painting miniatures – When Cannons Fade…

Spectraltalon – Hobby, Life and Motivation

Welcome back, dear readers! This week, another of my friends from across the pond has kindly offered to write an article for the site. Confusingly his name is also Matt, hence me using his Instagram handle in the post title.

Getting the mojo up to do some painting sometimes can be tough. Inspiration may not be forthcoming, you may be getting to much thrown at you in your day-to-day work/life situation, so what can you do?

This is quite a long one, so make a cuppa, rev up some crumpets and marmite and settle in.

Spectraltalon, over to you sir…

Pandemic Lockdown project: Squats. Matt weighs in.

Squats… Stunties… Space Dwarfs (Dwarves??)… you may remember these half-barreled sized denizens of the Imperium from the early days of 40K. Or not, I can’t comment. I remember thinking that these little characters were a little odd, and were honestly never my cup of tea but Your Mileage May Vary.

Daughters of Khaine – Kraith test mini

As I had mentioned in my previous post, I’d picked up the army book, cards and miniatures for the Daughters of Khaine forces of Age of Sigmar. I’m not sure why these hadn’t caught my eye earlier, but I’ve got to say, the movement and posing of these Aelves is just gorgeous. The miniatures really get across the message that these are lithe, brutal killers, and bloody scary to boot.

Pantheon of Chaos – Warband nostalgia!

Now that Chiberia/Ice Planet Hoth seems to be retreating, life seems to be returning to normal. I recently picked up a copy of ‘A Song of Blades and Heroes’ by Ganesha Games as I wanted to use a simple and fun rule set to give me an excuse to put together a warband using the Pantheon of Chaos figures I picked up a little while ago through the Knightmare Miniatures Kickstarter campaigns.

The Horus Project – An International Hobby Quest

“It does not matter how the galaxy burns, only that it does”.

“Warmaster – that is what it means, my brother. The strength to do what must be done.”

Welcome back, friends! This post sees the beginning of a long(ish)-term project between me and my good friend Matt. After exchanging several text messages through WhatsApp a couple of weeks ago, we decided upon a painting thing we could do together, and so The Horus Project was born.

Continue reading “The Horus Project – An International Hobby Quest”

Dark Mariner Vanguard finished!

“Most curious, the morphology of these creatures. I have dissected one of the recovered bodies and found that its structure has a basic skeletal form of calcareous bone, but replaced in some sections by soft tissue, supported by a surgically embedded alloy lattice. The techniques used in this type of surgical work is far beyond anything I have witnessed, and the alloy is much stronger and lighter than any we can produce. I must determine the origins of these technologies if we are to repel these creatures…

Research Journal – Pilny the Aged, 1689″

Finally, after what seemed to be an age, I managed to finish up this underwater lurking creep. I had a lot of fun painting him as I wasn’t as ‘tidy’ as I am on other miniatures, and that was mainly due to the fact that I wanted a more organic feel to his look. This guy does, after all, live under the sea and his armor is going to be rusted and barnacle covered, and worn down with the elements, so I wasn’t looking to have a ‘clean cut’ paint job like I would do on say Infinity miniatures for example.

I’m pretty pleased with the lighting effects I have on the ether crystals, I always dread doing that stuff as if it looks crap, it’s hard to rectify it without repainting the area!

I’m looking to get two starter warbands painted up so that I can start running some demo games of Deepwars, and now i’m a step closer to that goal. I’m actually really looking forward to making the gaming surface (more on that later).

I’ve started a painting tracker spreadsheet which is (hopefully) going to help me rage through the Heavy Metal and Plastic Pile of Shame that I have accrued (I’ll be writing an article about that shortly too, that’s going to run for several posts). So, first entry is completed, it felt good to fill the first line in lol!

I’m excited to work on these figures, it certainly gives me something a little different to go at, and I love the fact that it’s a game set underwater (cue JAWS music…). You should all really do yourselves a favor and check out the Antimatter Games website/store and take a look at the worlds of Shadowsea and it’s sister game Deepwars (most miniatures are compatible for both games).

Alrighty… on to the next! >fistbump<