15mm WW2: Panzer IV ausf. H - Detailing

After getting a good drybrush to bring out all the details on the model, it was time the details got some love.

15mm WW2: Panzer IV ausf. H - Drybrush and metals

So, after the filter or wash or whatever you want to call it, the overall color of the camo looked good. Now it was time to apply a drybrush to bring out the details and start the weathering of the tanks.

15mm WW2: Panzer IV ausf. H - Continued

As pointed out by myself and some astute readers, the colors are a bit on the bright side to be camo.
Actually I anticipated this in my use of a very light yellow color whereas the base color of late war panzers is dunkelgelb, aka dark yellow.

That's why I planned from the beginning to add a wash of vallejo sepia. After reading up on what filters are (in a model painting context) I decided to just go ahead with the wash, but in a thinned down version. This should have the same effect as a filter, with the added benefit that I didn't have to buy yet another modeling supply ;)

15mm WW2: Panzer IV ausf. H - Airbrush camo

I'm taking a break from 40k and I'm now foraying into the world of 15mm WW2 models. As I've said before, this is a quite natural evolution as I play World of Tanks and have a general interest in all things concerning the development of new technologies. And believe it or not, but war has been the best catalyst for the development of technology.

So I know this might be a bit morbid, but I have a serious interest in how weapons work, how they have evolved over the course of history and the tactics behind deploying them.

Friday night, fight night...

It was that time again... time for a brawl... time for a fight...

You can see my Tau deployed across the table, with Longstrike's hammerhead in the left corner, accompanied by 5 pathfinders and 2 broadsides with heavy rail rifles and 2 missile drones. Next to the building they are standing on is a devilfish with a unit of firewarriors inside. The riptide is smack in the middle of my deployment zone, ready to engage targets on either flank.

Occupying the Aegis defence line are two squads of firewarriors, the left-most is joined by the fireblade. Behind the bastion are the two crisis suits with dual missile pods.

Reserve forces are comprised of 10 Kroot with sniper rounds and a squad of Stealth suits.

And now for something completely different... 15mm WW2

Finishing my Tau Riptide, I decided on buying the next step for my army. Unfortunately, this isn't very exciting as I just need more Firewarriors to field. So I ordered a box of Firewarriors.

Also, I've been ogling Flames of War and especially the minis, as these are great copies of the tanks seen in World of Tanks (well duh, they are after all historical WW2 tanks). So I bit the bullet and bought a box of 5 15mm Panzer IVs from Plastic Soldier Company.

Tau: State of the army

It's been a while since I posted a "State of the army" article. Last time was 4 months ago. I can't believe time goes as fast as it does.

I admit, the summer months were slow when it came to hobby-ing. More time is spent outdoors on other activities and going on vacation.

So, doing a quick calculation with the numbers I used in the last article, in June I had painted up about 460 pts worth of models. In the 4 months time since last article, I finished my Devilfish (+/-100 pts) and 2 gun drones (I'm not counting pts for those), 4 Kroot (28 pts) got painted and my Riptide was done yesterday (190 pts) giving me a grand total of 318 pts painted in 4 months... that doesn't sound like a lot, but considering the time I actually spent on painting these (Kroot needed a brand new painting scheme so I had to smik that and the Riptide is the first giant model I have done), I think that's quite alright.

Incidently, exactly 6 months have passed since I rebooted my Tau army (I started off on April 16th with Shas'la S'mik). So in 6 months time I painted 778 pts worth of models, which is not bad, considering my track record before this army ;)

After the break, a breakdown of the models I have, what is painted and what is planned... also... some army shots.

XV104... Finished Him!

You should read the title in the voice from Mortal Kombat:

Final pictures after the break!

XV104... basing

This guy needed some more work done on the base... which I did yesterday. However, I don't have any WIP shots, only glamour shots of the finished state... past the break!

XV104... Decalled!

You remember this guy, right?

Well, I decided to add some decals to the model, just to make it stand out some more.

XV104... III

Last picture of previous update, as per usual.

Yesterday I continued work on the model and I'm really enjoying the painting, so a pretty big update after the break!

XV104... part deux

This is where I left off... the washes needed to dry, so that's what happened and last saturday, I put in another hour or so of painting. Read all about it after the break!

XV104... need I say more?

I know this picture is obscure, but the astute observer immediately notices this is a Riptide (well duh).

As the background is most obviously my painting desk, this must mean the Riptide is on my painting desk... and what do people do at painting desks? Among other things, they paint!

So that must mean... *gasp* ...that I'm painting my Riptide!

Back from holidays and update!

As you can see here, I haven't been thinking about hobby-ing for about two weeks while I was at the Gorges du Verdon in France... well, that's actually a bit of a lie, as I've read about 4 Black Library books while I was there... enticing me to start some new armies:
(in no particular order)
- Eldar
- Pre-heresy Thousand Sons
- Flesh Tearers
- Ultramarines (gasp!)

They also prompted me to start again on my Dark Angels and Death Guard...

Ah the lure of new (and/or existing) armies...

I refuse to give in, so I'll continue work on my Tau, as you can see after the break!

Kroot batch painting

Remember this guy?

Time to get him some friends!

Airbrushing for noobs

So on saturday, Dries came over to my house for a tutorial on using an airbrush for painting models.
I've had my airbrush for about a year now and to tell you the truth, it has been the best hobby-related investment ever. Yes, it requires a non-trivial amount of money to get going, but once you have a setup, things only get better, faster and easier.

Update you say?

You all remember this guy, right?


...


RIGHT?

Ok so, I did some more work on this concept Kroot dude and you can read all about it after the break...

Small update to Smik Kroot

Howdy folks.

You might remember this picture up here... it has the Kroot guy with the clashing colors for his clothing.

Anyway, I didn't like how the green and the purple worked together, so I decided to just paint his clothing brown, darker than his skin.

Weekend Laze

Ah yes, the weekend... a time in which you need to do all sorts of stuff, but you actually just want to chill ;)

Update... yay!

Remember these guys?

Well, I decided to finish painting the one I like best, first and in the mean time, continue painting 2 gun drones that I started (what seems like) ages ago.

Weekend Laze

Ok so this time, not so much a weekend laze as more of a summer holiday laze ;)

Tau: How they play - Part Deux

Last Friday was the second battle I played with Tau since I rebooted my army. Last time I wrote a post pondering what I did wrong and/or could do better. So today, let's take a look at the lessons I learned and what can still use some improvement.

Friday Night - Fight Night

Friday night was the second battle fought with my rebooted Tau Empire army.
Compared to last time, I brought along a Fireblade instead of a Crisis Commander as my warlord. This is a difference of about 120 points, which was well spent on extra Troops in the form of Firewarriors.

To accomodate another squad of Firewarriors, I left 3 of the stealth suits at home and as such, only took 3. This allows them to be more stealthy and less of an attention magnet. Apart from some changes in armament, those were the only major changes in my army list. So:
+ 20 Firewarriors and Fireblade
- 3 Stealth suits and Crisis Commander

Read on to find out how my list did against the same Tyranid list as last time... (both lists can be found in this post and its comments)

1500p Casual Tau army

And now for something completely different... (no painting progress this time)

On friday, I've got another battle planned with my Tau army. The usual approach to building an armylist for me is to start off with what I have (if I don't have enough models to fill the points value) and go from there, adding in a few proxies where necessary. (We decided on 1500pts)

This time will be no different...

Weekend Laze: Racing, washers and racing

This seems to be happening a lot lately, so why not make it a recurring item on the blog, right...

Let me introduce:

WEEKEND LAZE

So once again, the weekend was filled with stuff to do, only, not much on the warhammer-side of things...

SmiKroot

So I decided to paint my Kroot Carnivores next and I started experimenting for a color scheme.

Earth Caste BioMech Research: Kroot colonies

Greetings fellow Earth Caste researchers.

This treatise handles the physiological discrepancies of divergent Kroot colonies in relation to Fire Caste applicability of mercenaries.

It was not done... NOW it's done!

It looked done... but it didn't feel done...
And like I said in yesterday's post, I wanted to go back in and add some smaller markings, just to tie it all together. I also said I needed a break from painting... well, here's what I did yesterday...

Devilfish down!

Like usual, the above pic is where I left the model after the previous painting session.

I got a little bit of painting done this weekend, and because I couldn't resist, I also stuck together a pathfinder (of which I don't have picture proof).

The end is nigh!

Apocalypse Then?

Back when the first iteration of Apocalypse was released, I was in a 2 year hobby-void where the only thing I did, related to the hobby, was read codices and novels. I did this just to stay in the hobby mind-set for a bit.

So I bought the book and read it cover to cover. I wasn't very impressed and as I didn't have a big enough army nor a regular opponent, no Apocalypse games were played. The big models were cool, like the Baneblade and Stompa (was that released along with Apoc?), but the release came and went and not much of an F was given.

I read the recent rumors about the new iteration of Apocalypse and had the same thought about it: Meh.
But then...

Devilfish update!

This was the Devilfish before I did what I did last night...

Another weekend without hobbytime

I'm not saying I've been a lazy cat, it was only the hobby side of my life that didn't get any attention these last couple of days...

The Devilfish is in the Details

After the previous update giving color to the fish, yesterday, I took back some of the color...

Devilfish in color

You all remember this picture, right?
Well, this weekend I slapped some wash onto the thing and it came out looking OK-ish...
I also told you before that I was going to do an edge drybrush before the wash to make the edges stand out a bit more... well, I was already halfway through the washing process that I remember I was gonna do that... so nope, didn't do it.

Anyway, picture after the break!

Teaser Reveal!

This was the teaser I showed in my last progress update.
I thought it was kinda obvious what it is, and if you took a clever way about this, you could get a big hint from the filename of the image. (how naive of me to think nobody would find that :p)

Look past the break for the big reveal!

Tau: State of the army

(Almost) another month has passed by and this is a new overview of where things stand with my Tau army.

In my last "State of the army" post (here) I finished by saying that I wonder what I would get done in another month's time, and that I hoped I could keep up the momentum.

Well... the momentum has faded a bit, but I have an explanation (or excuse) for that: the weather has become a lot better the last couple of weeks, so less time is spent indoors and thus less time can be spent on hobby-ing.

Since May 21 (when I had painted up about 300 pts) I only finished this one batch of models, comprising 2 broadsides, a marker drone and a Firewarrior. This isn't a lot...
Although, to my defence, the broadsides are the largest models yet painted in my Tau army and the batch represents a little over 160 pts, so that's a painted points increase of over 50% in a month.

Of course, this also means I painted only about half of the points I did the month before and only about 1/4th of the amount of models. Eh well...

Anyway, looking back on the 2 months since first (re-) starting Tau, I'm very happy with what I achieved, and I'm glad the models that have been lurking in my closet for about 8 years are finally starting to really form an army.

After the break, a breakdown of the models I have, what is painted and what is planned...

Broadside Batch Completed!

The drill, it is known to you... above picture is where I left off last week, having just painted and shaded the bases.

Then after some work this weekend and further work yesterday, I can finally say they are finished. Pictures after the break...

Update containing only text!

And we have another mini-update as I didn't think the progress was significant enough to warrant a picture...

I gave the latest batch (2 broadsides, Firewarrior and Marker drone) their coat of varnish and thus prepared them for the final touch: a couple of pieces of static grass.

Since I had set up my airbrush I then proceeded to undercoat my devilfish and 2 gun drones in black primer, like I do with all my models and then started thinking about a camo scheme... I'm not sure what to do with it yet, but I have some ideas... I will explain in a following post what I intend to do...

Next up, adding some grass!

Broadsides mini update

Just wanted to let you know I finished the bases on the Broadsides batch. The only things left to do is spray on a coat of varnish with the airbrush and gluing some static grass to the bases.

Next up, I'll be doing a Devilfish. This will be mostly done with an airbrush, but I will be using the same monochrome highlighting technique followed by a (or several) Violet washes. The idea is that I will spray the vehicle black and then add highlights and a grey/white camo pattern using my airbrush. Then, after the Violet wash is applied, the tank will appear to be painted in several shades of purple.
I hope that turns out ok...

Do you guys have any experience with monochrome highlighting of vehicles?

Broadsides: nearing completion

Here's where I left off this weekend.
I continued work last night, look past the break for more info...

Broadsides: start of detailing

The last days, the weather here in Belgium has been great, so not many hours were spent indoors doing hobby stuff.

Although, I do have a little bit of an update ready as put on another coat of white, just to cover up some blotchy white and I started on the detailing... picture after the break!

Faeit 212: Restored!

Ok, so I'm a couple days late with this, but I thought it was worth mentioning anyway.
natfka.blogspot.com was restored by google on monday, june 3rd. As of that moment, natfka has been posting on that page again instead of the temporary faeit.blogspot.com. Also, this is another temporary solution as his own site (not powered by google or any other blogging platform) is under construction and will appear at www.faeit212.com.

Video by Natfka after the break...

Further Broadside Business

So here we have one broadside with its basecoat of Stonewall Grey on the Rail Rifles and the other without the basecoat. Yesterday, I continued work on them and got a little bit further...

Broadside business

Well, you know how this works. On top is the picture of where I left off with my current paint batch. This was over a week ago (*gasp*) but I finally got a couple of hours of painting done and after the break, I will show you where I ended up this saturday...

WTF? - Ethereal and Cadre Fireblade

My first post in 3 days... I've been busy with anything but the Fire Caste, meaning that I haven't done any actual hobby-ing.

What I did do, however, is read up on the rules for Ethereals and Cadre Fireblades.
Time for another WTF post...

Tau: how they play

This post will detail my experience with Tau units' performance on the battlefield.

Friday was the first battle I did with them with the new Codex, and also in 6th edition. I think the last time I played Tau was in 4th...

Check my previous post here to see what list me and Dries were playing.

Tau: Inaugural battle

Friday night, I had the first of (hopefully) many battles with my new Tau army.
This will be a short battle report mainly focussing on how the army plays.

Faeit 212: Temporary site

Just a quick update about Faeit 212.

Natfka has a temporary site set up on blogspot while waiting for his own, permanent new website.
Visit http://faeit.blogspot.com for news and rumors!

Yay!

One power armour; coming up!

I just read an article on Gizmodo that talks about a new support system for soldiers, called "Warrior Web".

The idea is that it's a full suit that can be worn underneath the soldier's uniform. It incorporates such things as sensors, components to provide joint support where needed and the ability to stiffen to help distribute weight of gear carried on the body.

Is anyone else seeing the similarities with the Space Marine's black carapace?
Could this, along with the developments in exoskeletons, be the first step towards a fully functioning power armour?

I've added some additional links to read after the break...

Next!

Meet Bob.

Bob is a friendly Tau. He's currently employed as an XV88 pilot in the service of the Greater Good(tm). In his spare time, Bob is an avid member of the Fire caste and he likes to shoot Heavy Rail Rifles, preferably at things that are far, far away.

Fred is Bob's coworker and squadmate. He's also Bob's best friend and once a week, they get together for a night of poker. That night, they are joined by other employees of the Greater Good(tm) like Lucy and Joe. Joe is just a starting Shas'la and is currently something of a pariah, being without a squad to belong in. Also, everybody thinks him and Lucy are a couple, but Lucy thinks she is way out of his league. Lucy is (for now) unique in the Greater Good(tm) as she is the only marker drone around. Maybe that's why she has a bit of a superiority complex.

Bob's current title is Shas'ui, but at night, he dreams of becoming Shas'vre one day. Could you help Bob out by not trying to kill him next time he's on the battlefield? Bob would be very grateful.

Also, Bob doesn't like the fact that his feet need to be so close together, he'd much prefer a larger space to pose. However, his employer is using old equipment right now, but once newer equipment becomes available, Bob was promised an upgrade.

Tau: State of the army

So I finished my two XV8 suits and 3 Firewarriors batch and wanted to take some time to evaluate where I am now with painting my Tau army.

On April 16th, I started this whole madness with Shas'la S'mik. Now, 35 days later, this is where I'm at. I like to think I made a lot of progress with the army and I really like the pace at which this project is moving forward.

I have about 300 points painted up if you count both XV8s as regular XV8s. However, I need a Commander, so before I buy one, one of the XV8s will stand in as the commander, bumping the painted points (for now) to about 400. Not bad for a month of painting :D

After the break, there's a list of what I have finished and what I still need to do.