Monday, 9 April 2012

Liquid Green Stuff and the New Citadel Paints

Today, as a birthday present from my best beloved, I got some of the new Citadel paints and some Liquid Green Stuff.

New Paints 
I made sure to get a few different types to get the best impression of the new range as I could. I didn't get any glazes as I don't have any projects that require them at the moment.

Base
Pretty much the Foundation paints they released a couple of years ago but with a much bigger range of colours available. Lots of pigment and can stand being thinned down a lot before you start losing coverage.

Shade
A revamp of the previous Washes, again with a greater variety of colours. Don't need too much thinning unlike some of the heavier washes and inks and pool well in the recesses without making them too dark.

Layer
This is the straight up replacement for the Citadel Colour range, some of which has been in service for around 25 years. Well-formulated and give good clean coverage.

Dry
Drybrushing paint! It's like a sort of pigment sludge; very thick and you don't need much to load a drybrush. Takes a lot of wastage out of drybrushing as it removes the requirement to get as much paint on a brush as possible and then wipe most of it away.

Overall
The new range seems like much more of a deliberate attempt at creating a coherent set of paints for use with Citadel Miniatures, where there's always a suitable lighter or darker colour to use during the painting process rather than having to bugger about mixing Skull White into whatever colour and never getting it to look the same twice. As much as I liked the 'old' paints, some of them were absolutely dire and the range did mostly feel like an exercise in giving acrylic paints exciting names rather than producing a minimum-fuss-maximum-results set of products.

Skeletons
To test the new paints vs. the older ones I painted up a couple of skeleton spearmen, both using colours and techniques prescribed by Games Workshop for getting a fast and decent-looking finish.

Old Paints
Skeleton - Old Paints
Bone: base coat of Deneb Stone, wash of Ogryn Flesh, drybrush of Bleached Bone & Skull White.
Spearhead: base coat of Tin Bitz, dry brush of Dwarf Bronze, edged with Burnished Gold.

New Paints
Skeleton - New Paints
Bone: base coat of Zandri Dust, wash of Seraphim Sepia, drybrush of Terminatus Stone.
Spearhead: base coat of Screaming Bell, wash of Reikland Fleshshade, layer of Hashut Copper, drybrush of  Golden Griffon.



Skeletons
As you can see the skeleton painted with the new paints is a lot more natural-looking and less grey, with a much smoother paint coverage. This is the first time in 20 years of doing this that I have been able to paint a bone colour I am ompletely satisfied with.

Liquid Green Stuff
This really is rather special. It's a non-toxic, water soluble version of the Green Stuff epoxy putty used by modellers the world over. It is designed to deal with all the cracks and gaps that are near inevitable when putting together a multi-part model kit, and it does its job very well. Just look at the before and after shots of this Ork Mekaniak that I had managed to put together with a big gap in the shoulder.

Mekaniak - Before

Untitled

The simple conclusion here is that I really like the new range of paints as over the next 12 months or so will be gradually replacing all the paints I currently own with new ones.

Sunday, 8 April 2012

Western Erithas

So... due to spending an awful lot of time lately running a Pathfinder campaign I am going to include more  RPG-related stuff in this blog. The first such post is this map what I made using Campaign Cartographer 3 of the area the campaign is so far operating in.


Western Erithas

I'm quite pleased with this, really.

Monday, 6 February 2012

Cursed Realms of the Winterdemons...

Just a quick post about the plans for my Vampire Counts army. I'm going for a winter theme, with off-white/cream and blue-grey being the main colours.

This choice of theme and colour scheme is for three reasons:
  1. Off-white and blue-grey are colours I know I can paint well and paint quickly.
  2. Everybody does 'goth' undead with their blacks and purples and reds and stuff. They probably write poetry about it too and give their characters mysterious and sexy sounding names.
  3. Winter is trve and kvlt and stuff. And is just my favourite season in general. Also, it's actually winter right now.
I'm most of the way through basecoating my Grave Guard and have some Cairn Wraiths to start on too. I'm also going to use the Konrad von Carstein model as my general (as I already have it, though I'm tempted to order the Sartosan Vampire instead), except he'll be a regular vampire and will have enamelled blue-white armour. Will I actually go through with all this and finally end up with a finished army? Only time will tell.

Tuesday, 24 January 2012

Cold, Cold Heart

And here is a stage-by-stage pictoral of my Tomb Banshee, whom I have named Miss Havisham Tomb Banshee 1 Tomb Banshee 2 Tomb Banshee 3 Tomb Banshee 4 Tomb Banshee Finished

Monday, 23 January 2012

Hello!

It's been a while. Following my last post I haven't touched any miniatures at all save for tidying them up.

But this evening I am painting! Hurrah! One of the older metal Tomb Banshees to be precise. Pics will follow when it's done. :)


Sunday, 19 June 2011

Great Big Robots!

So... after playing a couple of games today at the new local game store (Game Craft) I'm officially a Warmachine convert. I had a couple of battlegroups and the Mk. I rules already but had never played because I didn't know anyone locally who did... but now there's a shop, that sells Warmachine stuff, and is intending to have regular games.

Win, pretty much.

I'm gonna carry on with the GW stuff I already have, but it's not likely that I'll be buying anything new for a loooong while. Warmachine FTW!

Tuesday, 31 May 2011

Citadel Finecast, again...

Last week I emailled GW regarding their decision to put the prices up at the same time as releasing Citadel Finecast.

This is the response I got:

It is Games Workshop’s policy from time to time to review our entire range to ensure they are appropriately priced, which sometimes means certain items within our product range will incur a price increase. We feel the price of Citadel Finecast fairly reflects the increased quality of these models over there metal counterparts just take a look at this month’s White Dwarf or pop into your local Games Workshop store to see for yourself.

There you have it, folks... GW's answer to the Finecast range costing more to buy is basically "they are better"! I've asked them to clarify whether the production, packaging and distribution for Finecast figures costs significantly more than the metal versions... if the answer is equally bullshit (or they do not answer at all) I guess that'll be the end of me buying new GW products.