Guild Ball: Navigator's Guild painted

I painted my Navigators over Easter. I chose to paint them all as an African guild ball team, complete with clothes inspired by various African clothing. I usually don't do a lot of freehand, so it was fun with a new challenge. The non-freehand parts I kept fairly plain, to increase the contrast.

Skin color

Haven't really painted much black skin before, so I tried this.

Basecoat: P3 Umbral Umber
Shade: GW Nuln Oil wash
Highlight: P3 Umbral Umber + P3 Jack Bone

Navigators Guild

Fathom got a geometrical pattern in Pan-African colors. She was the first of the Navigators miniatures I painted, and inspired me to do the rest to match!

Fathom

Fathom

Ebb got a Kente inspired pattern on his trousers. Inspired by an image I found here.

Ebb

Ebb

Nkyimkyim - Zigzag, Life is not a straight path

Azimuth has a Mali mudcloth inspired pattern on his armor. Trousers are plain green for contrast.

Azimuth

Azimuth

Pattern I used for inspiration here: https://no.pinterest.com/pin/660903314047287972/

I wanted to do a Dashiki shirt for Windfinder, but it had so much structure that I could not find a way to do it. I decided to use that pattern as an inspiration for her pants, and left the shirt white with some gold trim.

Windfinder

Windfinder

Horizon got a Kente inspired shirt. There are so many amazing Kente patterns.

Horizon

Horizon

Inspiration!

Albatross wings are dark on top and white beneath, for camouflage. You learn something new every day!

Wander

Guild Ball: The Farmer's Guild is painted!

Thresher and friends are ready for action! :D

Guild Ball: The Fishermen's Guild is fully painted!

I got the Fishermen's Guild done! I went for a fairly uniform palette with this guild. The blue color is the lovely P3 Arcane Blue, and I also repeated P3 Sunburst Yellow on most of the models.

Tentacles was fun to paint. I painted the whole model in a bright purple, then blended it more bluish on the head, and more pinkish towards the tentacle tips.

I did some simple freehand. I gave Jac a yellow and green checkerboard pattern on his pants. How to do it? Draw in the checkerboard just as thin lines, then fill in the pattern.

Veteran Siren got pink and white vertical bands on her tights. Shopping at the goth store, no doubt!

Hag's sickly skin and hair was done by painting GW green shade over the normal base colors.

Guild Ball: Fishermen "The Changing Tide" Box Fully Painted!

My fourth Guild Ball team is ready to play!

From the left: Siren, Salt, Greyscales, Shark, Angel, and Kraken.

I went for a pretty classic paint scheme here, I think. P3 Arcane Blue base and light grey clothing, with some colorful details in yellow, green, red or pink on the models for some contrast. All the shading is various GW shades, with highlights picked out afterwards.

I am particularly happy with what I did with Kraken's and Greyscale's fish netting. I painted it in the color of whatever would be beneath the netting, added shade, and then carefully drybrushed the netting light grey. It gives a subtle illusion that the netting has transparent holes.

Guild Ball: Brewers Team Fully Painted!

My Guild Ball Brewers, fully painted, plus Union members Hemlock and Harry "The Hat" Hallahan!

I went for a bright, high contrast color scheme where I repeated the "tartan" (which I simply painted a bright orange-yellow instead of as a tartan pattern) on every model, and used a palette of various browns for most of the belts, gloves, boots and other details. For contrast and variety, I gave each model a unique piece of clothing, like the checkerboard pants on Mash and PintPot, the bright blue pants on Tapper, or the striped pants on Stave. I hope this makes them look like a cohesive team, but with each model also looking like an individual player.

Pretty much all of the painting is bright base colors, a bunch of different GW magic washes, and then picking out highlights and detail. Feel free to ask if you want to know about any particular colors.

I find writing names on the rim of the base a bit ugly, so I added a green stuff plate which I built into the base, with the name of the character. I know from WARMACHINE how confusing it can be with 100+ different models in the game. Hopefully this will make it easier for beginners!

I don't like my bases to take focus away from the miniatures, and I also find basing mind-numbingly boring, so they are quite simple - GW Astrogranite smeared on, with a light grey drybrush, and a few pieces of GW grass tufts. The plan was to make something that will look good, and fairly neutral, on both street and grass mats.

Next project: The Union. Unless Octoberfest Esters should happen to arrive by tomorrow...

Guild Ball: Hemlocke, painted!

After painting Harry "The Hat" Hallahan, I moved on to Hemlocke. She has quite a list of plays, both defensive, by removing negative conditions, and offensive, by blinding players and dealing damage. I think she might be a good toolbox to add to my roster.

I am happy with the cape color. It's P3 Arcane Blue shaded with GW Drakenhof Nightshade. I made slightly irregular highlights by drawing small diagonal, crossing lines in Arcane Blue + White. The hem is P3 Beate Purple shaded with GW Druchii Violet, and highlight is Purple + Pink.

The plants are P3 Wurm Green with GW Shade and highlights picked out with Wurm Green + White.

For contrast with all the cold colors, I have her red pants and bright yellow hair.

As you can see above, each color is pretty straightforward! Base color, GW magic, pick out the highlights.

Front

Back

Guild Ball: "The Hat", painted!

My latest paint job is the Union player Harry "The Hat" Hallahan, the hat with the most awe-inspiring man in Guild Ball. If the hat does not get the job done, the man also has a huge wrench and Molotov cocktails. Such an great model, he really looks like he means business!

Not sure if he is good with the Brewers, but I will soon find out!

Front

Back

Guild Ball: The Farmer's Guild, Painted!

I am done painting my second team - the Farmer's Guild "The Honest Land" starter box. The players are Windle, Bushel, Harrow, Peck, Grange and Jackstraw, also there is a pumpkin ball and the goalpost.

I wanted to paint them as a team, but also to have some fun with the color palette. I prefer a high contrast scheme to make it look good at a distance. I chose to repeat several browns and the bright green on every model. I also wanted to have some unique colors for each model to spice it up a bit.

Windle got a pink shirt (the big softie!), Bushel a PP Arcane Blue shirt, Harrow a deep PP Skorne Red Base coat, Jackstraw a PP Cygnar Blue Base shirt, and Captain Grange just got the general color palette.

All of the models got base coated. Then I used a bunch of different Citadel washes, and picked out the highlights. The bases are quite simple, just covered in Citadel Astrogranite, a type of paint with grains mixed in. It is smeared about with tools instead of a brush.

I also added a nameplate (just a bit of green stuff) to make the models easy to identify.

Guild Ball: That brief moment of hesitation before googling for "Cock Image"

This is an eternal problem for miniature painters. Sometimes we need reference pictures. Sometimes those reference pictures can be things that could be confused for other things.

My friend Leif once was going to paint some fairly detailed cavalry pieces, and had to at one point google for a images of horses' private parts. Today, I also had to find a picture of a cock.

Fortunately, Google knows all, including what kind of cocks I prefer.

Phew.

Peck and his harem of hens.

Cocky!

And, with that, good night! I'll be here all week, folks.

Guild Ball (#1): Demo Game

I have had a fairly long break from Warmachine. I don't really have the motivation to play it right now, but I miss painting, and I have been hearing about Guild Ball for a while. Basically the game is Blood Bowl, but with Warmachine rules and alternating activations. Also, it does not require you to paint hundreds of miniatures if you want to keep up with the meta. 6 models in a starter, and I think a full roster is 10 or 12 models.

I asked Alexander for a demo game, and he happily obliged.

The Guilds Face Off

I got to try Brewers, and he had Farmers. Brewers seemed pretty straight forward to play, solid and fairly punchy. Farmers seemed a lot trickier.

I scored a goal and beat up four of his players, and he scored once and beat up one of mine, for a score of 12-6 to me. He also had a great goal attempt with the teleporting scarecrow dude, where he needed one single 3+ on 2 dice.

'

Not  3+ on at least one die.

This was quite fun. Definitely not a casual game, but not nearly as hardcore as Warmachine.

So, I checked the Norwegian Guild Ball Facebook groups and lo and behold, another player in Oslo had an extra set of plastic Brewers from the new Kick Off set. Exactly what I wanted!

I went down today and bought them from him. Time to break out the paint bottles!

Tapper and Scum

I decided to go for a different style than I usually paint. I have painted maybe 250 Warmachine models using pretty much the same technique all the way. This is a good chance to try something new!

The characters and setting is quite cartoony. I therefore wanted to try a high-contrast scheme, with less layering and blending, going for a more "painted" look. I decided to use the amazing washes from Game Workshop instead of hand painting all the shadows. After base coat and washes I went back and added just 1 or 2 layers of strong zenithal highlight, without doing any blending.

These are the two first ones, Tapper (captain) and Scum (mascot). I think they turned out fine!

That feeling of confusion...

...when you lick your painting brush after washing it, and it suddenly tastes of coffee...

Hot Coffee Haley Prime

Basecoating done, and started work on the purple cloth highlights.

Random Stuff that Happens at 2D6

I painted new and improved front arcs on 90 models.

That is 4 hours of painting front arcs

Meanwhile, a new WARMACHINE player plays his third game and it's 50 points Lylyth3 vs Caine2. As Jarle says: "Vi leker ikke WARMACHINE".

The assassination run is real!

Painting: Lynus and Edrea

Lynus and Edrea are painted!

Lynus had a broken sword grip, so I had to model a new one for him.

These sure are going to be handy with Caine2!

Lynus Wesselbaum and Edrea Lloryrr

Painting: Stormwall

I was looking through my unpainted models in order to sell off stuff that I was unlikely to use in the near future. Guess who I found at the bottom of a drawer? I could not even remember buying this dude.

Every time I say I do not play with a Stormwall or Storm Lances, Jarle looks at me sadly. I am pretty sure he is thinking about whether I have brain damage and if it's best to get help, run away, or just stay really really quiet.

Well, I better get this dude done before they stage an intervention.

Step 1: Primer.

Basecoat from Army Painter. Fairly expensive but this stuff is great.

Step 2: Basecoat

First, I threw all my GW and PP metallics in the garbage and bought a set of new ones from Army Painter. I lie, I always recycle.

I am keeping the color scheme from the rest of the army. Since the model is so large I am alternating the colors of the different sections more than I do for smaller models.

• Blue body: PP Cygnar Blue Base
• Purple body: PP  Non-Covering Purple, I Must Buy A New One
• Grey body: PP Ironhull Grey
• Steel is AP bluegrey base first and then AP Gunmetal
• Bronze is PP Brown mixed 50/50 with AP Bronze
• Insignia: GW White first, 3 Layers PP Non-Covering Sunburst Yellow
• Coils: PP Arcane Blue

Step 3: Shade and highlight

All layering and some blends, using brushes. I like to have a popping cartoony look to my models, though after spending 14 hours painting this guy I can understand why people buy an airbrush.

• Blue body: Black + Blue -> Blue -> Blue Hightlight -> GW Light Blue
• Purple body: Purple -> Purple + Light Grey
• Grey body: Grey -> Light Grey
• Steel: Black ink wash -> Gunmetal+Silver -> Silver
• Bronze: Bronze -> Bronze + Silver, Dark Brown lines
• Insignia: Blended edges with Orange
• Coils: Arcane Blue + White

Grass is AP Tuft and the stones are from my driveway.

Front

Back

Side

Step 4: Get murdered by the Protectorate

Paint sure does not protect against poor positioning.

Painting: Lieutenant Allison Jakes

I can't have an army with only one miniature left unpainted. Here's Allison Jakes!

Front View

Straps. So many straps. And ammo belts. The amount of detail on this miniature is just crazy.

Rear View

Allison Jakes, at your service!