Painted: Empire Swordsmen

There's certainly not much time left in February for completing my hobby projects, but after a nice afternoon painting session I do have my Empire Swordsmen wrapped up.  They go along with my other swordsmen, Master Engineer, Witch Hunter and a gaggle of flagellants for the painted Warhammer Fantasy Empire army I've been working on.

Reporting for duty.

There's a lot of detail on these guys that I didn't pick out. I made the decision early on with this 30 strong troop choice that I wasn't going to spend much time on each individual. They're meant to run around on the table as a large mob so the important thing was for the paint scheme to consistent across the regiment. That's why they call it a uniform, after all.

Here's an older shot of my witch hunter and his retinue.  The freshly painted swordsmen and master engineer aren't included in the shot. I still have a steam tank and 12 more swordsmen that need painting up, then the original composition of the army will be fulfilled.

A witch hunter and his retinue

I'm not going back and putting these guys on round bases for Age of Sigmar. Even though that's probably the rules set they'll be used in from here on out, I still like the look of them when they're all ranked up in traditional Warhammer Fantasy style.

My Cygnar Collection

I thought I'd take a break from my painting updates to showcase my Cygnar army.  It's the faction I chose when I first started playing Warmachine. It is the largest in part because it has had the most time to grow, but mainly because I still have a soft spot for it in my heart and end up adding the occasional model her and there even though I don't really need it.

Here are my warcasters. From right to left: Caine, Kraye, Haley, Sloan and Junior. I'm most happy with the Sloan model.  I really like the conversion to her aiming her rifle rather than holding it up in the air like a drum major. I've also realized upon taking this picture that Caine needs some touch up work, especially on his face. Dude looks like he's wearing a mask.

Here are the heavy warjacks. Again from right to left: centurion, stormclad, defender. I think the defender is my favorite jack by far. Not because his rules are necessarily awesome, but because I love lobbing cannonballs downrange and the idea of robot-brain-killing-hammer.

And the light warjacks.  We've got a charger, hunter, firefly and sentinel. You'll usually find the hunter being run by the journeyman warcaster and some mix of the others running around causing problems where they can. I like to field them even though they're probably not the best choice given that the warcasters I run are happiest when they're keeping their focus to themselves.

And all my gun mages. There's two units of regualar gun mages in there with their officers.  Also along for the ride are two gun mage captain adepts and the Black 13th.  Gun mages are my favorite of all the various Cygnar units.  Having almost 20 of them in various flavors on the board puts a lot of tools in my swiss army knife.

I've also got a few random solos.  Three stormcallers, Arlan Strangeways and a storm strider.

And here's my pile of unpainted miniatures.  There's Nemo, a couple squads of long gunners, a unit of stormguard, a range squad, Thunderhead, a second sentinel, an ironclad and Captain Darius with his halfjacks. Someday I'll get all these guys painted up, either through my own efforts or by farming the job out to a miniatures painting service. Blue Table Painting has already handled a fair bit of the army, but I'm open to doing some research and seeing if I can find someone else to do the remainder.

I'd love to have an excuse to add to the army. I like the rules on the minuteman light jacks and I've always wanted to throw down a cyclone heavy. Some sword knights would let me field the theme force for Darius. Of course adding in a stormwall colossal would be fantastic.  The work of an obsessive collector is never done.

Sadly, the army hasn't seen the tabletop in years. Some of the painted units like the firefly and storm strider have never seen action. I really want to be able to write a resolution that I'll get them into combat soon but I think that would just be empty words. C'est la vie, I suppose.  Someday.

Riptide of Joy and Suffering

I remain, as always, a slow painter. Do you also paint slowly? I feel like a couple hours of painting only gets me through one little section on a large model or that I just get one color laid down on a squad of miniatures.  C'est la vie, I suppose.  I should give up on any dreams I had of being a professional painter.  It would take much too long for anyone to want to hire me.

I wouldn't want to hire me.

Clank Clank I'm a tank.

The base colors on my Tau are Bastion Grey from Privateer Press and Mecharius Solar Orange from Games Workshop. Both paints need two coats to get proper coverage, but for different reasons.  The grey is very thin and lets a lot of the primer show through so two coats are necessary to get a smooth finish.  The orange is extremely thick, and remains so no matter how much water I add.  My brush seems to end up pushing globs of paint around and it takes two coats to smooth it all out.

It's time consuming.

I might get one more evening of painting in on the Riptide before I set it aside to tackle some of this month's other projects. I pulled out a reference model from my empire army so I will go ahead and tackle the six empire swordsmen on this month's todo list.