Diesel DM

Nog challenged me for the #donateorpaint challenge and I managed to finish up Jakes in under 3 days:

Allison Jakes – Front

I’m happy to have completed it in time with a decent paint job.  While I was initially pretty excited to paint this one, overall I found the model to be too busy.  Too many buckles and belts and pads and it all felt detrimental to painting the model.

Allison Jakes – Side

To alleviate the bizarre downhill pose she came with I ended up sculpting a little hill on the base for her right foot to sit on in order to make her not be staring into the ground.  With the extra green stuff I made the little gray boulder in front of her.

Allison Jakes – Back

Before and After: from bare metal to border legion

It was a long month and I put in a lot of hours and late nights, but I managed to pull off a victory.  I know have a fully painted 35-pt 5th Border Legion army.  Check out Nog’s Painting Cave for a full story on how everyone did.

My painting speed definitely increased as I progressed through this challenge.  The last model completed, the Spriggan, took very little time but still came out look good and matching the rest of the army.  How this speed increase will apply to my regular painting remains to be seen, but hopefully it has a positive impact allowing me to get more painted models to the table.  I have quite the Cygnar backlog of baremetal minis, so I hope to make a serious dent in that.  Once you play a few fully painted games it gets more and more irritating to place unpainted models on the field.  Especially alongside the Stormwall that I painted up, it’s such a focal point that looks so good, bare metal really jumps out next to it.

The painting challenge was a lot of fun and I’m glad I participated.  It will probably be some time before I recuperate enough to take up another such challenge, but the results of this one speak for themselves.  It will be good to try out this crazy force on the table.

For now it’s back to Cygnar, I’ve got some metals laid down on a Sentinel for Kara Sloan’s army.  I’ve only played one game with him, expecting him to take some Shield Guard damage, but instead he took out quite a swath of Risen, so I’d like to keep trying him out in her (and eventually Caine’s) army.  But it needs to be painted!  After that I need to get the Stormsmith’s painted up for use with the Stormwall.

The Butcher’s pent up rage erupted in an almost palpable wave of heat. The Doom Reavers let loose an eery howl as their fell blades began to cut faster and deeper. They moved through the last of the ‘jacks to meet the knights head on, cutting through them to the last. The Savage moved into the next group of bane knights, swinging with abandon as they dropped around him. (more…)

Lola was constantly on the move, cutting back and forth, taking out great swaths of thralls, ‘jacks and anything else that got in the way of the great axe. The destruction put forth by the Butcher’s battlegroup was limited only by how fast they could swing their weapons and fists, but the numbers were beginning to shift against them. Orsus’ grip on his sanity was starting to loosen as the rage swept over him. His arcane abilities had been waxing and waning during the early battle, but as we began to wade through the undead, his rage brought him arcane clarity. His ‘jacks were feeding off his rage, hitting more surely and moving more quickly. Still it wasn’t enough to stem the tide. (more…)