsu Butai in a link team, a Kempeitai, an Oniwaban and Oniwaban Shinobu Kitsune.
I'm getting better with loaded brush blending too, I think the rest of the JSA is going to be easier to do with this technique. White is heaps easier, I find.

I've been pulled into a small Dark Age force as well, as I said last time, and the first one's gotten a basic paintjob now:

Still got 2 warriors and the captain to go, but they should be done soonish.
They're fun to paint, I'll give them that, but ye gods the assembly... Probably the fiddliest models I've worked with so far.

Lastly, the club I go to is running a frostgrave campaign, so I've gotten on board with that too, with this being the start of a little warband:

And a few guys in WiP:

And that's what I've gotten done lately. Comments and criticism welcome as always!

A finished project? Surely not...

Yes, the title is correct - I have actually finished a project!
I think the last time I could say that was in.. 2010 or something, when I managed to complete a bunch of Russians for SOTR.
It is, of course, the Lion Rampant army, and completed is a bit of a misnomer as they still need some varnish and some grass on the bases, but that's going to have to wait until I find my spray varnish. I can't be bothered brush-varnishing these, there's far too many of them.

List-wise, it's 6 foot knights, 6 mounted serjeants, 12 foot serjeants with polearms, 12 foot serjeants with pikes, 12 crossbowmen and a unit of 6 bidowers, skirmishing archers. They represent the forces of Graf Wihelm, a minor noble of a German family, trying to stop the nefarious Danes under my friend Mikkel from burning and looting everything in the Brandenburg region. It's a bit much for my little photo-tent to handle, so this is going to be a bit of a photo-dump. 

These guys have been my command group for the first few battles we've had, as the chap on the left waving his sword about seemed like a good commander. I've since realised that it'd be more realistic if they more or less had the same colours throughout the unit, as a group of this size would apparently be from the same house, or the retinue of a knight or noble wearing his colours. My opponent, Mikkel, is a historian, and I'm inclined to believe more or less anything he says on the matter.
Of course, the logical solution is to expand the army with more units.

The mounted serjeants got split up, they were too big for a single pic. In-game, they function as the personal guard of my commander, Graf Wilhelm. He's the fellow in the knightly armour with the blue lance, and the other blue lance is his squire. Neither are keen to be mistaken for the commoners they lead, that simply wouldn't do. 

 
These are the foot serjeants with polearms. I'm actually on the fence about them, as they've been quite ineffective in game. Their polearms give them 4+ in attack value instead of 5+, but they lose schiltron which is very useful for static defense, and it costs 2 points. Maybe I need to use them differently.
In-game, they're the household troops of graf Wilhelm, hence the more regimented colours and better equipment.

These are also foot serjeants, but I'm thinking I'll field them as foot yeomen instead - they're visibly poorer equipped compared to the guys above and are posed statically, so it'd make sense for them to be town militia I think.

I'd been looking forward to fielding these when I got them done! They're meant to be Italian mercenaries, lead by the disgraced nobleman Luigi, and sadly they've been very mercenary-ish on the field - very reluctant to fight, and they spent most of the last game we had in a discussion about their pay before they finally passed an activation towards the end of the game. 

Lastly, the bidowers. Obviously, they're the old, old Perry Warhammer sculpts, but they actually fit in nicely I think, since the rest of the army is Perry sculpts too barring some of the crossbowmen. They're superfluous in the list too, so they're simply there for a bit of variety. 

But yeah, that's an army completed. Feels strange... 

Not to worry, there's plenty to do still. I've started a Domaru for the JSA, I think my white is improving a bit:

Aaaaand I've been nagged by a friend to start a Dark Age warband, so here's some Kukulkani:

They're getting a quick and dirty paintjob tho. Nothing fancy.

Comments and your thoughts are most welcome as always!

Plodding along

Things are moving slowly here, but they're moving at least.

The Lion Rampant army is slowly getting there, but I'm afraid it's quite difficult to grab pics of large units so that the models are actually visible. You'll have to make do with some rather smaller pics until I get a hold of Mikkel soonish and get everything set up for a battle.

I've almost got the crossbowmen painted as well, meaning that I've only got a single 12-man unit of foot sergeants with polearms left!
This means I'm close to being actually done with an army, which is pretty unusual for me. I'm still trying to come to terms with it really, but at least there's plenty more to work on.

The skaven is slowly coming along too, I've got 3 in the alcohol to get rid of some paint on them, and I'm playing about with a warlord for them. Recently, I saw the Painting Budda painting videos they did with the AoS starter, and the loaded brush technique they've used looked very interesting. Luckily I had a Skaven warlord lying about that I was going to paint anyway, and he makes a decent testing model.

Results aren't perfect and while I think he's looking decent there's a lot of work in mastering that technique. Nonetheless, I think there's a lot of promise in it, when I get it to work it works beautifully and gives a nice smooth blend with very little effort.

Next update should include a lot of crossbowmen and hopefully an infinity model or two. I miss working on sci-fi. 

Slow and steady

Getting closer to that complete-some-projects goal!
Lately, I've gotten the mounted serjeants for the Lion Rampant force completed. They couldn't fit in my lightbox all 6 at a time, so 2 pictures it is:

In-game, these are going to be a group of young sons of well-off families from a hansestadt, who nonetheless aren't noble. As far as I can tell, it was fairly usual for rich families to do this. I assume it's been good networking, the LinkedIn of the medieval era. That's why the obviously noble commander is riding with them: Clearly, they aren't as bad as the usual rabble (they have money, after all), but they might still need some stiffening from a proper, noble, commander. He's taken his squire with him, they're the ones with blue lances.

I usually loathe painting cavalry models, so it's a testament to the Perry brothers sculpting that these were actually decently fun to paint. Not something I'm looking forward to doing again, but not as bad as cavalry usually is. Dunno what it is about cav, but it's not my thing.

Also gotten started on the tiny skaven warband. It's basically going to be 10 stormvermin and a character in the lead, unless I fall into the trap of scope-creep.

I might tweak the red a bit, it's slightly flat I think.

And finally, I got some infinity done - the female wildcat. The guy with the spitfire snuck into the shot as well:

Sadly, I can't get the link team completed with the last Wildcat. The model I got might have a mismatched arm, and I'm going to wait until I get hold of the Corregidor box to see if there's something I can do about it.

Thanks for reading!