New year, new name, 2011’s failures, 2012’s future successes ………….

New Year

Hey all so it's a way into 2012 and I figured a new start could be in order. I think it's time I caught onto the trend and put everything I do this year into a single thread, not least because I'm hopelessly disorganised, prone to flights of fancy and distracted from a project at a moments notice. Hopefully this blog will allow me to focus my efforts in a more constructive way.

New Name

My old user used to be "Ceimeifukan" a name which nobody could remember, spell or say and was based on a very poor lizardmen joke years ago. I've decided that I want rid of it and now seemed as good a time as any. I'll still use the account to conclude any open trades I have, but effectively Ceimeifukan is gone and replaced with ChinaShopTaurus. Sorry for any confusion.

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You see a mousetrap, I see free cheese and a f*cking challenge

2011’s Failures

So my main army that I’ve been working on (on and off) for the last little while has been skitarii. I've taken my time and only succeeded in painting a handful of models in almost 3 years and have a woeful TOEG log showing the proof here. I've decided to put these guys aside for a bit as the current Skitarii list is going through a period of change right now and I'd prefer to paint models which I know I'll be able to use later. I've taken a pic of the army as it stands below, but if anybody's interested there's far more detailed in the TOEG log.

The whole sorry bunch


My plasma hammer conversions - proxies for macharius tanks


tech lord + skitarii


my minoris conversions

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You see a mousetrap, I see free cheese and a f*cking challenge

2012’s future successes

So that leaves me needing a new army to paint, and into the breach steps exodus wars and their January sale. I've always admired the guild tanks as designed by Otterman himself and took full advantage of their offer leaving me with a heap of tanks which I could use with the minervan rules found in raiders2.0.

As you've probably gathered I'm quite a slow and lazy painter so I needed a scheme which would look effective but importantly wouldn't kill my enthusiasm to paint, with that in mind I've taken inspiration from and stolen Luca77's colour scheme from his thread here, the only difference I've made is that I've replaced painting on the basecoat with an all in one primer and basecoat spray from army painter. As it happens this scheme also matches those of the Narmenian tank regiment desicribed in the Dan Abnett book “Necropolis” which I’m a big fan off, I’ll work out some of the nice fluffy details such as what regiment and company markings later but for now onto the models and what I’ve done so far

10 Leman Russ equivalents (WIP) – I’m just working on adding the metal to the tracks and grills, and will come up with some company colours as well to make them a bit more interesting. Any suggestions for colour combinations?



My Salamander equivalents (WIP) – These are Kharzari raiders, I’ve replaced the weapons they usually come with, with the sponson weapons from the heavy tanks exodus wars produces. I think this is more in keeping with their scout and recon role.



The scheme has proved as easy to follow as I’d hoped.

1/. Spray Desert Yellow
2/. Wash Gryphone Sepia
3/. Wash Devlan Mud
4/. Highlight Bubonic brown
5/. Engage smug smode

With any luck I’ll be able to stay the course and get an army out to a standard I feel happy with in record time, hopefully I’ll be able to update shortly with completed pics of both of the above.

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You see a mousetrap, I see free cheese and a f*cking challenge

Ceimeifukan is dead! Long live ChinaShopTaurus!
Great looking stuff. The window on that salamander/raider is superb.

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Let us playtest like the Greeks of old... You know the ones I mean

Very nice Indeed !!!!

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Legion 4 "Cry Havoc, and let slip the Dogs of War !" ... "People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf."

those skitarii look great

agree with captPiett, the raider looks fantastic

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May your tankard never be dry and the Dice Gods look favourably upon your endeavours!

Welcome back dude!
I remember those skitari and wouldn't call them a failure at all

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MoK's Painting Blog
Now Showing:
Mok's Modular Modern Messy Guard Army

Another thread to follow

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Vanguard Miniatures

Link, http://vanguardminiatures.co.uk/

Stockist of:

Vanguard Miniatures
BattleGroup Helios
Onslaught Miniatures
Pyrkol Gaming Markers
Gregster's Lab
Microworld Games
Troublemaker Games

Lovely Raiders, the window looks fantastic. Would make good Taurus proxies as well.

/Fredmans

Those raiders are ace, the window looks great.

Steve

Plasmahammers are great

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AFK with real life, still checking PMs

Cheers guys lots of really nice comments there, but as with most of the stuff I do I lifted the windows for those raiders from somebody else.

Spectar ghost has some lovely windows in his TOEG blog here and even applies the scheme I admire to the same models himself.

The other thing I had in mind was Apoc's Raiders from his Chaos squats force, I've wanted to use those models ever since.

In reality my army is more of a gestalt entity comprised of all the things I admire and hope to emulate from others on here.

In regards to actual work I've been doing, the weekends been a bit of a crazy one so I've only just got back to my workstation. All I've managed is putting down the initial chaos black layer to add metalics for things and started trying to piece together a conversion to represent a demolisher.

What did arrive in the post yesterday are some really nice 1/300 scale pintle mounted machine guns which I plan to add onto my tanks to at least give a hint of the sponson weaponry they're missing. L4 was very kind to help me find them and using his encyclopedic knowledge of 6mm he directed me to here.



They're really nice and are perfect for what I need. I tried taking some pictures to show them on some unpainted models but I can't get a decent focussed pitcture, they're that fine and delicate. I'd heartily recomend them and soon as I get some painted up I'll put them up here.

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You see a mousetrap, I see free cheese and a f*cking challenge

and only $.11 each is a great deal.

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SG

Ghost's Paint Blog, where everything goes that isn't something else.

Right, so I mentioned I was easily distracted. Well I managed to stay on course for all of whole days

Note:-I think I can discuss this without breaching forum rules as I gather press moulding components of models in very limited quantity is fine for your own purposes, but if not if somebody could let me know I'll remove this double quicktime.

This all happened because I got my hands on some fantastic stuff called instant mold which is sold by coolminornot.com. It's basically this super awesome completely non stick, completely pliable after dunking in hot water, completely solid(ish) after dunking in cold water gift to modellers. It basically makes press moulds ridiculously easy and they hold an amazing amount of detail.

So to test this out I thought I'd have a go at a conversion which I'd been thinking about for a while of creating a model to represent the Eldar hornet. Although not an exact replica the footprint should be similar and it should be armed the same. The idea was to take a metal scorpion turret, saw out the twin pulsars, smooth it all down and then add in a couple of pulse lasers. I'd always been put off because chopping up the turret of a £12 tank on a whim with no guarantee that what will come out will even look half decent is a bit of a risk, but with instant mould I can create test copies with a press mould and greenstuff

below are pictures of the mould and the cast as it came out of it, the irregular and pitted surface is actually from the original which I think is quite impressive in some ways.





So with my greenstuff test models I was free to file, sand and chop away to my hearts content without worrying about damaging my original. Unfortunately my execution of adding some pulse lasers was a bit slapdash but was the best I could do with my big clumsy fingers and lack of skill. In the future if I was to repeat this I'd probably look for some forumware eldar support weapons I seem to remember as replacements.

I've painted two tests, mostly because I've never painted Saim-Hann or Eldar in general which is pretty self evident and also because greenstuff is a pretty soft substance to create press moulds of this scale (even when cured) and in handling I managed to squidge out some of the detail on the hornet model. The second is just to show what it would look like before I disfigured it with the ear-bud-esque (cue-tip-esque) pulse lasers.





All in all I think there's definite scope for "pressing" on with the metal model should it pique my interest again. What I can say is that instant mold has certainly left me with a “fine impression” of itself.

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You see a mousetrap, I see free cheese and a f*cking challenge