Diesel DM

eStryker: face and hair completed

I’ve been searching for my next Cygnar caster to paint and play. Currently I have pStryker, pCaine and Kara Sloan. It seemed like eStryker, with his in-your-face melee, caster assassinating abilities would make a good change-up from the my current warcasters.  Also the model is remarkably dynamic.  The base however, wasn’t for me.  I cast that aside and have replaced it with an angled rock cliff, as if Stryker were running up and about to jump off it to deliver the kill.

I’ve played him a few times and it’s a nice change of pace, but will take some learning to get used to. Gotta get him up front, but not so far as to get wiped out second turn.

For now the face and hair are done.  The close-up iPhone shot really killed the contrast on the hair, but I really like how it came out.  I typically use standard PP mixtures found in the FoW books, but since the hair is my own creation, here’s the recipe I used:

Base: Ember Orange

Shade: Wash of Bloodstone and Mixing Medium, applied carefully into crevices, avoiding tops as best you can.

Highlight 1: Hit the tops with Ember Orange again to cover any Bloodstone that escaped the shadow areas

Highlight 2: Ember Orange + Cygnus Yellow, paint the tops of the roots and the tips

Highlight 3: Highlight 2 + Menoth White Highlight, paint the same areas as Highlight 2, but smaller to leave some Highlight 2 showing

Highlight 4: Highlight 3 + more Menoth White Highlight, paint very small area of roots and tips

For the Shading and Highlighting I used a Raphael 8404 3/0.  Keep it wet with a good supply of paint to prevent the tip from drying out too quickly, but not so much paint that it floods your shaded areas.

As my first epic caster I’m excited for painting this one and am going to see how good I can get it.  Hopefully this will end up being one of my finer models, but time will tell.

Gobber mechanik, ready to work

While flipping through my IKRPG book my 2-year-old son was very interested in the Gobber  on page 5, so much so that we had to flip through the rest of the book looking for “more Gobbers Daddy, more Gobbers”.  Surprisingly there are a lot of Gobber pictures in the book.  So I decided to paint him up his very own Gobber.  I grabbed one from the Cygnar mechaniks unit and got to work.  I tried to go extra bright with a lot of the colors to make it more appealing to a 2-year-old.  It occurs to me that this is the first miniature I’ve ever painted for someone else.  Not exactly commission work, but it should be well worth it.

I kept the colors similar to those of the IKRPG pg5 Gobber

Carrying, of course, a Cygnar ‘jack arm.

I like the blue goggles, they really pop on the green and brown

Painting and basing are complete, but in the hands of a 2-year-old I’m thinking it’s best to put two coats of gloss varnish and then a matte coat in hopes of it surviving. Once that’s complete I think I’ll get back to eStryker, who is based and primed.

I’m not exactly sure how the Warmachine ruleset for 2-year-olds works, but it seemed very important that you place a die next to each mini.

Gobbers vs Khador

I don’t have high hopes for the unit of Cygnar Field Mechaniks with an Avenger against Winter Guard w/ UA, a max unit of Man-O-War Shocktroopers and a Manhunter all led by Sorscha. For a while my son had all the Gobbers in the woods, each with their own die beside them. I think that was a better plan than rushing out to meet the Khadorans head-on.  We can only hope reinforcements arrive soon for the Cygnarans.

Storm Strider – Crawling across the battlefield

At long last I’ve completed the Storm Strider.  This thing was a ridiculous amount of work.  When I first got it assembled I thought there wasn’t much detail, this thing would be done in no time. WRONG. Painting all those blue glowing circles and the gold rings that surround them takes a significant amount of time, and I didn’t even blend them.  All in all this is one of my least favorite models. I didn’t like assembling it and I didn’t like painting it. I can only hope it plays well on the table.

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