I really must apologise this time, this post has been put off for too long. A side effect is of course I have more to blog about!
On Friday and Saturday the 2nd and 3rd of August respectively, I've once again been beavering away on Romans, and on Saturday, I decided to build some Warmachine models so I could lend my unit of Knights Exemplar to Neal at Dice and Decks Gaming Club.
I completed the assembly of my unit of Warmachine Protectorate of Menoth Knights Exemplar, one of which was completely finished and was featured on this blog some time ago, another is mid-way through painting. The unit was successfully lent out and was used in the Midlands Steamroller Warmachine Tournament on Sunday at the Ross-on-Wye scout hut.
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| Fully Assembled Knights Exemplar (at last) |
In the process I built the rest of my Warmachine Protectorate of Menoth Exemplar Cinerators, and I have been painting the unit champion. My colour scheme for my Warmachine Protectorate of Menoth force, as a reminder, since it's been a while since I last posted about Warmachine on this blog; white armour, with crimson cloaks and crimson/red and gold edging, eyes are predominately yellow. I have also restarted doing my Judicator Collossal for my force, which is also shown below.
In other news, I've been convinced, mainly by the quality of the models, to start collecting a few models for the Batman Arkham City Miniatures Game by Knight Miniatures. The models are 35mm tall on average, with various models being slightly above or below this due to their comparative heights. I have ordered the following miniatures to test; Batman - the Dark Knight movie versions, and Ra's Al Ghul and the League of Shadows.
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| Batman - Dark Knight movie version - images from the Knight Miniatures site |
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| Ra's Al Ghul and League of Shadows - movie version |
The rules and some scenarios along with stat cards for some of the models are all available for free, but the rules are badly traslated from the designer's native Spanish. Miniatures vary, a mixture of Batman's, currently 3, a Frank Miller version, a Arkham City video game version, and the Dark Knight movie version. There are a Dark Knight movie Joker and the one from the Arkham City game, along with gang members and Harley Quinn. Penguin and his gang, generic Inmates. Heroes and villains also include; Deathstroke, Green Arrow, Robin, Nightwing, Talia Al Ghul and Catwoman. Others appear all the time and so this list isn't to be considered up to date.
The models arrived for the aforementioned game yesterday, and I have started assembling and painting the League of Shadows and Ra's Al Ghul, the Batman model is a different story however. The company I ordered from has sent me the wrong Batman! They sent me the Arkham City Video Game version, not the Dark Knight Movie version I asked for. So I had to wait until this morning for the correct one to arrive, during which time I have assembled all of the League of Shadows boxed set and started painting Ra's Al Ghul and one ninja.
The models are nice quality and I am quite chuffed with them.The current models I ordered are all going to be an interesting challenge for me to paint and try to do some more techniques than normal for me on. I have already started trying a few of these on Ra's Al Ghul as he is sculpted in the gear he was wearing for the final scenes of Batman Begins; namely black suit, with black shirt, tie and gloves, so it's an interesting challenge to show different shades of black material on the model. Above here is the finished result, where I hope the camera shows the differences.
One of the Ninjas - Lotus on the stat card, is sculpted so as to be jumping whilst throwing a morning star, and so I clipped the tab off the feet, and pinned the foot to a metal pin. When in Hereford I bought a urban basing kit from the Games Workshop there, and some various Vajello and GW paints in various shades of blue and black for the Ninjas and Batman.
I have also started working on my Judicator for my Warmachine Protectorate of Menoth again, with the torso now glued and pinned to the bottom half. The left arm has also been mostly painted, bar a few minor details and has been attached to the torso. With the rocket pods that mount on the shoulders going to be painted seperately before being glued on, otherwise it'll be a pain not to spoil the already painted sections of the Judicator.
As I have for the last two weeks been going back and painting models that I have had lying around on my painting desk, I have also in addition to those mentioned above, been painting more of my 32mm tall Dystopian Legions Kingdom of Brittannia force. At this moment I am working on the HMG team for my second squad, focussing first on the loader. The work so far is detailed in the pictures below.
As I keep adding to this post before I actually add pictures and such, which then leads to it being published, I'll state another piece of Wargaming news, I've ordered the rulebook and one ship for Mongoose Publishings' A Call to Arms: Star Fleet. A game based in the Original Series era of the Star Trek universe. I went to just order a single ship - a Constitution Class Cruiser, the same type as the original USS Enterprise, so I could try and make a ship at a manageable size and then paint it. The rules were ordered just for me to have a nose at to begin with, I'll report my opinions in a future blog post.
I have assembled the Consitution with minimal effort, although a bit of bad casting on the smooth sections at the front of the nacelles involved smoothing and filling in with Green Stuff. A slight issue is that the stand fits into the body of the model at the bottom of the hull, but the hole is not the correct size and so has had to be corrected using a rotary tool before being pinned so it can be removed from the base for painting etc. In terms of painting I have started so that I can attempt to enter it in Dice And Decks Gaming Club's painting competition this coming Friday (30th August). Here's the result so far:
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| Main colour is done, now the details! |
In other important news, Dice and Decks Gaming Club's charity event for this year had to be cancelled due to various circumstances, a great shame, but it is hoping to run more events for next year.
