Avatars of War - Dwarf Berserker Finished

Now I'm normally not a dwarf lover.  I generally dislike all elves and dwarves, but the Avatars of War dwarves I do like.  They are very nice looking miniatures, and heavily muscled. 

I started painting this miniature a couple of years ago.  I experimented greatly with the fleshtones, actually using a purple paint wash for everything in the shadows. 

The purple definitely added a nice cool tone in the shadows of the miniature.

In hindsight, I should have used a different color for the cloth, too close to the goblin.

I think the red hair worked out pretty good.  The bronze metallics got a good weathering, that is about 5 shades of different colors highlighted with a gold.

The eyes are painted, but they are so deeply set in the head.

I like how the goblin head came out.  Love the green.  There you have it.  Entered it in the Adepticon Paint contest, but I knew that if everyone showed up it would not even come close to placing.

My Adepticon Report....

Adepticon 2012 has come and gone.  I had successes, failures, and a great time.  I mad the trek down to Lombard, IL crossing the Cheese curtain that divides Wisconsin from Illinois, picture the great wall, but made out of cheese.  You can always tell you cross the border into Illinois by the horrible condition of the roads, the lack of proper road signs and directions, and the amount of freaking toll booths that I swear have tolls that double in cost every year. 

Started out Friday afternoon by entering the War Ancients Battles big crusade game.  This was great fun, a game hosted by RichN, of the Chicago Terrain Factory, his blog can be found linked at the following:  Chicago Terrain Factory  .  RichN was the organizer of all of the WAB events at Adepticon and filled in on a couple of seminars also I believe, great job Rich, I appreciate your efforts.  Well on to the game, I did not get all of my AoA crusaders done so I borrowed my buddy Jerrod's Normans to fill out my roster.  I found out that Jerrod and Lil' Matt (who's not so Lil'), two of my local gaming buddies, got screwed out of playing the Malifaux tourney that some great organizer decided to change the start time by email on, so they showed up an hour late and did not get to play.  So I spoke with Rich and we added them to our Crusades side since Rich had an extra 1500 pts and Jerrod could play his own Norman contingent.  The good guys team consisted of myself, Jerrod, Lil Matt, Merle, and Nostromo on the WAB forums.  The bad guys team was Mr. Bruins, RichN, Pat aka SoCalWarhammer, Mike Butcher who will be having coverage of the event at his blog at the following link:  The Butcher's Bill .
The Badguys won by a point, probably because Jerrod and I broke Butcher's infantry about a turn too late.  Next time.

Saturday was Warhammer Ancients Singles tourney.  Also a great time.  Prior to the games commencing I got see Mr. Battle Road Games himself, which you can read his Adepticon post at the following blog:  http://akersminis.blogspot.com/ Good to catch up with Mr. Akers, and he was kind enough to present me with a gift, namely the casting of some heads that his commissioned from the Bugman, Navarro found at the following blog:  The Bugman Great looking stuff Navarro did, I believe you can find this on sale the Battle Road website.  So matchups came down from RichN and I drew the ringer in Round #1, otherwise known as Xenite over at the Little Green Monster's and following blog: http://xenite.wordpress.com/  He was playing an Arab army, and I managed to pull out the win with my Romans.  Game 2 was against a veteran in SoCalWarhammer himself and his Greeks.  Now Pat is a very good player with a lot of gaming knowledge, which is evident at his blog:  http://nwhistoricalwargames.wordpress.com/ and he is also the man that does the Historical's Podcast:  http://historicalwargames.org/  This was a tough game and I tried to put up a fight, but quite frankly I was out classed.  So 1-1 and went into the third game with Romans versus Viking Shieldwall with the general being Matt from Appleton, WI.  Now this was sort of rematch of game 3 at our La Crosse WAB Tourney, and the outcome was the same, I lost.  In the end even at 1-3 I was like third from the bottom.  Ouch.  But hey Rich made sure everyone went home with a small prize, so I got another Roman figure to add to my collection.

Sunday was Warhammer Ancients Team tourney.  Well here's the trophy plaque:

Yes that is right, I'm one half of the Grumpy Old Coots team that took home the prize.  I and my crusader knightes were teamed with the afforementioned Mike Butcher and his Saxon Shieldwall.  And as the prize I got even more romans.  More on that later.

Oh and just for kicks I entered the Crystal Brush Painting Competition.  My entries were not in a stacked Fantasy and 40k Singles categories.  No awards there, just not good enough.  Not even close.

Oh and if you go to this event and are looking for good places to eat relatively close by, you need to go to the Patio and catch a game with your food.  Great place to eat.

So there you have it.  Sorry no pics, but checkout all of the blog links I posted up, as they will have some and besides they are great blogs, that I recommend.

Back From Adepticon

Just got back from a long drive home from Adepticon.  Had another great time at the best War Gaming convention in America.  Played WAB all weekend and even brought back a trophy.

More on all the events soon.

Conquest Games Converted Crusaders ... Last unit for Adepticon

Got back home a bit late, spent the weekend with further preparations for racing Tuesday, but the last unit that I have done for Adepticon is a fairly big unit of Conquest Games Normans that I converted up.  I've shown quite a few of the miniatures thus far, below is the entire unit.

I'm pretty happy with these guys.  I think they turned out nicely.  I'm probably going to do another unit of them and hopefully some more infantry in the future.

Their horses have really grown on me. 

I blended the movement tray in with the others and with the bases of the minis.

So that is it for the Adepticon Crusader preparations.  I'll be playing in the Big Crusades Game on Friday with these guys, I'll also be playing with my Roman army on Saturday, and teamed with Mike Butcher on Sunday's WAB Team tourney, so if you are in the area swing by and say hi. 

So now the rest of the week, I'm somewhat freed up.  So with that in mind I'm going to finish up two minis an Avatars of War Dwarf and a 40k Ork.  Then I'll see if I can get a Viking all done for the Adepticon Paint Contest.  I don't really expect to win anything, but you cannot win if you do not enter.  Tuesday night is open track night, and I'm excited and nervous all at once, that competition bug is calling and there is a need for speed.

The Conquest Crusaders grow

Its spring and the Crusade grows.  The following are more of my Conquest games miniatures, mostly converted.

Pic above of the shield.  Below another of the conveted Knights.  The one thing I'm noticing a bit painting the Conquest Minis is that they are easy to paint.  There is one small flaw that keeps showing up in the minatures and thats the mail sleeves are lacking a bit in depth on the molds.

Below you can see more of the horse conversion.  I also added the surcoat on this rider.

Below is the other red one, set more as a sergeant and not a knight.

I like this pose, quite cool looking for the right flank of the formation.  I'm sort of avoiding adding a bunch of crosses.

This is an interesting one.  Conquest Games makes these as Normans, and in their time period they were not known to couch their lances, used them essentially as spears.  This one I used a spear arm from my Gripping Beast's plastics and it sort of looks like a couched lance.

That's it for now, hopefully the next time you see these it will be as a full unit.

Old Stuff Wednesday - April ... Wargor #3

In the previous Old Stuff Wednesdays we saw two of my other Khorne marked Wargors.  This one came a couple years later, Wargor #3, the great weapon beastman character.  I really liked this miniature, so I did not really change it up much.

I did a bit more cloth on this backside of the model with greenstuff.  My style of painting had evolved so much from when I first did a whole lot of pieces in this army.  My style got a bit more sharp and controlled.

And this is one of those miniatures that just sort of paints itself.

So there you have it, another piece from my Khorne Beastmen.