Stormblades
It has been way too long since I last cracked off a post. Spring and summer managed to sneak up on me this year, keeping my busy. I've really want to get back to blogging though, so I’m going to make a focused effort to see if I can at least get a post up a couple of times a week - which would be far better than what I have managed to date. For me, writing a blog is much more of a personal therapy than it is a need to communicate with the masses. It’s my opportunity to wallow in my dorky hobbies without fear of social reprisal. It is the outlet for my nerdastity.
I am nothing if not a well-rounded gamer. I like miniatures gaming, roleplaying games, complex board games, card games, and video games. Yes, I am very gamey. Lately, I’ve mostly been posting about my progress painting my two Warmachine armies in preparation for PAX. In the coming weeks, you can expect that focus to widen quite a bit. My attentions tend to wander far afield, and the topics I choose to blog about are going to be adrift upon that same stream of consciousness.
But for today, at least, we are going to return to that familiar fields of Warmachine: I finally finished my units of Stormblades and took some pictures. To be fair, the Stormblade unit has been finished for a long time, but they have been waiting on their Unit Attachment. I had everything painted long ago except for the standard-bearer. I’ll admit, having to freehand the swan on the banner freaked me out. With a piece that big, he is going to command attention on the table top, and I didn’t want to paint it until I felt like I had enough skill to pull it off at least reaonably. I finally decided to give him a chance, and thankfully, I think he turned out nice. Take a look for yourself:
To paint it, I first painted the entire center of the banner yellow, adding all the shading and highlights. I then went back and started outlining the swan with Ultramarines Blue. This was far easier than trying to paint the fine lines in yellow over a blue field, and gave me a chance to get my shading nice without having to be so precise.
The rest of the unit turned out pretty well. I used a fairly standard Cygnar paint scheme, with the exception of the added white accent on the pauldrons, the buckler and the little piece of armor over the arch of the foot. In my Cygnar army, I’m using heavy white accents on my warcasters, and I wanted to paint my stormblades as if they were special elite cadre, given the role they usually play in the game's fluff.
At first I was intimidated by all of the electric coils on the storm glaives, but I ended up landing on a really easy technique that makes them all look great. I paint the entire coil bright white, and then wash over it with a very thinned-out electric blue wash. The blue settles into the crevices leaving the white on the high spots, giving it a nice cold, electric glow. I wish I was good enough to pull off reflected light like you see on Privateer’s studio Epic Nemo, but that kind of skill is still a ways off for me.
81 days until PAX.
Labels: miniatures, wargaming, Warmachine
